[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 14 Apr 2005]

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SPEAKING WITH SADDAM'S LAWYER
Malcom Lagauche
... We've not even seen the charges yet. We don't know what he's being
charged with. Events that took place on the first of July last year
(Saddam's court appearance) were nothing more than a violation of the Third
Geneva Convention that attempted to humiliate our client. It was not
certainly an indictment or any type of charges. They didn't even mention
one provision of law. The only time the law was mentioned, the judge got it
wrong. In any other court in the world,! a lawyer would be completely
negligent if he did not immediately stand up and ask the judge to dismiss
the charges summarily because the charges are not based on law...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11117&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11117


Tarmiya: The Silent Agony
BRussells Tribunal - [ For security reasons the name of the writer of this
article can not be revealed ]
...K. was a farmer, married and had 7 children, a boy and six girls. The
house looked very poor, too many children, women in black and an old man,
K.'s father (...) The mother, who works as a cleaner in Tarmiya School for
girls, told us the story.When I returned home, they told me that they found
K's body; he was shot once in his mouth and the back of his head was
shattered. His body! was thrown in the stream". Eye witnesses say that the
American took her son with them inside the farm to a thicket, when they
left he was not with them. The people went later to the place to check, and
his body was there." K is the second son this woman loses. Her oldest son
is in Bucca prison in the south, for more than 16 months. He was arrested
while he was sleeping in his house at 5 am. They raided the house, searched
it, and did not find any thing, no weapons, not even an empty bullet...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11112&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11112


SEXUALIZED VIOLENCE AGAINST IRAQI WOMEN BY US OCCUPYING FORCES
A Briefing Paper
OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Kristen McNutt, Researcher, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers
Iraqi female detainees have been illegally detained, raped and sexually
violated by United States military personnel. Women who stay at home in
traditional roles are more likely to be imprisoned as bargaining chips by
US troops seeking to pressurize male relatives, according to the New
Statesmen (UK). In December 2003, a w! oman prisoner, "Noor", smuggled out
a note stating that US guards at Abu Ghraib had been raping women detainees
and forcing them to strip naked. Several of the women were now pregnant.[ ]
The classified enquiry launched by the US military, headed by Major General
Antonio Taguba, has confirmed the note by "Noor" and that sexual violence
against women at Abu Ghraib took place...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11094&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11094


DETERIORATING POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS OF WOME IN IRAQ UNDER US
OCCUPYING FORCES
A Briefing Paper
OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Hanna Dahlstro, Researcher, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers
Almost two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, under U.S.
occupation, Iraqi women are worse off than during the administration of
President Saddam Hussein, according to an Amnesty International report
released on February 21, 2005. A survey by Women for Women International in
May 2003 conclud! ed that none of the Iraqi women interviewed had their
families' basic needs met. With one million Iraqi women as heads of
households, women face the biggest burden as primary caretakers of their
families....

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11098&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11098


Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq
Ken Sanders, www.dissidentvoice.org
Although studiously ignored by the mainstream news media, last month came
reports that the U.S. used napalm and chemical weapons in its assault upon
the city of Fallujah. The assault of November 2004 resulted in the
near-total destruction of the city, as well as the deaths of thousands of
non-insurgent Iraqi civilians (...) U.S. denials of wrongdoing
notwithstanding, there are numerous independent sources making similar
reports about U.S. forces empl! oying banned weapons in Fallujah, as well
as targeting hospitals and civilians. In the face of such independent and
corroborating reports, it is hard to escape the sickening conclusion that
the U.S. violated international law and committed war crimes in its
assaults upon Fallujah...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11116&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11116


Sgrena : US Clears Troops, Still Hiding Death Car
Fintan Dunne, BreakForNews.com
...Sgrena says that as the car rounded a turn, driving no faster than 30
miles an hour, it was hit by gunfire and at the same time, a bright light.
She told CBS News the car was not speeding, nor was there any warning (...)
Despite the 'dispute' over this issue, at this point the Italians are
accepting it was all an 'accident.' For the real story of what happened,
see our investigations...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11113&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11113


Parallel universes
In this world, lies are lucrative, but the truth doesn't pay much
John Kaminski
...In preparation for writing this piece, I reviewed all the essays I've
written during these past three years on the Internet. My first essay was
"No One Is Safe From America's Killer President," and every word written in
2002 remains relevant and timely today. I have warned you that your vote
would not matter because the elections were rigged, as we have proven once
again. I told you that many m! edicines are meant to kill you, that under
new laws you are guilty until proven innocent, about how our schools create
passive automatons, about how we are responsible for the evil that enslaves
us, about how Planet X was a hoax, about how merely replacing one candidate
with another was futile because it is the corrupt system that must be
replaced, about how all those government terror alerts were fake, about how
(in "The Dead Zone Scenario") what we have to do to stop this madness,
about how we can't have one set of standards for Americans and another set
for everybody else, and about how the invasion of Iraq would be the start
of a new world war (...) Once again I find myself at a crossroads, one
which will determine if I shall continue to write these sporadic
commentaries on events in our world. There is no sense talking if nobody's
listening ...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11108&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11108


Theories and Tactics for the Anti-War Movement
Challenging the Empire
VIRGINIA RODINO, CounterPunch
...The anti-war movement must develop an understanding that the war in Iraq
is linked inextricably to the entire neo-liberal project. As The New York
Times' columnist Thomas Friedman has unequivocally stated, in an analysis
cheerleading Madeline Albright's State Department, "The hidden hand of the
market will never work without a hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish
without McDonnell Douglas, the b! uilder of the F-15. And the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the
United States Army, Air Force Navy and Marine Corps." Debates within the
movement cannot avoid questions of the state, and of empire...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11110&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11110


Axis of Logic Interviews Dahr Jamail, Independent Journalist in Iraq
Les Blough
Dahr Jamail, U.S. citizen, has made four trips to Iraq as an independent
journalist, the first time in November, 2003. Unlike the corporate media's
journalists "embedded" with the U.S. military, Dahr has been traveling in
Iraq and reporting his observations and interviews on a regular basis
through his website, Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches. He learned how to
travel to and inside Iraq, how to develop his own resources there and raise
! funds for his work on his own. You can read all of Dahr's reports which
are linked at the bottom of this page. Rather than focusing on those
reports which are readily available to the reader on his website, we asked
Dahr if we could learn to know more about his personal background,
ingenuity and courage as an independent journalist in Iraq....

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11106&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11106


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 13 April 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 9:35am Mecca time Wednesday morning, Mafkarat
al-Islam reported that for the third straight day extremely violent
fighting was raging in the city of al-Qa'im on the border with Syria. Iraqi
Resistance fighters were battling groups of American commandos and Marines
on the western, eastern, northern, and sou! thern approaches to the city
that liberated itself from the American occupation last week...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11105&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11105


Military resister Carl Webb speaks out:
"I am not going to be silenced"
CINDY BERINGER, Socialist Worker
.... I even had some people in Austin Against War who said that I might as
well go, because I'm a medic (...) I never had any intention of going to
Iraq and participating in this atrocity. There's also the issue that I
consider even serving as a medic to be aiding and abetting the war machine.
I tell people, "Put yourself in the shoes of someone in the German army
during World War Two or the Confed! erate Army during the Civil War." Even
though you're not a combatant, you're part of the war machine. I'm not
willing to be a part of the war machine in any way...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11118&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11118


GIS CLEARED IN ITALIAN'S DEATH
Gersh Kuntzman, NEW YORK POST
U.S. soldiers reportedly have been cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting of
an Italian journalist and an intelligence agent last month in Baghdad. U.S.
military officials told NBC News that a joint American-Italian
investigation found the soldiers acted properly in firing on a car bearing
a just-freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and an intelligence
officer, Nicola Calipari...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11103&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11103


Billions More for Military Contractors and Permanent Bases
Aaron Glantz, AntiWar.com
In Baghdad yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters the
U.S. has no "exit strategy" for the country - just a "victory strategy."
That statement seems in line with the sentiment of most lawmakers on
Capitol Hill. They're posed to approve another $80 billion for American
military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Included in the request is
money to construct 14 "enduring" military bases in Iraq and one in Afgh!
anistan...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11101&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11101


Pentagon: Detainees? What Detainees?
William Fisher
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military's most senior leaders, want
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve new guidelines that will
formalize the George W. Bush administration's policy of imprisoning
so-called enemy combatants without the protections of the Geneva
Conventions and enable the Pentagon to legally hold "ghost detainees," a
human rights group is charging...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11100&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11100


Stockholm Syndrome
Jacob G. Hornberger
...Wouldn't it have been nice if those Iraqi officials had instead replied
to Rumsfeld's lecture as follows: "Rummy, we Iraqis don't need lectures
about 'competence' and 'corruption' from you or any other U.S. government
official. You people in the U.S. government corruptly manipulated
intelligence to justify invading our country for the sake of substituting a
new regime here in Iraq — one that would be obeisant and obedient to you so
that you could keep permanent bases here! in our country and permit your
favorite companies to extract our country's oil"...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11111&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11111


Deadly car bombs explode in Baghdad
Aljazeera.net
At least 11 people have been killed and 20 wounded, mostly police officers,
after two car bombs hit an Iraqi Interior Ministry complex in Baghdad's
al-Jadiriyah neighborhood, a source told Aljazeera. The bombers blew up
their cars on Thursday morning near a fortified section of the ministry in
central Baghdad, police said...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11099&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11099


Failure in Iraq needed to discredit war policy
Karel von Wolferen
The United States must fail in Iraq. It is a thought that lies deep in the
minds of many Europeans and rarely expressed openly. We may find such a
defeat terrible, but at the same time necessary. There is an inescapable
logic to it: If the United States does not fail, other countries amassing
power may in the future believe that they too have the option to start
``preventive wars.'' This means that the world will return to the laws of
the jungle...!

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11092&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11092


The battle in and around Al-Qaim rages for the sixth day
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
Further to the earlier news (translated yesterday from Arabic from
Mufakirat Al-Islam) concerning the control of Al-Qaim by the Iraqi
Resistance, the following are news developments of the raging battle as
reported by Mufakirat Al-Islam's correspondents and an Al-Hurra Arabic TV
channel correspondent who is embedded with the American army: The Iraqi
Ministry of Health has warned the American army against the repeated use of
c! hemical, nerve and mustard munitions as was used in the November 2004
attack against Fallujah, whose traces are still evident there. It asked
that International agencies be permitted to transport food, water and
medicine to the civilian population in Al-Qaim and surrounding villages...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11091&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11091


Hussein's Pre-Trial Proceedings Turn Into 'Three Ring Circus'.
Human rights defense attorney says due process rights of Hussein and
Guantanamo Bay detainees irreparably damaged, making a fair and impartial
trial impossible
Greg Szymanski
Dr. Curtis Doebbler took a lawyer's oath years ago to make sure that
everyone is seen as equal in the eyes of justice (...) For more than 18
years, the American born and educated attorney, has represented literally
millions of people around the world who have ! been "battered and abused."
(...) But never in his long and distinguished career of fighting the
so-called "good fight," has he been up against a "mountain of injustice"
like what he faces as the defense attorney for Saddam Hussein and several
other Guantanamo Bay detainees. The most notable detainee he now represents
is a former Taliban Ambassador, who has been held for more than two years
in U.S. custody without official charges being filed (...) There is nothing
usual about the Hussein case. In his case and those of the detainees, none
of the customary and usual international law protections exist.

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11088&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11088


Big rise in deserters 'fuelled by Iraq war'
Richard Norton-Taylor and Audrey Gillan, The Guardian
The number of soldiers to desert the army or go absent without leave has
more than doubled over the past year, the Ministry of Defence has revealed.
There are now more than 500 soldiers whose whereabouts are unknown. The
rise coincided with the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11087&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11087


Abu Ghraib convict breaks silence
Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times
...At his court-martial, prosecutors portrayed Pvt. Graner as the
ringleader in a group of Reserve MPs who abused and humiliated detainees as
discipline and as a way to elicit information on a deadly Iraqi insurgency.
Pvt. Graner did not testify at trial, but made an unsworn statement, in
which he said he was just following orders from military intelligence
personnel desperate for tips on the enemy...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=11086&s2=15>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=11086




<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.





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