[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 21 Feb 2006 - part two]

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

Missing for Three Years in Iraq’s Prisons Karen Button Assaf Hunaihin Salih al-Jumeili is a well-dressed man with a serious face and very sad eyes. We met at the Cairo Tribunal on Bush, Blair and Sharon; he had been looking my way trying to catch my eye, but focused on the proceedings and assuming he was looking for someone else, at first I didn’t respond. At a break, he motioned me over as I walked by and, puzzled, I sat down next to him. On his lap were several folded papers sitting atop a Koran. Opening the papers, he shows me a letter to the International Red Cross in Egypt he’d written on behalf of his only son, Aysser Assaf, who disappeared at the beginning of April 2003 (...) After his son’s disappearance, Assaf Hunaihin traveled to the closest prison facility, as many families do when a relative disappears, and found his son’s name on a list maintained by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of Bucca detainees... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20877 DU SCANDAL EXPLODES Free-Market News Network The Preventive Psychiatry Newsletter has written to its subscribers telling them that the real reason the former Veterans Affairs Secretary, Anthony Principi, recently resigned was because he has been involved in a massive scandal covering up the fact that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by the use of depleted uranium, according to the SF Bay View. In the article Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law, reportedly wrote that "thousands of our military have suffered and died from, [and depleted uranium] has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed." Bernklau went on to detail several alarming statistics... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20870 'Saddam Tapes' weirdo directed by God Sploid The American who translated the alleged "Saddam Tapes" says God sent him to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bill Tierney is a former army intelligence man who now does freelance translations of Arabic documents. That's how he got a gig transcribing and translating some mysterious tapes said to be recordings of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen (...) Tierney's resumé includes torturing Arabs in Baghdad and at Camp X-Ray (...) God reportedly told him to join the Army in 1983. In a speech last year, he said he enjoyed torturing Arabs but was furious that his prisoners "did not break"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20871 CIA's Paul Pillar: Iraq war was to shake up Middle East Truth about Iraqis MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Vice President Cheney said last week that he has the authority to declassify intelligence, information like the kind that led to us to war in Iraq. Now retired Paul Pillar worked at the CIA for 28 years. From 2000 to 2005, he was in charge of coordinating the entire intelligence community's assessment of Iraq. He recently wrote that the Bush administration cherry-picked intelligence before the war to support the decision they had already made to go there... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20879 US Congress Votes to Provoke Iran Ben Frank A few weeks ago there was a story in Israel's leading Newspaper the Haaretz: Iranian official: UN sanctions may lead us to seal off Persian Gulf Iran has the high mountains north of the narrow Straits of Hormuz, and if provoked, they can shut off all oil from the Middle East. What do you think that would do to our economy? Naturally, our Congress voted 404 - 4 to refer Iran to the UN Security Council. Are they trying to start a war?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20876 GI Special 4B20: "What The Hell Is Going On" - February 21, 2006 Thomas F. Barton Dave Adams, 25, a student at Southern Illinois University and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, told a group of more than 50 people at a rally Saturday at Illinois Disciples Foundation in Champaign that President George Bush challenged troops to find weapons of mass destruction and members of al-Qaida. Adams, who served as a mechanic and chaplain's assistant from 2000 to 2003, said his challenge to the president is to apologize to the American soldiers and public, to bring the troops home now and to properly care for veterans, as promised. Later, in answer to a question from the audience, Adams added that Bush should also apologize to the people of Iraq and properly compensate them for the destruction caused by this war... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20878 Cindy Sheehan Interview David Barsamian, The Progressive I will never, ever forget the night of April 4, 2004, when I found out my son Casey had been killed in Iraq," Cindy Sheehan recalls. "I will also never forget the day when we buried my sweet boy, my oldest son. If I live to be a very old lady and forget everything else, I will never forget when the general handed me the folded flag that had lain on his coffin, as his brother and sisters, standing behind me, sobbed." The first thing that strikes you about Cindy Sheehan is she is genuine. There is no artifice, power play, or lexical wizardry. She is without affectation. And that has enabled her to make an impact. She has reached beyond intellectual formulations to get to the heart of the matter... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20874 Iraq: The Death-Squad War Seeking justice among corrupt cops, crooks and torturers. Michael Hastings, Newsweek They sat dejectedly on the floor in ill-fitting police uniforms, separated from the other inmates at Baghdad's Al Hakimiya detention facility. The 18 prisoners in blue were members of the highway patrol. Government investigators allege that the prisoners were also part of a roaming death squad and that they had been preparing to kill a Sunni prisoner when they were arrested at a checkpoint in Baghdad in late January. When NEWSWEEK encountered the detained cops during a visit to Al Hakimiya shortly after their arrest, one of them rose to his feet, gave his name as Maan Hadi and denied they had done anything wrong. He said he and his friends had captured a suspect who was wanted by U.S. authorities, but the Iraqi troops running the checkpoint decided to steal credit for the arrest. "They wanted our prisoner, and when we refused to give him up right away, they arrested us," Hadi said. "They beat the crap out of us"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20872 Report probes US custody deaths BBC News Almost 100 prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to US group Human Rights First. The details were first aired on BBC television's Newsnight programme. Of the 98 deaths, at least 34 were suspected or confirmed homicides, the programme said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20873 "Strategic Redeployment" The Democrats' New Stall Strategy BRUCE K. GAGNON The reports are coming in from all over the nation. The Democrats are getting pilloried as they shuck and jive on the war. They have an election coming up in fall of 2006 and they want to take back Congress. They are scrambling to find their footing. The Dems think we can have guns and butter - war and health care. I've got news for them - that tune ain't playing no more. The Boston Globe reported on February 20 that the Dems have put Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), a former Army officer, in charge of coming up with a consensus Democratic plan for the war. His answer? It's called "strategic redeployment"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20869 U.S. Still Planting Stories in Iraq Media ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was mistaken when he said last week that the U.S. military had stopped the controversial practice of paying to plant stories in the Iraqi news media, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Whitman noted that Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq , has said he saw no reason to stop the practice... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20868 A TALE OF TWO GITMOS: WHERE WAS THE MSM? William Fisher Last June 17, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, "If you think of the people down there (at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba), these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, (Osama bin Laden's) bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker." Yet two recent reports, based on the Defense Department’s own documentation, reach conclusions that are dramatically different than Mr. Rumsfeld’s. And, despite the millions of words journalists have written about GITMO during the past few years, the mainstream press has largely ignored these new reports... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20867 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. 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