|
The surprising End of the New American Century
Mike Whitney
The Iranian Mullahs have one advantage over the Bush administration if war breaks out. They know what Bush plans to do. They know that he intends to bomb numerous targets which are unrelated to the nuclear facilities, and they know that his ultimate goal is “regime change”. This fits into America’s larger regional-wide schema of crushing indigenous resistance movements (Hamas and Hezbollah), redrawing the map of the Middle East, and integrating the oil ! of the Caspian Basin into the US-controlled economic system. Recent reports suggest that the Bush strategy is going forward despite warnings from high-ranking officials at the Pentagon and respected members of the foreign policy establishment…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26836
The Paradise Of The Grave
iraqi screen
Any government in the world with such killing rate like every day in Iraq, would declare its resignation immediately as an admission of its failure in providing its people with the basic requirement any people need to live like human beings. With all this vivid failure on all levels and the best indication for it, is the escalation of violation and increase of number of Iraqis who are fleeing the hell of Iraq, with all this shortage in fuel, power an water and endless list o! f red marks the Iraqi government gets for its shameful performance, still all its members, from the president till the MPS whom quarrelling all the time, all of them are clinging to their chairs to the last breath (…) All of that, and the Iraqi government still talks about its unique achievement with such a record time to send the Iraqis who elected them as soon as possible to the paradise of the graves where they can have peace and democracy without exerting any effort or sustain any fear and where they can fulfil all their dreams. It is really shameful, the world silence towards the daily slaughtering of the Iraqis and it can’t gather to find a solution for the Iraqi problem though most of the world armies gathered within few months to come and destroy Iraq in 2003…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26851
In A Town Called Mahmoudiyia
iraqi screen
In a town called Mahmoudiyia, south of Baghdad, people used to live together in peace for ages, no one ever there raised the question of Sunna or Shiite, locals are busy with farming, some of them joined Mahmoudiyia factory for bikes, but the town became busier with the establishment of Al-Q’aq’a Compound there during the eighties. The compound itself is an image for the intimate relations among the people there, as you can find, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians fami! lies work and live together. After the US invasion, troubles engulfed the town, car bombs, IEDS, kidnapping and assassinations, still Sunni and Shiite kept living together because they believe that common Iraqis did not dare to do that to cause harm to their own people. After the formation of Al-Ja’aferi government and the disastrous ministry of Interior who brought all the Shiite militias, equipped them with weapons and uniforms to kill with official approval, Mahmoudiyia became a hell for its people, particularly the Sunnis…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26850
Home Raids Provoke Increased Unrest
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily, Inter Press Service
Renewed raids at Iraqi homes by joint U.S.-Iraqi security forces are angering Iraqis — while failing to improve the worsening security situation. “Operation Forward Together should be called ‘To Hell Together’,” 53-year-old Hamid Fassal, an estate broker from the Dora region of Baghdad told IPS, referring to the major U.S.-Iraqi joint security campaign launched in June. “They should be ashamed of what’s going on after four ye! ars of plans and such huge expenditure. The result is only more deaths and more agony for all Iraqis.” U.S. troops accompanied by Iraqi soldiers have conducted raids across much of the Sunni region of Iraq in search of death squads. Several Iraqis say they are surprised about the areas searched because they say U.S. forces know that the majority of death squads are located in the Shia areas…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26839
LEBANON: THE AFTERMATH OF WAR. A SYNTHESIS
Sarah Meyer, INDEX RESEARCH
On the 23rd of August, Amnesty International presented first hand information on the Israeli policy of deliberate destruction of the civilian infrastructure. The Amnesty report was followed nine days later by a report of The European Commission. This report said that: * Israel destroyed or damaged in south Lebanon 1489 buildings, 21 of 29 bridges over the Litani river, 535 sections of road and 545 cultivated fields during its 34-day military ! offensive.* In Beirut, 326 residential buildings have either been damaged or destroyed in the southern suburbs, of which 269 are located in the Haret Horaik area.* All runways of Beirut airport and six strategic highway sections have been severely damaged.The Red Cross reported (12.09): “During the conflict the majority of people affected were civilians and two thirds of them were women and children.” Hezbollah, meanwhile, was rapidly managing to do what the US has failed to do either in Iraq or Afghanistan: make funds available to rebuild the country…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26840
Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 20 September 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 2:09pm Makkah time Wednesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a force of more than 20 US troops in four Humvees and armored vehicles stormed the Muluki Mosque in the al-’Amiriyah section of Baghdad during midday prayers on Wednesday. The al-’Amiriyah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam r! eported that the Americans surrounded and burst into the mosque during the prayer, (specifically, during the fourth rak’ah). They raided the Imam’s room and other rooms in the mosque but did not go into the prayer hall. But they then waited for the worshippers to finish the prayers and start to go out and then began to interrogate the Imam and a number of regular worshippers, asking whether armed men ever come to the mosque to pray. Meanwhile the Americans also questioned a large number of the worshippers, checking their IDs and asking them what work they did. No one was arrested. The intimidating and provocative operation lasted about half an hour…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26854
DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, September 20, 2006
Today in Iraq
A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier died at approximately 5:30 p.m. today after the vehicle he was traveling in was struck by an improvised-explosive device northwest of Baghdad. (MNF -Iraq). A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier was killed by small-arms fire at approximately 10:40 a.m. today in north eastern Baghdad. (MNF -Iraq) A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier died in a non-combat incident in southwest Baghdad at approximate! ly 9 p.m. Tuesday. (MNF -Iraq. A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier died in a non-combat incident in Baghdad at approximately 6 a.m. today. (MNF -Iraq). A suicide truck bomb slammed into a Baghdad police headquarters, killing seven and wounding more than a dozen. The truck bomb attack on the police building in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora came Wednesday morning just as officers were coming on duty, said Capt. Jamil Hussein. He said the number of casualties was expected to rise..
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26849
Frist threatens to join “Talk for Torture” campaign
Stephen Soldz
In a new first, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has threatened to filibuster the McCain-Graham-Warner bill because it doesn’t authorize the CIA to continue torturing detainees, the Washington Post reports. Usually governments torture covertly, while denying all the while that they’re doing so. The U.S. government is notorious for this, as hundreds of thousands of torture victims in Vietnam [Operation Phoenix], Iran, the Philippines, Indonesia, an! d throughout Latin America can attest (…) What is unique about the present moment is that the President, the Vice President, the Attorney General, and now the Senate Majority Leader are openly engaging in a “Talk for Torture” campaign…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26848
Retired Colonel: ‘We Are Conducting Military Operations Inside Iran Right Now. The Evidence Is Overwhelming.’
Think Progress
Just now on CNN, Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, “We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming.” Gardiner, who taught at the U.S. Army’s National War College, has previously suggested that U.S. forces were already on the ground in Iran. Today he added several additional new points…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26834
17 ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTING TO SERVE BUSH COMMISSION VERDICT ON BUSH AT U.N.
“YOU ARE GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES.”
Shortly after noon, right as Bush stepped to the podium to deliver his speech at the U.N. General Assembly, a line of 13 anti-Bush activists stretched across 44th Street at 1st Avenue chanting “Arrest Bush,” “Bush is a War Criminal”, “Bush Step Down.” Within minutes 16 were arrested in front dozens of press crews. The civil disobedience action was organized by the Bush Crimes Commission ( www.bushcommission.org ) and World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime ( www.worldcantwait.org ). Protesters included a former State Dept. official, a priest, military families, Iraq veterans, students, humanists, and others. They were attempting to serve Bush with the Bush Crimes Commission’s Verdict of GUILTY of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Several protestors were assaulted by the police and are still in jail…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26852
Bush Desperate To Legislate Mengele Style Torture
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com
…They are actually arguing for the legalization of sadistic, serial killer style torture and sexual molestation of children – the same administration that labels its critics “fascists” is pursuing a doctrine that makes Dr. Josef Mengele look like Ronald McDonald in comparison. The official US Army report listed all the abuses committed at the Abu Ghraib prison. These methods are standard use in the ‘Copper Green’ worldwide to! rture program. a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol; c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees; d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape; f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26847
We’re Not Going To Iran
Robert Dreyfuss
…There are, I’ve written, many parallels: the Bush administration accusing Iran of harboring al-Qaida and building WMD, neoconservative analysts warning that time is running out, Pentagon task forces making contingency plans for war and so on. Back then, too, Bush smilingly promised to go to the United Nations to seek support for the crusade against Baghdad, only to launch a unilateral war of aggression on his own months later, after dismissing the United Nations as feckl! ess and cowardly. Then, however, Bush had an army to invade Iraq. This time, that army is bogged down in Iraq, stretched to the breaking point, and the international community is both older and wiser. And the neoconservatives have been taken down a peg or two…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26845
Judge expels Saddam from court
Ahmed Rasheed and Ibon Villelabeitia, Reuters
A new judge expelled a defiant Saddam Hussein from his genocide trial on Wednesday and defense lawyers stormed off in protest after the government sacked the chief judge, throwing the month-old case into turmoil. The Iraqi government removed judge Abdullah al-Amiri overnight saying he had abandoned his neutrality for stating last week that Saddam was “not a dictator.” International legal groups and the U.N. said it eroded the court’s leg! itimacy…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26844
Where the Terrorists Come From
D. Burbeck
Let’s be careful about calling people terrorists, but the people who are strapping on bombs and walking into a situation where they can murder several dozen civilians can, I believe, be considered terrorists and not military personnel. But the question is: “Who are these people, and why do they do such a
horrible deed.” Are they so involved in the Islamic faith that they are mindlessly killing for Alla? Have they been brainwashed by al qaeda as to not think rationally? No! This is not the case with the hundreds, now thousands of people who have been willing to die for their cause in a disgraceful exhibition of murderous rampage. Most people are not aware of the casualties of the four wars since 1991 in which uranium weapons, so-called “depleted” uranium, have been used…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26843
No One Dares to Help
The Los Angeles Times
The wounded die alone on Baghdad’s streets. An offer of aid could be your own death sentence, an Iraqi reporter writes. Because this account of daily life in Baghdad reveals where the writer lives, his name is not being used to protect his safety. He is a 54-year-old Iraqi reporter in the Times’ Baghdad Bureau…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26841
Iraqi captive died with 93 injuries, QC says
New Zealand Herald
Captive Iraqis were beaten with iron bars, kicked, starved, and forced to drink their own urine during abuse which led to the death of a prisoner, the first court martial of British troops accused of war crimes was told yesterday. The dead man, 26-year-old Baha Musa, had 93 injuries to his body. Two other Iraqis were severely wounded by “systematic mistreatment”. Among the seven soldiers in the dock is the most senior officer to face charges over the! Iraq war, Colonel Jorge Mendonca, 42, who is accused of negligence in his duties in failing to halt the ill-treatment by his men…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26838
The proposed attack on the people of Sudan, posing as humanitarianism
Xymphora
…Jews sans frontieres refers to a rare moment of sense on proposed intervention in Sudan, an article by Jonathan Steele, and makes the connection of the campaign against Sudan to International Zionism. I can predict, with one hundred percent certainty, that any Western involvement in Sudan, other than sending food and medical aid, will result in all the people of Sudan being much worse off. Much worse off. One hundred percent cert! ainty. In a world with interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, how can anybody even consider the nonsense of doing the same thing to yet another country?..
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26853
Israelis trained Kurdish troops in Iraq-BBC report
Reuters
Former Israeli commandos secretly trained Kurdish soldiers in northern Iraq to protect a new international airport and in counter-terrorism operations, the BBC television reported on Tuesday. Former Israeli special forces soldiers entered Iraq from Turkey in 2004 to train two groups of Kurdish troops, one of the former Israeli trainers told the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme (…)
The former soldier said he believed Kurdish officials knew the trainers were Israelis although the troops did not…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26837
Israel Plunders Lebanon While Corporate Media Sleeps
Kurt Nimmo
On the one hand, we are told Israel plans to pull its troops out of south Lebanon “by the weekend,” according to the Minister of Offense and Ethnic Cleansing, Amir Peretz, while on the other hand Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff of Israeli Occupation Forces, tells us no deal, the troops will stay put, at least through the weekend. “Israel said it would pull out its troops from southern Lebanon once the number of Lebanese soldiers and internati! onal troops in the region was large enough to enforce the cease-fire that ended 34 days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants last month.” Of course, as usual, people who defend their country against invasion are “militants,” probably the same way the Continental Army consisted of “militants” who attacked defenseless Brits over the Pennsylvania Line…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26835
Full text of Chavez’s UN speech: Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, Delivers Remarks to U.N. General Assembly, New York
HUGO CHAVEZ, PRESIDENT OF THE BOLIVARIAN REPULIC OF VENEZUELA
…The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace. But what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And no! w threatening Venezuela — new threats against Venezuela, against Iran? He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision? Is this crossfire? He’s thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire. This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, “We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26833
GI Special 4I20: “The Mess That We’re In” – September 20, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
“I Got To Experience Firsthand The Mess That We’re In Over There”
“I’m Not A Big Fan Of It”
“Even As He Fought, His Dad Fought To Bring Him And His Comrades Home”
“When he wasn’t just trying to stay alive, he became known as the soldier who fired off volleys of e-mails to Maine’s and Vermont’s congressional delegations. His message: To send soldiers to war without the protection they need – starting with armored Humvees – was nothing short of criminal.”
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=26832 |