Separately, another group of five Marines in Kilo Company, including a lieutenant who commanded the platoon, are under investigation for injuring a suspect in their custody, according to a defense attorney who has been contacted by the family of one of the Marines. He spoke Thursday only on condition of anonymity because he has not taken on the case.

The Iraqi man was killed west of Baghdad on April 26. His death was unrelated to the shootings of as many as two dozen civilians in the western Iraqi city of Haditha. The Pentagon is investigating troops from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment in that case.

The Marine Corps and Pentagon spokesmen have refused to comment on any aspect of the Iraqi's death since an investigation was announced May 24.

However, a Pentagon official said Thursday that charges are expected to be brought "very soon." The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss charges before they are filed, could not confirm the specific counts.

Sullivan said the eight men are being held in solitary confinement.

"There's concern about the publicity of Haditha having a detrimental impact on the case," he said. "My concern is that the whole politics of this. There's an assumption that these guys are guilty before there's been an opportunity for a thorough, impartial investigation."

Under military law, after charges are served defendants have the right to an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury investigation.

An investigating officer presides over the hearing and makes a recommendation to the Marine general who directed the investigation. The general has the final say whether to order a court-martial and what charges, if any, the defendants will face.

Omar Saed, 55, a university lecturer in Baghdad, said: "We'd like to send a brief letter to all the world: 'Please stop the American troops killing any more people.' We need full cooperation from all to help us avoid any more incidents like what happened in Haditha and Ramadi and all the [other] Iraqi cities."

Omar al-Hadi, a businessman in Baghdad's affluent Mansour district, said: "Why are the Americans making a big deal of this now? Don't they know how many thousands of Iraqis have died at the hands of the foreign forces, the terrorists and the militias, and how nothing is ever done about it - apart from occasional expressions of regret?"

Hussein al-Jassim, a baker in the capital's Karrada district, said: "I don't care who was responsible - the Americans or the terrorists. All I know is their deaths and all the deaths are for nothing.

"Iraq was finished the minute Saddam took over, and then the minute the Americans thought they could come and save us from him."

Reports of the killings at Haditha had been circulating since March but the reaction of Iraqi politicians and the media had been relatively muted. And it was not until Tuesday that the new Iraqi prime minister chose to comment. "We emphasise that our forces, that multinational forces, will respect human rights, the rights of the Iraqi citizen," Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview with the BBC.

But Mahmood Talib, a Haditha trader who moved to Baghdad a year ago, said: "Weekly, the American troops and the terrorists surprise us by aggressive operations against our people in the Sunni triangle."

"The whole purpose of those regulations is to know if Geneva applies," said Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has been pressing the Defence Department for details of its detainee policy for months.

The 1991 Canadian regulations - developed during the Persian Gulf war - included provisions to hold tribunals to determine a detainee's status under Geneva if there is any doubt.

Captured fighters don't deserve these rights because this isn't a war between countries, says Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, who commands the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command and thus oversees all Canadian Forces deployed abroad.

"They are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status but they are entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment," he said, asserting that all detainees are humanely treated.

"The regulations apply in an armed conflict between states, and what's happening in Afghanistan is not an armed conflict between states. And therefore there is no basis for making a determination of individuals being prisoners of war," he said.

Since Ottawa first sent fighting forces to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the government has said that anyone captured by Canadian Forces is treated humanely. For years, detainees were quickly turned over to the U.S. military. But, since last December, a new agreement with Kabul means Canadian troops now turn detainees over to the Afghan military, a move some have criticized because of the Afghans' uneven record of observing human rights.

The decision to ignore the regulations without a legal test of whether detainees in Afghanistan are entitled to PoW status puts Canada "in a very odd situation. It's completely irregular," Prof. Attaran says.

He believes the government's position that Geneva doesn't apply may be correct but it needs to be tested in court.

According to Canada's Prisoner-of-War Status Determination Regulations, "the commanding officer of a unit or other element of the Canadian Forces shall ensure that each detainee is screened as soon as practicable after being taken into custody to determine whether or not the detainee is entitled to prisoner-of-war status."

Last updated before Ottawa sent a field hospital to Saudi Arabia in the middle of the Persian Gulf war, the regulations are designed to make sure Canadian soldiers understand and correctly apply the 1949 Geneva Conventions with respect to detainees.

But Canada, following the Bush administration's lead in the United States, had decreed that there are no lawful combatants among the enemy in the current conflict and no screening was required.

Gen. Gauthier concedes that the change in policy could open the door to criminal charges being laid against Taliban fighters.

If a captured enemy fighter is implicated in killing a Canadian soldier - for instance, the Taliban fighter who launched the rocket-propelled grenade that killed Captain Nichola Goddard on May 17 - Ottawa might order him charged with murder and tried.

"I would seek guidance that clearly would come from outside the Defence Department if we wished to pursue this any further from a prosecutorial basis," the general said.

The change aligns Canada's position on the criminal culpability for battlefield violence with that of the United States. Omar Khadr, the only Canadian held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is charged with murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier.

Canada has provided few details on the fate of detainees its forces have handed over to U.S. authorities since 2002; neither the number nor the names have been made public. All the government has said is that none are currently at Guantanamo Bay. But it's unknown whether they have been released, or are being held at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe.

Similar secrecy cloaks what happens to detainees handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces fighting in Kandahar province. Gen. Gauthier indicated such transfers occur regularly, if not daily then several times a week. But no numbers are publicly available.

"Our default setting is transfer," he said. "We haven't held anybody for more than a few hours and we would prefer not to."

Canadian troops do screen detainees - determining on the spot whether a captive poses a threat and should be handed over to the Afghan authorities or should be freed. Gen. Gauthier said the decision to release those not considered dangerous happens routinely. Both decisions are checked up the chain of command, he said.

Prof. Attaran says the military's policy on transfers doesn't absolve Canada if detainees are then mistreated, tortured or killed.

He argues that if the government wants to be involved in this conflict, then it should take responsibility for those its soldiers detain, at least until a court or tribunal determines it can properly transfer them.

"It seems like they want to treat them as though they are radioactive," he said.

But Gen. Gauthier said there is no risk that ordinary soldiers or junior officers could face war-crimes charges, even if detainees handed over to the Afghans were tortured or killed.

"Our intention certainly isn't to leave junior folks hanging out to dry at all on this," he said. "We are on firm legal ground we have no worries about the possibility of prosecution or allegations of criminal wrongdoing for having transferred detainees."

This program of corporate welfare led Lay to dub the first President Bush "the energy president" in a column supporting his reelection because "just six months after George Bush became president, he directed ... the development of a new energy strategy," which, in effect, compelled local utility companies to carry Enron electricity on their wires. It was, Lay crowed, "the most ambitious and sweeping energy plan ever proposed."

Another huge gift from the first Bush regime came in the form of a ruling by Wendy Gramm, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that permitted Enron to trade in energy derivatives, making possible the company's exponential growth. Five weeks after that ruling, Gramm resigned and joined the Enron board of directors, serving on its subsequently much criticized audit committee. Six years later, Gramm's husband, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), further enabled Enron greed by pushing through additional anti-regulation legislation.

A long list of members of George H.W. Bush's Cabinet and inner circle, including Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, went to work for Enron after his 1992 defeat. An even greater number of Enron officials returned the favor by joining the George W. Bush administration in 2001 shortly before the Enron scandal exploded.

The close connections between President Bush and Lay began when they both worked on the 1992 Bush père presidential reelection campaign. In fact, a long paper trail of their friendly and collaborative correspondence has been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests. "Dear Ken, one of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older -- just like you!" wrote then-Texas Gov. Bush in April 1997. "Thank goodness you have such a young beautiful wife." In Lay's typed responses -- some are handwritten -- he sometimes crossed out Bush's formal titles to scrawl a friendly "George," emphasizing their personal history before he urged the governor to, for example, help Enron secure foreign energy contracts with regimes in Romania and Uzbekistan, or called for so-called tort reform designed to protect corporations from lawsuits.

Typical was Bush's role in Enron lobbying of Pennsylvania's governor to permit Enron to enter his state's energy market. As Lay wrote in a letter dated Oct. 7, 1997: "I very much appreciated your call to Gov. Tom Ridge a few days ago. I am certain that will have a positive impact on the way he and others in Pennsylvania view our proposal." After the Enron crash, Bush attempted to distance himself from the "Bush pioneer," who had sent more than $2 million in Enron funds George W.'s way, as well as supplying him with the Enron company jet on at least eight occasions. "I have not met with him personally," Bush said after the scandal broke.

What Bush left out was not only his hundreds of personal encounters with Lay before he assumed the presidency but, more important, Lay's key role in drafting the Bush administration's energy policy. Lay met with energy task force chairman Dick Cheney at least six times. It was Lay who submitted a key memo opposing price caps in response to the energy crisis in California that Enron had helped engineer. Lay was also instrumental in the abrupt dismissal of Curtis Hebert Jr. as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The neutered FERC later conveniently refused California's loud pleas for help.

So far, California has recouped some of the billions in taxpayer and pension funds it lost, and several of Enron's top dogs are looking at hard time. Perhaps, after this November, if the opposition party can retake at least one branch of government, the connections between these corporate criminals and their buddy in the White House can be more fully investigated as well.

The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.

RFID tags have long been used to identify animals in a variety of settings; livestock, laboratory animals and pets have been "chipped" for decades. Privacy advocates have long expressed concerns about this technology being used in human beings.

In a related story, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe allegedly remarked that microchips could be used to track seasonal workers to visiting U.S. senators Jeff Sessions (Alabama) and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania). "President Uribe said he would consider having Colombian workers have microchips implanted in their bodies before they are permitted to enter the US for seasonal work," Specter told Congress on April 25. [...]

"Not because of armed conflict, not because of ethnic conflict, not because of other forms of displacement, but because of so-called development-based projects and plans."

"It's a situation that's grave enough to require global attention. Unfortunately it does not get the kind of attention that armed conflict, ethnic conflict or refugee situations get," he said.

Kothari, a Indian architect and specialist on land rights who reports to the UN's top human rights body, has repeatedly spoken out against evictions in a string of countries.

He said there is a common pattern of human rights abuse involved: residents are rarely consulted or even informed about plans, there is little or no search for alternatives to demolitions, and police and private security firms use violence and intimidation with impunity.

Kothari raised the alarm a year ago about a campaign in Zimbabwe which saw 700,000 people driven from their slums in what the government billed as a necessary urban clean-up.

Today, many of the victims are today still homeless or badly-housed, but the issue has dropped out of the spotlight, Kothari complained.

"The international community, after a flurry of activity last year, seems to have forgotten the people of Zimbabwe," he said.

"There is a silence at the highest levels of the United Nations, there is a silence from bilateral donors, there is a deafening silence from senior African leaders including Mbeki from South Africa and Obasanjo from Nigeria, and there's a shocking silence even from influential individuals like Nelson Mandela."

Kothari's recent targets have included: a highway project in the Pakistani megacity of Karachi which could eventually leave 250,000 shanty-town dwellers homeless and a ongoing urban renewal programme in Mumbai, India, that has razed the homes of an estimated 350,000 people.

They also included other programmes affecting hundreds of thousands of people in Angola, Cambodia and the Philippines.

"We're seeing the formation of apartheid cities all over the world," said Kothari, as a result of efforts to drive the poor from what has often turned into prime urban real estate, particularly in countries which are emerging from conflict.

"I think that is a very grave portent for the future because it will certainly lead to more conflict," he said.

Kothari has spotlighted the impact on rural residents of high-profile dam construction projects in China and India.

The developed world is also at fault -- and not just because of its investments or aid which can end up being used for development projects that hurt the poor -- Kothari said.

He pointed to expulsions of Roma communities in Russia, as well as the evictions from and demolition of public housing in Canada and the United States.

The GAO, the non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress, urged the Pentagon to draw up standards that each component and the overall ballistic missile defense system must meet before they can be used, just as other major weapons programs do.

It also recommended that the Department of Defense (DOD) set up a new structure to identify all the costs of operating the missile defense system, some of which are now being funded with research money, and report them to Congress.

Underscoring the cost and significance of the program to U.S. national defense, GAO suggested that lawmakers pass legislation requiring the Pentagon to actually act on its recommendations.

GAO said that was needed because Pentagon officials agreed or partially agreed with its recommendations, but did not say if they planned to adopt the changes.

"Without the ability to identify and assess total ballistic missile defense operational costs, neither DOD nor Congress has complete information to make funding and trade-off decisions among competing priorities," the report said.

The Bush administration asked Congress for $10.4 billion in fiscal 2007 for all missile defenses, up from about $8.8 billion for the current year.

Combined spending on missile defense projects remained the costliest item in the defense budget.

Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering in March said U.S. efforts to develop a layered defense against enemy missiles had "turned a major corner" after two interceptor tests failed in late 2004 and early 2005.

Military commanders have not yet determined it is ready.

John Isaacs, a critic of the missile defense system, said the GAO report was the latest in a string of critical reviews by various watchdog agencies. All see "serious deficiencies" with the program, he said.

"They're spending a lot of money, but no one has an idea of what it will do and ... whether it will work," said Isaacs at the Council for a Livable World.

Even Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, a key member of the House Armed Services Committee, recently said he feared the missile defense program would become a billpayer for other unfunded weapons programs, Isaacs said.