[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 23 Oct 2005 - Part Two]

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A MAN OF INTEGRITY
Malcom Lagauche
In August, Jude Wanniski died suddenly at the age of 69. Many people of the
left probably never heard of this man, but he was a giant in the area of
integrity. Wanniski was a former assistant editor of the Wall Street
Journal. His expertise was in the field of supply-side economics. In 1978,
his book The Way Things Work was an instant success (...) Wanniski was
probably the most vocal opponent of the U.S. intrusion into Iraq. He had
written hundreds of columns on t! he issue. In fact, when he suffered his
fatal heart attack, he was at his keyboard writing a piece about the
occupation of Iraq. Wanniski pointed me in the right direction to research
many matters. He was the first person of note to publicly state that Saddam
Hussein was innocent of the charges of genocide. He lost many friends and
acquaintances because of his views on Iraq, but he did not care. The truth
was too important...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17087&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17087


Torture in Iraq
NYR Books, Volume 52, Number 17
Residents of Fallujah called them "the Murderous Maniacs" because of how
they treated Iraqis in detention. They were soldiers of the US Army's 82nd
Airborne Division, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
stationed at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury) in Iraq. The
soldiers considered this name a badge of honor. One officer and two
noncommissioned officers (NCOs) of the 82nd Airborne who witnessed abuse,
speaking on condition of anonymity, desc! ribed in multiple interviews with
Human Rights Watch how their battalion in 2003–2004 routinely used physical
and mental torture as a means of intelligence gathering and for stress
relief. One soldier raised his concerns within the Army chain of command
for seventeen months before the Army agreed to undertake an investigation,
but only after he had contacted members of Congress and considered going
public with the story...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17084&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17084


The « Oil for Food » affair "I pay for my support to the Iraqi people…"
Statement by Gilles Munier
Secretary General of the French-Iraq Friendsdhip Organisation
After 60 hours of questioning and police custody, I was charged, on October
6, 2005, by Magistrate Philippe Courroye but released on a bail amounting
to 80 000 euros or $ 96 600 which I have to pay in four instalments till
February 2006 or be imprisoned. My passport has been withdrawn and I am
forbidden to leave France (...) I am charged with v! iolating UN Resolution
986 which had placed Iraq under embargo. However, no personal enrichment
has been held against me. Similarly, I had been questioned by members of
the United Nations Commission (Volcker Commission) the week before whose
report will be released end of October. (...) To me, the United Nations
resolutions were illegal and tantamount to a genocide. Therefore, any
decision taken by the Iraqi government to bypass the embargo and alleviate
the sufferings of the people was legitimate. The Iraqi leaders always
claimed that they had no arm of massive destruction. As a consequence, I
considered it my duty and my right to come to the rescue of the Iraqi
people condemned to death as I considered it to be in the interest of
France...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17081&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17081


The ploy of the Iraqi referendum
Elias Akleh
The Iraqi referendum had been played so cleverly that all types of media,
although most British papers were more cautious than others, and all
political figures could not but call it an expression of democracy. Yet
this "democracy" is being used to manipulate Iraqis into accepting the
dictates of the American administration. The American power elite has been
very proficient in this type of manipulation; after all, they had used the
same tactics for almost 227 years sin! ce the establishment of the American
Constitution, to impose their own ideologies on the people, and make them
believe that these ideologies are their very own...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17096&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17096


NIGER-GATE: THE SCANDAL BEHIND THE SCANDAL
Michael Rivero, of WhatReallyHappened.com
In his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Speech, President Bush uttered
16 words that have since come back to haunt him. "The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa." Bush was quoting a statement by the British, "There
is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities
of uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civilian nuclear powe! r
programme or nuclear power plants and therefore has no legitimate reason to
acquire uranium." This quotes came from a document issued by Number 10
Downing Street titled, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The assessment
of the British Government". This document has since become more widely
known as the "Dodgy Dossier" following exposure that it was written from
plagiarized student thesis papers...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17095&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17095


Voting in Afghanistan; warlords, jihadis, and Iranian-agents
Mike Whitney
...It is widely believed that Tehran is directly supporting the more
extreme members in the fledgling parliament. This tells us that Iran is
developing a base of political support in Afghanistan as it has in Iraq.
Ironically, the US is currently defending Iran-friendly regimes in both
countries it has chosen to invade. After 4 years of occupation, we can see
that the administration’s promises for Afghanistan were all lies. The
military has ! never tried to liberate the countryside from the tyranny of
the warlords, nor has Bush’s promise of a Marshall Plan ever materialized.
The Karzai government is a feeble puppet-regime with no popular base and
with no real power beyond the confines of Kabul...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17094&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17094


The Dangerously Incomplete Hariri Report
Robert Parry
A new United Nations report implicates the Syrian government in the
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, giving a lift
to George W. Bush’s demand for "regime change" in Damascus. But the
investigation has many holes, including failure to follow up on a
mysterious van connected to the Feb. 14 bombing. The 54-page U.N. report
concludes that the bomb that killed Hariri and 22 other people in Beirut
was likely in a white Mitsubishi Canter ! Van that closed in on the convoy
of cars carrying Hariri and his entourage before a suicide bomber detonated
the powerful blast...


<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17092&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17092


Kiss your Democracy Goodbye (But Did You Ever Have One?)
William Bowles, I'n'I
...The role of the 'war on terror’ therefore, is to justify a state that
has lost all legitimacy and must perforce rule by force, admittedly without
recourse to an English equivalent of the SS and given the fact that the
majority of the citizens have opted out of a political process over which
they have no say, won’t be needed — yet; except of course to repress those
who fulfill the role of 'enemies of the state’, Muslims, 'extremists’! and
other malcontents, who can be safely handled by existing organs of the
state, MI5, MI6 and the various and sundry 'security’ services (in
authoritarian regimes, they get called the secret police) all administered
with the 'anti-terror’ laws. Throw in a complicit corporate and state
media, which is only too happy to maintain the illusion of a democracy and
we have a 'very English’ police state...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17089&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17089


Blasts rock Baghdad, Kirkuk
The Australian
THREE car bombs and several roadside bombs hit US and Iraqi security forces
in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk overnight, killing at least
eight people and wounding dozens more, Iraqi police said. US commanders
have warned of more attacks in the run-up to December 15 elections that
they fear insurgents will try to disrupt. The US military death toll in
Iraq is approaching 2,000, focusing attention on the security situation
more than two-and-a-half years after the! US-led invasion. The toll stood
at 1,996 after the overnight attacks...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17086&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17086


Blasts halt north Iraq oil exports to Turkey
Reuters
Four sabotage blasts have brought oil exports from northern Iraq to a halt
and repairs could take up to one month to carry out, an oil official said
on Sunday. "The exports to Ceyhan (Turkey) have stopped completely because
of four blasts that hit a main gathering centre for at least four fields,"
the official told Reuters. He said that oil from Kirkuk, Janbour, Bay
Hassan, Khabaz and other northern fields were gathered at the centre...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17085&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17085


Gassing Iraqis: Karen Hughes Tells a Big Lie
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
Karen Hughes, Bush’s propaganda minister on call, is apparently a habitual
liar. Hughes, visiting Jakarta, Indonesia, in an effort to "repair the
image" of the United States, an image seriously hemorrhaging thanks to the
duplicitous neocons, was called out earlier this week. "Saddam Hussein had
gassed to death 'hundreds of thousands’ of his own people," Hughes told the
hand-picked students, according to the Associated Press. "Hugh! es twice
repeated the statement after being challenged by journalists. A State
Department official later called The Associated Press to say she misspoke."
In other words, the State Department admitted she had used an exposed and
threadbare lie. Obviously, it is difficult for the Bushites, who like to
tell us they alone fashion reality, to stop using discredit lies. As we
know, even the US Army War College admits there is no evidence Saddam
gassed the Kurds...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17057&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17057


Insurgency still strong after referendum
UPI
The Iraq referendum last Saturday did not take the wind out of the
insurgency there. On the contrary, the rate of casualties inflicted upon
U.S. and allied Iraq troops actually increased significantly in the
following days. Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, continued to account
for more than half the total casualties inflicted on U.S. troops -- an
ominous indicator that the technical expertise of the insurgents is
steadily advancing...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17056&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17056


Sorry, Judy... Everybody Didn't Get it Wrong on WMD
Arianna Huffington
In the Times' Sunday Judy-Culpa, Judy Miller said of her woeful pre-war
reporting: "WMD -- I got it totally wrong... The analysts, the experts and
the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong." To which a growing
number of journalists are responding: No, we weren't...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17054&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17054


Miller’s Tale - Can the reporter—or the New York Times—be trusted?
FAIR Media Advisory
The New York Times editorial page told readers over and over again that
Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail for 85 days for a noble cause—the
protection of confidential sources. But to many outside observers, the
principles that Miller went to jail for were far from clear, with many
fundamental questions left unanswered. Readers and media watchers were
eager to hear Miller’s side of the story, and to see the newspaper dev! ote
its considerable journalistic energy to investigating a crucial political
story that its reporter was in the middle of: the efforts of Bush
administration officials to punish a critic by leaking the covert identity
of Valerie Plame Wilson to the media. But neither the October 16 report
written by a team of Times reporters, nor the accompanying first-person
tale written by Miller herself, answered the questions posed by critics. In
fact, those questions have only multiplied...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17053&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17053


America’s Asian Empire: Aggression, A-Bombs and Other Atrocities
Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers
Once a rational person realizes that our government has lied or bent the
truth – as all governments do – in order to look better or to present
matters in a more flattering light, then one will begin to see everything
differently, including current events. Naturally, the consideration of any
question of how humans will act in or react to a given situation requires
the use of one’s common sense; it makes sense that any governmen! t would
try to make itself look better by hiding the truth from the public. This
article is another exercise in asking the reader to consider events leading
up to and concerning World War II, while using historical fact and common
sense in the consideration of these events. The purported reasons for war –
any war – as presented by a government for public consumption are obviously
quite different than the real reasons. Just one moment’s consideration of
the details surrounding the current debacle in Iraq should make this fact
of life apparent...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17052&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17052


Journalist Dahr Jamail draws capacity crowd for Iraq update
Jennifer McNulty
...As part of his presentation, Jamail screened a new independent film,
Caught in the Crossfire: The Untold Story of Falluja. The film's footage of
the suffering of displaced residents and the decimation of the city, 60
percent of which was bombed to the ground by U.S. forces last November, had
prompted the young boy's query. Today, U.S. commanders in Iraq compare
battling Iraqi resistance to stepping on a half-filled water balloon, said!
Jamail, "You step on one part, and it squeezes out the other side"...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17051&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17051


Spanish court orders arrest of US soldiers for war crime
Warrant issued in killing of cameraman José Couso
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
A Spanish judge issued an international warrant Wednesday calling for the
arrest and extradition to Spain of three US Army personnel in connection
with the April 8, 2003 killing of television cameraman José Couso in Iraq.
The arrest warrant stems from the shelling on that date of Baghdad’s Hotel
Palestine, where over 100 international journalists were staying during the
US inv! asion of Iraq. A tank round fired into the hotel’s 15th floor
fatally wounded Couso, a 37-year-old cameraman for the Spanish network
Telecinco, and Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian cameraman who worked for the
British news agency Reuters...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=17048&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17048


Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter on Iraq, WMDs and the Role of the Clinton
Administration in the 1990s
Democracy Now!
...The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain
Saddam, because the C.I.A. said, "All we have to do is wait six months, and
Saddam's going to collapse on his own volition." That vehicle is sanctions.
They needed a justification. The justification was disarmament, but
understand that a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security
Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq! and saying in Paragraph 14
that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this
resolution being passed - and the United States was a drafter and voted in
favor of this resolution- within months, the President, George Herbert
Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State James Baker were saying publicly,
not privately, publicly, that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to
disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam
Hussein is removed from power...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16971&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=16971


They Are Not Numbers
Cindy Sheehan
I received this email the other day. I have removed the names: Dear Ms.
Sheehan ~ I wasn't sure how else to contact you, so am sending this thru
the gsfp website. I just want to thank you for posting your essay entitled,
'A Peaceful Day' dated October 17th on the commondreams.org website, a site
I visit every weekday. My cousin, "brave soldier", 30, originally of
Indiana, was one of the five U.S. soldiers killed on Saturday, October 15th
-- Iraq's 'peaceful day.' He is survi! ved by his wife, his two children,
his parents, his sister, our grandma, his aunt, his two uncles and his two
cousins. We are currently awaiting confirmation per dna identification....

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16972&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=16972


Violence in Iraq - Conspiracy to destroy Iraq
Truth About Iraqis
...By the way, during the January elections, Iraqi resistance groups
distributed a flyer saying they would not participate in any attacks
against Iraqi civilians at the polls. Who then attacked the civilians? Iraq
has been under the glaring eyes of many since 1972, the year Saddam Hussein
nationalised the oil industry, much to the chagrin of the British. The
following year trouble began to brew in the north of the country...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16969&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=16969


9/11 Theologian Says Controlled Demolition of World Trade Center Is Now a
Fact, Not a Theory
Globalresearch.ca
In two speeches to overflow crowds in New York last weekend, notable
theologian David Ray Griffin argued that recently revealed evidence seals
the case that the Twin Towers and WTC-7 were destroyed by controlled
demolition with explosives. Despite the many enduring mysteries of the 9/11
attacks, Dr. Griffin concluded, "It is already possible to know, beyond a
reasonable doubt, one very important thing: t! he destruction of the World
Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own
government"...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16966&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=16966




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