[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 06 Apr 2005]

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FLASHBACK: KURDISH MELANCHOLY
HUSAYN AL-KURDI
I am a Kurd who has the misfortune of wanting to liberate his country at a
period in history when the USA has made it its firm policy to disallow
Kurdish self-determination. Kurds serve well as puppets, victims, pawns,
dependents, terrorists, malcontents, smugglers, refugees, immigrants,
"terrorists," or, to use the CIA terms, "assets." (...) Jalal Talabani is
universally hailed as "Everybody's Agent." He has gone after Saudi Arabia,
Israel, Iran, Turkey, the United S! tates and a dozen more states in search
of support. He is commonly referred to by Kurds as "the man with many
orifices." Meanwhile, the all-out ethnic cleansing of the Kurds is being
actively carried out by Turkey with U.S. backing and approval. 20,000 have
been killed in the past ten years. Scholars, journalists, and intellectuals
are favored targets...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10942&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10942


US probes whether troops hold Iraq women "hostage"
Michael Georgy, Reuters
The U.S. military in Baghdad confirmed on Wednesday it was holding two
Iraqi women and was investigating accusations that they were being held
hostage to pressure their fugitive male relatives to surrender. A spokesman
said the women were detained as insurgent suspects, not hostages. The
latter would be a breach of international law, human rights experts say; it
could, however, be legitimate to hold relatives as suspects in their own
right! ...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10941&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10941


30,000 U.S. military troops not citizens
UPI
...There are still about 30,000 active duty and 11,000 Guard and Reserve
personnel in the military who are not U.S. citizens, according to Under
Secretary of Defense for Personnel David Chu. He testified Tuesday before
the Senate Armed Services Committee on personnel issues facing the
military...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10937&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10937


Bush and the lies about the weapons of mass destruction
Editorial AMANECER DEL NUEVO SIGLO
...It is now up to US Congress to fully investigate this matter. Congress
should initiate an impeachment inquiry with full subpoena power, sworn
testimony and in public so that Americans know how they were plunged into
an illegal and unnecessary war on a platform of deceptions, fabrications
and manipulations. Actually, it is funny that those who wanted to impeach
President Bill Clinton because he had “lied” about his love a! ffair with
Monica Lewinsky kept silent on the issue of the lies that were used to
invade and destroy a whole country. If the US democratic system worked
properly, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the other individuals who deceived
the country and the world should be in prison, not in office...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10938&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10938


The United Vegetative States of America
Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead
...The American President played a lead role in this theater of the absurd.
On her death he said, "I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue
to work to build a culture of life… The essence of civilization is that the
strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious
doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life." Some
hypocrisy, some gall, some double bloody standards. As the Americ! ans
applaud their president who makes murder acceptable and lies seem true,
they neither challenge the serious doubts and questions in Iraq's case nor
force their government for a presumption in the favor of Iraqi's lives.
While their president urges the Americans to build a culture of life, he
sanctions his strong forces to make it their duty to prey on innocent lives
in Iraq with nauseating impunity...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10945&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10945


British soldier accused of killing Iraqi civilian has charges dropped
Kim Sengupta
Charges have been dropped against the first British soldier to be accused
of murdering an Iraqi civilian. Trooper Kevin Williams had been charged
with killing Hassan Abbad Sayed, a lawyer and father of nine children, in
August 2003. The decision to drop the charges came, it was reported, after
the Director of Public Prosecutions had reviewed the evidence and decided
that there was no case to answer...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10935&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10935


Bush aiming to remake Iraq as a free-market paradise
WILLIAM O'ROURKE
Given the realities of the war in Iraq -- shock and awe, death and
destruction, a continuing guerrilla insurgency -- it is easy to overlook
what in Hollywood is called "the back story," what our government also
brought to Iraq when it invaded: We're not just bringing "democracy" to
Iraq, we are bringing, without objection, unchecked free-market ideology...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10925&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10925


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 5 April 2005.
''Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org''
...The London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Quds al-‘Arabi reported on
Tuesday, 5 April 2005 that informed sources working with refugees for the
United Nations say that a large number of Iraqi refugees continue to pour
across the border into Syria every month. The UN and Syrian officials
estimate the number of refugees wh! o have arrived in Syria since the US
occupation of Iraq to be about 700,000. That number must be added to the
100,000 Iraqi refugees who were living in Syria before the American
invasion (...) In addition to Syria, the other main destination for Iraqi
refugees is Jordan. UN officials in that country estimate the number of new
Iraqi refugees who have poured into that country as 300,000...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10936&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10936


304 U.S. soldiers ordered killed by Pentagon in Iraq
Tehran Times
About 304 recalcitrant U.S. soldiers have been killed by the Pentagon’s
special team, intelligence sources in Iraq have revealed. The sources
quoted high-ranking U.S. officers as saying that since the U.S. occupation
of Iraq in March 2003 more than 304 U.S. military forces have been executed
in spurious clashes at the behest of army commanders and with the knowledge
of the Pentagon...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10931&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10931


The Psychodynamics of Occupation and the Abuse at Abu Ghraib: An
Interpretation After One Year of Revelations
Stephen Soldz
...The publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs and all subsequent
revelations about the widespread nature of detainee abuse and torture were
met with official denials that anything more than a "few bad apples" were
to blame. Furthermore, denial, in the psychological sense of unconsciously
ignoring the importance of a fact or event, has characterized the American
public reaction. While the ! majority of Americans told pollsters that the
torture was wrong and that the US government was lying about it, and also
that those who wrote the legal opinions justifying torture bore some blame,
there was no major public outcry over the issue. It was hardly mentioned
during the American elections by either major party candidate, or at either
party's convention. Those in charge when the torture happened were
reelected, and many of those who developed and justified the policy of
torture were promoted, with little public outcry. Torture is now out of the
closet, it has become an accepted, however distasteful, aspect of American
life. As Mark Danner puts it: "We are all torturers now"...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10933&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10933


Al-Malwia, as Sad as the Rest of Iraq
Raed Jarrar, Raed in the Middle
...This historical landmark is not the first one destroyed under the
occupation, and I'm afraid it won't be the last. Al-Jazeera website in
Arabic mentioned that the minaret was used by the US army as a sniper base,
and it was destroyed today. Whether it was detroyed by the Iraqi resistance
or the US occupying army, it is just another sad loss for Iraq, Iraqis,
Arabs, and Muslims...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10843&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10843


ICRC demands probe into Iraq prison riot
AFP
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) demanded yesterday an
investigation into a riot at the US-run Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq
and warned tensions were still running high at the facility. “We are asking
the US Army to investigate the cause of the riot which happened at the
detention centre,” ICRC spokeswoman Rana Sidani said. The US military
announced early yesterday that 12 Iraqi prisoners and four US guards were
wounded when inmates rioted at Ca! mp Bucca on Friday, torching tents and
hurling rocks in Iraq’s largest US-run detention centre...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10930&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10930


WMDs, Criminality, Peak Oil and Imperialism
Bill Henderson, Al-Jazeerah
...Reasonable people knew even before the war that Iraq was not a
legitimate threat to the US and that WMDs/terrorism was just a
construction, a lie from the Bush Admin to obfuscate their intentions to
remove Saddam Hussein and control Iraq for a whole bundle of tempting
reasons including: control of Iraq to control oil: for oil and contracts
now, control of OPEC, oil in dollars not Euros, etc; for leverage with
trade competitors such as Chin! a in a longer time frame; as a needed move
in the peak oil endgame; control of Iraq as strategic aid to Middle-East
ally Israel and to promote neo-liberalization in the region...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10928&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10928


British Treatment of Mau Mau Insurgency Foreshadows Imperial America
Stan Moore, Media Monitors Network
The Kikuyu people of Kenya did not enjoy the "freedom and democracy"
brought them by the British Empire, any more than Iraqis enjoy American
occupation and control of their elections and governance. The Kenyans
formed an insurgency, known as the Mau Mau movement, which became an armed
movement of liberation. The British reacted to the Mau Mau insurgency very
much the same way as the Americans have reacted to t! he Iraqi
insurgency(...) The day will come when Iraq will become free of American
occupation and interference. The stories of Fallujah and Samara and Karbala
will one day be recorded for the world to read. Those stories will be no
less severe or atrocious as the stories of British cruelty to the Mau Mau
movement and the Kikuyu people...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10929&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10929


UNITED STATES: Building a movement to bring down an empire
Rohan Pearce and Alison Dellit , en Left Weekly
...Part of strengthening the movement against Washington's wars, Goff
argued at the APISC, should be increasing the “unity of progressive forces”
and consolidating the anti-imperialist wing of the movement. The struggle
against the war should be used to help “refound” the left. What is needed
isn't just an anti-war movement, Goff said, but an “anti-empire” movement
that can challenge Washington's program for! world domination. Shawki told
the meeting that socialists need to be able to explain that “war is part of
this system, part of this empire”...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10926&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10926


“Howard and Bush are war criminals”
‘They are afraid of you’
John Pilger, Green Left Weekly
...Yesterday, all over the world, people like you expressed their defiance
and anger at the unprovoked attack on Iraq, a defenceless country, and the
killing of more than 100,000 people and the theft of their resources and
the poisoning of their land: all of it justified by demonstrable lies. Go
back to a speech Howard made early in February 2003. He spoke for 53
minutes and lied about weapons of mass destructi! on at least 20 times: 20
lies in less than an hour. Even Bush and Blair would have trouble topping
that. Then he sent Australian troops off to take part in an invasion,
which, under the universally acknowledged and respected terms of the
Nuremberg judgment in 1946 — the cornerstone of international law — was “a
paramount war crime”...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10927&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10927


Survey: U.S. media censors Iraq reporting
Angela Woodall, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
The news media are self-censoring reports about Iraq because of concern for
public reaction to graphic images and details about death and torture,
according to a survey of 210 U.S. and international journalists. Many
reporters and editors chose less-graphic images and explicit details, or
made them less noticeable, according to an online, anonymous survey
conducted between September and October 2004 by two American University pr!
ofessors. The study was released March 17...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10924&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10924


Unfortunately, Iraq spy story seems destined to have a sequel
Trudy Rubin, Baltimore Sun
Have I got a spy story for you. It takes place just before the Iraq war. It
reads like a thriller, except you can't believe the spooks in the story
could be so clumsy. The most hair-raising chapter tells the tale of a
defector named Curveball, who duped the United States into believing that
Iraq had mobile germ-warfare labs. The saddest part of the tale is that
it's all true...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10923&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10923


Another Bombing at Abu Ghraib
Sunni Meeting Collapses in Acrimony
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Guerrillas mounted another bombing attack on Abu Ghuraib prison (this one
involving a tractor), leaving 5 Iraqi civilians wounded. On Sunday, a
combination of car bombings and mortar attacks wounded dozens of Americans
and Iraqis. The NYT reveals that a rumor is going around that Iraqi women
are being held at Abu Ghraib and raped...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10932&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10932


Bush's Legacy
Dead Bodies, Dead Wrong, Dead Logic
MATT VIDAL, CounterPunch
... Of course, the report's authors were careful to stick to their mandate,
which authorized them only to blame the intelligence community and not to
investigate how the "intelligence" was used or influenced by policy makers.
But what should be clear to anyone paying attention was quietly
acknowledged in the report: "the river of intelligence that flowed from the
CIA to top policymakers seemed to be 'selling' intelligence ! - in order to
keep its customers, or at least the First Customer, interested." The White
House got what it wanted...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=10934&s2=07>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=10934




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