[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 08 Dec 2005 - Part One]

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Young Iraqi surgeon testifies about the horrors of the Iraq war
‘Even during operations, doctors were shot at by US soldiers’
Barbara Debusschere, BRussells Tribunal
The Iraqi surgeon Salam Ismael (29) has piles of pictures and interviews
with survivors and witnesses that show that many Iraqi civilians and
doctors were victims of much more than 'collateral damage’, as was the case
with the US attacks on Fallujah. "Doctors and patients were killed,
ambulances were attacked. They used illegal weapons such! as napalm, and
even those who surrendered and dared to move, were shot." "I want to return
to Iraq soon. In Fallujah, I’m going to help set up a water purification
plant, and in Hadeetha, I want to help build a new hospital", Ismael says.
It sounds like urgent. A member of the Doctors for Iraq Society, Ismael is
thin and has those typical long, fine surgeon’s fingers. But in Iraq,
Ismael has already survived the worst situations. His organisation is
gathering evidence of human rights violations under occupation. He was
invited to Brussels by the Belgian NGO 'Medical Aid for the Third World’,
in order to draw attention to the war crimes being committed in Iraq...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18521&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18521


Iraqi resistance sets back Bush’s ‘plan for victory’
John Catalinotto
What will George W. Bush’s "Plan for Victory" speech and his promise to
stay in Iraq mean? Iraqi resistance forces have given their answer. On Dec.
2, they set off a roadside bomb that killed 10 Marines on foot patrol near
Falluja, the city U.S. forces virtually destroyed in November 2004 with
troops, aerial bombs and heavy artillery. One Marine corporal commented,
"Sometimes it seems there is no point anymore.... If we were to stay till
we’re ! finished, we’d probably never leave." (New York Times, Dec. 3)...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18533&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18533


An Open Letter To the Congress of the United States
From Monica Benderman
What are you afraid of? That without your office you are nothing? That it
is your elected office that makes you who you are, and if you lose it, you
will be nothing more than a common citizen again? Perhaps that is what has
to happen, for you to realize that even in office, you are a common
citizen. You are failing us – time to go back to the beginning and start
again. My husband went to war because you ALL agreed that there was no
other ch! oice. Hundreds of thousands of our American soldiers were sent to
war, sent to sacrifice for what you all agreed was a significant defense of
this country, to die because you all agreed there was no other option. But
that was not the truth...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18528&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18528


Watching Human Rights Watch - Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, Executive
Director Human Rights Watch
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream
Dear Mr. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director Human Rights Watch
On December 2, 2005 the New York Times published an article with the title
"Rights Group Lists 26 It Says U.S. Is Holding in Secret Abroad". The
article quotes Marc Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst at Human Rights
Watch, saying: "One thing I want to make clear is we are talking about some
really bad guys," Mr. Garlasco said. "These are criminals who need to be
brought to justice. One of our main problems with the U.S. is that justice
is not being served by having these people held incognito." Mr. Garlasco
said, "Our concern is that if illegal methods such as torture are being
used against them," trials may "either be impossible or questionable under
international standards of jurisprudence."On December 4, 2005 I wrote to
Mr. Garlasco, asking: 1) did the New York Times quote you correctly? 2) if
not, will you ask for a formal correction to the NYT? 3) if yes, don’t you
think your words are quite bizarre for a HRW’s representative? Did we get
to the point that even H! uman Rights Watch doesn’t care for the
presumption of innocence? Is that really HRW’s concern about torture?...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18523&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18523


EYEBALLING IRAQ KILL AND MAIM
Cryptome
This presents about 4,000 photographs showing the Iraq War killing and
maiming, most from the Associated Press's archive and others from sources
listed. The photographs were obtained from a library which provides its
members free online access to the AP archives along with many other
electronic collections. The library logs online accesses to its collections
and is subject to secret, non-disclosible demands for access logs from US
authorities. Cryptome offers a free DVD (190! MB) of this collection to
public and .edu libraries which do not have access to the Associated Press
archive.

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18531&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18531


Art, Truth and Politics
Harold Pinter
This is the text of the lecture to be given by Harold Pinter when he
receives the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature on Saturday. Forbidden by
doctors from going to Stockholm to receive the £720,000 prize, the ailing
playwright and poet has delivered his speech by video. (...) The invasion
of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating
absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an
arbitrary military action inspired! by a series of lies upon lies and gross
manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to
consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East
masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to
justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military
force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands
of innocent people...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18526&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18526


Angela’s Betrayal
Mike Whitney
The abduction and torture of Khaled El-Masri has presented the new German
Chancellor, Angela Merkel, with her first major crisis. El-Masri, who is a
German citizen, was snatched by the CIA and spirited off to a remote
facility where he was abused and tortured for 5 months. He was finally
released when the American spy-agency realized they had seized the wrong
man. So far, the media attention has focused exclusively on the CIA
practice of "extraordinary rendition" and on Secretary of! State
Condoleezza Rice’s bland defense of torture. There’s been virtually no
criticism of Merkel’s reaction to the incident or what it conveys about her
close alliance with the Bush Administration...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18522&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18522


Siberian Shadowlands - Part 3
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
"The struggle between people and corporations will be the defining battle
of the 21st century. If the corporations win ... democracy will come to an
end. The great social democratic institutions which have defended the weak
against the strong – equality before the law, representative government,
democratic accountability and the sovereignty of parliament – will be
toppled. If, on the other hand, the corporate attempt on public life is
beaten back, then dem! ocracy may re-emerge the stronger for its conquest.
But this victory cannot be brokered by our representatives. Democracy will
survive only if the people in whose name they govern rescue the state from
its captivity"...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18514&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18514


Acts of Defiance against War Turned Ordinary People into Criminals
Jason Bennetto and Terry Kirby , The Independent
In three different British courtrooms yesterday, three ordinary people
stood accused of three very different crimes, but all based simply on their
opposition to the war in Iraq. In the first case of its kind, a woman
received a criminal conviction for standing outside Downing Street and
reading aloud the names of the 97 British soldiers who have died in the
Iraq conflict. At the same time as Maya Ev! ans, 25, appeared in court
yesterday to become the first person to be found guilty under the
legislation designed to create an exclusion zone around Parliament Square,
Douglas Barker, 72, a retired businessman from Wiltshire, was told by a
magistrate that he faces jail for withholding part of his income tax on his
investments, also in protest over Iraq...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18536&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18536


Report outlines plans for corporate plunder of Iraqi oil
James Cogan
A report published in November by the London-based environmental and social
justice network Platform makes clear that the invasion and occupation of
Iraq was, and remains, a war for oil. The document, entitled "Crude
Designs: the rip-off of Iraq’s oil wealth", is a concise review of how
Iraq’s vast energy resources, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, will
be handed to transnational companies over the next several years...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18535&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18535


Iraq: The War To Start All Wars
Think Progress
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, deputy editor George Melloan advanced
startling rationale for the Iraq war. In Melloan’s view, the invasion was
about creating a home base from which the United States can launch future
wars against Iran and Syria: The invasion of Iraq was not only about
weapons of mass destruction…It was also about establishing a U.S.
war-fighting beachhead in the heart of the Middle East, the principal
breeding ground of terrorists. The invasi! on took out one terrorism
sponsor, Saddam Hussein, and gave the U.S. a presence for intimidating two
others, Iran and Syria....

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18534&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18534


Attackers free detainee in Kirkuk
Aljazeera.net
Attackers have raided a hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk,
killing three policemen and freeing a member of a cell who had planned to
assassinate a judge trying Saddam Hussein. "A group of about 20 armed men
burst into the establishment around 6am (0300 GMT)," said Captain Salam Abd
al-Qadir, in charge of security at the hospital, 250km north of Baghdad, on
Wednesday...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18532&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18532


The Anti-Empire Report: Some things you need to know before the world ends
William Blum
...It's time once again to remind ourselves of the big lie, the biggest lie
of all, the lie that makes this whole current controversy rather
irrelevant. For it didn't matter if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,
it didn't matter if the intelligence was right or wrong, or whether the
Bush administration lied about the weapons, or who believed the lies and
who didn't. All that mattered was the Bush administration's claim that!
Iraq was a threat to use the weapons against the United States, an imminent
threat to wreak great havoc upon America. ("Increasingly we believe the
United States will become the target of those [Iraqi nuclear] activities,"
said Vice President Cheney six months before the invasion, as but one
example.) Think about that. What possible reason could Saddam Hussein have
had for attacking the United States other than an irresistible desire for
mass national suicide?..



<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18530&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18530


Show Us the Money
The Progress Report
The U.S. has allocated more than $250 billion for Iraq to date. Yesterday,
Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) said that the military had told him the Pentagon
would ask for another $100 billion next year. The war in Iraq is "rapidly
shaping up to be the third-most expensive war in United States history,"
and Linda Bilmes of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government estimates that
if the war lasted five more years, the total cost could reach $1.4
trillion. With all this money flowing into I! raq, one would think tracking
its whereabouts would be one of the Bush administration's top priorities.
But despite Bush's claims that they are working with Iraqis to "demand
transparency and accountability for the money being invested in
reconstruction," the truth is that spending is not being monitored
effectively...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18529&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18529


War Crimes Under the Cover of Empire
Rendition, Torture and Democracy
WILLIAM W. MORGAN
What are the chances that Rice and the current National Security Advisor
don't know about the secret CIA flights and the torture of prisoners?
Almost zero. This makes both guilty of concealing a crime. What are the
chances that the current interim ruler of the US, George Bush does not know
of such things? Slightly more, but still not much more than zero. So he is
almost certainly also guilty of conspiracy to conceal! a crime. Might not
those tortured have been terrorized by the event? Weren't they in a state
of terror? Under existing and/or proposed laws anyone guilty of even
knowing of a terrorist act is themselves a terrorist, yes? Do we need a
seventy page document from NAM to define what constitutes a terrorist
act?...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18527&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18527


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 7 December 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org
In a bulletin posted at 5:45pm Mecca time Wednesday, Mafkarat al-Islam
reported from al-Qa’im that a short time earlier an Iraqi Resistance bomb
had exploded by a US Marine patrol near the elementary school in the 12
Rabi' al-Awwal neighborhood of the city. The correspondent for Mafkarat
al-Islam reported that a bomb exploded w! hen a number of US Marines who
were on a foot patrol in the area approached a garbage barrel by the side
of the road. The explosion killed or wounded four Marines...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18525&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18525


GI Special 3D37: Torture Is An American Value - December 7, 2005.
www.militaryproject.org
I became aware of torture as a U.S. policy in 1969 when I was serving as a
USAF combat security officer working near Can Tho City in Vietnam's Mekong
Delta. I was informed about the CIA's Phong Dinh Province Interrogation
Center (PIC) at the Can Tho Army airfield where supposedly "significant
members" of the VCI (Viet Cong infrastructure) were taken for torture as
part of the Phoenix Pacification Program. A huge French-bui! lt prison
nearby was also apparently utilized for torture of suspects from the Delta
region. Many were routinely murdered. Naive, I was shocked!...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18524&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18524


G.W. Bush: Deaf Man Talking
A TvNewsLIES Analysis - December, 2005
Maybe it’s the newly appointed speech writer. Maybe Peter Feaver has been
locked away in some windowless sub basement of the White House, without
access to the outer world. Maybe he can do little more than recycle earlier
speeches about the war in Iraq. Maybe he and everyone else in this
administration have become trapped in a bizarre and crippling time warp. Or
maybe, just maybe, it’s that George Bush is hard of hearing. That has to be
the explan! ation. After listening to his delirious portrayal of progress
today and of victory tomorrow in war-torn Iraq, there is only one
conclusion: the President of the Untied States is nothing more than a deaf
man, talking...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18520&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18520


Important letter from Vanunu - you can help him and defend free speech too
Mordechai Vanunu, peacepalestine
On 15 January 2006 I will stand trial in the Israeli court. I will be
charged with 21 counts of speaking or meeting with foreigners, which Israel
has said I am not allowed to do. These restrictions were imposed on me on
21 April 2004 upon my release from 18 years of isolation in prison. I am
asking all of my friends and supporters all over the world to help and
support me in this very important case. I thi! nk this trial will
concentrate on the issue of freedom of speech. What I need from you is to
send information about your country's history, experience, and expertise in
freedom of speech cases...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18519&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18519


Isn't It Time
Dr. Sam Hamod
Isn’t It Time. Isn’t it time America finally came out with the truth about
the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan? Isn’t it time that Conde Rice quit
lying about the illegal detention of thousands of Muslims in prisons in the
world? Isn’t it time that Rumsfeld finally admitted that he had no plan for
Iraq except to invade and hope for the best—and that he has failed as a
Secretary of War? Isn’t it time that Gonzales was told to follow the U.S.
Constitution and Bill of Rights and quit t! rying to usurp them? Isn’t it
time that Dick Cheney quit trying to call others a "liar" when he is the
biggest of liars, the pot calling the kettle black?...

Isn’t it time that John Kerry finally becomes a man instead of a simpering
little boy trying to be a man, a senator?

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18516&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18516


"I Am Sullied"
Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq
GARY LEUPP
I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuse,
and liars. I am sullied. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.
Death before being dishonored any more. Having written a last note, and
placed it by his bed in his trailer on a U.S. military base near Baghdad,
on the afternoon of June 5, 2005 Colonel Ted S. Westhusing put his 9-mm.
service pistol to his head and blew his brains out. He was 44, surviv! ed
by a wife and three young children. Quite a number of U.S. troops have
committed suicide in Iraq, or upon return home...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18515&s2=09>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18515




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