[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 17 Jun 2006 - Part One]

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The Struggle to Recapture our Soul Mike Whitney George Bush loves being the war president. He loves popping up in Baghdad for a few hours of male camaraderie with the newly-appointed Iraqi Premier al-Maliki or strutting across an aircraft carrier in a tight-fitting flight-suit. He loves showing Papa-Bush that he can stay the course when things get tough and that he won’t squander his "political capital" by "cutting and running". But things are going the wrong way in Iraq and, by many accounts, the war is already! lost. Conservatives are jumping off the bandwagon faster than liberals and Bush’s approval ratings continue to plummet. Retired General William Odom summarized the Iraq misadventure best when he said, "It is the greatest strategic disaster in US history." Bush’s photo-op in Baghdad only proves the wisdom of Odom’s judgment. What looked like a triumphant visit by the Commander-in-Chief to the heart of a war zone, was actually a desperate attempt to garner support for a failed mission... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24022 Reflections on the “civil war” in Iraq Luciana Bohne, Online Journal Contributing Writer ...That Iraqis live in a state of terror is hard to dispute, but I doubt that astute Iraqis call it a "civil war" -- unless they are in the service of the occupation and training to suppress the people’s call for ending the occupation. Ordinary Iraqis, judging from independent journalistic sources and accounts in the foreign press, complain of murder and abductions, of rapes and disappearances, of massacres and detentions, of! bombing raids and chemical weapons -- and they have no doubt that this violence is generated under and because of the occupation. Everything is a struggle: access to employment, electricity, medicines, schools, security. I would like to ask the promoters of the "civil war" theory: who is responsible for this massive humanitarian crime, the American invasion of Iraq or the Iraqi "civil war"?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24009 American gods Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead Not withstanding the fact that Aristotle had said long back that, "the gods too are fond of a joke" and that there were no American gods then, now there are and we the hadjis of the world need to understand that like all gods, the American gods too are fond of a joke. Not withstanding the fact that the term "hadji" is used by American forces in Iraq as the word "gook" was for Vietnamese to signify the subhuman scum of the earth and that the term "hadji" had to be coined! for Iraqis because unfortunately there are no 'Mai Lais’ in Iraq, only Fallujahs and Hadithas and Ramadis and Ishaqis, we the hadjis of the world understand that American gods too are fond of a joke... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24015 EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE Malcom Lagauche ...Every once in a great while, human beings will stand up and react to situations in a manner which shows integrity well beyond what most humans could conceive, let alone perform. In my mind, two stand out. Let’s look at the most recent one first. Michael Berg’s son, Nicholas, was beheaded in Iraq. The perpetrators made available a videotape of the beheading with bogeyman al-Zarqawi supposedly cutting off Berg’s head. The outrage in the U.S. was at a fever pitch. When Michael! was first interviewed about his son’s death, the warmongering administration assumed they had a propaganda coup that would carry on for months. They were wrong. Michael Berg quickly let it be known that he blamed his son’s death on the U.S. government... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24006 Abu al-Masri and the Pentagon’s Iraqi Propaganda War Kurt Nimmo The Associated Press reports: "A document purportedly captured in an al-Qaeda hideout portrays the insurgency in Iraq as being in 'bleak’ shape, saying that it is losing strength and proposing ways to stir up trouble between the U.S. and Iran to divert American attention." As usual, a translation is in order. Military intelligence created a document (or did not create one and simply claims it found one) at complete odds with reality and dished it out! to corporate media stenographers. Also as usual, a caveat is attached to this alleged discovery: "There was no way to confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaeda, and U.S. and Iraqi officials offered conflicting accounts of when and where it was seized." As well, another caveat should be attached: there is no way to confirm the existence of "al-Qaeda in Iraq" or for that matter the existence of "al-Qaeda" in any other country, period. Our rulers demand we suspend critical judgment... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24012 Exceptional Americans Manifest Their Destiny: And to Hell with the Consequences... Jason Miller Contrary to the "catapulted propaganda", Enron, Haditha, and Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents or the work of a "few bad apples". American savagery and oppressive behavior pervades our society and predates our nation’s birth. Building its patriarchal wealth on the backs of Black slaves and cheap labor while acquiring its territory through Native American genocide, predatory exploitation of non-Anglos, the poor, wo! men, and the working class emerged as a pillar of America’s socioeconomic "success" before we even declared our independence... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24027 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, June 17, 2006 Today in Iraq U.S. troops searched Saturday for two soldiers who went missing after an attack that killed one of their comrades at a traffic checkpoint in the so-called "Triangle of Death" just south of Baghdad, the military said. U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said four raids had been carried out since Friday's attack and that ground forces, helicopters and airplanes were taking part in the search. The soldiers came under attack at a traffic checkpoint southwest of You! ssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad. A quick reaction force arrived at the scene after hearing small arms fire and explosions, according to the military. "We are currently using every means at our disposal on the ground, in the air and in the water to find them," Caldwell said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24025 Iraq democracy takes root Truth About Iraqis ... Did you really think I was writing about Democracy? What putrid stench-ridden democracy do you see here? How stupid are you? Is this the kind of democracy you would welcome on yourselves? This IS the new Iraq. For those Iraqis waiting for some respite, move to Iran. You will get better treatment than the Green Zone there. Human rights? Ha! Government? Ha! "You can't even talk to the militias, because they are the government," Yei said. "They have ministers on their! side."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24024 GI Special 4F15: 2100 Baghdad IEDs Since 1.06 - June 17, 2006 Thomas F. Barton 1st ID Encounters 3,400 IEDs In Baghdad Since 1.1.06: U.S. General Says Only 2,108 Detonated "Thanks To Tips, Training And Better Equipment" Iraqi insurgents are using new "pop and drop" bombs that are quickly set down in the path of US or Iraqi forces, a US commander said. Major General James Thurman, commander of multinational forces in the Baghdad area, said US forces have been effective in spotting and countering the new improvised explosive devices (IEDs). "It's where they put down some form of an explosive very quickly, thrown out of a car, that's thrown out there, and we encounter it," he said. Since his US Army 4th Infantry Division troops deployed in the Baghdad area in January, they have encountered 3,400 IEDs, the general said. US troops encountered 814 IEDs in the Baghdad area last month, but 38 percent were detected before they exploded thanks to tips, training and better equipment, he said. [Lord Cornwallis reported today that of the 9,763 artillery shells fired by George Washington’s terrorist army against his forces in the Yorktown Green Zone, 38% have failed to explode.] Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24021 Comments on John Pilger's New Book Freedom Next Time Stephen Lendman John Pilger is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker and one of the truly great ones of our time. For nearly 50 years, he's courageously and brilliantly done what too few others in his profession, in fact, do - his job. John has also been a war correspondent, is the author of 10 books and is best known in his adopted country Great Britain for his investigative documentaries exposing the crimes of US and Western imperialism. Freedom Next Time is John's newest book just published and the fifth one of his I've read. The others were magnificent, and when I learned a new one was due out, I couldn't wait to read it knowing it would be vintage Pilger and not to be missed. I wasn't disappointed and am delighted to share with readers what it's about. What else, as John himself says in his opening paragraph: "This book is about empire, its facades and the enduring struggle of people for their freedom. It offers an antidote to authorized versions of contemporary history that censor by omission and impose double standards." Indeed it does, and John devotes his book to exposing the crimes of empire in five countries... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24020 EXXONMOBIL, SHELL NECK-IN-NECK IN WAR OIL SALES Nick Mottern, ConsumersforPeace.org From the first year of the Bush Administration in 2001, through the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 and in the first year of the occupation, 2003, ExxonMobil was the top seller of petroleum products and services to the Pentagon, taking in about $2 billion in taxpayer money for those three years. However, in 2004, Royal Dutch Shell was the number one top seller for the year. With Shell’s continued high level of sales in 2005, it bec! ame the overall top seller of petroleum to the U.S. military between 1999 and 2005, at $4.08 billion, compared to ExxonMobil’s $3.90 billion for the same period... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24019 US-corrupted Germany & Japan resume horrendous war crimes Dr Gideon Polya, ...Now, thanks to George Bush and his obscene and criminally mis-directed "War on Terror" (in reality a War for Resources and a War on Women and Children), all that has changed. Germany has resumed war crimes with gusto in Occupied Afghanistan and Japan has resumed war crimes in BOTH Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan. Of course, Japan and Germany are not the ONLY countries variously allied with the UK and US in Occupied Afghanistan o! r Occupied Iraq. Thus major players in Afghanistan currently include the US, UK, Australia, Canada and France - as well as Germany and Japan ; and major players in Occupied Iraq currently include the US, UK, and Australia – as well as the former Axis countries Italy and Japan. Numerous other countries (from Western and Eastern Europe, East Asia, South East Asia and Central America) have dirtied their international reputations by making token contributions to these criminal American enterprises... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24017 Count All the Dead Dahlia Wasfi, M.D., Denver, Colorado, USA In the spirit that all lives are of an immeasurable value, I am requesting that we discontinue the use of separate counts for dead Iraqis, Americans, and members of the "Coalition of the Willing." 2500 Iraqis were dead withing the first few hours of the start of "Shock and Awe," and the crime they committed which warranted the penalty of death was that they were born Iraqi. More than 90% of the casualties of war since WWII are civilians--unarmed people-! -and one-third of that 90% are children. Unlike American soldiers, they never volunteered to pick up a gun and learn to kill. At this point, however, we've given Iraqis every reason to do just that. Many of the U.S. dead are victims, too, but let's not glorify their status as warriors. Every one of them was likely just following orders, but the Nuremburg trials determined 60 years ago that such an excuse was inadequate... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24014 Death to 'al-Zarqawi'! Long may he live! William Bowles, I'n'I Since the 'death’ of 'al-Zarqawi’ reams have been written from both a 'left’ and right perspective on the significance of his death or even, as I along with other writers have asserted, whether the damn fellow existed in the first place, at least as he has been portrayed. Regardless, the one thing that seems to be missing from all the 'analysis’ (whether he existed or not is not really relevant), and that is the role of these 'personalities’ in the sc! heme of things, or rather their use in mystifying events and their causes.* The BBC produced an extremely hurried so-called documentary the other night on the 'life and death’ of the man, that regurgitated every piece of US propaganda without criticism including the seminal Colin Powell speech at the UN in early 2003... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24018 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 15 June 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ...In a dispatch posted at 12:25pm Makkah time Thursday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that fierce fighting broke out between Iraqi Resistance forces and US occupation troops in the al-Karmah area east of al-Fallujah, which is about 60km west of Baghdad, late Wednesday night. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses in al-Karmah as ! saying that the combat erupted when a US force attempted to surround the ar-Rufah area in the middle of al-Karmah in order to storm into it. Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons intercepted the Americans, however, sparking a firefight... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24010 Fake Document Roads to Iraq ...Last announcement by Mowaffaq al-Rubaie was: Document discovered in terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s hideout. Don’t believe a single word of this fake document, also don’t believe that such a document exists, for a single reason it’s came from Mowaffaq al-Rubaie. Al-Rubaie [head of National Intelligence Coordination Commission] being Iraqi security adviser, is one of the two untouchables in the Iraqi government, the other one is Muhammad al-Shahwani [head National Intelli! gence Service]. Both appointed by the Americans and reports to the American directly [the CIA], not to the Iraqi government, the agencies [security agency and intelligence agency] are not taking orders from any Iraqi high authority, defense ministry, the ministry of interior affaires and not even from prime minister... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24008 Shiite Militias Control Prisons, Official Says Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview this week. "We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that," said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. "Our jails are infiltrated by the militias fro! m top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad."(...) In an interview this week, Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, the top Sunni Arab in Iraq's new government, showed photographs taken from one recent inspection of an Interior Ministry detention center. An inmate in one of the photos held out his misshapen, limp hands for the camera. The man's hands had been broken in a beating, Zobaie said. Other inmates showed massive, dark bruises on their skin; one bore a large, open infected sore (...) Ninety percent of the men crowded into Interior Ministry detention centers are Sunni Arabs, Zobaie said... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24013 Bush's Baghdad Stunt Walter C. Uhler While reading about the exploits of Emperor Bush, who bravely flew in to war-torn Baghdad, Iraq and spent a whole six hours there without even providing the usual notice to, let alone securing the necessary approvals from, its so-called "sovereign" government, I was reminded of the remarkable words spoken to author Ron Suskind by a senior Bush advisor in the summer of 2002... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24004 GI Special 4F14: 2500 Gone - June 16, 2006 Thomas F. Barton U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Reaches 2,500:18,490 U.S. Troops Have Been Wounded WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq war has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said Thursday, more than three years into a conflict that finds U.S. and allied foreign forces locked in a struggle with a resilient insurgency. In addition, the Pentagon said 18,490 U.S. troops have been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24003 Telling Lies about Ahmadinejad Kurt Nimmo Buried in the Week in Review section of the New York Times is an admission that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said Israel should be "wiped off the map," a reference to a mistranslated phrase bandied about the corporate media over the last several weeks as an example of Iran’s intention to attack Israel, especially after it develops nukes, either next week or a decade out, depending on the level of fanaticism of the neocon making the claim... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24028 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 2006 Today in Iraq 11 killed, 25 wounded in suicide bombing at Shiite mosque in Baghdad. The bombing came 1 hour before the main Friday prayers, avoiding greater casualties. Two killed and 16 wounded when four mortar rounds struck a house and a shop in Baghdad's Sab al-Bur neighbourhood. Gunmen in two trucks stormed two villages near the town of Suwayrah, 50 km south of Baghdad, in the early hours Friday, and killed three people and kidnapped nine others, police said. One pers! on killed, another kidnapped when men dressed in Iraqi army uniforms attacked a house in Al-Jahar village near the town of Madain, 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Baghdad. Iraqi police found three unidentified bodies near the cemetery of Khaldiyah town, some 80 km west of Baghdad. The bodies showed signs of torture with bullets in the head and chest. Gunmen killed Yusif al-Hassan, a senior member of the Muslim Scholars Association, near the mosque where he led prayers in Basra. The MSA is a Sunni organization opposed to the occupation... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24011 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.