[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 13 Jun 2006]

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O Iraqis, they make songs now celebrating your deaths! Truth About Iraqis In Iraq, from bad to worse, from Nazi to Satanic, the US military continues to seek new lows of human debasement with which to beat its chests. Today the BBC has revealed that there is a US military probe into a song composed by a US Marine singing about his joys at killing Iraqi civilians. This is the video, see it before someone realizes that the US military is really going all out to prove how humanitarian they really are... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23949 Déjà vu in Ramadi Mike Whitney An Iraqi city is surrounded by troops and armored vehicles; the artillery is wheeled into place, the roads are blocked, a giant wall of sand is piled up around the perimeter, and everything goes silent before the final onslaught. We’ve seen it in Falluja, al Qaim, Husbaya and Tel Afar; the same persistent refrain over and over again; Rumsfeld’s lone mantra; "surround, isolate and destroy". This time it’s Ramadi, next time somewhere else; what difference does it make? Iraq is being! decimated city by city, town by town; ravaged by invaders who see an opportunity to fatten their wallets or enhance their reputations. They’ll level everything before they’re done (...) Ramadi is a teeming city of 400,000 people. Now it is under siege by Rumsfeld’s legions. The water lines have been blown up, medical supplies have been blocked, electricity has been cut off, and tens of thousands of people are fleeing into the countryside without shelter or food... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23933 Freed prisoners speak of violations, torture Ammar al-Khafaji, Azzaman Prisoners freed by U.S. troops recently have spoken of violations and torture at the hands of their U.S. jailers (...) Iraqi human rights monitors estimate that tens of thousands of prisoners languish in Iraqi and U.S. jails. One prisoner, released recently and refusing to be named, said U.S. jailers "used humiliation techniques and resorted to torture and violated prisoner rights." Another said U.S. jails are crowed and the jailers "put 50 in! mates in cages less than 50 square meters." "You could be confined to a solitary cell for no reason," one prisoner said. The prisoners said jails run specifically by U.S. troops lacked bathrooms. "Conditions are subhuman and the inmates face torture. They are subjected to heating in summer and cooling in winter. Mass punishment is normal," a prisoner said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23951 Saddam Judge: No More Defense Witnesses AP The chief judge declared an end to hearing defense witnesses in Saddam Hussein's trial Tuesday and said the prosecution will present its closing argument next week. The declaration came despite complaints by the defense team that it has not had the freedom to properly present its case and that many of its motions were not ruled on by chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman in the nearly eight-month-old trial (...) Last month, three witnesses testified that some of the 148 Shiites! were still alive and living in Dujail. Abdel-Rahman had the three witnesses arrested for perjury, along with a fourth witness who claimed that the chief prosecutor tried to bribe him to testify against Saddam. On Monday, alleged confessions of the four witnesses were read in court, admitting they committed perjury either because they were intimidated by Saddam loyalists or offered rewards by the defense. The defense team alleged the confessions were forced, and two of the witnesses _ who have since been released and fled abroad _ told The Associated Press they were beaten in detention to make them sign the confessions... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23952 Psyops Against the American People, The Boogeyman Principle Anthony Wade ... No, bin Laden, who once worked for the CIA, cannot be killed off. The war machine does not want him dead. They need him alive. The only thing the war machine wants is the continual perpetuation of the war. Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Iran. Bin Laden is the primary boogeyman that cannot be caught, so there needs to be secondary boogeymen. Enter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Had you heard of him before this war? I thought not. Suddenly a couple of ye! ars ago, it was Zarqawi that began being blamed for everything that went wrong in Iraq. He became the poster child for the war on terror. Even the Washington Post had reported on the decision to glorify all violence in Iraq to Zarqawi as a psyop... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23944 Karl Rove Gets Off - I Want My Money Back Evelyn Pringle The American people were told three years ago that an investigation was being set up to do one thing, find out the names of the 2 Bush administration officials who were the sources for a newspaper article by Bob Novak that revealed the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. We now know that Rove was one of the sources - end of story. He should have been charged. Does the Bush administration really think that the public will not remember what they were ! told when this investigation was set up? How Rove got Fitzgerald to fold and let him off is anybody's guess. Maybe Rove used his usual dirty tricks and dug deep enough to find some intimidating tale in the special prosecutor's lily-white past... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23943 AMERICA'S ENDLESS RACE WARS AND MASSACRES Glen Ford and Peter Gamble Massacre is an acquired taste. The United States is arguably the only country on the planet whose national personality and self-image is rooted in centuries of unremitting expansion through race war punctuated by massacre. There have always been free-fire zones all along the coveted, ever moving peripheries of white American power, from the Indian country surrounding the settler beachheads of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown to the Sunni Triangle of ! Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. Whole peoples millions have been erased in the glorious march of American Manifest Destiny... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23947 Tomgram: David Swanson on War Porn and Iraq Tom Engelhardt & David Swanson ...An artist should keep a human skull on the desk as a constant reminder of death, of the need to -- in the words of a currently popular country tune -- live like you were dying. A peace activist should keep a photo in his or her wallet of a small Iraqi child torn to pieces -- a constant reminder to live like others are dying. The trouble is that we find it almost unbearable to look at such images. We believe the war would end if the corp! orate media showed such images, yet we turn our faces away if they're placed in front of us; even more so, if they happen to be images of torture or of soldiers enjoying humiliating Iraqis. Worst of all are the gruesome images that soldiers have created themselves in this new digital age as war trophies... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23940 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 12 June 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...US occupation forces have issued an ultimatum to the city of ar-Ramadi, giving the city until June 15 to turn in all the Iraqi Resistance fighters in the city or face massive American military attack, Quds Press reported. Leaflets dropped by US aircraft on a number of ar-Ramadi neighborhoods said that the residents of the city will have the opportunity to lea! ve their town until 15 June. Resistance fighters must surrender, the American leaflets threatened, or face a massive American offensive... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23939 The General, the New York Times and the Gitmo Suicides The Evil of Banality ANTHONY ALESSANDRINI There are moments that require us to stop everything and take stock of the time in which we are living. This is one such moment. Listen: "They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." This is Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris! , commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison. His words appeared, without comment, in the first news reports about three men, detained indefinitely and subjected to systematic torture at the prison, who committed suicide on Saturday by hanging themselves in their cells. Take a moment to dwell on the admiral's words. Look especially at the first sentence, at the adjectives used to describe the dead men: "smart, creative, committed." There is a perverse compliment being paid by the torturer to the tortured. This attitude is also implicit in the follow-up article printed by the New York Times the next day, with the headline: "Prisoners' Ruse Is Suspected at Guantanamo"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23938 Exception or Rule? The Meaning of Haditha PAUL D'AMATO As I go through a list of New York Times articles on the Haditha massacre, in which Marines murdered 24 Iraqi civilians, the following phrases keep popping up: "unprovoked attack," "unprovoked murder," "unprovoked killings." (...) The problem with the term "unprovoked attack" is that it deliberately obscures the larger picture--that the entire U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq itself is an unprovoked attack by a foreign army on the Iraqi people.! All U.S. armed action in Iraq is provocative in this sense; all Iraqi reactions to it are provoked by the occupation. It is shameful that we should even have to explain this, so numbed are many people in this country to the idea that the U.S. is perfectly within its rights to operate hundreds of military bases around the world and invade any country at will, and that it isn't legitimate for anyone to resist it... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23937 US, Global Arms & Huge Infant deaths Gideon Polya IN WORLD WAR ONE young men of the British Empire were exhorted to "join up to fight the Hun" ( "Hun" or "Boche" being the popular names for a "German" at the time). We are all familiar with the famous recruitment poster in which a stern Lord Kitchener points and declares "Britain needs you". However an additional impetus for enlistment was given by propaganda about "the Boche bayoneting Belgian babies"), a line that was also used to get America into the war. Ind! eed a version of this canard was used during the 1991 Gulf War, with the US promulgating utterly false propaganda about Iraqi soldiers murdering hundreds of Kuwaiti babies by tipping them out of humidicribs. However these lies of commission have given way to lies of omission – lying, racist, Anglo-American Mainstream Media will simply NOT report the horrendous avoidable infant mortality that is ACTUALLY occurring in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories because of gross Israeli, US, Coalition and NATO violation of the Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Civilians in Time of War. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23936 Karl Rove Non-Indictment – Time for Jason Leopold and William Rivers Pitt to Pony up with Names and Specifics Steven Leser According to John Solomon of the Associated Press, Patrick Fitzgerald did not indict Karl Rove and reports have surfaced that he will not be indicted despite reports to the contrary. Truthout as well as Jason Leopold who reported that the indictment had in fact happened on Friday May 12 and his editor William Rivers Pitt now have a responsibility to take readers through the process that led t! hem to report the incorrect information. Depending on the way sources provided information, particularly if it can be determined that sources intentionally misled Leopold, those sources should be named along with details of what information they provided. Sources that lie or otherwise intentionally provide disinformation to the media should not have assurances that they will remain anonymous... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23950 Precious Leader Visits Baghdad piglipstick The Codpiece Commander pulled a "surprise" visit to Iraq, sneaking into the city to meet his satrap Nouri al-Maliki for a photo op. Some thoughts about this trip crossed my mind when I read about it. According to news reports, it was all quickly arranged and the prime minister was kept in the dark until 5 minutes before the meeting. Not exactly the usual exchange between heads of state but more like the office manager popping into a cubicle to see if the guy is playing v! ideo games. And the obvious message to us all is that the Victorious War President is exulting over the staged Zarqawi production from a few days back, possibly stressing how much safer and secure Iraq is now that the terrible boogeyman was removed... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23945 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, June 13, 2006 Today in Iraq A U.S. soldier died on Monday of wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, the U.S. military reported. A second U.S. soldier died also on Monday of wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province. Four mortars slammed into Baghdad's southern Dora district, killing 2 people and wounding 11. Gunmen shot dead Baghdad University Professor Muthana Harith Jassim. A professor at the Engineering College of Bagh! dad University was gunned down in a drive-by shooting as he was leaving his house in the upscale Mansour neighborhood. Police found 6 bodies, showing signs of torture, in different parts of Baghdad. Iraqi police found eight bodies, including one policeman, in western Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23932 Cure the Disease Cindy Sheehan ...Yet, although George is the not so clever, greedy, power hungry string-puppet of many clever, greedy, power hungry puppeteers, he is not the problem: he is just the symptom of a much greater problem: the corruptness of our democracy. I was conveying this thinking to the audience at my talk in Cincy when I said, "George Bush is only a boil on the ass of democracy." He is not, no matter what the world thinks, the ass and, similarly, he is not, no matter what he thinks, the democrac! y. No doubt about it, he is a boil that needs to be lanced (impeached and removed from office) to cure immediate problems; such as crimes against humanity, but lancing him is only temporary relief. We have to look at why our democracy was so ill that it manifested itself in the symptom of George Bush. A symptom is also a warning sign and a wake up call. Let's examine the disease before we break out in more boils…which could be even more severe and poisonous than George... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23948 Palestinian Referendum … A Distraction Dr. Elias Akleh Again the Palestinians are being distracted away from the core issue (the Israeli occupation) and being occupied with secondary trivial matters that gets them no where except cause more division and internal friction. The prisoner’s document and the national referendum are the latest examples of such distractions (...) The document and its referendum are being used by certain corrupt Fatah leaders to undermine the popularity of Hamas government... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23934 GI Special 4F11: Soldier-Killers At Work Again - June 13, 2006 Thomas F. Barton Nine months after an Army order that all combat soldiers would get lifesaving clotting bandages to curb bleeding deaths, some troops in Iraq are still calling home, asking friends and family to supply them. Despite Army assurances that there are plenty of the bandages to go around, soldiers have written to say they haven't found their way to all of those on the front lines. One platoon leader stationed in the Sunni Triangle west of Baghdad asked his college alumni association to send the bandages, saying his unit has never had access to them during his two tours there. "We have no supplies of coagulating bandages and agents to stop arterial bleeding," the soldier wrote in an e-mail about a week ago. "My unit does not have the budget to procure such supplies for our front-line soldiers," wrote the soldier, a second lieutenant who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. "Bleeding out is the leading cause of death for our soldiers." Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23929 'MARINES' CHEER SONG ABOUT KILLING IRAQI CIVILIANS Song's lyrics: 'I blew those little f**kers to eternity' CAIR The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the Pentagon and Congress to investigate a music video posted on the Internet that seems to show U.S. Marines cheering a song that glorifies the killing of Iraqi civilians. CAIR said the four-minute video, called "hadji girl," purports to be a "marine in iraq singing a song about hadji." (A "Hajji" is a person who has made the ! Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, but the term has often been used as a pejorative by U.S. troops in Iraq.) The song, posted online in March, tells of a U.S. Marine's encounter with an Iraqi woman. It has been viewed by almost 50,000 people. The song's lyrics include: "I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally. . .I blew those little f**kers to eternity . . .They should have known they were f**king with the Marines."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23941 Silent but Deadly in Ramadi Lenin's Tomb In a drawn out repeat of the Fallujah assault, residents have been fleeing Ramadi city in droves, anticipating a massive US assault. The city has been cordoned off, with aerial assaults being perpetrated with increasing frequency on residential areas. The city has for months suffered from US-led assaults, in which the occupiers have shut off water and electricity in violation of Geneva Conventions (the usual). We've seen similar assaults before in Tal Afar, Haditha and al-! Qaim, where civilians have been repeatedly targeted... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23931 Saddam concerned about hurting innocents: bodyguard AFP Two former bodyguards of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein have testified that the former president actually stopped them from returning fire to would be assassins in Dujail in 1982 for fear of hitting innocents. "He (Saddam) got out from the car after the firing and actually shouted at us to stop firing towards the orchards from where the bullets were coming at the convoy," the bodyguard said Tuesday (...) "The president said there could be someone inno! cent in (the orchards) who could be hit by your firing, so stop shooting," recalled a second bodyguard. When asked by a defense attorney why Saddam ordered that, the earlier witness said "he did not want anybody in the orchard to be hit as usually there are women and children in such orchards and he thought they may be hurt due to our firing"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23930 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.