[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 29 Sep 2005 - Part Two]

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Preparing for War With Iran?
Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter outlines the Bushies' plan for
military domination of the Middle East
Steve Sellery
Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, made a strong case
that the Bush administration is preparing to take the war to Iran in a
speech he gave at the United Church on the Green in New Haven on Sept. 17
before an attentive crowd of about 250 (...) "Iraq is a nation on fire,"
Ritter asserted. "And our troops are the fuel that fe! eds that fire." Make
no mistake about it, he added, today is the best day that we are going to
have in Iraq. It is only going to get worse. Why not get out of Iraq on the
best day? We do not need to wait until it gets worse...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16280&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16280


The Evil of Torture and the Power of Non-violence
Mike Whitney
...Man is capable of great good; creativity, curiosity and compassion. But,
that is only half the story. He is also capable of incalculable evil;
torture, war and devastation. This evil-seed in the soul of man does not
emerge from a blighted childhood or some remote psychological disturbance;
it is an integral part of his human make-up; a faculty for annihilation
that is every bit as real as the gnawing hunger of a starving man. Evil and
nihilism are ! a central part of man's incomprehensible complexity; they
cannot be dismissed as mere character flaws or aberrations. The photos from
Abu Ghraib express the unalloyed wickedness of torture. This is evil in the
truest sense. The men who produced these horrors are not the victims of
some unknown childhood trauma or buried dementia. They are men who take
delight in inflicting cruelty and pain. This is important, because we are
not looking to understand their twisted behavior; only for an effective way
of stopping it. Evil cannot be stopped by reason, but only by putting
oneself in harms way and obstructing the perpetrator. Every act of
non-violence diffuses the power of evil...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16269&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16269


DON'T GO UNLESS BUSH, CHENEY, WOLFOWITZ AND RUMSFELD SEND THEIR KIDS
Sam Hamod
If George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are so positive that
people should sacrifice and give their lives to fight in Iraq and
Afghanistan, then read this. It is time for Americans and others to realize
that no one should go to Iraq or Afghanistan unless Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Wolfowitze send their children first; if their children go, then you
may go if you wish, if they do not send their sons and daughters, then yo!
u should not to either. Better to follow the example of Muhammad Ali and
other draft resisters of the past and of today by not going; better prison
than going off to fight in an immoral massacre that
Bush calls a "war"...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16263&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16263


Permanent Occupation
Rep. Barbara Lee
...Anyone familiar with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
should be skeptical about the administration’s claims that it does not have
plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq. PNAC, many of whose
founders, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, went on to serve in
the Bush administration, published a document in 2000 titled “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses.” It plainly cites the objective of an increased U.S.
military presence in the region as a rationale! for invading Iraq: “While
the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for
U.S. military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence
in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein”...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16272&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16272


Constitution-Making Under Occupation
The manner in which the occupation authorities affected and intervened in
Iraq’s constitutional process
Zaid Al-Ali
There are three ways in which the occupation intervened in the context of
Iraq’s constitution-writing process. Firstly, the occupation authorities
selected and affected the makeup of the commission that was charged with
drafting Iraq’s transitional law, and its permanent constitution. Second,
the occupation determined the limits and the param! eters within which the
constitution was to be drafted. Third, the occupation authorities
intervened directly in order to safeguard its interests in the context of
the constitutional negotiations...




<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16264&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16264


A one-sentence essay
You decide if it works ...
John Kaminski
People say I write too long. OK, then, here is a one-sentence essay, which
if sincerely asked by enough people, would eliminate a large percentage of
the problems we all as human beings now face. Ready? Here goes .... "If
Arab terrorists really did destroy the World Trade Center, it would be the
only time in his terms as president that George W. Bush actually told the
truth".
If you like this, whisper it to friends at choice moments.

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16261&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16261


Captain Courageous
Chris Floyd
Quietly, firmly, relentlessly, the good captain laid out the list of
atrocities committed at the order of the enemies of freedom: "Death
threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme
forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and
degrading treatment." A catalogue of depravity, all of it designed -- with
diabolical sophistry -- by self-exalted men cloaking their violent
perversions with sham piety and righteous sputum. This was ter! rorism on a
grand scale, chewing up the innocent and guilty alike...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16281&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16281


Manipulating the Public Mind
Charles Sullivan
...Indeed, so superb are the propagandists who control the flow of
information in America that the average American enthusiastically supports
polices that are detrimental to him. Thus we witness families that espouse
political and fiscal conservatism supporting huge tax cuts for the wealthy,
rampant corporate welfare, and the writing of blank checks for endless war
waged against the world’s working poor—and they are themselves the cannon
fodder for those wars. We are ! witnessing a bizarre psychic phenomenon
that is the physical and spiritual equivalent of mass hypnosis...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16285&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16285


WHO DID YOU TORTURE DURING THE WAR, DADDY?
Ted Rall
Never miss the Saturday paper. Because it's the skimpiest and
least-circulated edition of the week, it's the venue of choice for
lowballing the stories the government can't completely cover up. September
24's New York Times, for example, contained the bombshell revelation that
the U.S. government continues to torture innocent men, women and children
in Iraq (...) Current attorney general Alberto Gonzales authored a
convoluted legal memo to George W. Bush justify! ing torture. Defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld joked about forcing prisoners to stand all day
and officially sanctioned keeping them naked and threatening them with
vicious dogs. Ultimately Bush declared that U.S. forces in Afghanistan
would ignore the Geneva Conventions. By 2004 a third of Americans told
pollsters that they didn't have a problem with torture. Torture has been
normalized.

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16284&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16284


Media Coverage Disappearing in the Iraq War 'Endgame'
Danny Schechter
...The war on terror -- of which Iraq is said to be part -- has gone on
longer than the U.S. war on Hitler and Hirohito combined. A forthcoming
book, Fog Facts, by Larry Beinhart author of Wag the Dog, notes that those
wars lasted three years and seven months. This one has lasted for four
years, with no real end in sight. The adoption of a hideously deformed
"constitution" masquerading as a victory for federalism, if not democracy,
is about to ! be used as the ultimate justification for the war. All the
rest is detail -- to be followed by Saddam's quick departure from the stage
in true Alice in Wonderland fashion: "First the verdict, then the trial"...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16283&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16283


Let's Do It Again, Soon
Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan
GARY HANDSCHUMACHER
On Monday, 9/26, Cindy Sheehan and I were arrested together; along with
more than 350 other good citizens. We had committed the crime of going to
the White House to deliver a list of the names of those who have been
murdered in Iraq in the latest version of US Government empire building. I
hadn't planned to be arrested, not for fear, I have had the experience on a
few occasions before, but more for convenience, not wishing ! to miss my
early Tuesday AM flight. But, as I marched with friends to the White House,
my thoughts changed. The logic of, "If not now, then when?...If not I, then
who?", took over...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16282&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16282


Iraq is an Occupied Nation in Revolt
Rhetoric and Reality of War
RAMZY BAROUD
...The official British story defies common sense. Why would the Iraqi
authorities that derive their legitimacy from the British and American
military presence pose any threat to the lives of the two British soldiers?
Was that threat so imminent that it required such a fantastic show of force
to further humiliate the already scorned Iraqi police and murder several
people? Why were the British 'special forces' dressed in Arabic! -style
disguise? The great majority of British and American newspapers, with a few
exceptions, chose to avoid any critical inquiry into the British government
and military account...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16286&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16286


Retired general: Iraq invasion was 'strategic disaster'
The Lowell Sun
The invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States
history,” a retired Army general said yesterday, strengthening an effort in
Congress to force an American withdrawal beginning next year., Retired Army
Lt. Gen. William Odom, a Vietnam veteran, said the invasion of Iraq
alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war
against terrorists...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16277&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16277


U.S. general says number of capable Iraqi battalions drops to one
LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press
The number of Iraqi battalions capable of combat without U.S. support has
dropped from three to one, the top American commander in Iraq told Congress
Thursday, prompting Republicans to question whether U.S. troops will be
able to withdraw next year. Gen. George Casey, softening his previous
comments that a "fairly substantial" pull out could begin next spring and
summer, told lawmakers that troops could begin coming hom! e from Iraq next
year depending on conditions during and after the upcoming elections
there...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16275&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16275


Five U.S. Soldiers Killed in Ramadi
SAMEER N. YACOUB, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A roadside bomb killed five American soldiers during combat in the western
town of Ramadi, a hotbed of insurgent activity, the U.S military said
Thursday. The five, who were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine
Expeditionary Force, were hit while "conducting combat operations" on
Wednesday, a statement by the Marines said...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16271&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16271


Tomdispatch Interview: Cindy Sheehan, Our Imploding President
Tom Engelhardt
...As Sheehan approaches, she's mobbed. She hugs some of her greeters,
poses for photos with others, listens briefly while people tell her they
came all the way from California or Colorado just to see her, and accepts
the literal T-shirt off the back of a man, possibly a vet, with a bandana
around his forehead, who wants to give her "the shirt off my back." She is
brief and utterly patient. She offers a word to everyone and anyone. At on!
e point, a man shoves a camera in my hand so that he and his family can
have proof of this moment -- as if Cindy Sheehan were already some kind of
national monument, which in a way she is. But, of course, she's also one
human being, even if she's on what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton would
call a "survivor mission" for her son. Exhaustion visibly inhabits her
face...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16270&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16270


Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos
LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
Pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released
despite government claims that they could damage America's image, a federal
judge ruled Thursday (...) The American Civil Liberties Union sought the
release of 87 photographs and four videotapes as part of an October 2003
lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody
and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture.! The ACLU
contends that prisoner abuse is systemic...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16262&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16262


Cindy And The Hurricanes
Ted Lang, www.rense.com
...The astonishing and rapid destruction of our nation by this Bush
administration and its Democratic and Republican enablers in Congress,
demonstrates as well that our nation is really under the political control
of only one political party - the War Party. The Cindy Sheehan-inspired
anti-war demonstration of the weekend of September 24 and 25 not only
brought attention to the total absence of the corporate establishment
mainstream media, but also the total absenc! e as well of any
representative of either party from either house of Congress. We now have
proof of our one party system and the media's complicity in enabling the
horrific new direction our government is forcing upon us...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16259&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16259


Car bombs kill more than 60 north of Baghdad
Luke Baker
Three car bombs tore through busy streets in a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni town
north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing more than 60 people and wounding
dozens in the latest apparent sectarian attack to strike Iraq. Hours
earlier, five U.S. troops were killed in one of the deadliest bombings in
weeks near Ramadi, a bastion of Sunni Arab insurgency; the U.S. commander
in Iraq told senators plans to cut troop numbers next year may be thwarted
if things go awry in a ! constitutional referendum and election in the
coming months...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16265&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16265


Lame Democrats and Tame Republicans
No Leaders in Congress Against This War
WINSLOW T. WHEELER, CounterPunch
More than three decades ago, argument over the war in Indochina raged among
the public and in Congress. Today, opinion polls show real popular dispute
about the war in Iraq, but Congress shows no evidence of genuine debate,
just some toothless carping. In the early 1970s, I sat in the staff gallery
of the Senate and listened as congressional leaders argued over the merits
of bringing home the tro! ops from the divisive war in Indochina. Senators
from both parties broke away from the fabrications of the Johnson and Nixon
administrations to oppose a war they deemed not in the national interest...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16258&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16258


Race, class, and the devastation of New Orleans
A Category 5 impeachment of Bush and the capitalist system
Doug Barnes, Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 26, No. 5
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the suffering in New Orleans and along a
400-mile stretch of the Gulf Coast has shown the world the searing
realities of race and class in the United States. The life-and-death divide
along skin color and wealth is finally on the front page. But a further
truth, so familiar it goes unrecognized, is that the ! U.S. poor are
overwhelmingly women of color, their kids, elders, and people with
disabilities. This is who feels the brunt of Katrina’s fury, the poisonous
floodwaters, and the callousness of the Bush administration...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16274&s2=30>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=16274




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