shredding machine: "Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head." Johann Hari, a British supporter of the Iraq war, quoted Joseph saying the trip "shocked me back to reality" in a column in The Independent published on 26 March 2003. His piece "I Was Wrong" became a pivotal argument on the whole idea of liberating Iraq. Groups that organized the human shield action in Iraq say they have no record of Rev. Kenneth Joseph Jr., and "no one, it seems, ever met him." Human shield activists speculated that if Joseph had gone to Iraq he was likely "motivated by his campaign for 'Assyrian Independence' rather than the welfare of the Iraqi people in the face of an invasion." Doubts surface Brendan O'Neill was the first Western journalist to seriously challenge the existence of the shredder, in reports for The Spectator and The Guardian in February 2004. He asked Clwyd and Mahon to provide evidence or the names of the Iraqis who gave them the story. He spoke with the doctor who dealt with executed prisoners at Abu Ghraib during Saddam Hussein's rule, who said that all executions were performed by hanging, and denied claims that there was a shredder of any type. Did he ever attend to, or hear of, prisoners who had been shredded? "No." Did any of the other doctors at Abu Ghraib speak of a shredding machine used to execute prisoners? "No, no, never." Clwyd responded to O'Neill's allegations in The Guardian later the same month, stating: Brendan O'Neill was told by my office, but chose not to include in his article, the following information. In his statement, the witness who said that people were killed by the shredder was very specific: he named individuals who he said were killed in the shredder and the individuals who he said supervised the execution by shredder; he stated where the shredder was located and the month and year when the executions took place. The witness was closely questioned by Indict researchers and was described by them as being "unshakeable". He said he is also prepared to testify in court about the incident. Brendan O'Neill wrote a letter in response to Clwyd's, claiming that her office had actually refused to