REMEMBER
Malcom Lagauche
If you haven’t been keeping score, the individuals in the above photo have either been hanged, or soon will hang, at the hands of the cowards who call themselves the Iraqi government. Just five years ago, these martyrs were running an efficient government in Iraq, despite the embargo still in place. Their Iraq was peaceful. The streets at night in Baghdad were alive with people enjoying life. Street musicians and artists exhibited their talents while patrons ate delicious meals in the many restaurants. Gasoline was readily available and cost about one or two cents to fill up a car. I’m not lying: Baghdad was once like this. It is easy to understand that to today’s Iraqis a peaceful and beautiful Baghdad is so far removed from reality that they can’t comprehend that only five years ago Baghdad residents did not take their lives in their own hands just by opening a door to go to the street. The individuals in the photo kept Iraq free and sovereign…

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HADITHA: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
And Disinformation
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
AP reported on 20 October that two servicemen will face court martials. “Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani faces charges of dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order on allegations that he mishandled the aftermath of the Nov. 19, 2005… Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, was ordered to face a court-martial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.” Involuntary manslaughter? On 22 June 2006, I published The Haditha Doctor and The Media Dissemblers. This research covered the story of the murders in Haditha and explored the sordid media disinformation as well as their wealthy funders….

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Anywhere But Home
umkahlil
Young Palestinian refugees [refugees from Nahr Al-Bared Refugee Camp] rest on mattresses in a school classroom in Beddawi [Refugee Camp]. Said a seventy-year old Palestinian woman who is leaving the camp: “I am relieved that we are leaving, but where do we go now?” Maybe she’ll go to Brazil. At least one hundred Palestinian refugees who were living in Iraq because they were ethnically cleansed from Palestine have been resettled in Brazil while 237 Brazilian Jews immigrated to historic Palestine in 2004. If one is Jewish, one becomes an automatic citizen upon arrival in historic Palestine, no matter from where one comes. But if one is a Palestinian refugee, one of 7.2 million due to the establishment of the so-called “Jewish” state on top of Palestine, one may, if one’s lucky, escape a refugee camp on Jordan’s border, and go to Brazil….

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US: Raid of Baghdad’s Sadr City Kills 49
STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
The U.S. military said its forces killed an estimated 49 militants during a dawn raid to capture an Iranian-linked militia chief in Baghdad’s Sadr City enclave, one of the highest tolls for a single operation since President Bush declared an end to active combat in 2003. Iraqi police and hospital officials, who often overstate casualties, reported only 15 deaths including three children. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all the dead were civilians….

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Syria Shuts Main Exit From War for Iraqis
THANASSIS CAMBANIS, NYTimes
Long the only welcoming country in the region for Iraqi refugees, Syria has closed its borders to all but a small group of Iraqis and imposed new visa rules that will legally require the 1.5 million Iraqis currently in Syria to return to Iraq. The change quietly went into effect on Oct. 1. Syrian officials have often threatened to stem the flow of refugees over the past eight months, but until now have backed down after pleas from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. For more than a year, 2,000 to 4,000 Iraqis have fled into Syria every day, according to United Nations officials. On the last four days that the border remained open, the officials said, 25,000 Iraqis crossed into Syria….

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Declaration of the Arab Nationalist List on the US Senate Resolution on the Partition of Iraq.
The Arab Nationalist list
The Arab Nationalist list condemns in the strongest possible terms the resolution passed by the US Senate on 26 September 2007 providing for the partition of Iraq, a resolution whose framers claimed was “non binding” only because the US Senate officially has no legal jurisdiction over Iraq. The resolution, nevertheless, is a reflection of the practical actions that have been underway on the ground since the occupation in 2003 aimed at the partition of Iraq and of the areas surrounding it, for Iraq is not suspended in a vacuum. This resolution also reflects the agreement of all the main circles in the American ruling elite for the continuation of the American plan for global hegemony, and at the same time for the Zionist plan to split up the Arab Nation, a plan that has been expressly laid out in Zionist documents and studies since the 1950s….

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Iraq’s al-Maliki takes jab at Sunni vice president over prison visits
Associated Press
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in an apparent jab at Iraq’s Sunni Arab vice president, said Saturday that he will no longer permit “politically motivated” visits to the country’s jails by government officials. Tariq al-Hashemi, a harsh critic of the Shiite al-Maliki, has been calling for the release of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab security detainees who had not been charged with specific crimes. Accompanied by TV camera crews, he has been touring the country’s jails in recent weeks. Pan-Arab satellite television stations have extensively covered his visits, airing interviews with inmates complaining of torture, poor conditions and pleading innocence. “We will not permit politically motivated visits by government officials to prisons,” an official statement quoted al-Maliki as saying during a meeting with Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the U.S. deputy commander of detainee operations in Iraq…

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Legal battle begins over Iraqi death
Iraqi teen’s family says he was tortured and killed by British soldiers
RAYMOND HAINEY, Scotsman
THE family of a 17-year-old Iraqi has lodged papers at the High Court claiming Scottish troops tortured and killed him while in custody at an army detention centre. Hamid Al-Sweady was said to be uninjured after he was detained following a gun battle between insurgents and a unit from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. But in papers filed yesterday, his family, which is fighting for a public inquiry, claims his corpse bore marks of torture and hanging after it was handed over to relatives a day later (…) The gunfight, which began when an Argylls’ patrol unit was ambushed on the main road between Basra and Amara in the south of Iraq in May 2004, ended with two soldiers slightly wounded and at least 14 Iraqis dead. The next day, soldiers removed bodies from the battlefield and arrested a number of people, taking them all to their base near Amara. Among them, the family claims, was the teenager, who was said to be studying for exams nearby when the battle broke out. It is not known how he died, but his body was given to relatives for burial a day later. Roz Campion, of Public Interest Lawyers, which is acting for Iraqi families, said Mr Al- Sweady’s uncle, Khuder, a hospital laboratory scientist, saw the corpse of his nephew after it was handed over for burial. His witness statement, lodged at the court, claims the corpse had a bullet wound as well as marks of ill-treatment and hanging (…) ACCOR! DING to witness statements lodged with the High Court, several Iraqi bodies collected by British troops following the battle and handed back later bore marks consistent with mutilation…

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The 160,000 American troops in occupied Iraq today are 160,000 too many
Kaleem Omar
…So now we’re expected to believe that what motivates the US and Britain in their invasion and occupation of Iraq is Iraqi “security concerns.” In fact, of course, it is the US occupation of Iraq that is the cause of the violence, the ever-growing tally of deaths and the chaos into which the country has descended. Contrary to the Bush administration’s propaganda, what is being witnessed in Iraq today is its deconstruction, not its reconstruction. Even in Baghdad, a large chunk of the population has been reduced to drinking raw sewage water….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 20 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 7:45pm Baghdad time Saturday night,the Yaqen News Agency reported that the Muhammad al-Fatih Army, an Iraqi Resistance organization, had issued a communiqué in which it announced that it had blown up a US armored vehicle and shelled a US headquarters in ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah, a suburb located 7km southwest of al-Fallujah (which is 60km west of Baghdad). Yaqen reported that one unit of the Muhammad al-Fatih Army blew up and destroyed a US armored vehicle on the highway near al-Fallujah. Meanwhile, a second unit of the Muhammad al-Fatih Army in ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah shelled the US base in the area with mortars, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. No information on the nature or extent of US casualties was available….

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ONGOING PALESTINIAN DISPOSESSION
Desert Peace
Last Friday’s Haaretz newspaper in Israel had an interesting Op Ed by Danny Rubinstein who wrote in part: “ The deliberate settling of Jews in the heart of East Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods is an unacceptable act of incitement. Thirty years ago Mohammed Said Burkan wanted to buy a house in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and his request was denied. He turned to the High Court of Justice, and Justice Haim Cohen, who rejected his request, determined that there was no discrimination in the fact that the Jews would have a quarter of their own, as in the past. “Each quarter and its ethnic group,” wrote the justice. After the state denied Burkan, why shouldn’t the Arab neighborhoods remain Arab? The settlers of Elad on the outskirts of the village of Silwan acquired mainly houses and land purchased at the time by Baron Rothschild. The same is being done by similar associations in East Jerusalem, which locate land and assets purchased before 1948 by Jews and demand ownership of them. The Arabs, on the other hand, cannot demand assets they owned in Jerusalem?s Katamon neighborhood, in Jaffa, in Haifa and all over Israel, because in the 1950s the Knesset passed a retroactive law that is far from being a credit to our law books, and that prevents Arabs from receiving their property.” And people in Israel wonder why we are considered a racist state!…

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Report says buildup in Iraq gained little
U.S. military, civilian officials warn progress will require years of work
David Wood | Baltimore Sun reporter
Despite hopes that the U.S. military “surge” in Iraq would encourage economic and political headway and sap the strength of the insurgency, very little lasting progress has been achieved, according to a new U.S. report. The study, based on the assessments of dozens of U.S. military and civilian officials working at local levels across Iraq, runs counter to the optimistic forecasts by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker….

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U.S. force raids IIP headquarters in Baghdad
Voices of Iraq
A U.S. force raided the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) on Saturday and ransacked it for four hours before leaving the place in total chaos, the IIP said. “The raid was not the first. Several offices of the party were raided on frail pretexts and groundless allegations,” the party, which is led by Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi, said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The IIP is one of the main components in the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) bloc, whose ministers quit the government of (Shiite) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in protest against its policies and failure to meet some IAF demands…

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Ex-top envoy calls Iraqi government a failure
Aram Roston, NBC News Investigative Unit
A principal architect of Iraq’s interim constitution, who resigned in August as one of the country’s top diplomats, has laid out a devastating critique of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the U.S. occupation, telling NBC News that, functionally, “there is no Iraqi government.” The diplomat, Feisal Amin Istrabadi, said in his first interview since stepping down as Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations that “this government has got to go.” When he resigned, Istrabadi, a U.S.-born lawyer who lobbied for the U.S. invasion and was the principal legal drafter of Iraq’s interim constitution, said he was leaving because it was time for fresh ideas after having served three years at the United Nations….

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Iraqi oil output likely to drop, expert says
Azzaman
Iraq’s oil production is not stable and all indications are that it is going to fall in the absence of new investments and overhaul of present producing fields, according to Mohammed al-Zaini. Zaini is one of Iraq’s most known oil experts and his predictions have proved correct in the past. His criticisms of the draft Oil and Gas Law are now taken up by Iraqi groups opposing the legislation….

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Israel: Government Blocks Medical Evacuations from Gaza
Denials, Delays Cause at Least Three Deaths
Human Rights Watch
Israel is arbitrarily blocking, delaying and harassing people with emergency medical problems who need to leave the Gaza Strip for urgent care, Human Rights Watch said today. At least three patients denied exit permits have died since June, and others have lost limbs or sight due to injuries and disease that have gone without proper treatment. Despite its 2005 disengagement, Israel maintains substantial control of Gaza’s borders – land, air and sea. Since June 2007, when Hamas forcibly seized power in Gaza, Israel has made it increasingly difficult for medical supplies to get into Gaza and for any of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents to get out, even when they urgently need medical treatment. “Israel is punishing sick civilians as a way to hurt Hamas, and that’s legally and morally wrong,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza despite disengagement, and thus has a legal obligation to facilitate medical care to the greatest extent possible.”….

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Jerusalemites stage sit-in against IOA demolition of Palestinian home
Palestinian Information Center
Dozens of Palestinian Jerusalemites staged a solidarity sit-in on Friday before the house of a Palestinian citizen in occupied Jerusalem to protest the Israeli higher court’s decision sanctioning the demolition of his home. Majed Abu Aisha, the house owner, said that the court had turned down his appeal against demolishing his home and set Sunday 21/10/2007 as a date for knocking it down. He charged that the ruling was passed despite obtaining approval of the construction committee but the Israeli occupation municipality’s prosecutor cancelled the committee’s approval and insisted on flattening his house…

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Israeli forces demolish electricity transformer in northern Gaza
Ma’an News
Israeli forces completely demolished the main electricity transformer in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday evening. Local residents of northern Gaza reported spending Friday night completely immersed in darkness after the destruction of the transformer which supplies power to the area. Eyewitnesses stated that an Israeli tank launched a shell towards the transformer located near the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun…

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Bipartisan Perversity: Rebuking the Truth, Mocking the Dead
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
Here’s how it works in the fightin’ progressive liberal anti-war Democratic majority in Congress: if you speak the actual truth about George W. Bush’s murderous war crime in Iraq, you get slapped down. Pelosi Rebukes Stark for Iraq Comments (AP) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked a fellow San Francisco Bay-area liberal Friday for what she said were “inappropriate” comments about Iraq during a congressional debate. During a debate on children’s health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”…

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Um Nidal – “ Mother of the Palestinian Struggle”
Interview with Um Nidal ( Meriam Farhat )
Hiyam Noir & Khaled Safi, PalestineFreeVoice
…As for the sons were martyred, I generally consider all sons of the Islamic movement to be mine. My beloved and I missed them all, but my children were three. I have six children, three of them were martyred, where still the three sons alive fight as soldiers of Allah (Mujahideen), to follow their brothers path, besides I consider the fourth martyr, my son in law, the martyr Imad Abbas, is my son.Mohammed Fathi Farhat, 19 years old, was the first martyr and after him the oldest, 32-year-old, Nidal Fathi Farahat (Nidal = struggle).The third was Rawad Fathi Farhat, 17 years old Nidal and Rawad, targeted in assassination process, while Muhammad went to break in a settlement….

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War News for Saturday, October 20, 2007
Iraq today
BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb killed a man and wounded another in al Salam district, western Baghdad, police said. A roadside bomb and small arms fire killed one U.S. soldier and wounded another in southern Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said. Six bodies were found in Baghdad over the past 24 hours, police said. A roadside bomb killed one dustman and wounded three in Ghadir district, southeastern Baghdad, police said. One civilian was killed and two others wounded in an IED explosion inside a sedan car in AL Tobchi neighborhood north east Baghdad around 3,15 pm. 12 policemen killed, wounded, 34 gunmen arrested in Baghdad….

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