[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 07 Feb 2006 - Part One]

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Interview by Karen Button An Interview with George Galloway Karen Button ...Iraqis know that the imperial powers and Israel want to break Iraq, because they don’t want to see any strong Arab country. An Arab country with a population with water, with oil, with gas, with educated people, with a sense of itself as a nation…they don’t want to see such an Arab country. They want to break Iraq and the Iraqis know this! If I have one message for the Iraqi people, it’s to stay at one people! Don’t allow the enemy to break Iraq!... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20382 The Denmark Cartoons Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead ...Has it all happened innocuously and accidentally or is it a deliberate attempt towards an ulterior motive? To answer this question let us go back in time to May 2005. Only four months before the crisis, between May 5 to May 8, 2005, a group of powerful men from today’s finance, industry and politics huddled together in the warm and cozy rooms of the 5-star Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Germany. Outside the hotel, private and state guards patrolled with automatic weapons and sniffer dogs. The gray Bavarian skies rained on. This secretive cabal of powerful men otherwise goes by the name of Bilderberg Group (a simple Google query will throw up thousands of results). The Bilderberg Group is the only private international organization that Time magazine rated 10 for secrecy on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being most secret). So what do the defamatory cartoons have to do with the Bilderbergs?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20377 Attempting to Defraud the Nation Into War Congressman John Conyers ...In sum, a new Downing Street Memo exists -- which my staff was chasing down but was unable to obtain for inclusion in "The Constitution in Crisis." The Memo says the following, according to the Guardian: "Mr Bush told the Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'. Mr Bush added: 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]'." What was really going on here? If Saddam shot down a U.S. spy plane, was the President set to claim that he had actually shot down a U.N. plane in an effort to gain world support? Is there any other reasonable explanation than that? If so, it shows that -- at the highest levels on the United States government -- previously undisclosed attempts to deceive the American people, the Congress, and the entire world into war... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20395 The Hillary and George Show Partners in War Joshua Frank There aren’t many elected officials in Washington who want to throw the gantlet down on Iran more than Hillary Clinton. The New York Senator believes the president has been too soft on the militant Islamic country, claiming that Bush has played down the threat of a nuclear-armed Tehran. "I believe we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," Clinton told an audience at Princeton University on January 18... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20394 IRAQ: Children's mental health affected by insecurity, say specialists IRIN The Association of Psychologists of Iraq (API) has released a report stating that the US-led invasion and occupation of the country have greatly affected the psychological development of many Iraqi children (...) More than 1,000 children were interviewed countrywide over the past four months for the study, the findings of which were released on 5 February. According to Abdullah, the survey was undertaken after a noticeable increase in the number of children seeking psychological counselling, many of whom were found to have learning difficulties. "It was incredible how strong the results were," said Abdullah. "The only things they have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the US occupation."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20393 Cities and State Parties Pass Impeachment Resolutions David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org The past month has seen a burst of resolutions supporting impeachment in city councils, state democratic parties, and even chapters of Democrats Abroad. On January 6, the City Council of Arcata, Calif., passed a resolution demanding the impeachment or resignation of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, citing violations of international and constitutional law. On January 15, the Executive Committee of Democrats Abroad France unanimously passed a resolution calling upon Congress to determine whether impeachable offenses have been committed by the Bush/Cheney Administration and if necessary to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20396 Ex-U.N. Inspector: Decision Already Made To Attack Iran Brandon Garcia The former U.N. weapons inspector who said Iraq disarmed long before the U.S. invasion in 2003 is warning Americans to prepare for a war with Iran. "We just don't know when, but it's going to happen," Scott Ritter said to a crowd of about 150 at the James A. Little Theater on Sunday night. Ritter described how the U.S. government might justify war with Iran in a scenario similar to the buildup to the Iraq invasion. He also argued that Iran wants a nuclear energy program, and not nuclear weapons. But the Bush administration, he said, refuses to believe Iran is telling the truth... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20392 Interview with Samir Khader, Program Editor for Al-Jazeera Dahr Jamail On 1 February 2006 in Doha, Qatar, I interviewed Mr. Samir Khader, Program Editor for Al-Jazeera Channel. Mr. Khader was a key personality in the highly acclaimed documentary "Control Room" about Al-Jazeera. I asked him questions about his channel, Bush’s plans to bomb Al-Jazeera, present and future goals of Al-Jazeera, Iraq and the state of journalism... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20391 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 7 February 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice n a dispatch posted at 11:25am Mecca time Tuesday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that fighting had been raging for about half an hour between Iraqi Resistance fighters and US troops in the al-Mu'allimin neighborhood in the middle of ar-Ramadi, some 110km west of Baghdad. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the Resistance fighters were armed with shoulder fired rocket launchers and locally upgraded S5K and RPG7 rockets and rocket propelled grenades in addition to light and medium weapons. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported a member of the Resistance in the rear lines supplying the Resistance fighters in the al-Mal'ab neighborhood as saying that the Resistance had damaged an American Apache helicopter that was attempting to rocket a group of fighters... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20390 Yet Another Bush Lie Robert Parry, Consortium News George W. Bush has assured Americans that they can relax about his warrantless wiretapping because the program is reviewed by lots of lawyers and intelligence professionals. What he doesn’t say is that officials who object too much find themselves isolated, ridiculed and pushed out of their jobs. For instance, when Deputy Attorney General James Comey refused to recertify the spying program in March 2004 – while Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital – Bush gave Comey a derisive nickname, as "Cuomey" or "Cuomo" after New York’s former liberal Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo, Newsweek has reported... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20389 Flemming Rose and the Straussian Art of Provocation Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire As suspected, and claimed on this blog over the weekend, the inflammatory anti-Muslim cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were a deliberate provocation designed to outrage and incite Muslims and thus engender support in Europe and America for the manufactured "clash of civilizations" engineered by the Straussian neocons. As Christopher Bollyn writes for the American Free Press, the neocon operative behind the cartoon scheme is Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who has "has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons." Rose "traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares 'militant Islam’ with fascism and communism," Bollyn reveals... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20388 Following Orders is No Excuse Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man" PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS "A hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council." That is how Secretary of State General Colin Powell's February 2003 Iraq WMD speech to the UN was described last Friday (Feb. 3) on PBS by one who ought to know, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary Powell. In a February 2005 interview with Barbara Walters on ABC News "20/20" program, Powell himself declared his UN Iraq speech to be a blot on his reputation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20387 Cartoonish conspiracies Xymphora You know that it has hit the fan when you start to see alternative conspiracy theories in an attempt to deflect attention from the real conspiracy. There are at least two: 1. the Saudis stirred up the cartoon issue in the Muslim world in an attempt to deflect attention away from the deaths that occurred during the Hajj; and 2. Danish Imams created the controversy by spreading the cartoons to the Middle East. Juan Cole takes care of the Saudi conspiracy by considering the timing issues in how the protests arose. In fact, if we look at the timing issues, we can see how the real conspirators, who were all non-Muslim Europeans, worked. The intention was to provoke the kind of response in the Middle East that we are seeing now... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20386 Bush proposes $2.8 trillion budget to boost military spending and slash social programs Kate Randall, WSWS President Bush sent a $2.77 trillion budget plan to Congress on Monday that includes record spending for the military and cuts funding for a wide range of social programs. Included is $65 billion in cuts to entitlement programs over the next five years, more than half of this from Medicare. Bush is also seeking to make his first-term tax cuts permanent. The plan is in line with the agenda set forth by the president in his State of the Union address last week—to boost funds for the "war on terror" and domestic policing and slash federal spending on programs relied on by working Americans, retirees and the poor... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20385 An American tragedy—the plight of the US war wounded James Cogan, WSWS One of the terrible legacies of the criminal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is the number of maimed, sick or traumatised former US soldiers—many of them just in their twenties—who will require medical assistance for the rest of their lives. For political reasons, the scope of the tragedy is barely being reported despite the impact it is having on a significant layer of young men and women, their families and communities. Due to improvements in surgical techniques, medicine, body armour and transportation, only nine percent of American casualties in Iraq die from their wounds, compared with 17 percent in Vietnam and 23 percent during World War II. The official US death toll since November 2001 stood at 2,513 as of February 7—261 deaths in Afghanistan and 2,252 deaths in Iraq. The official wounded number stood at 17,096—676 in Afghanistan and 16,420 in Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20384 GI Special 4B6: "My Brother's Body Was Left To Rot" - Febraury 7, 2006 Thomas F. Barton ...On August 15th, 2005, my brother, Sgt. Paul A. Saylor of the 48th Brigade, 108th Scout Division lost his life while fighting for our country in Iraq. A HUMVEE he was in accidentally rolled off the road and fell down an embankment into a canal. He was knocked unconscious and drowned. Paul was 21. He was, is, and always will be a hero like every other soldier fighting for America. Upon his return home my family was told that my brother's body would not be viewable. We were told he was non-viewable due to injuries sustained from the accident. This was not true. We asked our funeral director to open Paul's casket and see if there was any way we could view him to say our last goodbyes. He notified us that there was no way he could repair or cover the damage done to Paul due to neglect and no refrigeration. Paul was non-viewable not because of injuries he sustained, but because our United States Army failed to care for his body... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20383 Four Camp Lejeune Marines killed in two bomb attacks Associated Press Four Marines with units based at Camp Lejeune were killed by roadside bombings in western Iraq's volatile Anbar province, the military said Tuesday. Three Marines were killed by a bomb blast Monday in Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad, according to a military statement. The victims were assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit that has operated in Anbar province since mid-December with an Iraqi Army battalion... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20373 Bush and Blair's Secret Pact Peter Rothberg, The Nation A new memo leaked to the British media last week asserts that George Bush and Tony Blair agreed in January 2003 to go to war in Iraq--not March 2003, as they insist. It also suggests that the leaders knew there was no legitimate case for war, and that Blair told Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality. Most shocking, it reveals that Bush was so desperate to provoke a war that he proposed painting US planes to look like UN aircrafts and flying them low over Iraq in hopes of inciting an Iraqi attack (...) As with the Downing Street Minutes last spring, international media are covering this story thoroughly, while US counterparts are sitting on their hands. Public education and outrage have forced the US media to pay attention before. Let's do it again!... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20397 The Secret World of Stephen Cambone Rumsfeld's Enforcer JEFFREY ST. CLAIR The grave fellow in the business suit sitting between two uniformed generals at the witness table during the senate hearings about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib was Dr. Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, known throughout the Pentagon as Donald Rumsfeld's "chief henchman". In his testimony before the committee, Cambone was unapologetic and almost as dismissive as the ridiculous Sen. James Inhofe about the global disgust which erupted over the abuse and murder of Iraqi prisoners of war. Cambone, an apex neo-con and veteran of the Project for the New American Century, evinced disdain not only for the senatorial inquiry but also at a squeamish Lieutenant General Antonio Taguba, who sat next him, looking as if he suspected that he might well be the next one leashed to Cambone's bureaucratic pillory... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20378 Soldier pays for armor # Army demanded $700 from city man who was wounded Eric Eyre The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood. A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again. But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20399 The Muhammad caricatures: Freedom of suppression Jan Oberg, transnational.org Jyllands-Posten's drawings are caricatures with a tendency. They associate the Prophet with terrorism, criminality and repression of women. None of them could possibly serve dialogue, mutual understanding or much needed public education between Danes and the Muslims anywhere. They are ill-willed. The intensity of the negative reaction may be surprising. But seen in the context of our contemporary, globalizing world, their publication was both thoughtless and purposeless. It reveals a mind-boggling deficit in general education and good (journalistic) manners... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20379 www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English.   You receive this newsletter because you subscribed it. If you think it was an abuse, or simply if you don't want to receive it any more, click here to unsubscribe from the newsletter.