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New U.S. military strategies in Iraq bring more death, destruction
Eugene Puryear
The New York Times reported on Dec. 5 that 4,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq have been “shifted” out of combat and into positions as trainers of Iraqi military units. The Bush administration claims that this move will strengthen the Iraqi army and help them become self sufficient sooner. They say it will help them stem the tide of violence raging throughout Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group has said this tactic should be vastly expanded. The ISG report, released on U.S. occupying soldiers are now more actively “advising” the Iraqi army…
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No Mr. Buckley, No
Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead
Dear Mr. Buckley, Writing in National Review Online in February 2006, you William F. Buckley Jr. its Editor at Large and a diehard conservative icon, admitted that the U.S. mission in Iraq has failed but gave the following reason for the disaster; “Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans…………they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.” No Mr. Buckley, no. You are muddying the water…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 15 December 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 11:51am Makkah time Friday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US military forces have launched a major campaign to install spy cameras in neighborhoods and streets of the city of al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad in an effort to put an end to Resistance activity in the city. nThe al-Fallujah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the Iraqi puppet police as saying that US occupation troops began an extensive effort to install a large number of spy cameras in various parts of the city on Thursday. The source said that the Americans installed the cameras atop tall towers surrounded by barbed wire. The towers were surrounded by barbed wire and signs were posted around them warning everyone against approaching the towers…
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MURDER LEGALISED IN ISRAEL
Desert Peace
Despite the fact that there were 339 targeted assassinations in the Occupied Territories since the year 2000, despite the fact that 210 of those murdered were targets and the rest (129) were innocent bystanders, the Supreme Court of Israel declared it legal for Israel to continue such operations. This practice has received condemnation from most European countries, but once again, Israel does not give a damn… it will continue doing what it wants to… legal or not. This is a most dangerous precident that must be protested by the civilised world… it cannot be allowed. The following AP report deals with the court’s decision…
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Iraqi refugees can’t find peace
Hundreds of thousands spread across Mideast, straining host countries
QAISAR AHMED, Los Angeles Times
…The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees put it more starkly in a recent assessment: “Iraq is hemorrhaging. The humanitarian crisis which the international community had feared is now unfolding.” Including those who have fled their homes but remained inside the country, nearly 10 percent of Iraq’s prewar population of 26 million has been displaced (…) Consider the fate of Laith Youssef, a shopkeeper who also ended up in Amman. An Iraqi gang threatened to kidnap his three children if he did not pay $40,000. Weeks later, a grenade exploded outside his shop, speckling his leg with shrapnel. Then he was jailed for 15 days for offending the Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army. While he was imprisoned, his wife was attacked for not wearing strict Islamic dress in public. Mr. Youssef and his family fled to Jordan, but even here, without the bombs and beheadings, life is tough…
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Palestinians need support, not division (epilogue to a smeary gatekeeping campaign)
Mary Rizzo, peacepalestine
End of the year, it seems natural to try to sum up a few things, to try to draw up the balance sheet of what has been happening. Unfortunately, for Palestinian people and for the people of Lebanon, being on the wrong side of the Israeli stick has meant now (as much as ever) destruction, death, and suffering. Even as the world was witnessing the wanton demolition of civilian infrastructures, it seems as though Israel gets let off the hook again, as amazing as it seems to many of us. The propaganda is THAT intense that we turn a blind eye. It would have been an important opportunity for the people who consider the struggle for the extension of human rights to every person on our planet to not miss an opportunity to voice their horror for this outrageous and illegal violation of basic human rights, considering the situation that we are witnessing in Iraq; a total disaster. But, excepting isolated cases, that did not happen…
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Palestine on the brink of civil war?
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada
Since the Palestinian elections on 25 January 2006 brought a resounding Hamas victory, Fatah and its US and Israeli allies have been working to destabilize the democratically-elected government. Hamas truly did deserve a chance at power after a year of unilateral ceasefire in the face of Israeli assassinations of its leaders, massive Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land, and the ongoing daily brutality of Israel’s military occupation. And it certainly deserved the opportunity after seven years of Fatah’s abject failure during the “peace process”, leaving nothing but a legacy of continuously-colonized land while Fatah officials blatantly embraced self-serving corruption and overt pandering to US and Israeli interests…
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Diplomat’s suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war
Colin Brown and Andy McSmith, Independent
The Government’s case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. A devastating attack on Mr Blair’s justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, “at no time did HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests.”…
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When There’s No One Left to Blame
What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel?
VIRGINIA TILLEY, CounterPunch
What are you going to do now, Israel? Now that three small boys have been killed by assassins’ bullets, and a Hamas judge dragged from his car and murdered, perhaps you are pleased. The Palestinians are finally succumbing to your plots, you think. The long-planned bottle has finally been sealed, in which the “drunken cockroaches” can only crawl around, shooting each other. Maybe you are sitting back in your national chair, rubbing your hands together in triumph, watching the Palestinians finally turn on each other, slowly becoming what you always claimed they were. Maybe you are repelled, secure in your sense of superiority…
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Guantanamo Detainees To Be Held Even Without Evidence
CON COUGHLIN – The Daily Telegraph
The hard core of detainees held at America’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp will be held indefinitely even if there is insufficient evidence to bring them to trial, a senior Bush administration official said. Of the 435 detainees being held at Guantanamo, only 10 have so far been charged with terrorism-related offenses. A further 14 detainees — the so-called high value detainees such as the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — are also expected to face trial now that the U.S. Congress has passed the Military Commission Act, which will finally enable America to commence trials of Guantanamo detainees next year. But of the remainder, an estimated 200 detainees face being held indefinitely at Guantanamo because they are deemed a threat to international security even though there is insufficient evidence to bring them before a military commission…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2006
Today in Iraq
The number of dead bodies found in Baghdad today increased up to 45 bodies. 42 bodies were found in the western part of Baghdad (Karkh part) and only 3 bodies were found in Rusafa part the eastern part of Baghdad. Gunmen killed a Shiite tribal sheik linked to British forces in a drive-by shooting Friday in the southern city of Basra. The slain cleric, Muhsin, was a member of the provisional council in Iraq’s second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, and had good relations with the British forces in the area, police said…
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Destructive dreams of world domination
Rodrigue Tremblay, Online Journal Guest Writer
On September 20, 2002, American President George W. Bush enthusiastically and officially embraced a policy of world dominationthat hisneoconservative advisors had drafted for him. In fact, it was a retake on a discarded foreign policy draft paper that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had written in 1992 for then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the George H.W. Bush administration. The new foreign policy paper introduced by the White House in 2002 was entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States” and was dubbed by its authors the “Bush Doctrine” of preventive wars and of international unilateralism and militarism. Indeed, under the guise of spreading ‘democracy’, the new ‘doctrine’ called for the United States to place itself above international law, ratified treaties and international institutions, and initiate “preventive wars” each time American interests or those of close allies such as Israel, are threatened. The policy paper went even further and proclaimed that the “United States has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge,” with the intent of preserving the United States’ position as the world’s sole military superpower, not only on Earth, but also in Space. The Bush-Cheney administration even declared its intention to keep the option of using nuclear weapons — not only preemptively but even preventively, whenever and wherever it saw fit to do so…
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Come 2008, Will Kucinich and the “New Democrats” Fool Us Again?
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day In the Empire
It’s the old same old in Washington. Democrats, worried about not appearing “hawkish” enough—that is willing to invade small countries and slaughter large numbers of innocents—are attempting to out-neocon the perfidious neocons. “If you think a new wind is blowing in Washington in terms of security issues because the Democrats are going to take over Congress, you probably have another think coming,” Christopher Hellman of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation told OneWorld, according to Aaron Glantz..
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New age Me and I’ll New age You…
Layla Anwar
Another American Soap Opera. James Bond and the Cowboys report. Oops , sorry meant the James Baker report which basically summarizes as follows : Change course and think of our long term oil interests. Now the cowboy G.Bush stated only yesterday that :”The Enemy has not been defeated yet.” Danger is still looming . How about another 5 million Iraqis dead , will that attenuate your fears? Not important, let’s not get side tracked with details. George.W.Bush says that he has a plan. A plan dictated by none other than God himself. (and yes politically correct feminists, in this instance it is definitely a HE, so lay off my back.) I will relay to you what exactly happened…
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Iraq prime minister says he hopes for a swift ruling on Saddam appeal
The Associated Press
Iraq’s prime minister said Friday he hoped it would only be a matter of days before an appeals court rules on Saddam Hussein’s death sentence. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also accused Saddam’s defense lawyers of submitting far too many documents to the appellate judges to delay their review of the death sentence, which a lower court handed down Nov. 5 against the former president and two others for the deaths of nearly 150 Shiites following a 1982 attempt on Saddam’s life in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad…
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Iraqi Red Crescent protests US forces’ attacks
Middle East Online
The Iraqi Red Crescent is often attacked or harassed by US-led forces in Iraq, the agency’s vice president Jamal al-Karbouri said Friday. “The main difficulties we are facing are, first of all, the presence of MNF (multinational forces). They give us a hard time, they attack some offices, and they detain some volunteers,” Karbouri told journalists here. “Seven days ago in Fallujah, we had our offices attacked by American forces, they detained the volunteers and staff for more than two hours, and they burned the car and even the building belonging to us,” he added. “Mainly we are attacked by American forces.”…
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PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 48/2006 – 07 – 13 Dec. 2006
# Two Palestinian couple were killed by the explosion of a mysterious object from the remainders of IOF. # A Palestinian woman died from a heart attack when IOF detonated a sound bomb inside her house. # 11 Palestinian civilians, including two children, were wounded by IOF. # IOF conducted 27 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. # IOF arrested 40 Palestinian civilians, including 6 children. # IOF raided offices of two local radio stations in Hebron. # An IOF bloodhound bit and injured a Palestinian woman in Nablus…
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Three US servicemen killed in Iraq
Middle East Online
Three US servicemen were killed in Iraq, including two US marines in the restive western province of Al-Anbar, the US military announced on Friday. The marines, one from a unit stationed in the western Euphrates valley, the other stationed in Fallujah, died in clashes on Friday. On Thursday, a US soldier was killed in the northern Nineveh province and two others were wounded in clashes with insurgents…
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Iran’s poison … ???? ???????
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
On Thursday, November 23, 2006, a bomb exploded in a market in Thawra City (Sadr City) that caused the death and wounding of tens of civilians. The culprit was caught the next day by Al-Mahdi army who control Thawra City. His name is Firas Al-Rikabi. He confesses in this video (in Arabic) that Hakam, who lives in the nearby Rashad district, had given him the bomb and the detonator and instructed him to place it among the crowd and blow it up, for $200 bounty. Both Hakam and Firas are Shi’ites. Hakam belongs to the Badr and SCIRI Iranian backed shi’ite militias who now control the police in the Interior Ministry (who are responsible for the recent mass kidnappings) and the army in the Defence Ministry (being trained to step up by the American occupiers to allow Bush to step down)…
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Military Considers Sending as Many as 35,000 More U.S. Troops to Iraq, McCain Says
JOHN F. BURNS, NYTimes
Senator John McCain said Thursday that American military commanders were discussing the possibility of adding as many as 10 more combat brigades — a maximum of about 35,000 troops — to “bring the situation under control” while Iraq’s divided political leaders seek solutions to the worsening bloodshed here. After talks in Baghdad with Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and other top American generals, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, said a substantial United States troop increase was one of the strategy changes the generals were considering as they reviewed what he called “a steadily deteriorating situation.”…
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