[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 31 May 2006]

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Haditha Killings are Tip of the Iceberg Karen Button Last November US Marines intentionally killed 24 civilians in Iraq’s western town of Haditha. This, plus another killing in April, are—finally—making its way to the mainstream news in the US and a Congressional and military investigation are underway. But, the investigation should expand. Though rarely reported in the mainstream media, independent news sources and human rights groups have documented hundreds of Iraqi civilian deaths by US forces that were eith! er indiscriminate or intentional... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23656 The 10,000th Haditha. Ted Rall ...Most of the world's population--including virtually every Muslim and about a third Americans--always believed that the war against Iraq was a genocidal attempt to intimidate the Muslim world and extort its oil at gunpoint. They don't see a difference between Haditha and the thousands of other Iraqis killed by U.S. forces since 2003. Because the entire exercise was morally bankrupt from the outset, sold and perpetuated with countless lies, all of the 200,000-plus civilians and Ira! qi soldiers who have died--whether by bomb or by bullet--were effectively murdered by the U.S. military. Haditha, where two dozen were executed, was merely the 10,000th Haditha... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23658 A Higher Standard Kim Petersen ...The US war crimes are myriad, and there are several instances of US troops reveling in the debauchery of killing. These crimes are taking place under the auspices of an illegal invasion and occupation -- a violence that encompasses the wickedness of genocide. It is a genocide that is aimed at all aspects of Iraq: history, culture, intra-societal harmony, the economy, the dignity of Iraqis, callous disregard for Iraqi life (and a classist contempt for the lives and well-being of A! merican military personnel), democracy, freedom, etc. The genocide against Iraq is where the wrath of outraged humanity should be directed, and not at the sad afflicted figure of Jesse Macbeth or the media that reported in good faith what Macbeth said. For the corporate media, it is another story. Hundreds of thousands have already been murdered through corporate media complicity in genocide. The latest disinformation emanates from the Zionist-owned National Post in Canada, which mendaciously reported that authorities were requiring distinctively colored sartorial to identify Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian minorities in Iran. The timing of such Nazism-evoking disinformation coincides suspiciously with chickenhawk saber rattling with Iran. The wrath of humanity should also be directed at the complicity of the corporate media in genocide... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23636 Endgame in Iran Mike Whitney The Bush administration has no intention of peacefully resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran. They have consistently blocked all attempts by Iran to negotiate in good faith or to establish diplomatic channels for discussion. The current offer by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk directly with Iran is less a departure from the normal US’ belligerence than it is a means of enlisting support from Russia and China for future punitive action. In one particularly ominous comment! , Rice said that the negotiations would give Iran "one last excuse" to resist American demands. This tells us that US diplomacy is a just a smokescreen for the eventual hostilities... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23630 Update from Iraq Baghdad Dweller First and most important: US terrorists in uniforms, the criminals killed two women one of them is pregnant. "It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped…..God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives." The media did not report the second, although it happened two days ago: US Helicopters bombed "Ishreen street" in Ahdamia district after a car explode their, the bombin! g caused the death of many ordinary people... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23642 The Splendid Failure of Occupation Part 45: How the U.S. engineered the Iraqi holocaust B. J. Sabri, Online Journal Contributing Writer Did the United States, under the pretext of "liberating" Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation, engineer and execute an Iraqi holocaust to implement, consolidate, and entrench American imperialism in Iraq, and the Middle East? By judging from the scale of destruction and death the United States inflicted on Iraq, and by considering the international and regional objectives ! of war, history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East since the 1930s, control of oil, Israel, U.S.-Israel relations, the answer is yes... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23646 Two Iraqi women, one of them pregnant, killed by US forces Truth About Iraqis Two Iraqi women, one of them about to give birth, were killed by US troops at a checkpoint in Samarra, north of Baghdad, Iraq. The women were rushing to hospital to deliver. US forces said the car failed to stop after signs and repeated warnings. They said they fired shots to disable the car. Apparently, they ended up disabling the pregnant woman - a mother of two - and her cousin. Jassim's brother, who was wounded by broken glass, s! aid he did not see any warnings as he sped his sister to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her there. "I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped," he said. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives." Indeed. Untermenschen, remember? Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23631 Mass rioting reveals depth of Afghan opposition to US occupation Bill Van Auken, WSWS The mass rioting that broke out in the Afghan capital of Kabul Monday has exposed the intensity and breadth of popular opposition to the four-and-a-half-year US-led occupation of Afghanistan and the fragility of the hold on the country by Washington and the puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai. According to official and press reports, at least 20 people died Monday in clashes between demonstrators, US troops and Afghan securi! ty forces, while more than 140 were wounded. A doctor at the Khair Hana Hospital in northern Kabul told the New York Times that a seven-year-old child was among the dead, while several other school children were severely wounded... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23659 Palestinian Violence as an Indicator of a Bigger Battle Ramzy Baroud Labeling as 'dangerous’ the violent escalation in the Gaza Strip between supporters of the Fatah and Hamas movements is an understatement, to say the least. The situation in the Occupied Territories is more perilous than any media account, however decent, can portray. In fact, the once distanced possibility of a Palestinian civil war is forcing its way back to the forefront, not merely as an Israeli fantasy, but a looming, albeit wicked reality.! .. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23653 The President Seems Out of Touch With Events on the Ground in Iraq Robert Higgs ...In a more fundamental sense, however, every person the U.S. forces have killed in Iraq is the victim of a murder, because the U.S. forces had no just grounds for invading and occupying the country in the first place – this war is a textbook case of unprovoked aggression – and the Iraqis and their friends have a just right of self-defense against these violent foreign invaders... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23652 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 30 May 2006. Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. In a dispatch posted at 9:35pm Makkah time Tuesday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that that the US Marine commander in ad-Dulu'iyah, known as "Captain Phil"announced that he would order his soldier to rape every woman in the city if the people fail to turn over or reveal the whereabouts of all the Resistance fighters in ad-Dulu'iyah. The Tikrit correspondent! for Mafkarat al-Islam reported Shaykh Jasim al-'Azzawi of nearby ad-Dulu'iyah as saying that the shaykhs in the city had gone to confer with the occupation forces in an attempt to get them to raise the siege on the city and allow food and medicine – cut off from ad-Dulu'iyah for the last 10 days – to come in... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23651 Video Iraq: The Women's Story IslamicVideos.net A compelling account of a life inside Iraq that is rarely seen on news bulletins: stories of ordinary women whose struggle to survive has only worsened since the war. Iraqi women and child The invasion of Iraq heralded promises of freedom from tyranny and equal rights for the women of Iraq. But three years on, the reality of everyday life for women inside Iraq is a different story. To make this film, two Iraqi women risk their lives to spend three months t! ravelling all over the country with a camera to record the lives and experiences of women they meet... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23650 Your Next Target, Dear Americans Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead ...There is a country, other than yours and the four other permanent UN members, that has dozens of weapons of mass destruction. What’s more, this particular country refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections, routinely seizes the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in full defiance of U N Security Council resolutions. This country regularly violates the interna! tional borders of other sovereign states with warplanes, artillery and naval gunfire and sends assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies. Its high-ranking military officers, while publicly admitting that they have executed unarmed prisoners of war, refuse to prosecute those soldiers who had acknowledged the gruesome crime.This country created upward of three-quarter of a million refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses. It also refuses to pay compensation to people, out of those unfortunate refugees, whose land, bank accounts and businesses it impounded (...) Yes. This country is none other than your most allied ally, Israel... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23660 The Iraqi My Lai? Tragically, Only Half So Michael George Smith , www.dissidentvoice.org This week's revelations that Marines in Iraq brutally gunned down 24 unarmed civilians, many women and children, last November is a horrific, if somewhat unsurprising, reminder of the inhumanity inherent in imperialist war. It is a tragedy beyond tragedy, revolting and sickening. It has been described by several liberal and leftist bloggers and pundits as the "Iraqi My Lai," referring to the 1968 massacre in Vietnam by US s! oldiers of 500 unarmed civilians. Of course, the scale is different, but the basic dynamic is the same -- an extreme form of the racism and dehumanization used by Bush and the military brass to sell the war and convince young men and women to fight and die in a war for the benefit of the rich and powerful. The significance of the My Lai massacre in the political arena was that it helped to galvanize antiwar opinion in the United States, turned millions more against the war and served as a springboard to a stronger antiwar movement. Unfortunately, given the politics of the leadership of the current antiwar movement, Americans' justifiable revulsion at November's events in Haditha is unlikely to produce a similar outcome this time around -- a tragedy that will prolong the occupation and only lead to more bloodshed... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23648 Orwellian Bush War on Terror is a LIE Dr Gideon Polya GEORGE ORWELL described an "endless war" in his 1949 novel "1984" that has considerable similarities with the current "endless" and semantically absurd "War on Terror" announced by US President Bush in 2001 after the 9/11 atrocity. The "endless war" in George Orwell’s "1984" involved (a) shifting enemies and alliances (involving entities such as Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia, friends one day and enemies the next); (b) personified, ideological evil (enemy! of the people Emmanuel Goldstein); (c) an all-powerful, ruling father-figure (Big Brother); (d) re-writing of history (that was poor Winston’s job); (e) a Police State ("They" always eventually got the dissidents such as Julia and Winston); (f) sexual repression; (g) torture (as in Room 101 where Winston encountered his most dreadful fear, the rat, literally and helplessly face to face); (h) re-writing of the English language (as progressively reduced and simplified Newspeak); (i) untruth became truth (thus "war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength … and 2 plus 2 does not equal 4"); (j) it became a crime to think; and (k) FINALLY, unlike Joseph K in Franz Kafka’s "The Trial" (who is true to himself to the end), ultimate psychological submission... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23647 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, May 31, 2006 Today in Iraq Spc. J. Adan Garcia, 20, of Irving, Texas, died on May 27 in the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., of injuries sustained May 22 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his convoy encountered small arms fire received while returning from an explosive ordnance mission. (...) At least 40 corpses, shot in the head and showing signs of torture, found in different locations around Iraq. The largest cache of 16 bodies turned up in Baladiyat in the eastern outskirts o! f Baghdad, while five were found in Husseiniya, northeast of the capital. Another four were found in Baghdad's impoverished Shiite district of Sadr City, three decapitated bodies were discovered in Muqdadiya, northeast of the capital and another 12 around Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23644 Remembrances of Haditha Eli Stephens, Left I on the News Here are two stories from 2005, which bear directly on the current story of the Haditha massacre and its exposure in the press. First, this one from March, 2005: "US occupation forces' fighter planes have attacked civilian populations in the Iraqi cities of Haditha and Haqlaniyah, in the western province of Al Anbar." This story, as far as I could tell at the time, never appeared in a single corporate news outlet. The old tree falling the forest stor! y. Iraqi civilians are massacred on the ground and from the air by American forces on a routine basis; only the rare stories even make the press for a one-day run, and few indeed get the followup they really deserve... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23643 Four defence witnesses arrested in Saddam trial Reuters An order for the arrest of four defence witnesses in the trial of Saddam Hussein has been made. A US official close to the court said the order was to hold the witnesses to allow an investigation of their allegations of impropriety against the prosecution. "Four defence witnesses have been ordered held," the official said on Wednesday. The official said the inquiry would focus on witness allegations that Jaafar al-Musawi, the chief prosecutor, had attended a! n event celebrating a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23641 Saddam prosecutor on defensive over bribe claims Thibauld Malterre The chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein over the mass killing of Iraqi Shiite villagers was forced to defend himself in court against accusations he had fabricated the case. Defense witnesses accused prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi of coaching witnesses and offering bribes if they testified against Saddam over the crackdown against Shiites from Dujail village after an attempt on the former dictator's life in 1982. Several witnesses were d! etained after making their statements, US officials said (...) Witnesses charged Tuesday that the prosecutor had visited Dujail in 2004 to drum up testimony against Saddam -- and they also claimed many of the alleged victims of the crackdown were still alive (...) One of the defense lawyers, meanwhile, said Tuesday that a defense witness who testified recently had been killed... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23639 Saddam witness accuses prosecutor of bribing him Omar al-Ibadi and Hiba Moussa ...Speaking from behind a curtain to hide his identity, a defense witness, who said he worked at a U.S. base, accused chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi of offering him money in 2004 to give false testimony. "One day they took me to a room where I met someone and he said: 'What you are saying is not good for us or the Iraqi people. We want to have the tyrant Saddam executed'," said the witness of Moussawi and others. "An officer threa! tened me and said if I speak out about this, he will kill me and my family. I watched the court on television at a later time and realized that Moussawi was the same guy." "At the end of the meeting he gave me $500," the witness said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23638 GI Special 4E31: "It's Messed Up, Dude" - May 31, 2006 Thomas F. Barton "I Was Over There, In Baghdad. It’s Messed Up Dude! I’m Glad That You Are Out Here Doing This!" This was in response to signs stating BRING THEM HOME NOW! and 2464 KIA FOR A LIE. I think that blue collar support for this administration is evaporating. This should not surprise anyone. As in Viet Nam, Iraq is a war being fought by the poor and middle class. I was about 100 yards away from the rest of our group. I stood on the frontage road stoplight with a 'tip jar' labeled VETERANS FOR PEACE.org. I was not pushy about it, just standing on the curb with the jar for any who cared to donate. The most common remark from donors was "thank you for doing this." One elderly man refueling at the service station on the opposite side of the frontage road walked across three lanes of traffic to donate and tell me "thank you folks for saying what needs to be said." Another young couple dug for all the spare change between them as he told me, "I just got out of the Army. I was stop lossed for six months beyond my ETS date. I was over there, in Baghdad. It's messed up dude! I'm glad that you are out here doing this!" Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23637 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.