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The Breaking Point
Mike Whitney
…There is no good news from Iraq. It’s all bad. The magnitude of America’s defeat is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day. Rumsfeld’s cheery propaganda campaign has fallen on hard times and will have no effect on the wars’ final outcome. The problem is the policy; it is untenable and will require a thorough overhaul. We should expect to see dramatic changes following the elections. The Iraq Survey Group, steered by committee-chair and Bush family friend James Baker! , will release their findings right after the November balloting. Judging by their guarded comments, big changes are ahead. Perhaps, the troops will move to the perimeter and let the Iraqis kill each other in a full-blown civil war. Whatever transpires, the first phase of the Iraqi fiasco is nearly over. The Bush administration will be compelled to protect its interests while limiting the exposure of its troops. They may choose to minimize their activities to bombing raids and counter-insurgency operations, further destroying the threadbare fabric of Iraqi society…
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REVISIONISM AT ITS WORST
Malcom Lagauche
…The destruction of the Iraqi education system was devastating and the number one reason why Iraq was kept in a “pre-industrial” mode for years after the U.S. assault in 1991. However, few people in the U.S. have a clue to the former crown jewel of the country. Today, there is a tremendous amount of revisionist history that is effective propaganda for the U.S. public. The new version could not be further from the truth. In 1973, Iraq began an all-out assault on illiterac! y. Thousands of Iraqis were sent overseas to obtain advanced degrees. They, in turn, came back to Iraq to educate the next generation of educators. In the 1980s, the Iraqi education system was universally acknowledged by the U.N. and many international education organizations as the best in the world for developing countries. Officials from many nations visited Iraq and took notes at how the system worked. These facts have simply been ignored in the past few years in re-writing the history of Iraq. An interesting part of the Ba’ath education system was its secular approach. Students received a first-class education regardless of their religious affiliation. Females attended school regularly and did not have to wear a veil if they did not choose. Today’s Iraqi education experience is far different. Few females attend class. In most areas, they are compelled to wear veils, ever if they’ve never worn one in their lives. And, they mostly have to be escorted to school by two mal! e family members. By 1990, the literacy rate in Iraq had grown! from ab out 40% in 1973, to almost 90% This success rate was unheard of in the Arab world…
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Bob Woodward: Bush Misleads On Iraq
Tells 60 Minutes’ Wallace That Kissinger Is Regular Visitor To White House
CBS
Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. In Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the reporter! also claims that Henry Kissinger is among those advising Mr. Bush. According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. “It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That’s more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,” says Woodward…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 29 September 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
…In a dispatch posted at 3:50pm Makkah time Friday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US warplanes prowled the skies of al-Fallujah for the first time since the second Battle of al-Fallujah in the winter of 2004-2005, in another sign of increasing losses being suffered by American forces in western Iraq’s al-Anbar Province. The correspondent for Ma! fkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying that American C-130 warplanes struck a house in the Abu Sudayrah area west of al-Fallujah at 2:30am local time Friday morning, razing the home to the ground and killing eight local residents, among them women and children. The correspondent reported sources in the Iraqi puppet army as saying that the American Air Force had brought the C-130 warplanes into al-Anbar for combat operations…
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The Americans Are Coming
Iraqi screen
It was the most bloody, awful and sorrowful afternoon in the history of Baghdad since its foundation, when shouts broke the silence in Palestine hotel in April 8, 2003 by foreign journalists who were gathered there till the end of the war, they were shouting, “The Americans are coming.” (…) At that moment, I envied all the Iraqis who died during the war and before the war, because they died before they see that shameful scene, their dear Baghdad, their dear Iraq was gone, t! hey, who refused to leave Baghdad and their country just because they love it and they died in its love, they were lucky not to see that bloody evening when US soldiers were everywhere in Baghdad streets, except in Adhamiyia, people there were still fighting for their beloved country. Soon, looting campaign began in Baghdad blessed by the Americans, ministries and governmental buildings were burned and people were talking about Kuwaitis who came by themselves to do that in revenge of 1991 war…
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Fool’s goal
Sheila Samples, Online Journal Contributing Writer
…Still, it’s difficult to determine who’s dumb and dumber here — the American people or their foolish president. I cannot believe people don’t realize that Bush gives the same damn speech over and over, word for word, and has for five years. He uses the singed flesh of the people slain on 9-11 to justify killing so many, many innocents throughout the world — September the 11th . . . we’re on the hunt . . . got the evildoers on the run . . . we’re ! bringing them to justice . . . September the 11th . . . freedom’s on the march . . . we don’t kill ‘em over there, they’ll follow us home and we’ll have to kill ‘em over here . . . September the 11th . . . September the 11th . . . they kill without mercy because they hate our freedoms . . . September the 11th. Bush’s speeches are replete with hate, and with horror, fear, death, suffering, plotters, planners, and hateful ideologies..
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Curfew in Baghdad Until Sunday
Zeyad, Healing Iraq
…According to Al-Amin residents, Mahdi army militiamen routinely round out Sunnis for interrogation at these ‘husseiniyas,’ where Shari’a kangaroo courts are set up. One local Mahdi army leader is known as Thamir Al-Mayahhi, and people say he is as brutal as the infamous Abu Dera’ of Sadr City, who is wanted by American forces (…) During the day, militiamen guard local fuel stations and sell black market fuel. The Health Ministry has employed a number of thos! e militiamen as security guards at Baghdad’s Medical City. I should remind that the Medical City is where several Sunni patients, medical students, professors and physicians are being kidnapped almost daily and later executed. Baghdad’s Medical City Hospital, Adnan Khairallah Hospital, the Health Ministry, the Medico-legal Institute (Baghdad’s main morgue), and the colleges of medicine and dentistry are all located at the Medical City. At Hayy Al-Mu’alimeen in Dora, the Al-Kadhimain husseiniya at Abu Dshir, south of Dora is used as a base to launch attacks against residential apartment buildings for Sunni citizens. The husseiniya is controlled by a person named Sheikh Falah Al-Sa’di…
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Relatives of new Saddam trial judge are killed in Baghdad
The Associated Press
Iraq The brother-in-law of the new judge presiding over Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial was killed and his nephew was wounded in a shooting Friday in Baghdad, the latest deadly violence linked to proceedings against the former Iraqi leader. Kadhim Abdul-Hussein was fatally shot, and his son, Karrar, was wounded in the capital’s western Ghazaliyah neighborhood by unidentified assailants, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said (…) During Sa! ddam’s first trial, three defense lawyers were killed, and in July, Saddam and three other defendants refused food to protest lack of security for lawyers and conduct of the trial…
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Who Runs Iraq?
Roads to Iraq
Reports about the role of Nuri al-Maliki’s press advisor Majid Yassin to convince him to take the decision to close down Alarabyia satellite office in Baghdad for one month. Observers questions on the nature of the functions carried out by Maliki’s advisers, their experience and performance of their duties and their influence on the decisions of the Prime Minister. “Elaph” met in Amman, a member from the former government, who preferred not to reveal his name, he reveald more informat! ion about the advisors…
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Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children
The “horror of the shrieking boys” gets a rubber stamp from the boot-licking U.S. Congress & Senate as America officially becomes a dictatorship
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com
Slamming the final nail in the coffin of everything America used to stand for, the boot-licking U.S. Senate last night gave President Bush the legal authority to abduct and sexually mutilate American citizens and American children in the name of the war on terror. T! here is nothing in the “detainee” legislation that protects American citizens from being kidnapped by their own government and tortured. Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman states in the L.A. Times, “The compromise legislation…authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”…
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A Personal Declaration of Independence
William Cook
Citizens of the United States of America bear an awesome responsibility to maintain control of their government’s behavior since that government derives its powers from the consent granted it by the citizens. When the government ceases to act in accord with the dictates of the respective consciences of its citizens as determined by its foundational documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights — , when it violates the established principles that give this nation legitimacy before the nations of the world through mutually accepted agreements, charters, and conventions, when it abrogates the inalienable rights granted the citizens by the Creator, when it declares unequivocally that the citizens cannot dissent with an action or actions taken by the government, then it is the right and the duty of the citizen to “alter or abolish” that government…
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Iraq After Liberation
iraqi screen
…Then, the man asked him about Mahdi army and how it was formed, the man answered like that, “ few days after the end of the war of 2003, when Saddam Hussein government collapsed and the Americans controlled Iraq, a representative from Iranian Intelligence “ Itila’at” approached a top Shiite cleric from Sader family and presented this offer to him. “ If you can recruit 6000 man from your followers to work for us, we will allocate $3 million for you every month and will provide! them with equipments and training.” The cleric answer was like that, “ Look, I am an old man, I am a cleric not a politician, so, your offer is rejected.” Few weeks later, Mahdi army was formed instead.”…
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Torturing Democracy
Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico PitneyAmanda Terkel and Payson Schwin – Center for American Progress
On Wednesday, the House rubber-stamped (253-168) the White House-backed legislation governing the interrogation and trial of terror suspects, “a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.” Yesterday, the Senate passed the measure in a 65-34 vote. This legislation was the result of a supposed “compromise” b! etween conservative lawmakers and the administration. But in reality, the bill was more about making sure President Bush has the opportunity to sign high-profile terrorism legislation before the midterm elections. The bill was drafted in Vice President Cheney’s office and gives Bush “the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture,” and to deny habeas corpus to detainees…
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Confronting the “Cut and Run” Slander of Bush’s Praetorian Guard
Walter C. Uhler
With elections but little more than a month away, President Bush’s do-nothing Republican majority in both houses of Congress is up for grabs. And, thus, so is a genuine investigation into the Bush administration’s lies, deceit and crimes concerning Iraq — especially its “Chicken Little” clamoring about weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda that, as we would learn later, didn’t actually exist…
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Muqtada al Sadr orders followers to put down their weapons
Nancy A. Youssef
Muqtada al Sadr, the firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric whose Mahdi Army is arguably Iraq’s most powerful armed group, has ordered his followers to put down their weapons temporarily, three of his aides told McClatchy Newspapers on Friday. Analysts differed on the significance of the directive, which Sadr delivered in secret to his commanders two weeks ago in the southern city of Kufa. Some saw it as Sadr’s way of distancing himself from risi! ng sectarian violence, most of which has been blamed on his followers. Others said the order was little more than an effort by Sadr to head off an offensive by American and Iraqi forces against his militia, which increasingly is seen as a shadow sectarian security force. Controlling many of Iraq’s larger cities, the Mahdi Army uses its political hold on several government ministries to win new supporters…
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In Case I Disappear
William Rivers Pitt
…Underneath all this is the definition of “enemy combatant” that has been established by this legislation. An “enemy combatant” is now no longer just someone captured “during an armed conflict” against our forces. Thanks to this legislation, George W. Bush is now able to designate as an “enemy combatant” anyone who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Consider that language a moment. “Purposefully and materially supported hos! tilities against the United States” is in the eye of the beholder, and this administration has proven itself to be astonishingly impatient with criticism of any kind. The broad powers given to Bush by this legislation allow him to capture, indefinitely detain, and refuse a hearing to any American citizen who speaks out against Iraq or any other part of the so-called “War on Terror.” If you write a letter to the editor attacking Bush, you could be deemed as purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the UnitedStates. If you organize or join a public demonstration against Iraq, or against the administration, the same designation could befall you…
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Detainee Bill and the Dawning of a Fascist America
Kurt Nimmo
As Steve Douglas notes, “the Schmittian drives for the arrogation of all power into the hands of a ‘unitary executive’ Presidential dictatorship,” in the case of both Hitler and Bush, are “essentially, identical.” In the wake of the Reichstag fire in early 1933, blamed on the Comintern, Hitler and the Nazis, with “the support of a terrified populace … suspended civil rights and civil liberties, fattened their war machine and rode the fascist tide into ! a full-blown dictatorship,” writes Harvey Wasserman. After the Reichstag fire, Paul von Hindenburg signed the fateful emergency decree, thus providing Hitler’s SA and SS with the legality required to round up the opposition and throw them in makeshift concentration camps run by local Gauleiters and SA leaders. “The rest, as they say, is history,” notes Wasserman…
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Israeli Criminal Conducts Shows NO Respect for Palestinian Rights
Hayam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
The Israelis killed today two Palestinian children while they were riding on their bikes in Biet Hanoun in broad daylight in the northen Gaza Strip – the boys where killled by a drone missile that was fired at them. The bodies are taken to Kama Adwan Hospital in Jabalya.The two children where the brothers Anwar and Ghanam Hamdan – 14 and 16 years of age – when they was killed. The two teenagers riding on their bikes o! n a clear day well visuable by the operators of the Israeli drone,was no threath to “Israeli’s security”.The missile attack on the two chidren was a violation of Israel’s obligation under international laws and resolutions…
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GI Special 4I29: 60% Of Iraqis Say Kill U.S. Troops – September 29, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
As many as six in ten Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces in their country. But almost as many say they also have an overwhelmingly negative opinion of Osama bin Laden.
Support appears to be related to a widespread perception, held by all ethnic groups, that the US government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq.
About 61 percent approved of the attacks – up from 47 percent in January.
A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according to the poll. The increase came mostly among Shiite Iraqis.
Three-fourths believe the U.S. intends to keep military bases in Iraq permanently.
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On Friday, September 29, It’s Mourning in America
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL Via Axis of Logic
Just as it is hard to fully comprehend the grief of a beloved friend or relative killed needlessly in an accident, it is excruciatingly painful to try to come to terms with the pernicious betrayal of our Constitution and liberty that occurred in the Senate on Thursday, September 28. In the past week alone, we have seen factual evidence that belies the need for the power play/pre-election attack on our Constitution. I! n fact, these developments indicate that giving Bush even more unprecedented power is not only unconscionable; it puts the national security of the United States of America in peril…
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Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine
Jonathan Cook
A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap. Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the I! sraeli air force of Gaza’s power plant in late June. The horrifying consequences of this act of collective punishment — a war crime, as B’Tselem rightly notes — are clearly laid out in the report…
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