Thursday, June 08, 2006

[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 07 Jun 2006]


 

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


Death Squads in Iraq
Fanatic Militias Used in a Dirty war

(Name of Iraqi author withheld for security reasons) The BRussells Tribunal
...The type of killing now connected to the death squads began around early 2005, on the hands of the Iraqi police commandos. But some important points worth mentioning here: that the first Iraqi interim government was (elected) in January 2005 and was heavily Shiite (Jafari government), that around that time the talk of the Salvador option in Iraq was being heard (4),! and that the police commandos were formed, mainly of Shiite militias, especially Badr (the armed branch of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and the Mahdi Army (the Sadr Movement militia). But does all this mean that the death squads are Shiite militias within the interior ministry forces? The answer is: NO, not exactly. I know that any Iraqi who has seen a death squads' operation (which is becoming a familiar day light phenomenon) would want to shoot me in the head for this answer; because a convoy of heavily armed men, masked, black-suited, in expensive modern cars and pick ups, calling Sunnis the worst of names, shooting in the air, calling for revenge, attacking individuals, shops, kidnapping people, beating them to death or shoving them in cars trunks, would not look like anything other than a sectarian militia. But this is only part of the story.


Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23795


US/UK BASES IN IRAQ, Part II. The South : Falcon-Al-Sarq, Tallil, Shaibah
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
The CIA ’03 oil map (above) explains the location of US/UK bases in Iraq. There is also a CIA map of oil fields, circa 1992. If one then looks at the Centcom map, one sees that there are nine visibly marked bases, not including the Baghdad complex, along the oil axis. These are: Al Sahra, Kirkuk, Balad and Qayyara West in the North; Tallil and Salman North in the South; Al Taquaddam, H2 and H3 in the West. Some s! outhern UK-controlled areas, including Basra where the UK base is located, cannot be seen. US/UK Bases in southern Iraq1 focuses on the camps and their facilities as well as some of the human rights abuses of prisoners ("detainees") within each base. Prison camps are part of the scenery within most - if not all – bases in Iraq...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23785


Kristol: Bush as Supreme Leader
Kurt Nimmo
...Thus Kristol let slip on Fox News in response to comments made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameni: "Maybe we should have Supreme Leader Bush. I kind of like the sound of that." Bill thought he made a funny. But what he did, for a brief albeit brightly illuminated moment, was reveal the inner most thinking of the Straussians, now in control of the "unitary executive." Few noticed the glaring truth of this seemingly off-the-cuff comment. It was mentioned on Crooks and! Liars, Democratic Underground, Antiwar, and discussion made an appearance on numerous forums. But naturally the corporate media completely ignored the comment. It was allowed to drift up in the air, suspended for a small moment, and then evaporate into the cauldron that is the corporate media news cycle...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23800


Sunni party makes new allegations against US forces in Iraq
Zee News
The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab political party, today accused US forces of unlawfully killing over two dozen Iraqis last month in a series of incidents across the country. "The US forces have violated human rights many times across Iraq," said Omar al-Juburi, spokesman for the human rights department of the party, led by vice president Tareq al-Hashemi. In the latest in a string of allegations against US forces, Juburi said 29 people were! killed in may in separate incidents involving the US forces in the towns of Latifiyah and Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad and in Baghdad itself...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23784


Pathetic rationalization of killing innocents at Iraq checkpoints
clammyc, Daily Kos
...According to US Defense officials, the amount of innocent Iraqi civilians killed in cold blood at US checkpoints has dropped to one per week from roughly one per day back in July 2005. What's even more disgusting is the admission that: [c]heckpoint and convoy shootings are almost always the result of mistakes in which confused or disoriented Iraqi drivers don't respond to initial warnings from U.S. forces to slow down or b! ack off, U.S. officials say. U.S. forces, worried about their own security and that of their colleagues, must make split-second decisions to fire warning shots or open fire. (...) I am sure that the Iraqis won't forget how the US vigorously defended it's right to shoot unarmed civilians in the name of "self defense"...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23799


PRESS RELEASE
Judge Says Legitimacy of the Tribunal and Intimidation of Witnesses Not Important

Defense and Support Committee of President Saddam Hussein, his Comrades and all P.o.W.s and Detainees in Iraq. (ISNAD)
The trial of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein resumed with increasing intimidation of witnesses and defense counsel by Iraqi and United States authorities and with the Special Court refusing to rule on defense lawyers’ requests for time to prepare and present their case. Judge Abdel Rahman said! that neither the legitimacy of the Special Court nor the detention of defense witness was important in refusing to reply to defense lawyers’ request that lawyer not be harassed and that the defense lawyers’ be given time to prepare a defense. He said these are not his problems. Prior to the Monday hearing the United States authorities attempted to prevent the President’s lawyers from coming to Iraq by repeatedly threatening that they would be arrested and that their security could not be guaranteed despite the fact that the trial is taking place in the heavily fortified Green Zone, under American control. When they arrived they were taken to be 'screened’ where they were thoroughly searched, including their confidential papers in a procedure described as new...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23798


The Real Meaning of Haditha
Tom Engelhardt
...If those horrific murders in Haditha become the mother of all "incidents," however, Iraq may not make more sense, but less. So let's widen the Iraq frame and take another look. Those 24 dead noncombatants are not, in fact, an "incident" at all, nor "isolated," nor -- another of those then-and-now terms -- an "aberration." Make no mistake, they are the essence of this war. From the beginning, the continual slaughter of civilians, as well as the destruction of civilian ! property and livelihoods, has been the modus operandi of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. That most of it didn't happen eyeball-to-eyeball with revenge on the brain certainly made little difference to the many victims, nor should it make too much difference to us...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23797


From logistics to turning a blind eye: Europe's role in terror abductions
Stephen Grey and Ian Cobain, The Guardian
The full extent of European collusion with the CIA during operations to abduct terrorism suspects and fly them to countries where they may be tortured is laid bare today by the continent's most authoritative human rights body. Several states have allowed the agency to snatch their own residents, others have offered extensive logistical support, while many have turned a blind eye, according to the Co! uncil of Europe. The UK stands accused of not only allowing the use of British airspace and airports, but of providing information that was used during the torture of one suspect. The report adds that there is strong evidence to suspect two European states, Poland and Romania, of permitting the CIA to operate secret prisons on their soil, despite official denials...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23796


White House abruptly cancels classified Iraq 'progress' briefing with senators
John Byrne, RAW STORY
President Bush has cancelled a classified briefing on the situation in Iraq, according to a letter from four Democratic senators obtained by RAW STORY. US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad had been set to brief Senators today. Democratic aides tell RAW STORY that the meeting, set to address "all members," was cancelled abruptly yesterday. Requests for a briefing by another administration official went unanswered! . In the letter, four U.S. Senators call on the White House to "publicly and immediately commit to making senior Administration officials available" for questioning regarding the current state of Iraq...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23801


Limbaugh admitted to airing call from phony liberal-bashing Lt. Col. in Iraq but continued to hold out hope officer was real
Media Matters
On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh admitted he had aired a phone call from a purported Air Force officer in Iraq who the military says "[d]oes not exist." The apparently phony officer, who Limbaugh said identified himself as "Lieutenant Colonel Luke Fitzpatrick" of the "336th Tactical Air Wing," delivered what Limbaugh described as a "profound" and "mov[ing]" message. But despit! e acknowledging that Pentagon officials and the Air Force told him they have no record of a "Luke Fitzpatrick" or a "336th Tactical Air Wing," Limbaugh nonetheless continued to float the possibility that the caller was in fact an officer in Iraq...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23793


Posada Crony Runs Iraq Death Squads
Prensa Latina
US Colonel James Steele, accomplice of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, is advising death squad operations in Iraq, Granma newspaper reported Tuesday. Steele was the one to whom Posada Carriles reported the shooting down of a DC-3 airplane in Nicaragua and Eugene Hassenfus´ apprehension, an incident that provoked the Iran-Contras scandal, the daily stated. Steele´s presence was denounced in a letter by US congressman Dennis J. Kucinich addressed to th! e State Department. Kucinich said he has a copy of all Pentagon documents on the use of US Special Forces members to constitute murder and kidnapping equipment in Iraq...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23807


The Case of the Missing $21 Billion
Who's Following the Iraq Money?

DAVE LINDORFF
During the days of the Nixon Watergate scandal investigation, reporter Bob Woodword was famously advised by his mysterious source, Deep Throat, to "follow the money" as a way of cracking the story. Well, there is a lot of money to follow in the current scandal that can be best described as the Bush/Cheney administration, and so far, nobody's doing it. My bet for the place that needs the most following is the more than $9 ! billion that has gone missing without a trace in Iraq--as well as $12 billion in cash that the Pentagon flew into Iraq straight from Federal Reserve vaults via military transports, and for which there has been little or no accounting...


Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23791


When hope died: The lesson of Ishaqi
Richard Marsden, The Business of Emotions
It's not often we get to witness the death of an emotion. But it happens. It happened this weekend, another casualty of Ishaqi. Was it only last Thursday that the BBC broadcast new video evidence of the U.S. attack on a house there which killed five children, four women and two men by American forces? The video corroborated other, photographic, autopsy, and eye-witness, evidence. Together they contradicted the Pentagon's version of eve! nts. Coming hard on the heels of the Haditha scandal, there was every reason to be hopeful about holding to account those responsible for these atrocities. The mounting global moral outrage was palpable. And then, the very next day, just in time for the lazy weekend, the Pentagon released a video of Major General William Caldwell reading a statement from a teleprompter, somewhere in Iraq (...) The Pentagon simply exonerated itself, ignored incriminating evidence and dismissed allegations, supported by this evidence, that its troops had executed these civilians. It then waited for the story to go away (as often happens to Friday's news). And, guess what? It did. I published a challenge to this self-exoneration on Monday— Getting away with murder at Ishaqi: The American’s "rational" defence—and looked around for company. There was none. The story died over the weekend...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23790


Haditha? No Big Deal, Say Neocons
Robert Dreyfuss
... Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, had written in an editorial that there is entirely "too much liberal hand wringing" about the murders. On Fox, he said: Some decent liberals are spending much too much time hand wringing over this incident, which they say overshadows the decent things our troops are doing in Iraq, and a lot of the people who want us to lose in Iraq are obsessing about this story. They can barely contain their glee at this story. ! And I do think that for both Newsweek and Time to put this on the cover—we don’t know what happened yet, it’s one incident in a war, and how often have they put United States soldiers on the cover in the last three years? … And this is the time to put United States soldiers on the cover, with comparisons in the text to My Lai? It’s offensive really. And that’s what the U.S. media is using Haditha to do. … It’s not as bad as VN, obviously. No one is accusing Iraqi vets when they come back of being baby-killers…. Well, Bill, I for one as doing exactly that: accusing some Iraq vets of being baby killers, since that’s what the facts tell us. Meanwhile, over at the American Enterprise Institute, Reuel Marc Gerecht blames President Bush for the fact that there aren’t more atrocities. Don’t believe me? Here’s the text...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23788


DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, June 7, 2006
Today in Iraq
... Fifteen of the 50 Iraqis kidnapped yesterday in downtown Baghdad by gunmen wearing police uniforms were found wandering in eastern Baghdad, many of them showing signs of torture. Police found eight of them together on a major north-south highway in east Baghdad. Patrols were alerted to search for others and another seven were found around the area, three of whom had bullet wounds in their legs. The al-Kindi hospital confirmed that 13 people had been bro! ught in by police for treatment. Four police officers were killed, and another wounded, when gunmen attacked their patrol in Baghdad. Police sources said the attack took place in the western al-Mansour district of the capital...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23787


'U.S. Military Hides Many More Hadithas'
Aaron Glantz and Alaa Hassan
An Iraqi doctor who was in Haditha during a deadly U.S. raid last year says there are many more stories like that in Haditha that are yet untold. The Pentagon admitted last week that U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians — including a 66-year-old woman and a four-year-old boy — in the Western Iraqi town last November. Before that, the military had maintained the civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. "There are many, many, many cases like Haditha! that are still undercover and need to be highlighted in Iraq," Dr. Salam Ishmael, projects manager with the organisation Doctors for Iraq, and former chief of the junior doctors in Baghdad's Medical City Hospital told IPS...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23786


The Courage of Lieutenant Watada
Bob Geiger
When Lieutenant Ehren Watada's Army unit from Fort Lewis, WA leaves for Mosul in northern Iraq this month, he will not be among them. The 28-year-old Army officer will formally refuse today to ship out when his unit deploys to Iraq. "I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to watch families torn apart, while the President tells us to 'stay the course,'" said Watada, on a web site supporting his cause. "I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people! who did nothing to deserve our aggression." Watada faces being court martialed for refusing to serve as ordered, unless the Army allows him to resign his commission or assigns him elsewhere, in a capacity unrelated to the war in Iraq...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23803


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 6 June 2006.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.
In a dispatch posted at 7:05pm Makkah time Tuesday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier, US occupation forces had begun to seal off the city of ar-Ramadi, about 110km west of Baghdad. The blockade that the US forces are imposing on the city closes all approaches to the city and cuts it off from the Euphrates River ad the al-Warrar wat! er treatment project facility. The ar-Ramadi correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the Americans have deployed hundreds of troops around the city, preventing anyone from entering or exiting. Afterwards, the Americans shot off the electricity grid, turned off the fresh water supply and completely shut down all the oil and gasoline stations in the city. The correspondent reported that the Americans also bombarded all medical storage facilities where medicine was kept and closed all medical clinics, confiscating their first aid supplies. At the time of reporting, American warplanes and helicopter gunships were prowling the skies at extremely low altitudes...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23783


Sunni party makes new allegations against US forces in Iraq
Zee News
The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab political party, today accused US forces of unlawfully killing over two dozen Iraqis last month in a series of incidents across the country. "The US forces have violated human rights many times across Iraq," said Omar al-Juburi, spokesman for the human rights department of the party, led by vice president Tareq al-Hashemi. In the latest in a string of allegations against US forces, Juburi said 29 people were! killed in may in separate incidents involving the US forces in the towns of Latifiyah and Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad and in Baghdad itself...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23784


Israeli Exceptionalism: Hamas Is Not the Issue
Ramzy Baroud
Recently, the Aljazeera online English service posed a seemingly simple question: "Should (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert talk with Hamas?" The question, of course, acquires ample meaning once examined against the backdrop of far-reaching political developments: Stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the emerging political crisis between supporters of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in the Fatah movement and those of the elected Palestini! an government, led by Hamas. It also comes on the heels of Olmert’s "successful" visit to Washington, where he received abundant rounds of applause from the ever-loyal US Congress and a few hints from President Bush that he can set in motion his "bold" unilateral plan to define Israel’s borders...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23782


Thouloiya: women threatened with rape will await American soldiers with explosive belts ..
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
...The American occupation forces did manage this afternoon to take complete control of Thoulouiya and the surrounding villages after days of a tightly-imposed brutal siege. The Islam Memo reporter in Thoulouiya confirmed that American soldiers, along with Kurdish peshmerga soldiers, have captured the remaining districts in Thoulouiya near the post office after an unbalanced (in strength) heavy figh! ting, in which more than 60 Resistance fighters and men of Thoulouiya have died. The woman and children of Thoulouiya are now under the mercy of the American occupation forces who are ransacking and searching their homes, one by one. The occupation forces have already captured more than 100 men of the city. The reporter, who miraculously managed to escape capture by the occupiers and to leave the city, reported that the city is now open to the occupation forces to do what they like in it and without being monitored, after taking control of the city and the departure of all journalists from it...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23781




www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English.

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