In the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, press stories appeared in the United Kingdom and United States of a plastic shredder or wood chipper into which Saddam and Qusay Hussein fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action, in stories with titles such as "See men shredded, then say you don't back war". A year later, it was determined there was not enough evidence to support the existence of such a machine. Press reports The first mention of the shredder came at a meeting on 12 March 2003, when James Mahon addressed the British House of Commons after returning from research in northern Iraq. Ann Clwyd wrote in The Times six days later, an article entitled "See men shredded, then say you don't back war," saying that an unnamed Iraqi had said the Husseins used a shredder to gruesomely kill male opponents, and used their shredded bodies as fish food. Later she would add that it was believed to be housed in Abu Ghraib prison, and spoke with an unidentified person who claimed the shredders were dismantled "just before the military got there". Two days later, Australian Prime Minister John Howard made reference to the "human-shredding machine". In William Shawcross' 2003 book Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq, he claimed that Saddam Hussein "fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony". The Suns political editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote in February 2004 that "Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders." No further evidence for the existence of the shredder has ever been published, though a witness named Ahmed Hassan Mohammed at Saddam's trial in December 2005 claimed to have seen it. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, verbally attacked the witness, shouting he "should act in the cinema." Rev. Kenneth Joseph For Americans, a major domestic source for the shredder story was the (later discredited) testimony of Assyrian Christian Ken Joseph Jr., a pastor who had entered Iraq in 2003 and whose family came from Mahoudi in Northern Iraq. He reportedly found that far from trying to avoid conflict, Iraqis were in favor of an American invasion, and "would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start." He promptly reversed himself and exited the country after hearing this and first-hand accounts of Saddam's