[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 27 Mar 2006 - Part two]

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Time to Talk War Crimes Robert Parry In a world where might did not make right, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and their key enablers would be in shackles before a war crimes tribunal at the Hague, rather than sitting in the White House, 10 Downing Street or some other comfortable environs in Washington and London. The latest evidence of their war crimes was revealed in secret British minutes of an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 31, 2003, when Bush, Blair and their top aides chillingly discussed their determination to invade Iraq, though still hoping to provoke the Iraqis into some violent act that would serve as political cover... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22003 What Bush and Blair Told the Press After Key 2003 Meeting on Iraq Greg Mitchell A front-page New York Times article this morning about a meeting between President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan 31, 2003, is receiving substantial international attention. It gets even more interesting when contrasted with what the two men told the press when they emerged from the closed-door session. The Times article reviews for the first time the full text of a confidential memo of a two-hour meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. The memo makes clear that the White House was bent on attacking Iraq two months later no matter what, "even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons," writes Don Van Natta, Jr. (...) While continuing to emphasize the need to attack Iraq because of the threat of WMDs, the two men not only questioned the existence of WMDs but privately agreed this was not the cause for an invasion in any case. So: What did the two leaders say when they completed their meeting and went out to meet the press that day?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22004 Shameless BBC Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream Dear Bridget Kendall, "There's still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?" (Bridget Kendall, BBC Six O'Clock News, Monday, March 20, 2006). According to Les Roberts (Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the world’s top epidemiologists and lead author of the Lancet report) there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006). Then there are American, British and other countries’ soldiers. In their thousands. Disagreement?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22001 Iraqi woman's Baghdad blog in the running for £30,000 book prize John Ezard, The Guardian An anonymous Iraqi woman has become the first blog author to be in the running for a big literary prize for a book published between hard covers. Baghdad Burning, by a 26-year-old author who has won an international readership under the pen name Riverbend, is longlisted for the £30,000 Samuel Johnson award. In the list, announced today, she is up against 18 other books including Alan Bennett's latest bestseller, histories of the cold war and the great wall of China, and a biography of the 19th-century cookbook author Mrs Beeton. The Guardian carried an extract from Riverbend's title last summer... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22000 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 27 March 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org ...In a message to the Arab summit meeting set to convene in Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan on Tuesday, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warned against US plans aimed at partitioning Iraq into three mini-states, and of planning to use sectarianism to tear the Arab countries apart. The Iraqi President warned that what is happening in Iraq is not some outburst of passions, but the result of a plan that has been drawn up to split Iraq into three states: a Kurdish one in the north, a Sunni one in the center, and a Shi'i one in the south. Saddam Hussein held the US responsible for the bombing of the Shi'i Imam 'Abd al-Hadi shrine in Samarra’ on 22 February 2006, and for the campaigns of sectarian kidnapping and murder that have swept the country since... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21998 The Shiites in Power Accuse the US of "Organized Crime" Le Figaro with AFP The bloody raid conducted Sunday in north Baghdad against Shiites assembled in a mosque in the country's capital continues to elicit reactions. Shiite leaders, who suggest there were around twenty deaths, denounce an American bungle. The Unified Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition in power, describes that operation as a "massacre" and demands that the American government cede responsibility for the maintenance of order to the Iraqi government. "American forces and Iraqi Special Forces committed an odious crime when they attacked the Al-Mustapha Mosque in the Ur neighborhood," the Shiite bloc asserts in a communiqué. "It's an organized crime with serious political and security implications. It aims to incite a civil war," the Shiites insist... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21996 So You Still Think the Press is Free Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org So it took several weeks, not a year this time, for the NY Times to print information related to George W. Bush breaking the law. Yes, The NY Times, even though they ignored the first documents indicating such, finally reported about the second smoking gun memo indicating that the Bush administration intended on going to war with Iraq regardless if there was a legitimate reason for going to war. They even planed to provoke Iraq into a war. Now get this: the entire American corporate media ignored the first smoking gun memo indicating that George W. Bush lied to Congress, to the American people, to the world and to the US Military and started a war based on lies. A second piece of evidence surfaces and the New York Times ignores it for several weeks and then finally reports it... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21995 Towns, Cities Pass Resolutions Urging Impeachment David Swanson Brattleboro, Vermont, has joined nine other towns and cities, five state Democratic parties, and 19 local Democratic committees in passing resolutions urging the impeachment of President Bush and -- in most cases -- Vice President Cheney. "Hopefully if enough towns start passing these somebody will take action," Brattleboro Town Representative Dora Bouboulis told the Burlington Free Press. "It's about starting a movement and helping them have the courage to act." ImpeachPAC is working with Progressive Democrats of America and local activists to pass similar resolutions around the country, and has created a kit to assist local organizations in the task: http://www.impeachpac.org/resolutions ... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21994 Disinformation Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream "Bombing civilians is not only immoral, it's ineffective" (AC Grayling, The Guardian, Monday, March 27, 2006), reads: "No one knows how many civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. The most careful assessment, by the website Iraq Body Count, estimates at least 36,000. The true figure could be three times higher." This is factually wrong. IBC simply records the Iraqi civilians deaths reported in the English language media with an online website. On the IBC website, you may read: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media." "The most careful assessment" IS NOT "by the website Iraq Body Count" (...) "The true figure could be [NOT] three times higher" than 36,000. According to Les Roberts (Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the world’s top epidemiologists and lead author of the Lancet report) there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21993 Sending mentally ill soldiers back to Iraq: Reckless disregard for soldiers’ welfare and for Iraqi lives Stephen Soldz As the US military has difficulties recruiting and retaining soldiers for its never-ending war of occupation in Iraq, the armed services are resorting to increasingly desperate means of coping. The Stop-Loss option in soldiers’ contracts has allowed soldiers to be kept in uniform months or years after their term of service has expired. The National Guard has been sent overseas to a previously unprecedented extent. And military standards have been lowered, so that drug or alcohol abuse, pregnancy, and poor fitness no longer necessarily lead to dismissal of new recruits. Now word comes that "mentally ill" troops are being sent back to Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21991 Bush Signs Statements to Bypass Torture Ban, Oversight Rules in Patriot Act Democracy Now! ...When President Bush signed a law banning torture he quietly signed a statement saying he could bypass it. Earlier this month, Bush signed the USA Patriot Act but signed a statement that said he did not consider oversight rules binding. We speak with the Boston Globe reporter who broke the story (...) This was not the first such statement to come from the White House. When Congress passed a bill outlawing torture of detainees last year, President Bush quietly released a signing statement in which he affirmed his right to bypass the law if he felt it jeopardized national security. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said the President"s latest effort represents "nothing short of a radical effort to manipulate the constitutional separation of powers and evade accountability and responsibility for following the law"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21990 Will Caligula Bush ends up by committing suicide? Abu Assur, Al-Moharer What the white House is hiding again from the US people. Rumors, and there is no smoke without fire, tell about the US President nervous breakdown. The White house is trying its best to shore up the public image of an unpopular President, in these dark periods. Why not! The US who is able to conceal and hide its massive casualties in Iraq, is able to hide the President sinking back into alcohol.. Caligula goes on rambling! He still dares to talk about a victory strategy in Iraq.. Three years in the Iraqi cauldron and thousands of US youth have already been killed and maimed.. and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocent have been slaughtered by the US fascist army.. the fate of the most powerful superpower is still hanging in the balance within the hands of a drunkard who continues his drivels..But is the US President mental health well?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21989 GOD MADE HIM DO IT Malcom Lagauche We all know of Tony Blair’s unflinching support of George Bush and the illegal invasion of Iraq. Many people are hard-pressed to understand why the leader of the British Labour Party was so adamant about pledging British support and troops. Blair outdid even the most warmongering Conservatives in promoting war. British MP, George Galloway called Blair "Bush’s poodle." However, the actions he condoned and still stands by are not as benign as that of a poodle and its master. Last week, Blair came out with the reason he was so faithful to the Bush war agenda: God made him do it... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21987 Never Ending Funding for the Never Ending Iraq War: A Discussion of the Pending Supplemental Spending Bill Jeff Leys Once again, Congress is poised to approve "emergency" funding to prosecute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House already approved $67.5 billion on March 16, 2006-rushing the bill through the Appropriations Committee and the House floor in order to get home in time for St. Patrick's Day. The Senate Appropriations Committee held hearings on the Bush Administration's supplemental spending request on March 8, though it is yet to vote to send it to the full Senate. The full Senate is expected to vote by the end of April, and quite probably much sooner... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21985 69 Killed in Separate Outbreaks of Violence Juan Cole ...Then the US and Iraqi forces say they raided a terror cell in Adhamiyah. Adhamiyah is a Sunni district of Baghdad and is still Baath territory. But somehow the joint US-Iraqi force ended up north, at the Shiite Shaab district. They say that they took fire from Mahdi Army militiamen. But there aren't any such Mahdi Army men in Adhamiyah. I have a sinking feeling that instead of raiding a Sunni Arab building in Adhamiyah, they got disoriented and attacked a Shiite religious center in nearby Shaab instead. Iraqi television angrily showed twenty unarmed corpses on the floor of the religious center, denouncing the US for killing innocent worshippers. The US military is now saying it did not enter any mosques and that anyone killed was killed by Iraqi special ops. The Mustafa Husayniyah, however, is not a mosque and may not have been distinguishable as a religious edifice to non-Shiites... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21984 Developments in Iraq on Monday The Associated Press ...-A suicide bomber strikes an army recruiting center, killing at least 40 in front of a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base between Mosul and the ancient city of Tal Afar. - A total of 29 more bodies are found, nine with nooses around their necks. A variety of attacks with guns, bombs, mortars and rockets kill at least 12 other people - including seven who died in Baghdad when a rocket hit a building that housed the headquarters of the Shiite Fadhila party... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22008 Angered by Fatal Raid, Shiites Exit Unity Talks Richard Boudreaux and Zainab Hussein As coffins of shooting victims rolled past wailing mourners, Iraq's dominant Shiite Muslim political alliance Monday condemned the United States for a weekend raid that left at least 16 people dead in a Shiite neighborhood and said it was for now dropping out of U.S.-guided talks aimed at forming a unity government. Shiite political leaders and U.S. military commanders gave wildly contradictory accounts of the Sunday evening raid in northeast Baghdad, evidence of a growing rift between the United States and the Shiite-led government that came to power after the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22010 Two Months Later, Better Than Never, New York Times Covers White House Memo AfterDowningStreet.org We began making noise about the White House Memo almost two months ago. I don't know if the NY Times finally got mad at Bush blatantly lying or if their lawyers finally gave them the OK to publish without fear of being Dan Rathered, but for one reason or another, two months after citizens began clamoring for coverage, The New York Times has written about the White House Memo and recognized it as evidence that Bush was lying when he recently claimed he had wanted to avoid war (though, of course, the New York Times can't print the word "lying" and the word "President" in the same article)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22007 Turkey and Iran Xymphora I keep reading that American officials are hanging around Turkey, arranging for Turkish participation in the attack on Iran. This doesn’t make any sense. If Iran is attacked – and I still think there is no chance of that happening, but all the talk about it has successfully kept the price of oil up – the goal will be Iraq-style 'regime change’, followed closely by an Iraq-style, Israel-mandated break-up of the country into pieces. The north will naturally be broken off to join the new Greater Kurdistan being formed in northern Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=21997 Signs of a long US stay ahead Bases getting bigger, more elaborate Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of as many as 120 US helicopters, a ''heli-park" as good as any back in the States. At another giant base, Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King and Pizza Hut, a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations, and young bikers clogging the roads. At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22005 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. 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