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The Myth of the “Anfal Genocide”
Did Saddam Hussein “Kill the Kurds”?
David Hungerford, BRussells Tribunal
Many crimes against Iraq have been justified by the demonization of Saddam Hussein. Invasion was justified by claims that he possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” had ties to al-Qaeda, and posed a threat to the territorial United States. The claims turned out to be lies. There were no “weapons of mass destruction” or programs to develop them. There were no ties to al-Qaeda. He did not! threaten U.S. territory. Those who still support the occupation now say it was justified because Saddam Hussein was a “brutal dictator.” One of the main complaints against him is that “he killed the Kurds.” The usual reference is the Anfal campaign of the Iraqi army from February 23, 1988 to September 6, 1988. It is claimed that Anfal was a campaign of genocide. It can now be said that the “Anfal genocide” never happened. It is another lie. Ironically it is the second of the illegal U.S.-run “trials” of Mr. Hussein in Baghdad that allows this conclusion. The facts and circumstances of the “trial” can be analyzed without any concession to the legitimacy of the “court.” Nor, since it is illegal, is there any reason to wait for the “court’s” findings before reaching one’s own conclusions…
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Genocide and denial
Gabriele Zamparini, The cat’s dream
…As soon as the British medical journal the Lancet published a new scientific study estimating 655,000 excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, the propaganda machine started to work full time to discredit it as it did with the other Lancet study published in 2004 (…) Maliki’s masters, the butchers of Washington and London and their gangs of psychopaths have been adopting the same tactic, discrediting the Lancet study as not credible. Once again ! the propaganda machine is trying to deny the public opinion knowledge, the first step for change. In this noble goal, they have a great ally. On 16 October 2006 Iraq Body Count (IBC) published a Press Release “Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates” signed by Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty. The IBC’s press release reads: “In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors [of the Lancet study] have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data.” (…) With the carnage going on in Iraq, together with Bush, Blair, Maliki and their propaganda machine, IBC’s Sloboda is arguing methodology, when the scientific world in this field is unanimously supporting the Lancet study. Why has IBC decided to be so active to discredit this Lancet study that the scientific world unanimously supports? What does this have to do with counting the Iraqi deaths reported by the Engli! sh language media?…
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A Few More ‘ Bad Apples’
Felicity Arbuthnot.
… But the most appalling atrocity to come to light (so far) in Afghanistan is meticulously reconstructed in Jamie Doran’s film: ‘ Massacre at Mazar ‘. In November 2001, just weeks after the invasion, up to three thousand, men were loaded into twenty five metal containers. The containers were shot at killing many inside, others suffocated over four or five days. That it happened on US watch in the occupied country cannot be disputed. Repeated witness allegations ! of actual US involvement have never been investigated. One witness saw six containers with blood pouring from them. In the desert at Dasht Leili, a fifty metre mound of sand may be America’s very own mass grave (…) Occasionally another atrocity leaks out of Afghanistan, the shooting up of a village, wedding party, or funeral, the small and larger massacres of people going about their business, or a small but huge personal tragedy as a farmer told the BBC’s correspondent about the British, who he said with immense sadness, had destroyed his citrus groves, olives, livestock, even the walls of his smallholding, he had nothing left (…) Now, it transpires, a different kind of atrocity caught on, with German soldiers in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF.) On October 25th., the German Daily, Der Bilt, printed pictures of German troops playing and posing with a skull…
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Iraq is Post-Tet
Ahmed Amr, www.dissidentvoice.org
…In any case, we are way post-Tet in Iraq. Vietnamization was post-Tet. Iraqization has been a work in progress for three years. And the results are well documented. Militias that were armed, trained and indoctrinated in Iran have infiltrated the police forces. By day they get government paychecks and training from the coalition forces. By night, they moonlight as gangsters in death squads. After refusing to acknowledge an insurgency for over a year and then r! epeatedly casting it as a temporary phenomenon by a finite number of “foreign agitators,” the Bush administration now lives in denial about the ongoing sectarian strife. The recipe for the Iraqi civil war was cooked up by the same neo-cons that insisted on disbanding the entire Iraqi Army to get rid of Baathist elements. Once they came to terms with the scope of the insurgency, they decided to train and build “new” Iraqi security forces organized in units that were predominantly Kurdish or predominantly Shia. The idea was to get the “good Shia militias” to fight off the “bad Sunni insurgents” and take the heat off the American army. So far, three million Iraqis have been displaced as a result of a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing (…) Every “corrective”’ measure designed by his neo-con high priests has created additional challenges. The strategy of integrating Shia militia “allies” into the police force has given free reign to death and torture squads operated by the! same parties who dominate the Iraqi National Assembly. Nouri ! Al Malik i’s “sovereign” Iraqi government has no interest in curbing Shia militia power. Without Moqtada Sadr and the Mahdi Army, he wouldn’t be Prime Minister and he knows it. Sadr’s militia is Maliki’s militia. That explains why the Iraqi Prime Minister gets bent out of shape every time the coalition forces tangle with the Mahdi Army…
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As violence grows, oil-rich Kirkuk could hold key to Iraq’s future
Tribal chiefs call for return of Saddam while Kurds eye a new federal state
Michael Howard, The Guardian
The tribal chiefs, in traditional robes and chequered headdresses, emerged from the dust stirred up by their convoy of pick-up trucks and walked towards the big white tent, gesturing welcomes to each other as they sat. Accompanied by about 500 clansmen and a gaggle of local journalists, the 35 Sunni sheikhs – from Mosul, Tikrit, Sama! rra and Hawija – converged last week on Hindiya, on the scrappy western edges of Kirkuk, to swear their undying opposition to “conspiracies” to partition Iraq and to pledge allegiance to their president, Saddam Hussein (…) “If the Iraqi government wants national reconciliation to succeed and for the violence to end, they have to quickly release the president and end the occupation,” said Sheikh Abdul Rahman Munshid, of the Obeidi tribe. “But most important of all,” he added, “Kirkuk must never become part of Kurdistan. It is an Iraqi city, and we will take all routes to prevent the divisions of Iraq.”…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2006
Today in Iraq
Intense house-to-house fighting between insurgents and Iraqi police north of Baghdad killed 43 people, including 24 officers, the U.S. military said Friday. U.S. troops later joined the fight, aiding in a counterattack that left 18 insurgents dead, the military said. Gunmen attacked three U.S. military positions in the western city of Ramadi with rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and machine-gun fire, police said. A Reuters reporter said U.S. helico! pters flew over Ramadi and U.S. forces had sealed off entrances to the city. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a query on the reports…
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GI Special 4J27: The Worst In A Year – October 27, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
96 U.S. Troops Killed So Far In October: U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Worst In A Year
The number of American troops killed in Iraq in October reached the highest monthly total in a year Thursday after four Marines and a sailor died of wounds suffered while fighting in the same Sunni insurgent stronghold.
The U.S. military said 96 U.S. troops have died so far in October, the most in one month since October 2005, when the same number was killed. The spike in deaths has been a major factor behind rising anti-war sentiment in the United States, fueling calls for President Bush to change tactics.
The deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq was November 2004, when military offenses primarily in the then-insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, left 137 troops dead, 126 of them in combat. In January 2005, 107 U.S. troops were killed.
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Slave Labor at US Embassy in Baghdad?
David Phinney
Several months before a U.S. construction foreman named John Owen quit in disgust over what he said was blatant abuse of foreign laborers hired to build the sprawling new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Rory Mayberry witnessed similar events when he flew to Kuwait from his home in Myrtle Creek, Ore. The gravelly-voiced, easygoing U.S. Army veteran had previously worked in Iraq for Halliburton and the private security company Danubia. Missing the action and the big payc! hecks U.S. contractors draw there, Mayberry snagged a $10,000-month job with MSDS consulting company…
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The Lesson of Germany to be Learned Again
Confessions of a Malamute
Americans always claimed it couldn’t happen to them. That they had checks and balances that didn’t permit dictatorship. They spoke arrogantly, using this as a way to feel superior to everyone else. Imagining themselves to be above all others because of their constitution. Yet, now, they find themselves in a de facto dictatorship. Shrub has some amazing new powers unheard of in civilized societies. Overturning laws 791 years old that grant people ! the right from arbitrary arrests. Using torture and hearsay as “evidence”. And the American people sleep on. There is no mass demonstrations, there nor are there any complaints that have any meaning. The so called leaders of the free world are nothing more than a sham. Shrub was right in one thing. There is no going back. He has utterly destroyed any and all vestiges of morality that US once claimed. Even when he and his ilk are gone the US is finished as a world power. The entire world has seen the US for what it is – even if the American people refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes. I used to wonder about Nazi Germany and how that was permitted to happen. Now I don’t wonder. We have all seen it right before our eyes…
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Sadr threatens rogue commanders of his Iraqi militia
AFP
Radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr has threatened rogue commanders in his Mahdi Army militia with the wrath of God, his principle mouthpiece told worshippers at prayer Friday. The Mahdi Army is one of the most powerful armed Shiite groups in Iraq and has been implicated in a number of recent battles with police, despite orders from Sadr to his followers not to spill Iraqi blood without permission. “This disobedience to the leadership has divided us and ea! rned us multiple enemies,” declared Sheikh Jaber al-Khafaji, the preacher who speaks for Sadr at the mosque in the central Iraqi town of Kufa…
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Leaving the scene of the crime?
William Bowles
The Independent’s front page head for Wednesday 25 October proclaimed loudly “We’re out of here” purportedly the words of General George Casey, the US’s head military honcho in Iraq. Of course the devil lives in the small print as any reading ‘between the lines’ reveals. And in any case, Casey’s comments are designed precisely to give the impression that a pullout is imminent when in reality, there is no way the US can leave voluntarily, there is simply too much at s! take…
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Squaring-off on Zionism: Four Perspectives
A Palestinian, An Israeli, A European, A European Pan-Arabist Face off on the Ultimate Question of Israel’s Legitimacy: Is There Any Life After Zionism?
peacepalestine
Exclusively for the Spanish newspaper Diagonal, two heavyweights of pro-Palestine intellectual activism, Khalid Amayreh and Gilad Atzmon, enter the polemic between the Spanish thinkers Santiago Alba-Rico and Raúl Sánchez-Cedillo about the State of Israel’s historical responsibility in the Middle! East tragedy…
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The Armageddon Lobby:
Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Shaping of US Policy Towards Israel-Palestine
Rammy M. Haija
This article investigates the history of contemporary Christian Zionism in the United States and the impact of this movement on US policy issues related to Israel-Palestine. Dispensationalist Christian Zionists, often described the ‘Armageddon lobby’, make up the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party and have become a mainstay in US politics. More recently, the Christian ! Zionist lobby has had a profoundly damaging impact on the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’ as well as creating a conspiracy of silence regarding Israeli offensives in the occupied Palestinian territories. Though the ‘Armageddon lobby’ has been successful in its efforts as a pro-Israel lobby, its influence is in fact counterproductive to Israel because the lobby hinders the prospect of Israel living in peace because of their policy of deterring the progression of negotiations…
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THREAT TO OLIVE HARVEST… THANKS TO HERR LIEBERMAN
DesertPeace
With the prospect of Palestinians having one of the most successful olive harvests in recent years, the Israelis had to think quickly how to prevent this. A good crop equals good money in the pockets of the Palestinian farmers that grow the olives and good money to the merchants that process and sell them. An occupied nation with food on its tables is not what the occupier wants. Starvation and want are two key ingredients for a successful occupation! . Lieberman’s entrance into the government is a guarantee that this will happen. As the Jews in the European ghettos starved under the nazi rule… so will the Palestinians under Herr Lieberman’s rule…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 27 October 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 2:52pm Makkah time Friday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance marksman shot and killed a US soldier on the Hajlan Bridge over the Euphrates River in the city of al-Hadithah, about 220km west of Baghdad on Friday morning. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying that a US Marine ! who was standing at the northern entrance to the bridge was struck by an Iraqi Resistance sharpshooter’s bullet. He died instantly. Witnesses reported that US troops sealed off the bridge and took more than 10 men to carry out attacks on two vacant houses opposite the bridge, thinking that the Resistance sharpshooter must have fired from atop the roof of one of the houses. The Americans found no sign of the rifleman…
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Members of Bush Gang Swore Under Oath Saddam Was Behind 9/11
Evelyn Pringle
Much to the dismay of the Bush administration, Americans can remember all on their own, without any help from Democrats, that in the run up to the war in Iraq, it was top White House officials who were making the claim that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden and secretly involved to 9/11. The fact that the administration’s disinformation campaign was overwhelmingly successful was evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three we! eks before the last presidential election, that found 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had “strong links” to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had “helped plan and support the hijackers” who had attacked the country on 9/11. As we now know, the basis for these allegations was false, but the saddest part of the sordid tale is that many Americans are just now beginning to realize that Bush knew the stories were false for more than a year when he cited them as justification for taking the country to war…
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Israeli attack on Germany
Xymphora
The Germans reported that one of their ships sailing off the coast of Lebanon was fired upon by Israeli F-16 fighters. Israel immediately denied the incident, and then came up with a convoluted non-denial denial. We are left with the conclusion that Israel did fire, but did not intend to hit, the German ship (the proverbial ‘shot across the bow’). The attack worked, with the Germans cravenly agreeing to restrict the ambit of their ships to six nautical miles off the coast of ! Lebanon. Why would Israel do something this stupid?…
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Bush’s Shiite relationship on the rocks; Who will be his next partner?
Arablinks.blogspot.com
There’s broad agreement Bush is threatening to topple the government he himself created in Baghdad, but the unanswered question is: What will his next creation look like? One immediate reaction to the recent threat is to welcome the boost this gives the opponents of the occupation generally. An editorial in the Egyptian opposition daily Al-Gomhuria says the latest developments are evidence not only of the failures on the! military and security levels, but more importantly the failure of the effort in Baghdad to stigmatize all opponents of the occupation as terrorists. This is a great victory for the national resistance, the editorialist says it is also an incentive for the Iraqi population to continue “with all strength and defiance” on the road of resistance, taking care to prioritize national unity at the same time, “lest the occupation be forced out the door of nationalism, only to return by the window of factionalism.” But from the other side, the follow-up question has to be: Bush will replace Maliki with what?…
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Ethnic Cleansing in a Baghdad Neighborhood?
MARK KUKIS, Time
…Sadr’s militia, the document suggests, are systematically driving Sunni families from their homes around Washash, which some U.S. troops who patrol there have taken to calling Little Sadr City. Among the papers found in the raid is a list of 65 houses around Washash where Shi’ite families have replaced Sunni families. On other pages were drafts of threat letters clearly intended for delivery to Sunni homes. And there was a roster of “virtuous familie! s” in the Washash area with house numbers written next to their names, so the militia relocation agents could keep track of people deemed fit to stay. “They’re very well organized,” said Capt. Johnny Sutton, whose troops head up U.S. patrols in Washash…
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ANALYSIS-Iraqi Shi’ites could clash for control of regions
Mariam Karouny, Reurers
Dozens of Iraqis are killed every day. Bodies are dumped on streets, disfigured by torture. A climate of fear reigns. But worse may yet be to come. U.S.-backed plans to create autonomous regions with varying access to Iraq’s oil wealth risk sparking greater conflict between rival factions in the Shi’ite majority that could turn already anarchic violence into the messiest of wars, analysts and sources within various Shi’ite politica! l groups say. Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, acknowledging the scale of the threat, said on Thursday he would abort the “federalism” project altogether if it prompted such violence…
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Lebanon’s irreplaceable cultural loss
Mulham Assir, Electronic Lebanon
The loss inflicted by the Israeli war on Lebanon is measured in the 1,400 people killed, the thousands maimed (with more continuing to be killed and maimed by the hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs left behind), the hundreds of thousands displaced or left homeless, and the wholesale destruction of infrastructure essential to life. And yet there is even more loss, impossible to put a number to and irreplaceable. Colonial wars of aggression ! like the one waged by the US in Iraq or the slow genocide carried out by the Jewish state against the Palestinian people have a more profoundly destructive effect than the most brutal barbarian invasions of old because they aim deeper, into the very soul of the nations under attack…
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