Nobody was told off, there was no inquiry, and 20 years on, some of us remain impoverished by that experience.”‘I carried the experience for years after’Sheila Craig, 50, from London, is a former peace activist. She now works as a freelance teaching consultant and trainee counsellor.”I still see the total brutality of the attack It was malicious We had all travelled there in the spirit of non-violence. People were physically and psychologically wounded, and I carried the experience for years after I still have the scars. But the scars served a purpose and I became more committed to political, social and environmental change.My son, who was four, was with me We were having a picnic We saw dark figures in riot gear charging down the field It was unreal. Look at the pushed-in fa?e of the American consulate, three miles from the blast’s centre, or the face of the Catholic cathedral, one mile in the other direction, torn down like gingerbread, and you can tell that the liberated atom spares nothing in the way.” Weller’s remarkable dispatches might not have been discovered but for his son Anthony, also a writer and journalist, who was dealing with his father’s belongings after his death in 2002. And he displayed an obsession with cleanliness during the period the soldiers, all Pennsylvania National Guardsmen, were observing.A Pentagon spokes-woman said that it would be inappropriate to comment on the story.n In defiance of two major US-Iraqi offensives against rebels in the past few days, a suicide car bomber killed at least 15 traffic policemenoutside their unit’s headquarters yesterday in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil.And insurgents assaulted a police station in Baghdad, killing at least eight policemen and an eight-month-old baby.. Three years after Weller’s death at the age of 95, and 60 years after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing more than 200,000 people and ushering the world into the nuclear era, some of those first-hand dispatches have been published in a Japanese newspaper.They provide a raw and unique insight into the bomb’s devastation and the horrifying effect of radiation poisoning, known to the author of the reports and the bewildered doctors he spoke to simply as “Disease X”.In a report filed from Nagasaki on 8 September 1945, Weller wrote: “In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki.

The scenes that confronted the reporter George Weller would fill his dispatches with horror and stay with him for life. The first Western reporter into the bombed and off-limits city of Nagasaki in September 1945, Weller encountered sickness and suffering of a kind never seen before. He described the cityscape though which he passed as a “wasteland of war”. Concerned at the effect Weller’s reporting would have on worldwide opinion as well as his subsequent political ambitions, the general ensured that none of the reportage he filed from Nagasaki would be published.Until now. He knows that he will never find them.”One soldier, Jesse Dawson, said: “He’d always tell us he was still the president.

That’s what he thinks, 100 per cent.”Saddam derided the Americans, according to the magazine, for failing to target the palace he was in during a spate of bombing in Baghdad at the start of the invasion in March 2003 “America, they dumb” he reportedly said to the soldiers. “They bomb the wrong palace.”The magazine provided a portrayal of Saddam as a poetry lover, who enjoyed telling jokes, tending to his garden and smoking cigars, who also displayed paternal instincts towards his guards, offering them advice and the opportunity to tour his country once he regains power.Saddam displayed a perhaps unsurprising chauvinism, telling one soldier: “You must find a good woman, not too smart, not too old, one that can cook and clean”. A glimpse into the mind of Saddam Hussein has revealed that he wrestles as much with his hatred of the cereal Froot Loops as with his anger towards Bush’s Senior and Junior.
American soldiers who spent 10 months guarding him have revealed a list of the former dictator’s passions – and topping the bill are Doritos, Raisin Bran Crunch and Ronald Reagan, although not necessarily in that order.Saddam’s unexpected admiration for Reagan was expressed in broken English to the five soldiers who have now finished their tour of duty in Iraq and have given an interview to the American edition of GQ magazine.The former leader, whom they said had convinced himself was still president, said of them: “The Bush father, son, no good,” maintaining of George W Bush: “He knows I have nothing – no mass weapons. “I seek your help and ask you to be present in the second round of the election so that we can prevent extremism,” he said in a press statement.In a statement issued late on Sunday night, the main reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, instructed supporters to “not remain indifferent” to the race, without mentioning Mr Rafsanjani by name.Student groups who supported the reformists have also rallied behind the former president, once considered a hate-figure among students and still mistrusted for his administration’s constriction of free speech..

However that is unlikely to satisfy reformists, because they believe the tampering did not include miscounting of votes. The conservative has denied any irregularities and dismissed the claims as evidence that Mr Karoubi is a bad loser.All pro-reformist groups have now swung their support reluctantly behind the ?nence grise of Iranian politics, the former president Mr Rafsanjani.The strength of Mr Ahmadinejad’s support among poor Iranians came as a shock to the reformists, who now recognise that a fundamentalist victory is very possible.Mr Rafsanjani has himself appealed for votes from all groups to the left of Mr Ahmadinejad. The conservative reached this Friday’s second round with about 700,00 votes more than Mr Karoubi.The white-bearded ally of President Mohammad Khatami surged unexpectedly in the poll, scoring high gains in rural areas with the promise to pay Iranians £30 a month from energy savings. But he cried foul as Mr Ahmadinejad drew ahead, claiming to have taped proof of fraud.

He said some votes had been bought and that the military had been illegally involved in voter mobilisation. Mr Karoubi also alleged that faked identity cards were distributed among conservative supporters, allowing them to vote more than once.The Guardian Council yesterday ordered a recount of 100 boxes taken at random from the cities in which Mr Ahmadinejad won the most votes. He had earlier questioned the propriety of the Guardian Council’s announcement of voting results as they came in.The clerical body is mandated to ensure that elections comply with constitutional requirements, but Mr Karoubi said it broke the law during the count by releasing figures that gave a sudden boost of 1 million votes to Mr Ahmadinejad. A total of 45 people were killed in insurgent assaults throughout the country on Sunday.The suicide attackers have no qualms about killing other Muslims, including women and children, in order to destabilise the Shia-led government of the Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The rate of insurgent attacks has risen sharply since Mr Jaafari announced his cabinet on 28 April.