"In a case that cuts right to the heart of the First Amendment, a US Army prosecutor has indicated he intends to subpoena Truthout Executive Director Marc Ash, a Truthout reporter, and two of the nonprofit news organization's regular contributors, to authenticate news reports they produced and edited earlier this year that quoted an Army officer criticizing President Bush and the White House's rationale for the Iraq War.
Captain Dan Kuecker, the Fort Lewis, Washington-based Army prosecutor, has stated his intent to compel Ash, Truthout reporter Sari Gelzer, and contributors Dahr Jamail and Sarah Olson to testify at the court-martial of First Lieutenant Ehren Watada. Kuecker is actively seeking the journalists' testimony so he can prove that Watada engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer, directly related to disparaging statements the Army claims Watada made about the legality of the Iraq War during interviews with Truthout and his hometown newspaper, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, in June."
* juancole:
"Mark Danner writing for NYRB reviews the sad story of how it all went wrong in Iraq. He is very clear on the unresolved question of how the Iraqi army got dissolved and deep debaathification was pursued. Then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld denied having made the decision. Danner thinks it came from Paul Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith, the number 2 and 3 men at the Department of Defense at that time. Given the tight links between Feith and the Israeli Likud Party and the Israeli military, one has to wonder whether the Israeli Right had input into these fateful decisions, which have the lives of nearly 3000 GIs and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The role of the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, both of them Neocon Central, would also bear looking into. Certainly, the decisions were not in the interest of the United States."
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