Divide and rule
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly
…The Senate’s partitioning plan should come as no surprise. The desire to split the Arab world into mini- states surfaced immediately after the 1973 War, when it became clear that the Arabs were capable of standing up for themselves and challenging the Zionist project. The Arabs then used their wealth to promote national and regional interests. The use of oil as a means of pressure — regardless of the motives that emerged later — proved that the Arabs were capable of acting in unison if left alone. The then secretary of state Henry Kissinger responded by arguing that the US should do everything within its means to ensure that Israel remained the strongest force in the region. His remarks didn’t attract much comment in an Arab world used to Washington’s unquestioning backing of Israel. Following the 1973 War, US experts concluded that the partition of Arab states would have spin-off benefits. It would not only preclude the formation of an Arab military force capable of confronting the Zionist scheme but provide opportunities to foment disputes over land and interests, making it easier for outsiders to control the region’s oil fields…

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No Child Left Behind in Iraq – 9 Children Killed in US Raid
Richard Blair
When George Bush was thinking NCLB, I wonder if this is what he had in mind? BAGHDAD – A U.S. attack killed 19 insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, northwest of the capital Thursday — one of the heaviest civilian death tolls in an American operation in recent months. The military said it was targeting senior leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq… “After securing the area, the ground force assessed 15 terrorists, six women and nine children were killed,” the statement said. Two suspected al-Qaida members, a woman and three children were wounded, according to the military account. (…) This isn’t war. This isn’t occupation. This isn’t rooting out terr’ists. This is flat out indiscriminate goddamn killing. This is evil incarnate. There isn’t anything “targeted” or “surgical” about it. I’ve asked before – do Iraq insurgents carry ID cards identifying them as such? And do al-Qaida members (what’s the diff between them and insurgents anyway?) wear special “colors” like the Bloods and the Crips?…

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Opening a new front
Today’s announcement of a new resistance group in Iraq is a landmark in the armed campaign against the US occupation.
Seumas Milne, The Guardian
Today’s announcement on al-Jazeera TV of the launch of a Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance, which brings together the main non-al-Qaida Islamist groups in the Sunni areas, is likely to prove a landmark in the emergence of a coherent leadership for the armed campaign against the US occupation. The new front, first reported in the Guardian in July, has published a 14-point programme, declaring the armed resistance against illegal foreign occupation to be the legitimate representatives of the Iraqi people; rejecting as null and void all constitutional arrangements and laws passed under the occupation; calling for the establishment of an interim government and the defence of Iraq’s territorial integrity; and rejecting sectarianism and attacks on “the innocent”. Underlying the new front, which has been many months in the making, is a rejection of the tactics and ideology of al-Qaida (which accounts for a minority of armed attacks) , and a determination to give the resistance movement a political face in preparation for an eventual American pullout…

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It’s the Oil
Jim Holt, London Review of Books
…How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.) In February last year, the Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks described one such facility, the Balad Air Base, forty miles north of Baghdad. A piece of (well-fortified) American suburbia in the middle of the Iraqi desert, Balad has fast-food joints, a miniature golf course, a football field, a cinema and distinct neighbourhoods – among them, ‘KBR-land’, named after the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the construction work at the base….

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Thursday: 1 GI, 2 Coalition Soldiers, 82 Iraqis Killed; 113 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
A mortar attack on the U.S. army headquarters in Baghdad left two Coalition soldiers dead and 40 more wounded. In other violent incidents, 82 Iraqis were killed or found dead, and 113 more were wounded. As the specifics of the Camp Victory attack become known, these figures may rise significantly. In a separate hostile incident, a MNC-I soldier died of wounds received during combat yestarday in Baghdad. In Baghdad, overnight mortar fire killed two Coalition soldiers of unreported nationality at Camp Victory, near the Baghdad airport in al-Bayaa. Two of the 40 wounded were foreign civilian contractors. The numbers of American and Iraqi casualties have not been released. Camp Victory houses the headquarters for the American forces in Iraq. It is a separate location from the better known Green Zone which houses the American and British embassies. Later, a police officer and six policemen, who are believed involved, were arrested during a raid on an al-Bayaa precinct station….

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Scapegoating Blackwater: U.S. Soldiers Commit War Crimes at One-Ninth the Price
Ted Rall
…Pundits and politicians are scapegoating Blackwater and other private security firms to help sell the continuation of the Iraq War. Some mercenaries shoot at anything that moves. They endanger locals with crazy practices like speeding down jammed highways on the wrong side. (Memo to Secy. Gates: Ban screenings of “Ronin.”) Rein in these Rambo wannabes or fire them, the argument goes, and Iraqi commuters will warm to their friendly public-sector replacements in the United States Armed Forces. A thousand roses will bloom. Soon we’ll be awash in that staple of postwar gratitude, Iraqi war brides. But it isn’t just Blackwater. Official U.S. soldiers are no less stupid or vicious or trigger-happy than their private counterparts…

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U.N. Report on Iraq Details An ‘Ever-Deepening’ Crisis
Joshua Partlow and Colum Lynch, Washington Post Foreign Service
The assessment by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, which covered a three-month period ending June 30, found that civilians were suffering “devastating consequences” from violence across the country. It documented more than 100 civilians allegedly killed by U.S.-led forces during airstrikes or raids. The report described Iraq in more dire terms than last month’s congressional testimony from top U.S. military and embassy officials, which stressed improvements in the security situation. “The killings are still taking place, the torture is still being reported, the due process issues are still unresolved,” said Ivana Vuco, a U.N. human rights officer in Baghdad…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 11 October 2007.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 3:30pm Baghdad time Thursday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the intense mortar attack that targeted the American “Camp Victory” at Saddam International Airport near Baghdad on Wednesday killed two US troops and wounded 38 more. Another two individuals were also wounded in the Resistance attack, the Americans admitted in a communiqué issued Thursday. The AMSI reported that “Camp Victory” is the location of the headquarters of US occupation forces in Iraq. AMSI noted that an American announcement declared that the deadly attack was now the subject of an investigation. It came just hours after another attack targeted a US base in ad-Diwaniyah, 180km south of Baghdad. The last time the American’s so-called “Camp Victory” was hit by a Resistance rocket barrage was on 11 September when the US admitted that one Ameican soldier had been killed and 11 more wouned. In a dispatch posted at 11:50pm Makkah time Wednesday night, Mafkarat al-Islam had reported that the US military base located near Saddam International Airport in Baghdad came under a mortar barrage after sunset on Wednesday….

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Turkey plans long stay in northern Iraq
Today’s Zaman
…The government will send a motion to Parliament next week requesting authorization for a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to deal with a terrorist threat based there, with a possible incursion expected to involve up to 15,000 troops, government and security sources said. If it takes place as planned, this will be the largest-scale cross-border operation on Iraqi soil since 1997, when 50,000 soldiers entered northern Iraq. Sources said the military measures on the Iraqi side of the border will not be confined to a one-time operation carried out by a massive number of troops, as authorities are also planning to boost the existing Turkish military presence in northern Iraq to increase the Turkish military’s ability to deal with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) threat over the border. A 150-member Turkish military base in the Bamerni area near Dohuk in northern Iraq will be reinforced with professionally trained personnel so that operations against PKK bases in the region can be conducted on a more regular basis.

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GI Special 5J7: Petraeus Relieved Of Command [ October 9, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
Gen. Petraeus also delivered a more upbeat message on security in Baghdad in the wake of this year’s “surge” by US and Iraqi forces.
He said in some parts of the capital it was secure enough for him to walk down the street unprotected. “Certainly in places you could do that.
“You could walk right down Haifa street right now,” Gen Petraeus said.
But he added: “Nobody will let me do it.”

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New resistance alliance: The Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance
Roads to Iraq
This morning Al-Jazeera reported that Iraqi Islamic resistance factions formed a new front called “The Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance”, the statement says that the factions who joined the new alliance are: 1- Jihad and Reform Front. 2- Islamic Front for the Iraqi resistance (Jama’a). 3- Hamas-Iraq. The most interesting part of the announcement is point 10 (see below) “the formation of a technocrat government” and not an Islamic government as people expected. Political program for the new alliance is the following: 1- The occupation of Iraq is injustice and aggression, not acceptable religiously and legally, resisting the occupation is legitimate by all laws. 2- Armed resistance to, is the legitimate representative of Iraq, which carries a responsibility to lead the Iraqi people to achieve their hopes. 3- The liberation of Iraq from foreign occupation and influence and achieve full independence, and force the occupiers compensate the Iraqi people for all the moral and material damage. 4- The Mujahideen operations target the occupiers and their agents, the operations do not target innocent and the vulnerable civilians. 5- We refuse any change in the population structure of the Iraqi people, and the sectarian divisions of the people, and work to defeat the sectarian-ethnic project, and preserving the unity of Iraq land and people…

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Pink and Red Clouds…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…From being one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East in gender matters, Iraq has been turned in the space of 4 years into one of the most oppressive countries for women. From being a secular state that allowed and encouraged women in all walks of life, it has become a sectarian prison state that targets and murders women… From being a country that respected its women and their contributions to society in arts, politics, literature, poetry, music, science…it has become a country that tortures, imprisons, rapes, mutilates its women and send them to the gallows. From what used to be a civil society, emerged the monsters of Freedom and Democracy, destroying our families, our parents, our children, our lovers, our husbands, our friends…and us. Look at the current ideological atmosphere that reigns over Iraq. It is a disaster of monumental proportions. All the laws pertaining to gender equality have been changed. Everything that Iraqi women struggled for since the 1920’s, everything that the previous governments tried to establish in matters of gender equality, has been ripped apart….

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Good-bye My Beloved Baghdad
Healing Iraq
I write these words while I say good-bye to you, my beloved Baghdad. I say good-bye while the pain and the grief tear my heart and fill my essence and feeling. You are the city which embraced my father and other Armenians who survived the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and provided them with shelter and means of living and comfort (…) Despite great difficulties I faced in you that lasted for more than a quarter century, beginning with the Iraqi-Iranian war, passing through the UN economic unjust sanctions and the invasion, I remained adhered to you like a baby adhered to his mother. However, I now may have lost patience and the ability to withstand after all my family members and relatives have left you and I remained alone with my sick mother and brother. Under these circumstances, I do not find anyone who aids me in taking care of them and the atmosphere around me is depressed and sad. So, I was forced to think of what I didn t think of before… I thought of separating from you, leaving behind my history which I made in you through long years and beginning a new history away from you. However, my sick mother did not wish to leave you. She told all around her: I wish that my son bury me in Baghdad before leaving the city. She wanted to be buried close to my deceased father to be loyal to him even in death….

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U.S. Army lowers its recruiting standards
More recruits have criminal records, no high school diploma
Aamer Madhani, Chicago Tribune
The U.S. Army met its recruiting goals for the last year but enlisted thousands of new soldiers with criminal records and fewer who have earned high school diplomas, according to figures released Wednesday. The spike of new enlistees given “character” waivers for fiscal 2007 continues a steady upward trend in the number of recruits with past arrests and convictions allowed into the Army since the start of the war in Iraq. More than 11 percent of the Army recruits needed waivers for problems with the law — up from 7.9 percent the previous year and more than double the percentage in 2003, the year the U.S. invaded Iraq. Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, stressed that a vast majority, about 87 percent, of those allowed in with waivers had misdemeanors for such offenses as joy riding or violating curfew. Most faced little punishment beyond community service for their actions, Bostick said….

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Shiites in Baghdad turning against Mahdi army
Sabrina Tavernise
In Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protectors against Sunni militants but now resent as street thugs without ideology. The hardening Shiite feeling in Baghdad opens an opportunity for the American military, which has repeatedly clashed with the Mahdi army, as it relies increasingly on tribes and local leaders in its prosecution of the war. The sectarian landscape has shifted, with Sunni extremists largely defeated in many Shiite neighborhoods, and the war has sunk into a criminality that is often blind to sect. That has led to killings and kidnappings of Shiites by the militia itself, as militia members look for new sources of income, and has turned some formerly peaceful Shiite neighborhoods upside down. Among the people killed in the neighborhood of Topchi over the past two months was the owner of an electrical shop, a sweets seller, a rich man, three women, two local council members, and two children, aged 9 and 11….

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Still heading backwards
Corruption and partition are the headlines in another dismal week in occupied Iraq
Nermeen Al-Mufti, Al-Ahram Weekly.
…Following reports of torture and rape in Iraqi prisons, Tareq Al-Hashemi, vice-president and leader of the Islamic Party of Iraq, started touring detention centres around the country. He visited the women’s prison in Baghdad, where he voiced shock at the lack of proper medical care. “The visit revealed a complex, thorny, and tragic situation, beginning with the manner of detention and ending with the deteriorating conditions in the prison regarding health and other services,” a statement by Al-Hashemi’s office said. Two women died in prison due to the shortage of medicine, the statement added. Some inmates were being held as hostages, to pressure their spouses into surrendering to the authorities. One prisoner said that she was sentenced to death without being interrogated. Another, a school principal, said that she was arrested while searching for her son who went missing over a year ago….

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Book review: “Married to Another Man”
Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada
Dr. Ghada Karmi’s latest book Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine opens with the problem European Zionists faced over a century ago when they first mooted the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. They found then that there was already a well-established Palestinian society existing in the land they wished to claim as their own. Hence the message sent back to Vienna by the two rabbis who made the discovery: “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” It is the essence of “Israel’s dilemma”: how to effect the disappearance of the ever-present Palestinians so that a purely Jewish state can exist on Palestinian land? The Zionist program of ethnic cleansing that has been going on since Israel’s creation has not solved the problem. Neither has the living hell of occupation….

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EU quiet over Israeli land expropriation
David Cronin, The Electronic Intifada
Representatives of the European Union’s two most powerful institutions remained silent this week on new efforts by Israel to expropriate Palestinian villages, triggering accusations that the bloc’s Middle East policy suffers from double standards. During a 10 October debate in Brussels, speakers from the Portuguese government, which holds the Union’s rotating presidency, and the European Commission did not refer directly to the Israeli order to seize control of four Arab villages located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Jericho. Their reticence drew angry response from some members of the European Parliament, the EU’s only directly-elected body….

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Divide and Contend
Word of the Cze
You know, before Iraq was sent to the scrapheap, Saddam had an immigration problem. People were trying to get into Iraq by the truckload; it was the most liberal Arab state. Iraq was the only Arab nation that allowed Christians in high level government positions Iraq was the only Arab nation that women could walk around without Muslim garb of any sort. You could get a drink in the heart of Baghdad. You could buy guns in the middle of Baghdad. Iraq also complied with all the UN inspections. In 1998, Clinton bombed Iraq, and the inspectors had to get out for fear of safety. Saddam openly wanted the inspectors back. He even invited them in during the final days leading up to the war. Bush painted it as irrelevant. America edited the inspector reports, to cover up US involvement….

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Six Iraqi insurgent groups announce formation of a “political council” to liberate Iraq
The Associated Press
Six main Iraqi insurgent groups announced the formation of a “political council” aimed at “liberating” Iraq from U.S. occupation in a video aired Thursday on the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera. The council appeared to be a new attempt to organize and assert the leadership of the multiple insurgent groups, which have moved to distance themselves from another coalition of insurgent factions led by al-Qaida in Iraq. In the video aired on Al-Jazeera, a man identified as the council’s spokesman — wearing traditional Iraqi garb and his face blacked out — announced the council’s formation and a “political program to liberate Iraq.” He said the program was based on two principles. “First, the occupation is an oppression and aggression, rejected by Islamic Sharia law and tradition. Resistance of occupation is a right guaranteed by all religions and laws,” he said. “Second, the armed resistance … is the legitimate representative of Iraq. It is the one that bears responsibility for the leadership of the people to achieve its legitimate hopes,” he said….

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Attack at US Base in Iraq Kills 2
KIM CURTIS
A series of rockets or mortar rounds struck Camp Victory, killing two members of the U.S.-led coalition and wounding 40 other people on the sprawling headquarters for U.S. forces in Iraq, the military said Thursday. Most troops stationed at the base are American but there are small contingents from other countries. The military said those wounded in Wednesday’s attack included two “third-country nationals,” meaning they were not Americans or Iraqis. More details on the attack were not immediately released. U.S. bases in Iraq frequently face so-called “indirect fire,” the military’s term for a rocket or mortar attack, but Camp Victory is well-entrenched on the capital’s western outskirts and such heavy casualties are rare….

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PPS: “Palestinian detainees in Azion facing ongoing violations”
IMEMC
The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) issued a press release stating that the Palestinian detainees in Azion Israeli interrogation facility are facing ongoing violations and are deprived from their basic rights. In a visit conducted by one of the lawyers of the PPS, the detainees said that their conditions never improved in spite of promises by the Israeli Prison Administration, and that the detainees are subjected to ongoing violations including barring them from leaving their rooms, placing them in solitary confinement, and are not even allowed to communicate with each other. The detainees added that on Wednesday they were surprised to see sufficient food of a good quality, in addition to vegetables which they usually never see, but then they found out that a representative of the Red Cross was visiting the facility. The detainees stated that their suffering is ongoing, and that they are subjected to collective punishment, and are placed in tiny dark cells. It is worth mentioning that there are several detainees in Azion who are sick and deprived from their medication rights….

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U.S. military: 19 insurgents and 15 civilians, including 9 children, killed in raid targeting al-Qaida in Iraq
Associated Press
U.S. troops backed by attack aircraft killed 19 suspected insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, in an operation Thursday targeting al-Qaida in Iraq leaders northwest of Baghdad, the military said. An initial airstrike struck a “time-sensitive target,” killing four insurgents in the Lake Tharthar area after intelligence reports indicated senior members of al-Qaida in Iraq were meeting there, according to a statement….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free
…In a dispatch posted at 12:50am Makkah time just after midnight Thursday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the US military had admitted that two American troops had died in Iraq on Wednesday. Mafkarat al-Islam reported the Americans as claiming that the two US troops died in what were officially described as two separate “non-combat incidents.” In keeping with the American policy of concealing information regarding US losses in occupied Iraq, the American statements indicated that one of the troops was assigned to a unit in Baghdad and the other in “central Iraq” but no further details were revealed….

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Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq
THOM SHANKER, NYTimes
The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials. The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command. The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces….

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Damascus Palestinian Summit Under Way
Hamas & Fatah Resume Negotiations in Progress
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
Efforts are in progress to resume negotiations between Hamas and Fatah. Consolidating talks between the who political organizations in oppositian are planned in the coming days.A country in the Middle East will host the meetings.Its unclear if Hamas intentions are to relinquish its control of the Gaza Strip – the Palestinian PM, Ismail Hanieh is quoted saying that the Hamas “administration in the Gaza Strip is only temporary.” Fatah have said that returning Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA) > (today Fatah ruled), is a precondition for any negotiations.The ruling party on the Gaza Strip, Hamas movement,made in the late July a serious proposal,to restore PA control in almost all government departments,except from the intense,exasperated security services(previously the revere of Mohammad Dahlan )….

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Haditha massacre defendant pursues defamation suit against US congressman
Naomi Spencer, WSWS
Last month, a federal judge ordered US Representative Jack Murtha (Democrat of Pennsylvania) to testify in a defamation suit brought against him by a Marine facing murder charges for his involvement in the 2005 massacre in Haditha, Iraq. The lawsuit, a transparent attempt to silence opposition to the war and criticism of the military, has become a cause célèbre within right-wing circles. Frank Wuterich, a Marine sergeant who was squad leader during the incident, sued Murtha for libel and invasion of privacy last year for saying the murder of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha was a killing carried out “in cold blood.” Wuterich is currently charged with 17 counts of unpremeditated murder and is among the last of 12 Marines involved in the killings to face the possibility of court martial…

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Pres. Carter: US tortures prisoners, ‘I know it’
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne, RAW STORY
Former president Jimmy Carter isn’t just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees — he’s absolutely convinced. Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter’s definition of the word, the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant: “I don’t think it, I know it,” he said. “Certainly.” Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear. “The president is self-defning what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners,” said Carter.”Yes.”…

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What Israel Wants, Israel Gets
Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
There is a consistent thread, a pattern, which designs Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories. Any scrutinizing observer will notice how Israel first pitches an idea to the public – however preposterous – then allows the Palestinians and the international community to absorb it before putting it into action. This way, policies and measures are less shocking and seem more acceptable once the dust has been allowed to settle. We have all seen it time and time again. When the Aqsa Intifada first broke out, there was no Qalandia or Huwwara checkpoint and there was no separation wall. Jerusalem, although technically closed off to the West Bank by ineffective and extremely liquid checkpoints, was more or less accessible to most Palestinians. Not that the situation was ideal for the Palestinians because if this were the case, there would never have been an Intifada….

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GI Special 5J6: Why Not? [ October 7, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
“Fight Against Congress? Why Not?”
“What Can Such An Entity That Would So Suppress Our Rights Be Considered Other Than An Outright Enemy Of Democracy?”
While our constitution surely includes a provision for government, it certainly has no mandate for this specific government, and, as it stands, this collective of elites that presumes to rule this society have formally declared their opposition to its very foundation.

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Sudan finalizes preparations for hosting Palestinian refugees fleeing Iraq
Palestinian Information Center
The Sudanese ambassador to Jordan, Mohammed Osman, has affirmed that his country had finalized preparations for hosting Palestinian refugees fleeing Iraq and stranded at its borders with Syria and Jordan. Osman told reporters in Amman on Wednesday that Khartoum had officially located the places those refugees would be hosted in the Sudan namely in the Khartoum and Northern provinces. He said that thus his country had concluded its part of required procedures to host those refugees and that the remaining preparations are left for the Palestinian government and other concerned Arab governments….

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