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Woolsey blasts threats to Iraq oil workers : "WASHINGTON, June 6 Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., said Iraqi threats to its striking oil workers are undemocratic during a briefing with a visiting Iraqi unionist. 'If they are working for a true democracy, working rights have to be front and center,' Woolsey said during the briefing with Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union. Woolsey was responding to questions about the ongoing strike in Basra, in southern Iraq, where workers began striking Monday over frustrations that demands for better working conditions and inclusion in the negotiations over the draft oil law have not been met."

United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Briefing

Rights Groups Call for End to Secret Detentions - New York Times : "WASHINGTON, June 6 — Six human rights groups on Wednesday released a list of 39 people they believe have been secretly imprisoned by the United States and whose whereabouts are unknown, calling on the Bush administration to abandon such detentions. The list, compiled from news media reports, interviews and government documents, includes terrorism suspects and those thought to have ties to militant groups. In some suspects’ cases, officials acknowledge that they were at one time in United States custody. In others, the rights groups say, there is other evidence, sometimes sketchy, that they had at least once been in American hands."

Baghdad's Green Zone Is a Haven Under Siege - washingtonpost.com Despite the rising casualty toll from the attacks -- eight people have been killed, including two U.S. soldiers, and about 25 have been injured since late March -- the bigger problem is the psychological impact of insurgents striking the symbolic heart of the United States here, Iraqis and Americans say. That view is strengthened by the sense -- correct or not -- that the Green Zone was a relatively secure oasis where the war didn't seep in. "It's amazing to people in the red zone, who think that if it can happen in the Green Zone, it can happen anywhere, and what's going to happen next?" said a 27-year-old Iraqi computer technician, who spoke on condition his name not be used, fearing that he and his family could be targeted. Like many Iraqis, he works in the Green Zone but lives outside it, an area some now call the red zone.

If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran - by Paul Craig Roberts The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat," and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time." More evidence that the war is lost arrived June 4 with headlines reporting that "U.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday." After five years of war the U.S. controls one-third of one city and nothing else.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News - Iraq: Yes, Rambo, you get to win this time

More than 4 million Iraqis have fled home as situation worsens – UN 5 June 2007 – More than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, seeking refuge either inside the country or beyond its borders as the situation deteriorates, the United Nations refugee agency said today, urging countries to do more to ease their plight.