[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 29 Mar 2006 - Part One]

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Another Day, Another Sorrow Fayrouz In Beaumont Two years ago, my friend and fellow Iraqi blogger Al-Baghdadi packed his bags and moved his family to Jordan. The least he knew at the time is that sadness will follow him to Jordan. Last June, thugs roaming streets of Baghdad kidnapped and later killed his younger brother. Yet, that wasn't the end of his sorrows. Yesterday morning, I received an e-mail from Al-Baghdadi informing me of more bad news: Dear Fayrouz, I really regret and sorry to tell with all the pain in the world squeezing my heart, that I had lost my older brother S., age 52, a week ago in Baghdad. He got 5 kids, the youngest is 3 yrs old. The same old story of my youngest brother M. played again. He was kidnapped from outside his house, hit on the head by the gun handle (the gang uses Glock guns that are distributed by the U.S. to the Iraqi police forces), put him in his car and run away with him in front of all people at 9am at one of the most troublesome districts of Baghdad, called Al-Shaab where the Shiite are dominant (...) People in Baghdad say that many Iranian militiamen have been operating in Baghdad under the name "revenge squads." They are responsible for killing Sunnis. An average of 30-40 Sunnis are being killed each day in Baghdad. It's a genocide. It's a massacre... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22073 Fox: Should We Torture People To Prevent Terror Attacks? Twisting logic to justify anti-American debauchery Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com Fox News continued their efforts to make jackbooted tyranny seem as normal as drinking a cup of coffee yesterday when it aired a segment asking if Zacarias Moussaoui should have been tortured in order to prevent 9/11. Cavuto stand-in David Asman acted as devil's advocate while convicted criminal Oliver North played the 'good cop' in a completely framed debate. North argued that we shouldn't torture but should use 'harsh interrogation methods'. "For example, you say, "If you don't answer me, I'm going to take you out and shoot you."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22076 A War in Search of a Justification War Supporters Still Looking for a Smoking Gun Joshua Frank, www.dissidentvoice.org On March 20, the twits at FrontPageMag.com interviewed Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, who stated without a doubt that Saddam shipped WMD off to Syria on the eve of the Iraq invasion. McInerney was referring to documents he believes prove that Saddam was hiding his horrible weapons. Of the 600 documents that have been released to the public thus far, none, I repeat none, say that Saddam shipped off his WMD to secret hiding spots. It is clear that McInerney, a Fox News [sic] commentator, and the FrontPage conspiracy nuts are desperate to find evidence that WMD existed in Iraq prior to the invasion three years ago. They are also hoping to uncover ties between bin Laden and Saddam. Many of the documents they hope will uncover these claims contain forgeries, rumors, and disinformation. In short, they aren't the most reliable sources... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22075 Iraq mosque crisis highlights Shi‘ite militia role Michael Georgy Champions of the poor or sectarian thugs? A crisis over a U.S.-backed raid on an Iraqi mosque that cost at least 16 lives has again thrust attention on a Shi'ite militia led by fiery young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mehdi Army fighters were guarding the Baghdad mosque complex at the time of Sunday's assault and shot at Iraqi troops as they approached, witnesses in the neighborhood said. "The Iraqi forces tried to enter the mosque and the Mehdi army fired at them. Iraqi forces entered the mosque and killed people," car mechanic Ali Jabber told Reuters. Sadr's aides denied the Mehdi Army was involved in the violence and said the dead were innocent worshippers... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22074 An "Alliance" of Violence Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective A disturbing trend noticeable in Iraq for quite some time now is that each aggressive Israeli military operation in the occupied territories results in a corresponding increase in the number of attacks on US forces in Iraq. One of the first instances of this was the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 2004 and the reaction it set off across Shia and Sunni, ultimately spiraling into the siege and devastation of Fallujah. Fallujah is but one example one may use to demonstrate how the ongoing use of heavy handed tactics by the US-Israel alliance is proving to be as suicidal as it is homicidal. US troops in Iraq and Israeli civilians in their homes can bear testimony to this, as they are the ones who bear the brunt. Not to mention the collateral damage in Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22072 A Message from the Baath Arab Socialist Party to the Arab Summit in Khartoum The Arab Baath Socialist Party ...We expect from the Khartoum meeting to seriously get involved into saving the unity of Iraq as a people, and as a homeland from the danger of sectarian and ethnic dismembering in order to get back its freedom, its sovereignty, and its independence and putting an end to the bloodthirsty occupation which has been always and still is the cause of all the ordeals endured by Iraq for the last three years due to the ongoing non existent security, mass detention, tortures, and rape against those freedom loving Iraqis who oppose the Occupation through pacific or national armed Resistance means. Our enduring persevering and resisting people is moaning under the Occupation burden and from its practices and those of its puppet authority which has consecrated the sectarian and the racist allotment, has smoothed the way to a sectarian loggerhead which can be of a devastating consequences, while the citizens suffer from the least basic services and from a terrifying unemployment, rampant criminality, corruption and drugs... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22079 Gunmen dressed as police kill 9 in Baghdad Omar al-Ibadi Gunmen dressed as Iraqi police commandos killed nine people in an attack on an electronics store in Baghdad on Wednesday, the latest in a series of raids targeting lucrative businesses in the capital. Witnesses said the workers, including women, were rounded up and then killed. Bodies lay on the bloodstained footpath, with blood dripping from the lower parts of the walls of the two- story home that housed the business (...) Amid a rise in sectarian killings there has also been a spate of attacks and robberies by uniformed raiders on stores, money-changers and other businesses this week. On Monday and Tuesday, a total of 35 people were abducted in four attacks, including two on electronics dealers and one on a money-changer where the attackers also stole $50,000. The fate of those victims is unknown... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22078 Atrocities By Any Other Name... When is Killing Arab Civilians Considered a Massacre? OMAR BARGHOUTI Recent reports from Iraq indicate beyond doubt that the U.S. occupation army has embarked on a new "tactic" from its menu of atrocities, in an attempt to counter the burgeoning Iraqi resistance attacks against its soldiers. "Old-style" massacres of Iraqis have become so commonplace lately that even Iraqi "allies" of the U.S. were forced to unreservedly condemn them. Among Western governments, alas, silence prevails. After all, the massacre victims are only Arabs. Not only is there an alarming apathy towards the horrifying spread of this phenomenon, but there is also a despicable aversion to calling it by its name. At the same time, many in the West go up in arms condemning the "massacre" of seals, whales, dolphins or a few white men anywhere around the world... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22071 Baghdad. Istanbul. What’s the Difference? The blogosphere nails a California Republican for his view of Iraq. Daren Briscoe, Newsweek Online sleuths can claim another victory. Howard Kaloogian, a Republican candidate in California’s 50th Congressional District, has removed a picture from his campaign Web site that he claimed was evidence that journalists are distorting how bad conditions are in Iraq. The photo purported to show a placid street scene in downtown Baghdad, including a hand-holding couple in Western dress and shoppers out for a stroll on a cobblestone street in an unmarred business district. As it turns out, the photo is a genuine street scene—from Istanbul, Turkey... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22070 Two Fronts In Iraq Robert Dreyfuss One week into the fourth year of the war in Iraq, the United States is now fighting two robust insurgencies, not one. The first insurgency, of course, is the Sunni-led one, a resistance movement made up of former and current Iraqi Baathists, many loyal to Saddam Hussein, former Iraqi military officers and fighters from the old Republican Guard and a coalition of tribal and Sunni religious leaders bitterly opposed to the U.S. occupation. That force shows no sign of weakening. And indeed, it is steadily killing American soldiers and Marines, along with scores of Iraqi army and police recruits weekly. But now a Shiite insurgency has emerged—nearly full-blown and with Iranian support—to confront the occupation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22066 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, March 29, 2006 Today in Iraq U.S. soldier killed and three wounded when their Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad. Bring 'em on: U.S. soldier killed by small-arms fire south of Baghdad. OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTs: Baghdad: Gunmen line up 14 employees working at an electronics trading company in Baghdad Wednesday morning and shoot them all, killing eight and wounding six, police said. Gunmen kill three staffers of Muqtada al-Sadr in drive-by shooting in west Baghdad. Gunmen attack highway police patrol in west Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding four others, including a civilian. In south Baghdad, sniper kills a policeman on patrol in Dora neighborhood... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22065 9/11 Truth Calling Oprah! An Appeal from TvNewsLIES.org For more than five years now, the entire mainstream corporate news media apparatus has been controlled by a handful of behind-the-scene power brokers. In all that time there has been a total blackout on any mention, never mind discussion, of the truth behind the events of 9/11. Despite their credibility and expertise, high-powered and extremely convincing voices of truth have been denied access to the public via the mainstream media. In the years following the attacks of 9/11, a significant number of knowledgeable people have attempted to alert the nation about the mountain of evidence that has been unearthed by their investigations, and which shoots large holes in the 'official’ version of events sold to an unsuspecting and unquestioning public. These people include former Bush administration officials, CIA analysts, FBI whistleblowers, scholars, academics, theologians and eye witnesses to the events of that tragic day. Not one of these people has been allowed to present his or her individual and collective conclusions that the Bush administration was either totally negligent or fully complicit or in the events of 9/11... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22064 GI Special 4C26: ENDGAME - March 29, 2006 Thomas F. Barton ... The killing of what the Americans say were 16 "insurgents", and what Shias claim were 37 unarmed worshippers in the Mustafa mosque, may turn out to be a turning point in the three-year-old Iraq crisis. Iraq's Shias, 60 per cent of the population, have hitherto largely co-operated with American occupation while Sunni Arabs have resisted. But the Shias increasingly see the US as trying to deny them power despite the electoral success of its Alliance. Critics of the killings at the mosque included the most powerful members of the Iraqi government... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22063 GI Special 4C25: " Utter Debacle" - March 28, 2006 Thomas F. Barton Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit (...) We recently spoke to Haney, an amiable, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, on the set of "The Unit." Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq? A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22062 Exposing bullshit in internet time Robert Jung, Electric Escape I love this story as it combines three of my favorite things: the speed of the internet, the power of individuals working together, and exposing bullcrap from idiots. Background: On Tuesday, March 28, San Diego Republican Howard Kaloogian posted the following photo and caption on his election campaign website: Downtown Baghdad : We took this photo of dowtown [sic] Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it -- in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism. (...) After some virtual collaboration from eagle-eyed skeptics, the real location of the photograph was identified less than 24 hours later as Bakirkoy, Istanbul... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22057 Kaloogian Blames Iraq Photo Error on Staffer Justin Rood Oops. Howard Kaloogian, a leading GOP candidate for Randy "Duke" Cunningham's seat in Congress, posted a photo on his Web site of a quiet Turkish suburb. No problem there -- but his site said it was of Baghdad, taken during his trip there. He called it proof that Iraq was calmer than the media was reporting. Josh tells the story at TPM of how the blogosphere rounded up a posse and proved the pic was a fake -- or rather, the pic was real, but the caption was hooey. We reached Kaloogian by phone moments ago. Here's what he had to say: [O]n the way back from Baghdad some of the crew stopped in Istanbul as a layover. We turned all the photographs [from the trip] over to the webmaster, and it appears he took one from the stopover and not from Baghdad. If a mistake happened, we'll correct it.... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22055 Busted! Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo There are some moments when collaborative journalism really does shine. A commenter at Kos -- jem6x -- seems to have found the conclusive evidence that Howard Kaloogian's photograph of "Baghdad" is in a suburb of Istanbul. Late Update: Okay, put a fork in him. This guy's done. Below I've taken the image of peaceful "Baghdad" which candidate Kaloogian posted on his website and said he himself took. Below that I added the image of the Istanbul suburb unearthed by the commenter on Kos's site. (The image is of the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy and comes originally from this site.)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22054 Did Monty Python Fan Dupe Laurie Mylroie? Fake Saddam Interview Put Out By Israel Lobby Catspaw, Endorsed by Neo-Cons Pet Cassandra, Now Wiping Egg From Face CounterPunch News Service A bizarre "interview" with imprisoned former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was circulated yesterday by MEMRI TV, a non-profit in Washington DC that specializes in translating and circulating mainly Arab-language materials, selected to display the Arab world in a poor light, to the advantage of Israel. Releasing its translation of the purported interview, supposedly conducted over the phone to the imprisoned former dictator by Al-Fayhaa TV on on March 28, 2006, MEMRI TV trumpeted the news to its customers that "Saddam Hussein issues a Calls to Cut Off Nose and Ears of Former Iraqi VP 'Izzat Al-Duri and Declares: It Will Make Me Happy if Iraq Turns Into Ashes, Iraq is Not Worth Two Bits Without Saddam Hussein."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22053 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 28 March 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org In a dispatch posted at 9:40pm Mecca time Tuesday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a convoy of fuel tankers headed to US bases on the highway east of Hit, some 140km west of Baghdad. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in Hit as saying that the bomb went off by the fuel convoy, completely destroying one fuel truck and killing its driver, a worker for the US occupation forces... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22051 The forever stained forehead of the GIs! Abu Assur ,Al-Moharer The propaganda image which always has been printed in the French unconscious memory is the hundreds of majorettes, bachelorettes, and suffragettes standing in highly disciplined ranks, waving tiny US flags with the smile only the French girls know the secret, thanking the US GI's for freeing France from the Nazi yoke... Some of these adorable, well behaving and with strict flowery petticoat bits of skirts are seen printing, oh my God, a chaste kiss on a pale GI's cheek sending him to the seventh heaven... This is what the US propaganda says and what has been planted in the Media. Mind you, they tried to do the same thing in Iraq. Didn't they come with US flags as tiny as thongs to distribute to the Iraqis? But it didn't work!... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22077 Estimating civilian deaths in Iraq – six surveys Nicolas J S Davies, Online Journal Contributing Writer Since I wrote Burying the Lancet Report . . . and the Children (Online Journal) in December, a number of people have asked me, "What about the other surveys that produced lower estimates of civilian deaths than the Lancet report?" The appearance of inconsistency between different surveys has led most news organizations to adopt the phrase "tens of thousands" when speaking of civilian deaths. In this article, I hope to clarify the apparent inconsistencies between these different surveys. Six distinct groups have conducted and published surveys of civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion. These surveys were conducted at different points in the conflict and with different methodologies, and it is important to understand exactly what each of them was attempting to count and when... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22052 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.