[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 05 Jan 2005]

["uruknet.info" <redazione at uruknet.info>]

  uruknet.info
  «Ë-Ë"Ê Æ‰Ê·Ë
:: information from occupied iraq
:: informazione dall'iraq occupato

Fallujah atrocities
'How can they talk about elections?'
Socialist Worker
Iraqi doctor Salam Ismael attempted to reach Fallujah over Christmas to
help thousands of refugees stranded by the US assault on their city. He
found misery, hunger and growing anger. 'How can they talk about
elections?'Christmas eve, there is a cold wind, the temperatures in the
desert dip below freezing. A group of us, all doctors, decide to try and
reach Fallujah. There are stories of disease and hunger...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8653&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8653


The Mighty US GI's: Lied To, Used, and Losing.
Amer Jubran
...While news sources are divided between either concealing or exaggerating
the number of those killed in Iraq, other important statistics about US
soldiers are forgotten. These statistics give a shocking picture about the
truth of what is happening in Iraq. For example, CBS's 60 Minutes reported
last fall that 300 soldiers migrated to Canada when they received orders to
join their units heading to Iraq. 60 Minutes went on to say that 5,500 US
soldiers h! ad deserted for fear of being killed in Iraq. (...) Information
about the number of US causalities in Iraq is available on the web site of
the Pentagon, a building which some are now calling the "War Hub." This
information covers only those who are officially US citizens enlisted with
different military services. Hired security contractors, or mercenaries,
and recruits who are not citizens who enlisted to obtain a "green card,"
are not counted or mentioned...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8632&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8632


Elezioni in crisi. Dubbi sull'intesa Usa-Iran
Stefano Chiarini, il manifesto
Il tentativo Usa di «irachizzare» il conflitto con la convocazione di
elezioni farsa che dovrebbero incoronare gli uomini politici arrivati a
Baghdad sui carri armati Usa e dividere il paese su base
etnico-confessionale, sta affondando sempre più nella violenza e nel caos,
mentre la possibilità di una intesa Usa-Iran per una sorta di condominio
sull'Iraq comincia a creare dissensi e fratture nello stesso governo
filo-americano di Iyad Al! lawi...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8636&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8636


Navy SEAL Details Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
By Staff and Wire Reports
A former Navy SEAL testifying under a grant of immunity said he first
witnessed prisoner abuse a week after his arrival in Iraq in October 2003.
The sailor, whose identity was not revealed, recalled an incident during
which a hooded and handcuffed detainee was kneed, punched and had his
testicles twisted by SEALs in the back of a Humvee...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8649&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8649


US mercenary Abizeid Tarzan: learn to shut up!
Abu Assur, Al-Moharer
...Tarzan Abizeid! You warned the Mosulis through the media. Because you
are a born boaster, and you think the war is just a joke and Iraq is a
never never land. The Iraqis didn't warn you, humbug through the media,
because their fight is not a Hollywood affair, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED like.
Every thing happens on the terrain Tarzan Abizeid. And the terrain in Iraq,
in Mosul, in Basrah, is littered with your broken army bodies...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8648&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8648


Mike Whitney: ''White Man's Burden' and the Iraq War'
Mike Whitney
...Every facet of the war in Iraq has been painstakingly dissected like a
murder victim at an autopsy. Every facet, except one. The only topic that
continues to remain off-limits is race, and the racist theology that drove
the country to war. It's odd, in a country where so much of the history is
steeped in the blood of chauvinistic wars, that Americans are still
hesitant to examine the reflection in the mirror...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8646&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8646


Cultural Leaders say Looting of Iraq's Antiquities Continues
VOA News
...Iraqi cultural officials say the looting of museums has stopped. But
they say robbers continue to move from province to province plundering
archeological sites. Director of museums, Donny George Youkhanna, says as
many as 15,000 objects disappeared from Iraq's museums and cultural sites.
He says all are of historic importance, but some were of particular
significance. "The small piece of ivory, the Nubian and the lioness, this
is one of the! extraordinary pieces," he said. "We have lost the statue of
the Sumerian king Entemena. This might be one of the oldest statues
actually having the name of a king on it, mentioning that this is a king on
it, in the history of mankind. That piece is lost"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8655&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8655


U.S. military doctor says military forced closure of online war diary
MATTHEW P. BLANCHARD, Knight Ridder Newspapers
A Bucks County, Pa., military doctor serving in Iraq says he was forced to
shut down his Internet war diary last week after Army officials decided his
gripping accounts of frontline medicine constituted a breach of Army
regulations. Maj. Michael Cohen, a doctor with the 67th Combat Support
Hospital unit, had chronicled the bloody aftermath of the Dec. 21 mess-hall
bombing in Mosul that killed 22. T! hat account and 12 months of other
postings on his Web log, <http://www.67cshdocs.com, >www.67cshdocs.com,
were replaced with a short notice: "Levels above me have ordered, yes
ORDERED, me to shut down this Web site..."

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8651&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8651


Iraqi Sunni party official killed
Aljazeera.net
A senior official of Iraq's main Sunni Muslim party, which last month
withdrew from the 30 January election it wants postponed, has been abducted
and killed.
The Iraqi Islamic Party said that Umar Mahmud Abd Allah, a cleric who has
written a number of books on Islam, was snatched from his pharmacy in the
northern city of Mosul and killed on Tuesday. Hashim Yihya al-Tai, an Iraqi
political analyst told Aljazeera he thought the crime was committed by a
group related to Mossad...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8635&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8635


US GUARDS DID GIVE ME ELECTRIC SHOCKS
Anthony Harwood, Mirror.co.uk
THIS hooded Iraqi prisoner shown wired up in Abu Ghraib jail claimed
yesterday he was tortured with electric shocks. Haj Ali, who also said he
was hung naked from his handcuffs while soldiers hurled ice cold water over
him, said: "I could feel the pulses going even into my eyeballs." The
picture of Ali, 46, standing on a box with wires attached to his fingers is
one of the most haunting images of the humiliation heaped on prisoners in
Baghdad by ! US troops. At the time it was believed that Ali was being
tormented with sleep deprivation, fearing he would be electrocuted if he
fell off the box. But now for the first time he has told US magazine Vanity
Fair: "They'd give me electric shocks"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8647&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8647


US general warns Army Reserve is being 'broken'
Reuters
The U.S. Army Reserve, tapped heavily to provide soldiers for wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, is "degenerating into a 'broken' force" due to
dysfunctional military policies, the Army Reserve's chief said in a memo
made public Wednesday. "I do not wish to sound alarmist. I do wish to send
a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern," Lt. Gen. James Helmly
said in a Dec. 20 memo to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8652&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8652


Unfinished Business: Confirming Gonzales Is Confirming Torture
Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.,
...Mr. Gonzales' legal opinion was meritless but highly consequential, for
it ultimately lead to the US military's scandalous use of torture tactics
on war prisoners and detainees -- including at least 40 who were tortured
to death -- at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Now the entire world regards
Alberto Gonzales as complicit in these war crimes. Mr. Bush is currently
attempting to "define failure up" by elevating tor! ture's advocate,
Alberto Gonzales, to the nation's top law-enforcement position -- or, as
one professor of international law put it, "War Criminal For Attorney
General?"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8642&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8642


Ask Not Who Bankrolled Falluja
War Tax Resisters Opt Out
Greg Moses, Texans for Peace
For three weeks beginning October 14, say sources at Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting, the assault on Falluja was pure PSYOPS, a mere announcement of
assault, designed to provoke "the opposition" into premature response. The
lie worked pretty well. "The opposition" abandoned their so-called safe
havens and
"melted into the night." For this reason, many residents of the city
expected the PSYOPS theater to let out early, too. One hapless doctor,
Hakim Mirzoev, says he expected the Americans to surround the city, fire a
few shots, and declare victory. He didn't realize that a greater PSYOPS
scheme was in the making, a plan to flatten Falluja under boot and mortar
so that the City of Mosques could be rebuilt by Christian Soldiers into a
Model City "a Pasadena by the Euphrates"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8643&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8643


Falluja and the New York Times
Adam Shoop, ZNet
...The front page of the NYT tells us that (accompanied by a photo—this
time not of a gripping snowstorm), "Patients and hospital employees were
rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the
floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs." This
"accomplishment" has an interesting place alongside the 1st Geneva
Convention (article 18) which states, "Fixed establishments and mobile
medical units of the Medical Service may in no circums! tances be attacked,
but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the
conflict." The NYT was less forthcoming about the unusual challenge at the
time they were gloating about the accomplishment as "much of the city lay
in smoking ruins," describing it not as the city we destroyed but as the
task of "rebuilding what the conflict destroyed." Commenting on that
article, Chomsky noted the principle at work: "the word 'conflict' is a
common euphemism for US aggression… just 'the conflict,' with no agent,
like a hurricane"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8645&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8645


Privations weigh down Iraqi housewives
Ahmed Janabi , Aljazeera.net
The lives of Iraqi housewives have not got any easier since the US invasion
in March 2003 and their hopes for better days are fading with every passing
day. Insecurity, unemployment, a lack of electricity and drinking water, as
well as a shortage of fuel are among the many facts of daily life, some
Baghdad women say. The shortage of fuel has made winter especially tougher
on families. Room heating and hot water are essential in temperatures that
! sometimes reach zero...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8650&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8650


The Naivety of Michael Moore
Kurt Nimmo
... Michael Moore, lost in the sixties, believes political action will
motivate the conscience of those who have no conscience, who are in effect
sociopaths, for only a sociopath would support the murder of 100,000 or
more Iraqis and the infliction of cancer, through depleted uranium, on
innocent Iraqi babies and children. Only a sociopath would support more
than a decade of brutal sanctions—resulting in the murder of 500,000 or
more Iraqi children—and then vote to invade a! nd bomb the victims, not
only bomb and invade but pave over the immense crime of the above mentioned
sanctions with a cooked up "oil for food" scandal designed to eviscerate
the United Nations (who supported the sanctions), a wholly frivolous
"international body" reviled by Republican-Christers because on occasion it
musters the impertinence to criticize the United States and excoriate the
tiny outlaw nation of Israel...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8639&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8639


Where are the Images from Iraq & Afghanistan?
Death on the Living Room Floor
BRUCE JACKSON, CounterPunch
...Where are their pictures, those dead and mutilated Iraqis? How many
images have you seen of Iraqi children blown to dripping pieces of flesh,
puddles of blood, scattered white chunks of bone? How many images have you
seen of Iraqis who have lost hands, feet, eyes, jaws when bombs when off,
when machine guns fired, when mortars fell, when vehicles blew up? You've
gotten words about those American ! and Iraqi deaths and mutilations, but
precious few images...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8641&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8641


SADDAN HUSSEIN the Fighter, the Thinker and the Man
PART II, CHAPTER 15: Europe and the American Hold
Amir Iskander
...In political terms, this was a fundamental element in the alliance
between America, Europe and Japan, and strengthened America's bold over
both, as well as consolidating American positions and centres of influence
in its overall general policy. The nationalization of Iraqi oil did not
therefore only represent liberation from the exploitation and political
hegemony of monopolist companies. It a! lso represented liberation for a
part of the European will itself from the dominance of America's hold over
it, and from the latter's almost total control over European domestic
economic life...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8637&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8637


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 4 January 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member editorial board The
Free Arab Voice.
...The Director of the Supreme Election Commission in al-Anbar Province,
who resigned along with 12 other members and 500 employees of the
commission spoke to Mafkarat al-Islam about the reasons for the mass
resignation, just shortly before they took office. Sa'd 'Abdallah al-Bari
said that "the elections are an excuse for storming into cities, hurting
their pe! ople and terrorizing their women. As for me, I don't want to be a
part of this game" ...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8638&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8638


US helicopters in Iraq bomb Arbil
Aljazeera.net

Four Iraqis have been injured after US helicopters bombed residential
buildings in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, Aljazeera has learned.
Aljazeera's correspondent in Iraq's Kurdistan, Ahmad al-Zawiti, said the
bombing on Wednesday damaged the building where students of Salah al-Din
University live, in the Sidawa neighbourhood...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8634&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8634


Iraqi police academy bombed in Hilla
Aljazeera.net
At least 22 people have been killed and others injured in a car bomb
targeting a police academy in Babil district in Hilla, south of Baghdad.
Hussain al-Haidari, an Iraqi journalist, told Aljazeera a booby-trapped
Daewoo car exploded on Wednesday during a graduation ceremony at the police
academy...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8633&s2=06>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8633




<http://www.uruknet.info>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 has
been an abuse, or simply if you don't want to receive it any more, to
unsubscribe from our newsletter, please write to
<mailto:webmaster at uruknet.info?subject=UNSUBSCRIBE>webmaster at uruknet.info
If you cannot read correctly our newsletter, please write to
<mailto:webmaster at uruknet.info?subject=ONLYTEXT>webmaster at uruknet.info to
get the text-version.