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Iraqi screen
All tears in the world are not enough to cry our dear Iraq, our dear brothers, relatives, friends and innocent Iraqis who have been killed for no reason just because they loved their country and wanted to stay loyal to its soil till the last breathe they have in this life. Can any body explain to me what kind of a world we are living in now, a world that is watching and hearing every day that no less than 100 body found in Baghdad thrown in the trash and does not take a single step to stop that, in the contrary it has become a common piece of news and merely number written in the newspapers and thrown away, no one can feel the impact of that, only the Iraqi families who lose every day, a father, brother, son and relative. Instead of finding a solution to this daily mass killing, Bush declared his support to the Iraqi sectarian government who is in charge of all these victims and insisted on keeping Malki, Ruba’i and other ulcers to accomplish their mission and genocide all the Iraqis except their loyalists and supporters…
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IF THE AMERICANS REALLY INTEND TO NEGOTIATE WITH THE RESISTANCE, THEY SHOULD FIRST LIBERATE TAREQ AZIZ !
Gilles Munier (*)
An Iraqi member of the Resistance recently told me: “We have never invited the Americans to Iraq, therefore we do not invite them to leave, we are kicking them out! There will be no honourable way out for them. They must negotiate their withdrawal if they are eager to reduce their casualties and the sooner the better. As a matter of fact, they really need to find the right people to talk to.” “The right people” that is the leaders of the Resistance, especially those close to the underground Baath Party, who have set clear-cut conditions: Total and unconditional withdrawal of all invaders – Apologies the Iraqi people and their leaders for the crimes and destructions carried out by the occupations forces – Cancelling of all the laws imposed by the occupiers and their allies, in particular those related to the prohibition of the Baath Party – Liberation of all political prisoners – Compensations paid to the Iraqis for their losses – Compensations paid to the State to finance the reconstruction…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 20 December 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab
In a dispatch posted at 10:35pm Makkah time Wednesday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that after a battle with Iraqi Resistance forces, US troops were able to take control of 17 Street and the ‘Ishtar Hotel in ar-Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad on Wednesday afternoon. The ar-Ramadi correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying that an extremely massive US force advanced on the city under cover from US aircraft and engaged the Iraqi Resistance in a short battle in which they were able to seize control of the heart of the city. The correspondent reported that after the engagement, the Americans posted snipers atop buildings along the vital street in the city and on the roof of the ‘Ishtar Hotel, the biggest hotel in ar-Ramadi. Those American snipers proceeded to shoot and kill four local civilians, two of them children, and wounded nine other civilians according to a source in ar-Ramadi General Hospital, where the casualties were taken…
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The $2 Trillion Dollar War
CHARLES M. YOUNG, Rollingstone.com
A leading economist says the true cost of Iraq is far higher than President Bush claims — and America will pay the price for decades to come. When America invaded Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would turn a profit, paying for itself with increased oil revenues. So far, though, Congress has spent more than $350 billion on the conflict, including the $50 billion appropriated for 2007. But according to one of the world’s leading economists, that is just a fraction of what Iraq will actually wind up costing American taxpayers. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at$2.267 trillion. That includes the government’s past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion)…
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Bush “Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons” for Offensive Use
Sherwood Ross, t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon “is now gearing up to fight and ‘win’ biological warfare” pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted “without public knowledge and review” in 2002…
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Assault on Red Crescent an Escalation in Iraq
Chris Floyd, t r u t h o u t
Less than a mile from where British prime minister Tony Blair was gripping and grinning during a surprise visit to Baghdad on Sunday, agents of the extremist factions that he and George W. Bush have empowered, paid, and heavily armed were raiding the offices of the Iraqi Red Crescent Agency and rounding up some of the few remaining relief workers in the country who attend to the suffering of all sides. This bold, broad-daylight assault came less than 48 hours after top Red Crescent officials publicly accused US military forces of conducting a series of attacks on the agency’s offices around the country during the course of the war…
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MICHAEL KLARE FORESEES YEARS OF IRAQ BLOODSHED AND CHAOS
Nick Mottern, Director, ConsumersforPeace.org
On December 5, a day before the release of the Iraq Study Group report, I interviewed Michael Klare about what he envisions happening in Iraq. He is Five College Professor of Peace and World Security, based at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, teaching also at Amherst, Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is the author of the authoritative “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Oil” and defense correspondent for The Nation magazine. He has published a variety of books and articles on oil and on U.S. intervention, including in 1974 “War Without End: American Planning for the Next Viet Nams.”…
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The other Israel lobby
A new alliance, including financier George Soros and former Bill Clinton advisor Jeremy Ben-Ami, aims to take on the powerful lobbyist group AIPAC — and reshape U.S. policy.
Gregory Levey, Salon.com
This past June, on my last day working as a speechwriter for the Israeli government — first at the United Nations and then in the prime minister’s office — I met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his private office at the Israeli parliament to discuss a speech he had just given to the U.S. Congress. The speech, which I helped write, was largely about the future of U.S.-Israeli relations, and we discussed how it had gone over. Also at the meeting was a high-ranking official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and when we left the building together, he told me that the next day officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful lobbying group, would be visiting. He asked if I had any suggestions about what to tell them about how they could more effectively help Israel in Washington…
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U. S. military says 2 soldiers killed by roadside bombs in Iraq
Associated Press
Two American soldiers were killed and six injured in separate attacks today in Baghdad. One soldier was killed and four wounded when a bomb detonated as a combat patrol passed on its way to investigate an explosion. A second soldier was killed and two injured in a blast in a southern neighborhood in the capital…
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WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2006
Today in Iraq
A policeman was killed by gunmen in the southern Shia city of Amara. On Tuesday, 53 bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad. Among the dead in Baghdad was Mutashar al-Sudani, a well-known television actor who was kidnapped on Monday. Police commandos in southern Baghdad arrested 10 to 15 employees of the central electricity authority for suspected links to “terrorists and insurgent groups,” an Interior Ministry official told CNN. The commander of a Green Zone police station and 13 police officers were arrested in connection with the escape of Iraq’s former electricity minister from a Baghdad prison Sunday. Ayham al-Sammarae’s daughter speculated that he had made his way to Irbil in Kurdistan, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday. Gunmen dressed in plain clothes abducted in broad daylight the chief resident doctor at the Al-Alwiyah maternal hospital in central Baghdad…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 19 December 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.
…In a dispatch posted at 12:01pm Makkah time midday Tuesday, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that fierce fighting raged between Iraqi Resistance forces and US troops in al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad, on Monday. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in the ash-Shuhada’ neighborhood in southern al-Fallujah as saying that Resistance men armed with light and medium weapons ambushed a US patrol near the ash-Shamari Mosque in the neighborhood. The Resistance men fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US Humvee, wounding two American soldiers and setting the vehicle ablaze. US forces responded quickly and forcefully sparking a gun battle that lasted for more than 15 minutes but left no casualties among the Resistance men. A source in al-Fallujah General Hospital confirmed that that institution had received the body of a badly wounded 20-year-old girl who died upon admission to the hospital…
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Iraq events: 20 Dec 2006
Roads to Iraq
Iraqirabita reported through an eyewitness that American forces raped 2 women in Al-Saidya district. Five US occupation forces entered the house of two women for searching, they beat the women stole their jewelries and raped them. – Not yet one week passed since Maliki announced his invitation for the former Iraqi officers to join the army and yesterday 20 former military officers kidnapped and later 15 of them found killed…
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Pentagon report paints grim picture for US in Iraq
Patrick Martin, WSWS
A report issued by the Pentagon Monday confirms the disastrous state of the American project for the conquest of Iraq and transformation of the oil-rich country into a semi-colony of the United States. The armed resistance to the US occupation continues to swell, with both insurgent attacks on US forces and American casualties growing at a double-digit rate. According to the quarterly report, mandated by Congress, the number of attacks carried out by insurgents has risen by 22 percent over the past three months, while US casualties have risen 32 percent. More than two thirds of the attacks are directed against American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and police…
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Premier Wants U.S. Forces to Target Sunni Insurgents
Maliki Would Attempt To Contain Shiite Militias
Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post Foreign Service
Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has created a two-pronged security plan for Baghdad in which U.S. forces would aggressively target Sunni Arab insurgents instead of Shiite militias. At the same time, Maliki would intensify his efforts to weaken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and contain his Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. Under these conditions, Maliki would accept a surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad, according to two Maliki advisers with knowledge of the plan. Maliki plans to discuss his proposal with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and senior U.S. commanders during a meeting in Baghdad on Thursday, the officials said. The Bush administration is contemplating a temporary increase in troops to help stem the highest levels of violence since 2003…
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Iraqi soldiers eat frogs, rabbit at handover ceremony
Claudia Parsons, Reuters
Iraqi soldiers bit the heads off frogs and ate the heart of a rabbit as signs of courage on Wednesday at a ceremony to transfer Najaf province, home to one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrines, from U.S. to Iraqi control. A U.S. general called the transfer, under a plan to gradually hand over security and allow the withdrawal of 135,000 American troops, a major step in strengthening the Iraqi government as it seeks to stop sectarian violence. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said Iraqis can take control of all Iraq’s 18 provinces by June, despite doubts about capabilities and the sectarian loyalties of the army and police…
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There is still another way for Palestine
Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada
After months of anticipation, Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction finally launched their attempted coup against the democratically-elected cabinet headed by the Hamas party and prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. Days of interfactional violence, following Abbas’ speech in which he threatened to call new elections (something most legal experts agree he does not have the authority to do), claimed at least seven lives. A shaky truce continued to be violated, and the events of the past week have provided a terrifying glimpse of what may yet await Palestinians if Abbas decides to continue on his disastrous path…
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HRW
Xymphora
It has taken almost a month, but the bureaucrats in the U. S. State Department have finally gotten around to authorizing their agents, a bogus human rights advocacy group known as ‘Human Rights Watch’, to (sort of) apologize for its outrageous November 22 Press Release in which it complained about the use of non-violent resistance by Palestinian civilians against war crimes being committed against them on a daily basis by the State of Israel. The obvious intent of HRW was to remove any hope of any resistance by the Palestinians, thus leading to the ethnic cleansing desired by the Zionists. HRW can quibble all it wants, but we all know that any legitimate advocates for human rights would never even dream of issuing an obscenity like the November 22 press release…
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U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq, Bush Says for 1st Time
President Plans to Expand Army, Marine Corps To Cope With Strain of Multiple Deployments
Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the “stressed” U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists. As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. “We’re not winning, we’re not losing,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, “Absolutely, we’re winning.”…
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“IraqSlogger” warmly endorsing crude propaganda
Helena Cobban, ‘Just World News’
I am not going to spend very much longer hanging around the dank confines of the IraqSlogger site. Today, they put up a post with the embedded video of a short and extremely crude YouTube production portraying ISG head James Baker as a latter-day Neville Chamberlain. Here is the text intro they give it: Filmmaker David Zucker makes, posts video lambasting James Baker and the Iraq Study Group’s call for negotiations with Iran. Must-see. This can only be read as a strong endorsement of the message of this slimy piece of propaganda. Who is David Zucker, anyway?…
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Some people look at Iraq and see a giant Crackerjacks box
Weldon Berger, Smirking Chimp
For whatever reason, the New York Times has published yet another puerile op-ed column on Iraq. The column, written by Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, proposes that 2007 will be the year we finally learn whether or not the invasion and occupation of Iraq will be proved a success and packages everyone else’s lame notions — with the exception of those who think we should, like, leave — into an exposition that wanders between the spectacularly dull and unintentionally hilarious and is wrapped in a delightfully cheesy graphic. It’s a good news-bad news scenario in the Brookings collective mind. More children are being immunized, but more children are getting blown up and otherwise traumatized. Unemployment is down almost 40%, but it’s still almost 40%. The number of insurgents is up 500% from November of 2003, but only 20% from November of 2005. Shiite militias boast 1000% more members now than in 2003, but only 250% more than a year ago…
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MORE ON ‘SECOND CLASS CITIZENSHIP’ FOR PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL
DesertPeace
…Again, proving that Palestinians (Israeli Arabs) are treated as second class citizens, the following was just published in HaAretz..
Yes, there is eqality in Israel… All (most) Jews are treated the same.
Following is the report… Report: Arabs in north get 10% of budget for rebuilding region By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent A new report released on Wednesday alleges that the State of Israel has allocated to Arab communities 10 percent, instead of the 30 percent pledged, of the budgets for rebuilding Israel’s north in the wake of the war in Lebanon…
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