[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 15 May 2006 - Part One]

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

Pentagon PSYOP: "Terror Mastermind" Abu Musab Al Zarqawi is "Incompetent" Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch.ca The Pentagon has released yet another mysterious video allegedly discovered in April by US forces in a hideout in the Al-Yusufiyah neighborhood of southern Baghdad. The video portrays "Terror Mastermind" Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi acting in a "foolish" and "incompetent" fashion. He appears "confused" on how to handle a US M-249 squad automatic weapon (SAW), which every US serviceman learns from day one. W! ithout further examination, the US media concurs in chorus: the video is authentic and the enemy is "incompetent"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23294 Russian Identity and the Prospects for Democracy in Putin's Russia Walter C. Uhler ... Readers of that article know that I dispute the contention that the United States is a democracy. Why? Because, as America's war in Iraq demonstrates, America's so-called democracy fails to meet even the most basic and fundamental requirement for a functioning democracy: the ability to hold its leaders accountable. Thomas Jefferson had accountability in mind, when he asserted: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a ! state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Ignorance falls easy prey to political deception. Witness the ease with which the Bush administration was able to persuade 51 percent of Americans, in March 2003, that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Vice President Cheney never tired of falsely linking Saddam and al Qaeda. Yet he remains in office. Where's the accountability? Consequently, I certainly was not surprised to read that Mr. Cheney not only advised Russia to return to democratic reforms, but that he equates such reforms with "the gains of the last decade." After all, it was during that decade, under the rule of Boris Yeltsin and his "shock therapy," that privatizers in so-called democratic Russia gave away much of the people's wealth, especially oil wealth, to Russian oligarchs... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23284 Solidarity: Remembering Algeria And Fanon Tony Solo ...What French governments did in Algeria is being variously repeated now by the US and its allies and their proxies in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia. Over the last two years United Nations forces have used brutal, colonial-style murder and terror against people in Haiti. Constant threats and menaces are sustained by the same imperialist bloc against countries, like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, that defend their national interests. Blatant intervention! in countries with weak national governments is routine. International norms like the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg principles, human rights covenants as fundamental as that on the Rights of the Child, all have been effectively trashed. But the criminal politicians who have wrecked those protective covenants and agreed rules declare constantly they are acting to defend the highest ideals of freedom, democracy and "civilization". They do this at the same time as they massacre civilians and pollute targeted countries with their poisons, be it depleted uranium in Iraq or glyphosate in Colombia (...) Even so, the hypocrisy of politicans like Georeg W. Bush and Tony Blair and their colleagues is still capable of debilitating resistance in their own countries. Outright international solidarity support for the Iraqi resistance is rare, despite their legitimate fight against their country's brutal occupation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23291 Smoke Alarm: Yet More Evidence for War Crimes Chris Floyd Ex-WMD Inspector: Politics Quashed Facts (AP) Here's yet another smoking gun revealing the fireless smoke of lies that the Bush Regime spread across the land to justify its outright war of aggression in Iraq. How many more times do we have to be shown glaring evidence that the war was a con job from the word go, that lies were told – deliberate lies, knowing lies, lies now soaked with innocent blood – by leaders who drape themselves in Christian pie! ty, before this crime is at last called by its rightful name, and the long-dormant, hard-rusted machinery of justice begins to move against these death-dealing hypocrites?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23288 Q: Is Iran breaking the NPT? A: No, but the US/EU are David Morrison 'Under NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] rules, there is nothing illegal about any state having enrichment or reprocessing technology – processes that are basic to the production and recycling of nuclear reactor fuel – even though these operations can also produce the high enriched uranium or plutonium that can be used in a nuclear weapon. An increasing number of countries have sought to master these parts of the "nuclear fuel cycle"' These are words of the Director-General of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram (6-12 April 2006) Specifically, on Iran’s enrichment programme, he told Reuters on 30 March 2006: 'Nobody has the right to punish Iran for enrichment. We have not seen nuclear material diverted to a nuclear weapon'... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23289 NSA phone spying program: a blueprint for mass repression Patrick Martin, WSWS In the wake of the May 11 revelation by USA Today of a massive telephone spying program by the National Security Agency, directed against nearly every American citizen, the media commentary has deliberately downplayed the sinister nature of the program. This is a deliberate cover-up of what is without question the most wide-ranging invasion of privacy by the federal government in US history. The press coverage has sought to obscure the! vast scale of the data-gathering, as well as the political purposes to which it can be used, in order to lend credence to the Bush administration’s claim that the operation is targeted exclusively at suspected terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. There has not been a single serious media commentary questioning why a supposedly "narrowly focused" program should collect data on an estimated 225 million Americans... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23306 America In Baghdad David Phinney ...What is news is that the Bush administration continues to follow the same dysfunctional contracting methods and lack of transparency with one of its most recent and visible projects in Baghdad—the building of the new U.S. embassy. When the U.S. State Department awarded the $592-million embassy deal last summer, officials reasoned they needed to keep the contract secret because of their concerns for the safety of work crews. Others believe it has more to do with keeping the lid ! on an overpriced, behind-the-scenes political deal with a building contractor that has been accused repeatedly of coercing low-paid laborers from poor Asian countries to work in Iraq against their better judgment. Keep the contract secret? It’s a joke... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23305 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR MONDAY, May 15, 2006 Today in Iraq "Insurgents" shot down a U.S. helicopter south of Baghdad and killed two soldiers, bringing the weekend death toll of American service members to seven, the U.S. military said Monday. (…) Two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died due to enemy action while operating in al Anbar Province May 14. (CENTCOM). Iraqi police said they found five bodies from one family near their home in the northern outskirts of the capital. All had been shot dead. (S. of)! Roadside bombs exploded in two cities north and south of Baghdad, killing one Iraqi civilian and a police officer, and wounding five Iraqis... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23304 Now It's Shia Troops Versus Kurds Troops... Iraq's "Rag Tag" Army Units Start Fighting Against Themselves PATRICK COCKBURN A gun battle between two units of the Iraqi army has left one soldier and a civilian dead, underlining how ethnic and sectarian divisions are crippling the US-trained force. The shooting, which took place between Kurdish and Shia soldiers on Friday near Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, is a bad omen for US plans to hand over security to the Iraqi army by the end of the year. Th! e fighting started after a powerful roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army convoy carrying Kurdish troops was passing Duluiyah, a small agricultural town that has long been a centre of armed resistance to the occupation. Four soldiers were killed and three wounded in the explosion, according to police, while the US military said one soldier died and 12 were wounded... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23302 The secret tapes and the strategy of tension in London Xymphora There is now even more evidence that the London bombers were connected to the British security establishment, just as the Madrid bombers were connected to the Spanish security establishment. MI5 had secret tape recordings of one of the bombers discussing the building of a bomb, failed to properly monitor him, and then hid the existence of such tapes from the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which investigated the attacks. It wasn’! t just that the MI5 innocently let the bombers slip through their hands by failing to know the importance of specific people. They knew exactly what was going on, and let it happen. ... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23301 Violence robs Iraq of Christian heritage Firas al-Atraqchi The flight of religious minorities escaping violence in post-war Iraq is threatening to rob the country of its once diverse Christian heritage. In the early 1980s, Iraq's Christian population numbered 1.4 million but economic strife brought on by the war with Iran and UN sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War pushed some in the ancient community to emigrate. Nevertheless, the Christian community continued to enjoy religious freedoms in the majority Muslim coun! try until the US-led invasion of 2003, says Adli Juwaidah, a former director of cultural relations in Iraq's ministry of higher education (...) But after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the Christian community found itself under attack and tens of thousands have since fled the country in fear of religious persecution... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23285 Rove, Hatfield, Leopold? Xymphora ...I don’t want to dump all over Leopold, as, unlike everybody else, he seems to be trying. On the other hand, his background makes him, exactly like James Hatfield, an excellent target for Rovean disinformation. The Rove pattern is to pick somebody with an iffy history to spread rumors about a touchy topic, rumors which have a basis in truth but which are technically wrong, and then use the character of the person reporting the rumors to deflect attention from the real issues.! They used the same method in dealing with Bush’s military service, or lack thereof... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23300 US helicopter shot down in Iraq Reuters Militants have shot down a US helicopter during clashes south of Baghdad, killing two soldiers. The US military says the incident took place near the village of Yusifiya 15 kilometres south of the Iraqi capital. The area is a stronghold of Sunni Arab militants fighting against US and Iraqi forces. "Two soldiers died ... when their helicopter was shot down during fighting in Yusifiya," a US statement said, giving no further details... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23299 Saddam defiant as charges read Aljazeera.net Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has refused to enter a plea after hearing the formal list of charges against him read in court. The trial reconvened in Baghdad on Monday after a three week recess following the completion of the prosecution case (...) According to previous statements by Najib al-Nuaimi, a former Qatari justice minister and member of Saddam's defence team, they plan to call around 30 witnesses in the defence stage of the trial. The court must approve ! the witnesses before they give their testimony. Another member of the defence team, Bushra al-Khalil, said she had had several meetings with Saddam in the past few weeks and that he is ready for the trial. He is in good health, she said, and had won the respect of his guards. She said he told her that he was not afraid of death, and ready for it (...) Al-Khalil, a Lebanese Shia, said she was defending Saddam, a Sunni, because she believed that the campaign against him was only because he was an ambitious and patriotic leader. "His only crime is he tried to build a strong and sophisticated country, and that does not suit the West and some countries in the region... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23298 Karl Rove Indictment an elaborate Hoax? Did Jason Leopold get Rolled? Most of US Media Waiting to see with Held Breath Steven Leser Despite right wing media and blogosphere accusations, Jason Leopold has been a reliable source for some time. For now, I am willing to take it on faith that he has numerous well placed sources that did in fact tell him that Karl Rove had been indicted. As a journalist for Truthout ( http://www.truthout.org ), Jason has ! broken numerous stories ahead of the rest of the media which up until now have all proven to be true. If his story on the Rove indictment is incorrect, and I want to stress that we do not know either way right now, I have a theory as to what might have happened... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23297 Iraq Sunnis accuse US of "atrocity" over raids Reuters Iraq's main Sunni religious grouping accused U.S. forces on Monday of killing 25 civilians in raids near Baghdad in the past two days, rejecting the U.S. account that only suspected insurgents had died. "We hold the Iraqi government and the occupiers responsible for this brutal atrocity," the Muslim Clerics Association said in a statement. The U.S. military earlier on Monday said its forces had killed more than 41 insurgents in and around the villages of Lati! fiya and Yusifiya, south of the capital, on Saturday and Sunday. It also said a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two soldiers... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23296 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 14 May 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...New Iraqi Resistance groups with distinctly Shi'i names have begun to make their appearance in attacks and video announcements, joining their Iraqi Sunni brothers in the battle against the Anglo-American occupation. The appearance of the groups within the last week or so has followed the widely-publicized shooting down of a British helicopter in al-Basrah. Qu! ds Press reported on Sunday that a video that appeared on an Internet website announced that the Brigades of the Imam al-Kazim had detonated a bomb by a US patrol in the Sab' al-Bur area northwest of Baghdad. The accompanying communiqué by the group claimed that their attack had left seven American soldiers dead.... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23295 GI Special 4E15: Col. Ritchie Confirms.... - May 15, 2006 Thomas F. Barton Pentagon Traitors Devise Exciting New Way To Kill More U.S. Troops: Col. Ritchie Confirms Sending Mentally Disabled Back Into Combat "Driven In Part By A Troop Shortage" SOME DAY, Trisha Fish says, she will have to tell Chance, now 7, that his father committed suicide in Iraq. She says she finds herself rehearsing what she will say. "Your Daddy went to war and he saw a lot of things and they broke his heart. They broke his spirit. They changed who he was." (MARK MIRKO) Mar. 17, 2006 [Thanks to Alan Stolzer and James Starowicz, who sent this in.] Some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring, the Courant reported. The Army's top mental health expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23293 GI Special 4E14: Bush Approval Rating Down Again - May 14, 2006 Thomas F. Barton May 11, 2006 Washington Wire & ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE, The New York Times President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an "excellent or pretty good" job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%. Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say "things in the country are going in the right direction," while 69% say "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track." This has been the trend since January, when 33% said the nation was heading in the right direction. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23292 Neocons Commie Bait Ray McGovern Kurt Nimmo The neocons over at the Weekly Standard—the house organ of the Straussian neocon movement—have vehemently attacked former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in the wake of his confronting Donald Rumsfeld. In Bushzarro world, opposition to the occupation of Iraq is "extremism" and cheer leading the murder of around 200,000 Iraqis is patriotism. The Weekly Standard accuses McGovern of acting "as front man for an exceedingly unsavory group called Not In Our Name," described as "a co! alition formed in 2002 by the likes of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist party." A quick Google search of the organization turns up little on its supposed communist affiliation, except by way of accusations made by the usual suspects—the rabid and vile freepers and predictably emanating from Frontpage Magazine, a website run with Scaife money by the former Marxist turned neocon, David Horowitz. It is interesting the neocons would call McGovern a commie, or rather a commie dupe. As is well-known, or should be, the Old Guard of the Straussian neocon movement is comprised of Trotskyites... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23287 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SUNDAY, MAY 14, 2006 Today in Iraq Two British soldiers of the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment killed, one wounded by roadside bomb north of Basra. Suicide bombing near Baghdad Airport and "Camp Victory" (U.S. military HQ) kills 14 Iraqis. Six Shiite shrines damaged by bombs near Baqouba. Police found the bodies of five people, blindfolded, bound and with gun wounds, near the Shi'ite city of Kerbala, 110 km southwest of Baghdad, police said. The bodies of four brothers who work in a human! itarian aid organization were found beheaded in Kerbala, police said. They were earlier abducted from their home. Iraqi police found the bodies of three people, bearing signs of torture and with gun wounds, south of Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, police and hospital sources said.... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23286 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.