[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 19 Apr 2006]

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WOMEN AND GAYS DON’T COUNT Malcom Lagauche ...During the Ba’athist years, Iraqi women dressed in styles as diverse as those in the west. If a woman wanted to "take the veil," she was allowed. But no woman was ordered to perform such a ritual (...) Today’s Iraq is totally different. I don’t have to repeat some of the horror stories of women now not being able to leave their houses without two male family members, or women being beaten because of their style of dress. There have been many reported incidents. In add! ition to the regression of women in Iraqi society at the hands of a few fundamentalist U.S.-appointed stooge politicians, many Iraqi women have been humiliated and even raped by U.S. troops. Again, there are many published articles concerning these abhorrent actions. So, Iraqi women are doubly-damned: with the fall of a government that held them in high esteem, they must put up with social mores that are against their own beliefs; and add to that the presence of the military personnel who forced the old government out... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22717 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, April 19, 2006 Today in Iraq A U.S. soldier died from wounds sustained on Tuesday when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. Bomb targeting police patrol blows up in the neighborhood of Harthiya, killing one civilian and injuring 11 people, including two policemen and an Iraqi soldier. Roadside bomb explodes near al-Kindi hospital in eastern Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding four others. In the Amariyah district, gun! men kill medic as he walked from house to house administering vaccinations. In three separate attacks, gunmen in the neighborhood of Dora kill a construction worker, a trade ministry employee and three power plant workers who had been snatched from their car an hour earlier. In the suburb of Rustamiyah, police discover five bodies of Iraqis, handcuffed and blindfolded. Late Tuesday, police had found 11 corpses in various parts of the capital... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22714 The Billion-Dollar Baghdad Embassy Leigh Saavedra, POAC That's the estimate, though only half of it has been appropriated so far, a billion dollars to build a new embassy in Iraq . It will be the largest on the globe, the largest the world has ever seen, the size of Vatican City in Italy. U.S. embassies typically cover ten acres. This one, a 104-acre complex, will be comprised of 21 buildings, its own water wells, an electricity plant and wastewaster-treatment facility that makes the huge compound completely i! ndependent of Iraq , whose "interim government" sold the land to the U.S. in October 2004. Terms of the agreement do not appear to be readily accessible... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22708 Death warrants – Saddam 148, Bush 152 Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY, Pravda.ru ...Saddam Hussein, we now hear, signed the death warrants of 148 Shiite villagers who had risen up against him in Dujail in 1982, for which Saddam Hussein sits in the dock and could face the death penalty. George Bush, in his six-year tenure as Governor of Texas, signed 152 death warrants, a record for any governor of any state in the history of the USA. An example of what George Bush is capable of is provided by the signing of the death wa! rrant of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of 33 with the brain of a seven-year-old. Pleas of clemency were denied after a hearing which lasted barely half an hour. Saddam Hussein was derided because he invaded a sovereign nation – in the event, Kuwait, which was stealing Iraq’s oil by cross-drilling, and which had been warned against this practice. George Bush invaded a sovereign nation – Iraq, based on lies and deception... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22707 DOES IRAN'S PRESIDENT WANT ISRAEL WIPED OFF THE MAP AND DOES HE DENY THE HOLOCAUST? Anneliese Fikentscher and Andreas Neumann Bush frankly speaks of 'threat to Iran'. Is this a Freudian slip? He speaks of 'military might' against Iran: "But now that I'm on Iran, the threat to Iran, of course -- (applause) -- the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. ! I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel, and -- (applause.)" George W. Bush, US-President, 2006-03-20 in Cleveland (Ohio) in an off-the-cuff speech. But why does Bush speak of Iran's objective to destroy Israel? To raze Israel to the ground, to batter down, to destroy, to annihilate, to liquidate, to erase Israel, to wipe it off the map - this is what Iran's President demanded - at least this is what we read about or heard of at the end of October 2005. Spreading the news was very effective. This is a declaration of war they said. Obviously government and media were at one with their indignation. It goes around the world. But let's take a closer look at what Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22711 The Really Real "Long War" Chris Floyd ...Control of these resources and strategic areas in order to box in China (and eventually India) and prevent the rise of any potential rival to American domination of global affairs – or rather, the domination of global affairs by a small American elite quite willing to see their own country sink into corruption, ruin, tyranny and fear – is now and has been since the end of the Cold War the driving force of the political faction led by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfow! itz and others brought into power by the rigged election of runner-up George W. Bush in 2000. It is for this and no other reason that thousands of Americans have been killed, and tens of thousands maimed in Iraq; it is for this that up to 300,000 innocent Iraqis have been slaughtered; it is for this that the war plans for Iran are going forward. The only way that the pathetic, stunted intellects of this political faction know how to interpret reality is through the paranoid prism of the Cold War, with its hidebound abstractions, its cartoonish exaggerations, its perverted morality (willing to destroy a village, a region, a nation – even the whole world – to "save" it from the enemy) and, more than anything else, the vast power and privilege it accorded to the national security elite... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22706 Baghdad Slipping Into Civil War Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed The new clashes between Shia militiamen dressed in Iraqi military and police uniforms and resistance fighters and residents from the Sunni Adhamiya district of Baghdad have convinced many that what Baghdad is witnessing is no less than a civil war (...) Residents said the attack was clearly carried out by Shia militia. "I have seen these members of the Badr militia and Mehdi Army wearing Iraqi Police (IP) uniforms and using IP pick-up trucks roaming our ! streets," said Abu Aziz, "They tried to reach our sacred Abu Hanifa mosque, but they were stopped before they could do so, thanks to god. Some were just wearing civilian clothes with black face masks, others were definitely commandos from the ministry of interior"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22705 MEDIA ALERT: 'YOU COULD KILL WHOEVER YOU WANTED' War Crimes And The Struggle For Truth Media Lens ...By contrast to coverage of the incident at Haditha, Newsnight's even more disturbing eyewitness accounts - suggesting the routine killing of civilians - have generated no response in the media: not one article discussing these reports has appeared in any newspaper since the film was shown. But this is hardly surprising, given the almost complete indifference of so many British journalists to the fate of! Iraqis. Also ignored by the media was last week's report that, "The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 percent compared to the Saddam Hussein era," according to Dr Haydar Salah, a paediatrician at the Basra Children's Hospital... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22704 Welcome Home Cindy Sheehan, t r u t h o u t "Go home," a Crawford neighbor of Camp Casey, her face deformed with rage, yelled at me as about 50 of us walked the four miles from Camp Casey I to Camp Casey II on Good Friday. We were re-enacting the Stations of the Cross. I was hauling a 12-pound cross on my shoulders, which was Station 12: Jesus Dies. The cross kept getting heavier as we walked along in the high noon Texas sun, but it was not nearly as heavy as the cross that George Bush handed me on April 4, 20! 04. "We are home, thank you," I replied happily, as I flashed a peace sign to her. Camp Casey is our home... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22702 20 000 people kidnapped in Iraq Abdelamir Hanun Nearly 20 000 people have been kidnapped in Iraq since the beginning of 2006 alone, according to a report on violence in a country scarred by three years of conflict. The survey, which underscored the massive social upheaval caused by rebel activity and increasing sectarian conflict, didn't give the number of people killed. However, it said 15 462 people had been wounded... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22699 GI Special 4D19: "Sir! No Sir!" Free DVD For Troops - April 19, 2006 Thomas F. Barton In the 1960s, thousands of American GIs rebelled against the Vietnam War, changing the course of U.S. history and society. No film has ever told their story... until now. Are you or do you know someone serving in or in support of Iraq or Afghanistan? For a limited time only IVAW and Displaced Films is proud to offer 500 free copies of Sir! No Sir! to members of the military who are serving overseas. This award winning document! ary uncovers the untold story of the antiwar movement within the military during the Vietnam era. To learn more about the film and watch the trailer, go to www.sirnosir.com ... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22716 Bait-and-Switch on Iran When "Diplomacy" Means War NORMAN SOLOMON One of the nation’s leading pollsters, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, wrote a few weeks ago that among Americans "there is little potential support for the use of force against Iran." This month the White House has continued to emphasize that it is committed to seeking a diplomatic solution. Yet the U.S. government is very likely to launch a military attack on Iran within the next year. How can that be?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22712 Three university professors shot dead by gunmen in Baquba Deutsche Presse-Agentur Gunmen opened fire on staff members at a university in north-central Iraq on Wednesday, killing three professors and seriously wounding another, as police announced the discovery of nine corpses with bullet wounds near Baghdad. Security forces immediately sealed off the area around Baquba University following the attack, while the dead and wounded were transferred to Baquba General Hospital. The attack followed the announcement by a! n Iraqi police source of the discovery of nine corpses with gunshot wounds, between al- Mussayeb and al-Iskandariya, 36 kilometres south of Baghdad (...) Earlier, US troops clashed with insurgents in al-Ramadi, 110 kilometres west of Baghdad, killing four civilians and injuring six others, among them small children and women, a police source said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22718 IRAQ: Palestinian refugees remain stranded on Jordan border IRIN About 150 Palestinians refugees fleeing from Iraq, including some 50 children, remain stranded near the Jordan-Iraq border, say aid officials. "The children are suffering due to a lack of protection and food," said Ahmed Barak, a volunteer for the Iraqi Aid Association. "Medical provision in the area is very poor." The refugees, many of whom fled their homes in Iraq in the wake of a recent spate of anti-Palestinian violence, have been waiting for Am! man's permission to enter the kingdom since 4 April... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22698 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 18 April 2006. Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...In a dispatch posted at 11:25am Makkah time Tuesday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that fierce fighting was raging at the time of reporting in the northern Baghdad area of al-A'zamiyah between Iraqi Resistance fighters and US and Iraqi puppet troops. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in al-A'zamiyah as saying that the battl! e broke out on Tuesday morning when the joint US-Iraqi puppet forces attempted to storm the district in order to carry out mass arrests among the residents. Iraqi Resistance fighters among the local residents, armed with light and medium weapons and pipe rockets resisted the American-led assault... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22697 Nature abhors a security vacuum, and so do Iraq's militias Needlenose ...Iraqi reporters for NEWSWEEK set off last week to visit some of the country's most sacred sites. They didn't get far. At the first stop on their list —- the 10th-century Kadhimiya shrine in Baghdad —- two reporters were detained and questioned. The armed men who held them were from an obscure security force called the Facilities Protection Services, which now apparently numbers a staggering 146,000 men. . . The FPS, as it turns out, is a mut! ant security agency that has grown from a 4,000-man group of "night watchmen" -— the description given to them last year by Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training all Iraqi security forces -— into a large, amorphous force that seems to lack any centralized control. Not one ministry contacted by NEWSWEEK would accept overall responsibility for the FPS. The Americans don't oversee them either: "We really don't get anywhere near them," says Tim Keefe, a U.S. military spokesman in BaghdadmFacility Protection cops are suspected of committing at least some of the sectarian killings that have plagued the country in recent months... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22696 Bush: the Decider Dictator Kurt Nimmo I recall months ago, when folks began first murmuring about booting Donald Rumsfeld, arriving at the obvious conclusion—Donald Rumsfeld is not going anywhere, not anymore than Cheney is (short of a heart attack). Rumsfeld and Cheney are integral to the Straussian neocon hold on both the Pentagon and the Oval Office (...) It’s said Rumsfeld has to go because Iraq is a disaster. I beg to differ—things are going swimmingly for the Straussian neocons in Iraq. Bush never intended! to bestow democracy on the Iraqi people, as claimed, and we all know about the weapons of mass destruction that never were (and a few of us said this in late 2002, as the Office of Special Plans began to circulate its propaganda and lies to the likes of Judith Miller at the New York Times). All of it was and is a smokescreen for the real deal—fomenting "civil war" and eventually breaking Iraq up into three pieces based along ethnic and religious lines (all the better to rule and divide—and steal oil, water, and other natural resources, not to mention turning millions of people into a pool of cheap labor, as the Israelis have done over the years to the Palestinians)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22693 Stand up for Humanity Dr. Gideon Polya ...Dr Dhafir and Dr Kendall-Smith are both medical doctors who have been imprisoned in Western democracies (the US and the UK, respectively) for standing up against horrendous abuse of humanity by the Anglo-American Coalition in Iraq. The Nazi analogy adduced by Dr Kendall-Smith in his defence is germane. The Nazis killed 1.5 million Jewish children during World War 2. So far, the post-1990 Iraqi infant mortality totals 1.6 million and the post-2003 infant mortality totals 0! .4 million - 90% of these deaths have been AVOIDABLE and have occurred through the non-provision by the Occupying Coalition of the life-preserving requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions. The under-5 infant mortality in Iraq (post-1990) and Afghanistan (post-2001) have been 1.6 million and 1.4 million, respectively, and now total 3.0 million. How many infants have to be murdered before the world cries "enough is enough"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22692 Bush declines to exclude nuclear strike on Iran Edmund Blair, Reuters U.S. President George W. Bush refused on Tuesday to rule out nuclear strikes against Iran if diplomacy fails to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, told world powers it would pursue atomic technology, whatever they decide at a meeting in Moscow later in the day. Bush said in Washington he would discuss Iran's nuclear activities with China's President Hu Jintao this week and av! oided ruling out nuclear retaliation if diplomatic efforts fail. Asked if options included planning for a nuclear strike, Bush replied: "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22691 Why Oppose the Israel Lobby? Comments on Mearsheimer and Walt Gabriel Ash, www.dissidentvoice.org ...I’ll state here my core agreement with the authors: the Israeli lobby is indeed powerful and influential; its influence is nefarious and damaging to Americans, Israelis, the people of the Middle East and the rest of the world (though not necessarily in that order.) The evidence supporting these statements is beyond dispute by any fair and open-minded person. The problem, however, is not with these conc! lusions, but with the way M&W frame their understanding of the Lobby’s role in American politics... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22690 Forget the Middle East: North America Harbors the World's Most Dangerous Terrorists JASON MILLER After years of living under the perpetual risk of the ultimate terrorist attack, most people have become acclimated to the distinct possibility of imminent extinction of life on Earth. Fortunately, humans tend to be highly adaptable beings, and most are able to go on with their daily tasks without dwelling on potential doomsday scenarios. In fact, people have become so desensitized to the threat of nuclear ! holocaust that those who still believe American propaganda are more terrified of religious fanatics wielding box cutters than they are of an ICBM capable of annihilating millions... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22701 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.