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REGIME CHANGE IN REVERSE
Malcom Lagauche
…Bloodshed is the rule of the day and there is no functioning government. Chaos reigns and there is no end in sight. Over the three years of producing my column, many lefties have taken aim at my writing. They all profess to have been anti-war and, for the most part, anti-occupation, but they always qualified their articles with, “At least Saddam Hussein is gone.” Unlike them, my reasoning that Iraq had become a basket case was different. I have always said the chaos evo! lved BECAUSE Saddam was gone. I was called a “Saddam dupe,” a “Saddam apologist,” a “Saddam diehard,” and other such designations. One writer told me that Saddam and the Ba’athists had absolutely nothing to do with the resistance: it was a popular movement that magically sprung up after April 9, 2003. Looking back, they were wrong and Lagauche was right…
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September War Dead the GOP Wants You to Forget
Bob Geiger
With just six weeks until the 2006 midterm elections, one would never know to look at the media — or by where the White House or Republican Congress direct their focus — that the United States is still involved in a bloody war that has continued almost as long as our country’s entire involvement in World War II. September 20 marked three years and six months since America invaded Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction and the imminent thr! eat the Bush administration claimed Saddam Hussein posed to us. All of that and the contrived links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden have since been proven false and yet no oversight or investigations have been performed by the Republican-led, do-nothing Congress and, to watch the news and the actions of the GOP in Washington, one could easily miss how much American and Iraqi blood is still being shed for nothing…
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Video
On Patrol with Iraqi Neighborhood Watch – 09.19.2006
Alive in Baghdad
As the threat of death squads continues, Iraqi civilians have taken security into their own hands. This week Isam Rasheed takes Alive in Baghdad viewers to Adhamiya, in the middle of the night, where three men guard a civilian checkpoint in the neighborhood. They’ll tell you about their work, their hopes, and fears for their families. The US and Iraqi governments might call them terrorists, they consider themselves to be doing ! whats necessary to keep their homes safe…
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Sundry videos
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
Hail the ‘Liberators’: “HalliburtonWatch has obtained the first video of an ambush against a Halliburton convoy in Iraq that resulted in the deaths of three truckers who worked for the company’s KBR subsidiary. The video, shot on Sept. 20, 2005 by KBR truck driver Preston Wheeler, shows what initially appears to be a routine convoy of sixteen-wheeler trucks delivering supplies to U.S. troops. But the convoy enters tiny Iraqi towns along the highway and children begin throwin! g rocks at the trucks.” …
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR MONDAY, September 25, 2006
Today in Iraq
Police found 14 corpses, including three in western Baghdad and four in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Two bombs went off outside the Assyrian Orthodox Church of St Mary in the central neighbourhood of Karrada. The attackers put a bomb under the parish priest’s car. The blast, that took place at 9.30am, drew many people, including some from the parish. Immediately afterwards another bomb went off close by, injuring many people and killing a watchman of! the church. Two explosive charges went off successively near a police station in central Baghdad, wounding three policemen, a well-informed police source said. “A bomb detonated inside a car around 10:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) near a police station at the 62nd neighborhood,” the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Two minutes later, a second blast caused by a roadside bomb near a shop of al-Sa’eh Refreshments which is close to the police station, the source said. Three policemen were wounded in the two blasts, and several nearby cars and buildings were damaged, he added…
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GI Special 4H24: Revolution – August 24, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
Bush Calls On American Civilians And U.S. Troops To Organize For Revolution And Overthrow The Government.
August 22, 2006 Guardian Unlimited.
Mr Bush said US troops would not leave Iraq “so long as I’m the president”.
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Saddam’s Lawyer Says New Judge Has “Iranian Links”
E Canada Now
“This behaviour on the part of al-Oraiby is not strange, given his links with hostile quarters in Iran,” Khalil al-Dulaimi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Monday, describing the judge as a “foe” of Saddam. Al-Oraiby on Monday ordered Saddam out of the courtroom for the second time this week when the former Iraqi president refused to keep quiet during the hearing. Al-Oraiby took up his post last week after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki fired the cour! t’s former chief judge Abdullah al-Amiri, after the latter said on September 14 that Saddam was “not a dictator.”…
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The “Stinky Inky,” Part IV: More Incompetence, Bias and Dishonesty at the Philadelphia Inqurier?”
Walter C. Uhler
Readers of Frank Rich’s new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, understand quite well the crisis of confidence that justifiably afflicts America’s mainstream news media today, due to its largely uncritical (if not enthusiastic) reporting of the exaggerations and lies by the Bush administration during the run-up to its illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. During the past two years, I! ‘ve written three articles addressing the failures of my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer…
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Is the Bush Administration Itching to Nuke Iran?
A Crisis Upon Us
Paul Craig Roberts
A number of experts have concluded that despite the Bush administration’s desire to attack Iran, the aggression would be too rash and the consequences too dire even for the irrational Bush administration. Military experts point out that at a time when generals are calling for more troops for Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be ill-advised for Bush to add Iran to the war theater. Experts note that Iran is well armed with ! missiles capable of attacking US ships and oil facilities throughout the Middle East and that Iran can direct its Shiite allies in Iraq to assault US troops there and set in motion terrorist actions throughout the Middle East…
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Sgt. Ricky Clousing on US war crimes in Iraq
Charles Jenks, Traprock Peace Center
On September 16th, Sgt. Ricky Clousing spoke on US war crimes in Iraq and why he became a resister to this war. He is facing court martial on a charge of desertion. He spoke at Camp Democracy’s encampment at the National Mall in Washington, DC. before an overflow audience that included activists from across the nation as well as many tourists. His entire talk can be downloaded at www.traprockpeace.org …
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2006
Today in Iraq
Two Task Force Lightning Soldiers were killed and three others were wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded near their patrol outside the Kirkuk city of Hawija today. Danish soldier killed, 8 injured in roadside bombing near Basra. Injuries are not life-threatening. Bomb kills 34 in Sadr City, injures 35, many badly burned. AP gives death toll as 37. Attack near truck distributing kerosene apparently targeted civilians…
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Israel ‘held secret talks with Saudi royal family’
The Guardian
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, held a secret meeting with a senior member of Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family about a possible peace initiative for the Middle East, a report in Israel said today. According to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the meeting, said to have been held 10 days ago, was likely to be the highest-level contact ever made between an Israeli leader and the Saudi royal house. Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic! relations. The newspaper reported that some of its sources said the meeting was held with King Abdullah. Others said that the meeting took place with another senior member of the royal family…
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Report Number Five from Lebanon: Nabatiyeh
Samia A. Halaby
Today we decided to use the public taxi called service to get to the southern village in the surrounds of Nabatiyeh where we were schuled to meet with the Nuclear Physicist, Dr. Muhamman Ali Qubeisi who claims that he found high radiation in some of the pits created by Israeli bombing in the south of Lebanon during the July 2006 attack. Dr. Qubeisi was interested in telling us his history and his work record all of which were both impressive and interesti! ng. He spoke English flawlessly as he told us all this including the fact that he was also a US citizen…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 24 September 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 4:45pm Makkah time Sunday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance high-explosive bomb exploded by a US Humvee in the al-Bu ‘Isa area of southwestern al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad, at midday Sunday. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the puppet police of ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah a! s saying that the blast killed three American Marines and destroyed a Humvee…
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Facing Facts on Iraq
The New York Times
While Iraq is a central issue in this year’s election campaigns, there is very little clear talk about what to do, beyond vague recommendations for staying the course or long-term timetables for withdrawal. That is because politicians running for election want to deliver good news, and there is nothing about Iraq – including withdrawal scenarios – that is anything but ominous. In the real Iraq, armed Shiite and Kurdish parties have divided up the eastern two-thirds of the ! country, leaving Sunni insurgents and American marines to fight over the rest. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his “national unity cabinet” stretch out their arms to like-thinking allies like Iran and Hezbollah, but barely lift a finger to rein in the sectarian militias and death squads spreading terror across Baghdad and the Shiite south…
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British troops suspected of ‘guns for cocaine’ trade
NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN
BRITISH soldiers are being investigated for smuggling guns out of Iraq and allegedly exchanging them for cocaine in illicit black market deals. Security officials have confirmed that soldiers from the third battalion the Yorkshire Regiment are at the centre of a criminal probe by the Royal Military Police, who are investigating a “guns for drugs” network. According to a newspaper report, the alleged illegal deals are the latest blow to the Br! itish military, coming in the wake of a week when a corporal from the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment admitted he had committed a war crime against an Iraqi civilian…
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Debunking 9/11 Website Debunks Itself
Middle school grammar, contradictory arguments befit proponents of the official conspiracy theory
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com
A website which purports to disprove claims that there was government complicity in 9/11 and that the twin towers and Building 7 were demolished with explosives is riddled with errors, middle school grammar and arguments that both defy common sense and contradict one another. Since the 9/11 truth movement’s success in attracting an ! increasing crescendo of positive media attention, a backlash of websites and videos have sprung up that attempt to reinvigorate faith in the official conspiracy theory of the government fairy tale – a yarn that has about as much basis in reality as Humpty Dumpty. The author of the Debunking 9/11 website refuses to reveal his or her identity but does admit to being part of the left gatekeeper crowd, confessing on the front page, “I am a flaming liberal and proud of it.”…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 23 September 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 2:03pm Makkah time Saturday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces bombarded the US occupation headquarters set up in the former Technical Institute in as-Saqlawiyah, just north of al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying that a fire! erupted in the back part of the Institute after the 62mm and 82mm mortar shells blasted into the building…
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VENEZUELAN FOREIGN MINISTER ILLEGALLY DETAINED AT JFK AIRPORT AND STRIP-SEARCHED
Stephen Lendman
VHeadline.com broke the news early Saturday evening that Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Madura was prevented by airport officials from departing the US from JFK airport on a commercial flight on Saturday following the UN General Assembly meeting. He said officials demanded he surrender his ticket and boarding pass claiming his name was on a so-called “red list.” He was then illegally detained, taken to a small ro! om and strip-searched despite his strong protests after having clearly identified who he was. He explained once he did, his treatment only got worse…
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Boycott Caterpillar – Equipment Used to Destroy Palestinean Homes
Ramallah Online
Please act during this month to write and publicize the use of Caterpillar equipment funded by our tax dollars to demolish Palestinian homes and uproot their trees and thus to continue an ethnic cleansing process that started over 54 years ago…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 24 September 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 4:45pm Makkah time Sunday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance high-explosive bomb exploded by a US Humvee in the al-Bu ‘Isa area of southwestern al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad, at midday Sunday. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the puppet police of ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah a! s saying that the blast killed three American Marines and destroyed a Humvee…
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New judge in Saddam’s court is not a judge
Roads to Iraq
Elaph revealed that the new judge in Saddam’s court is not a judg. A judicial source close to the Iraqi Criminal Court revealed that the judge of the Supreme Court in Saddam Hussein trial is not a judge and didn’t exercise this profession ever in his life, “Majid Mohamed Aribi” was chosen with hurry to get rid of the former Judge Abdullah Al-Amri. In a telephone call from Baghdad, a judicial source said today that the atmosphere of frustration prevails in t! he Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court among judges and prosecutors because of government interference and appointing a new judge. The source said that Aribi was not a member of the International Criminal Court, never served as a judge at any time previously, and have no experience in courts…
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Meanwhile in Baghdad
Zeyad, Healing Iraq
In a very disturbing development at the Hurriya district, west of Baghdad, two women from the Sunni Al-Bu Khalifa clan were kidnapped from their residence by an armed group last Thursday. They were found dead later and their corpses are still at the Medico-legal Institute of Baghdad. Residents of Hurriya have mentioned on several Iraqi websites that the two women, Hadiya Ibrahim Abd and her daughter, Karima Dawud Mutlag, attempted to resist the attackers but the house was ! broken into and the women were taken away. Some Sunnis in Hurriya claim that the attackers were members of the Mahdi Army, adding they were accompanied by several unmarked vehicles belonging to the Iraqi Interior Ministry. It should be noted that the Hurriya district has been plagued by dozens of violent sectarian incidents over the last few weeks, with many Sunni families asserting that they are the victims of an ongoing campaign of assassinations and kidnappings by armed groups associated with the Office of the Martyr Al-Sadr (which maintains four branches in the Hurriya district), and that local police forces are heavily involved in many of these incidents…
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EXCLUSIVE: BETRAYED, SOLDIER QUITS
Nick Owens
A SENIOR soldier is quitting the Army in disgust at the way frontline troops in Afghanistan have been let down. The officer decided to leave after Tony Blair told exhausted troops they were in the war-torn country for “reconstruction”. He told how he and colleagues were furious with the message – because they had spent all their time in vicious battles with Taliban rebels. The officer – a member of 16 Air Assault Brigade – has now turned whistle-blower to give a shock! ing account of how shortages have hit troops on the frontline. He reveals how British soldiers were reduced to borrowing ammunition from Canadian forces also serving in the lawless Helmand province. He says guns are melting in intense 50C heat, leaving soldiers unable to use them to defend themselves. Lives are being put at risk, he claims, because vital communication kits are being rationed. He also tells how Taliban fighters steal soldiers’ food supplies because there aren’t enough British troops to guard them…
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GI Special 4I25: The Devil – September 25, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
the 4 star death generals drip blood
from their eye teeth like little children
with their halloween masks
as they shout trick or treat ba-a-a-by
many ugly americans with w
jump up and down with stars and stripes
in their bully mouths
crying kill kill kill like laughing hyenas
awol-ing this war with sulfur yellow
(…)
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‘Iraqi troops refusing Baghdad duty’
Reuters
The US commander in Baghdad has said that more troops are needed on the streets of Baghdad, but Iraqi soldiers are refusing to leave other parts of the country to serve in the capital. Major-General James Thurman said on Friday: “I would tell you I need more Iraqi security forces.” Thurman said that the Iraqi government had failed to supply six Iraqi army battalions – roughly 500 soldiers in each – to reinforce the streets of the capital…
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Global War Economy – Destroy and Rebuild
The Truth Will Set You Free
Over, and Over, and Over again. What better way to “stimulate” an economy than to blow it to smithereens and send your pet corporations in to rebuild it? President George W. Bush on Saturday named a delegation of business leaders and U.S. officials to visit Lebanon to discuss the rebuilding after the 34-day war between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas. The group will be led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dina Powell and will i! nclude Intel Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett, Cisco Systems Inc. Chief Executive John Chambers, Ghafari Inc. Chairman Yousif Ghafari and Ray Irani, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp…
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Toward the Garden of Eden
Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead
All indicators are that the rapidly emerging global civilization is here and here to stay, the teething-pains resistance offered by nationalistic, patriotic or religious forces not withstanding. The beginning of a global society may now be considered unavoidable. Trends other than the American Neoconservative led Empire building gamble, like the growing integration of the world’s economies and their increasing inter-dependence, the ever-rising blending of in! ternational social and cultural systems, and the proliferation of space-shrinking new technologies, are the prima facie confirmation of this new reality. Will this new age, when it does finally get on toward its absolute shape, eventually embody humanity’s darkest fears or its most cherished hopes? Will it be our eternal Garden of Eden or will we have created a hell on earth forever to live in…
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List of accusations of GIs in Iraq stuns experts
Associated Press
The accounts are brutal: An Iraqi man dragged from his home, executed and made to look as if he were an insurgent. Three prisoners killed by their Army captors. A team of revenge-seeking Marines going home to home, shooting down unarmed Iraqi men, women, children. The recent flurry of accusations against U.S. servicemen has stunned military analysts and experts. Many see a critical new point in the war — though few agree whether it shows the toll o! f combat stress, commanders resolved to stamp out war crimes, or, as some claim, an overzealous second-guessing of the troops. But the number and gravity of the latest allegations have drawn the greatest outcry against U.S. military actions since the Abu Ghraib prison abuses…
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Bush’s ‘Dirty War’ Amnesty Law
Robert Parry
The United States is following the lead of “dirty war” nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S. government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes. While the focus of the current congressional debate has been on Bush’s demands to redefine torture and to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, the compromise legislation also would! block prosecutions for violations already committed during the five-year-old “war on terror.”…
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Take your torture and go, George
Don Williams
George Bush 43, Commander-in-Chief, Decider, Your Royal Highness, however you’d like to be addressed… For God’s sake, take your torture program and go. Take your secret prisons, your attack dogs, your electrodes, your water boards, your feeding tubes, your ceiling restraints, your whipping wires, your excruciating music, your sleep deprivation, your hobbles and cuffs. Take all such instruments and go…
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Saddam’s defense team to boycott trial
Jamal Halaby, Associated Press Writer
Saddam Hussein’s defense team will boycott his genocide trial “indefinitely,” citing violations by the Iraqi court trying him, his chief lawyer said Sunday. “The court committed several violations of the law and we will not just sit there gagged to give it legitimacy,” said Khalil al-Dulaimi, who heads the nine-member defense team for the deposed Iraqi leader. He said the lawyers would “indefinitely” boycott the trial, in which Saddam fa! ces charges of committing genocide against Kurds in northern Iraq…
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From the New “Anti-Semitism” to Nuclear Holocaust
How Israel is Engineering the “Clash of Civilizations”
JONATHAN COOK
The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002. At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank tow! ns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a “new anti-Semitism”, a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US…
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Frank Rich: Stuff happens again in Baghdad
RAW STORY
…The museum changed hands in August, when Donny George, its longtime administrator and the chairman of Iraq’s official antiquities board, fled the country fearing for his life and for the treasures in his care, both at the museum and the country’s many archaeological sites. George is a Christian and had good reason to fear. The new government minister placed in charge of the museum, a dentist, is an acolyte of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose ! goal is to make Iraq a fundamentalist theocracy…
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FLASHBACK: Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq
Julian Borger, Guardian
December 9, 2003 : Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military “consultants! “ have also visited Iraq. US forces in Iraq’s Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops…
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3,000 Demonstrate in Tikrit for Saddam Retur
Muqtada: US DoD has File on Shiite Messiah
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
…Moqtada al-Sadr maintained that the US Department of Defense has compiled an enormous file on the hidden Twelfth Imam, that is virtually complete save that it lacks his photograph. [For Shiite Muslims, the Twelfth Imam or Imam Mahdi is a little like Jesus Christ for evangelical Christians. Shiites believe that the Imam was translated by God into a supernatural realm, from which he secretly r! ules the world and from which he will one day return to restore the world to justice.] Al-Sadr said during his Friday prayer sermon in Kufa that “The United States has been preparing for ten years a rapid reaction force against the awaited Imam Mahdi and the US provoked the Gulf War so as to fill the region with military outposts for this purpose.”…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2006
Today in Iraq
A bomb blew up a kerosene tanker truck and killed at least 32 people Saturday. People frantically carried survivors from the narrow muddy street to ambulances, and hauled away bodies in blankets. At least 38 people were wounded by Saturday’s blast in Sadr City neighborhood. The bomb was hidden in a barrel near the tanker truck, where scores of people were waiting to buy fuel, said police Col. Saad Abdul-Sada. There were more people on hand than usual a! s families sought to stock up on fuel for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he said. Seventeen women were among the dead, Abdul-Sada said, adding that casualties were expected to rise. [Later reports say 37 died, over 40 wounded. –] A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier died at approximately noon today after the vehicle he was traveling in was struck by an improvised-explosive device in northern Baghdad…
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GI Special 4I24: The Appeal For Redress – September 24, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
I am writing to engage you on the Active Duty military project, a movement that will help end the occupation in Iraq and bring our love ones home.
The Active Duty military project is an initiative led by active duty service members and supported by veteran peace organizations including Military Families Speak Out (MSO).
Department of Defense regulation 7050.6, the Military Whistleblower Act, gives all of our service members the right to send a protected communication to a member of Congress.
This project is geared towards mobilizing appeals for redress from our service members in the United States and deployed/stationed throughout the world.
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Iraq is Bush’s Reflection Pond
Mike Whitney
Martial law is not liberation. Baghdad has been in a state of virtual lockdown since thousands of American Occupation Forces (AOF) were deployed to the city in a futile attempt to establish security. In the last two months, the number of dead appearing at the Baghdad morgue has skyrocketed; nearly 6,600 Iraqis brutally tortured and killed in July and August alone. In terms of population, this is the equivalent of 79,200 American casualties. Simply put, it is a massacre.! Still, the AOF continues to execute its bloody mission with impunity regardless of the horrific cost. Occupation is not freedom; it is servitude enforced at gunpoint. By every objective standard, life was better under Saddam Hussein. The people had reliable sources of electricity, clean water, food and medical supplies. Employment was high, crime was low, schools were open, markets were bustling and the socialist regime provided education and health services to the destitute…
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AP Propaganda About Iraq
Dahr Jamail
On Monday, September 18, Associated Press (AP) ran a story titled, “Iraqi tribes fight Insurgency.” At first glance, the average reader cannot be blamed for thinking that this is a story about how tribes in Iraq have decided to take up arms against the “insurgency.” (…) Allow me to pause here and address the use of the word “insurgent.” According to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, an insurgent is “a person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an esta! blished government: [a] rebel.” This of course begs the existence of a legitimately elected government that the “insurgent” rises in revolt against, which in Iraq we do not have. How is it possible to have a legitimate government in a country that was first illegally invaded and today is illegally occupied? Yet, AP uses the word unquestioningly. The story continues: “Tribal leaders and clerics in Ramadi, the capital of violent Anbar province, met last week and have set up a force of about 20,000 men ‘ready to purge the city of these infidels,’ Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent tribal leader from Ramadi, told the Associated Press, referring to the insurgents.’” At this point, either the author of this AP story, or the editor, or both, rightly assume that the reader is not aware that Sheik Fassal al-Guood tried to lead the local resistance against the occupation in Ramadi, but turned against the same resistance group when its members rejected him as a leader because they con! sidered him a corrupt thief. Nor is the reader aware that toda! y, Sheik h Fassal al-Guood lives in the “Green Zone” and happily talks to reporters from behind the concrete blast walls, and that his power in Al-Anbar now equals exactly nothing…
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More Evidence “al-Qaeda” is a CIA-ISI Contrivance
Kurt Nimmo
Don’t expect our corporate media “op-ed” stenographers to deviate from their Pentagon and neocon generated scripts and connect the dots now that another in-your-face link between “al-Qaeda” terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism (one in the same) has surfaced. “Omar Khyam, an accused leader among seven men charged in 2004 with stockpiling half a ton of explosives in an Al Qaeda-linked bombing plot, took the stand Tuesday long enough to refuse to contin! ue his testimony. The judge temporarily adjourned the trial, which began in March,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “On Monday, Khyam stunned his own lawyer when he declared that his relatives in Pakistan had been intimidated in recent days by agents of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which has a shadowy history of contacts with Islamic extremist networks”…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SEPTEMBER 22, 2006
Today in Iraq
A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier died at approximately 11:40 p.m. Thursday after the vehicle he was traveling in was struck by an improvised-explosive device in eastern Baghdad. Gunmen killed three people in an attack on Sunni Muslim homes Friday, then opened fire on two Sunni mosques before fleeing at the arrival of U.S. and Iraqi troops, police said. The attack came in the capital’s northern Hurriya area, a neighborhood with a mix of Shiites and Sun! nis. About 20 gunmen drove in in five cars, then attacked several houses and set fire to two, said police Lt. Maithem Abdel-Razzaq. In addition to the people killed, one more was wounded. They then opened fire on the mosques, damaging the buildings but not causing any injuries, Razzaq said. When U.S. and Iraqi soldiers arrived, supported by helicopters, the gunmen fled…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 22 September 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 5:56pm Makkah time Friday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by an American patrol of four Humvees east of the city of al-Qa’im near close to the Syrian border, some 390km northwest of Baghdad on Friday morning. The al-Qa’im correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported local residents as sayi! ng that the bomb went off by the patrol in the al-Bu Mahall area in the east of the city, destroying a vehicle and killing three US troops and wounding a fourth. Local residents who went up on their roofs were able to watch as the Americans transferred the bodies of their dead to one of their other vehicles in order to haul them away…
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Illusion and Reality
William Bowles , I’n’I
…The US and its major partner, the UK, with the complicity of the corporate and state-run media would have you believe that North Korea, even if it had the means (which it most obviously doesn’t) would risk total destruction by invading the US. What a ludicrous notion! The answer, as Elich rightly points out is simple; profit, and here Elich runs somewhat counter to the prevailing orthodoxy by stating quite categorically that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan far f! rom being failures are resounding successes when measured in dollars. “Western leaders may miscalculated the ease with which they would be able to impose their will on Iraq and seize control of its economy, but there is nothing irrational in the decision to go to war. The losses have been borne almost solely by ordinary Iraqi citizens and by the occupation soldiers who suffer injury and death. The expenses are paid through taxes taken primarily from the pockets of working people, while it is the corporate sector that reaps the benefits. The gains have been real for that class. The fact that many of the Bush adminstration’s goals have not been met does not exclude the fact that some ends were achieved. Even partial gains are valued when the cost is borne by others. That war-torn Iraq is a dangerous and harrowing place need not trouble corporate owners who never set foot there and for whom Iraq represents a profitable venture.” This is the same, cold logic that has pro! pelled US policy toward North Korea for over fifty years. Simp! ly put, defy US capitalism and you will be destroyed…
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Kucinich Calls For Congressional Hearings On Negroponte’s Role In The Release Of A False And Misleading Report On Iran
Dennis J. Kucinich
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), Ranking Member of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, today, called on Chairman Christopher Shays (R-CT) to hold hearings on a false and misleading report approved by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, on Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities. Below ! is the text of Kucinich’s letter…
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GI Special 4I23: Lunatics In Command – September 23, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
How Do You Know The War Is Lost?
When Lunatics Take Command Of Your Defense:
In Vietnam, U.S. Imperial Politicians Built A Silly Fence Across The Country To Keep Out The Nationalist Army: Oops, Didn’t Work; Bye Bye Vietnam.
In Iraq, Their Farcical Idiot Successors Are Digging A Silly 60 Miles Trench.
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The Next Palestinian Struggle
Ramzy Baroud
The Palestinian declaration of independence of 1988 in Algeria was structured in a way that would allow the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee to devise foreign policy, thus representing the Palestinian people in any future settlements with Israel. The signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993 and onward demoted the function of the Executive Committee and eventually undermined the import of the PLO altogether, concentrated the power in the ! hands of a few at the helm of the Palestinian Authority (PA): the late President Yasser Arafat and a clique of business contractors and ex-revolutionaries turned wartime profiteers…
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Environmental impact in Lebanon
Keeping the oil spill and forest fires under control could save the future of the country.
The Minnesota Daily
Aside from human casualties, war has a detrimental effect on the environment. In Lebanon, living conditions worsen each day. The country has suffered dramatic effects from missile attacks, the recent bombing of a power plant in Jiyeh and the largest oil spill ever in the Mediterranean region. The environmental issues started with the five-week attack on thousand! s of Lebanese homes and buildings. The fires from the attacks caused large clouds of smoke that experts reported containing contamination with the potential to create hormonal and respiratory problems in humans…
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Iraqi Sufis Join the Fight Against Coalition Forces
Lydia Khalil
Of all the Islamic trends, Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, is reputed to be the least prone to violence and more tolerant of other currents within Islam as well as other faiths. This is why the recent announcement by a group of Qadiri Sufis that they have formed the Battalions of Sheikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani to fight against coalition forces and the Shiite-led government of Iraq is surprising to many (…) The group had previously rejected vio! lence against the coalition and in fact cooperated with U.S. forces upon their entry in Iraq in 2003 (…) The rising sectarian violence played a prominent role in the Sufi group’s decision to take up arms and join the insurgency. Ahmed al-Soffi, a Sufi leader in Fallujah, told the media in August, “We will not wait for the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade to enter our houses and kill us. We will fight the Americans and the Shiites who are against us.”…
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Compact with Evil: The McCain “Compromise” on Bush’s Torture Program
Chris Floyd
…What we have seen today is no “grand compromise,” no “great debate,” no “act of principle” and certainly no “preservation” of the Geneva Conventions. What we have seen instead is a small group of rich, cynical, power-hungry old bastards belch forth lies in the service of torture and tyranny. And if you’re not angry about that, if you’re not “shrill” about that, then by God you are one piss-poor American citizen. You shame every ma! n and woman who have fought and died and marched and worked and dreamed for our freedoms…
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Hugo Chavez and the sulfuric odor of “devil” Bush
Larry Chin, Online Journal
…The full transcript of the Chavez address should be read in its entirety, from beginning to end, for its substance as well as its galvanizing tone. Skip the predictable US media attacks, the right-wing pundits and the brayings of Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton. The timeliness and accuracy of Chavez’s worldview, not simply his strong language, has earned him ovations from common people as well as top diplomats and heads of state, fro! m both “aligned” and “non-aligned” circles. What Chavez expressed was the voice of most of the world outside of the United States (…) Chavez began his speech by evoking Noam Chomsky, describing him as “one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals,” and urging people to read Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States. It is surprising that a political street fighter with the savvy and intellect of Chavez found the need to promote the work of Chomsky, whose weak, grossly deceptive and empty “structuralist” hand-wringings have been designed to deny systemic realities and real “root causes,” protect corruption and criminality, and purposely lead gullible Left/liberal icon-worshippers into terminal intellectual dead ends…
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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 37/2006 ( 14 – 20 September 2006 )
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
# 3 Palestinians were killed by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
# One of the victims was extra-judicially executed by IOF in the West Bank.
# A child died from a previous wound she had sustained when IOF killed her father and brother.
# 10 Palestinian civilians, including 7 children and a woman, were wounded by the IOF gunfire.
# IOF have continued to launch air strikes on houses in the Gaza Strip; 4 houses were destroyed in Rafah.
# IOF conducted 42 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 4 others into the Gaza Strip.
# IOF arrested 52 Palestinian civilians, including a child and a woman, in the West Bank, and two civilians in the Gaza Strip.
# IOF raided the Jordanian National Bank in Nablus, and 11 money exchange shops in 4 West Bank towns…
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Political Prisoners Speak
Richard Hugus
On Sunday, September 17 The New England Committee to Defend Palestine and the Boston chapter of the Jericho Movement* held an event in Boston to raise funds for Palestinian political prisoners. There are currently 10,163 Palestinians imprisoned for political reasons by the “Israeli” colonial occupiers. 50,000 residents of the West Bank and Gaza have been detained since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September, 2000. 5,000 of these detainees have been children. 700! ,000 people – 25% of the total population – have been detained since 1967. It is estimated that this includes more than 40% of the total male population. For adult males, the number is probably higher than 80%. Detention routinely involves torture. The September 17 event was held in memory of Black September, the month in 1970 when Jordanian forces under King Hussein massacred as many as 5,000 Palestinian refugees in Amman…
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The Zarqawi affair, part 9 of 15
B. J. Sabri, Online Journal Contributing Writer
… De Vieira and staff were victims of a terrorist attack, but behind that attack was the United States that ordered it for tactical reasons related to its occupation of Iraq (…) Why did the U.S. and Israel kill De Vieira as it killed Hariri on February 2005? Answer: it killed De Vieira to create the impression that the U.S. is fighting implacable terrorists in Iraq, and, as I said before, it killed Hariri to destabilize Syria and! Lebanon through the UNSC…
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Demonstrators call for Saddam to resume power
Gulf News
Around 500 demonstrators in Tikrit on Friday called for Saddam Hussain’s release and his return to power, organisers said. The demonstration happened in Hussain’s hometown of Tikrit in front of the Al Jamaa Al Kabir mosque and was organised by the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Tikrit Shura Council. Head of the Tikrit Shura Council Mohammed Talib Jassim said the people demanded his release and that the former dictator be allowed to resume power agai! n as president of Iraq…
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The Zarqawi affair, part 9 of 15
B. J. Sabri, Online Journal Contributing Writer
… De Vieira and staff were victims of a terrorist attack, but behind that attack was the United States that ordered it for tactical reasons related to its occupation of Iraq (…) Why did the U.S. and Israel kill De Vieira as it killed Hariri on February 2005? Answer: it killed De Vieira to create the impression that the U.S. is fighting implacable terrorists in Iraq, and, as I said before, it killed Hariri to destabilize Syria and! Lebanon through the UNSC…
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The Zarqawi affair, part 8 of 15
B. J. Sabri, Online Journal Contributing Writer
What were the preludes predating the official appearance of the Zarqawi hoax, and most importantly, was there a premonitory prelude before all preludes? I shall discuss the premonitory preludes last — backtracking is essential to see events in reversed perspective, thus demonstrating that the U.S. prepared, labored, and executed those events according to a long-term methodical plan…
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Hezbollah won’t disarm, has 20,000 rockets: Nasrallah
Nayla Razzouk and Haro Chakmakjian
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made his first public appearance since the war with Israel at a huge “victory” rally, rejecting calls to disarm and saying his guerrilla group still had 20,000 rockets.(…) “The resistance is stronger today than on July 12,” Nasrallah said, when Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers along the Israeli-Lebanese border, triggering a month of fierce clashes. “The resistance today ! has more than 20,000 rockets,” he added, rejecting Israeli claims to have inflicted heavy damage on the guerrilla group…
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GI Special 4I22: Lousy Odds, And Getting Worse – September 22, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
The US Department of Defense has done some opinion polling that indicates that 3/4s of Iraqi Sunnis now support what the Pentagon calls the “insurgency”. When the DoD started doing polling on the subject in 2003, they found that 14 percent of Sunni Arabs supported the insurgency. If there are 5 million Sunni Arabs, let us say that 1.5 million are less than 15 years of age. Of the 3.5 million left, half are women and less likely t! o actually engage in violence, though they might offer support for it. So that is 1.75 million men. At 75%, that is 1.3 million male supporters of the guerrilla movement. Of the 147,000 US troops in Iraq, a very large number of which now seem to be in and around Baghdad itself, I don’t know exactly how many are fighters.
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