Relatives of U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq are currently in Baghdad. They are meeting with members of the Governing Council and ordinary Iraqis, as well as with U.S. soldiers including their loved ones stationed in Iraq. Today they expressed surprise at the dire conditions of schools and hospitals that they have visited. They also…

FERNANDO SUAREZ DEL SOLAR Fernando Suarez del Solar (whose primary language is Spanish) is the father of Jesus Alberto Suarez del Solar Navarro, who died in Iraq on March 27. He will be leaving on a delegation for Iraq this Saturday and is available for a limited number of interviews. He said today: “Bush goes…

BRYAN STEVENSON Executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, Stevenson said today: “The legitimacy of the death penalty in the United States has been so undermined — by inadequate legal services to the poor, unreliable administration of criminal justice and political exploitation by elected officials trying to prove they’re tough — that it…

The following people are available for interviews. Note that Baghdad is 8 hours ahead of Eastern Time. JAMES JENNINGS President of the humanitarian aid organization Conscience International and a longtime professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies, Jennings has worked extensively in Iraq. He last traveled to Iraq with Congressman Nick Rahall and former Senator…

GAIL SHEARER Shearer is senior health policy analyst for Consumers Union and author of the just-released report “Medicare Prescription Drugs: Conference Committee Agreement Asks Beneficiaries to Pay Too High a Price for Modest Benefit.” Among the report’s findings: * “The funds set aside for this ‘benefit’ — $400 billion over 10 years — cover just…

JOSEFINA HERNANDEZ PONCE and PEDRO EUSSE and SEVERINA RIVERA, Hernandez Ponce is a sewing machine operator and president of SITEMEX, the only union in the sweatshop garment industry in Mexico. The union was founded last year after two years of efforts which began when Hernandez Ponce and four other workers refused to eat the factory…

GREG PALAST Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His investigative reports appear on BBC Television and in the Guardian Newspapers of Britain. He said today: “Blair, like Margaret Thatcher before him, faces revolt within his own party. They believe he lied to get Britain into Bush’s…

MILAN RAI The British author of Regime Unchanged, a just-released book on the invasion of Iraq, Rai is in the U.S. until November 25. He said today: “President Bush recently said in an interview with the BBC of the war on Iraq: ‘War is my last choice, not my first choice.’ In March 2002, a…

MEDEA BENJAMIN Benjamin, the founding director of the international human rights group Global Exchange, is also co-founder of the Occupation Watch Center in Iraq. Paul Bremer, in Washington mid-week, repeatedly cited the Iraqi Governing Council in his remarks. Benjamin said today: “The Bush administration wants the Iraqi Governing Council to rubber-stamp policies coming from Washington…

ALAN SAGER DEBORAH SOCOLAR Sager and Socolar are co-directors of the Health Reform Program at Boston University’s School of Public Health. They have recently released a report entitled “New Medicare Rx Benefit Means Big Profits for Drug Makers.” The report finds that “an estimated 61.1 percent of the Medicare dollars that will be spent to…