One of the names I remember hearing in the news often in my pre-teens was that of General William Westmoreland. He was the commander of US forces in Vietnam while Lyndon Johnson was President.

Westmoreland died on Monday at the age of 91. Clearly a major figure in one of the nastier of America’s many incursions into foreign affairs.

I’ll keep this post open for a while to link to obituaries and reaction to Westmoreland’s passing. I’ll kick it off with the Wikipedia page on Westmoreland, and a lengthy piece by New York Times obituarist Eric Pace.

• Washington Post obituary
• NPR Morning Edition - audio profile by Stanley Karnow
• The Guardian newsblog

Disturbing report in Sunday’s Washington Post claiming that the Bush Administration has been bugging the telephones of IAEA director-general Mohammed El Baradei (“IAEA Leader’s Phone Tapped”). It’s all about looking for dirt to use to block El Baradei’s reappointment for a third term.

But there’s something even more disturbing tucked away towards the end of the article. It seems the US State Department have approached Global Village Idiot Alexander Downer to run against El Baradei. Downer, to his credit, is understood not to be interested.

And the US government still can’t understand why they are so out of step with the rest of the world.

6 May 1953: Airman Ronald Maddison died less than hour after sarin gas was deliberately dripped onto his arm as part of an experiment at a chemical weapons facility at Porton Down, Wiltshire. Fifty-one years later, a fresh inquest has decided that Maddison was unlawfully killed. His relatives intend seeking compensation from the Ministry of Defence, and more than 500 claims from exservicemen who were involved unwittingly in the WMD tests (and survived) could be forthcoming.

The Guardian has a report today. BBC Online has a series of articles about the inquest, and the background to this amazing story. Best way to navigate is to start at the verdict and follow the related links back.

The Black Vault has some astonishing material regarding more than ninety trial biological warfare “attacks” conducted by the Porton Down facility between 1963 and 1975. (The Black Vault is a quite remarkable reference on government - mainly US - documentation.)

The Porton Down Veterans Support Group has a website (albeit tarnished by some gratuitous DHTML). The UK Medical Research Council has also published its findings of an epidemiological study of twenty thousand veterans who took part in the Porton Down research between the 1940s and the 1980s.

An article at UK Indymedia entitled UK Porton Down WMD Expert dies in Air Crash is worth reading as well.

A few articles published over the last few weeks that I think are worthy of attention:

By Naomi Klein: James Baker’s Double Life (The Nation, 12.10.04): The conflicts of interest surrounding James Baker, GHW Bush’s Secretary of State, now GW Bush’s special envoy - and also on the payroll of, and an equity member in, the Carlyle Group.

Also by Naomi Klein: Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us? (The Guardian, 16.10.04): Dealing with the reparation that Iraq still has to pay resulting from Saddam Hussain’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

From Juan Gonzalez: The war’s littlest victim (New York Daily News, 29.9.04): On the effects of the USA’s use of depleted uranium during their occupation of Iraq.

From George Monbiot: Exploitation on Tap (The Guardian, 19.10.04): About the privatisation of water in South Africa.

One year on, UN takes up Greenpeace Iraq warnings
http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/news/details?item_id=613590
Mohamed ElBaradei warned the world today that nuclear assets in Iraq have been looted and nuclear materials have disappeared. Greenpeace made that warning more than a year ago when we located radioactive materials and returned them to the nuclear facility at Tuwaitha. Due to US resistance to the UN nuclear watchdog’s return to Iraq, it has to rely on satellite images. We saw evidence of the UN concerns on the ground.

Terror cargo lands in France
http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/news/details?item_id=608529
LATEST UPDATES: www.stop-plutonium.org
After weeks of cat-and-mouse antics, the Pacific Pintail slipped into the port of Cherbourg with a deadly cargo of Plutonium — but only after a French court ensured Greenpeace would be kept out of the way.