[uruknet] - NL 18 June- Part One

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Reclaiming Our Democracy, Our Country, and Our Soul. Keeping the Downing
Street Drums Beating.
Anthony Wade, www.OpEdNews.com
“You can’t just say the President is lying.” That was the opinion of New
York Times reporter, Elizabeth Bumiller recently when discussing honesty in
today’s press. It also highlights a serious flaw in the current logic with
today’s press that has led to the erosion of any possible faith people have
in media anymore. I would proffer that you most certainly can say the
President has lied, if! you meet one condition, that being he lied. It is a
disservice to this country to have a media that either is protecting the
President, or too scared to tell the truth. While we are at it, you can
also call the President a criminal, if that is what he is...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12720&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12720


Iraq's sectarian myth
Hana Al-Bayaty, Al-Ahram Weekly
...The forces which today form the third interim Iraqi government and
participate in the drafting process agree on one point: They accept the
partition of Iraq along sectarian lines. Indeed, whether it is the Shia-led
religious government, which mainly represents the Shia bourgeoisie, or the
Kurdish movement, both support the concept of Iraqi federalism even if each
has a singular understanding of it. The Kurdish concept of federalism is
closer to the idea of ! confederalism. Through this political process, the
Kurdish movement hopes to constitutionally annex Kirkuk and declare its
future independence. The Shia leaders believe that their new status as the
governing majority will allow them to impose a religious state similar to
and allied with Iran...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12703&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12703


OBSESSED WITH FLAGS
Malcom Lagauche
Next week, the U.S. Senate will vote on passing the amendment that would
make a criminal out of someone who would protest U.S. government policies
by using the flag to depict the message. Five conservative freshmen
senators may swing the vote in favor of criminalization of yet another of
the vastly diminishing number of rights to which U.S. citizens are legally
entitled. The U.S. flag is a sacred item to many Americans, even though a
substantial number are made in China. Howeve! r, the same flag-waving and
flag-loving individuals have no sympathy for foreign countries. To them,
their flags mean nothing. A case in point is the Iraqi flag. During
Bremer’s regime as viceroy of Iraq, he changed the flag to one that
resembled the Israeli flag. Just like that, he told the Iraqis they now had
a new flag. Fortunately, even the quislings did not accept this edict and
the Iraqis just ignored it...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12706&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12706


MEDIA ADVISORY: Justifying the Silence on Downing Street Memos
FAIR - I'n'I
One of the features of the newfound media interest in the Downing Street
Memo is a profound defensiveness, as reporters scramble to explain why it
received so little attention in the U.S. press. But the most familiar
line—the memo wasn’t news because it contained no “new” information—only
raises troubling questions about what journalists were doing when they
should have been reporting on the gulf between official White House
pronouncement! s and actual White House intentions...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12716&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12716


Bring the Troops Home – Homeward Bound Act Introduced
Kevin Zeese , DemocracyRising.Us
A Bi-partisan group of Members of Congress - two Republicans and two
Democrats - introduced the Homeward Bound Act on June 16, 2005 to begin the
process of putting in place an exit strategy from Iraq. The resolution
calls for bringing the troops home no later than October 1, 2006. Below are
statements from the website of three of the original co-sponsors. Two other
Members immediately joined as sponsors Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) ! and Martin
Meehan (D-MA)...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12701&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12701


PM could face Iraq prosecution
Herald Sun
PRIME Minister John Howard could face criminal prosecution overseas for
Australia's role in the Iraq war, an international lawyer says. Philippe
Sands, QC, director of the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals at
University College London, says Mr Howard along with British Prime Minister
Tony Blair could face charges amid claims the Iraq war was illegal. United
States President George W Bush and US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld
could also find themselves i! n similar predicaments, Professor Sands says.
"Under international law an illegal war amounts to the crime of aggression
and in some countries around the world a crime of aggression is one in
which they exercise jurisdiction," Prof Sands told ABC TV...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12715&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12715


Theocracy Alert
Their God is not on our side
Frank Scott, Online Journal Contributing Writer
In the political battle between America's brainless and its gutless,
agreement seems clear on one issue. They demand we remain in Iraq until the
horrid mess we've created becomes somehow uncreated. Perhaps when an iraqi
teenager takes a gun to school and blows away a dozen classmates we will
leave, since they will have finally achieved our level of democracy...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12713&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12713


U.S. offensive targets insurgents as bomb kills Marines in Iraq
PATRICK QUINN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. troops bombarded a dusty border town with airstrikes and tank fire
Friday, capturing 100 militants in the third major recent attempt to uproot
tenacious insurgents who are believed to use the region to sneak foreign
suicide bombers Four suicide attacks around Iraq, including one in the
capital, killed 11 people as rebels seeking to lead Iraq into a civil war
intensified the pace and scope of attacks against I! raq's still-weak
security forces...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12718&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12718


Iraq Water Torture
Charles Walker Poff
Centuries ago the Emperor of China would use on occasion what is termed
"Chinese Water Torture" whereby the unfortunate victim would be lashed to a
table and a water would drop drip by drip hitting between the victim's
eyes. Not an especially gruesome torture, as torture goes, but one by its
relentless nature would break the victim mentally. Today the United States
is undergoing a somewhat simliar fate on a much grander and bloodier scale
in its military occupation of Iraq.! ..

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12714&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12714


Downing Street and Beyond: Hearing Builds Momentum for Full Investigation
Democracy Now!
More than thirty members of Congress convened at a public hearing in
Washington Thursday to investigate the so-called "Downing Street memo." We
play excerpts of the hearing chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) that
featured former ambassador Joe Wilson, veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern,
attorney John Bonifaz and Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey was killed in Iraq
in 2004...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12709&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12709


Mocking the Downing Street Memo
Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com
If American progressives think they have enough media clout to make a real
issue of George W. Bush’s possible impeachment over the Iraq War, they
should read the account of Rep. John Conyers’s rump hearing on the Downing
Street Memo that appeared in the Washington Post. The story by political
correspondent Dana Milbank drips with a sarcasm that would never be allowed
for a report on, say, a conservative gathering or on a topic involving any
part of ! the American political spectrum other than the Left...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12710&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12710


Collateral Risk: DU Research Gap Could Impact Vermont Troops
Kathryn Casa, The Vermont Guardian
By the end of June, more than 600 Vermont National Guard members will be
deployed in and around heavy combat areas in Iraq, where battlefield
exposure to depleted uranium – a highly toxic and radioactive battlefield
poison widely used by the United States in combat zones – has now become
routine, military watchdogs say. During the recent legislative session,
Vermont lawmakers and state leaders turned aside a modest pro! posal to
assess the impact of Vermont National Guard members deployed in dangerous
and highly stressful war zones...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12711&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12711


Iraqis struggle to make ends meet as food rations shrink
Louise Roug
After his American employers left and monthly food rations began to shrink,
Hussein Hadi started selling his furniture. His bed was the last thing to
go. Now Hadi, his wife, sister, mother, two brothers, three children and a
nephew sleep on his living- room floor in Baghdad, their blankets sewn from
flour sacks. Some nights they fall asleep hungry. "Hope is small," said his
wife, Zainab. Like many Iraqis, the Hadis depend on food rations distrib!
uted by the government. Sometimes the sugar they receive has been hardened
by rainwater and the rice is crawling with maggots. The soap is so harsh it
causes rashes...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12712&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12712


Congressman Conyers hammers the Washington Post's Dana Milbank
John Conyers, Jr., RAW STORY
...I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June
17 report, "Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War," which purports
to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In
sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole
cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered
under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to ! examine a very
serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in
the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this
event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more
egregious...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12708&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12708


Gunmen take over Ramadi as bomb kills five marines
Rory Carroll in Baghdad and Osama Mansour in Ramadi
Insurgents have taken over much of the Iraqi city of Ramadi and used it to
launch attacks against US forces while terrorising the population with
public beheadings. A huge bomb killed five American marines yesterday and
showered body parts on to rooftops, fuelling suspicion that armour-piercing
technology is being developed and tested in Ramadi. US troops recovered the
remains and withdrew to their base outside! the Arab Sunni stronghold,
leaving masked gunmen to erect checkpoints and carry out what residents
said was the latest of many executions...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12702&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12702


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 17 June 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 12:33pm Mecca time, the Saudi News Agency WAS
reported that US aircraft had carried out an intensive attack on
residential neighborhoods in the area of al-Karabilah near town of al-Qa'im
on the border with Syria on Friday. The official Saudi news agency made no
reference to the major battle underway in the! area around al-Qa'im, except
to say that the US air strikes followed "clashes" between Iraqi Resistance
forces and with American occupation troops. According to local hospital
sources quoted by WAS, the brutal American air raid killed seven civilians,
including a woman and child, and wounded 10 others, one of them a child.
The air raids also severely damaged residential apartments in the
neighborhood...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12700&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12700


A press coverup
Joe Conason, Salon.com
To judge by their responses, the leading lights of the Washington press
corps are more embarrassed than the White House is by the revelations in
the Downing Street memo -- which quite suddenly is becoming as "famous" as
NBC's Tim Russert suggested weeks ago, when most of his colleagues and
everyone at his network were still ignoring the document. Mooing in
plaintive chorus, the Beltway herd insists that the July 23, 2002, memo
wasn't news -- which would be true if the absen! ce of news were defined
only by their refusal to report it...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12697&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12697


Is worst yet to come in Iraq?
TIMOTHY M. PHELPS AND KATIE THOMAS
During a terrible week for violence in Iraq, a senior administration
official yesterday warned that the worst is yet to come. Five Marines and a
sailor were killed Wednesday in attacks west of Baghdad, the U.S. military
announced yesterday, a day that also brought news of a suicide bomber in
Baghdad who killed at least eight police officers and wounded 25 others. "I
think you'll see it continuing up, because the terrorists know what's
coming," said ! the official, speaking as peace demonstrators chanted
outside the White House...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12694&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12694


Conyers’ Hearing on The Memo: This evidence is so compelling, it must be
investigated- period.
Bellaciao
Yesterday’s phenomenal testimony at the John Conyers’ Hearing on the
Downing Street Memo left many jaws gaping. All news organizations are now
faced with a choice, are they going to continue to cover for the Bush
Administration, or are they going to cover The Downing Street Memo story
like it ought to be covered? (...) Testimony was given by former Ambassador
Joe Wilson, Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, Constit! utional Lawyer John
Bonifaz, and 27yr CIA Veteran Ray McGovern...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12693&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12693


Historic Testimony Yesterday in Congress on Iraq War Smoking Gun Memo,
Followed by Rally of a Thousand People at The White House
AScribe Newswire
On Thursday, June 16, two historic events took place in Washington, DC
which shed light on the "Downing Street Memo," a secret British government
memo about the Bush administration's plan to manipulate intelligence to
supports its invasion of Iraq. Millions of Americans still don't know about
the existence of the Downing Street memo, despite the fact that its
contents ! are so controversial that they could provide grounds for the
impeachment of the President of the United States...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12692&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12692


MALAYSIA: FORMER PRIME MINISTER URGES FAIR TRIAL FOR SADDAM
Adnkronos International
The former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad told reporters that
the fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein should get a fair trial or else the
United States will be able to "get away with murder" and capture any world
leader it wants to. Mahathir made the remarks while announcing details of
the international Emergency Committee for Iraq that was formed this week to
ensure a fair trial for Saddam and other officials of the f! ormer Iraqi
regime...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=12690&s2=18>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=12690




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