[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 06 Apr 2006 - Part One]

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Protecting Israel: Chomsky’s Way Ghali Hassan Reading the latest attacks to discredit Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt very credible and insightful assay on the pro-Israel Jewish Lobby in the US, one wonders why so many people come to defend Israel blindly. It appears that the critics are more interested in protecting Israel and elevating their positions than defend 'free speech’, democracy, or the rights of the Palestinian people. One of those attackers is the "celebrated" American linguist and US pol icy critic, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky condemnation of the two prominent professors, who are now accused of being "anti-Semites", and lost the support of Harvard University, is a betrayal of academic freedom. Protecting Israel and Zionism has been Chomsky’s sacred duty from an early age. Chomsky is on record denying the existence of the pro-Israel Lobby in the US... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22301 JUST THREE YEARS AGO Malcom Lagauche ...Pro-invasion Americans will go to any length to paint a pretty picture of today’s Iraq and constantly try to hoodwink the public. Unfortunately, their deceit is successful. It is very hard to put things in perspective, but an Iraqi friend of mine told me about a recent discussion he had with a relative who visited Baghdad a couple of months ago. The relative told him, "Compared to today’s Baghdad, the embargo years were the golden years." That is a statement in which no one should take pride... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22280 More than 40,000 Sunnis killed in 18 months? Truth About Iraqis Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) Harith al-Dhari has told Aljazeera that during the time Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafary led the so-called Iraqi government, some 40,000 Sunnis were gunned down, kidnapped, assassinated and murdered. Al-Dhari implied that death squads which have been active since just before the January 15, 2005 elections were behind most of the killings... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22286 Madrid International Seminar on the Assassination of Iraqi Academics and Health Professionals 22-23 April 2006 US policy in Iraq: A War Launched to Erase both the Culture and Future of the Iraqi people Spanish Campaign Against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI), The BRussells Tribunal and International Action Center The Association of Iraqi Academics estimates that more than 180 academics, from a wide range of academic and scientific fields of study from all over Iraq, ha ve been being assassinated since the US invasion in 2003. Many hundreds more have been forced into exile. Most were high-level academic staff members. The Spanish Campaign Against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI) has confirmed 141 names of targeted academics ( http://nodo50.org/iraq /). The BRussells Tribunal has a confirmed list of 218 killed Iraqi academics ( http://www.brusselstribunal.org/academicsList.htm ). In addition, according to official Iraqi sources, 311 teachers of both sexes have been killed in Iraq during the last four months alone (The Independent, 29 March, 2006). Equally, staff of the National Iraqi Medical System — a model of civic courage during 15 years of sanctions, war and occupation — are being targeted in a campaign of extortion, threats and murder... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22272 Headline of the Day Eli Stephens, Left I on the News The San Jose Mercury News headlines a Washington Post story about Saddam Hussein's trial yesterday with this: Saddam acknowledges signing political enemies' death warrants. "Political enemies"?!! These were people who were accused, tried, and convicted of attempting to assassinate Hussein! I'm not saying that either the accusations, trial, or convictions were fair or just, I'm really not in a position to judge that, although it was apparently a 16 -day trial, so it was hardly a lynching. But whether or not it was a fair trial, describing the defendants as "political enemies" instead of "convicted assassins" is truly bizarre... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22294 Tomgram: Robert Dreyfuss on the "D" Word in Iraq Tom Engelhardt & Robert Dreyfuss ...Defeat. The unthinkable. Call it the dreaded "D" word. And suddenly on the scene was the part of the Vietnam era that the President's high officials and neocon supporters never considered in their wildest dreams and so never spent a day preparing contingency plans for. Now, like it or not, believe it or not, they are in terra incognita and, to mix metaphors, visibly at sea.... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22296 Breaking News – UK Govt hurls BBC into alternate universe! William Bowles, I'n'I Condi 'not nice’ Rice was given extensive and extremely favourable coverage by the BBC when she visited foreign minister Jack 'the lights are on but nobody’s home’ Straw’s constituency in Blackburn Lancashire, last week. And the Beeb PR pieces tracked Ms. Rice to Liverpool, then onto Baghad where they did some arm-twisting of the 'prime minister' of 'independent' Iraq. Then it was back to Downing Street, no doubt to plan how to sell u s Phase II of the PNAC, taking out Iran and pushing the 'final' frontier further Eastward. Not that you'd know it from BBC 'news' reports as it seems that the BBC was reporting from what appears to be an almost identical parallel universe that defies the laws of credibility by co-existing with the one you and I live in... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22290 Phantom al-Zarqawi Targets Hamas Kurt Nimmo Now that Iraq is well on the way to chaos and destruction, commonly referred to as a "civil war" in the corporate media, the services of the boogieman and phantom terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, successful in tainting the Iraq resistance as blood-thristy butchers, are no longer required. "According to Huthayfah Azzam, the son of Abdullah Azzam, al Zarqawi’s former mentor, the notorious commander of al Qaida in Iraq was stripped of his political duties at a meeting two we eks ago," reports the Telegraph of Calcutta, India. "The claims could not be confirmed, but they did add to mounting evidence that al Zarqawi has been increasingly isolated over the past months because of his ruthless tactics." Of course, it is not that such tactics are no longer of use, it is simply that such tactics are needed elsewhere—for instance, the West Bank and Gaza Strip of Palestine, where a democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people, Hamas, needs to be cut down to size... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22289 Saddam co-accused defends actions BBC A co-defendant in the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has said that 148 Shia Muslims sentenced to death in 1982 had a 16-day fair trial. Awad al-Bandar also told the court that none of those sentenced to death was under 20 years old. He is one of seven men on trial with the former leader for their alleged role in mass killings in Dujail (...) "The accused had all the rights and were defended by their lawyers," he said. He said his court worked long hours during the trial but agreed that only one lawyer had been appointed for all the accused. He also denied ordering the execution of minors. "I am a judge and my deep conscience does not allow to sentence someone under 20 to death," he told the court. He said documents showing that one of those killed was 15 years old were forged... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22299 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 5 April 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 4:30pm Makkah time Wednesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a mysterious car bomb exploded by Palestine street in eastern Baghdad’s Bayrut Square after noon on Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding 16 others (...) Another mysterious car bomb exploded in northwestern Baghdad’s ash-Sh u'lah district. Witnesses there said that an explosives-packed car that had been left by the side of the main road in ash-Shu'lah blew up after noon Wednesday, killing one civilian and wounding 15 others. In contrast to Iraqi Resistance attacks, which have clear and defined targets – occupation troops or armed forces, officials, or collaborators with the US-installed puppet regime – the latest wave of attacks appear targeted exclusively on civilians. Such mysterious attacks are widely viewed as a part of an Anglo-American effort to rescue their failing fortunes in Iraq by sparking a sectarian civil war in the country enabling them to fulfill their plans of partitioning the country along ethnic and religious lines... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22285 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, April 5, 2006 Today in Iraq Unknown gunmen in military uniforms kill two Iraqi workers in mobile phone company of Iraqna in western Baghdad and kidnap two others. Two car bombs explode in Baghdad. One woman was killed and 15 people were wounded in a blast in an area of eastern Baghdad. Thirteen people were injured in the other attack in an area in the north of the city. Explosion outside a building housing the Iraqna cell phone company in the Mansour district. It damaged the building and 14 nearby stores but no injuries were reported. Civil engineer shot to death in front of a barber shop in west Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22283 Saddam dodges questions as he faces first cross-examination AP ...Asked if he had read the evidence against the 148 suspects before referring them for trial, Saddam replied, "If the constitution requires the head of state to review documents before referral, then I abided by it." "At the time this crime was committed against the head of state, Saddam Hussein, we were in a state of war," Saddam said Wednesday, referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. "Don’t you know that now children and women are being killed? " Saddam asked, apparently trying to shift attention to the country’s current violence. "Now, the bodies are being thrown on the street as if they were dogs. ... An Iraqi is not a dog." Al-Moussawi asked Saddam if he was aware that 28 of the Shiites sentenced to death were under 18 and presented identity cards showing some were minors. Prosecutors have said an 11-year-old boy was among those killed. "I sentence an underage Iraqi to death? I wouldn’t do it even if you were to carve my eyes out," Saddam said. He added that identity cards can easily be forged. "I could get a hold of an ID saying Mr. Raouf is 25 years old," he added, waving toward the judge... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22293 The Plame Game What Murray Waas’s big scoop may really tell us about Bush’s pre-war deceptions. Greg Sargent Murray Waas’s latest scoop -- in which he broke new ground with a detailed account of the Bush administration’s deceptions about Iraq -- has won plenty of plaudits already. But its true larger significance is still crying out to be explained. To do this we need to step back and look at his revelation in the context of the ongoing investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame. If you do, you can see that what once were a bunch of disparate subplots -- the pre-war duplicity, the 2004 election, the Libby indictment, the continuing investigation into Karl Rove -- suddenly can be woven together into one grand narrative that makes coherent sense in a way that much of this story didn’t before. And the resulting storyline is not a pretty one... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22277 Bush OK'd intelligence leak CNN Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide testified that President Bush authorized the release of parts of a classified report on Iraq to rebut criticism of the case for the 2003 invasion, federal prosecutors disclosed in documents released Thursday. The information did not name CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose 2003 exposure triggered an investigation that led to the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agent s investigating Plame's exposure... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22292 Iran Oil Exchange Needlenose ...It's worth repeating: this isn't a zero-sum game. Iran doesn't seem to be entering this venture in order to shut down the dollar but to offer an outlet for entities that don't want to be dependent on the U.S. currency. It's a classic hedge strategy, and it wouldn't be surprising at all if competitors to the U.S. global trade (you know who you are) enter into Euro-based exchanges in order to keep their downside covered -- just in case something happens and our trillion dollar IOUs co me due... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22279 News of Neoconservative Demise are Somewhat Premature Gabriel Ash, www.dissidentvoice.org It’s high five time for many in the anti-war punditry. No, the war hasn’t ended. The death toll in Iraq is rising like the NASDAQ in the late nineties. But American public opinion is beginning to give in to the reality principle: not only is a majority of Americans finally realizing that this war is no good, but the finger is beginning to point clearly towards Pennsylvania Avenue with over 40% of Americans favoring impeachme nt (a surprising result given that the mainstream media isn’t even discussing impeachment). While the hermetic circles around George Bush and Tony Blair are drowning in their platitudes (corners, tipping points, milestones, God, etc.) further out the sacrificial priesthood is getting cold feet... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22278 Democracy is as George says Frank Pitz, Online Journal Contributing Writer First it was weapons of mass destruction and then when the damn elusive things didn’t turn up, it was all about bringing "democracy to Iraq." During the run-up to bringing that democracy, the war drums reverberated across the land and the old men in Washington talked it up. They talked it up while the compliant media mills incited the jingoistic armchair patriots across the land. "It’ll be a cake walk;" "they’ll welcome up with roses and sw eets;" "we’ll be in and out of there in no time." And, the mother of all the neocons’ phraseology: "Mission Accomplished." Here we are some three plus years later and there was no cake, or roses, or sweets. Needless to say, George and the rest of the chicken hawks did accomplish a few things. They succeeded in murdering a few hundred thousand innocent Iraqi men, women and children. And, they managed along the way, to condemn to death some 2,635 men and women of the U.S. military -- between Afghanistan and Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22276 Chomsky turns over his cards Xymphora ...Has anything gotten better since Chomsky started telling us about the problems with the American Empire? No. Everything has gotten much worse. Why? Because Chomsky’s information is directed at vague intangible bad guys that Americans can’t do anything about. Short of revolution, which ain’t gonna happen, how do you wage war against a 'class’? On the other hand, it you are made aware that there are certain identified people – like, ahem, the Lobby – that are causing th e problem, you can actually do something about it.... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22274 US Attitude to Hamas: The Disturbing Parallel With Nicaragua Ramzy Baroud What is currently transpiring in the Occupied Territories is by far a worst-case scenario, ironically one made possible with the direct help of many Palestinians themselves. The democratically elected Palestinian government is now officially isolated, as many Palestinians cannot see beyond their own narrow — and frankly irrelevant — ideological differences and immaterial factionalism. Others cannot resist their total reliance on foreign, mos tly European funds to run their mostly self-exalting NGOs, whose tangible contribution to Palestinian life is still disputed. The final outcome is that turning Palestine into another Nicaragua is working... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22271 Impeachment Does NOT Mean Cheney Will be President Impeachment will write this nightmare into history. Lucille Moyer That anyone would even begin to think that Cheney would come out of the impeachment process uncharged and unscathed is mistaken, sorely mistaken. That one would think to impeach Bush without Cheney, and Rumsfeld and the others, is short-sighted... maybe blind. We'd get Hastert as president, but we're waiting at the door for him, too, to impeach him for his taking bribes. Even if Hastert w ere to become president, no Republican would be Speaker of the House because they have all lost their credibility and it's looking good for a Democratic majority. After 2006 elections (praying for the removal of electronic voting machines) the mean and corrupt Republicans will be where they always deserve to be, without a stolen vote, in the minority... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22275 Saddam returns to court, denounces Interior Ministry Mussab al-Khairalla, Reuters Saddam Hussein returned to court on Wednesday and, in remarks likely to inflame sectarian tensions, immediately accused the Iraqi Interior Ministry of killing and torturing thousands of Iraqis. The toppled leader, who could face a death sentence, remained defiant one day after the court announced that he would face new charges of genocide against the ethnic Kurdish population in the late 1980s. He could face another trial as early as next month. Saddam refused to sign documents, saying that only an international court would be fair, and denounced the Interior Ministry. "It's the side that kills thousands in the street and tortures them ...," he said, criticizing the Shi'ite-run ministry... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22269 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.