[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 16 Jan 2005]

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Ein Tamor Refugee Camp: Sad Stories of the Falluja Continuing Tragedy
Eman Ahmed Khammas
....The refugee camp was a club of sadness. Every one there had a story,
even the children. "No one visited us, except these people" said Sabiha
Hashim, pointing to the Iraqi HRW members who accompanied us. She is a
crippled widow in her fifties, and a mother of two young boys. She was
burnt two years ago, and was handicapped since. Wrapped in a blanket, she
was sitting in the middle of her miserable properties. Few dirty dish es, a
blackened broken oil lamp that has not been cleaned ever, small primitive
oil stove…etc...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8889&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8889


The Phantom Weapons...
Baghdad Burning, Girl Blog from Iraq...
... When they saw their idiotic president wasn't going to find weapons
anywhere in Iraq, they decided it would be about mass graves. It wasn't
long before the very people who came to 'liberatè a sovereign country soon
began burying more Iraqis in mass graves. The smart weapons began to
stupidly kill 'possibly innocent' civilians (they are only 'definitely
innocent' if they are working with the current Iraqi security forces or
American troops). It went once more from protecting poor Iraqis from
themselves to protecting Americans from 'terrorists'. Zarqawi very
conveniently entered the picture. Zarqawi is so much better than WMD. He's
small, compact and mobile. He can travel from Falloojeh to Baghdad to Najaf
to Mosul… whichever province or city really needs to be oppressed. Also,
conveniently, he looks like the typical Iraqi male- dark hair, dark eyes,
olive skin, medium build. I wonder how long it will take the average
American to figure out that he's about as substantial as our previously
alleged WMD...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8903&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8903


Rights lawyer for Saddam
The Age
One of America's most renowned human rights lawyers has stunned friends and
supporters by taking on Saddam Hussein as a client and describing the
former dictator as "reserved, quiet, thoughtful and dignified". Ramsey
Clark, a former US attorney-general, said Saddam had been unfairly
demonised by his captors. He spoke of his client, who faces trial in an
Iraqi court for war crimes, after returning to the US from Jordan. He
provoked a furore by declaring that Saddam had been subjecte d to "savage"
treatment by his US captors and compared it with the abuse of inmates at
Abu Ghraib prison...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8914&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8914


Saddam didn't gas Kurds: lawyers
Jamal Halaby
Saddam Hussein's legal team said it had witnesses willing to testify the
fallen dictator's regime was not responsible for gassing thousands of Kurds
in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988. The claim, made by Saddam's
chief lawyer Ziad al-Khasawneh, relates to one of the main charges against
Iraq's deposed president, who is in US military custody along with 11
former lieutenants awaiting trial before a special Iraqi tribunal...



<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8910&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8910


Deadlier face of torture emerges
Sarah Baxter, Times Online
...Yet the image of the corpse wrapped in polythene, his right eye
bandaged, his nose broken and his mouth open as if gasping for his last
breath, signifies that darker practices than sadistic games have taken
place inside American-run jails in Iraq. It is part of growing evidence
that some detainees have been tortured and beaten to death by American
forces...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8909&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8909


The Splendid Failure of Occupation
Part 25: Dick Cheney, the inferior art of bulldozing reality
B. J. Sabri, Online Journal Contributing Writer
...Recently, the "brilliant minds" at the hyper-imperialist press agency,
the "Associated Press," entered into the foray of how to nominate the
Iraqis by proposing two new categories: (1) Shiite Muslim majority, and (2)
Arab Sunni minority. According to trite colonialist categorizations, the AP
immediately divided the Iraqis into two factio ns with the intention to
spread ignorance and misinformation among its countless correspondents,
world journalists who depend on its reporting, and among the ultimate
target: the readers....

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8908&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8908


Wounded child, mass graves behind soldier's refusal to return to Irq
RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press
A young girl clutching her arm blackened by burns, dogs feeding off bodies
in mass graves - the images still haunt Sgt. Kevin Benderman 15 months
after he came home from Iraq. Witnessing the brutal reality of war,
Benderman says, made him choose conscience over his commitment to fellow
troops. That's why, after 10 years in the Army, he can bear the insults.


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8907&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8907


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 15 January 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice.
...The correspondent met Dr. Taha Ahmad of ar-Ramadi General Hospital who
showed him the bodies of the dead fighters and local people. He said that
22 martyrs had fallen, among them 13 Resistance fighters and nine
civilians, including a woman who was with the Resistance and was killed
when she was trying to recover the body of her son, one of the fighters. T
he doctor said, "we found her with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in her
hands, which we could only extract with difficulty since she died clasping
it so tightly"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8906&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8906


Abu Ghraib abuse firms are rewarded
Peter Beaumont, The Observer
Two US defence contractors being sued over allegations of abuse at Abu
Ghraib prison have been awarded valuable new contracts by the Pentagon,
despite demands that they should be barred from any new government work.
Three employees of CACI International and Titan - working at Abu Ghraib as
civilian contractors - were separately accused of abusive behaviour...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8905&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8905


From Axis of Evil to Exit Door for Weasels
Ahmed Amr, Media Monitors Network
...Neither does the absence of WMDs bother the Likudnik neo-con architects
of the war who played a decisive role in manufacturing the so-called
"intelligence failure" - with the capable assistance of rogue intelligence
operatives in the Office of Special Plans. As Wolfowitz has already
admitted, the WMDs were just a convenient pretext for launching this
'cakewalk'. "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of
mass destru ction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,"
(Paul Wolfowitz (5/28/2003)...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8912&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8912


Iraq bans travel on Election Day
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, New York Times
Iraqi officials on Saturday announced drastic security measures for the
coming elections, including a travel ban between cities, the establishment
of pedestrian-only areas within blocks of the polling places and plans to
park bulldozers and ambulances in front of the polls. One U.S. general said
it was "highly likely" that travel restrictions would be so severe that all
private vehicle traffic would be banned across the country on Election Day,
Jan . 30...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8904&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8904


Economic Nonviolence Empowers Iraqi Women
Peggy Gish, Electronic Iraq
We walked into a teach-in, already in process. Hana Ibrahim, coordinator of
Women's Will and Dr Balkiss, member of the board, (two middle aged Muslim
women) alternatively spoke to about 18 women and five men about one way
Iraqis could resist the U.S. occupation. "We would silently defeat the
occupation, not by killing, but by refusing to cooperate economically with
America," said Dr. Balkiss. "America is trying to make this a free market
for its elf and treating Iraq like another state."...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8913&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8913


Falluja
City Without a Future?
Michael Schwartz
...But to say that the attack on Falluja definitively disfranchised
Fallujans would be to ignore the much larger reality: that elections cannot
be held in most of Sunni Iraq. It was not just that very few voters had
registered in either Mosul or Anbar province; nor that the Interim Security
Secretary had warned that safety concerns might preclude elections in the
four majority-Sunni provinces; nor that there were few functioning voter
registration centers (and tho se were targeted by guerrillas); nor that the
whole election commission in Anbar province had resigned, claiming that it
was not worth risking their lives when elections were impossible. The most
significant factor was that a large proportion -- likely a majority -- of
Fallujans and other Sunnis believed the election to be a cruel charade in
which they were being asked to choose which group of quislings would
administer American policy...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8902&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8902


"Suicide by cop": Marine provokes police shootout to avoid return to Iraq
Kevin Kearney and John Andrews, WSWS
On January 8, 19-year-old Andres Raya, a US marine, killed one police
officer and seriously wounded another before being shot dead in his
hometown of Ceres, a small agricultural community near Modesto in northern
California. The apparent motive was Raya's determination not to return to
duty in Iraq. Raya, who fought in Fallujah last spring, returned from Iraq
in September for a holiday visit. His mother, Julia Cortez Raya, told the
Modesto Bee, "He came back different"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8899&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8899


Coalition admits on eve of election: 'the battle for Iraq may never be won'
Sunday Herald
...One high-ranking army officer was even moved to admit that the coalition
is losing the fight and told the Sunday Herald that the battle might never
be won. "The truth is that we are containing the problem but we are in no
condition to crack it," he said. "It's bound to be an imperfect exercise
for the simple reason that in many parts of the country we have failed to
impose our authority and failed to win the trust of the l ocal people.
Instead, they have turned to the insurgents as their best bet"...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8900&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8900


Fallujah for Dummies or an Idiot's Guide to Fallujah
Tet, Iraqwar
Back in November of 2004 the United States government and military decided
to empty out Fallujah a city of 300,000 souls in the dead of winter in
order to liberate the citizens there. This undertaking was timed to occur
just after the Presidential election just in case there were one or two
citizens left in the United States to scream out with some degree of moral
outrage...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8901&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8901


Recruiting voters is another deception
Ibrahim Ebeid, Al-Moharer
Bush with his arrogance led the United States into a war that is not in the
interest of the American people; the war became costly and levied a heavy
toll on its citizens. The economy is getting worse and the poor are being
used to fuel this blatant war. The search for the "weapons of mass
destruction" came to an end simply because the weapons there were no
weapons .The real weapons of mass destruction were in the hands of
Washington, which were use d against the Iraqis since 1991 and they are
still being used...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8897&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8897


For the New Year, a bouquet of thousands of flowers to Iraq, to the Iraqi
resistance and to Saddam Hussein
Abu Assur, Al-Moharer
Yes! Thousands of flowers to the men of the year! Thousands bouquets of
roses, red roses, love roses to the Iraqi Resistance. To the heroes, who
are writing shining pages of the history against the most horrifying blood
thirsty Hydra in mythology or in documented history. And all is happening,
again, in Mesopotamia. All is happening again in Iraq. God bless Iraq for
the New Year. Many m ore flowers to Saddam Hussein, the living martyr who
engineered, conceived, planned and put into practice the resistance against
the US barbarian invaders in the land of Sinnaar, Sinn, the god full
moon....


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8896&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8896


US security chief does not rule out torture
Reuters
Outgoing U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said on Friday that torture
could be used to extract information from terror suspects in extreme cases
to prevent huge loss of life. He told the BBC in an interview that the
United States did not condone the use of torture, but said it could happen
"under an extreme set of circumstances" such as the threat of a nuclear
holocaust...





<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8891&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8891


It's Official: My Brother Died in Vain
Dante Zappala
This week, the White House announced, with little fanfare, that the
two-year search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had finally ended,
and it acknowledged that no such weapons existed there at the time of the
U.S. invasion in 2003. For many, this may be a story of only passing
interest. But for me and my family, it resonates with profound depth. My
brother was Sgt. Sherwood Baker...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8892&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8892


The Tsunami of Iraq
Dahr Jamail
The morgues at the hospitals of Baghdad are filling to capacity. At Yarmouk
Hospital in central Baghdad, the three freezers reek of decaying bodies,
despite the temperature (...) Many of the bodies are from Fallujah,
obviously picked off the streets-parts of which are eaten by dogs. The
bodies from Fallujah have the typical oddly discolored skin, along with
other abnormalities...



<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8895&s2=17>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8895




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