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Govt. Death Squads Ravaging Baghdad
Ali Al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
…A UN human rights report released September last year held interior ministry forces responsible for an organised campaign of detentions, torture and killings. It reported that special police commando units accused of carrying out the killings were recruited from Shia Badr and Mehdi militias, and trained by U.S. forces. Retired Col. James Steele, who served as advisor on Iraqi security forces to then U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte supervised th! e training of these forces…
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One Crime Too Many
Mike Whitney
Iraq is the great tragedy of our generation. Every day men and women are brazenly killed in their own homes or cities by foreign troops who occupy the country without justification. In Baghdad, “liberation” has become a permanent state of martial law where one can never be certain if his door will suddenly be kicked in and he will either be shot or dragged off to some remote prison for torture. Entire cities are now under siege; surrounded by concertina-wire and massive walls of ! dirt. The townspeople are forced to exit and enter through American-run checkpoints and forced to verify their identity to their foreign jailors. The country has become so unsafe that it is impossible for independent journalists to gather the information the world needs to grasp the horror of what is taking place under the rubric of “democracy”. Meanwhile, “embedded” journalists continue to reiterate the same, worn fictions, generated in the Pentagon or right-wing think tanks, that somehow the Iraqi people are to blame for the massive tragedy which was created by the invasion…
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Iran Sparked Islamic Divide, Iran Only Can Defuse It
Nicola Nasser, thepeoplesvoice.org
Tehran for the first time and at the highest level has this week went public on the so far taboo Sunni-Shiite divide, accused the American Great Satan of exploiting and fuelling the historic Islamic sectarian tragedy, which is true, but offered no way out of the divide except a verbal call for unity, which has to be tested against the Iranian policies on the ground in Iraq, where the Iranian call can make or break (…) Hailin! g the occupation of the sisterly Muslim neighbor by Tehran as innocently an ousting of a dictatorship could not be interpreted except as in defense of the bad example of inviting the Great Satan, or any other foreign power, to interfere in settling scores in intra-Muslim conflicts and disputes (…) Changing regimes by foreign invasion is in principle rejected regionally and internationally. No sectarian alliances or dividends could justify it; nor could anti-Saddam vendetta. In Iraq there is ample evidence that Iranian policies have significantly contributed both to the sectarian divide and the U.S. exploitation of the underlying sectarian fire. The seeds of the low-intensity civil war that is raging in Iraq now and the de facto division of the country have flowered in these policies…
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Mysterious wounds point to Israel’s use of new weapon
Rory McCarthy
DOCTORS in Gaza have reported previously unseen injuries from Israeli weapons that cause severe burning and leave deep internal wounds, often resulting in amputations or death. The injuries were first seen in July, when Israel attacked Gaza after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier. “Bodies arrived severely fragmented, melted and disfigured,” said Jumaa Saqa’a, a doctor at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. “We found internal burning ! of organs, while externally there were minute pieces of shrapnel. When we opened many of the injured people we found dusting on their internal organs.” It is not clear whether the injuries come from a new weapon. The Israeli military denied reports that the injuries came from a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (Dime), an experimental weapon…
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The New World Order and Creation of the Amoral Economic Man
Abbas Bakhtiar
Once a week, I watch the American CBS TV program: the 60 minutes. This time part of the program was about the latest fad among some teenagers: beating homeless people, some resulting in death. The reporters had obtained the footage of a security camera which showed how four young men beat an unfortunate homeless man for fun. The reporter then interviewed another young man (part of a group of four) that had participated in killing a homele! ss man. When the reporter asked the young man why he had done this, he replied for fun. The reporter went on to point out how a DVD film called BUMFIGHT, in which two homeless people were paid to beat each other, had become very popular among the American teenagers. The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) says that beating the defenceless homeless people has become a perverse national trend…
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Hiding the Dead Bodies in Iraq
Ahmed Amr, www.dissidentvoice.org
If there is one thing about George Bush that both his supporters and detractors can agree on — it has to be his inflexibility. His partisans call it consistency while others recognize it as obstinacy. As governor of Texas, he never once pardoned a man condemned to the hangman’s noose. And as chief executive, he never vetoes a bill that makes it to the oval office. On the subject of Iraq, Bush adamantly refuses to recognize the terrible human catas! trophe he unleashed by launching this war of choice. There is never even a hint of personal guilt about the laundry list of war crimes committed by his post-mission-accomplished mismanagement of America’s newest colony…
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Bush does not HEAR; does not SEE but does SPEAk
an iraqi tear
The prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, published a study achieved by researchers from John Hopkins (American) and Al-Mustansiriya (Iraqi) universities, stated that more than 650,000 people have been killed in Iraq since March 20 2003, the date on which Bush began invading Iraq till now (…) Yet many Iraqis say that the figure might be bigger; they say that the sectarian violence flooded the country after explosion of the Samara golden do! me last February . Bush made Iraq drowned by the bloods of the Iraqis; yet he is insisting to mislead the American and world public opinion and he is managing it!! How much Iraqis will be killed more to satisfy Bush revenge feeling? “I will do it for my daddy”, Bush announced in January 2003 speaking about his war against Iraq; “this man (Saddam) tried to kill my daddy”, he said.. How long takes the sectarian violence in Iraq? Again, the sectarian and ethnic disputed among the Iraqis were planned by Bush and Paul Bremer the third, his viceroy in Iraq, while establishing the Governing Council on the sectarian and ethnic bases…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 19 October 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 11:07pm Makkah time Thursday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces blasted the headquarters that US forces have set up in the education building in downtown al-Hadithah with a massive barrage of more than 30 mortar shells and Katyushar rockets igniting a massive fire in the US-occupied facility that sent smo! ke billowing into the sky. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the puppet police as saying that more than 20 US troops were reported killed or wounded in the barrage, the heaviest seen in al-Hadithah in months. The American casualties were evacuated to the US military hospital in al-Habbaniyah, the source reported…
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‘It is either us or you,’ Iraqi rebels tell U.S.
Muthana Aidan and Ali al-Mawsawi, Azzaman
Iraqi rebels are determined to turn the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this year into a turning point in their struggle to defeat the United States. In interviews with residents and insurgents in violence-ridden areas, particularly in central Iraq, it appears that rebel tactics of turning the holy month into the bloodiest for the occupiers have been ‘a resounding success.’ (…) Residents in rebel-held areas denied reports th! at Iraqi resistance was losing its popular base. “Everybody would opt for resistance and support it. There is little choice. It is hard for anyone in our area to even sympathize with these Olooch,” said a farmer in a village close to Falluja…
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IRAQ: WHAT DOES ‘JOB DONE’ MEAN?
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
The mantra, since the bloody and illegal war in Iraq started, has been: “we will leave Iraq when the job is done.” What exactly does this mean? Why doesn’t anyone ask Mr Bush/Blair what ‘job done’ means? Yesterday, Mr Blair told MP’s at Question Time: “Troops will be out of Iraq in 16 months.” No one asked him about an earlier report by Kim Sengupta in The Independent (22.09.06), who wrote: “A force of around 4,000 British troops will stay behind in Ira! q for an indefinite period, even after all provinces controlled by the UK are handed over to the Baghdad government in nine months’ time, senior defence sources said yesterday. “ The soldiers will be positioned at a base in Basra ready to act to “protect the investment” made by US and British forces in the country, it was disclosed.” WHAT ‘investment’?…
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Baath Party Statement
Glory to the President overwhelming support day and shame and dishonor to the three Zionist “Emirates”!
The Arab Baath Socialist Party
…It has been proved that the masses, which are subject to death and detention are defying the Occupiers by backing the leader Saddam Hussein. The near consensus in amongst the tribes and the social and political forces to back and support the return of the leader to preside the Republic, and in these unprecedented proportions under the Occupation,! asserts the veracity of the two polls undertaken by the patriotic progressive government. The Iraqi masses knew that the fabricated lies against the patriotic regime were nothing but a plan to draw Iraq into the Occupation, division , hell and the dispersion of millions of Iraqis outside their homeland, and practice ethnic cleansing on racist basis, in the north, and sectarian ones in the south. That is why Iraqis were more and more convinced that there is no hope for Iraq and its unity without the return of the Baath leadership and its allies’ forces to the affairs in Iraq…
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Upon Red Rivers of Genocide
Manuel Valenzuela
Daily upon the rivers that birthed civilization can the flow of crimson colored blood be seen journeying over liquid roadways through the land of Mesopotamia, its accumulated and growing volume the result of scattered bodies, bullet hole riddled men and bloated humans, all silent witnesses to the devastation that has cursed the Iraqi people. Tainted with the flow of human wickedness, the Tigris and Euphrates spread their polluted waters over the entire culture of Iraq! , like sewers of human waste contaminating land, water and air, their toxins of evil and torture and murder and suffering spreading a noxious fog over cities and towns, its cocktail of death and destruction infecting the fabric of society, the very foundation of Iraq cracked and shattered by the spillage of human energy, that crimson liquid granting life…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR THURSDAY, October 19, 2006
Today in Iraq
At least four people were killed and 13 wounded when a pair of roadside bombs went off in quick succession in the same spot in a residential part of the southern Dora district of Baghdad. The first blast killed two civilians and wounded 11. A second explosion five minutes later, targeting police and rescuers who arrived at the scene, killed two policemen and wounded two others, police Lt. Maytham Abdul-Razzaq said (…) 31 bodies were discovered in Baghd! ad on Wednesday. A suicide car bomb hit a major police station in the northern city of Mosul Thursday, killing 12 people and wounding 25, many of them motorists waiting to buy gasoline at a nearby gas station, police said. Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew after the attack on Abi Tamam police station at 7:15 am…
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Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK Policy
Craig Murray
As the catastrophe in Iraq continues to unfold, an unresolved question remains on the role of Bush, Blair, and the US/UK military. To what extent were they passively incompetent in facilitating the decline into civil war, and to what extent were they actively pursuing policies that promoted that outcome? The adoption of the ‘Salvador Option’ by the US in Iraq was reported and discussed from the beginning of 2005 onwards…
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US has lost control in Iraq, says military strategist
Eleanor Hall
Harlan Ullman who’s now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says the US lost control of events in Iraq almost immediately after the invasion and that far from assisting in the development of democracy, the US-led allies, including Australia, have fomented chaos.mBut Dr Ullman says he holds out little hope that either the escalating US deaths in Iraq or the recommendations now being developed by a senior policy adviser to the for! mer Bush administration, James Baker, will convince the President to change his mind…
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Things aren’t going to get better
Xymphora
…The Democrats have the same problem as the Republicans. They exist solely to collect bribes, try to gain more power, and satisfy their Zionist paymasters. Cracking down on corruption would make it more difficult for the Democrats to collect their share, so it won’t happen. Bush impeachment? Don’t make me laugh. Even if Diebold doesn’t do its job and the Democrats squeeze out a tiny sliver of control of one or both houses of Congress – an extremely unlikely eventu! ality, and Rove is already preparing the way to mute the outrage at a Republican ‘victory’ by boasting of how confident he is – nothing whatsoever will change…
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An Open Letter to the US Ambassador to Iraq
Mahmoud Alyousseph
As an American citizen and a retired veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces, I would like to express my dire concern regarding Mrs. Golshan Al-Bayati*, a well known Iraqi journalist and writer. She is the correspondent of the Al-Hayat London-based Arabic newspaper in Iraq. I would like you to intercede on behalf of Mrs. Al-Bayati and ensure her immediate release. Mrs. Al Bayati is a mother of 3 children, who was first arrested on September 11th 2006, then r! eleased. Mrs. Al Bayati was rearrested shortly after her release on September 15th 2006, in the city of Tikrit, after she attempted to retrieve her computer and car, which were confiscated during the raid on her house. It seems to me that her arrest was arbitrary, which is illegal under international law. Her arrest was carried out by one of the Iraqi Army’s many militias, after she wrote about corruption and human rights abuses in Iraq…
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IRAQI CLERIC’S AIDE FREED BY U.S. FORCES
WHILE AL-MALIKI, AL-SADR SAY FEDERALISM IS UP TO IRAQI PEOPLE
Radio Free Europe
Sheikh Mazin al-Sa’idi, a senior aide to radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was released by U.S. forces on October 18 at the request of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, international media reported the same day (…) Prime Minister al-Maliki consulted separately with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and radical cleric al-Sadr in the holy city of Al-Najaf to discuss the current se! curity situation and the issue of federalism, Al-Sharqiyah television reported on October 18. During a news conference, al-Maliki stressed that the Iraqi people should be the ones to make decisions on federalism. In an apparent shift, al-Sadr concurred with al-Maliki. “The Iraqi people should have the final say about federalism or any other issue. If the Iraqi people approve on the issue of federalism, let it be,” he said. Al-Sadr previously opposed federalism, warning that it would lead to the breakup of Iraq…
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A Call for Help from an Iraqi Woman
Lift the Siege of Al-Kmira
Sabah Ali, BRussells Tribunal
For the fourth week, the people of Kmira are under siege, they can not go out, or come in, no food, no provisions. We do not know how they are, how they are fasting Ramadan. The media is fasting too, in reporting on what the people of this village, which is part Al-Fahhamma, north east of Baghdad, are going through. The American-Iraqi troops attacked the region of Al-Kmira after they put it under siege ! for a week. The fighting with its community went on for two days. Some of the people, who went out and then could not go back, said that the troops had bad casualties. Others claimed that there were Iranians among the dead of the militias’ masses which participated in the attack against Al-Kmira…
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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 41/2006, 12 – 18 October 2006
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
28 Palestinians, 17 of whom including 2 children and a woman are civilians, were killed by IOF. Each of the two children was killed together with the father of each. 6 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF in 3 separate attacks. 45 Palestinians, including 14 children and 4 women, were wounded. IOF have continued to launch air strikes on! houses and civilian facilities in the Gaza Strip; 5 houses were destroyed and a number of others were severely damaged…
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Two largest Shiite militias battle in southern Iraq
Hamza Hendawi, AP
The family of the murdered chief of police intelligence in the southern Maysan province struck back today against his suspected killers, kidnapping the teenage brother of a local militia commander and vowing not to free him unless the culprits are turned over, police said. Ali Qassim al-Tamimi was killed Wednesday by a bomb planted on the highway between Maysan’s provincial capital Amarah and the city of Basra farther south. He was killed along! with four of his bodyguards. Tamimi is known to be a member of the Badr Brigade, a militia linked to Iraq’s largest religious Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI. The family maintains that the rival Mahdi Army of radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was behind his murder. The showdown between the two Shiite militias has the potential to develop into an all-out conflict between the heavily armed groups and their political sponsors, both with large blocs in parliament and backers of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition…
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