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West’s attempt to divide Iraq on sectarian grounds
Abdujabbar al-Samarai , Azzaman
Several years before the 2003 U.S. invasion, western media had already divided the Iraqi society into several ethnic and sectarian groups. Even western powers, particularly the U.S. and the U.K. had their prior invasion policies based on the fact that Iraq was divisible into at least three separate ethnic, sectarian and geographical regions. The two powers even resorted to military means to translate their strategy of partitioning the country on the ground. They create two no-fly zones one in the north and one in the south ostensibly to protect the northern Sunni Kurds and the southern Arab Shiites from the ‘oppressive’ Arab Sunni regime in the center…
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HERE AND THERE
Malcom Lagauche
Most people have forgotten the ridiculous statements made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ‘They will welcome us with flowers,” “It will take six days or six weeks to finish the war, not six months,” etc. Almost four years later, the U.S. is involved in its heaviest fighting in Iraq. The Iraqi resistance is powerful and well-organized. Even the most ardent anti-Ba’athist knows that the Ba’ath Party is behind the major resistance activities in Iraq. On March 11, 2003, nine days before the announced start of hostilities, Amir Taheri wrote an article for the conservative publication, National Review, called “Saddam’s Soldiers: Will They Fight for Him?” Here’s the first sentence: “Talk of protracted urban guerilla warfare is unrealistic, for the simple reason that Saddam and his gang are not guerilla leaders.” This has to be the biggest gaffe of all the predictions…
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Give Peace a Chance – A Personal Reflection
Felicity Arbuthnot
Peace campaigners Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Sing Sooden of the Christian Peacemakers, have ‘unconditionally’ forgiven those who took them hostage in Iraq and desire no ‘retribution’ against them, they stated at a Press Conference in London, at St.Ethelbergs Centre for Peace and Reconcilliation, on December 9th. Kidnapping can mean a death sentence in Iraq, thus is ‘irrevocable’ they say, adding their implaccable oppostion to it. Would President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, who also call themselves Christian have followed such a path, the precious lives of countless Iraqis and Afghans might have been saved, as the countless more certain to follow before the US and UK and the few little helpers left in the ‘coalition’ flee with their tails between their legs and declare mass graves, ruin and overflowing cemetaries: ‘victory’…
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Gilad Atzmon – Think Tribal, Speak Universal (Don’t let the smear campaigners set the agenda!)
peacepalestine
NEVER GIVE UP! That is what we can all say following the insuccess of the latest of a slew of Zionist smear campaigns directed against Gilad Atzmon. All of you who have been following this blog, and the very many other places where Gilad’s work is published have witnessed many attempts to publicly defame him, to accuse him of being a racist and an anti-Semite. All of these campaigns ultimately fail, because when one looks at the actual material that is available, it is crystal clear that Atzmon is one of the strongest voices condemning racism! Every time these attacks start, they fall flat once one is given the opportunity to evaluate for themselves whether or not this strong anti-Zionism can be interpreted as being anti-Semitism, it is obvious that the attempts to silence him, to silence anyone who dares criticise Israel or Zionism, are exposed for the instrumental propaganda that they are…
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The Most Dangerous Place in Iraq
MARK KUKIS/RAMADI, TimesOnline
…Since June, the U.S. effort to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad has drawn thousands of troops to the country’s capital, where the world’s attention remains largely focused. But outside of Baghdad, U.S. forces are suffering the heaviest death toll these days as they continue to wage a grim, uncertain struggle to defeat insurgents in the predominately Sunni province of Anbar. Tallies of the war dead from August to November show that more than two-thirds of the U.S. casualties in Iraq were outside Baghdad, with four in 10 of those deaths occurring in Anbar Province…
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THE UGLY AMERICAN WHO REMAINS IGNORANT
Ibrahim Ebeid *, Al-Moharer.net
The ‘Creative Chaos’ in Iraq at its best, is a madness and insanity that reflects the neoconservatives’ doctrine in Washington. It is designed to control the “Middle East” in an effort to rip it apart further more, to weaken it, and to turn the region into insignificant sectarian and ethnic powerless mini states. There are two reasons for creating such chaos: to protect the Zionist entity, known as the “Israeli State,” not because Iraq posed a threat to the United States. The illegal attack on Iraq and occupying it was one of these two reasons. Zelikow made statements about ’the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the President. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003…
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Engelhard: Carter’s Book is Mein Kampf, Protocols
Kurt Nimmo
Novelist Jack Engelhard, minus a firm grip on reality, absurdly lambastes former president Jimmy Carter as the author of a modern day version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Engelhard is whirled into a tizzy by Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid published recently by Simon & Schuster, not exactly the publishing wing of Hamas. “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land,” writes Carter…
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Israel’s use of DIME bombs in context of DU
Traprock Writers Blog
We have published a new, important report by James Brooks on Israel’s use of exotic weaponry against Palestinians in Gaza. It is an extentively researched work, with over 50 links to resources (given the number of links, we make it available as a pdf file, rather than printed within the blog.) Brooks explores the nature and use of DIME bombs in the context of the long term use of uranium weapons – also highly toxic (as well as radioactive) – by the US. Download this report at
www.traprockpeace.org/israel_dime_bombs_121206.pdf
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Sunnis shooting down aircraft in Anbar with missiles?
Born at the Crest of the Empire
Another helicopter went down in Anbar, no fatalities, 18 wounded. This is the third aircraft to go down in Anbar in two weeks. At this point there’s no evidence to say that these were shot down, the military holds that all three went down for mechanical reasons, but I do want to point back to this unconfirmed AP report four days ago. In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in (private) Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. The missiles were purchased from someone in Romania, apparently through the black market, he said…
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The Iraq Study Group Study Group
Zbignew Zingh, www.dissidentvoice.org
…Once stripped of its tepid criticisms, the Baker-Hamilton ISG report looks like an attempt to stuff the evil genie of Mr. Bush’s policies back into the bottle of a more subtle Bismarck-Metternich style of empire. Mr. Baker and his groupies clearly are nostalgic for the day when his class of people could achieve dominance while keeping up the pretenses of goodness and democracy for public consumption. They recoil from the blunt, naked aggression of the Bush Administration which Mr. Baker et. al. equate with the boorish behavior of crass amateurs and thugs. Baker et. al. prefer the more nuanced, more subtle exercise of power, like the true aristocrats they are, who keep their white gloves clean while the blood is spilled off-stage and out-of-sight by covert military operations…
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1.8mn Iraqi refugees in Mideast
UPI
More than 1.8 million people have fled Iraq since 2003, many of them since sectarian fighting began in earnest in February, an advocacy group in Washington says. The largest concentrations are in Syria and Jordan, and then Lebanon and Egypt. The governments of those countries have not provided Iraqis with official refugees status and therefore they get few social services, according to Refugees International (RI), a Washington advocacy group. On a recent trop through the Middle East, RI researchers learned that most of the families are strapped for money and because they lack refugee status are unable to work legally in their host countries even though some are doctors, teachers, architects, and other skilled professions…
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Five U.S. servicemen die in Iraq
Reuters
Three U.S. airmen were killed in action in western Iraq on Monday and two other soldiers died in separate incidents, the military said on Tuesday. The U.S. military in Baghdad said the three airmen were killed by enemy action in Anbar province. One Marine died in “non-hostile action”, the ususal term for an accident, in the same area. A fifth serviceman died of what the army described as apparent natural causes…
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Iraqi Quagmire Haunts NATO Riga Summit
K Gajendra Singh
…Russia is the only power which even now can thwart US moves and military power. But it was the Iraqi resistance in Iraq which exposed the limits of US military power sending a resounding warning to aggressors and occupiers of other people’s lands .A resurgent Talebans with Pakistani acquiescence are doing the same to embattled Nato forces in Afghanistan. While other subjects were discussed at Riga , Afghanistan has now became Nato’s major preoccupation and a veritable hot potato…
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Jordanians say faced torture by US in Iraq
IRIN
Three Jordanians who were freed from Iraqi jails last November said they were subjected to “indescribable psychological and physical torture” by the US forces during detention. The Jordanians – Hassan Sharafat, 56, Naji al-Waladat, 35, and Ahmed Rashad al-Jabaari, 35 – said on Tuesday in a press conference organised by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) that they were held for more than three years without a court order. Sharafat and Waladat worked as truck drivers between Jordan and Iraq while al-Jabaari was a businessman in Iraq. The three men said they were hog-tied, blindfolded, sexually abused, deprived of sleep and denied medical care…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 2:16pm Makkah time Tuesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that in what has become an increasingly common occurrence, an Iraqi woman gave birth at a US roadblock outside the city of al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad. The al-Fallujah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported the female physician Sana’ Ahmad as saying that a 24-year-old woman gave birth to twins at the US checkpoint at the eastern entrance to al-Fallujah after the woman and her husband had been blocked from entering the city to go to the hospital. The Americans prevented her from getting into the city despite her obvious medical condition and despite the fact that her identity document proved that she was a resident of the city…
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Iraq events: Dec 12
Roads to Iraq
The Americans think playing chess in the Green Zone will be the solution to run away from Iraq. Al-Hayat reported that there are Informations on a new alliance to replace Maliki’s government. The ruling coalition seeks to change Maliki, talks taking place behind the scenes for the formation of a parliamentary bloc aimed the replacement of the current government, and explained that the new alliance is likely to nominate Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi to head the new government. iraq-na revealed another story contrary to Al-Hayat’s report: Dr. Nabil al-Janabi is a candidate for the formation of a transitional government. Al-Janabi is the head of “Monarchy Alliance”, which calls for the return of the Hashemite monarchy to Iraq, has excellent relations with the Hashemite Jordanian royalties…
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Bomber kills 70 in Baghdad
Ross Colvin, Reuters
A suicide bomber targeting poor laborers killed 70 people in Baghdad on Tuesday, a day when President Bush was talking to his military chiefs in Iraq to help him draft a new U.S. strategy. A White House official said Bush, who faces popular pressure for a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops, was likely to delay unveiling a new strategy until early in January, instead of late this year as originally planned. The top U.S. operational commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, said before briefing Bush in a video teleconference that U.S. forces should stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces were ready to assume security control.
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Routine and Systematic Torture Is at the Heart of America’s War on Terror
George Monbiot, The Guardian UK
In the fight against cruelty, barbarism and extremism, America has embraced the very evils it claims to confront. After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being. Last week, defence lawyers acting for José Padilla, a US citizen detained as an “enemy combatant”, released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk – taking him to the prison dentist…
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SANTA MIGHT NOT PASS THROUGH SECURITY AT BETHLEHEM THIS YEAR
Desert Peace
With the Christmas holiday approaching, the annual pilgrimage to Bethlehem might be quite limited this year. Economic hardships in most Palestinian areas as well as the difficulty in getting there because of the apartheid wall has put a damper on the celebrations weeks before they even start. How ironic that the very place that the ‘Prince of Peace’ was born in is now a war torn city… ironic and sad.
There is still time to change the situation, but somehow it seems that the spirit of Christmas will be best celebrated elsewhere this year. The following report appeared on Yahoo News this evening…
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Presidential Tyranny Untamed by Election Defeat
Chris Floyd, TO UK Correspondent
…For those who hoped that November’s elections might bring some essential alteration in our degraded estate, some repair of the broken strands, recent events have been dispiriting indeed. Two in particular stand out as exemplary of the ugly reality behind the bright rhetoric of “change” and “moderation” now twinkling in the Beltway air. Although apparently unrelated, they are in fact part of the same malignant process that has been devouring the structure – and substance – of the Republic for years. One strand of this revealing juxtaposition involves the release of a video showing the nightmarish treatment meted out to Jose Padilla – an American citizen seized on American soil and subjected to torture under indefinite detention without charges or trial, and who was subsequently revealed by the Bush administration itself to have engaged in no conspiracy or act of hostility toward the United States. Now his mind has been broken by years of brutal “interrogation methods,” complete isolation and bizarre sensory-deprivation techniques, leaving him incapable of aiding his defense in his trial for the much-reduced – and, according to most legal experts, highly shaky – charges of trying to aid Islamist groups in Chechnya and elsewhere…
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