[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 9 Jun 2006]

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“Every moment in Iraq is like this!” Karen Button My Iraqi colleague and friend Aishya is on the phone detailing names, ages and method of death for each of the victims of Haditha’s massacre by US troops last November. She tells me that from her interviews with survivors, there are certain details being incorrectly reported and she wants to correct them. She double-checked, she says, on a recent trip when she was bringing medical supplies to Haditha. As I scribble down the information, she pauses. "You know,"! she says, "this happens every day, of course. And what about the wedding party in Mukaradeeb the US murdered in 2004?" At least 45 people were killed by US troops in the attack near Al-Qaim in western Iraq. Pentagon officials denied a wedding was in procession, claiming instead that party-goers were "anti-coalition forces." "We need to get this information out," Aishya continues, "but let me tell you something that happened just the other day... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23844 Impunity Mike Whitney George Bush is right; Iraq is "the central battlefield in the global war on terror". Regrettably, it is United States that is the main sponsor and supporter of that terror in the form of American-trained death squads. Death squad activity in Iraq now accounts for more than 1,000 casualties per month. The Baghdad morgue has become a conveyor-belt for American-generated carnage. Up to now, the US involvement in the killing has been effectively concealed by the mainstream media. Apart from inf! requent reports on the internet, there is little information connecting the burgeoning death toll to America’s counterinsurgency operations. That changed on May 4, 2006 when Congressman Dennis Kucinich gave a speech on the floor of the House which linked the Bush administration to the death squad’s in Iraq. Reading from a long list of newspaper articles he had compiled, Kucinich provided a detailed account of America’s disturbing undercover war. Naturally, his speech was shunned by the major media and consigned to the memory hole... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23852 Pulling corpses out of the hat William Bowles, I'n'I There can be no doubt that the 'death’ of 'Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’ is part of a carefully planned disinformation campaign designed to divert attention away from the slaughter of Haditha (and elsewhere), a campaign that the corporate and state media have gleefully participated in. Indeed, 'al-Zarqawi' is itself a psy-ops programme in its own right, replete with faked letters of authenticity, fed to the press by the US military, which calls into question the source! of the Internet videos of beheadings, and who is behind the wave of kidnappings and murders currently sweeping Iraq... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23853 Zarqawi... Riverbend, Baghdad burning So 'Zarqawi' is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I've lost track of time…). I didn't bother with the pictures and film they showed of him because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken, bleeding bodies. The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even! exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003… The timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.)... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23854 Propaganda and Haditha Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pflueger , t r u t h o u t Propaganda is when the Western corporate media tries to influence public opinion in favor of the Iraq War by consistently tampering with truth and distorting reality. It is to be expected. And it is to be recognized for what it is. On occasions when the media does its job responsibly and reports events like the November 19, 2005, Haditha Massacre, it must also be willing and able to anticipate and counter propaganda campaigns that will inevi! tably follow. It is to be expected that the responsible members of the media fraternity will stick to their guns and not join the propagandists. This piece is a summary of five most commonly deployed crisis management propaganda tactics which the State and Media combine that we can expect to see in relation to the Haditha Massacre. Listed in a loose chronological order of their deployment, the tactics are: Delay, Distract, Discredit, Spotlight and Scapegoat. Each of the five public relations campaigns will here be discussed in the context of the Haditha Massacre... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23848 The Courage to Resist: A US Lieutenant Refuses Deployment to Iraq Sarah Olson Ehren Watada is a 27-year-old First Lieutenant in the United States Army. He joined the Army in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq war. He turned in his resignation to protest the war in Iraq in January 2006. He expects to receive orders to deploy in late June and will become the first Lieutenant to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq, setting the stage for what could be the biggest movement of GI resistance since the Vietnam War. He faces ! a court-martial, up to two years in prison for missing movement by design, a dishonorable discharge, and other possible charges. He says speaking against an illegal and immoral war is worth all of this and more. Journalist SARAH OLSON spoke with Watada in May... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23850 MEDIA ALERT: AN EXCHANGE WITH BBC WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR JOHN SIMPSON Media Lens On June 6, we sent the following email to the BBC's Baghdad Correspondent Andrew North, World Affairs Editor John Simpson and Director of News Helen Boaden: Who would guess from your reports and commentary tonight (BBC1, Ten O'Clock News) that the US-UK 'coalition' had anything to do with the catastrophic loss of life in Iraq? Andrew North mentioned sectarian strife and insurgent attacks causing civilian and 'coalition' casualties. ! John Simpson talked of Lebanese-style "civil war". There was not a word about US-UK killings of civilians (Simpson hinted at the very end that this was "a war" that the 'coalition' might not be able to win).... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23845 Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi Michel Chossudovsky & Thomas E. Ricks The following article published last April in the Washington Post reveals the contents of leaked internal military documents pertaining to Zarqawi. While official Washington and the media present Zarqawi as an evil enemy and "terror mastermind", the leaked documents confirm that Zarqawi was a central figurehead in the Pentagon's propaganda campaign. This role has been previously documented by a number of independent studies. What the Washin! gton Post article conveys is that the role of Zarqawi has been deliberately "magnified" as part of a Pentagon PSYOP program. The hidden agenda was to distort the nature of the Iraqi resistance movement... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23843 War Criminal Nation Paul Craig Roberts ...Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed US taxpayers $300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year. Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These are not the full costs. The huge figure does not include the destroyed equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and disabled. Gentle reader, are you getting enough vicarious plea! sure from the slaughter of Iraqi women and children to justify this price tag? Is murdering "ragheads" that important to you? If so, you are one sick person, just like every member of the Bush administration... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23841 Political humor of the day Eli Stephens, Left I on the News There's nothing whatsoever funny about brain injuries to U.S. soldiers, but this statement has to be new low in the absurd statements emanating from the U.S. government: The Pentagon is refusing to release data on how many soldiers have suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says disclosing the results would put the lives of those fighting at risk. Ri-i-i-i-ight. Because if they only knew the number was 10,453 and not just "a lot" th! ey would surely redouble their efforts at setting IEDs... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23840 al-Zarqawi Dies Again Joe Quinn, Signs of the Times ...oday, in an inspiring act of self-sacrifice, the Pentagon offered up one of its most valued assets - the phantom Islamic terrorist known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Through this act, the U.S. government clearly hopes to convince the American people and the world that it really is fighting a 'war on terror' in Iraq against real 'terrorists', despite the fact that American troops have shown a proclivity for 'offing' Iraqi children and pregnant women rather than 't! errorists', (maybe they can't find any) and someone seems determined to embroil Iraqi civilians in an ethnic bloodbath. As if this blatant and obvious manipulation were not enough, we now have to face ourselves into the nauseous backslapping and rhetoric as Bush and Co play up this "victory" in the war on terror... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23839 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 8 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 9:45pm Makkah time Thursday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that their Ba'qubah correspondent had been able to get to the Habhab area after the US occupation forces lifted the blockade in the district which lies north of Ba'qubah and is where an American air raid killed Abu Mus'ab az-Zarqawi at dawn Thu! rsday. The Ba'qubah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported from the ruins of the house where az-Zarqawi and seven of his aides were meeting that local residents of the area said that the Americans launched two rocket attacks at the house that were so powerful that they shook the whole city... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23838 GI Special 4F7: Pentagon Scumbags At It Again - June 9, 2006 Thomas F. Barton The Pentagon is refusing to release data on how many soldiers have suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says disclosing the results would put the lives of those fighting at risk. The data come from screenings of 1,587 soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and 9,000 at Fort Carson in Colorado. Army Medical Command spokesman Jaime Cavazos said Wednesday that the results of the tests represent "information the enemy could use to potentially make soldiers more vulnerable to harm." He declined to elaborate. Pentagon scientists and other health officials have already made public similar data from other installations. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23837 Painful legacy Firas Al-Atraqchi While world media discusses the Haditha and Ishaqi atrocities "and the guilt or innocence therein of the United States military", it should be stressed that the beginning of the Iraqi resistance movements in Iraq can be traced back to several similar incidents during and after the March 2003 invasion. Since the days of the beginning of hostilities in Iraq, Iraqis have complained that US troops were ruthless and trigger- happy, often responding to incidents of violence with disprop! ortionate force and caring little for Iraqi casualties (...) The first signs that Iraqis were in for a bloody and inhumane occupation were felt in the precision bombing of Baghdad and other cities. Arab media clamoured viciously to broadcast the freshest images of civilian dead which were coming in to news bureaus every hour. By now, there are several images which have become ingrained into the collective psyche of this war. But there are other stories, many of them without accompanying footage, which have long been forgotten by many... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23813 Breakthroughs in Iraq, While Backing Off on Iran Gary Leupp, www.dissidentvoice.org This morning I wake up to learn, as I peruse Antiwar.com, that the Bush administration has suddenly agreed to acknowledge Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Then almost immediately thereafter, from the TV, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed. Then from the car radio I learn for the first time, and from the mouth of President Bush in his statement announcing Zarqawi’s death, that Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki has finally appo! inted defense and interior ministers to his cabinet. The failure of the client-state to do this for five months following the parliamentary elections in January (and thereby actually pose as a state in the real world where state power grows out of the barrel of a gun) had become an acute embarrassment for those attempting to lend it legitimacy... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23835 Comments on Greg Palast's New Book Armed Madhouse Stephen Lendman I've known about and followed Greg Palast's important work for some time. I read his eye-opening book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy a few years ago and have mentioned it several times in some of my other writing. Greg is one of the most important and exhaustively thorough investigative journalists anywhere, which is especially important at a time when that kind of effort is needed more than ever. I knew he had a new book in the works, and I l! ooked forward to getting and reading it knowing it would be full of important and explosive material we all should know about. I wasn't disappointed nor did I expect to be. Living in the US under a rogue administration bent on world conquest and dominance, I can easily understand what Greg might have had in mind by his title. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23842 Zarqawi's real name: Lieutenant Kije Joseph Cannon, Cannonfire ...Supposedly, American soldiers found it during a raid. Which raid? Why not humor us with a few details? On second thought, don't bother. Any details provided by officaldom would never convince, since so many recent events have justified cynicism. The Casey slideshow confirmed what many had already suspected: Zarqawi existed solely because he fulfilled a propaganda function. Once that fact became known, it was necessary to bury the revelation. First ! came the video. When that ploy failed, Zarqawi lost his value as bogeyman and thus had to die... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23836 Why Operation Jump Start Worries Me Greg Moses The Guard operation at the border has an air of legal peculiarity about it. Obviously it has been initiated by federal powers, but care has been taken to leave troops under command of the Governors, sort of. If the legal finesse of Operation Jump Start offers a vulnerability de-militarization activists can exploit, it also presents features worth worrying about. Let’s not forget that the memo was released at the very end of the work week during the first week of the ! summer season. In Texas, it was distributed by the Governor’s office after five. And there has yet to be any public discussion of its wisdom. Doesn’t this sound too familiar?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23846 Enough about Ann Coulter: Answer the Jersey Girls questions about 9/11! Ben Frank Is anyone else outraged at all the attention that Ann Coulter is getting for attacking the Jersey Girls? How is it possible that everyone is talking about what Ann Coulter wrote, and no one is talking about what the Jersey Girls have to say? John Kerry wrote for Huffington post about how horrible it is that Ann is attacking them with the provocative headline "Shameless, but the Real Shame Is If We Don’t Act" No folks, he is not talk! ing about acting on the very important issue of demanding answers to what the hell happened on to our air defenses on 9/11…he wants us to act by calling the media and telling them we don’t like Ann Coulter. Instead of jumping in to defend them from this insignificant hateful warmonger, I bet the Jersey Girls would rather have people pay attention to what actually happened on 9/11 and start answering their questions!... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23847 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2006 Today in Iraq Four contractors working for Army Corps of Engineers killed by roadside bomb The Huntsville, AL center where they were based operates the Coalition Munitions Clearing Program that is responsible for receiving, transporting, segregating and destroying captured or any other munitions posing a danger in Iraq, according to a Corps of Engineers news release. Second Lt. John Shaw Vaughan, 23, of Battle Mountain, Alaska, assigned to the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat T! eam, killed in action in Mosul. The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 7, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during combat operations... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23849 Everybody Knows: Storms of Horror in a Tormented Land Chris Floyd ...Even in the most justified conflicts, war spawns monstrosities, drawing out the beast that lurks in the muddy sediment of our brains. How much greater, then, is the guilt of those who knowingly instigate unjustified wars? How much greater is the guilt of elitist cowards who send troops — deceived, undersupplied, undertrained, overworked — into the death-dealing chaos of urban warfare, in a land whose people can see they are not being liberated b! ut plundered, murdered, tortured, terrorized and driven back into a primitive –indeed a feral – state of existence?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23851 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.