American Style “Democratization”
Ghali Hassan, www.globalresearch.ca
…The US invaded and occupied Iraq because: 1. Iraq was a defenceless nation, destroyed by 13-years long genocidal sanctions and constant US-British bombing campaigns. 2. Iraq is a resources-rich and strategically vital nation, and 3. Iraq was and could be a formidable counter to Israel‚s Zionist expansion. Hence, Iraq was the preferred target for the soon to be US president long before the 9/11 attacks on the US. Also by attacking Iraq, the USintended to send a bullying message to other nations (…) The war perpetuated by the Anglo-American axis have caused the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, destroyed the Iraqi state and the fabric of the Iraqi society. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children as young as 12 years old, are languishing in hundreds of US-run prison camps and subject to unrestrained torture and abuse by US forces…
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The Vietnam Solution
Robert Dreyfuss, Tompaine.com
Comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are coming fast and furious now, so let’s consider one more. There is an apt parallel between the way we got out of Vietnam and the way that we will get out of Iraq˜sooner or later. Public opinion is turning sharply against the war, even though mainstream Democrats and most Republicans are mostly sticking with the victory-in-Iraq strategy. The conditions in Iraq and here at home are strikingly similar to those we saw surrounding Vietnam at the end of the Johnson administration (…) Once again, it is obvious to all˜again, including our intelligence agencies˜that the war in Iraq is lost. Once again, like the Tet Offensive, the recent wave of bloody assaults across Iraq has made it clear that the resistance, far from being in its “last throes,” is not being defeated…
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Bush’s Speech: Let’s Count the Lies
David Swanson
“Terrorists on streets of Baghdad are followers of the same ideology,” Bush said, that produced the attacks of ˆ you guessed it ˆ September 11, 2001. But ˆ do we really still have to say this? ˆ the regime that Bush changed in Iraq had exactly nothing to do with those attacks (…).”We fight today,” Bush said tonight, “because the terrorists want to attack our cities and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. We will fight them there, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.” So, the disaster that Bush has created in Iraq is now the justification for having created it. But who is this universal group of “terrorists” fighting this global war?
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BUSH WAS WARNED BY GENERALS NOT TO “STAY THE COURSE”
Grace Reid
We found the smoking bullet in the smoking gun of the Downing Street Memos, that being the massive pre-war bombing campaign intended to provoke Saddam into war. Now here is the “massive intelligence failure.” Bush and Rumsfeld had the intelligence and it came from the Pentagon. But they failed to read it, and they failed to understand it. George Bush himself is the “massive intelligence failure.‰ This following is one you can bank on. It is the Pentagon’s own Defence Science Board Report Strategic Communications, December 2004…
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Iraq warns of refugee disaster in al-Qaim
UPI
Iraq’s health ministry is warning of a human refugee disaster as thousands of families flee the Iraqi city of al-Qaim, an Arab newspaper reported Tuesday.
The United Arab Emirates’ al-Khaleej daily newspaper quoted Iraq’s deputy health minister Jalil al-Shammari as warning of starvation among the refugees who fled and continue to flee al-Qaim and surrounding areas to avoid massive U.S. military operations against suspected insurgents (…) U.S. and Iraqi forces have banned ambulances and humanitarian aid from entering al-Qaim city, and most of the refugees are suffering from a shortage of food, water and medicine, al-Shammari said…
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Those “Meetings” with Insurgents
More Rumsfeld Lies
MIKE WHITNEY, CounterPunch
…When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his scheduled appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows he confirmed that the alleged meetings had taken place saying, “Well, the first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time.” Later, he would reinforce this suggestion on Meet the Press when he was asked whether there had been “two meetings between Iraqi and U.S. officials and some members of the insurgency.” Rumsfeld responded, “I think there have probably been many more than that.” It was all lies…
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Tomgram: The Immoral Relativists of the Bush Administration
Tom Engelhardt
…Let’s throw in just a few other moments of high Bush postmodernism: No administration in memory has been quicker to lie in its own interests and never stop doing so, no matter what. (For instance, to this day the President never ceases to push the absurd link between the war in Iraq and the September 11th attacks). None in recent memory has been quicker to lie about or smear its opponents, or had, in political hand-to-hand combat, a nastier, sometimes filthier mouth, publicly (as Karl Rove proved in recent statements) or privately…
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Twelve more years
Pepe Escobar
If only those “axis of evil” fellas were a little more … cooperative. In Iraq, the Sunni Arab resistance insists on being on a roll, thus disturbing the Pentagon’s plans of quietly building its 14 military bases. In Iran, the new game has not even started, but Tehran and Washington are already at each other’s throats…
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The Last Throes
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Jack Random, www.dissidentvoice.org
…We are not losing the war; we have lost it. Any member of Congress who does not join the cry for immediate withdrawal (even as we negotiate with the insurgent leaders) must feel the pangs of popular uprising. You are in the last throes of your reign. We must not allow the party of opposition to offer up a softer version of pro-war. If the occupation is not over by the midterm elections, there is only one issue and it is not social security. As the weeks roll by and the body counts rise, the last throes seem more and more like the light at the end of the tunnel and the light at the end of the tunnel appears more and more like a desert mirage. Iraq is Vietnam. Look it up in the history books…
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Iraq needs $15bn to fix water supply
Aljazeera.net
…Liqaa Maki, an Iraq analyst, told Aljazeera.net that the Iraqi government and foreign donors must share the blame for water shortages. “In over half the cities and towns in Iraq there hasn’t been a single explosion in more than two years, but in these places there are still major problems,” he said. “The fact is that we are just not seeing any real investment in the water infrastructure (…) How can the government blame the resistance for these problems when it is obviously a result of bad management and a lack of investment?”…
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Iraq needs $15bn to fix water supply
Aljazeera.net
…Liqaa Maki, an Iraq analyst, told Aljazeera.net that the Iraqi government and foreign donors must share the blame for water shortages. “In over half the cities and towns in Iraq there hasn’t been a single explosion in more than two years, but in these places there are still major problems,” he said. “The fact is that we are just not seeing any real investment in the water infrastructure (…) How can the government blame the resistance for these problems when it is obviously a result of bad management and a lack of investment?”…
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ZERO HOUR June 28, 2005; 8PM EST
Grace Reid
…When reckoning the cost of the illegal war in Iraq, we count 1,700 US killed in action, more than 25,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and a cost to US taxpayers of something to the tune of $200 Billion. But there are more costs people don’t consider, especially the American people. But there are some other costs. Ireland pays 10,000 Euros a day for military overflights. Ireland has paid grandly for the US use of Shannon Airport for its illegal CIA torture flights — incomplete violation of our neutrality…
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EU Parliamentarians’ inquiry regarding credibility of Iraq elections – update
peacepalestine
…The comment of EU Parliamentarian Giulietto Chiesa to the response of the Council to the Written Interrogation ˆ 8 June: The Council is “gladdened‰, but does not respond to the questions. And, when it does respond, it does so by lying. It is easy to comprehend that whoever has written the response would like to say that those elections were approved of very much, despite the fact that they were incompatible withany of the parameters of validity that the European Union usually applies to elections. Then, despite the evidence, and of any sense of decency, stretches so far as to affirm that the elections were “in conformance‰ to international norms. It is significant that there was no precise response even to the specific matter of the 31.5 million Euro financed for the false electoral campaign…
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Election of Ahmadinejad Custom-Made for Neocons
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire
For the Straussian neocons, the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran is Christmas in June. It firms up their argument that the country is trapped in a mullah-instigated vapor-lock and in order for “democracy‰ (i.e., neocons and neolib carpet-baggers allowed to make the country Israel-friendly and turn off the oil burglar alarms) to prevail, invasion (or shock and awe) is the only choice, since we all know Iran‚s mullahs are obsessive-compulsive on the idea of stocking nukes. However, as William O. Beeman points out, attacking Iran, as the attack against Iraq, will be no cakewalk…
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We are Mujahideen for the sake of our nation.
The Mujahideen Army General Headquarters – ICH
We confirm to you, as well as the generally known media which as usual herd behind what comes out from these war criminals and these liars by profession. They lie so often that it has become the diseases, which with god’s will, bring their end. We have not entered in any negotiations with the occupiers or anyone who represent them or the puppet government…
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Iraqi Resistance Says It Will Not Negotiate With Occupation Forces
The Mujahideen Central Command – ICH
…In the name of all the factions that fight under our command, we declare to you, that we did not in the past present or the future, and will not sit on the negotiating table with the American Occupation forces or war criminal representatives. We also declare: That we did not conduct any negotiations with any person, party or group which either came with the occupying forces or claims to represent the vision of the Iraqi people…
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Iraq lawmaker, 2 US troops killed as Bush to speak
Peter Graff, Reuters
Suicide bombers assassinated a prominent member of the Iraqi parliament and killed two U.S. soldiers on Tuesday ahead of a speech by President George W. Bush to rally Americans behind an increasingly unpopular war. Bush was expected to mark a year since Washington formally handed over sovereignty to Iraqis by calling on Americans to stay the course in a speech to the nation surrounded by troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina…
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Only 34% of Americans Say U.S. Is Winning Iraq War
Bloomberg
Only about a third of Americans say they think the U.S. and its allies are winning the war against insurgents in Iraq, the lowest level yet, according to a poll by Gallup for USA Today and Cable News Network. Just 34 percent of Americans say the coalition is winning the war against an insurgency whose attacks have claimed more than 1,000 lives since Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on April 28 named members of his cabinet. That’s down from 43 percent in February, and the lowest out of four times the question has been asked since October. Poll data was published on the Gallup web site…
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Halliburton’s Abusive Practices in Iraq Are in the Spotlight
AFP
Democrats allege that the US oil services giant Halliburton, the biggest private contractor in Iraq, used its buddy relationship with the Pentagon to run up more than 1.4 billion dollars (1.15 billlion euros) in questionable charges. The Democrats released a report in the House of Representatives alleging that low-quality service, overbilling and questionable contracts were among Halliburton’s many abuses…
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