[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 02 Jun 2006]

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The Logic of War Crimes in a Criminal War Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Brian Becker, A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition ...The massacre in Haditha took place one year after a much larger massacre of civilians in Fallujah. Four to six thousand civilians are estimated to have been killed in Fallujah in November 2004, according to credible independent sources reporting from the ground. The truth of Iraq is that there were other massacres almost every week in between the events that have made Haditha and Fallujah famous cities: fa! mous in the way no city wants to become well known throughout the world. The attack on the people of Iraq and ensuing occupation by the United States government has caused the deaths of well over 100,000 Iraqi people (the British medical journal, The Lancet, reported an excess of 100,000 dead eighteen months ago)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23702 FLASHBACK: Baby Killers Mike Whitney What goes through George Bush’s mind when he sees the dead bodies of Iraqi women and children loaded on the back of a pickup truck like garbage? Is there ever a flicker of remorse; a split-second when he fully grasps the magnitude of the horror he has created? March 15 was another defining moment in America’s downward moral-spiral in Iraq. Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a wanton act of slaughter executed by American occupiers. Photos taken at the scene show t! he lifeless bodies of young children, barely old enough to walk, lying motionless in the back of a flatbed truck while their fathers moan inconsolably at their side. What parent can look at these photographs and not be consumed with rage?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23692 Massacre at Haditha: how the occupation turned an Iraqi town into hell Simon Assaf ...The Haditha massacre is not only about the crimes of a set of individuals or of one unit. It is an example of the systematic and much greater crime of Bush and Blair’s war. In the months after the fall of Baghdad, the US touted Haditha as a success story. The US army had rebuilt a vital power station at the Haditha dam and felt confident enough to hand over security to a small contingent of Azerbaijani troops. But in the summer ! of 2003 US troops rounded up over 700 young men in a mass sweep. The raids fuelled growing anger at the occupation. By April 2004, Haditha joined the revolt across Iraq. The US responded by isolating the town, blowing up most of its bridges and inserting teams of snipers. Later they shipped in Iraqi death squads. The town rose in rebellion, driving out US troops and the local authorities imposed by the occupation. In the summer of 2005 Haditha’s hospital was destroyed in fighting. The cousin of Iraq’s ambassador to Washington was shot dead by US troops during a raid on his house. One resident told the Arabic Al-Quds newspaper that US troops were threatening to kill civilians if attacks by the resistance did not stop. On 19 November US soldiers turned those threats into reality. It shows how appalling the situation is today that the Haditha massacre hardly features in Iraqi news. For Iraqis the slaughter at Haditha is but one of a series of mass killings... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23704 The Terrorist-in-Chief Robert Thompson, Axis of Logic Mr John Negroponte, Mr George W. Bush's Terrorist-in-Chief, has granted an interview to Mr James Naughtie of the BBC, in which he went so far as to brand Iran as the principal state supporting terrorism. He should not be so modest, because it is hardly a secret that the present administration in the USA is far and away the principal supporter of terrorism in the world. Mr Negroponte is not a beginner, since he had a great deal of experience under previous admi! nistrations, including that of Mr Bush senior, running terrorist operations in Central America on behalf of the big corporations which finance both substantial political parties in the USA. He was, in effect, the obvious choice to take charge of all terrorist operations for the USA since his experience and loyalty to the big corporations were undoubted, untroubled by any qualms of conscience. In other words, he was the perfect candidate for the Bush régime... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23703 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 2 June 2006 ranslated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org ...Earlier, in a dispatch posted at 12:10pm Makkah time midday Friday, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that two bombs exploded one after the other in a popular market in the middle of Baghdad at about 8:30am local time Friday morning. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses who were shopping in the market as saying th! at the bombs were planted in the al-Ghazal popular market where birds and domestic animals are sold. The market is normally crowded on Friday mornings. Six civilians were killed in the blast and 49 more of them wounded, the witnesses reported. In contrast to Iraqi Resistance attacks, which have clear and defined targets – occupation troops or armed forces, officials, or collaborators with the US-installed puppet regime – a wave of daily bombings has targeted civilians exclusively for several weeks. Such mysterious bombings are widely viewed as a part of an Anglo-American effort to rescue their failing fortunes in Iraq by sparking a sectarian civil war in the country enabling them to fulfill their plans of partitioning the country along ethnic and religious lines... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23698 Iraqis deserved being massacred; Iraq rejects Ishaqi findings Truth About Iraqis The statement above is reflective of the reaction that the Haditha and Ishaqi atrocities have received. I recently watched a taped FOX News segment Hannity and Colmes. They brought some father of some Marine who said when we send off our sons and daughters we have to remember they are our children and the US has to support them. What I find absolutely astonishing is that this old man seems to have no regard whatsoever for the Iraqi s! ons and daughters (as young as one-year-old in Haditha and seven months in Ishaqi) - infants. Nothing. In fact, Sean Hannity goes so far as to say women and children are known to be "insurgents" themselves and assist the "insurgents". This is the public reaction. No one fails to ask how a seven-month-old child could be a terrorist... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23697 MORE – LOTS MORE Mike Ferner, OrbStandard.com Please! Would somebody please tell me that the corporate news media is talking about U.S. war crimes in Iraq in addition to the civilians killed in Haditha?! I can only hope that my fellow citizens are not being told that this latest outrage tumbling out of Iraq is some isolated incident; that Herr Rumsfeld will diligently investigate it, and dispense timely justice to all guilty parties (below the rank of Lieutenant, of course)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23696 Another thoght experiment Xymphora ...The thought experiment – and I refer you to my own Syrian thought experiment, which I think proves conclusively that the Lobby promotes policies that do not benefit the United States but only Israel - demonstrates how the Chomsky thesis, that support for Israel masks support for American Establishment interests, is completely, and rather obviously, backasswards. The fact that somebody of Chomsky’s moral and intellectual stature would risk his reputation in order to provide ! cover for the Lobby is another demonstration of the lengths that Lobby members have to go to in order to support a program that is against the interests of both the American Establishment and the American people... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23695 Yet Another Massacre; And Horowitz's Disappearing Conspiracy Theory Lenin's Tomb New 'Iraq massacre' tape emerges. Okay, this time what happened was the fucking house collapsed and somehow, who only knows, riddled eleven civilians' bodies with wounds resembling bullet-holes. Oh, and the house also seems to have shot up a car on the way down. Oh, and it also shot up its own walls and the floor and furniture. And also, it doesn't seem to have really collapsed. The walls are still standing, albeit more perforated th! an a hedgehog's bed. Iraqi police and local residents say that US troops entered the house and shot all eleven people, but really, how believable is that compared to the mega-armed-and-shooting-collapsing-house-that-still-stands story? It might be an apposite time to mention that Countless My Lais is the norm in Iraq these days... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23690 Requiem for the Faith-based Greenback Mike Whitney ... We are seeing the greatest fiat-money experiment in history. The awesome power of the greenback extends to all markets, and yet, is completely disconnected from the traditional means of measuring value, like the gold standard. It’s clear that the Bush administration believes that the dollar will maintain its lofty perch if they are able to control the vast oil resources in the Middle East. Then, foreign countries would be forced to use the dollar, (despite ! its $8.4 trillion in debt) to purchase their oil. We should anticipate that the dollar’s value will be increasingly linked to oil, and that its future will depend to a large extent on the military’s success in pacifying Iraq. (and Iran) Needless to say, the results are far from certain... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23691 Sham US Proposal to Iran Evokes Memories of Past Similar Ones Stephen Lendman It may be a new month, but it's the same old Wall Street Journal trumpeting the latest US gambit designed to hide its real intentions toward Iran. Again it was in a front page feature story on June 1 headlined: "In Shift, U.S. Offers to Talk to Iran, Aiming to Bolster Allies' Cohesion." The WSJ is never up to explaining the real motive behind the latest ploy and instead falsely claims it's "a nod to European allies' desire to offer c! arrots as well as sticks to steer Iran away from its efforts to produce weapons-grade uranium." So to achieve that supposed end, the US has now said it will join with the European-led "negotiations" currently ongoing and actually talk to the Iranians. One has to be impressed with such professed generosity, which, in fact, is just more barely disguised US audacity with a heavy dose of mendacity... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23689 In Iraq, does the US practise justice or farce? Truth About Iraqis ...Chairman of the Iraqi Human Rights Association, Muayed al-Anbaki, said: "It looks like the killing of Iraqi civilians is becoming a daily phenomenon." Looks like? Becoming? No, my good man, this has happened since the summer of 2003. Yes, like the killing of five women and children in Ishaqi which had it not been for an AP cameraman would have gone unreported, or swept under the rug as one US soldier said in the BBC documentary I mentio! ned earlier... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23687 FLASHBACK: Children of Abraham: Death in the Desert Chris Floyd What happened in the village of Isahaqi, north of Baghdad, on Ides of March? The murk of war – the natural blur of unbuckled event, and its artificial augmentation by professional massagers – shrouds the details of the actual operation. But here is what we know. We know that U.S. forces conducted a raid on a house in the village on March 15. We know that the Pentagon said the American troops were "targeting an individual suspected of supporting forei! gn fighters for the al-Qaeda in Iraq terror network," when their team came under fire, and that the troops "returned fire. utilizing both air and ground assets." We know that the Pentagon said that "only" one man, two women and one child were killed in the raid, which destroyed a house in the village... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23693 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, June 2, 2006 Today in Iraq Two bombs struck in quick succession at a pet market Friday morning in central Baghdad. The explosives were left in a bag at the al-Ghazil market, where Iraqis can go every Friday to buy dogs, birds, snakes and other animals. Five people were killed and 57 wounded, some seriously. A few minutes later, an explosion near a Shiite mosque in the eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Jadida killed two civilians and injured five. A roadside bomb also targeted a patrol in! the Mansour district in western Baghdad, wounding two policemen and damaging their vehicle. In the Mansour neighbourhood of west Baghdad, a bomb went off near a passing Iraqi army convoy, killing one soldier and wounding four. A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded four in the eastern New Baghdad district. One Iraqi soldier was killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in the western Mansoor district of Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23685 GI Special 4F2: Marines Say Iraqis Don't Support U.S. - June 2, 2006 Thomas F. Barton "Most Iraqis Don’t Support The U.S. Presence, Talley And Other Marines Said" Unarmed Civilians Often Butchered "Accidentally" Nearly 25,000 Camp Pendleton Marines are serving in this western, mostly desert region of Iraq. Many are on their third tour in little more than three years. Three years of breaking down doors and rushing into small, dark rooms where Marines might encounter a man with a gun or a family frozen in terror. Three years of chasing snipers who shoot and then fade into the crowds. Three years of seeing buddies dismembered or killed by roadside bombs when their big hope is to go home in one piece. "It is just so frustrating. hey hit and run and it's all on their schedule, and then they blend in with the civilians," said Staff Sgt. Robert Talley, who spent early 2004 in Fallujah as a platoon sergeant responsible for 65 Marines from Camp Pendleton's 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Division. "Then you wonder: Does this guy who is smiling at me have an AK-47 behind the door that he is going to shoot me in the back with?" said Talley, who lives in Temecula and will retire in October after 22 years of service. For some of the guys, it eats them up. Until you get shot at, you don't understand what the pressure is like." That pressure and those insurgents' tactics are likely to remain for the duration of the U.S. occupation, because most Iraqis don't support the U.S. presence or the nascent Iraqi government, Talley and other Marines said. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23681 George Bush and the Haditha massacre Barry Grey, WSWS ..."If laws were broken there will be punishment." Really? The war itself is a violation of international law, along with the abuse and torture of prisoners, the kidnapping of alleged terrorists, their rendition to torture regimes allied with Washington, the network of secret CIA prisons, and the denial of due process and Geneva Convention rights to those swept up in America’s international dragnet. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, the military chiefs and! others who plotted and launched a war based on lies are the prime law-breakers. And the Republican and Democratic leaders and media yes-men who promoted the war and continue to defend the occupation are their accomplices. Haditha was a war crime, and of a particularly gruesome sort, because the perpetrators systematically cornered and executed men, women and children over a span of five hours. But what of the destruction of entire towns, such as Fallujah and Tall Afar, in which thousands of innocent civilians died? These are hailed by Bush and the media as great victories... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23684 Mass Murder “Symposium” at Neocon Frontpage Kurt Nimmo Indeed, the neocons are fanatical, warmongering, misanthropic sociopaths that need to be arrested immediately and locked up in protective custody—not for their protection but for our protection, for left alone they will attack Iran and kick off World War Three, or as former CIA spook James Woolsey describes it, World War Four (the Cold War, for the neocons, was World War Three). Speaking of Woolsey, he recently participated in a "symposium" (i.e., murder fant! asy) over at the former Marxist gone to neocon seed David Horowitz’s Scaife funded website, Frontpage. Woolsey and Kenneth R. Timmerman, a neocon who is executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (even the pro-Zionist Wikipedia tells us Timmerman’s org "works to instigate an armed conflict between the US and Iran"), and Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a Fox News pundit and member of the Iran Policy Committee, a criminal confab made up of mostly neocons fresh out of the White House, CIA, State Department, and Pentagon, a mafia determined to inflict "regime change" on Iran through "destabilization" and "coercive diplomacy," in other words criminal subversion of a sovereign nation, usually considered an international crime... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23682 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 31 May 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 3:10pm Makkah time Wednesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that before noon on Wednesday Iraqi Resistance fighters had assaulted the puppet police station in the al-Qahirah neighborhood of eastern Baghdad and seized control of it. They then seized the weapons in the puppet police arsenal and left! . The Baghdad correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in al-Qahirah neighborhood as saying that Iraqi Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons and pipe rockets attacked the puppet police station in their neighborhood. Hey clashed with puppet policemen in the station and then stormed in. There they seized the weapons reserved for te puppet police and destroyed the patrol vehicles inside... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23670 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.