[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 07 Feb 2005 - part I]

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Iraqi Democracy?
Bob Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
...Those noted experts on Islam, Cheney and Rumsfeld, told TV audiences
yesterday that people worried about Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq ought
to, as Cheney put it, stop their "hand-wringing." Rumseld, ever astute,
noted: "The Shia in Iraq are Iraqis, they're not Iranians." (Someone needs
to tell Rummy that Sistani is an Iranian.) He added: "And the idea that
they're going to end up with a government like Iran with a handful of
mullahs controlling much of the country,! I think, is unlikely." Well, if
it is unlikely, that's because the resistance won't let it happen...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9511&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9511


Falluja Residents Testify to the Destruction of Their City
Michel Bôle-Richard, Le Monde - t r u t h o u t
...Three months after the American offensive against Falluja that began
November 8, 2004, the rebel city fifty kilometers west of Baghdad is
devastated, emptied, sepulchral. "Like after an earthquake, a fire and bomb
tsunami that spared practically nothing, not even the mosques," relates
Sheikh Taghlib Al-Alousi, President of the Chura, the assembly of religious
dignitaries. The city with a hundred mosques i! s now only a shadow of its
former self. "It's a tragedy! I cried about it like a child," explains the
official from the Hazrah Mohammedia mosque...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9510&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9510


Breaking Ranks to Shun War
David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
His sergeant called him a coward to his face. His chaplain sent him an
e-mail saying he was ashamed of him. His commanders had him formally
charged with desertion. Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who has served one tour of
duty in Iraq, is refusing to serve another. When his fellow soldiers of the
3rd Infantry Division packed their gear and left nearby Ft. Stewart for
Iraq last week, Benderman stayed home. He says he has chosen to follow his
conscience ? not his! commanders...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9507&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9507


"We Have You Surrounded-Come Out With Your Votes Up!"
Larry Everest
...In a shameless orgy of support for the war, the U.S. media portrayed the
election as an outpouring of the Iraqi people, a veritable celebration of
the occupation elections. What the media never made clear was that they
were restricted to five polling places in Baghdad, four of them in Shia
areas expected to turn out heavily (harkening back to toppling of a statue
of Saddam Hussein, staged for the media shortly after the capture of
Baghdad)...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9508&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9508


Most shootings aren't publicized
Dionne Searcey, Newsday
The shootings rarely make news -- outside the towns where they occur. The
military does not make a practice of publicizing cases of "collateral
damage" unless by chance reporters are embedded with units and write about
the events they witness. And no one at the Pentagon nor at the U.S. Central
Command keeps a comprehensive tally of the incidents, according to senior
officials in both locations, who say that all operations in general are
periodically reviewe! d. The examples that follow are a sampling...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9509&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9509


The Myth of Iraq's 'Liberation'
Did the election set Iraq free? Not by a long shot…
Justin Raimondo, AntiWar.com
...The Iraqis can vote until they're blue in the face - or blue all the way
up to their elbows - but there are certain bounds beyond which they will
not be allowed to go, and the proposed status agreement maps out some of
those constraints. Iraq today is a province of the American Empire, and its
status is not changed by any election. The more honest neoconservatives,
like Max Boot ! and Niall Ferguson, don't deny the charge of imperialism:
they embrace it and openly tout the glories of Empire...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9506&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9506


Canadian Troops to Iraq? Hell No, We won't go
Mohamed Elmasry
It was downright shameful to hear the Canadian government and media falling
all over each other to be promotional mouthpieces for American propaganda
claiming the January 30 Iraqi elections were good news for the Iraqi
people. "Iraqis defy insurgents," "Iraqis defy violence as 8 millions cast
votes," "60% dare vote in Iraq," trumpeted front page headlines in the
January 31 Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and National Post, respectively...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9504&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9504


General who led US Marines in Iraq says "It's fun to shoot some people"
Jerry White, WSWS

A three-star Marine general gave an indication of the homicidal ethos
guiding the US occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan when he declared
during a military conference in San Diego Tuesday that "It's fun to shoot
some people." (...)The US media generally treated Mattis's comments as an
unfortunate slip-up rather than a revelation of the essence of American
policy in Iraq and Afghanistan (...) Fear and racist hatred of Arabs has
been deliberately inculcated by the Bush administration and the Pentagon
from the beginning of its "war on terror" in order to dehumanize US
soldiers and create the conditions for such atrocities as the torture in
Abu Ghraib and the Afghan prisons and the destruction of Fallujah...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9500&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9500


The Truth About Torture
William Pfaff
A historian in the future, or a moralist, is likely to deem the Bush
administration's enthusiasm for torture the most striking aspect of its war
against terrorism. This started early. Proposals to authorize torture were
circulating even before there was anyone to torture. Days after the Sept.
11 attacks, the administration made it known that the U.S. was no longer
bound by international treaties or by American law and established U.S.
military standards concerning torture and! the treatment of prisoners...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9501&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9501


'The two were not threatening anyone. So why shoot them?'
Kim Sengupta and Severin Carrell
...A 25-year-old tailor, Mr Hashem was carrying a pistol to protect himself
and his new car - a valuable possession at real risk of being stolen by
local bandits. He, like several other bystanders, fired in the air to
disperse the crowd, just as a British army patrol came past. "The soldiers
arrived, saw the firing and then they started shooting themselves," Mr
Hashem's brother Osama, 22, told The Independent on Sunday last! week.
"Azhar was killed and a young woman was hurt. My brother was not
threatening anyone and neither was that woman. Why shoot them?"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9502&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9502


Manufacturing consent
Omayma Abdel-Latif , Al-Ahram Weekly
...Even newspapers which campaigned against the war on Iraq like the
British Independent, or that which wrote in favour of an election delay
such as the New York Times, ran positive commentaries of the Sunday vote.
The bad news emanating from Iraq were either buried in the inside pages or
were never mentioned at all. Most newspapers turned a blind eye to the big
questions. Whether or not the minimum international standards of fair and
free elections were ! met and in what way the elections contained the
deplorable insecurity in the country were not addressed. Even the most
disturbing notion that Iraqis are voting along sectarian and ethnic lines,
were hardly tackled in the Western media coverage of Sunday's vote...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9499&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9499


Danse macabre
Wayne Brown
...But that, anyway, was the first White House gambit: Make the Iraqi
elections a sort of Superbowl, with Terror lining up against Democracy. The
other gambit was to feed the Iraqi electorate a ringing lie: if they voted,
their American tormentors would leave (...) In a word, what occurred last
Sunday - and was wildly celebrated as 'the triumph of democracy' by Mr Bush
and his agog Congress, citing ridiculously-inflated voter-turnout
percentages, 60 per cent, 72 per cent - was a major ac! celeration of Iraq
towards civil war and partition. That's all...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9503&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9503


The Abu Ghraib Scandal You Don't Know
ADAM ZAGORIN, Time
...In what amounted to a perversion of the traditional doctor's creed of
"first, do no harm," the medical system at the prison became an instrument
of abuse, by design and by neglect. As uncovered by legal scholars M. Gregg
Bloche and Jonathan Marks, who conducted an inquiry published by the New
England Journal of Medicine, not only were some military doctors at Abu
Ghraib enlisted to help inflict distress on the prisoners, but also the
scarcity of basic me! dical care was at times so severe that it created
another kind of torture (...) But there was also medical disarray at the
prison: amputations performed by nondoctors, chest tubes recycled from the
dead to the living, a medic ordered, by one account, to cover up a
homicide...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9492&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9492


Read, hear, and see what the Iraqi glorious resistance has made of the US,
the only superpower
Abu Assur, Al-Moharer
Laugh if you can! Look at the state of the only super power of our galaxy.
See what the Iraqi glorious resistance has made of this filthy Hydra
cutting its heads one after the other! Feel pity for the billions of
dollars squandered for what.. (...) God bless the Iraqis! God bless the
land of the first Revelation. God bless Iraq date palm tree groves! God
bless the land of the two rivers. God bless ! Mesopotamia the cradle of
civilization! God bless the Iraqi resistence fighters who put the US nose
into the mire of shame and everlasting defeat...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9495&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9495


Out with the old, in with the new
Tariq Ali, The Guardian
...The triumphalist chorus of the western media reflects a single fact: the
Iraqi elections were designed not so much to preserve the unity of Iraq but
to re-establish the unity of the west. After Bush's re-election the French
and Germans were looking for a bridge back to Washington. Will their
citizens accept the propaganda that sees the illegitimate election (the
Carter Centre, which monitors elections worldwide, refused to send
observers) as justifying ! the occupation?...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9494&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9494


Israel, US Spying on Iran From Iraq: Report
IslamOnline
The Israeli intelligence services (Mossad) has set up in cooperation with
US occupation troops radars and spying devices near the southern Iraqi city
of Basra to monitor Iranian military and security activities, well-placed
Iranian sources have revealed. The radars have been fixed to50 -meter-high
lampposts in the southern island of Um Al-Rosas, only 800 meters from the
Iranian harbor of Khourmushar, the sources told the London-based Arabic
language daily Al! -Hayat on Sunday, February 6...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9493&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9493


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 5 February 2005 and Sunday,
6 February 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member editorial board The
Free Arab Voice.
...The Board of Muslim 'Ulama' Scholars declared on Sunday that it would
never take part in any political system in Iraq so long as the country is
occupied. 'Umar Zaydan, a spokesman for the Board. In a separate statement,
the Board announced that it had appealed to the United Nations not to
recognize the recently-"elected" governm! ent produced by the
American-backed election farce on 30 January. The statement, issued by
Board General Secretary Harith ad-Darri, noted that many segments of the
Iraqi people had not taken part in the election...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9491&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9491


Sadr Group Says Future Government "Illegitimate"
Mazen Ghazi, IOL Correspondent
The future Iraqi government would lack the needed legitimacy, being formed
under occupation and being the outcome of "semi-legitimate" election, a
spokesman for Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr said on Sunday, February 6 .
"I'm afraid that the new Iraqi government will be a replica of the
US-handpicked and now dissolved Interim Governing Council," Abdel Hadi
Al-Daraji told IslamOnline.net.

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9489&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9489


The Ethics of War: Is the US Military Guilty of War Crimes in Iraq?
Jeremy Iggers
Is the US Military guilty of war crimes in Iraq? Some people believe it is
unpatriotic even to ask this question, which may be why the issue has been
largely ignored by American news media. But the question of U.S. war crimes
is not being ignored elsewhere around the world, where images of dead Iraqi
women and children, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the devastation of
the city of Fallujah and the shooting of unarmed captives in ! a Fallujah
mosque have done much to destroy America's image abroad...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9487&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9487


Iraq Shiites Insist Islam Be Sole Source of Legislation
IslamOnline
With Shiites expected to take the lion share of the 275-seat National
Assembly, their top religious leaders on Sunday, February6 , demanded that
the new constitution must clearly stipulate that Islam be the sole source
of legislation. "All of the ulema (scholars) and marjaiyas (religious
authorities), and the majority of the Iraqi people, want the National
Assembly to make Islam the source of legislation in the permanent
constitution and to rejec! t any law that is contrary to Islam," read a
statement issued by a representative of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ishaq
Al-Fayad, one of the four top Shiite authorities in Iraq, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP)...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9488&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9488


An Iraqi nationalist party is needed
Jude Wanniski, Al-jazeera.net
...With this perspective, it immediately becomes clear why the elections
were essentially meaningless: The way the balloting was constructed, there
was no venue for an expression of Iraqi nationalism. There was no
nationalist party. The electorate was offered essentially sectarian slates,
and even those were created either by Iraqi exiles who had sided with Iran
during the war that gave birth to Iraqi nationalism, or which were
identified with cle! rics such as Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, an Iranian by
birth who will be biased in favour of a theocratic state or something close
to it...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=9497&s2=08>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=9497




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