[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 01 Jun 2006]

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Water war in the Land of Two Rivers Gilles Munier ... What Herodote wrote about the symbiosis between Egypt and the Nile, goes for Iraq which "is a gift of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers". Today, the question is: for how long? A few observers who, like me, could travel wide and large in this desperate country, these past thirty years, wonder whether this "prophecy" said to be from Boutros-Boutros Ghali, is not already underway. The next war in the Middle East, he said in 1987, - he was the then Minister o! f Foreign Affairs of Egypt- would be "a war for water". The relentless pursuit of the GAP and, in the long term, the creation of a Kurdish State in Iraq risk precipitating its outbreak (...) The de facto self-rule enjoyed by Kurdistan since 1991 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein en April 2003 pave the way to the establishment of an independent Kurdish State. If Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani – the two Kurdish feudal chiefs of Iraq- succeed in separating Kirkuk (1) from the rest of the country to make it the capital of independent Kurdistan, the "Great Kurdistan" would hold two major stakes: oil and water. Will they use them to blackmail both Baghdad and Ankara with all the dangers lurking in that move or will they play one country against the other in a diplomatic game postponing in so doing a crisis over water for a while? All will depend upon the counsels of their all-too-ubiquitous Israeli advisers... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23667 Haditha: A Cover-up of Mass Murder Ghali Hassan, GlobalResearch.ca The massacre in Haditha is part of the U.S. deliberate and unprovoked war of aggression against a defenceless nation. The current media hype is an orchestrated propaganda campaign designed to mislead the public and cover up the mass atrocity in Iraq as an "isolated incident by few bad apples". It is the result of an illegal war of aggression based on lies fabricated by the highest levels of the U.S. administration. Since the 2003 invasion, there h! ave been daily massacres of innocent Iraqis by U.S. Marines with the full knowledge of the U.S. military chain of command. The war was based on lies printed in the minds of Americans and their army. Today, Iraq is littered with mass graves. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children have been slaughtered in cold blood and in cowardly fashion. These countless massacres by U.S. forces were obfuscated and barely reported by Western media... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23676 The Line of Atrocity: From the White House to Haditha Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque Many observers have compared the methodical murder of 24 innocent civilians by U.S. Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha – now confirmed by Pentagon and Congressional sources – to the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when American troops slaughtered hundreds of civilians in a bloody rampage. But this is a false equation, one that gravely distorts the overall reality of the Coalition effort in Iraq. For it is not the small-sca! le Haditha atrocity that should be compared to My Lai: it is the entire Iraq War itself. The whole operation – from its inception in high-level mendacity to its execution in blood-soaked arrogance, folly, greed and incompetence – is a war crime of almost unfathomable proportions: a My Lai writ large, a My Lai every single day, year after year after year. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23672 Darfur, imperialist intervention and anti-Arab hysteria Eugene Puryear For the past three years, the armed conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has provided a pretext for U.S. and European imperialist intervention in the oil-rich African country. As always, this intervention is hidden behind lofty ideals of "democracy" and "humanitarianism." The conflict has its roots in who will control local water resources as well as representation in the national government. But the Bush administration has portrayed the con! flict as a kind of racial "genocide." According to the imperialist propaganda, pro-government "Arab" militias are terrorizing unarmed "Black" civilians. For anyone who has studied the history of U.S. or other imperialist interventions, such humanitarian concern on the part of a government that is occupying Iraq, funding Israeli repression of Palestinians and backing reactionary terror around the world should provoke a moment’s reflection. How did the racist Bush administration become a champion for the lives of Africans?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23674 Restoring the Draft: The Universal National Service Act of 2006 Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch.ca Congressman Charles Rangel, a Democrat (NY), introduced on 14 February 2006 a bill in the US Congress which requires: "all persons in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a [two year] period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes." The bill applies to both US citizens! and non-citizens, to men and women. There does not appear to be a provision which would exempt women who are pregnant and/or caring for infants/children in a young age. While there was some media coverage of Rangel's initiative prior to the formal introduction of the bill, the matter has not been mentioned by the US media since it was introduced in February. There has been a deafening silence: since February 2006, not a single article or editorial has appeared in print on the Universal National Service Act of 2006... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23677 Harvest of occupation Mohamed Hassan Al-Khalesi ...Those who follow the US media may have noticed the proliferation of news programmes discussing civil war in Iraq. One gets the impression that this is what the Americans want for this country. The media campaign sounds a bit pre-meditated, a tad pre- programmed. Civil war is what the occupation authorities, and their local collaborators, want. The aim is to blame the failure of US policy on the Iraqis. The goal is to end Iraq as we know it... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23679 Shameful reactions to Haditha 'atrocity' Linda S. Heard, Online Journal Contributing Writer In last week's column, I highlighted the massacre of innocent men, women and children, carried out by up to a dozen Marines in the Iraqi town of Haditha (...) The responses to my last week's column, mostly from Americans, were shocking. Whereas one might have expected abhorrence at what is being described as Iraq's "new Mai Lai" or at the very least regret, most of the emails I received were from individuals out to attack ! the messenger, in this case me... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23678 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of June, 1 June 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 7:25pm Makkah time Thursday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that five bodies of tortured and murdered Sunni Iraqis were found in Baghdad and Karbala’. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the Statistical Department of the puppet "Ministry of Health" as saying that the bodies belong to! Sunni Iraqis. They bore signs of torture and had been shot to death in the head. Four of the bodies were found in the Baghdad district of ash-Shurtah al-Khamisah. One body, that of 73-year old Shaykh Ibrahim al-'Ubaydi al-Basir, was found on the outskirts of the southern city of Karbala’. Shaykh Ibrahim al-'Ubaydi al-Basir, who was blind, was a religious scholar who knew the Qur’an by heart. He was arrested by puppet "Iraqi Interior Ministry" troops at his house in eastern Baghdad several days earlier, charging him with providing funds to the Iraqi Resistance... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23680 New video of alleged massacre surfaces; In Iraq, some US soldiers were inhumane, says veteran Truth About Iraqis ...BBC: What kind of abuses were going on that you experienced? "I seen innocent people being killed, IEDs goes off and you just zap any farmer who's close to you, hit him with the 50 or Mark 19 ... "They basically jam into your head this is Hajji this is Hajji ... you totally take the human being out of it and make it a video game." BBC: Your superiors were doing that, your commanders were d! oing that? "Oh, of course ..." BBC: Up to what level? "Everybody ..." Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23683 Restoring the Draft: The Universal National Service Act of 2006 Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch.ca Congressman Charles Rangel, a Democrat (NY), introduced on 14 February 2006 a bill in the US Congress which requires: "all persons in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a [two year] period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes." The bill applies to both US citizens! and non-citizens, to men and women. There does not appear to be a provision which would exempt women who are pregnant and/or caring for infants/children in a young age. While there was some media coverage of Rangel's initiative prior to the formal introduction of the bill, the matter has not been mentioned by the US media since it was introduced in February. There has been a deafening silence: since February 2006, not a single article or editorial has appeared in print on the Universal National Service Act of 2006... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23677 INDEX ON AFGHANISTAN Sarah Meyer, Index Research Index on Afghanistan was my first blog, originally published on 26.05.05 with the technical help of my webmaster, Pete Dewell. Since then, Afghanistan has become another 'toil and trouble’ cauldron. The witchy brew becomes visibly more violent as objections to western materialistic and militaristic imperialism increase. As the newly installed NATO forces try to enforce their pro-US agenda, the resistance is likely to increase exponentially. Nervousness will be incr! eased by the 'red-rag’ announcement that Israel is to take part in a NATO exercise, "Cooperation Mako," in the Black Sea... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23675 MEDIA ALERT: ANDREW RAWNSLEY AND BLAIR'S ENLIGHTENED VISION Media Lens ...Rawnsley continues: "In the late autumn of his premiership, Mr Blair is especially obsessed with trying to retrieve this part of his legacy from the stigma of Iraq. He gave a new label to it in Washington. He recast it as 'progressive pre-emption'." Notice that the issue for Rawnsley is this one individual, Blair - his vision, his dreams, his values. The state-corporate machine, an entrenched system of power that has devastated an entire na! tion - with the killing and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of people - is a mere backdrop to this one person. Iraq is a "stigma" - not a catastrophe, not a crime, not an ocean of suffering, but a taint on this one man's career... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23673 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR THURSDAY, June 1, 2006 Today in Iraq A bomb struck a group of construction workers seeking jobs in central Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least two and wounding 18. The explosives were hidden in a plastic bag on Tayaran Square as the men were gathered near a stall selling breakfast food. Baghdad police found the bullet-riddled body of a man clothed in an Arab robe with his hands and legs bound. The bodies of four people were found in two different districts of the capital. Five people were kil! led and three others injured in an attack on their vehicle by unknown militants in Al-Hashimiyat district in Baquba... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23671 Iraqi children teach US soldiers ethics and morals Baghdad Dweller Shame on you invaders, Iraqi children age 9-10 years old teach you ethics and morals, from the video link "Iraq: The Women’s Story", the presenter talks to children: Child 1: It’s not right that a hospital should be bombed, children and babies. Child 2: Those Americans have come to destroy everything. Presenter: Will you resist them or not? Children (all): Yes, we’ll resist (...) US military killing Iraqis is hap! pening daily, but the problem is: it’s not reaching the American public... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23662 Tomgram: Greg Grandin on the Mother of All Scandals Tom Engelhardt & Greg Grandin You never can be too early when it comes to an anniversary. It's barely June, but a quick look down the road reminds us that the twentieth anniversary of the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra Affair lies just ahead this November. As Greg Grandin reminds us, Irangate (as it came to be known in the wake of Nixon's Watergate fiasco) was a kind of coming attractions, right down to its cast of characters, for our own era of right-wing ! domination, carnage, and now -- finally -- full-blown corruption scandals. From Vice President Cheney to the new Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, so many of the Iran-Contra era scoundrels returned to the political stage these last years for a grim second bow and, perhaps not so strangely, similar results -- though this time not on the relatively parochial stage of Central America, but in the oil heartlands of our planet... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23669 Media Crimes Sanitize War Crimes in Iraq (Ongoing) Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org As events in Iraq continue to slip from bad to worse, the good news brigade is scrambling for new stories— - 'anything, give me anything’ - to shore up what’s left of public support for a bloody war without end. As some feared and many predicted, the war hovers over our politics and the president who "brought it on." He is, as the journalist Sid Blumenthal puts it, stuck in a "paradigm" of his own making. The operative word is th! e title and refrain of an early Springsteen song: "TRAPPED." Another tipping point seems to have tipped. Fear and exhaustion are evident in our TV newsrooms, along with a continuing failure to recognize what is going on. The lack of insight is stunning; the quality of most of the news, pathetic... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23668 Video New 'Iraq massacre' tape emerges BBC The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians. The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March. The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people (...) The video pictures obtained by the BBC appear to contrad! ict the US account of the events in Ishaqi, about 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on 15 March 2006... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23665 The stakes are very high for the President and the people of Venezuela... Stephen Lendman ...We need only revisit the run-up to the ongoing Iraq war (the same is true for Afghanistan) to see how the US used one ploy after another to move closer to its fixed plan to invade and occupy the country whatever Saddam was willing to agree to. So after Saddam bowed to virtually everything asked of him, it was to no avail. New demands replaced the old ones complied with until the bar was raised higher than Saddam could rea! ch hard as he might try -- to be able to prove a negative: that he had no so-called "weapons of mass destruction" which we knew at the time he didn't and now everyone knows it. So just as the "now you see 'em, now you don't WMDs" were not a casus belli to attack Iraq, so too US hostility toward Iran has nothing to do with the country's supposed "nuclear threat"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23664 Has US media launched a campaign to white wash the Haditha massacres? (updated with BBC Video) Truth About Iraqis ...Two things in Iraq which grabbed my attention. First, is that the Iraqi government is launching an investigation of its own into the Haditha massacres. But this is remarkable for its tardiness not its courage. See, the civilians of Haditha protested to the government back in November. Yes, November, when this first happened. The Iraqi government did nothing. Then when a young film student provided ! footage indicating what happened in the homes of these women and children, the Iraqi government again did nothing. When Time broke the story in March (by which time a discreet investigation had been launched by the US military) the Iraqi government again did nothing. Not even an acknowledgement of the incident. April and May came and went with US media debating the Haditha massacres and one politician after another in the US calling for an investigation, and yet no word from the Iraqi government. Then, miraculously, on the same day US President George Bush spoke on the matter, we hear Iraqi PM Maliki speak out... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23661 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 GI Special 4F1: The Iraq War, On Drugs - June 1st, 2006 Thomas F. Barton "We Were So Junked Out On Valium, We Had No Emotions Anymore" "He And Others In His Unit In Iraq Became Addicted" In many cases, their problem is labeled stress. "Army docs have told me that commanders pressured them not to diagnose PTSD because it would cut into combat power: the ability to project men and women into war," says Robinson. "The docs admit that the decision is unethical, but are unwilling to take the huge career risk of becoming a whistle blower." Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23657 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.