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Talking To The Resistance
Robert Dreyfuss
In an exclusive interview , a prominent Iraqi Baathist says that the Baathist resistance in Iraq is preparing a major offensive for January 2007, and that as long as the United States refuses to open an unconditional dialogue with the Baathists, the armed resistance and its allies, there will be no respite from the withering attacks that have left more than 85 U.S. troops dead this month alone. Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi diplomat, says the resistance movement has s! ecured control of most of Baghdad in anticipation of an American withdrawal from Iraq (…) The resistance, says Mukhtar, is led primarily by highly trained officers of the former Iraqi army, and its leaders include both Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians. And although it is strongest in Baghdad and in Anbar, it has support throughout the southern half of Iraq, where many Shiites are turning against the Iran-backed forces such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), he says. “There is a silent majority in the south, which is against the occupation and against Iran. They are fed up with the crimes of the pro-Iranian groups,” he says. The United States, says Mukhtar, has no alternative in Iraq except to open talks with the Baath Party and the resistance…
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Stealing the Midterms and the Power of Myth
Mike Whitney
… Now, (coincidentally) everything has evolved almost exactly as Zelikow predicted. Just like Pearl Harbor, 9-11 has “divided our past and future into a before and after”. The post-9-11 world relates to a world in which personal liberty is no longer protected, and where surveillance, detention and the use of deadly force are all permitted. It is a world in which “America’s fundamental sense of security” has been shattered and will continue to be shattere! d as a way of managing public opinion. As Zelikow presciently implies, the post 9-11 world depends entirely on “public myths”; fairy tales invented by society’s supervisors which perpetuate the illusion of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. So, how does this apply to Karl Rove? There are only two weapons in the imperial tool-chest; force and deception. I expect that the anticipated Democratic landslide will be preempted by massive voter fraud accompanied by some type of “searing event”; that way the fantastical outcome of a GOP victory can be neatly folded into a larger and all-pervasive “myth”. As we have been reminded many times: Reality no longer matters; only the perception of reality. The power of myth reigns supreme. Happy balloting!…
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“America dictating the Iraqi partition scheme”
Arablinks.blogspot.com
…Another item in the Al-Quds selection for this week is an editorial in the newspaper of the Muslim Scholars Association, (Sunni), Al-Basa’ir, about the recent vote on the bill respecting procedures for federalism. The editorialist says this isn’t just a case of feeling our way, of the free play of domestic politics. On the contrary this is “literally the application of the American wishes”, for a division into sect- and race-based regions. I! t was already their policy in the Bremer era. And the extraordinary efforts that went into passage of the bill [in the famous disputed vote of October 11] appears to have been the result of specific instructions from Rice during her visit of Oct 7. The idea is to first partition Iraq, and then to partition the rest of the region, to produce what they are calling the “New” or the “Greater” Middle East…
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Iran’s presence in Iraq
BY DR MUSTAFA ALANI
…During the course of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), the Iranian leadership mobilised the pro-Iran, mainly Iraqi Shia opposition parties — Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Islamic Dawa Party — to support Iran’s military efforts in the hope of achieving victory. These two parties helped Iran with vital intelligence from Iraq; besides their cadres participated in Iran’s military operations along the border, even carrying out a number of atta! cks against Iraqi targets. The Baáthist regime in Iraq managed to prevent Iranian plans to interfere in Iraqi internal affairs. Indeed, until the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003, Iranian strategy to intervene in Iraq proved a complete failure. By mid-2002, the balance began to tip in Iran’s favour with the escalation of the Iraq-US confrontation. The pragmatic Iranian leadership accurately judged the seriousness of the post-9/11 Iraq-US conflict and US President George W. Bush’s determination to oust the Baáthist regime in Iraq at any price and by any means. Thus, while the American administration was fully engaged in plotting the removal of the Iraqi regime, the Iranian leadership was also busy planning how Teheran could strategically gain from any American adventure in Iraq…
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A polite declaration of mutiny.
Lenin’s Tomb
This is quite an important, if excessively civil, development: More than 100 U.S. service members have signed a rare appeal urging Congress to support the “prompt withdrawal” of all American troops and bases from Iraq. Now, these are off-duty service members: you can’t sign this sort of thing if you’re on-duty. Nevertheless, although a bit of fragging on the frontlines would help it along, it does significantly add to the difficulties faced by the Bush administration i! n Iraq…
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Despair of Baghdad turns into a life of shame in Damascus
Young women fleeing war and poverty fall prey to sex traffickers
Hugh Macleod, The Guardian
Um Ahmad, as she was known to the girls, had it all planned out. From Baghdad to the border and on to Damascus and a new life, Mona and her three Iraqi friends didn’t need to worry about a thing. The job in the textiles factory outside the Syrian capital would pay $300 (£160) a month, travel for the long journey was already arranged, a place for the girls! to stay was ready and waiting and – best of all – Um Ahmad would pay Mona’s father one month’s salary in advance. For the 26-year-old eldest daughter of eight children whose parents faced a daily despair of car bombs and poverty in their Baghdad slum, the offer sounded too good to be true. It was…
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Playing the Numbers Game with Death in Iraq
Tom Engelhardt
…When asked if, given the Lancet study, he stood by the number he had previously cited of 30,000 Iraqi deaths, the President responded, “You know, I stand by the figure. A lot of innocent people have lost their life — 600,000, or whatever they guessed at, is just — it’s not credible.” The reporter answered, “Thank you, Mr. President” and all and sundry turned to other matters. And yet, such a statement is little short of the darkest of jokes. Start wi! th the fact that, by last December, 30,000 was already a ludicrously low-ball figure for the Iraqi dead of the war, occupation, insurgency, and incipient civil war. Early on, to give but one example of a study completely ignored in the U.S. press, a group of Iraqi academics and political activists tried to research the question of civilian casualties, consulting with hospitals, gravediggers, and morgues, and came up with the figure of 37,000 deaths just between March 2003 and October 2003, when they stopped due to the dangers involved…
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Sign of the Times
Thoughts from Baghdad
I saw this sign put up in a couple of different locations in Dakhiliya district. In honor of Ramadan and the situation here it reads, “The best fasting (you can perform) is to (abstain) from your brother’s blood,” ie. from killings and murder.
Traditionally, we learn that fasting in the month of Ramadan is to abstain from eating, drinking and spousal relations from sun-up to sun-down. Here in Iraq, another basic point has to be emphasized…
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Saddam Hussein’s “guilty” conviction announcement planned for two days before elections
Ben Kage
According to Tom Engelhardt’s editorial in the Oct. 18 issue of The Nation, the U.S.-backed tribunal of Saddam Hussein will likely delay its verdict until Nov. 5, which he notes makes it fall on the day of midterm elections. What Engelhardt finds hard to accept is the fact that many in the mainstream media seem to have put a guilty verdict forward as a foregone conclusion, but almost none of them seem to have noticed ! the correlation between the verdict’s date and the midterm elections…
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It is not a good sign when you don’t even trust your puppets.
The Angry Arab News Service
US troops today invaded the offices of a TV station owned by the most trusted Shi`ite ally of the US: the Higher Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (is there something ironic that such a council is the closest ally of the US among the Shi`ite groups?). Muwwaffaq Rubay`i (who is coming to MESA): who is a most corrupt and most submissive puppet of the occupation tried to intervene: explaining to the US soldiers that “we! are friends” of the occupation to no avail. The soldiers said that they were looking for the missing American soldier, and that was that.
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US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War?
MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY, Global Research
There is a massive concentration of US naval power in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Three US naval strike groups off the Iranian coastline are deployed: USS Enterprise, USS Eisenhower and USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group. The naval strike groups have been assigned to fighting the “global war on terrorism.” Tehran considers the US war games to be conducted in the Persian Gulf, ! off the Iranian coastline as a provocation, which is intended to trigger a potential crisis and a situation of direct confrontation between US and Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 24 October 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
…In a dispatch posted at 2:30pm Makkah time Tuesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that following a rise in Resistance attacks on US forces, American troops vented their frustrations by vandalizing local civilian cars in the streets of the city on Monday. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying that American troops st! ormed onto a parking lot in the 40 Street area in the middle of the city and smashed the glass of several cars and then set some of them on fire. The witnesses said that the Americans also set on fire two guard stations at the parking lot…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, October 24, 2006
Today in Iraq
An American soldier was abducted in war-torn Baghdad after he left the heavily-fortified Green Zone to visit his family in the city, the US military has said. The soldier, an American of Iraqi descent working as a translator, was last seen inside the zone at 2:30 pm (1130 GMT) on Monday, after which he is thought to have gone to a relative’s house (…) Five more US soldiers have been killed in attacks and fighting with rebels in Iraq, the American milita! ry announced, bringing the death toll for the month of October to 91. Fierce clashes occurred between insurgents and US soldiers in the western Iraqi stronghold of Ramadi, according to the al-Arabiya news channel…
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U.S. October death toll in Iraq hits 91
Associated Press
U.S. officials said Tuesday Iraqi leaders have agreed to develop a timeline by the end of the year for progress in stabilizing Iraq, and Iraqi forces should be able to take full control of security in the country in the next 12 to 18 months with “some level” of American support. Even as October marked the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq this year, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said he felt the United States should continue to focus on drawing down ! American forces in the country. On Tuesday, the military announced the deaths of four more U.S. troops, raising the month’s toll to 91. At least 2,801 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count…
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Hakim Calls for Southern Iraq Autonomy
AFP
The leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite bloc called yesterday for the country to be divided into federal zones, to the dismay of minority Sunnis who fear losing out on Iraq’s vast oil wealth. Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told hundreds of supporters that a federal system with only loose central control would prevent the return of dictatorship…
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Baghdad: A doctor’s story
Roads to Iraq
I just watched it on the BBC, and you can watch it online. This is what we get from the Americans, killing, murders, no basic supplies for hospitals. The documentary is in Al-Yarmouk Hospital which was one of the best in Baghdad, not anymore under the US occupation. A 6 years old child operated on without anesthetic, a Shiite woman asking for the return of Saddam…
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General Peter Pace and His Dumb Bombs
Kurt Nimmo
First, General Peter Pace, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sec. Offense Donald Rumsfeld receives his marching orders from God, and now he declares the United States military “could defeat any enemy with overwhelming power,” never mind a few thousand moth-eaten “insurgents” with homemade bombs have brought Pace’s vaunted military to a stand still in Iraq. “But none of our potential enemies should miscalculate the capacity of this nation to genera! te overwhelming combat power, tomorrow, to defend our national interests,” or, in the case of Iraq, the combined interests of Israel and a brood of military contractors. It is said the neocons shape their own reality, apparently at the expense of the alternate reality the rest of the world experiences, and thus the stalemate in Iraq is considered a victory, or maybe “mission accomplished” in slow motion…
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People in occupied Iraq slide into poverty
Socialist Worker
Once it boasted the most advanced health service in the Middle East, an education system that turned out generations of skilled workers and a population that consumed the most books in the Arab world. Now Iraq has sunk into a mass of poverty and despair. It has been destroyed by war and occupation. New figures released by the Iraqi ministry of labour and social affairs show that nearly 5.6 million out of a population of 29 million Iraqis have sunk into p! overty since the invasion. Over 40 percent of these people are living in absolute poverty…
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U.S. says more GIs may be needed in Iraq
STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
Two weeks before U.S. midterm elections, American officials unveiled a timeline Tuesday for Iraq ‘s Shiite-led government to take specific steps to calm the world’s most dangerous capital but said more U.S. troops might be needed to quell the bloodshed. At a rare joint news conference with the American ambassador, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said additional U.S. troops could come from inside or outside Iraq to! “improve basic services for the population of Baghdad.”…
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GI Special 4J24: “A War He Saw As Futile” – October 24, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
(…) With these successes behind them, their flak vests packed, personal items sent stateside, and their Stryker Armored Vehicles turned over to other newly-arrived units, this battle brigade was able to breathe a sigh of relief and prepare to Go Home.
The following day, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld gave his approval to extend the 172nd Brigade’s deployment in Iraq. Instead of greeting their loved ones, the Strykers will help to fight the insurgency in Baghdad.
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