[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 23 Feb 2005 - part one]

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A very special thanks to Kurt Nimmo
Uruknet.info
...It appears Google has decided to delist one of my favorite web
sites—uruknet.info. I find uruknet.info indispensable, one of the best web
sites out there for news focused on Iraq and the Middle East. Apparently
uruknet.info was removed from Google’s corporate servers after the
concentration camp apologist Michelle Malkin whined about Google not
including her blog in its listings (...) If this sort of nonsense bothers
you, follow this link to the uruknet.info sit! e and send a complaint email
to Google. There’s a link to a complaint form at the bottom of the page.
Addendum : No sooner did I post the above I discovered Google has
reinstated Uruknet.info, probably due to the handy complaint form included
on the site. Obviously, Google — even with its momentary lapse of judgment
— is able to do what Michelle Malkin cannot: tell the difference between a
blog and a news site...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9908&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9908


Tomgram: Nick Turse, Rummy Dropped from the Loop?
Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse
...Now, let's just give these numbers a little thought. Iraq has a
population of approximately 25 million people, 20% of whom, roughly
speaking, are Kurds who are not likely to be in American "interrogation
centers" in Iraq right now. So that leaves us with about 20 million other
Iraqis, which means that 1 out of every 2000 non-Kurdish Iraqis is being
held under less than pleasant conditions by American forces. Figure that
each of those! prisoners has 9 close family members and friends likely to
be angry about his imprisonment (certainly an underestimate). That brings
us to 1 of every 200 Iraqis detained or closely involved with a detainee...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9910&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9910


A Kick In The Pants
Sheila Samples
It's unfortunate that Bush doesn't understand what is happening in the
world he so arrogantly believes he owns. The European trip he's on now is a
barely concealed attempt to strong-arm support for his upcoming invasion of
Iran. An invasion, according to former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott
Ritter, that Bush has already approved, and is slated for June 2005...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9909&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9909


DU - A Crime Against All Living Species
What Happened To The Test Tube Paradigm?
Dennis Kyne
These members of the 369th transportation battalion from New York City
fought in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. They walked into the "test tube"
- they were the "experiment" - that tested the effects, including the
genetic effects, of the 300 tons of uranium used by the U.S. military on
that battlefield. Now half a million of them are sick, and many of their
babies have birth defects. Far more uranium is being used! in Iraq...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9905&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9905


Iraqi Children Pay the Price of "Freedom"
Saleh Amer, IOL Correspondent
Almost two years after the US-led forces occupied Iraq, the children of the
northern city of Mosul have united in grief and need, working around the
clock to help provide for their one-time well-to-do families, who are now
living below the poverty line. “I have dropped out of school and I’m now
selling plastic bags in the city’s market to make ends meet,”
eight-year-old Jamal Mohammad told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, February 22...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9904&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9904


Doomed to Fail
If America Keeps Marching, It Could Very Well Be in the Direction of a
Nuclear Apocalypse
Scott Ritter, Baltimore Sun
...But the United States had, since 1991, committed to a policy of regime
change in Iraq, which required economic sanctions-based containment linked
to a continued finding of Iraqi noncompliance with its disarmament
obligation. Rather than embracing weapons inspections, three successive
U.S. administrations denigrated and subverted the work of the inspectors in
o! rder to keep the primary policy objective of regime change in Iraq on
track. The nail in the coffin of U.S. nonproliferation efforts came when
the Bush administration willfully misstated the extent of the Iraqi WMD
programs in order to justify its invasion of Iraq. North Korea and Iran
concluded from events leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that the Bush
administration did not regard nonproliferation as an endgame but a tool
designed to weaken a target state to the point that it could succumb to the
grander U.S. policy objective of regime change...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9902&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9902


Beware of Dog!
Uri Avnery
...It might have been assumed that the experience of the American adventure
in Iraq would cancel the next chapters. The Iraqi people did not receive
the occupying army with flowers. The pretext for the invasion – Saddam's
weapons of mass destruction – was exposed as a blatant lie. The armed
insurrection continues. The future of the Iraqi state hangs in the balance,
even after the recent elections. The country may well break up into three
parts, creating shock waves all around the Middle ! East. Naive people
believe that after all this, Bush would not risk more adventures of this
kind. They are wrong...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9895&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9895


Shiites Pick al-Jaafari As Iraq PM Nominee
The Associated Press
Interim Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari was chosen as his Shiite
ticket's candidate for prime minister Tuesday after Ahmad Chalabi dropped
his bid, senior alliance officials said. Pressure from within the ranks of
the United Iraqi Alliance, which won Iraq's landmark Jan. 30 election,
forced the withdrawal of Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon favorite, said
Hussein al-Moussawi from the Shiite Political Council, an umbrella group
for 38 Shiite part! ies...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9894&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9894


Soulless Soldiers
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst, Antiwar.com
...Let us never forget this moment, and let no future generations look back
with fury and despair at the path we have followed, thinking that nobody
noticed or cared that the Pentagon was building an army of metallic
soldiers for the War of Terror. We shuddered when we saw the unstoppable
robotic killers, devoid of faces and free of compassion, in Attack of the
Clones; but that was long ago and far away, or so it seemed. The most
fearsome thought imagina! ble – and we were so glad it was only science
fiction – would be an army of storm troopers devoid of human eyes, hearts,
or souls...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9897&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9897


Bombing Iran: Never Say Never
Kurt Nimmo
Bush says he wants “diplomacy to work” in Iran. But he doesn’t mean it.
Bush told European journalists “you never want a president to say never,
but military action is certainly not, is never the president’s first
choice.” On both counts Bush is speaking through a certain orifice that is
not his mouth. Smoke and mirrors come to mind. Bush’s first option is
invariably to shock and awe his Strausscon proclaimed enemies. In the
lead-up to the invasion of Afghanistan, the Tali! ban wanted to talk, even
mused the idea of turning over Osama bin Laden. No deal. “They must not
have heard. There are no negotiations,” said Bush, then he shocked and awed
them. Bush said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Iraq accepted an
unconditional return of UN inspectors...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9893&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9893


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 21 February 2005.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice. (http://www.freearabvoice.org)
...Mafkarat al-Islam reported on Monday that for two days the city of
al-Hillah, 53km south of Baghdad, has been the scene of bitter fighting
between members of the Shi‘i chauvinist collaborationist Badr Brigades and
Islamic Da‘wah Party on the one hand and armed Sunni residents on the
other. So far, the local Mafkarat al-Isl! am correspondent reports, 14 Badr
Brigade gunmen have been killed and nine more wounded and hospitalized. The
Badr Brigades are the armed wing of the Shi‘i chauvinist Supreme Council
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Together with US aggressor
troops the Badr Brigades invaded Iraq in spring 2003 and the US then
assigned posts to the head of SCIRI and the other main Shi‘i
collaborationist organization, the Da‘wah Party, in the puppet regime it
set up in occupied Baghdad...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9885&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9885


Imperial Entropy
Collapse of the American Empire
KIRKPATRICK SALE, CounterPunch
It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States
as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people
were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing
multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible
to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse. The neocons in
power in Washington these days, those who were delig! hted to talk about
America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet
disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse, just
as they ignore the realities of the imperial war in Iraq...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9884&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9884


Shia list selects al-Jafari as Iraqi PM
Aljazeera.net
Iraq's main Shia alliance has named Ibrahim al-Jafari as its candidate for
prime minister in the new government, Aljazeera has learned. Al-Jafari,
currently the vice president of Iraq in the interim government, is a
religious Shia and head of the Islamist Dawa Party. He had faced
competition from inside the alliance from former exile Ahmad Chalabi, once
favoured by the Pentagon, but Chalabi withdrew and the alliance's 140
members unanimously approved al-Jafar! i, alliance sources said...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9883&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9883


Iran, the draft, and another "New Pearl Harbor"?
Indymedia
..."...The plan is not for the USA to attack Iran as "leaked' to Seymour
Hirsh. The leaks...[are] merely to stir up the Ayatollahs like a hornet's
nest, AS ROOSEVELT STIRRED UP THE JAPANESE BEFORE PEARL HARBOR, AND FOR THE
SAME REASONS, AND WITH THE SAME CONSEQUENCES. That Iran should attack the
USA. And to provoke that happening, Israel will first attack Iran...Israel
will attack the Iranian nuclear sites, with the USA permitting overflight
of Iraq for t! hat purpose. Iran will retaliate--but not against Israel--it
will attack the ships and armed forces of the United States in the region.
Just like Japan did at Pearl Harbor"...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9881&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9881


Call it what you like - this is hell
The Observer
...Mark Danner - toiling through official reports and transcripts of
interviews with prisoners and witnesses, as well as conducting his own
investigation in Iraq - has exposed the false piety in disavowals of
responsibility by Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, and established official
complicity in the abuse. The moral corruption began, of course, from the
obfuscation of language. It's easy to lie if you muddle up the definition
of truth; abominable acts can be made defen! sible if you call them by
another name...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9878&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9878


IRAQ: Baghdad hospitals need urgent improvements, survey says
IRIN
The situation in Baghdad's hospitals is critical, particularly in terms of
unhygienic and unsafe working conditions, according to a recent survey by
the US-based Medicine For Peace (MFP) NGO. The MFP reported that most
hospitals were unclean and unhygienic and lacked an infection control
programme. The sanitation system was practically non-existent and,
according to the survey, as much as 60 percent of toilets were not
working...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9877&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9877


Hundreds in Brussels Protest Bush's Visit
ROBERT WIELAARD, The Associated Press
Hundreds of demonstrators protested George W. Bush's visit Sunday, hours
before the U.S. president was to arrive in Belgium at the start of a
conciliatory swing through Europe (...) "He is coming to persuade and
influence the European leaders. We are afraid the European leaders will
distance themselves from their people," said Pol de Vos, one of about 700
anti-Bush protesters marching peacefully in downtown Brussels...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9882&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9882


Jean-Claude Juncker May As Well Wish for a Pony
Kurt Nimmo
Cutting through the BS in Reuters news item about Bush’s visit to Europe,
we find this: Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, current EU
president, said the United States and the EU had proposed a joint
conference to rally international efforts to rebuild Iraq. Isn’t that big
of them. Never mind that had Bush Senior never invaded Iraq, imposed
murderous sanctions, eventually resulting in deprivation and poverty worse
than that suffered in ! Haiti, misery enforced by Clinton and then Bush the
Junior, who also invaded and then occupied the place, subsequently killing
around 100,000 people, added to the toll of more than a million killed by
his old man and Clinton, there would be no need to “rebuild” Iraq...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9892&s2=23>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9892




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information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts
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