[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 16 Apr 2006]

uruknet.info   اوروكنت.إنفو :: information from occupied iraq :: informazione dall'iraq occupato

Documenting US failures in Iraq is a historical imperative Truth about Iraqis ...When I first started blogging about eight months ago, I was always questioned why I chose to repeat that the US did not unearth WMDs in Iraq even though it was sure they were there and cited them as principal reasons for invading Iraq. I was asked why I repeatedly berated the US administration: * for the fallacy of its Iraq-AlQaida assertions * for its insisting that Iraq was an imminent threat, a "gathering danger", in the words of l il George of Crawford. Every assertion, accusation and assumption on the part of the US government, the US military, and the US intelligence community turned out to be false... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22628 Zarqawi; the Pentagon’s ongoing war of deception Mike Whitney In more than 3 years of war, there has never been a positive citing of alleged terror mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi. This has led many to believe that he is merely a creation of Pentagon propagandists working with their agents in the western press. Colonel Derek Harvey strengthened those suspicions last week when he admitted in a Washington Post article that the military intentionally "enlarged Zarqawi’s caricature" to create the impression that the o ngoing struggle against occupation was really a fight against terrorism. But, that is not the case. As Harvey notes, "The long term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but former regime types and their friends"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22619 Arturo Ui in Baghdad LENIN'S TOMB ... THE American military is planning a "second liberation of Baghdad" to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed (...) US forces would try to avoid the all-out combat that was used to subdue Falluja in 2004. "If you cut up the city into pieces neighbourhood by neighbourhood, you can prevent it from becoming a major urban fight," said Gouré. Jesus, what balls! Did you read that? Go and read it again. They, the war criminals who bombed a ci ty to drive out some of its residents, then encircled it and prevented all males of fighting age from leaving (military age is ten and above for these guys), launched a bombing raid that destroyed the city, killed thousands, used horrifying chemical weapons in civilian areas, committed war crimes in a fucking hospital (because it was a 'propaganda outlet') - yes they, who did all that, will sincerely try their best not to pulverise Baghdad in the same fashion. Rather, they intend to cut it up into pieces, and destroy it piecemeal... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22623 Science, Humanity and the Iraq Holocaust Gideon Polya ...The appalling, continuing, avoidable mass mortality of infants in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories is a gross violation of the fundamental human behavioral imperative of respect for Mother and Child and reveals the semantically-absurd War on Terror as in actuality a War on Women and Children. While this carnage has been occurring, the very people who can save societies from irrational perversion have been targeted, threatened and killed in Coalition -occupied Iraq, namely Iraq’s intellectuals, academics, lawyers, scientists, teachers and health professionals. According to the eminent Brussells Tribunal, about 220 Iraqi academics have been killed, hundreds of have been forced into exile, hundreds of Iraqi teachers have been murdered and there is evidence for targeting of professionals by death squads. What can decent people do in the face of the racism, violence, unreason and untruth exhibited by the UK-US-led Coalition countries over Iraq? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are all obliged to INFORM everyone about gross abuses of humanity. Having read this, please inform everyone you know... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22622 Iran was not ordered to Stop Enrichment Mike Whitney Here we go again. It’s easy to get confused about developments in Iran because the media does everything in its power to obfuscate the facts and then spin the details in way that advances American policy objectives. But, let’s be clear; the Security Council did NOT order Iran to stop enriching uranium. It may not even be in their power to do so since enrichment is guaranteed under the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty). For the Security Council to forbid Ira n to continue with enrichment activities would be tantamount to repealing the treaty itself. They didn’t do that. What they did was "request" that Iran suspend enrichment activities so that the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) could further prove that Iran’s nuclear programs were entirely for peaceful purposes... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22615 GI Special 4D16: An Execution In Radwaniyah - April 16, 2006 Thomas F. Barton The Americans came for Sabah one Friday night in September. His house in Radwaniya, on the western outskirts of Baghdad, stood in a dry, yellow field surrounded by brick walls. Three cars were parked in front the day I came to visit, two weeks after Americans had shot him. It was the month of Ramadan, and our mouths were as dry as his yard. The resistance was active in Radwaniya, and we drove through fields and dry canals to avoid any checkpoints that might reveal to locals that I was a foreigner. Journalists were targets now too. The Americans had come maybe 20 times before to search for weapons in the house were Sabah lived with his brothers Walid and Hussein, their wives, and their six children... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22630 BBC PROPAGANDA Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream Dear Steve Herrmann, Editor, News Online. The BBC NEWS website’s article "After the invasion: Iraqis speak" reads: "The BBC News website spoke to four Iraqis and asked them for their memories of the invasion, what life has been like in the country since and what they feel the future holds." By chance, the four people have something in common... FIRST PERSON: "I do not think the occupation is necessarily the problem" SECOND PERSON: "I would not call it an invasion, I would call it a liberation" THIRD PERSON: "When the fighting was over we came back. We were amazed when Saddam's statue came down and we said to ourselves: "Now things are better" FORTH PERSON: "Now, I think things here are now slowly becoming stable and we finally are starting to have a working government. They are trying to find solutions to stop things getting out of hand, like after the shrine bombing"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22631 SFSU students banned from campus after protest Campus Antiwar Network Ten students were forcibly removed today from the gymnasium at San Francisco State University for protesting military recruiters on campus. The students were cited by University Police for disrupting campus activities. Their activities included distributing anti-military-recruitment leaflets, talking to recruiters and potential recruits, and chanting phrases such as, "Killing Iraqis is no career! Recruiters are not welcome here!"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22632 Tomgram: History Ambushes the Bush Administration Tom Engelhardt You can count on one thing. All over Washington, Republicans are at least as capable as I am of watching and interpreting the polling version of the smash-up of the Bush administration. With each new poll, the numbers creep lower yet. Presidential approval in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll dropped another 3% in the last month and now sits at 38%, while disapproval of the President continues to strengthen -- 47% of Americans now "strongly di sapprove" of the President's handling of the presidency, only 20% "strongly approve." (62%, by the way, disapprove of the President's handling of the war in Iraq.. Behind these figures lurk worse ones... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22627 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 16 April 2006. Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. In a dispatch posted at 3pm Makkah time Sunday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded near a US military camp located in the proximity of the glass works in western ar-Ramadi, about 110km west of Baghdad. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in ar-Ramadi as saying that an explosives-packed car b lew up by the American camp destroying a US vehicle and killing three American troops and wounding two more of them... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22625 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 2006 Today in Iraq US Marine died in vehicle accident in Anbar province. Four US Marines killed in combat in Anbar province in two separate incidents. Five US troops wounded in fighting in Youssifiyah (...) Baghdad car bomb kills 7 and injures 24. Three more bodies found, believed to have been victims of sectarian death squads. The bodies were found in separate areas south of Baghdad. Director of traffic police killed in Basra as he drove to work. Roadside bomb kills three Iraq i soldiers and wounded eight others in al Doura suburb in Baghdad. Two electricity workers killed and another injured when mortar shells landed on the electricity station on Saturday in al Mussayeb. This forced the suspension of generating electricity that feeds central and southern Baghdad areas... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22624 Iraq's parliament session delayed after Sunni candidate rejected Leila Fadel, Knight Ridder Newspapers The speaker of Iraq's parliament late Sunday postponed a scheduled session of the parliament on Monday because four months after they were elected, Iraqi lawmakers still haven't been able to form a new government. Parliament speaker Adnan Pachachi, who last week said that a new government must meet to "keep the credibility of the Iraqi democratic experience," delayed the meeting for "a few days" after Iraq's most powerful Shiite Muslim political alliance rejected a Sunni nominee for parliament speaker. Iraqis called the state-run television channel, Iraqia, on Sunday to voice their rage about the delay, calling it a "lack of leadership."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22621 Who wants civil war in Iraq? Workers World It is normal for capitalist governments to lie through their teeth to justify war and aggression. Even allowing for this normal deception, the Bush administration suffers from a wider than usual credibility gap. If Bush says "It’s a beautiful day," one’s first impulse is to scan the sky for clouds and check that you’ve brought your umbrella... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22634 US firms suspected of bilking Iraq funds Millions missing from program for rebuilding Farah Stockman, Boston Globe Staff American contractors swindled hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, but so far there is no way for Iraq's government to recoup the money, according to US investigators and civil attorneys tracking fraud claims against contractors. Courts in the United States are beginning to force contractors to repay reconstruction funds stolen from the American government. But legal roadb locks have prevented Iraq from recovering funds that were seized from the Iraqi government by the US-led coalition and then paid to contractors who failed to do the work... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22620 4 Marines killed in volatile Iraq province Associated Press Four U.S. Marines were killed in action in Anbar province west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday. The Marines - three from Regimental Combat Team Five and one from the 2/28 Brigade Combat Team - died Saturday, the military said in two separate statements. Their identities were not released (...) U.S. casualties have begun to rise this month following a sharp drop in March, which saw the lowest number of American dead in Iraq since February 2004. L ast month, 31 U.S. service members died in Iraq, but the number of fatalities in April already has passed 40... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22617 Planning an attack on Baghdad ... Imad Khadduri , Free Iraq ...Of all the war crimes that have flowed from the originating war crime of George W. Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant was the wanton destruction of Fallujah in November 2004. Now, as ignominious defeat looms for Bush's Babylonian folly, some of the key players in fomenting the war are urging that the "Fallujah Option" be applied to an even bigger target: Baghdad. What these influential warmongers openly call for is the "pacif ication" of Baghdad: a brutal firestorm by U.S. forces, ravaging both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in a "horrific" operation that will inevitably lead to "skyrocketing body counts," as warhawk Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote cheerfully last week in the ever-bloodthirsty editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22616 Dozens of Iraqi Police Still Missing Days After Night Ambush Kirk Semple, The New York Times Dozens of Iraqi police officers caught in a deadly ambush north of Baghdad on Thursday were still missing on Saturday, and their colleagues feared that some had been captured by insurgents or killed, police officials said. The American military command said 9 police officers were killed and 7 wounded in the attack, which began after nightfall as a convoy of more than 100 police officers was returning to Najaf from an Ameri can base in Taji, a trip of about 110 miles. The Iraqis had visited the base to pick up several vehicles... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22614 U.S.: Rumsfeld Potentially Liable for Torture Defense Secretary Allegedly Involved in Abusive Interrogation Human Rights Watch Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could be criminally liable for the torture of a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002 and early 2003, Human Rights Watch said today. A December 20, 2005 Army Inspector General's report, obtained by Salon.com this week, contains a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt that implicates Secretary Rumsfeld in the abuse of detainee Moham mad al-Qahtani. Based on an investigation that he carried out in early 2005, which included two interviews with Rumsfeld, Gen. Schmidt describes the defense secretary as being "personally involved" in al-Qahtani's interrogation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22629 The 9/11 Pentagon Attack: Planes Simply Do Not Vaporize - Why Didn’t They Show Us the Wreckage? Jesse - Editor, TvNewsLIES.org As each day passes, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the startling evidence that clearly contradicts the official explanation of Sept.11th, 2001 offered by the Bush administration. In fact, as more and more evidence comes to light, incongruities in the official explanation become increasingly and undeniably apparent. Ironically, the growing number of people new to these unexpl ained discrepancies poses a new problem for those of us who have been researching 9/11 for many months or years. We will have to find a way to explain the many complexities related to the attacks to those who now doubt the official version of events... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22633 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.