Saturday, July 29, 2006

[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 28 Jul 2006 - Part One]


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Israel’s New Middle East: Kill All Arabs
Kurt Nimmo
As expected, Israel plans to completely flatten southern Lebanon and murder anybody who remains there, no matter there are thousands of people unable to leave—the sick, elderly, and those without resources. "Everyone remaining in southern Lebanon will be regarded as a terrorist, Israel’s justice minister said yesterday as the military prepared to employ 'huge firepower’ from the air in its campaign to crush Hizbollah," reports the Telegraph. "What we should do i! n southern Lebanon is employ huge firepower before a ground force goes in," insisted Haim Ramon, member of the "moderate" Kadima party and "Minister of Justice," that is to say justice for Israelis, not for Arabs, who are considered untermenschen worthy of slaughter. "Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah. Our great advantage vis-à-vis Hizbollah is our firepower, not in face-to-face combat." Obviously, this includes babies, grade school kids, and old people—all who will soon be blasted with white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25142



Is Lebanon the Great Unravelling?
William Bowles
...Thus I contend that the Lebanese 'adventure’ is a sign of increasing desperation on the part of the Wolves. Some on the left (and not so left) contend that this is a portent of a coming invasion/attack on Iran but again, I caution against this interpretation, not that 'taking out’ Iran isn’t an objective, the question is, is it a realistic objective? But how is it to be realised short of nuking the country? Invasion is obviously out of the question in spite of a! ll the ominous talk (fight the 'war on terror’ on four fronts?). What it does reveal I think, is the bankruptcy of the 'war on terror’ as a sustainable basis for a foreign policy. Once again, it reveals that the power elite have fooled themselves into confusing propaganda with real policies and real situations. So has the 'war on terror’ run out of road? I think the 'war on terror’ must be viewed from two positions; the first is as a rationale for projecting imperial power and the second, and I contend far more important, as a rationalisation for the control of domestic populations who they view potentially at least, as a real opposition to their plans for world domination...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25157



WHAT DID APRIL SAY?
Malcom Lagauche
With all the activity in the Middle East, Iraq has taken the back pages. Nothing has changed: daily murder and mayhem abound. Just a little over 16 years ago, Saddam Hussein met April Glaspie, then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. The date was July 25, 1990. Once, this date was a recognizable one for many people, however, it has faded into obscurity. The subjects brought up in this meeting astutely show how the U.S. was attempting to isolate Iraq even before its August 2, 1990 incursio! n into Kuwait. From 1980 to 1988, the U.S. played Iran and Iraq against each other in assistance. The U.S. sold weapons to both adversaries, but, most people thought Iraq held an upper hand in relations with the U.S. This was a fable. Once the cease-fire between Iraq and Iran was signed, the U.S. dropped Iraq like a hot potato taken from a scorching grill. The following is a transcript of the meeting between April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein. When it first appeared, most people took it to be solely a message against Kuwait. It is much deeper, however. Saddam brought up subjects that we know today were important at the time, but were considered less meaningful than his message about Kuwait. Reading this transcript today puts an entirely different slant on the meeting...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25161



DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, July 28, 2006
Today in Iraq
A Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 died due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province today. (MNF – Iraq) A Salvadoran soldier was killed in Iraq in an attack on the Halliburton Co. convoy he was escorting. The soldier died yesterday when the vehicles from Halliburton's KBR unit were hit by an explosion on the outskirts of Diwaniyah, a city south of Baghdad. Another Salvadoran soldier was injured in the incident. Sub-sergeant Donald Albe! rto Ramirez, a 35-year-old nurse, is the fourth member of the Salvadoran armed forces to be killed in Iraq. A mortar bomb struck a mosque in Baghdad killing at least four people. Six people were wounded in the incident which took place at the al-Alee al-A'atheem Sunni Arab mosque on the southern outskirts of Baghdad...


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SHIN BET VETOED SECRET ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE AGREEMENTIsraeli and Palestinian Sources Concur: Israel Made War Inevitable
Globalresearch.ca
The Omega Institute (OI), which works closely with the Institute for Policy Research for Development (IPRD), has learned from Israeli and Palestinian sources that just prior to the current crisis, senior Hamas leaders were in active dialogue with Israeli religious leaders in a round of bilateral peace negotiations. Israeli negotiators included Rabbi Menachem From! an, former deputy leader and co-founder of the Israeli Settler movement Gush Khatif; Rabbi David Bigman, head of the liberal religious Kibbutz movement Yeshiva at Ma’ale Gilboa; and Yitzhak Frankenthal, founder of the Arik Institute (...) Just hours before the meeting was due to start, the Israeli Shin Bet internal Security Service arrested Abu Tir and Abu Arafa and warned them not to attend the meeting, under threats of detention. The meeting, which offered a major opportunity to obtain Shalit’s release and launch a new framework for peace, was thrown into disarray. The next day, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) invaded Gaza, and the day after both Abu Tir and Abu Arafa were abducted by Israeli forces, along with a third of the Palestinian Cabinet, provoking a predictable escalation of violence. Israel simultaneously began conducting covert incursions on to Lebanese territory, provoking Hizbollah’s capture of two IDF soldiers. Credible sources confirm that the soldiers were! not abducted on Israeli territory, but inside Lebanon...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25159



NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks With Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollah’s Founding
Democracy Now!
...Sheik Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Although the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, three former U.S. diplomats had a chance to meet with Nasrallah this past February in Lebanon. The diplomats were members of a delegation organized by the Council for the National Interest. During the meeting, Nasrall! ah discussed Hezbollah’s strategy to free Lebanese prisoners being held in Israel. He also spoke about the origins of Hezbollah, and recounted an event that is back in the news this week—Israel’s bombing of a UN observation post in the southern Lebanese town of Qana in 1996 which killed 106 Lebanese refugees. One of the retired diplomats who met with Nasrallah in February was Edward Peck - he joins us from our Washington studio. Edward Peck is the former U.S. chief of mission in Iraq and ambassador to Mauritania. He served as the deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration..

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The lies Israel tells itself (and that we tell on its behalf)
When journalists use the word "apparently”, or another favourite “reportedly"...

Jonathan Cook, GlobalResearch.ca
When journalists use the word "apparently", or another favourite "reportedly", they are usually distancing themselves from an event or an interpretation in the supposed interests of balance. But I think we should read the "apparently" contained in a statement from the head of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, relating to the killin! g this week of four unarmed UN monitors by the Israeli army in its other sense. When Annan says that those four deaths were "apparently deliberate", I take him to mean that the evidence shows that the killings were deliberate. And who can disagree with him? At least 10 phone calls were made to Israeli commanders over a period of six hours warning that artillery and aerial bombardments were either dangerously close to or hitting the monitors’ building...

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The Court Insists on Breaching the Law in the Saddam Trial Session of July 26, 2006
The Defense Committee for President Saddam Hussein and his Comrades (ISNAD)
The proceedings of the 39th session of the High Iraqi Criminal Court which is trying President Saddam Hussein and his comrades in the Dujail case proved once again in its persistence to deprive President Saddam Hussein and his comrades of the minimum chance to defend himself. By rebuking the Defense lawyers and stating political attitudes that reveal the! lack of impartiality, the Court exploited the immediate broadcasting to falsify the facts. It became evident that we are facing pre-judgments which are made by those who stand behind the Court. All what is the Defense is required to do is to give legitimacy to such pre-judgments. The Defense was not allowed to amend the track so that this trial comes nearer to the minimum requirements for a fair trial...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25155



Hezbollah versus the 'experts'
Xymphora
...Rather than a victory for the neocons, this attempt at creating a 'new Middle East’ appears to be a manifestation of the fear that Israeli control over the United States is drawing to an end. The Israeli massacre of Lebanon is an attack of panic, as the neocon perception is that the window of opportunity for stopping the increasing strength of Islamist populism is closing. You can see how stupid – as usual (is there another group which is as consistently wrong?) – Israe! liamerican neocon intellectuals are driving this latest travesty...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25154



"Only Hezbollah Can Defend Lebanon"
Lenin's Tomb
...Nevertheless, once you've got beyond the militaristic bravado and the stuff about Israel's Trials, propagandists working for Israel are certainly keen to downplay their strategic and tactical losses and play up their gains. Angry Arab has been keeping an eye on this. Here, he finds the Israelis, having claimed to have captured Marun ar-Ras (a tiny village in southern Lebanon) admit that they're still snuffing their lids there. Here he notes that the small town o! f Bint Jbeil, which was supposedly under Israeli control, was still the scene of fighting. Here he finds that the town is actually "controlled from the outside". Unto which: "Control from outside? How does that work? Like, can I control Poland from my California? Explain that to me, o brilliant Israeli propagandist." If the Israelis aren't as good as ground combat as they might have thought they were (or if Hezbollah are better than they anticipated), one thing the IDF are proving exceptionally good at is killing more civilians. 600 dead now, which is quite an increase on the report of 390 from earlier in the week. Bear in mind that this has to be an undercount - there are bodies buried in rubble and dirt that even the Lebanese Health Minister, for all his efforts, will not have tracked down...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25153



Hamas: From an Islamic Resistance Movement to Palestinian government
Astris Essed
At the Palestinian elections of 25-1-2006, Hamas has obtained a startling victory. From the 132 seats of parliament, Hamas, which for the first time was participating in the parliamentary elections, obtained 74 seats, in contrary with the then reigning Fatah-party, which obtained merely 43 seats.
The further 13 seats were obtained by different smaller political parties, as well as independent candidates. This great victory for Hamas was no surprise because of the fundamental Hamas political and military resistance against the Israeli occupation and the Hamas social activities on behalf of the impoverished population of especially Gaza. In spite of this, leading American-European politicians, as well as the newsmedia, didn't only show great astonishment, they also demanded, that Hamas, as the price for financial support, would stop armed resistance (or what the Israelis and their supporters call "renouncing violence") against the Israeli occupation and also acknowledge the State of Israel...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25151



The Chalabi Factor
William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t Perspective
Ahmad Chalabi has been many things to many people over the last several years. Officials in Jordan considered him to be a petty criminal, convicting him of 32 counts of bank fraud and sentencing him in absentia to 22 years in prison. Chalabi was, for a time, the leader of a manufactured dissident group called the Iraqi National Congress, and received millions of American taxpayer dollars thanks to the passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act. Thi! s made him a source for New York Times reporter Judy Miller, who used his false information about Iraqi WMD capabilities to frighten the populace into war. Chalabi enjoyed a short, shining moment in the spotlight during Bush's harrowingly incoherent speech to the United Nations in September of 2003. The occupation was only six months old at that point, and Bush was before that body to try to justify the whole thing. Below him, seated in Iraq's chair as if he were already in power, was Mr. Chalabi. Chalabi also sat beside First Lady Laura Bush during the State of the Union address that propelled America toward the invasion...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25147



Israel prepares major escalation of Lebanon aggression
Patrick Martin, WSWS

The Israeli government issued orders Thursday to mobilize as many as 40,000 additional reserve soldiers in preparation for an escalation of its war of aggression against Lebanon. The action was taken by the security cabinet of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in response to mounting demands from the military brass and the media for a full-scale invasion of south Lebanon. The large-scale reserve call-up is but one indication that Israel is preparing a massive escalation of violence against the Lebanese population. Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon gave an interview to Israel’s Army Radio in which he said that the Israeli air force should bomb Lebanese towns and villages before the ground forces enter in order to cut Israeli casualties. Asked if this meant destroying villages and their civilian population, he responded, "These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating."...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25160



Death Toll in Lebanon Could Be Twice the Official Figure
Dahr Jamail
Lebanese doctors, aid workers and refugees are all reporting that the official number of dead in Lebanon is far lower than the actual. "I think that the real number is at least 750 dead so far," Dr. Bachir el-Sham at the Complex Hospital in Sidon city told IPS in a telephone interview. Sidon is 43 km south of Beirut, and just north of Tyre. This region has seen the worst of the Israeli bombing. Sham said that by coordinating casualty figures wit! h other hospitals and clinics in the south, he believes that an average of 40 civilians are being killed by Israeli air strikes each day. "One day we had 100 dead. The authorities in Beirut can only estimate -- we never have official statistics about anything in Lebanon," he said. "Regarding the number of dead, we can say for sure that by the numbers we're seeing down here, it is at least 750, if not more."...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25144



Hamadeh: Israel's Offensive on Lebanon a Proxy War for US, Iran
naharnet.com
Speaking to the French language television channel TV5, Lebanon's Hamadeh said: "We have the impression that for the last two weeks we have been taking part in the start of an Iran-US conflict, but it's Lebanon, it's the Lebanese people, it's the Lebanese state that will ultimately pay."

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25141



GI Special 4G27: Incompetence Killed Marines - July 27, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
The Marine Corps lost valuable time when it moved to reinforce its logistics trucks against the deadly effects of roadside bombs, settling on inferior solutions and falling behind on its armoring schedule, according to a June report from the Government Accountability Office.
The report said the Corps should have coordinated more closely with Army efforts to bolster its vehicle fleets, suggesting Pentagonwide coordination of urgent wartime needs and clearer rules on when those wartime needs should be satisfied.


Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25140



Russian Base in Syria, a Symmetrical Strategic Move
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, GlobalResearch.ca
Russian military officials have consistently denied reports that Russia is creating a permanent naval base in Tartus, Syria that would give it a Mediterranean outpost and represent a major shift in the regional security balance of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, and the Middle East as a whole. Reports were emerging long before the Israeli attacks on Lebanon that Russia had begun work on deepening the Syrian marit! ime port of Tartus, used by the Soviet Union and later Russia as a supply point since the Cold War, and widening a channel in Latakia, another Syrian port. Both Tartus and Latakia are significant for both Syria and Russia in that they face the outlet of the Ceyhan end—the receiving end—of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylan oil terminal giving Russia and its partners the ability to disrupt or secure the port and route during the possibility of the eruption of any future war(s) with the United States...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25139



First Iraq, now Lebanon
...US media, especially in the case of Fallujah, referred to Iraqi cities where fighting against occupation troops had erupted as "strongholds". The most popular definition for this term alludes to a militarised area akin to a fortress, populated by military or militia-affiliated personnel. The civilian component is therefore removed from the collective psyche. By performing such a sleight of hand definitions, Fallujah, once home to 400,000 Iraqi men, women and children, was then consider! ed a legitimate target -- an area upon which open warfare and the many horrors thereof was permitted. This, too, is the semantic strategy for qualifying the destruction of entire neighbourhoods in Beirut and all outlying villages and towns in South Lebanon. Villages dotting the Lebanese side of the border with Israel are now referred to as strongholds. The influx of such reasoning worked so well in Iraq (civilians continue to die by the busload in the war-ravaged country due to sectarian militia warfare and US military action) that it is now being applied in identical fashion to erase civilian considerations civilised countries must apply to areas of conflict...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25138



The Lebanese Invasion and the Beaver Creek Plan
Kurt Nimmo
Thierry Meyssan, French author and president of the Voltaire Network, has provided us with a summary of the neocon-Zionist plan currently unfolding in Lebanon. As I have written here for at least two years, the neocon project—taking its lead from militant Zionists in Israel—is all about attacking the Arab and Muslim Middle East, destroying its capacity to resist (or even effectively support human life, as is increasingly the case in Iraq) and break the re! gion up into mutually antagonistic statelets based along ethnic and religious lines, as envisioned by various Israeli policy strategists, most notably Oded Yinon...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25137



Israel bombs cause wounds 'never seen before'
Reuters
... Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an Israeli air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds. He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical. Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really ! burnt. It is something else." "If you burnt someone with petrol their hair would burn and their skin would burn down to the bone. The Israelis are 100 per cent using chemical weapons."...


Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25136



Lebanese Die as Condi Plays Piano in Malaysia
Kurt Nimmo
It is certainly a myth that Nero played a fiddle while Rome burned—since the violin was not invented for a full fifteen centuries after his rule—but it is true Condi Rice, Bush’s Secretary of State, played the piano in Kuala Lumpur as Lebanese continue to die under a hard rain of Israeli bombs and apparently chemical weapons, a situation allowed to continue after Condi nixed the "false promise" of a cease-fire and thumbed her nose at the Syrians and Hezboll! ah. "In keeping with her ’serious’ mood the Secretary of State performed two pieces from the brooding repertoire of Johannes Brahms—a solo Intermezzo number two, and Brahms Sonata for violin and piano, opus 108, with a Malaysian guest soloist," reports the Gulf Times. "She arrived at the Istana hotel in downtown Kuala Lumpur for the annual gala dinner wearing a glamorous red dress and red jacket made of traditional Malaysian batik material…. Regional ministers swooned over the performance as they left the dinner. 'Oh, beautiful, beautiful. She’s a great pianist. She’s a concert pianist,’ said Philippines Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo, who insisted that despite the geopolitical realities a good time was had by all." How utterly disgusting...

Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25143




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