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Powderkeg
Mike Whitney
…In an article which appeared on Monday in the Washington Post, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, Turki al-Faisal said, “Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave uninvited’. If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.” It is likely that Sunnis in the other Middle East capitals share al-Faisal’s sentiments and will be equally willing to contribute generously to their “brothers-in-arms” in Iraq. The invasion has opened Pandora’s Box and disrupted the regional balance of power. Now there’s no telling how far the war will spread. The ferocity of the sectarian fighting suggests that a much larger conflagration is on the way. Foreign leaders are already preparing for the worst. Bush’s misguided fantasies of “Victory” in Iraq have lit a powderkeg and it’s probably just a matter of time before the entire Middle East is consumed by war…
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Human Rights Watch – Brainfart!
Sabbah’s blog
Sorry, but these guys seems to be living on a different planet. Less than a week ago, they spilled their poison on Jordan. Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh replied: On Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, Judeh was surprised to hear the HRW asks Jordan to consider thousands of Iraqis as refugees, noting the Agency that concerns with refugees is Higher Commission for Refugees, which can classify the refugee. He indicated that HRW claimed that Jordan puts restriction on visas for Iraqis, the Iraqis, Judeh remarked, basically don’t need visa to enter Jordan but rather they need residence. He elucidated that the information HRW has got is inaccurate and its report is false…
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Israeli WMD ( Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East )
PalestineFreeVoice
Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities and Programs Nuclear * Sophisticated nuclear weapons program with an estimated 100-200 weapons, which can be delivered by ballistic missiles or aircraft. * Nuclear arsenal may include thermonuclear weapons. * IRR-2 40-150MW heavy water reactor and plutonium processing facility at Dimona, which are not under IAEA safeguards. * IRR-1 5MW research reactor at Soreq, under IAEA safeguards. * Not a signatory of the NPT; signed the CTBT on 9/25/96…
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El Salvador-style “death squads” to be deployed by US against Iraq militants
Roland Watson, Global Research, Global Research
This article first published in The Times in early 2005 acknowledges Washington’s strategy of US sponsored death squadrons in Iraq. With John Negroponte now at the helm of the US intelligence apparatus, this strategy is now coming to fruition. While the “death squadrons” were intended by the Bush adminstration to target “the leaders of Iraq’s insurgency”, they have been largely involved in the of killing of innocent civilians, with a view to creating conditions of ethnic strife and social conflict within Iraq. The El Salvador-style death squadrons have served to create a US sponsored “civil war”…
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Democrat Side of War Party Calls for More Mass Murder and Misery in Iraq
Kurt Nimmo
“Although the Democrats are very uncomfortable with the way the Iraq policy is being executed, they are at pains not to appear that they are shortchanging troops in the field,” Loren Thompson, CEO of the Lexington Institute, yet another “think tank,” this one connected at the hip to the neocon infested Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Associated Press. “This is their opportunity to show that they, too, are pro-defense,” that is to say pro-killing Iraqis in prodigious numbers with an inventory of truly heinous weapons…
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Repeating The Mistake, Intentionally!
24 Steps to Liberty
If a civil war were to happen in Iraq, “our Sunni brothers will be the ones to lose the most.” That’s what Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the most powerful criminal group in Iraq, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said last week. What a powerful, full of hidden and obvious meaning sentence that was. I wonder how many hours or days he had to think about it to make it as smooth as it sounded when he said it. Now we turned into a new era in Iraq. It is time to go public and threaten each other. Because you know what, the Unite States is, again, backing this up (…) Why when the poisonous turbaned snake, Hakim, publicly threatened his “brothers” the Sunnis, the government did not oppose? Why did not the devil-Mullah’s speech get enough publicity in Iraq to give an idea what one of the country’s most powerful terrorist wants to turn Iraq into? What was a total strange coincidence is that what Hakim said came just a few days before the White House leaked information about what the administration intended to do next: Back the Shiites and Kurds, who make about 80% of Iraq’s population, because that’s who you should care about. And leave the Sunnis to themselves and to the mercy of the Shiites…
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Mass Demonstrations against the US backed Lebanese Government
MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY, Global Research
The Western media, which often downplays the size of public rallies and anti-war demonstrations, confirms that “hundreds of thousands” of people from all sectors of Lebanese society gathered in Beirut in anti-government demonstrations, demanding the resignation of the US-Israeli supported government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The Beirut government is taking orders directly from the US embassy. The Siniora government has allowed the deployment of NATO forces on Lebanese territory under the pretext of a UN sponsored peace-keeping operation. NATO warships under German command are stationed off the country’s Eastern Mediterranean coastline. NATO has a military cooperation agreement with Israel…
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Vietnam, Iraq, and the M word
By Mickey Z.
Jimmy Carter is the latest to use the M word. The former president said he believes the “occupancy of Iraq and all the consequences of it are a big mistake.” This echoes John Kerry’s infamous 1971 question: “How do you ask a man to die for a mistake?” Hmm . . . perhaps recalling a few details about the Vietnam “mistake” might shine some light on the Iraq “blunder.” In 1954, Vice President Richard Nixon explained the need for U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia: “The Vietnamese lack the ability to conduct a war or govern themselves.” Over the next two decades, the U.S. (by mistake?) dropped the equivalent of one 500-pound bomb for every person living in Vietnam (…) Other countries have war criminals. In America, we have the mistaken…
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Cohen: No Moral Qualms Over Slaughtering Iraqis
Kurt Nimmo
I want to be nice to Richard Cohen, op-ed regular for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, because he seems so harmless, even innocuous. But with his November 21 installment, it is obvious he is minor neocon, even if he does not have the right stuff, that is to say the requisite moral depravity, the sociopathic personality. Instead, Mr. Cohen is a fool—not an idiot or moron, mind you, because imbeciles usually don’t make it on the pages of the Washington Post, but one easily hornswoggled by incessant and irrational propaganda…
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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 46/2006 , 23 – 29 November 2006
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) * 15 Palestinians, 7 of them are civilians (including a child and a woman), were killed by IOF. * 13 of the victims were killed by IOF in the northern Gaza Strip. * 3 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF in Jabalya town. * 49 Palestinians, including 19 children, a woman and an old man, were wounded by IOF. * IOF bombarded a money exchange shop in Gaza City. * IOF conducted 28 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. * IOF arrested 65 Palestinian civilians, including 8 children, in the West Bank.* IOF destroyed 27 houses in and razed 80 donums[1] of agricultural land in the northern Gaza Strip. * IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT; IOF arrested 6 Palestinian civilians, including two children, at checkpoints in the West Bank…
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What did Bush tell Maliki? Take your pick
Arablinks.blogspot.com
Let’s try an experiment bringing together the Washington and the Arab press coverage (with some shorthand to help keep things straight) to see what probably went down in Amman. Reports in Azzaman and Al-Hayat on Wednesday referred to what you could call a Sunni wish-list that Bush reportedly planned to present to Maliki together with his “final deadline” threat. For instance, both papers referred to a demand, not only for attacking the mostly Shiite militias, but also for hiring of many former Saddam-regime officers in law-enforcement, in addition to ending the De-Baathification program and a full amnesty. This is the “Sunni wish-list, or else” hypothesis. Today Al-Hayat merely says Bush gave Maliki a final deadline, but goes no farther than to say this included a requirement for combating the militia, in exchange for which Bush will give Maliki more military authority to do so. There isn’t any reference to any of the pro-Sunni points that were reported on Wednesday…
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Air, Ground Forces Repel New Raids in Baghdad
Jamie Tarabay
The sounds of cannon from American Apache helicopters woke Baghdad Friday morning. They circled the city firing into the streets where Sunni and Shiite gunmen were fighting. The Sunnis had attacked the Iraqi Health Ministry, which is controlled by Shiites loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s militia, the Mehdi Army, is believed to be responsible for much of the sectarian violence in Baghdad. The fighting was just the latest battle as sectarian lines are drawn neighborhood by neighborhood in the Iraqi capital. For the most part, Sunnis are concentrated on the west bank of the Tigris River, and Shiites on the east. But the Adhimiya district on the eastern shore of the river is the site of the holiest Sunni shrine in Baghdad. Sunnis living there have waged a relentless campaign to retain their hold over the area..
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Debate on US Troop Withdrawal fails to Acknowledge War Crimes & Violation of Iraq’s Sovereignty
Opportunity for the Peace Movement
Jack A. Smith, Global Research
There is a surreal quality to the nationwide political debate about the Iraq war now taking place in the United States. The primary emphasis of the debate is not upon the unjust, illegal and immoral nature of the war, but upon the Bush Administration’s failure to secure a decisive victory. In his only direct reference to Iraq war policy so far, Robert Gates, President George W. Bush?s nominee to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was critical this week of the Pentagon’s failure to ‘prepare adequately’ for suppressing resistance to the occupation…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2006
Today in Iraq
Men armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades drove into a mostly Sunni-Arab section of west Baghdad at 2 a.m. Friday and opened fire on a small mosque, a police officer said. The grenades set fire to holy books inside the al-Quds Sunni mosque, which was empty at the time. Neighbors opened fire on the attackers, forcing them to flee, the officer said on condition of anonymity out of concern for his own security. No casualties were reported. A roadside bomb also exploded in a commercial square in the center of Baghdad at 9:40 a.m., killing three civilians and wounding 17, said police Lt. Ali Muhsin said…
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Maliki’s tools
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
George Bush is being widely quoted as having said after meeting Iraqi Primi Minister Maliki yesterday. “One of his frustrations with me is that he believes we’ve been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people.” Bush didn’t elaborate on what those “tools” might be, nor has any of the news coverage I’ve watched so far, but surely it isn’t merely “training” which A) doesn’t qualify as a “tool”, and B) has been the alleged centerpiece of the U.S. “exit strategy” for several years now. No, as I’ve been writing for a year and a half, I’m guessing the “tools” that Maliki was referring to are the planes and tanks he really needs to emulate the American “success” against the resistance, tools that the U.S. has not only been “slow” about giving the Iraqis, but tools that there isn’t a chance in hell they’re ever going to give to them. Heck, as we just learned a few weeks ago, the U.S. isn’t even supplying armored Humvees to the Iraqi forces, much less tanks and planes…
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Baath Party Statement
Our supreme motto will always be: our Arab identity first!
The Arab Baath Socialist Party
…Our Party asserts that the Arab attitude towards Iran should not be a matter of meditation and doubt. It in not a secondary matter whose consequences and influences can be put up with. It must be viewed as a full part of the US and Zionist Entity plan to piece away the Arab nation down sectarian and racial lines. That is why we call those who still believe it is still possible to correct Iran’s mistakes through supporting it and not through antagonizing with it.. to reconsider their attitude for what moves Iran is its national permanent strategy.. whose objective is to control the Arab homeland as a step to control the Islamic world and establish a Persian empire hiding under the cloth of Islam. This plan can’t succeed unless to divide Iraq and wipe it out from the map, for Iraq is the dam which protects the Arab homeland from the Safawide racist flow as proofed experiences and modern time history…
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Sharp rise in Iraq civilian deaths
Aljazeera.net
Civilian casualties in Iraq have gone up by 44 per cent in November compared with October, official data from the Iraqi interior ministry has shown. The revelation came amid a gun battle between Iraqi troops backed by US attack helicopters and fighters for several hours in central Baghdad on Friday. Iraqi interior ministry data showed 1,850 civilian deaths in Iraq in the month of November, matching a a 45 per cent rise in the number of civilian deaths tallied by Reuters…
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Iraqi Shiite with Iran ties to visit Bush
CNN
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a top Iraqi Shiite leader with close ties to Iran, will meet with President Bush next week, the White House confirmed Friday. Al-Hakim leads the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, a rival group to the political movement led by firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the meeting was set for Monday. “President Bush looks forward to an exchange of views and a discussion of important issues facing Iraq today,” Johndroe said. Also, a senior administration official said Bush will meet with a Sunni leader — Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi — in January at the White House…
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GI Special: 4L1 Last Letters Home – December 1, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
A SOLDIER killed in Iraq left a diary of heartbreaking pleas for Tony Blair to end the conflict.
In one emotional extract, Gunner Lee Thornton, who was shot while patrolling the town of Al Qurna, near Basra, penned: “Dear Tony, stop putting our lives at risk.”
Another reads: “This is not worth dying for.”
A member of 12 Regiment Royal Artillery, he talks of failing army equipment, mistrust of Iraqi civilians and the sinking morale of peacekeeping troops.
Commenting on facing stonings by villagers and the ever-present threat of sniper or mortar attack from insurgents, he wrote: “I don’t trust the Iraqi army, the Iraqi police or the people, this is pointless.”
On a rare day off, August 17, he wrote: “All I have done all day is think of home. I hate this place, I really do. It is just not worth dying for, I wish Tony Blair could see that.”
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U.S. and Iraqi forces fight gunmen in capital
Ross Colvin and Alastair Macdonald – Reuters
Iraqi troops backed by U.S. attack helicopters fought militants for several hours in central Baghdad on Friday as new figures showed a leap in the number of Iraqis killed in violence in November. Two Apache helicopters firing anti-missile flares swooped over Fadhil neighborhood, a Sunni insurgent stronghold in one of the oldest parts of the capital, amid the slow thump of heavy machinegun fire, witnesses said…
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Ghosts in the Machine
Encounters with the NSA
Charles Sullivan
Quite some time ago, I am not sure exactly when, the thought police (National Security Agency) clandestinely moved into my computer. It did so without my permission and in violation of the law, not to mention the Constitution. The prying eyes of government are watching my every move, noting my every keystroke and monitoring my every electronic transmission and telephone conversation. They became visible to me one day when I did a trace route from the Windows command line of my home computer. Since then we have been peering at each other with eyes that do not blink. I am astonished that so many manifestations of a police state have managed to crowd into the narrow confines of my hard drive…
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