[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 11 Apr 2006 - Part One]

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Israeli advice to Americans on Iraq Xymphora The Jerusalem Post helpfully provides some advice to Americans on how they can get out of the Iraq mess by – surprise, surprise – agreeing to the Yinon solution of breaking the country into three chunks. Iran gets to look after the Shi’ites (strengthening the covert Israeli ally), Jordan gets to look after the Sunnis (and keep them pacified and out of Israel’s hair, just like it does to its own citizens), and Turkey (!!!) gets to look after the Kurds (the Kurds should be thinking: 'with friends like Israel, who needs enemies’)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22445 Are US military war crimes acceptable? Truth about Iraqis A US military investigation has reassigned three officers to new duties because of "problems" related to their battalion's (the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment) actions which led to the brutal murder of 15 Iraqi civilians. According to Iraqi eyewitnesses, US troops entered a house and killed all its occupants including a 3-year old girl. The US military had initially lied and fabricated accounts of the story saying the 15 civilians had all died due to a roadside bombing. Then the story was that the 15 were killed in a firefight. But Haditha residents disputed this saying all those killed were inside one domicile near the area of the bombing. A videotape taken by an Iraqi shows the aftermath of the attack by U.S. troops on civilians in Haditha: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22469 Yes, Blame the Lobby A Response to Prof. Joseph Massad Jeff Blankfort, www.dissidentvoice.org ... Massad’s article, "Blaming the Lobby," first appeared in the March 23-29 issue of Al-Ahram, the English-language Egyptian weekly, and was subsequently posted on CounterPunch. What was disturbing was not only Massad’s rush to the lobby’s defense, but that he failed to respond to the points raised by Mearsheimer and Walt and provided, instead, what could best be described as a legal brief for the Chomsky po sition. For those unfamiliar with the subject and details of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, it was, no doubt, very convincing. It was for this reason that, rather than write a general response, I decided to examine and refute his article, point by point... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22473 ACLU: US authenticates Abu Ghraib images RAW STORY The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today released the first official U.S. government authentication of images of detainee abuse by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The Department of Defense was forced to turn over the information as well as one additional image as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2004... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22474 Okay, So Let's Get This Straight: On Monday, Bush Admitted That he Lied About Leaking a Lie to Smear Someone Who Revealed the Truth About His Lying A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS Okay, so let's get this straight. Bush admits he selectively leaked classified information that wasn't declassified until days after he and Cheney had Scooter Libby leak it to Judith Miller, the pro-war megaphone for the New York Times publication of Bush lies. Bush "authorizes" this leak at a time that he is claiming that if he ever finds the leaker, he will basically fire him, meaning himself. Then he continues a public and Department of Justice vendetta against leakers, but not himself: the leaker-in-chief... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22466 RAF doctor: I had no choice but to refuse Iraq duty The Guardian A Royal Air Force doctor who refused to be sent to Iraq after arguing that the conflict was illegal today pleaded not guilty to five charges of failing to comply with orders at a court martial. Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, 37, said he had studied the judicial advice given to the prime minister, Tony Blair, ahead of the war and other reports about its legality before making his decision. "As a commissioned officer I am required to consider each and every order that is given to me and I am required to consider the legality of each order in domestic and international law," Flt Lt Kendall-Smith said in a statement to police last year... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22465 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 10 April 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org In a dispatch posted at 6pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked a column of armor-plated four-wheel drive vehicles and a patrol of Iraqi puppet army troops in central al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in al-Fallujah as saying that Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons and pipe rockets ambushed the column of four-wheel-drive armor-plated vehicles driven by mercenaries working for the US occupation forces. The attack destroyed one of the vehicles and left two of the foreign mercenaries dead and two more of them wounded... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22463 MUBARAK’S MIND NOT FUNCTIONING AGAIN Malcom Lagauche ...His advanced years have not stopped Mubarak from making ridiculous statements. On April 8, 2006, Al-Jazeera News ran an article titled, "Mubarak: U.S. Must Not Leave Iraq Yet." His red-white-and-blue tinged remarks included: Asked what effect an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal would have, he said, "Now? It would be a disaster. It would become an arena for a brutal civil war and then terrorist operations would flare up, not just in Iraq, but in very many pl aces." Maybe Mubarak has not read any recent newspapers. He uses the future tense for current everyday occurrences in Iraq. Most Arab leaders, even though in the pockets of the U.S., would not make a public statement calling for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq. Eighty-five percent of the Iraqi population is calling for an immediate withdrawal, even those who once supported the illegal invasion... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22456 Daniel Pipes and the unfolding civil war in Iraq James Cogan, WSWS Daniel Pipes, the director of the neo-conservative Middle East Forum and a vociferous supporter of the invasion of Iraq, is not an inconsequential figure in the American political establishment. His writings consistently articulate and refine the views of the extreme right in the United States, a layer that exerts considerable influence over the policies of the Bush administration. It is therefore noteworthy when such an individual begins publicly arguing that a sectarian civil war in Iraq would be to the strategic advantage of US imperialism. One can conclude that similar views are prevalent in Washington’s corridors of power. Pipes first presented what he views as the advantages of an Iraqi civil war in an article published by the New York Sun on February 28—six days after the destruction of the Shiite Muslim Al-Askariya mosque by suspected Sunni Muslim extremists and amid the reports that Shiite militias were carrying out revenge killings of Sunnis... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22450 Rumours of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s survival were greatly exaggerated So who really killed Nick Berg? Gavin Gatenby, Possum News Network ...So how much more of the Zarqawi legend is, shall we say, "greatly exaggerated"? What about the Nick Berg killing – where Zarqawi supposedly wielded the knife in the infamous beheading video? That was back in April 2004, at a time when the Zarqawi letter to Osama bin Laden letter we now know to be a fake was the centrepiece of the Coalition psyops campaign. The beheadin g rescued Bush’s fortunes by providing the neo-conservative shills with an example of a resistance atrocity that neatly offset the breaking Abu Ghraib torture story. The authenticity of the video and scepticism about the role of al-Zarqawi in it surfaced immediately on the internet, largely because Berg, shortly before his disappearance, had just been released from US incarceration – where he had been interrogated because of suspicions he had been involved in insurgent activities. The collapse of the Zarqawi myth provides an opportunity for a US lawmaker of goodwill to demand the opening of the State Department, CIA, FBI and US military files on the Berg case (including the video records of his interrogation in Iraq by the FBI)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22468 Palestinians latest casualty of Iraq conflict Abdul Jalil Mustafa Three weeks after they fled violence in Iraq, about 130 Palestinian refugees, including at least 50 children, are still stranded in the no-man's-land between Iraq and Jordan with no light at the end of the tunnel. A controversy is building up between Jordan and international human rights groups, including the Human Rights Watch (HRW), on to what extent the Amman government is under obligation to allow Palestinian refugees to move to the Ruweished re fugee camp, about 60 kilometres west of the border... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22471 The American Caesar Ralph Nader In the name of fighting stateless terrorism, George W. Bush is looming as the American Caesar running roughshod over the civil liberties of the American people who have turned against him in ever larger majorities. In the name of fighting terrorism, George W. Bush fabricated numerous excuses for illegally invading Iraq and occupying it for now over three costly years in ways that are magnets for the recruitment and training of ever more stateless terrorists. His own CIA Director, Po rter Goss, made exactly this point in testimony before the U.S. Senate in February 2005. So too have many retired intelligence and military specialists including those who recently worked for George W. Bush... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22470 IRAQ: Doctors, NGOs warn of high infant mortality in Basra IRIN As a result of water-borne diseases and a lack of medical supplies, infants born in the southern city of Basra are subject to abnormally high mortality rates, say officials of an international NGO devoted to child health issues. "For weeks, there were no I.V. fluids available in the hospitals of Basra," said Marie Fernandez, spokeswoman for European aid agency Saving Children from War. "As a consequence, many children, mainly under five-years old, die d after suffering from extreme cases of diarrhoea"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22461 Bush's "Nuclear Option" Evan Augustine Peterson III, GlobalResearch.ca Just in case you've gotten the impression that the Bush administration isn't seriously considering a military strike against Iran using both conventional and nuclear weapons, see the Amercan Progress Action Fund's 4-10-06 Progress Report, "The Nuclear Option." (...) On the brighter side, there are limits to the U.S. military's loyalty to Mr. Bush, and high-ranking American military officers have stated that they are adamantly opposed to the us e of bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapons (i.e., so-called "mini-nukes"). Moreover, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has publicly stated that the idea of a nuclear strike against Iran is "completely nuts"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22460 Air Force Chief Predicts Long Iraq Mission LOLITA C. BALDOR The U.S. Air Force may remain in Iraq for a "long time," most likely in a capacity similar to its lengthy patrols of the no-fly zone after the first Gulf War , the top Air Force general said Tuesday. "I think the Air Force will be there like we were for the no-fly zone for a long time," Moseley told defense reporters. "I don't know yet how many bases. We're looking at reducing the number of bases. We have 18 we are flying airplanes off of right now. I see that number coming down. But I don't see the air and space component leaving soon"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22462 Paul Wolfowitz’s Heart of Darkness William Hughes American policy maker Paul Wolfowitz reminds me a lot of Joseph Conrad’s character, Kurtz, from his seminal tome, "Heart of Darkness." Kurtz never allowed himself to be judged by the same standards as other mere mortals, nor has Wolfowitz. He seems manufactured in the image and likeness of another purveyor of malevolence - Henry Kissinger! Wolfowitz has so far escaped earthly punishment for his serial wrong doings. In fact, incredibly, he has been rewarded with ano ther high paying sinecure by the Wire Pullers. Wolfowitz was the prime architect of the Iraqi War, when he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Bush-Cheney Gang... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22459 Emergency Cindy Sheehan ...Truly, George Bush is obviously out of control and he and the neocons need to be stopped. We will make Camp Casey, Easter, next week all about not invading Iran. It should be so simple: GeorgeCo lied through their collective asses about Iraq and now they are doing so about Iran. I don't have to convince you all that this would be a major disaster and could lead to World War (insert your number here) and it would be an enormous disaster for the people of Iran, Iraq, and for our troops in harm's way there... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22457 'L'etat, c'est moi: Has the first American dictatorship already arrived?' Geov Parrish, Working For Change In 2003, while pledging to fire anyone in his administration found to have leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Wilson to journalists, President George Bush intoned that he did not know of "anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. Well. Pick your favorite Bush quote on this topic; there are countless good ones, now that we learn that former Vice Presidential Chief of Staf f Scooter Libby, when forced by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify under oath to save his own skin, fingered both Bush and his former boss, Dick Cheney. Libby testified that they both authorized the leaking of classified National Intelligence Estimate information on Iraq in July 2003 in order to defend the administration's decision to unilaterally invade Iraq. A president who has ordered the launching of widespread investigations to find leakers in the CIA and State Department, including the polygraphing of scores of intelligence professionals, the man who wants the NSA spying and CIA gulag whistleblowers prosecuted, is himself a leaker... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22475 He's dead, Jim Xymphora The Washington Post has reported that the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Iraqi insurgency has been played up by the Pentagon for propaganda purposes, both in Iraq and in the United States (...) Presumably, the Pentagon is clearing the decks of al-Zarqawi in order to roll out a new series of lies (although not everyone in the Pentagon is going along with the new program). Al-Zarqawi has been the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Iraqi insurgency, appearing in an enormous variety of roles and pla ces. You have to give him credit. The fact that he has been dead since at least 2004 hasn’t slowed him up one bit (nor has the fact that he lost a leg and then grew it back to star in the Nick Berg beheading video)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22443 Padilla Can't Wait Aziz Huq Can a U.S. citizen be locked up for three-plus years without access to a court or opportunity to challenge the government’s reasons for detention? Today, the answer in America is a provisional "yes." And last week the government took one important step toward cementing this "yes" into a permanent power. In legal briefs and internal Justice Department memoranda, the administration has argued since 9/11 that the president has authority to detain anyone—U.S. citizen or non-citizen—without charge, without a hearing before a neutral magistrate and without access to the evidence lodged against them... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22467 U.S. Reports Death of 5 Soldiers in Iraq The Associated Press Five American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, including three killed Tuesday north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A U.S. statement said the three members of Multinational Division Baghdad died Tuesday afternoon in a roadside bombing, but it did not give a precise location. Another soldier assigned to the 2/28th Brigade Combat Team died Monday of wounds suffered the day before in fighting in Anbar province west of the capital, the military said.. . Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22464 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.