[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 08 Apr 2006]

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Silence kills and silence is complicity Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's dream ...Underneath Patrick Cockburn’s article "Iraq three years on: Don't look away" (The Independent, 8 April 2006) your newspaper presents some number "Then and Now". About IRAQI DEATHS, you write: Military 4,895 - 6,370, Civilian 33,821 - 37,943. Iraq Body Count, from where you got the numbers, 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." A few weeks ago, the Independent wrote: "But IBC admits that with the increasing inability of journalists to move around and report freely, its method of monitoring civilian deaths is becoming increasingly inaccurate. What evidence has emerged indicates that a widely ridiculed study published in The Lancet in autumn 2004, estimating that at least 100,000 civilians had died violently since the war began, might not be so inaccurate."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22360 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 8 April 2006. Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...In a dispatch posted at 5:25pm Makkah time Saturday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the declaration by Qasim Yahya, the official spokesman for the puppet "Iraqi Ministry of Health," on Thursday that he would not be able to give out thedaily number of bodies taken in by Iraqi hospitals because he had been specifically ordered not to do so by the I raqi puppet "Prime Minister" has aroused considerable concern over the American-installed regime’s desire to cover up the reality in the country... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22382 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, APRIL 8, 2006 Today in Iraq US soldiers arrested a tribal leader and four members of his clan in Tikrit. ...Among the arrested was a policeman. In the town of al Suwaira, police discover the bodies of three members of the security forces with their hands cut off. One was an Iraqi soldier and another a lieutenant-colonel. A decapitated body of a man wear a military uniform was found in al Shahaimiya. A tailor shot dead by gunmen inside his shop in al Zab area, about 40 miles southwest o f Kirkuk. US soldiers accidentally kill a civilian by mortar in village south of Sinjar. Three Iraqis were killed and another two injured in Bab-Alsharqi area of Baghdad when mortar shells landed on Naji AL-Khudhairi Mosque and several neighboring houses. Two civilians from the same family were killed when a bomb exploded at the door of their house in central Baghdad, police said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22380 Bush and Cheney Get Over On Fitzgerald Evelyn Pringle With the latest revelations in the CIA leak case, the question on the minds of most Americans, is whether Bush and Cheney were the masterminds in an organized plot to destroy Joe Wilson by revealing his wife's name and status as a undercover agent of the CIA. Hands down, yes they were. And a brilliant scheme it was; especially when one considers that the combined IQ of Bush and Cheney is probably not equal to that of a goat... A concerted effort to destroy a c ritics is not a jailable offense. But it would seem that because they knew Valerie Plame was an under-cover operative, and knew the information was classified, that such a disclosure would be in legal terms "willful." In other words, a disclosure of information on purpose, even though they knew it was classified... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22379 Death Threats of a Criminally Insane Miscreant Kurt Nimmo I was two-thirds of the way through a blog entry on Bush’s desire to nuke Iran when I received an email pointing me to an article by Sunil K. Sharma on the Dissident Voice website. "CounterPunch co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair this morning brought to my attention a screed by a disturbed individual named George M. Weinert V of Chicago, Illinois, whose blog, American Jihad, features a March 24, 2006 article (to put it charitably) that reads clearly as an inciteme nt to violence," Sharma writes, "a call to 'hunt down the treasonous operators’ of Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Uruknet, and other 'radical left wing hippy commie Muslim sucking’ (wow, what a mouthful) web sites…. Particularly singled out for targeting in Weinert’s deranged ramblings are Dissident Voice contributing writers Mike Whitney, Ken Sanders, as well as our friend and past contributing writer Kurt Nimmo. Weinert is hardly subtle in issuing what is clearly a death threat against us"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22384 Letter from Baqhdad: The Growing Sectarian Divide David Enders, The Nation ...Mahdi commander Tamimi does not deny that rogue Mahdi elements are carrying out assassinations. "We have had to remove many people from the Mahdi Army," he says. "They are fighting for their sect; they don't care about Muqtada al-Sadr." But Sadr's own language has created a serious gray area, perhaps intentionally. He has approved killing of "takfiris"--Sunni extremists who consider Shiites heretics--and former Baathists. In his talks to members of the Mahdi Army, he makes it clear that he believes Sunni members of the government fall into these categories. "Saleh Mutlaq--he was a member of the Baath Party," Tamimi says of one of the most prominent Sunni politicians in the government (...) "We are buying more weapons," says Tamimi, the Mahdi Army commander. "The situation in Iraq is very bad, and we are ready to fight. Saddam had weapons factories in Abu Ghraib and Ramadi and Falluja. If the Americans leave, [Sunni insurgents] will have these weapons, and we don't." "We are all the army of the Iman [Mahdi Army]," says Naim Hussein, who lost three cousins in sectarian fighting. "We are waiting for the green light from our leaders. If there were really a civil war, there would be no Sunnis left"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22373 Why Buratha Mosque? Baghdad Dweller ...Since yesterday and I was thinking, I read something about Buratha mosque few months ago but I don’t remember what it was exactly. Here is what I know about Baratha: Few months ago I posted maps of locations used by the government as prisons, execution and torture centers, you still can axis the post here: Maps of Iraq’s secret prisons. If you look at map number 4, you will see that the locations are numbered, the circle marked as number 5 is Baratha mosque. Since this govern ment was in power (approximately less than a year ago), now and then people find "mini" mass graves, dead bodies dumped in the middle of nowhere with injuries made by gunshots or drill machines. Two months ago people found 45 bodies dumped behind Buratha Mosque... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22371 Official: Iraq in 'Undeclared Civil War' MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer A car bomb killed six people Saturday near a Shiite shrine south of Baghdad, and the death toll from the deadliest attack of the year rose to nearly 90. A senior official warned Iraq was in an ``undeclared civil war'' that can be curbed only by a strong government and greater powers for security services. With sectarian tensions rising, U.S. Marines on Saturday beat back the largest attack in weeks by Sunni Arab insurgents in the western city of Ramadi - another sign of the crisis facing this country three years after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22377 THE IRAN PLANS SEYMOUR M. HERSH The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact wit h anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22376 Saddam’s pilots hunted down by death squads Ali Rifat and Hamoudi Saffar, The Sunday Times IRAQI pilots who flew in Saddam Hussein’s air force are being targeted by armed militias in an apparent witch-hunt against veterans who fought in the war against Iran two decades ago. According to official military statistics, 182 former pilots and 416 senior military officers had been killed by the beginning of January 2006 as part of the campaign. At least 836 pilots and high-ranking military officials have fled to neighbo uring Arab states. Many of the assassinations have been blamed on militias from the Shi’ite Badr Brigade who were trained and financed by Iran and who now form the backbone of Iraq’s police and special forces... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22372 Torturing the Truth Mick Youther President Bush has assured Americans that "We do not torture" . Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has traveled around the world, assuring everyone that "We do not torture" . I guess it all depends on your definition of "torture". • "Torture under the law is described as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Waterboarding or mock drownings, sleep deprivation, beatings, shackles and other horrors apparently do not fall into the administration’s definition of torture." --Helen Thomas, D.C.-based columnist for the Hearst Newspapers, 12/11/05... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22378 Plenty of Opportunities to Impeach Bush Diane E. Dees, Mother Jones ...here are just a few of the March violations: Bush signed the spending bill, knowing that violated a Constitutional requirement that the bill must first pass in both chambers. He violated the material witness law by using it as preventive detention authority who could commit terrorist acts some day but for whom there is no cause for criminal charges. He violated the Clean Air Act by loosening emission standards for aging coal-fired power plant s. The Clean Air Act makes it clear that only Congress may make such a decision. In a legal brief written for the US Supreme Court, Bush cited evidence from a debate by two Republican senators. There was no such debate. The evidence was manufactured by the White House... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22383 GI Special 4D8: The GI Anti-War Movement - April 8, 2006 Thomas F. Barton ..."Sir, No Sir," the untold story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam, is a documentary. It’s not a work of nostalgia. It’s an activist film, and it comes at a time when GI resistance to the current war is spreading throughout the United States. There are more than 100 films -- fiction and nonfiction -- about the war in Vietnam. Not one deals seriously with the most pivotal events of the time -- the anti-war actions of GIs with in the military. The three-decade blackout of GI resistance is not due to any lack of evidence. Information about the resistance has always been available. According to the Pentagon, over 500,000 incidents of desertion took place between 1966 and 1977. Officers were fragged. Entire units refused to enter battle... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22369 Eyewitness testimony concerning Israeli war crimes Xymphora International lawyers are looking for eyewitness testimony concerning the Israeli war crimes of house demolitions, killings, and torture. It is nice to go after the big wigs, but I think it would also be useful to nail a few of the Caterpillar drivers and child murderers. As Israel becomes increasingly uninhabitable, people are going to want the option to live elsewhere, and the stark prospect that there is no other place to go without facing a stiff ja il sentence may scare some of the IDF thugs into acting like human beings. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22367 A statement on the occasion of the fifty ninth anniversary of the Baath Arab socialist Party The Arab Baath Socialist Party On the 7th April we celebrate the fifty ninth anniversary of the Baath with the last three years of the ongoing US invasion and occupation, christened by the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs and the suffering of the thousands detainees in the Occupiers and their stooges imprisonment camps, the ordeals of millions of orphans, widows, and devastated moms and families.. Indeed! The cr adle of civilization, Iraq, has been turned into a land ruled by the jungle law and a free arena for gangsters, murderers and chaos and where life has stopped its course under the slogans of freedom and democracy. This is the model the US criminal administration is trying to market and to sell to the world... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22366 The truth about Libby's statements to the grand jury claiming the President authorized a leak of classified information John W. Dean, FindLaw Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has now revealed in court filings bombshell information that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame-Wilson's covert CIA identity. According to Fitzgerald's filings, Libby said that he was authorized by the President and Vice President to leak classified information to New York Times reporter Jud ith Miller. This revelation has been accompanied by a number of public misstatements, which call for correction. The most blatant of these is the claim that Fitzgerald's filing indicates that the President authorized the release of Valerie Plame's covert status at the CIA. In fact, the document is conspicuously silent on this fact. The filing does indicate that the President authorized the release of classified information, but it was different information - a National Intelligence Estimate that had been classified pursuant to an executive order... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22365 How bad is the situation in Iraq? Eli Stephens, Left I on the News The death of dozens of people, day after day, certainly tells part of the story. So does this: The [Iraq Ministry of the Interior] warned people to stay away from crowded places like mosques and market places. Mosques and markets are, needless to say, always crowded, at least at the times when people have things to do there. Which means that the Iraqi police are warning the people of their country to stop shopping and stop going to prayers. Nothing important... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22386 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 7 April 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...In response to Friday’s murderous bombing of the Shi'i Buratha Mosque in Baghdad and Thursday’s deadly attack on the Shi'i Shrine of 'Ali in an-Najaf, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, the highest Sunni religious authority in occupied Iraq, issued a statement condemning those attacks and blaming plotters who seek to partition Iraq for the assaults. W ithout specifically naming the United States, the Association of Muslim Scholars in their statement linked the bombings to plans for a "three-state solution" that would partition Iraq into a Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shi'i Arab state as laid out by Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the US Council on Foreign Relations, in his often-quoted New York Times article of 26 November 2003... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22363 Iraq: Victims of Violence Sarah Meyer ...Now I have more questions. How does one find compassion for the soldier who has no remorse? And. The accomplices who supported this war with depleted uranium and napalm bombs, torture and "rendition" – the members of Congress, the Senate, Parliament, Stephen Cambone and the US/UK Intelligence community, the US lawyers and the UK Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith – the PNAC 1998 signatories, the weapons makers, the security firms, the mercenaries, the corporate contract signe rs, the oil Tsars – will they twist their hands, pace the room, feel suicidal? Will those responsible for this monstrous war in Iraq – George Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfovitz – will they ever have all the tortured, dead and future dead of Iraq before their eyes, awake or asleep, daily, for the rest of their life on earth?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22362 Compromising Americans’ Civil Liberties Walter M. Brasch Two weeks before President Bush signed Congressional legislation that made permanent all but two sections of the USA PATRIOT Act, State College, Pa., became the 397th American community to reaffirm the belief that the Constitution and Bill of Rights take precedence over any federal law. Not one of those resolutions should have been necessary. Nor should the legislatures of eight states—Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, and Vermont— have had to pass legislation affirming the rights of all Americans. But they had to, and they did... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22361 Neocon Plan to Wreck the Economy Kurt Nimmo If we are to believe Sterling Seagrave, "co-author of Gold Warriors and an extremely well-connected financial source in both the US and China as well as Europe," the White House, that is to say the Straussian neocons in control of the White House, have ordered the Federal Reserve to print a whopping two trillion in funny (or not so funny fiat) money. "The U.S. Treasury is allegedly running printing presses 24/7 to accommodate that order" and this "probably explains why t he US Treasury Secretary resigned several months ago and was replaced by a Bush flunkey, and why Greenspan resigned from the Fed several weeks ago, not wanting to go down with the Titanic…. We have been predicting this over the past two or three years, as the inevitable consequence of the Bush administration’s bizarre policies, although we were not certain exactly when it would occur"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22385 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.