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Why anti-racists should stand with Palestinians on June 18th at Boston Government Center
Richard Hugus
…On June 18 in Boston, a group of Zionists will march through the streets in a blatant show of support for the colonization of Palestinian land and the eradication of the Palestinian people. Their march, billed yearly as “Boston Celebrates Israel,” implies public support for their show of racism. It implies that the people of Boston support the foundation of the Israeli state—called by Palestinians the Nakba ! (”catastrophe”), the mass killing and expulsion of the indigenous Arab people—and the creation of “nationality” laws allowing Jewish people born anywhere in the world to occupy Palestinian land taken through military aggression, while depriving native born Arab Palestinians of their rights to live and build on their own land. Currently, it means support for the construction of 450 miles of prison walls surrounding Palestinian communities, an economic blockade of enforced starvation against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, aerial bombardment of Palestinian cities, assassination of Palestinian leaders, and the imprisonment of more than 9,000 Palestinians for political reasons…
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Which Side Are You On?
Stephen Gowans
When US President George W. Bush identified an “axis of evil” whose existence Washington pledged to topple through a program of regime change, Iraq was not the only country the United States threatened with a virtual declaration of war. North Korea and Iran were also singled out. According to former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, who boasts he had a major hand in coining the “axis of evil” phrase, the common characteristic that bound the trio was “resentment of US power,” ano! ther way of saying they resented US efforts to encroach upon their sovereignty. The quest by Washington to dominate other countries is ultimately rooted in economic forces, and seeks advantage for the country’s corporations, banks and wealthy families…
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Detainee report slammed as `whitewash’
AP
Murky procedures, lack of oversight and inadequate resources led to mistakes in the way US troops treated Iraqi and Afghan detainees. But two Pentagon reports, released publicly for the first time, found no widespread mistreatment or illegal actions by the military. A human rights organization called the reports released on Friday a whitewash that ignored countless documented accounts of detainee abuse. One report detailed several incidents involving US special operations! forces in 2003-04. It said interrogators fed some Iraqi detainees only bread and water for up to 17 days, used unapproved interrogation practices such as sleep deprivation and loud music and stripped at least one prisoner. That report concluded the detainees’ treatment was wrong but not illegal and reflected inadequate resources and lack of oversight and proper guidance rather than deliberate abuse. No military personnel were punished as a result of the investigation…
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Smearing Anti-War Activists?
NY Times Op-Ed Laments Anti-War Funeral Protests
FAIR
A June 12 op-ed in the New York Times made a bold accusation: anti-war activists have targeted funerals of Iraq War soldiers with noisy protests. But evidence to back up that charge is nonexistent (…) Many of the posts on Zacharias’ website suggested that the funeral protests she was describing were more likely those organized by Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, a virulently homophobic group that celebrates U.S. m! ilitary deaths as punishment for the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy towards homosexuals. The Phelps group is by no reasonable definition anti-war. In a response to one reader, Zacharias acknowledged that further research revealed that the widows she spoke with were all referring to Phelps’ group…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 17 June 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr,
n a dispatch posted at 3:27pm Makkah time Saturday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that at dawn on Saturday US occupation forces closed the highway to the border crossing between Iraq and Syria in western Iraq. The al-Qa’im correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported local eyewitnesses as saying that US forces suddenly closed the road that crosses the border 30km west of al-Qa’im in the face of peo! ple still leaving and entering Iraq. The witnesses said that swarms of US helicopters were prowling the skies at low altitude over the border strip that divides the two states, while US forces warned the people of the nearby towns such as al-’Ubaydi and Makr adh-Dhib and the surrounding areas that they would arrest anyone using Syrian cellular phones because the Iraqi Resistance – they claimed – uses them.
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Big Bad “al-Qaeda” and Zyklon B
Kurt Nimmo
If we are to believe Ron Suskind, billed as a “Bush antagonist,” al-CIA-duh terrorists “came within 45 days of attacking the New York subway system with a lethal gas similar to that used in Nazi death camps. They were stopped not by any intelligence breakthrough, but by an order from Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Zawahiri. And the U.S. learned of the plot from a CIA mole inside al-Qaeda. These are some of the more startling revelations by Pulitzer Prize-winning author ! Ron Suskind,” according to Time Magazine. Ah, yes, “al-Qaeda” operatives, acting like Nazi butchers, making sure to use Zyklon B on innocent commuters…
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Savage demanding reprisals against Iraqi civilians
Inland, Daily Kos
…The call for murder comes up in the context of the Haditha massacre, where Savage’s twisted mental wires gets things confused. Sometimes he asserts that the marines are innocent and being accused by vile Iraqis and insane liberals. But then he goes into an explanation of why killing a large number of civilians after an attack on American troops is not only okay, but a strategy for victory, just as it was after World War II. Typical of the c! onservatives of this country, Savage has one statement for people with a conscience, and another for his fans: our guys would never do that, and our guys were justified in doing that (…) Before anyone gives me shit for spending time on Savage, he illustrates why the con strategy is schizophrenic. One one hand, it’s all for them, the Iraqis, to protect them, give them freedom, here’s another billion. On the other, it’s looking to kill some muslims. The same war and occupation that is all for the good of the Iraqis won’t even count how many have been and are being killed by US troops…
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Bush In Baghdad
Walter A. Davis + Bob Boldt
As Marx taught, history repeats itself as farce. Except when it was farce the first time: Bush in military garb, tight at the crotch, striding the decks of the Lincoln under the banner “Mission Accomplished.” Then it can only repeat itself as a smug, tight-lipped instruction to the Media (and sadly even NPR chimed in) that they better play what is no more than a Photo Op as if it were the Second Coming. But not, perhaps, of Jesus. Something else descended from the ! clouds on Baghdad. A picture we are told is worth a thousand words. Or a challenge to words, perhaps, to honor the right side of the brain (the side that thinks poetically in images) by finding a way to offer the left what is known only when stripping away ideological mystifications has become the very way in which one receives “the news of the day.”…
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*** CounterPunch Special Report***
Its Origins and Growth
The Power of the Israel Lobby
KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON, Former CIA analysts
…The tragedy of the present situation is that it has become impossible to separate Israeli from alleged U.S. interests ? that is, not what should be real U.S. national interests, but the selfish and self-defined “national interests” of the political-corporate-military complex that dominates the Bush administration, Congress, and both major political parties. Th! e specific groups that now dominate the U.S. government are the globalized arms, energy, and financial industries, and the entire military establishments, of the U.S. and of Israel ? groups that have quite literally hijacked the government and stripped it of most vestiges of democracy…
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Torturers love loopholes
Swopa, Needlenose
The Washington Post has a pair of articles today on the bureaucracy of abominations. First, on page A16, a reverberation from our country’s dip in the moral abyss: A secretive military Special Operations group in Iraq used several unauthorized interrogation tactics on detainees in early 2004 after it erroneously received an outdated policy from commanders in Baghdad, according to a high-level military investigative report released yesterday at the Pentagon. . . . Army! Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica found that members of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula used official guidance that had been developed in September 2003 to create its own set of rules for interrogations, unknowingly including the forbidden tactics (…) . . . But Formica concluded that the soldiers using the tactics were not responsible for violating policy or the law from February to May 2004 because they believed what they were doing had been approved. . . .
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Zarqawi successor is a US creation
Roads to Iraq
As I said before, Zarqawi was a myth created by the Americans, the greatest mystery about Zarqawi was the fact that the bulk of his victims were Iraqis, not Americans, strange coincidence that his agenda to divide Iraq has been similar to that of the invaders. As Iraqi writer, Haifa Zangana said: Even if Zarqawi did not exist they, [the US occupation] would create one, and if he died, they would make another Zarqawi to keep Iraq under their control. The “fin! e-tuned” new Zarqawi is created. We heard about US military identified Zarqawi successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, as they called him, they even published his autobiography. One problem here and it is: Nobody in Egypt among terrorists experts, Egyptian security, not even fanatic Muslims knows such a man or such a name…
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A grim milestone in the Iraq war: 2,500th US military death
WSWS Editorial Board
…Every leading institution of the American establishment—political parties, the media, academia—is implicated in the crimes being committed in Iraq. The indifference and contempt within ruling circles for the both the lives of the men and women sent to fight the war and the growing opposition to the war at home was expressed in the lack of any significant coverage of the 2,500th US military death in Iraq. It received scant coverage! in the newspapers. After a brief mention on Thursday’s evening news programs, it was largely forgotten by Friday…
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WALL STREET JOURNAL GIVES HUGO CHAVEZ A MIXED REVIEW
Stephen Lendman
In contrast to its one-sided stance on Hugo Chavez, the June 16 Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on US based activists in Boston, New York, San Diego, Miami, Cincinnati and other cities around the country forming Bolivarian Circles and other groups supporting the Chavez government. But it couldn’t do it without taking its usual swipe at the Venezuelan leader beginning with the front page article’s title: Move Over Che: Chavez Is Ne! w Icon of Radical Chic. That’s WSJ language intending to demean in its headline rather than use a proper one to reflect what their story was about…
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2,500 dead: How many more?
Cindy Sheehan
On Feb. 1, I was arrested at the State of the Union address for wearing a Veterans for Peace shirt that read: “2,245 Dead. How many more?” A little more than four months later, we are now tragically marking the deaths of 255 more of our brave and wonderful young American soldiers. So today, with 2,500 dead, I ask again: How many more? And with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians — maybe even a lot more than 100,000 — killed, I ask: How many more? All of their families, ! American and Iraqi, will never be the same again due to the trickery and deceit of the commander in chief of the U.S. military and his advisers and cabinet members. And for what? So Halliburton can get reconstruction contracts and Exxon Mobil can lay its pipelines and charge $3.50 for a gallon of gas?…
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Iraq mother condemns army ‘blood money’
Lorna Martin, The Observer
The mother of a soldier killed in the Iraq war has condemned the army’s decision to offer a lucrative bounty to troops who persuade their friends to join the forces. Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Basra a month after completing his training, called it ‘blood money’. The army is offering members of infantry and artillery regiments £1,300 per recruit in an attempt to reverse a recruitment shortfall that has left the forces 2! 000 soldiers below strength…
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Video
The horrors of the Fallujah siege
Imad Khadduri
Independent filmmaker Mark Manning was the only Westerner to travel to Fallujah un-embedded, and he lived with the refugees of Fallujah and experienced life from their point of view, returning with them to their destroyed city after the siege by the United States. Unknown to any authorities, he recorded what he saw. He went through the checkpoints, witnessed the devastation of thousands of homes, shops and mosques, and documented the horrors of the s! iege as recounted by those who survived inside the city during the battles. The people of Fallujah asked him to tell their story to the world, and he is now fulfilling that request with the release of Caught in the Crossfire…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 16 June 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr,
…In a dispatch posted at 1:15pm Makkah time Friday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces battered British troops in their base near al-’Amarah in southeastern Iraq during Thursday-Friday night, forcing them to take refuge in pens for goats and water buffaloes over night. The al-’Amarah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the Resistance fired five Katyusha rockets! at the main British base located 5km from the city at 2am Friday morning. The barrages set fires burning in the northern part of the base, which was shaken a short while later by six explosions that were so powerful that they were felt in nearby villages as well…
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Zarqawi the scourge defeated, Osama not wanted for 9/11?
Jerry Mazza, Online Journal Associate Editor
As everyone and his brother, including Jordanian intelligence, rushes in to claim a piece of the Zarqawi kill, his fellow-Afghanistan-Mujihadeen and super-star terror-meister, Osama bin Laden, fade into Not Wanted by FBI for 9/11 status, that is, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to an article by Enver Masud. What? What’s going on here? I thought that’s why Bush declared The War on Ter! ror in the first place and went to Afghanistan to “smoke him out.” But hey, what do I know, what do we know? We only live here…
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The Struggle to Recapture our Soul
Mike Whitney
George Bush loves being the war president. He loves popping up in Baghdad for a few hours of male camaraderie with the newly-appointed Iraqi Premier al-Maliki or strutting across an aircraft carrier in a tight-fitting flight-suit. He loves showing Papa-Bush that he can stay the course when things get tough and that he won’t squander his “political capital” by “cutting and running”. But things are going the wrong way in Iraq and, by many accounts, the war is already! lost. Conservatives are jumping off the bandwagon faster than liberals and Bush’s approval ratings continue to plummet. Retired General William Odom summarized the Iraq misadventure best when he said, “It is the greatest strategic disaster in US history.” Bush’s photo-op in Baghdad only proves the wisdom of Odom’s judgment. What looked like a triumphant visit by the Commander-in-Chief to the heart of a war zone, was actually a desperate attempt to garner support for a failed mission…
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Reflections on the “civil war” in Iraq
Luciana Bohne, Online Journal Contributing Writer
…That Iraqis live in a state of terror is hard to dispute, but I doubt that astute Iraqis call it a “civil war” — unless they are in the service of the occupation and training to suppress the people’s call for ending the occupation. Ordinary Iraqis, judging from independent journalistic sources and accounts in the foreign press, complain of murder and abductions, of rapes and disappearances, of massacres and detentions, of! bombing raids and chemical weapons — and they have no doubt that this violence is generated under and because of the occupation. Everything is a struggle: access to employment, electricity, medicines, schools, security. I would like to ask the promoters of the “civil war” theory: who is responsible for this massive humanitarian crime, the American invasion of Iraq or the Iraqi “civil war”?…
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American gods
Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead
Not withstanding the fact that Aristotle had said long back that, “the gods too are fond of a joke” and that there were no American gods then, now there are and we the hadjis of the world need to understand that like all gods, the American gods too are fond of a joke. Not withstanding the fact that the term “hadji” is used by American forces in Iraq as the word “gook” was for Vietnamese to signify the subhuman scum of the earth and that the term “hadji” had to be coined! for Iraqis because unfortunately there are no ‘Mai Lais’ in Iraq, only Fallujahs and Hadithas and Ramadis and Ishaqis, we the hadjis of the world understand that American gods too are fond of a joke…
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EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE
Malcom Lagauche
…Every once in a great while, human beings will stand up and react to situations in a manner which shows integrity well beyond what most humans could conceive, let alone perform. In my mind, two stand out. Let’s look at the most recent one first. Michael Berg’s son, Nicholas, was beheaded in Iraq. The perpetrators made available a videotape of the beheading with bogeyman al-Zarqawi supposedly cutting off Berg’s head. The outrage in the U.S. was at a fever pitch. When Michael! was first interviewed about his son’s death, the warmongering administration assumed they had a propaganda coup that would carry on for months. They were wrong. Michael Berg quickly let it be known that he blamed his son’s death on the U.S. government…
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Abu al-Masri and the Pentagon’s Iraqi Propaganda War
Kurt Nimmo
The Associated Press reports: “A document purportedly captured in an al-Qaeda hideout portrays the insurgency in Iraq as being in ‘bleak’ shape, saying that it is losing strength and proposing ways to stir up trouble between the U.S. and Iran to divert American attention.” As usual, a translation is in order. Military intelligence created a document (or did not create one and simply claims it found one) at complete odds with reality and dished it out! to corporate media stenographers. Also as usual, a caveat is attached to this alleged discovery: “There was no way to confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaeda, and U.S. and Iraqi officials offered conflicting accounts of when and where it was seized.” As well, another caveat should be attached: there is no way to confirm the existence of “al-Qaeda in Iraq” or for that matter the existence of “al-Qaeda” in any other country, period. Our rulers demand we suspend critical judgment…
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Exceptional Americans Manifest Their Destiny: And to Hell with the Consequences…
Jason Miller
Contrary to the “catapulted propaganda”, Enron, Haditha, and Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents or the work of a “few bad apples”. American savagery and oppressive behavior pervades our society and predates our nation’s birth. Building its patriarchal wealth on the backs of Black slaves and cheap labor while acquiring its territory through Native American genocide, predatory exploitation of non-Anglos, the poor, wo! men, and the working class emerged as a pillar of America’s socioeconomic “success” before we even declared our independence…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, June 17, 2006
Today in Iraq
U.S. troops searched Saturday for two soldiers who went missing after an attack that killed one of their comrades at a traffic checkpoint in the so-called “Triangle of Death” just south of Baghdad, the military said. U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said four raids had been carried out since Friday’s attack and that ground forces, helicopters and airplanes were taking part in the search. The soldiers came under attack at a traffic checkpoint southwest of You! ssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad. A quick reaction force arrived at the scene after hearing small arms fire and explosions, according to the military. “We are currently using every means at our disposal on the ground, in the air and in the water to find them,” Caldwell said…
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Iraq democracy takes root
Truth About Iraqis
… Did you really think I was writing about Democracy? What putrid stench-ridden democracy do you see here? How stupid are you? Is this the kind of democracy you would welcome on yourselves? This IS the new Iraq. For those Iraqis waiting for some respite, move to Iran. You will get better treatment than the Green Zone there. Human rights? Ha! Government? Ha! “You can’t even talk to the militias, because they are the government,” Yei said. “They have ministers on their! side.”…
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GI Special 4F15: 2100 Baghdad IEDs Since 1.06 – June 17, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
1st ID Encounters 3,400 IEDs In Baghdad Since 1.1.06:
U.S. General Says Only 2,108 Detonated “Thanks To Tips, Training And Better Equipment”
Iraqi insurgents are using new “pop and drop” bombs that are quickly set down in the path of US or Iraqi forces, a US commander said.
Major General James Thurman, commander of multinational forces in the Baghdad area, said US forces have been effective in spotting and countering the new improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
“It’s where they put down some form of an explosive very quickly, thrown out of a car, that’s thrown out there, and we encounter it,” he said.
Since his US Army 4th Infantry Division troops deployed in the Baghdad area in January, they have encountered 3,400 IEDs, the general said.
US troops encountered 814 IEDs in the Baghdad area last month, but 38 percent were detected before they exploded thanks to tips, training and better equipment, he said.
[Lord Cornwallis reported today that of the 9,763 artillery shells fired by George Washington’s terrorist army against his forces in the Yorktown Green Zone, 38% have failed to explode.]
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Comments on John Pilger’s New Book Freedom Next Time
Stephen Lendman
John Pilger is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker and one of the truly great ones of our time. For nearly 50 years, he’s courageously and brilliantly done what too few others in his profession, in fact, do – his job. John has also been a war correspondent, is the author of 10 books and is best known in his adopted country Great Britain for his investigative documentaries exposing the crimes of US and Western imperialism. Freedom Next Time is John’s newest book just published and the fifth one of his I’ve read. The others were magnificent, and when I learned a new one was due out, I couldn’t wait to read it knowing it would be vintage Pilger and not to be missed. I wasn’t disappointed and am delighted to share with readers what it’s about. What else, as John himself says in his opening paragraph: “This book is about empire, its facades and the enduring struggle of people for their freedom. It offers an antidote to authorized versions of contemporary history that censor by omission and impose double standards.” Indeed it does, and John devotes his book to exposing the crimes of empire in five countries…
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EXXONMOBIL, SHELL NECK-IN-NECK IN WAR OIL SALES
Nick Mottern, ConsumersforPeace.org
From the first year of the Bush Administration in 2001, through the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 and in the first year of the occupation, 2003, ExxonMobil was the top seller of petroleum products and services to the Pentagon, taking in about $2 billion in taxpayer money for those three years. However, in 2004, Royal Dutch Shell was the number one top seller for the year. With Shell’s continued high level of sales in 2005, it bec! ame the overall top seller of petroleum to the U.S. military between 1999 and 2005, at $4.08 billion, compared to ExxonMobil’s $3.90 billion for the same period…
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US-corrupted Germany & Japan resume horrendous war crimes
Dr Gideon Polya,
…Now, thanks to George Bush and his obscene and criminally mis-directed “War on Terror” (in reality a War for Resources and a War on Women and Children), all that has changed. Germany has resumed war crimes with gusto in Occupied Afghanistan and Japan has resumed war crimes in BOTH Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan. Of course, Japan and Germany are not the ONLY countries variously allied with the UK and US in Occupied Afghanistan o! r Occupied Iraq. Thus major players in Afghanistan currently include the US, UK, Australia, Canada and France – as well as Germany and Japan ; and major players in Occupied Iraq currently include the US, UK, and Australia – as well as the former Axis countries Italy and Japan. Numerous other countries (from Western and Eastern Europe, East Asia, South East Asia and Central America) have dirtied their international reputations by making token contributions to these criminal American enterprises…
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Count All the Dead
Dahlia Wasfi, M.D., Denver, Colorado, USA
In the spirit that all lives are of an immeasurable value, I am requesting that we discontinue the use of separate counts for dead Iraqis, Americans, and members of the “Coalition of the Willing.” 2500 Iraqis were dead withing the first few hours of the start of “Shock and Awe,” and the crime they committed which warranted the penalty of death was that they were born Iraqi. More than 90% of the casualties of war since WWII are civilians—unarmed people-! -and one-third of that 90% are children. Unlike American soldiers, they never volunteered to pick up a gun and learn to kill. At this point, however, we’ve given Iraqis every reason to do just that. Many of the U.S. dead are victims, too, but let’s not glorify their status as warriors. Every one of them was likely just following orders, but the Nuremburg trials determined 60 years ago that such an excuse was inadequate…
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Death to ‘al-Zarqawi’! Long may he live!
William Bowles, I’n’I
Since the ‘death’ of ‘al-Zarqawi’ reams have been written from both a ‘left’ and right perspective on the significance of his death or even, as I along with other writers have asserted, whether the damn fellow existed in the first place, at least as he has been portrayed. Regardless, the one thing that seems to be missing from all the ‘analysis’ (whether he existed or not is not really relevant), and that is the role of these ‘personalities’ in the sc! heme of things, or rather their use in mystifying events and their causes.* The BBC produced an extremely hurried so-called documentary the other night on the ‘life and death’ of the man, that regurgitated every piece of US propaganda without criticism including the seminal Colin Powell speech at the UN in early 2003…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 15 June 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.
…In a dispatch posted at 12:25pm Makkah time Thursday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that fierce fighting broke out between Iraqi Resistance forces and US occupation troops in the al-Karmah area east of al-Fallujah, which is about 60km west of Baghdad, late Wednesday night. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in al-Karmah as ! saying that the combat erupted when a US force attempted to surround the ar-Rufah area in the middle of al-Karmah in order to storm into it. Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons intercepted the Americans, however, sparking a firefight…
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Fake Document
Roads to Iraq
…Last announcement by Mowaffaq al-Rubaie was: Document discovered in terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s hideout. Don’t believe a single word of this fake document, also don’t believe that such a document exists, for a single reason it’s came from Mowaffaq al-Rubaie. Al-Rubaie [head of National Intelligence Coordination Commission] being Iraqi security adviser, is one of the two untouchables in the Iraqi government, the other one is Muhammad al-Shahwani [head National Intelli! gence Service]. Both appointed by the Americans and reports to the American directly [the CIA], not to the Iraqi government, the agencies [security agency and intelligence agency] are not taking orders from any Iraqi high authority, defense ministry, the ministry of interior affaires and not even from prime minister…
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Shiite Militias Control Prisons, Official Says
Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service
Iraq’s prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country’s deputy justice minister said in an interview this week. “We cannot control the prisons. It’s as simple as that,” said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. “Our jails are infiltrated by the militias fro! m top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad.”(…) In an interview this week, Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, the top Sunni Arab in Iraq’s new government, showed photographs taken from one recent inspection of an Interior Ministry detention center. An inmate in one of the photos held out his misshapen, limp hands for the camera. The man’s hands had been broken in a beating, Zobaie said. Other inmates showed massive, dark bruises on their skin; one bore a large, open infected sore (…) Ninety percent of the men crowded into Interior Ministry detention centers are Sunni Arabs, Zobaie said…
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Bush’s Baghdad Stunt
Walter C. Uhler
While reading about the exploits of Emperor Bush, who bravely flew in to war-torn Baghdad, Iraq and spent a whole six hours there without even providing the usual notice to, let alone securing the necessary approvals from, its so-called “sovereign” government, I was reminded of the remarkable words spoken to author Ron Suskind by a senior Bush advisor in the summer of 2002…
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GI Special 4F14: 2500 Gone – June 16, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Reaches 2,500:18,490 U.S. Troops Have Been Wounded
WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq war has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said Thursday, more than three years into a conflict that finds U.S. and allied foreign forces locked in a struggle with a resilient insurgency.
In addition, the Pentagon said 18,490 U.S. troops have been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.
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Telling Lies about Ahmadinejad
Kurt Nimmo
Buried in the Week in Review section of the New York Times is an admission that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said Israel should be “wiped off the map,” a reference to a mistranslated phrase bandied about the corporate media over the last several weeks as an example of Iran’s intention to attack Israel, especially after it develops nukes, either next week or a decade out, depending on the level of fanaticism of the neocon making the claim…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 2006
Today in Iraq
11 killed, 25 wounded in suicide bombing at Shiite mosque in Baghdad. The bombing came 1 hour before the main Friday prayers, avoiding greater casualties. Two killed and 16 wounded when four mortar rounds struck a house and a shop in Baghdad’s Sab al-Bur neighbourhood. Gunmen in two trucks stormed two villages near the town of Suwayrah, 50 km south of Baghdad, in the early hours Friday, and killed three people and kidnapped nine others, police said. One pers! on killed, another kidnapped when men dressed in Iraqi army uniforms attacked a house in Al-Jahar village near the town of Madain, 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Baghdad. Iraqi police found three unidentified bodies near the cemetery of Khaldiyah town, some 80 km west of Baghdad. The bodies showed signs of torture with bullets in the head and chest. Gunmen killed Yusif al-Hassan, a senior member of the Muslim Scholars Association, near the mosque where he led prayers in Basra. The MSA is a Sunni organization opposed to the occupation…
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