28 September 2007

28/9/07-2

Iraq: Palestinian refugees caught in the crossfire
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Palestinian refugees living in Iraq are the hidden victims of the Iraq conflict — suffering threats, torture, killings and appalling living conditions in refugee camps such al-Waleed near the Syrian border, according to a new report by Amnesty International. The report Iraq: human rights abuses against Palestinian refugees looks at the human rights abuses committed against Palestinians living in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 and highlights the lack of action by the Iraqi government and the Multi-National Force to protect them. “Palestinians are currently one of the most vulnerable groups in Iraq. They are being hunted down, abducted, tortured and, in some cases, killed without any effective steps being taken to protect them,” said Malcolm Smart, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International. “They also face great obstacles in seeking refuge as the authorities in both Syria and Jordan, the main countries hosting Iraqi refugees, remain extremely reluctant to allow Palestinian refugees to enter their territory, and there is now a pressing need for other countries to resettle those most at risk.”…

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A Corner of “ Peace “
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…When we gathered to give our condolences, the women sat in one corner and the men in another. It was all very peaceful. Corners of peace. The peace of the departed, the peace of Death. There were silent tears, peaceful tears. I heard someone whispering : “ Did you hear about the partition plan ? The other responded : “ Yes, maybe this will bring us Peace. Anything, let them do anything but let them give us Peace. “ So this is the price of your famous Peace. This was the plan of your Peace. This was the orchestrated diabolical blueprint for you Peace. Kill them all to silence them into Peace. Murder them all so they can submit, surrender to Peace. Hunt them down, exile them and let them wish for a return to Peace. Give them divided pieces so you can shove Peace down their throats, like a cork before their grief explodes your Peace. Make them skeletons of Peace. Riddle them with Radiation, Bacterias, Germs, Viruses and they will swallow Peace. Imprison them and torture them till their skins fall off and form scabs of Peace. Starve them so you can see through their ribs and they will beg and eat Peace. Let them stutter with fear so they can murmur Peace. A beautiful peaceful Genocide. A silent, peaceful Holocaust from the makers of Peace…

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The Outrage of Blackwater
Abdul Razzaq al-Rubaie, Azzaman – Translated By James Jacobson, Watching America
…What was the result of the Blackwater Company’s crime, which has so tarnished the face of American security? The death of about 15 martyrs and the wounding of over 30 people – a death toll so high that it would have caused the fall of the government in any country other than Iraq!! And all this happened in clear sight and hearing of American diplomats who suffered no harm, except for the disturbing sound of the explosions taking the lives of so many innocent bystanders!! And what has the government done? It deplored and denounced this company which it licensed, and which then denied that its contract had been canceled!!! What did America do? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed regret to the families of the victims. Unfortunately, this year American politicians have expressed regret so often that their tongues have become veritable factories for producing apologies!!! – always agreeing to cooperate in order to carry out an investigation!! – Which will certainly be inconclusive due to a lack of evidence!!!…

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DEPLETED URANIUM
Peace For Palestine
What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own people and they have done it knowingly. The people out there – the Iraqis, the media and the troops – risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere.
It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world.
We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.’ This is a story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used. ‘Depleted’ uranium is in many ways a misnomer. ‘Depleted’ sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price…

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Boycott Israeli universities ‘illegal’
Richard Garner, The Independent
Controversial plans for a boycott of Israeli universities by UK lecturers were dealt a potentially crippling blow yesterday. The University and College Union, whose members backed boycott calls earlier this year in protest at the treatment of Palestinians, was told by its lawyers that such a move would be illegal. The decision, taken at the union’s annual conference in May, attracted outrage from the Jewish community and many academics. However, the union revealed yesterday it had now been told the boycott could be in breach of anti-discrimination laws and would be contrary to the aims and objects of the union…

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It was about oil
Xymphora
There are three places that require energy: the United States, Europe, and the manufacturers in Asia. There are three sources of energy: Russia; the Middle East/Africa; and the Americas, consisting largely of Mexico, Venezuela, and, of increasing importance, the Canadian oil sands. As we have seen, the Iraq war was reluctantly tolerated by the American oligarchs because the oil instability and insecurity in the Middle East increased the cost per barrel to a point where the Canadian oil sands became viable. In other words, contrary to what you may have been reading, the point of the war, from the view of the big American strategists, was to increase insecurity of supply in the short run. The point wasn’t to raise the profitability of the traditional big oil companies, which are of less and less importance in the bigger scheme of things as time goes on. The attack on Iraq was not desired as they knew it would be a disaster, but they put up with it as something that could be used to reconfigure international oil and security arrangements…

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American Occupation Air Raid Kills 13 Iraqi Civilians
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
US occupation helicopters attack building in Baghdad killing two women, four children, seven men while asleep. US forces carried out an air strike early on Friday, killing at least 10 people, including women and children, in a building in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. Friday’s air raid targeted a building in the Al-Saha neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad where families were sleeping, the Iraqi officials said. Bodies were pulled out of the rubble of the building, which was destroyed…

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No one is guilty in Israel
Gideon Levy
Nineteen inhabitants of Beit Hanun were killed with malice aforethought. There is no other way of describing the circumstances of their killing. Someone who throws burning matches into a forest can’t claim he didn’t mean to set it on fire, and anyone who bombards residential neighborhoods with artillery can’t claim he didn’t mean to kill innocent inhabitants. Therefore it takes considerable gall and cynicism to dare to claim that the Israel Defense Forces did not intend to kill inhabitants of Beit Hanun. Even if there was a glitch in the balancing of the aiming mechanism or in a component of the radar, a mistake in the input of the data or a human error, the overwhelming, crucial, shocking fact is that the IDF bombards helpless civilians. Even shells that are supposedly aimed 200 meters from houses, into “open areas,” are intended to kill, and they do kill. In this respect, nothing new happened on Wednesday morning in Gaza: The IDF has been behaving like this for months now…

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U.S. Soldier Acquitted of Murder in Iraq
PAUL von ZIELBAUER, NYTimes
A military jury acquitted an Army sniper of murder charges today in connection with the deaths of two Iraqi men whom he and his unit killed during missions in the dangerous Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad last spring. The sniper, Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval received congratulatory embraces from his two military lawyers after the verdict was announced in a small courtroom here (…) Specialist Sandoval has admitted killing the man after his team leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, ordered him to fire. The man, who was cutting grass in a field using a scythe when Specialist Sandoval killed him, had been considered by the sniper team’s leaders to be an insurgent trying to disguise himself as a farmer after battling Iraqi Army soldiers minutes earlier. Army prosecutors argued the killing was illegal because the man, aside from the rusty scythe, was unarmed at the time and was not demonstrating hostile intent or a hostile act when Specialist Sandoval killed him with one shot. The other killing, on May 11, was of a man who had inadvertently walked into the concealed location where Specialist Sandoval, Sergeant Hensley and three other snipers were located, near a water pumping house close to Iskandariya…

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Afghanistan: Cleared of Wrongdoing
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
Mr. Nawab Buntangyar was shot in the face / head by an American soldier in Afghanistan. The case focused not on the murdered Afghan’s plight but on the `procedures’, And, so, yet another American has been let off the hook for murder. Mr Nawab Buntangyar’s murder in Afghanistan was brought to my attention through an article by Robert Parry, George Bush’s Thug Nation. “According to evidence emerging from a military court hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US Special Forces are empowered to kill individuals who have been designated “enemy combatants,” even if they are unarmed and present no visible threat…

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Testimony in Court-Martial Describes a Sniper Squad Pressed to Raise Body Count
Paul von Zielbauer, The New York Times
An Army sniper is taught to kill people “calmly and deliberately,” even when they pose no immediate danger to him. “A sniper,” Army Field Manual 23-10 goes on to state, “must not be susceptible to emotions such as anxiety or remorse.” But in a crowded military courtroom seemingly stunned into silence on Thursday, Sgt. Evan Vela all but broke down as he described firing two bullets into an unarmed Iraqi man his unit arrested last May. In anguished, eloquent sentences, Sergeant Vela, a member of an elite sniper scout platoon with the First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, quietly described how his squad leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, cut off the man’s handcuffs, wrestled him to his feet and ordered Sergeant Vela, standing a few feet away, to fire the 9-millimeter service pistol into the detainee’s head…

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Official Calls Kurd Oil Deal at Odds With Baghdad
ALISSA J. RUBIN and ANDREW E. KRAMER, NYTimes
A senior State Department official in Baghdad acknowledged Thursday that the first American oil contract in Iraq, that of the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas with the Kurdistan Regional Government, was at cross purposes with the stated United States foreign policy of strengthening the country’s central government. “We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq,” the official said, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government. The official was not authorized to speak for attribution on the oil contract. The tensions between Kurdistan and the central government go well beyond the oil law. Already a semiautonomous region for more than 15 years, Kurdistan in many respects functions as independent state and wants as much latitude as possible to run its region. Recently, the Kurdistan government has pushed to extend its borders to include nearby areas that have sizable Kurdish populations…

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Certain Americans
Walter C. Uhler
C ertain Americans chose a president no smarter than themselves, an illiterate who, in the seventh year of his presidency, still mangles the English language with such sentences as “Childrens do learn.” Far worse, however, certain Americans chose a president who then lied to them about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda, in order to send their sons and daughters (along with our sons and daughters) to kill Iraqis and, perhaps, die in an illegal, immoral invasion – now considered the worst strategic disaster in US history. Even so, certain Americans either shrugged their shoulders or rationalized away the evil behavior of their president when, for example, on the eve of announcing the invasion of Iraq, he “pumped his fist as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. ‘Feels good,’ he said.” [Paul Waldman, Fraud, p. 8] Certain Americans cheered him when he proclaimed “Mission Accomplished,” more than four years and thousands of lives ago…

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Refugees? What Refugees?
ROGER COHEN, NYTimes
A 16-day overland odyssey has brought Mokaled Gamil, a former Iraqi Army officer, to this southern Swedish town, and what he fears now more than anything is resettlement north of the Arctic Circle in some snow-bound place that will ice over his Mesopotamian blood. “Please, not far north,” he says in passable English, addressing Oskar Ekblad, an official from the Swedish Migration Board. “Too cold.” Even by the fantastic standards of the Iraq war, the scene is bizarre: Gamil, a 45-year-old ex-colonel from an ex-army, stands outside a hostel full of stained mattresses and stunned Iraqis begging a decent Swede not to be dispatched to some remote reindeer-rich refuge. “Iraqis are destined to begin their lives again at 45,” Gamil, a Sunni who has fled Baghdad’s Shiite militia, says with a gloomy matter-of-factness worthy of Strindberg…

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U.S. Soldier: ‘I Was Ordered to Murder Unarmed Iraqi’
Associated Press
A U.S. soldier broke down in tears Thursday as he testified that he was ordered to shoot an unarmed Iraqi man, and that his sergeant laughed and told the trooper to finish the job as the man convulsed on the ground. The military reported, meanwhile, it had opened an investigation of the deaths of five women and four children killed earlier this week in a village south of Baghdad where American forces had carried out ground and air assaults. Sgt. Evan Vela’s testimony came during the court-martial of Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval, of Laredo, Texas. Sandoval is on trial for allegedly killing Iraqis and trying to cover up the deaths by planting weapons at the scene…

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Don’t You Cry Israel – As You Sow You Will Reap !
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
Special unites, i.e. Israeli death squads, killed 11 Palestinians and wounded over 22, as the Palestinians were observing the Muslims Holy month of Ramadan – and the Israelis them self began the celebration of their feast of Sukkot. On Wednesday, the Israelis begun its incursions and air strikes into the densely populated Gaza Strip. Nine Palestinians, two of them civilians, were killed in two different Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip. In the heart of Gaza City, five members of Army of Islam were assassinated when an Israeli aircraft targeted their truck. A sixth member of the group died of his wounds overnight. On Thursday morning at pre?dawn the Israelis assassinated two members of Hamas military wing, Al Qassam Brigades.In the outskirts of the northern town of Beit Hanun, two civilians and one militants were also killed in the Israeli ground incursion. Armored vehicles backed by helicopters and other air crafts, trespassed some two km inside the border of Palestinian territories…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 28 September 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 9:35pm Baghdad time Friday night, the Aswat al-’Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that the puppet police recovered the bodies of five more victims of sectarian murder that had been dumped in various parts of Baghdad on Friday. Aswat al-’Iraq reported a source in the puppet “Iraqi Interior Ministry” who asked to remain anonymous as saying that the victims were all shot to death…

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Iraqi PM rejects US federal plan
Aljazeera.net
Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, has rejected a US senate resolution calling for the creation of separate Sunni, Shia and Kurdish federal regions. Al-Maliki said: “They should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty. They shouldn’t be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region.” Al-Maliki also called on the Iraqi parliament to meet and respond formally to the non-binding resolution, which was passed on Wednesday…

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“Blackwater in Iraq”
Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
… It was only two weeks ago, that Blackwater was implicated in the deaths of 11 Iraqis, an event still under investigation. BB —before Bush —this would have been called what it is: cold blooded murder. Blackwater USA, meanwhile, has said its guards reacted lawfully to an attack on a US diplomatic convoy. What does “lawfully” mean in this case? Does “lawfully” mean that Bush may granted to whomever he pleases the power to murder indiscriminately? What “powers” were granted to Blackwater when the contract was executed? This argument sounds rather medieval, unprincipled and archaic to me, a defense Topcliffe must surely have cited to justify his tortures on behalf of Elizabeth I. My position is that the US presence in Iraq is itself illegal. The US, therefore, may not enter legally into any contract with any such sub-contractor. As the US presence itself violates Nuremberg, Geneva, and our own US Criminal Codes, the contracts thus executed are themselves null and void. In effect, I allege that Blackwater’s very presence in Iraq is a crime. The killing of 11 Iraqis is therefore cold-blooded murder, in fact, a war crime punishable by death. See US Codes, Title 18, Section 241…

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War News for Friday, September 28, 2007
Iraq today
A US air raid has killed at least 10 people, including women and children, in a building in a mainly Sunni area of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said Friday. The raid targeted a building in the Al-Saha neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad where families were sleeping, the Iraqi officials said. An official at Baghdad’s Al-Yarmuk hospital said 13 people — seven men, two women and four children — were killed and 10 men and a women were wounded. He said all the casualties were civilians. A U.S. Apache helicopter came under “enemy” fire that forced the aircraft to land near a military base in southern Baghdad, the U.S. army said. “A Task Force Marne AH-64 Apache helicopter hit by small arms landed at a nearby Coalition base Sept. 26 south of Baghdad,” the U.S. army said in a statement on Thursday received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). “A team of two Apaches were responding to ground troops in contact with enemy forces when one was hit and conducted a hard landing after disrupting the attack,” the statement read…

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28/9/07

It Is the Partition of Iraq that Would Be Truly “Artificial”
Reidar Visser
A steady stream of US commentators keep expressing support for the idea of some kind of ethnic partition, be it “soft” or “hard,” of Iraq. Despite the repeated warnings against division by military advisors and experts in humanitarian aid, the partition theme simply refuses to fade away from the American debate. One possible explanation for the strong attraction of the partitionist propaganda is its claim to resurrect what are taken to be “the long lines of history”; according to the partitionist canon, the Iraqis cannot live together because they have never done so in the past – at least not of their “free will.” Iraq is seen as “artificial,” a tripartite division is what is “natural.” No appeal to history could have been more ironic. Had these proponents of partition bothered to check the facts they would have found that the long-term trends in Iraqi history point in exactly the opposite direction of what they advocate…

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GAZA: the quality of mercy revisited
Sonja Karkar, Women for Palestine
In these days of warmongering, peace and justice are tossed about like hot potatoes with no end to the suffering in sight. But, where is the compassion for the children, women and men who are being subjected to the excesses of power in all its guises? Right now, some mercy for the Palestinians in Gaza is desperately needed before it is too late. Shakespeare saw mercy as “an attribute to God himself” and above “the force of temporal power”, but it seems that for all the Christian rhetoric today, and particularly amongst our Western leaders, mercy towards other human beings has been well and truly forgotten. Perhaps the Palestinians do not qualify – most are Muslim and the rest who are Christian,are still Arabs. To some, that means they are not like us because we have been told. (…) On 19 September 2007, the Israeli government designated Gaza “a hostile entity” and decided to impose “additional sanctions” which will reduce
even more drastically the basic necessities of living for the entire population. This unrelenting aggression against every man, woman and child for having elected a government that Israel and the US do not want, is known as collective punishment and is prohibited by international law. But, rather than castigate Israel, the international community, as is its wont, may well decide to sever all ties with Gaza in case it is seen to be aiding this “hostile entity”…

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Children imprisoned by Israel in Telmond appeal Abbas to intervene for their release
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinian under-age detainees imprisoned in Telmond Israeli prison voiced an appeal to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to intervene and place their case as a top priority especially since they are living under harsh conditions and subjected to ongoing violations. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reported that Bothaina Douqmaq, one of the lawyers of the society, visited a number of child detainees in Telmond and that the detainees informed her that he are facing abuse and attacks by the soldiers. One of the detainees, Bassam Shahroor, said that child detainees are not provided with the needed and sufficient food, adding that the prison canteen is overpriced…

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Blackwater responsible for the death of 11 811 Iraqis
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
(At least!). To the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, and with the usual alacrity that the U.S. Congress follows up on such matters (that is to say, none), a Congressional Committee has concluded: Blackwater USA triggered a major battle in the Iraq war in 2004 by sending an unprepared team of guards into an insurgent stronghold, a move that led to their horrific deaths and a violent response by U.S. forces, says a congressional investigation released Thursday. That battle killed, we are told, 200 insurgents and an estimated 600 civilians (the “11" in the headline refers to the Iraqis that Blackwater mercenaries killed directly two weeks ago, which led to their banning (quickly replaced by their non-banning))…

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US air raid in Baghdad kills 10: Iraqi officials
AFP
A US air raid has killed at least 10 people, including women and children, in a building in a mainly Sunni area of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said Friday. The raid targeted a building in the Al-Saha neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad where families were sleeping, the Iraqi officials said. Bodies were pulled out of the rubble of the building, which was destroyed. “Ten people were killed and seven wounded when American helicopters attacked Building No 139 at 2.00 am. We have no idea of the reason for the attack,” said an interior ministry official…

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GCC slams U.S. Senate plan to divide Iraq
Voices of Iraq
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Friday condemned a US Senate non-binding resolution to divide Iraq into three entities, saying it would complicate matters further in the war-ravaged country. “Such dividing plans would add new complications to the already difficult Iraqi situation,” GCC chief Abdul Rahman al-Attiyah said in a statement. The GCC groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The chief of the oil-rich bloc warned that the non-binding proposal to divide Iraq which was passed by the US Senate on Wednesday would also have a “detrimental impact” on regional and international stability. “Instead of calling for division, the causes that led to the current situation should be addressed. These include the (US-led) occupation, the sectarian and ethnic quota system, absence of law and security and the paralyzed administration,” he said…

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Supporters of U.S. Congress resolution will betray nation, faith – Sunni clerics
Voices of Iraq
The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) condemned a U.S. Senate resolution calling for diving Iraqi into three entities, considering whoever backs the resolution to be “traitors of the nation and faith.” “It would be a serious precedent that might be applied to all countries of the region,” according to an AMS statement on Friday received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). “The Senate’s adoption of a resolution outwardly suggesting the establishment of federal entities under the pretext of stopping violence in the country is not shocking because it was one of the objectives behind the invasion of Iraq,” read the AMS statement…

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Stress gnawing at mental health of Iraqis
AFP
He lost two sons to car bombs. She lost her husband to a death squad. Both are depressed, weepy, anxious, filled with rage and in denial. The mental scars of the war in Iraq run deep and jagged. Compounding the problem, says Dr. Shalan al-Abbudi, director of Baghdad’s Ibn-Rushd psychiatric hospital, is the flight from the country of psychiatrists — those best equipped to help shell-shocked Iraqis deal with their mental demons. “A year ago I had 14 psychiatrists, today I have four. They are all leaving Iraq,” Abbudi told AFP in his small office in the hospital, crowded daily with outpatients desperate for relief from images of horror that haunt them often in the day, always at night…

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4.5 million Iraqis displaced by U.S. occupation
Amelia McDonald, Party for Socialism and Liberation-
Nearly five years of violent occupation by U.S. imperialist forces has created the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948. Two million people have been forced to leave Iraq because of the occupation. Many have flooded neighboring states such as Syria and Jordan. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, more than 2 million are now refugees within Iraq. And nearly 2,000 Palestinian refugees living in Iraq are now stranded at the Iraq-Syria border, living in tents. Some have been made refugees for a second or third time since 1948. Contrary to the recent report by Gen. David Petreaus report, which praised the “growing safety” in Iraq, the reality is that the occupation has created an enormous humanitarian crisis for all Iraqis. Iraq has the fastest growing refugee population in the world…

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Democratic presidential candidates: US troops could stay in Iraq until 2013
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
The Democratic Party’s pretense of opposing the war in Iraq has largely collapsed following a series of defeats in the US Senate last week of Democratic-sponsored legislation proposing timetables for partial “redeployment” of the more than 160,000 troops currently occupying the country. Nothing could make clearer the real position of the party, however, than the Democratic debate Wednesday night in New Hampshire, in which all three of the party’s leading presidential candidates—Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards—refused to commit themselves, if elected, to withdrawing all American troops from Iraq by the beginning of their second term—in 2013…

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A federal Iraq on sectarian and ethnic basis rejected idea, says Syrian FM
Salwa JENDOUBI, KUNA
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallim on Thursday said that the decision of the US Congress to divide the Republic of Iraq into a federal country based on a sectarian and ethnic basis is categorically a rejected idea. In a statement to the Kuwaiti News Agency (KUNA) commenting on the non-binding draft resolution endorsed by the United States Congress yesterday, Muallim said: “We insist that Iraq will be a unified land and people.” Responding to a question on the American initiative for the peace conference scheduled for next November in Washington, DC, and the invitation of Syria to participate, Muallim said, “Syria did no receive such an invitation”…

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Palestinian captives revolt against IOA humiliating policies in jails
Palestinian Information Center
Tension ran high in the Israeli prisons as thousands of Palestinian captives revolted against the Israeli prison authority’s (IPA) repressive policies, sources close to the captives affirmed. In the Nitsan prison in the 1948-occupied Palestinian city of Ramle, a Palestinian captive assaulted and stabbed an Israeli jail guard in the face after the jail administration maltreated him, the sources added, affirming that the incident could spark an all-out revolt in those jails if the IPA inhuman practices against the captives persisted. More than 11,000 Palestinian prisoners are living in extremely difficult condition in Israeli jails, including denying them family visits and depriving them proper medical attention among other repressive practices…

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9 civilian deaths in village investigated
LATimes Staff Writer
U.S.-led forces said Thursday that they were investigating the deaths of nine Iraqi civilians in the village of Babahani. Iraqi police reported that the bodies of five women and four children were taken Wednesday to a hospital in nearby Musayyib, about 42 miles south of Baghdad, after U.S.-led forces conducted “ground and air” operations in the area, according to a military statement. The statement said buildings in the area have previously been used as safe houses by the Sunni Arab militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Forces searching a nearby house found bomb-making material, including wire, batteries and timers, the military said…

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The Hashemi -Biden “National Pact”
Arablinks
Biden’s Iraq-partition amendment wasn’t mentioned at all by the netroots watchdogs before it happened, and very little afterwards. Watchdog Laura Rozen, in her early warning on the bill, mentioned only the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, keeping completely silent about the Biden amendment, and the widely-read fop Yglesias, in his very witty “Kyl-Lieberman post-game”, didn’t mention it either. It was as if the thing didn’t happen…

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THE DEAD DO NOT SPEAK ~~~ THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE IN PALESTINE
Desert Peace
The Hebrew year just ended and the statistics are now available… statistics that show how many Palestinians were MURDERED by the Israeli army in the past year. It was a ‘relatively quiet year’… only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed… including NINETY TWO Palestinian children… Yet the Israelis claim that Gaza is an ‘enemy entity’… strange reasoning. This week’s episode of the Twilight Zone from HaAretz deals with the situation…

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Anti-ninny
Xymphora
For a classic in the complete destruction of a stupid conspiracy theory, read this, and then read the antidote from Unknownnews. Wayne Madsen – naturally – is attempting to turn this story into a military counter-coup against the Bush Administration (wishful thinking, and unnecessary, as the Establishment won’t allow an attack on Iran). My question: the U. S. has nukes all over the world, so why would they have to go through such convolutions to get one to Iran? …

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The forked tongue of Adel Abdul Mahdi .. Lies and Grease .. ??? ???? ??? ??????
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
“[Iraqi] Vice President [Adel Abdul Mahdi] warned of the “danger of extremism and terrorism and the misguided Fatawis on the security not only in Iraq but the whole region”. He added, during a visit to Cairo that “the people of Iraq are very aware of what is occurring around them” emphasizing that the Iraqis “avoided the acrimonious pitfall between the Shia’a and the Sunnis”. … He also added “that the security situation in Iraq is stabilizing and that the bombings are receding”. … At the end of the meeting, the Iraqi VP offered $250,000 to the students of the Azhar [a prestigious religious university in Cairo], but the Sheikh of Al-Azhar declined the offer stating that Iraq and its people are in more need of this donation”…

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Iraq: Legislators demand secret vote in parliament
Kareem Zair, Azzaman
More than 100 Iraqi legislators have made confidential casting of votes contingent to their taking part in parliamentary debates. As the 275-member parliament gears towards voting on crucial and sensitive legislation, members say opponents should not be given the chance to see whether they are against or pro controversial issues. Many politicians in the parliament belong to factions which employ heavily armed militia groups some of them already implicated in the upsurge in sectarian violence in the country. The draft laws before the parliament have sparked a lot of division and controversy…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 27 September 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 9:21pm Baghdad time Thursday night, the Aswat al-’Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that the Iraqi puppet police retrieved the bodies of nine more victims of sectarian murder that had been dumped in various parts of Baghdad in the previous 24 hours. Aswat al-’Iraq reported a source in the puppet “Iraqi Interior Ministry,” as saying that the victims had all been shot to death…

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While the “Green Zone” puppets are silent, Arab League condemns the separation of Iraq
Roads to Iraq
While the so called Iraqi government and politicians puppets who live on the Americans garbage in the “Green Zone” are silent, the Arab League condemned the US evil plan to divide the country. Ali al-Garoush said: Astonished that the U.S. Senate managed to reach such a resolution, although it failed repeatedly to reach a resolution on supporting Iraq or even gradual withdrawal from Iraq…

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The Meaning of the Biden Amendment
karlmarxwasright
This past September 25, 2007, the US Senate passed a non-binding Biden amendment to partition Iraq by a 3/4 majority in the Senate. This has been duly noted and commented on, now, by numerous sources. A small note on this, before going further. The old three way map that has/is being used on many sources for partitioning Iraq is NOT the map that was used in the most recent Senate hearings, above. The map I saw on TV, used by Senator Brownback, IF I recall correctly, partitions Iraq in much more than three ways. The new partitioned Iraq lines more resembles the erratic, gerry-mandered, artificially created election districts and zones, wildly gyrating lines, for the purpose of US elections…

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