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THE LIVING MARTYR
Malcom Lagauche
…I challenge all journalists who advocate the hanging of Saddam Hussein to take a few hours and research reality. * The standard figure of deaths attributed to the Ba’ath regime during the Anfal campaign is 182,000. Why have there not been any bodies found? If 182,000 people were killed, there must be piles and piles of bodies, yet none has appeared. * If 148 people were sentenced to death in 1982 for attempting to assassinate the president of Iraq, why are at least 24 still alive? And, those who were executed received a lengthy and fair trial that lasted about three years. They were fighting on the side of Iran while Iraq was engaged in a war with its eastern neighbor. In the U.S., this would be considered high treason. With Saddam Hussein, it was called mass murder. George Bush himself signed off more execution orders while the governor of Texas than did Saddam in the Dujail case. * If Iraqi military personnel gassed and killed 5,000 Kurds in Halabjah, why were only 300 bodies found? And, why was the gas used to kill the citizens cyanogen, a gas that Iraq did not possess but Iran did? Why have the CIA, the U.S. Army War College, Greenpeace, the main CIA analyst in 1988 (Stephen Pellitiere), the late Jude Waniski, the U.S Marine Corps Historical Report, and various other individuals and organizations blamed Iran for the gassing of the Kurds?…
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A Look Back and Ahead In An Age of Neocon Rule
Stephen Lendman
…At the end of the sixth horrific year under the reign of the Bush modern-day extremist Jacobin-neocons, we can now look ahead, but to what. We have an administration in charge for another two years one longtime analyst characterizes as “a bunch of crooks, incompetents and perverts” with the president’s approval rating plunging as low as 28% in some independent polls and a growing number of people in the country demanding his impeachment and removal from office. It’s not likely from the new Democrat-led Congress arriving in January, as their DLC leadership took it off the table and so far only promises more of the same failed policy other than some minor tinkering around the edges to create an illusion of change no different than the deceptive kind of course correction proposed by the Baker “Gang of Ten” Iraq Study Group (ISG) that guarantees none at all…
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IRAQ: Hussein al-Taakhi, Iraq “No one can heal the memories of the 48 days I spent in that prison.”
IRIN
I’m a 39-year-old former prisoner of the al-Jamiyat police station in Basra, and have been severely tortured for crimes that I did not commit. I have also been a witness to some of the terrible treatment prisoners have had to suffer, and have seen many prisoners killed. I’m a Shi’ite and have lived peacefully in Basra for more than 20 years raising my four sons aged 12, 15, 16 and 18 years. I’ve worked hard to be able to feed them. Things changed two months ago when members of a militia [armed Shi’ite group] and police officers raided my home and arrested me, accusing me of being a supporter of the insurgents [the armed groups fighting the US forces and the Iraqi government]. I am sure they knew I was not an insurgent, but the real reason for arresting me was that I’m from a tribe which is against local militias, and I was one of the dozens of men arrested as revenge on our tribe (…) Torturing us amused our captors. They enjoyed it. They would laugh at us while torturing us with electric devices, or by beating or hitting us with cables and pieces of wood, or kicking us with their boots. When they had finished the torture, they would often return us to our cells without medical treatment. Two people died from their wounds inflicted during the torture…
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Saddam Words
Moon of Alabama
Meanwhile a careful selective translation of a letter by Saddam Hussein got published is distributed through the US press. So what did he say? Here is the interpretation: Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to embrace ‘’brotherly coexistence’’ and not to hate U.S.-led foreign troops in a goodbye letter. This followed by the quote that is supposed to support that interpretation: ‘’I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking,” … ‘’I also call on you not to hate the people of the other countries that attacked us,’’ My interpretation of those quotes is: “Keep a cool head and don’t fight the home base of those troops, but concentrate on the troops themselves”
That does not sound to me like a call to NOT to fight and hate U.S.-led foreign troops…
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Saddam’s ‘final message’ urges Iraqis to unite against US
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian
In what may prove to be the final message from Saddam Hussein before his execution, the ousted dictator urged Iraqis to unite against the US and Iran and portrayed himself as a potential martyr. “The enemies of your country, the invaders and the Persians, have found your unity a barrier between you and those who are now ruling you. Therefore, they drove their hated wedge among you,” he said in a handwritten letter released by his lawyer yesterday. “O faithful people, I bid you farewell as my soul goes to God the compassionate,” he wrote. “Long live Iraq. Long live Iraq. Long live Palestine. Long live jihad and the mujahideen. God is greatest.”…
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GI Special 4L22: Huge Majority Say Surge Is For Shit – December 27, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
A CNN opinion poll conducted in mid-December showed only 11 percent of respondents supported the plan of boosting the US contingent in Iraq.
That was down from 17 percent, who supported the “surge” in a similar survey conducted jointly by ABC News and The Washington Post just two weeks earlier.
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A VALEDICTION FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN
Alison Gundle
I see vultures already circling
over a lonely patch of earth.
I see vultures scheming,
vultures briefing,
vultures in back rooms,
vultures in suits.
Eyes glistening with malice
they call you evil;
gleefully knotting your noose
they call you cruel.
Painted sepulchres!…
The stench of death
precedes them.
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Tariq Aziz
‘I want to testify’
Gulf Daily News
Former Iraqi deputy premier Tariq Aziz wants urgently to testify in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein before the toppled dictator is executed. “Aziz has told me he has very important information that he wishes to explain to the world,” lawyer Badih Aref Ezzat said yesterday. “This information will cause as much embarrassment inside the country as outside,” he added. Saddam, due to be hanged within 30 days, said in a letter released yesterday that his execution should be seen as a sacrifice for the nation and called on Iraqis to unite and fight US forces in the country. His Baath Party threatened to retaliate if he is executed…
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Neocons Endanger the Sixth Amendment
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire
I don’t know where Amy J. St. Eve received her law degree. Maybe through a mail correspondence course run out of a mail drop in Bibo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Surely, she didn’t attend one of the law colleges here in America. But then, the way things are going, maybe she did. Increasingly, in Bushzarro world, that it to say neocon world, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not say what they mean or mean what they say. “In Chicago, a federal judge recently permitted two Israeli agents to testify anonymously against two men accused of aiding the Palestinian group Hamas, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization since 1995. Judge Amy J. St. Eve said that the right to learn a witness’ identity was ‘not absolute’ and that the use of pseudonyms for the Israeli agents was justified because of their assignments,” reports the Los Angeles Times…
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SECURITY FOR PALESTINIANS IN BAGHDAD WORSENS AS SHIITE MILITIA TAKE OVER HOMES – UN
Press Release – UN News Center
Security for predominantly Sunni Palestinians in Baghdad has deteriorated over the past week amid increasing fears of attack as members of the Mahdi army Shiite militia are reported to be taking over apartments in a mainly Shia area, the United Nations refugee agency said today. In its latest warning over the safety of some 15,000 Palestinians still remaining in Iraq, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that the number of Palestinians stranded on the Iraq-Syria border after fleeing violence in Baghdad had doubled to 80, with more reported on the way. With weather conditions rapidly deteriorating, new supplies, including additional tents and kerosene, are urgently needed to take care of them, UNHCR said…
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Excerpts from letter in Saddam’s name
Associated Press
… Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if He wants, He will send it to heaven with the martyrs, or, He will postpone that … so let us be patient and depend on Him against the unjust nations…Dear faithful people, I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any faithful, honest believer … God is Great … God is great … Long live our nation … Long live our great struggling people … Long live Iraq, long live Iraq … Long live Palestine … Long live jihad and the mujahideen…
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2,700 Palestinians have been detained without trial this year
The Associated Press
A top military judge disclosed that 2,700 Palestinians have been detained without trial this year, criticizing the military prosecution for not filing charges against some of them. Colonel Shaul Gordon, chief justice of the army’s West Bank appeals court, told the soldiers’ weekly “Bamahane” that 2,000 of the detainees filed appeals, and their detention was shortened in many cases. He said even the ones who do not file appeals are reviewed. The practice of administrative detention has been harshly criticized by Palestinians and human rights groups, who say that if the military has evidence against suspects, it should put them on trial. The military has responded that sometimes evidence is too sensitive to submit to a trial…
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The Evil of Collaboration
Kim Petersen, www.dissidentvoice.org
Collaboration in a certain context epitomizes progressivism: people working together for the greater good. Collaboration, however, also has a dark side that is anathema to progressivist tenets: working against one’s own society. In other words: treason and sedition. In western society, those collaborating with the enemy were condemned as traitors. In Europe, the surname of Vitus Quisling, a Norwegian who collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Norway has come to mean “traitor” in much the same way as dual loyalist Benedict Arnold’s name means “traitor” in American society. There are two major contenders in the Middle East for eponymous recognition as traitors: Lebanon’s prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and Palestine’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, are willing to sell out their kinsfolk to Zionists and imperialists…
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Iraqis By the Numbers
Is There a Sunni Majority in Iraq?
FARUQ ZIADA, CounterPunch
The United States based its policy on Iraq on two primary so-called facts: 1. The Sunnis are a 20 % minority. 2. The Sunni minority and Saddam Hussein ruled the Shiite majority in Iraq. Thus, the U.S. Iraq policy — as set by the Bush Administration, and the Neoconservatives—both before and after the 2003 war and occupation, was based on this false premise. Because of this, the Sunnis were marginalized and power was handed over to the Shiite religious parties and Kurdish parties by the occupation force CPA, Ambassador Bremer, and later Ambassador Negroponte…
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“It didn’t happen under Saddam”
Hussein Al-alak, The Iraq Solidarity Campaign
Christmas day saw the destruction of the Jamiat police station in Basra, with an estimated 1,000 illegal immigrants storming a so-called bastion of US/UK democracy. Claiming they were liberating “dozens of prisoners”, who “were being tortured and faced imminent execution”, the 1,000 British soldiers, managed to kill seven people in the process of destroying the building. They were, according to the Independent of the 26/12/2006 attacking a “small rotten core” of police officers, who according to Sunni leaders are part of the “Shiite militia” and are allegedly turning a blind eye to the workings of death squads…
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GI Special 4L21: Wosing – December 26, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
A previously unpublicized assessment generated by the Republican staff of the House Armed Services Committee and obtained by the Globe effectively accused the generals of hedging the truth when Congress asks what they need to protect the troops.
The 2005 congressional report said that on numerous occasions, generals assured lawmakers that they have “complete (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) coverage over the respective theater battlespace; and in effect, ‘they get everything.’ “ That has repeatedly been proven wrong, it said.
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WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2006
Today in Iraq
A car bomb killed eight people near an Iraqi army checkpoint in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday, police said. They said all of the dead were civilians. Ten people were wounded. In an attack on Tuesday, a bomb hidden in a CD player exploded in a busy Baghdad market district after a man dropped it off at an electronics repair shop. The bomb killed five people and wounded 14 others. Police found 49 bodies bearing signs of torture dumped across the country, mostly in Baghdad. Clashes broke out in Sadiya, a mainly Sunni Arab district of Baghdad which also has some Shi’ite residents, after gunmen attacked police checkpoints in the area, residents said. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties. A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded five people, three policemen and two civilians, in Camp Sara district in eastern Baghdad…
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When Iraqis Gave Up on Government
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily, Inter Press Service
…”This government failed on all the promises it made to Iraqis, and so all Iraqis want it changed,” Muhammad Basher al-Faidhy, spokesman for the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars told IPS. “They are sorry they ever took part in the elections. Our Association warned Iraqis that this government would be the worst ever. They simply cannot get rid of death squads because they are their major ally.”…
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Gambling to save face on Iraq
Rodrigue Tremblay, Online Journal Guest Writer
Sometimes, when a snake tries to swallow a porcupine, it gets stuck in its throat and the predator has no choice but to spit it out. The neoconservative Bush-Cheney administration, under the pro-Israel Lobby’s influence, thought that Iraq would be an easy meal, to be savored while doing an easycakewalk, in the words of neocon Ken Adelman: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.” Now, the Bush-Cheney administration will spend the next two years it has left attempting to extricate itself from the morass they have brought upon Iraq and upon the United States. According to former U.N. General SecretaryKofi Annan, the U.S. is ‘trapped in Iraq’, and faces a no-win situation…
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Saddam offers his life as sacrifice for Iraq
Mariam Karouny, Reurers
Saddam Hussein, due to be hanged within 30 days, said in a letter made public on Wednesday that his execution would be a sacrifice for his country and called on Iraqis to unite and fight U.S. forces. “Here I offer myself in sacrifice. If God almighty wishes, it (my soul) will take me where he orders to be with the martyrs,” Saddam said in the hand-written letter obtained from his defense lawyers in Jordan after it was posted on a Web site. “If my soul goes down this path (of martyrdom) it will face God in serenity.” In his letter, Saddam called on Iraqis to unite. “Your unity stands against falling into servitude,” he said. “Oh brave, pious Iraqis in the heroic resistance. Oh sons of the one nation, direct your enmity toward the invaders. Do not let them divide you … Long live jihad (holy war) and the mujahideen against the invaders.”…
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The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford
Chris Floyd
…But Ford’s enduring legacy is in no way exhausted by the glories of his bloodthirsty political progeny. For the sad occasion of the statesman’s death is certainly a most appropriate time to recall what is probably his greatest geopolitical masterstroke: the green-lighting of Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor — an act of state-sponsored terrorism that killed more than 200,000 people. True, George W. Bush has now far surpassed that genocidal benchmark, setting new standards of pointless and barbaric mass murder in Iraq — but only with the help of Fordians Cheney and Rumsfeld!…
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