[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 24 Mar 2006 - Part Two]

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It’s time to use the H-word Frank Pitz, Online Journal Contributing Writer The word holocaust from the Greek word holokauston, meaning "a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering." In Iraq, Bush is daily, through murder most foul, making a sacrificial offering of Iraqi men, women and children to the god of empire. Thus far the murderous Bush has sacrificed over 300,000 Iraqis upon the altar of greed. In his deranged mind Bush sees the light and the way; the light of the burning corpses of thousands of victims and the way of imperialism’s road map. The Bush administration kills with impunity. The Bush administration uses the horrific tool of genocide as the lynchpin of their foreign policy. The Bush administration follows in the footsteps of previous imperialists slogging through the blood of hundreds of thousands... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21874 Can you help me not miss them?' In Baghdad, Iraqis spoke to Nermeen Al-Mufti of life under occupation Nermeen Al-Mufti ... "At 2.30, the night of 21 January, I woke up to a blast that opened the door of our house in the Al-Huriya Al-Thaniya area, west of Baghdad. A group of American soldiers stormed in. With them was an Iraqi translator, through whom they asked me about Mohamed. I pointed to my son Jaafar, whom we call Mohamed at home. Without a single comment, they moved to where Jaafar was sleeping and shot him dead. Athir, Jaafar's 28-year-old half-brother, tried to question the translator about the reason. The response was, 'the matter has come to an end.' And when he tried to go upstairs to seek the help of their elder brother Haidar, 29, an American bullet beat him to it, killing him immediately (...) Only later did the translator ask me to fetch the identity cards of those killed -- only to realise that there was no Mohamed among them. He said simply, 'sorry, but we have killed them on a suspicion.' And the raiding force left. What happened had not sunk in when they came back, and to this day I still can not believe it; I have not visited the graves of my sons (...) Tell me, what should I do when I miss Jaafar and his brothers? I miss them. For how long will we keep losing our sons by mistake? Just tell me what to do. Can you help me not miss them?"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21903 GI Special 4C21 - I Risked My Life For A Lie - March 24, 2006 Thomas F. Barton ...Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, military personnel nationwide are heading back to Iraq with a cache of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications. The psychotropic drugs are a bow to a little-discussed truth fraught with implications: Mentally ill service members are being returned to combat. Officials from the Defense Department and Camp Pendleton, where some units have been to Iraq three times, said they don’t track personnel deployed while taking mental-health medication or the number diagnosed with mental illness. But medical officers for the Army and Marine Corps acknowledge that medicated service members – and those suffering combat-induced psychological problems – are returning to war. And anecdotal evidence, bolstered by the government’s own studies, suggest that the number could be significant... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21906 Ungrateful victims Lenin's Tomb The locusts stripping Iraq bare are insulted. General Sir Michael Jackson, a Bloody Sunday criminal, a Kosovo war criminal and now a loyal goon in the mobbing of Baghdad, told ITN that he was "saddened that there does not seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives". ITN arranged a phone-in programme about the release of Norman Kember and the Christian peacekeepers who were with him. The question: "Do you believe Norman Kember was right to put his life in danger for the sake of the Iraqi people? Or, do do you believe he's been irresponsible?" Such a question has its own pre-written answers. It calls upon ingrained cultural prejudices, sullen racism, resentment against do-gooders, those who have the temerity, the audacity, to actually consider the lives of Iraqis worth protecting and respecting... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21905 Occupation, year three Tourhan Al-Mufti, Al-Ahram Weekly ...On that miserable Wednesday, I was sitting before the television, following events, attempting to put distance between my thoughts and fighting between brothers and the division of Iraq. Thinking and watching, I was stunned by the sobbing of Ahmed Abdul-Ghafour Al-Samaraai, president of the Sunni Waqf (endowment). He was one of the first Iraqi notables to have reached Samaraa. Al-Samaraai was crying loudly and praying for the unity of Iraqis and a halt to civil strife. Baghdad was boiling with anger and fear. With the frequency of news of civilian victims, it became certain that President George Bush's mission -- fragmenting and destroying Iraq and sowing sectarian and ethnic strife -- had been carried out successfully. Bush granted Iraq, albeit not on a golden platter, to states that attempted, through various means, to penetrate the Iraqi interior -- even if they failed to do so... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21901 The Accepted System of Dissent War Veteran Speaks Out Mike Kress ...If we want to end the occupation of Iraq, or stop the war on Iran – if we want the power to decide our own future – we must stop focusing on a particular war, a particular president, or a particular policy. Instead, we must focus on creating a sane new world by demolishing the illusions in which we live and rewriting the rules under which we are little more than slaves. Before we can figure out how to build that new world, we must first realize that the wars, presidents, and policies we routinely oppose are part of a system wherein governments, militaries, police, and the courts work for corporations and the wealthy – not We the People. And we must recognize that our predictable, conventional methods of protest are simply figured into their cost of doing business... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21900 TALKING POINTS - EXXONMOBIL WAR BOYCOTT Consumers For Peace - EXXONMOBIL AND OTHER MAJOR OIL COMPANIES STAND TO MAKE HUGE PROFITS ON IRAQ OIL AGREEMENTS DRAFTED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT PRIOR TO THE INVASION OF IRAQ according the "Crude Designs" report published by Platform in the UK last November. It appears there there is still time for a boycott to have a positive effect, as none of these contracts have yet been signed, though it is reported that negotiations are underway with the new Iraqi government. The U.S. drafted contracts could bring the oil companies profits on investment ranging from 42% to 162% compared to the minimum of 12% return that is considered more normal. Contracted access to one of the major southern Iraq oil fields could double ExxonMobil’s oil reserves, doubling the worth of the company. In January, 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority CPA appointed former senior executives from oil companies to help set up the framework for a longer-term oil policy in Iraq, with Gary Vogler of ExxonMobil, being one of the first advisors. ExxonMobil is on the board of directors of the International Tax & Investment Centre (ITIC), with is seeking Production Sharing Agreements in Iraq. Before the war started, ExxonMobil was in the hunt for Iraqi oil and it continues this quest during the occupation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21904 Know your enemy Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly The litany of horrors visited upon Iraq during its three-year long occupation is rarely better expressed than in the words of Iraqis forced into exile. In a statement signed by a group of Iraqi intellectuals abroad, Iraqis spoke of a "brutal military occupation" which "killed and maimed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, blighted the lives of an entire population and spoiled their environment, shattered our country's physical infrastructure, its civic institutions and its life-support systems, assaulted our culture and desecrated sacred sanctuaries, violated people with deviant cruelty and racist intent, implanted mercenaries and death squads, and encouraged corruption and sedition that threaten us as a people"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21899 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 24 March 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...In a dispatch posted at 11:30am Mecca time Friday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that pro-American Badr Brigade Shi'i sectarian militia have distributed leaflets threatening the Palestinian refugee community in northern Baghdad’s al-Hurriyah district with death if they do not leave Iraq. The Baghdad correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported from inside the Palestinian neighborhood that dozens of leaflets were found by homes on Friday morning after being dropped there during Thursday night. The leaflets demand that the Palestinians leave Iraq within 10 days or they will be killed... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21898 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2006 Today in Iraq Danish soldier killed by IED near Basra. Iraqi troops and security forces detained 169 insurgents and seized weapons caches in several cities, the government said. US soldier killed in action in Baghdad (...) Suicide car bomber blows up near passing US convoy in Fallujah, wounding several soldiers. Iraqi army killed a gunman and arrested three others in Mahaweel. Caches of weapons also reportedly found in Mahaweel. Canadian military personnel have been serving in Iraq since day one. In the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it's no secret that small numbers of Canadian military personnel are embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq as part of regular military exchange commitments between the two countries... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21897 The Gruesome Reality of Operation Swarmer Eman Ahmad Khamas, CommonDreams.org As I have traveled around the US on speaking tour organized by the women’s peace group CODEPINK, I realize how support for the war in Iraq has eroded—even among former supporters. George Bush, seeing his approval rating plummeting to below 40%, is worried and has launched a PR offensive to shore up support. In his recent speeches, he has complained that violent images on TV have undermined public support. So when the US military launched a massive air and ground assault on towns near Samarra, dubbed Operation Swarmer, the Pentagon barred even imbedded reporters. The American public was told that Operation Swarmer was a successful example of US and Iraqi forces working together to wipe out insurgents, but they saw nothing of the effects of the assault on the ground. But while the public is fed rosy propaganda, the reality is far more gruesome... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21896 Battle for Baghdad 'has already started' Patrick Cockburn The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest. "The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21902 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.