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WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?
Malcom Lagauche
What is the best way to ensure that the Republican neocon agenda continues? Elect Democrats. What a farce the November 2006 elections in the U.S. were. Almost every “liberal” or “progressive” writer told us how things would drastically change. For instance, the message was that the Democrat’s re-taking of the House of Representatives and the Senate would put a halt to the U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Finally, the troops would come home. What a bunch of horse merde. On December 19, the incoming Chairman of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid (D) gave George Bush an early Christmas present. He endorsed sending a further 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. military personnel to Iraq. Bush didn’t even have to twist anyone’s arm…
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Civil Wars?
Dr. Marcy /????? Newman, Body on the Line
…Every day I read more stories about escalating violence and factionalism or sectarianism growing in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. There are articles aboutan impending civil war in Palestine that are increasing. But are these articles describing a reality? Or are they projecting fears about the future? I know from friends who have spent a good deal of time in Iraq over the past few years working as journalists that much of the rhetoric about civil war or Sunni-Shia’ fighting (of course, the mainstream media is forever ignoring the Shia-led militia squads targeting Palestinians or Kurdish Iranians who, like Palestinians in Baghdad, had to flee to refugee camps in Jordan or who are in the No Man’s Land area in between Jordan and Iraq or Syria and Iraq because neither Syria nor Jordan will let them inside their borders) was initiated and/or propagated by the U.S. media or the state department in ways that made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I fear that this is happening in Lebanon and Palestine too with all of the rhetoric in the media about what is to come. I especially think this when I read about the U.S. making promises of arming Fatah against Hamas (though a part of me believes this has already happened)…
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Al-Maliki “Shadow” government
Roads to Iraq
Is the name Mohammad Al-Daini familiar to you? If not, then Al-Daini is the Iraqi MP “whistleblower” you already saw him on Channel 4 “Death Squads” documentary, he was the first to reveal that the Iraqi government behind the torture, secret prisons and “Death Squads”. Al-Daini was interviewed by alarabalywm. He denied that there is a government of Iraq saying: The government in Iraq is a “Shadow” government and accused them of being behind the death squads and militias, explained that the government of Al-Maliki directly supporting “Death Squads” and militias through its presence in the state bodies and ministries…
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Talking Surge: Another Imminent Iraq Bloody Disaster
James Brooks
‘Everyone in town is talking “surge” now’, a Pentagon adviser explained to NPR listeners the other day, and you could almost feel the country buckle up its mind for another bloody disaster ahead. One big “final” push to defeat the popular resistance of the Iraqi people. Just to see if we can do it, before we leave. ‘It probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try.’ For an alternative to this patent nonsense, we are told to look to the deliberations of the Iraq Study Group, which only offer proof that the US has no intention of either leaving Iraq or letting Iraqi oil slip out of its grasp. In addition to an indefinite military presence, the ISG recommends a number of specific steps to tighten controls over Iraqi petroleum and economic policy in favor of corporate oil. It’s simply an elite debate about how best to achieve the common objective, which has nothing to do with the expressed goal of the American people, i.e. to get the hell out of there…
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Hamas Organisation Stabile Grounded – Stop Israeli Alliance Interference In Palestine Domestic Affairs
PalestineFreeVoice
The Palestinian people are largely united – this is why Abbas and his aids (the Israeli alliance’s) provocations have failed to incite the civil war that is needed to excuse the coup that has been on their agenda since Hama’s first won a slamming victory. The leaders of Hamas knows very well that as each week passes by their position becomes stronger – while Abbas, the Palestinian Quisling position is weakened…
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How Syria dodged a neo-con bullet
Jim Lobe, Asia Times
Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of US President George W Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during summer’s Lebanon war, according to a newly published interview with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, reportedly told Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet website that a successful attack by Israel on Damascus would have dealt a mortal blow to the insurgency in Iraq…
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Iraq Is Vietnam – And You’d Better Believe It
John Graham, t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
… US leaders may decide, as they did 37 years ago, that we must again create a “decent interval” to mask defeat and that the PR benefits of that interval are worth the cost in lives and money. If they do, however, they should not – like the Iraq Study Group – lie to us that such a strategy has any military chance whatsoever of success…
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Fatah Is Not The Enemy
TONY SAYEGH, Palestinian Pundit
…The reality is that this is not a “civil war” between Hamas and Fatah. A large proportion of Fatah has rebelled against the puppet Abbas and his attempted Condoleezza-dictated coup. Many of the rank-and-file Fatah fighters receive money from Fatah but fight with Hamas. Fatah is fragmentd into many pieces and its central committee could not even hold together for a meeting a month ago in Amman, from which Abbas stormed out. The head of the PLO’s political department and one of the senior founders of Fatah is openly opposed to Abbas and has been working closely with Hamas leaders to isolate Abbas and to prevent this from becoming a civil war…
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Iraqi Women’s Bodies Are Battlefields for War Vendettas
Kavita N. Ramdas, Global Fund for Women
The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) recently issued a frightening report documenting the growing practice of public executions of women by Shia Militia. One of the report’s more grisly accounts was a story of a young woman dragged by a wire wound around her neck to a close-by football field and then hung to the goal post. They pierced her body with bullets. Her brother came running trying to defend his sister. He was also shot and killed. Sunni extremists are no better: OWFI members estimate that no less than 30 women are executed monthly for honor related reasons. Almost four years into the Bush Administration’s ill fated adventure in Iraq, Iraqi women are worse off than they were under the Baathist regime in a country where, for decades, the freedoms and rights enjoyed by Iraqi women were the envy of women in most other countries of the Middle East…
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US soldiers’ suicide rate in Iraq doubles in 2005
REUTERS
Suicides among U.S. soldiers in Iraq doubled last year over the previous year to return to a level seen in 2003, U.S. Army medical experts said on Tuesday. Twenty-two U.S. soldiers in Iraq took their own lives in 2005, a rate of 19.9 per 100,000 soldiers. In 2004, the rate was 10.5 per 100,000 and in 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the figure was 18.8 per 100,000. The figures cover U.S. Army soldiers only. They do not include members of other U.S. military services in Iraq such as the Marine Corps…
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Iranians Like Americans Show Their Discontent in Elections
Mike Mullenix – IMEMC
At a point in time when the American and Iranian governments have found various differences in ideology, the people of both countries have shared an astute judgment in determining that they are not happy with their elected officials. In an election result similar to the election results in the United States, Iranian voters have dealt the hard line rhetoric, International politics and failed economic policies of their administrations a sharp blow, showing the differences in the governments do not always reflect the differences in the people…
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A brief history of the PNAC: a refresher
Tj Templeton, founder Project for the old American Century
Once upon a time in an office rented to them by the American Heritage Foundation, a group of powerful men directly connected to the halls of the capital and the defense and energy industry formed a fringe rightwing organization based loosely on the teachings of Leo Strauss. They called themselves the Project for the New American Century. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project (both chaired by William Kristol) and as such is largely funded through it. Direct funding for PNAC comes from, but isn’t limited to, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ($700,000), the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation ($50,000), and the John M. Olin Foundation ($70,000). Unsurprisingly these three exceedingly conservative foundations have strong ties to weapons manufacturing and several members of the Project are former CEOs and board members of defense contractors and energy companies. (Halliburton, Trireme, Bechtel, etc.)…
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Bush: ‘We do need to increase our troops’
CNN
President Bush asked his new secretary of defense to draw up plans to increase the overall size of the Army and the Marines, according to an interview with the president published Tuesday in the Washington Post. “I’m inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops — the Army, the Marines,” Bush said. “And I talked about this to Secretary Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea.”…
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GI Special 4L14: No Bullshit Excuses – December 17, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
… We at IVAW know that reaching out to active-duty men and women is one of the most crucial steps to ending the war in Iraq. IVAW will be working with members from the Appeal for Redress, appealforredress.org , Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out to show our support for our troops by handing out care packages to them outside the gates of active-duty bases just before Christmas (Dec 18-20). Besides treats like cookies and candy, these care packages will include information on the anti-war movement and resources so that they can become directly involved in ending the war and caring for their brothers and sisters as they return home…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, December 19, 2006
Today in Iraq
One Marine assigned to 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable died Dec. 18 from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province. Thirteen men convicted of murder, kidnapping and other crimes were hanged in a Baghdad jail, lining up shortly before their execution in hoods and green jumpsuits, their hands bound behind their backs. Gunmen including some wearing police uniforms stole at least 1.25 billion Iraqi dinars ($875,000) in cash in the second major heist in central Baghdad in 10 days, a police source said on Tuesday. The source said the gunmen took the money from Industry Ministry employees who were picking up money for salaries from a bank in the Karrada district of Baghdad on Tuesday morning. An Interior Ministry source said the gunmen stormed the bank itself and took as much as 2 billion dinars ($1.4 million). There were no injuries reported in the robbery…
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Bush Cracks Down on Gitmo Detainees, Despite Overwhelmin Evidence Most are Not Terrorists
Innnocents Abroad
DAVE LINDORFF, CounterPunch
If you find those two sentences jarring and contradictory, you’re not alone, yet both were leading news items in today’s newspapers. The first appeared in a page one story in of the Philadelphia Inquirer by Associated Press reporter Andrew O. Selsky, which said most of the detainees are innocent of any crime. The second was a page one story in the New York Times by reporter Tim Golden, who reported on a harsh crackdown on Guantanamo detainees, including removal of common eating privileges, inmate soccer games, and incentives for good behavior by prisoners. Selsky, who traced what happened to 245 of some 360 Guantanamo detainees released by the U.S., found that 205 of them, upon arriving in their countries of origin, were immediately released, after their home governments determined that they were, after all, not dangerous terrorists…
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The US and Latin America
Overview for 2006, Perspectives for 2007
James Petras, www.dissidentvoice.org
To understand US-Latin American relations this year and its likely trajectory in 2007 it is obligatory to consider three dimensions: 1) the global context of US-LA relations; 2) internal dynamics of the US and 3) the real practical political-economic consequences of the 2006 elections in Latin America. US imperial policy continues to pursue military victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, to give unconditional support to Israel’s war against the elected Palestinian Government and to threaten a direct or Israeli attack on Iran. In other words, the prolonged, costly and inconclusive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine during 2006 will continue in 2007…
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Why is the US Government So Afraid of Justice In the Case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir?
Katherine Hughes, thepeoplesvoice.org
Urgent Request For Funds To Buy Trial Transcripts in defense of a blessed man wrongfully convicted by the Bush Justice Department for his crime of compassion: In direct response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by the brutal and unjustifiable U.S. and U.K. sponsored UN embargo on Iraq, Dr. Rafil Dhafir started the charity Help the Needy (HTN). For 13 years he worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them. According to the US government, he donated $1.25 million of his own money. As an oncologist, he was particularly concerned about the effects of depleted uranium and skyrocketing Iraqi cancer rates. Because of this humanitarian work he has been incarcerated since February 26, 2003…
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Report: Iraq on brink of collapse
Dave Clark, Middle East Online
Iraq is on the brink of total disintegration and could drag its neighbours into a regional war, a leading think-tank said Tuesday, after the Pentagon confirmed violence was at an all-time high. The warning from the International Crisis Group came amid lawless chaos in Baghdad, where police were hunting for 16 kidnapped aid workers and a former minister who escaped from jail, allegedly with the help of US hired guns. The ICG’s report called on Washington to distance itself from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s beleaguered government, which has failed to tackle sectarian militias, and reach out to the United States’ arch-foes Iran and Syria…
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Defiant , I stand.
Layla Anwar
…I noticed you have stopped parroting the “Saddam this, Saddam that” broken record. A little “démodé “ perhaps? Or have the 1000 times worse horrors finally caught up with a member of your loved ones? It seems you regret having voted – how very noble of you. I will give you a prize for that. A medal for your “unwavering” patriotism . But vote, you did. You voted when your country was and still is ILLEGALLY occupied by the most ruthless power in the World.
You still went ahead and cast your name in some dusty ballot box and shouted Halleluja to your so called democracy. Some of you even composed an Iraqi Version of “ We shall overcome.” But you changed the tense and renamed it : “We have overcome.” You called it the “New Iraq” song. And you sang and you danced to the tune. You were almost drunk with joy. And so proud of your victory against so called “tyranny” only to have the most brutal tyrants rule over you now…
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Muslim Holocaust & Holocaust Denial by Bush US Alliance
Gideon Polya
Christmas is almost upon us and the World – especially the mainly nominally Christian Western World – pauses to remember the birth of Jesus Christ and to celebrate the sanctity of Mother and Child. Yet much of the Western World through the Bush US Alliance is complicit in horrendous crimes against humanity in Occupied Palestine, Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan – in gross violation of the teachings of Jesus and of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) of the Abrahamic religions that declares “thou shalt not kill”. Much of the West is complicit in war criminal mass murder, genocide and mass infanticide led by Bush America in the Muslim World – yet the carnage continues due to the IGNORING of this Muslim Holocaust by Western politicians and racist, lying, holocaust-denying Mainstream media…
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Hamas: Olmert’s statement reveals those allied with the enemy
palestine-info.co.uk
The Hamas Movement on Tuesday said that Israeli premier Ehud Olmert’s statement in which he declared support for PA chief Mahmoud Abbas revealed the nature of those “allied with the enemy”. The Movement, in a press release, said that it was no longer strange that “terrorist Olmert” would declare his unlimited support to Abbas in the confrontation with Hamas. Abbas and those speaking in his name should have denounced such statements and should have rejected any backing from the “usurping Zionist enemy” or any foreign force in its capacity as a flagrant intervention in Palestinian internal affairs, Hamas charged…
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GI Special 4L16: The Myth Of Civil War – December 19, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
…Iraq is not undergoing a civil war. The country is in the throes of an anti-occupation struggle. Having declared, with the installation of the current government, that Iraq is no longer occupied, the US government and media can hardly frame the current violence as a struggle against a continuing occupation. Nonetheless, what is being cast as civil war is the latest example in a long line of peoples’ fighting against occupation, struggles in which those groups who collaborate with an occupier are themselves targeted by those seeking to end an occupation. Algerians fighting the French also attacked those indigenous forces who had allied themselves with France…
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Palestinian Refugees and Children Held at Hutto Jail
Greg Moses
Some of the children and a pregnant woman being held in an immigration jail in Texas are Palestinian refugees whose families came to the USA with visas, says a Dallas lawyer. Immigration attorney John Wheat Gibson represents two families that include a pregnant woman and children ages 2, 3, 5, 12, 14, and 17. The families have been incarcerated since their midnight arrests in early November by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “The children, imprisoned with their mothers, have never been accused of any wrongdoing. Neither have their mothers,” says Gibson. “All are Palestinian refugees who entered the U.S. legally, but have been denied asylum.”…
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The war is already lost
Tariq Ali, The Guardian
Once a war goes badly wrong and its justifications are shown to be lies, to insist that a “democratic” Iraq is visible on the horizon and that “we must stay the course” becomes a total fantasy. What is to be done? In the US a group of Foggy Bottom elders was wheeled in to prepare a report. This admitted what the whole world (Downing Street excepted) already knew: the occupation is a disaster and the situation gets more hellish every day. After US citizens voted accordingly in the mid-term elections, the White House sacrificed the Pentagon warlord, Donald Rumsfeld. The warlord of Downing Street, however, is still at large, zombie-like in his denials that anything serious is wrong in Baghdad or Kabul…
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The debate you don’t hear a word about in America
Arablinks.blogspot.com
Al-Jazeera hosted a televised discussion recently following the windup of the Istanbul Conference (Dec 13 and 14), including Adnan al-Dulaimi (head of one of the biggest Sunni political parties), Harith al-Dhari (head of the Muslim Scholars Association) and others. It has posted a brief summary on its Aljazeeratalk.net site, and the summary goes like this: First of all, judging from the banners in the background, the recommended English version for the name of the group that organized this is “Global Anti-Agression Campaign”, and the AlJazeera summary notes this was really the first-ever meeting bringing together representatives of the Sunni people of Iraqi with representatives of the Sunni populations of surrounding countries. And there was unanimous agreement on the concluding recommendations, but the there was also one major point of disagreement: Is the Iraqi conflict sectarian or is it political?…
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