[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 10 Dec 2005]

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Recall what happened in the "first" vote on Sunday February 6, 2005?
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
"A group of Shiite and Sunni parties has signed a declaration condemning
terrorism, urging a timetable for the end of the US military presence, and
vowing never to normalise relations with Israel. The parties to the "code
of honour" included followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,
deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ! and the Sunni Iraqi
Consensus Front" (...) Recall what happened in the "first" vote on Sunday
February 6, 2005? "Early Sunday morning: "Presently, and as expected, it
appears that the United Alliance Party, the mainly Shiite coalition
sponsored by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, will dominate parliament.The
basic principles of the Platform of the United Iraqi Alliance states: "The
Iraq that we want: 1. A united Iraq - land and people - with full national
sovereignty. 2. A timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces
from Iraq...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18609&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18609


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 10 December 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 6pm Mecca time Saturday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam
reported that Iraqi Resitance fighters had shot down an unmanned American
reconnaissance plane that had been prowling the skies over northern parts
of ar-Ramadi, some 110km west of Baghdad. The Mafkarat al-Islam
correspondent reported eyewitnesses as say! ing that the US plane crashed
in the al-Bu Fahd garden but caused no fire. The correspondent tried to
reach the crash scene but a group of US soldiers had already surrounded the
whole area and closed the road and the old bridge nearby by the time he
arrived...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18608&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18608


Does Apathy Make Human Rights Day Meaningless to Most Americans?
US Seen as the Great Violator of Global Human Rights
BILL CHRISTISON, former CIA analyst
...Outside the United States it is widely understood that the true motives
of the Bush administration for invading Iraq in 2003 were threefold: (1)
the U.S. drive for global empire, (2) oil, and (3) the desire of the
neocons in Washington to conquer Iraq in order to benefit Israel. Inside
the U.S., the last of these reasons -- the pressure of t! he neocons for
war on Israel's behalf -- is hardly ever mentioned...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18603&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18603


The Worm Ouroboros
William Bowles
It’s depressing to think on how many otherwise right-thinking people have
bought into the 'Peak Oil’ nonsense. We read for example, that of the over
60 known reserves in Iraq, only 17 have actually been exploited and it’s
been calculated that the reserves far outstrip the currently exploited
fields. I’ve dealt with the issue in at least five other articles here[1],
trying to put the record straight on the rip-off being perpetrated by the
big oilcos but it seems that the pre-conce! ptions, especially in the West
about resources are still stuck in the 18th century and it’s for sure
mainly down to the role of racism (again) ie too many (black) people, else
why the sudden concern about the people of China and India and elsewhere in
the developing world who, after decades of forcing them into adopting
'market’ economies, now threaten to make the rich minority of the world
face the reality of our rape of the planet by getting the developing
countries to shoulder the further cost of 'saving energy’ and saving the
planet...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18589&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18589


GI Special 3D40: The Political Lynching Of Cpt. James Yee - December 10, 2005
www.militaryproject.org
...The lies that were used to launch the war are now well known and deserve
few words. One of the main aims of the US today is to divide Iraq. The
divisions and killings we are now witnessing are the result of this
occupation. The sectarianism that is pitting Sunni against Shia, Kurd
against Turkmen and Christian, did not exist at such a level before the
occupation of our country. We see all the options presented! to us,
privatisation of the oil industry and the dominance of US companies over
the industry. The US has decreed that only its companies can bid for oil
contracts, sidelining the companies of other countries, whether from Europe
or elsewhere...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18610&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18610


Were looking for a few good refuseniks
Ted Rall
..."Supporting our troops while opposing their actions may seem
contradictory," argues Joshua Frank in the antiwar.com article. "The duties
of U.S. soldiers in Iraq are wrong and many may be committing horrible
crimes against humanity. True. But soldiers are mostly not bad people
(though, of course, some are)." How is a person who voluntarily commits
"horrible crimes against humanity" not a "bad person"? Even if U.S. forces
were not violating the rules of war in Ira! q--torturing, maiming and
murdering POWs, robbing and subjecting civilians to collective punishment,
dropping white phosphorus and depleted uranium bombs on civilian
targets--the war itself, based on false pretenses and opposed by the United
Nations, would remain a gross violation of American and international law...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18606&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18606


The Moral Hell of Condoleezza RiceTorture and White Phosphorous
JOHN CHUCKMAN
...The string of lies and misrepresentations leading up to the invasion of
Iraq alone are enough, in the words of Charles Laughton in Witness for the
Prosecution, "to make the Testament leap from her [the witness's] hand."
Only recently, after a year of denials about using napalm at Fallujah,
despite the words of witnesses and the charred bodies of victims, we learn
that white phosphorus was used. Indeed, Marines are trained to u! se white
phosphorus to drive people out to places where they can shoot them, only
the people are supposed to be soldiers, not civilians. Now, I am not sure
people whose flesh is roasted to bubbling globs care whether the Marines
used napalm or white phosphorus doing it. But on such fine distinctions and
guarded answers stands the word of the United States today. "No, Sir, I
don't understand how those good folks got roasted, but I can assure you we
did not use napalm"...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18605&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18605


How the CIA Paid for Judy Miller's Stories
All the News That's Fit to Buy
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
...Actually, it's an encouraging sign of the resourcefulness of those Iraqi
editors that they managed to get paid to print the Pentagon's handouts.
Here in the Homeland, editors pride themselves in performing the same
service, without remuneration. Did the White House slip Judy Miller money
under the table to hype Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? I'm quite
sure it didn't and the only money Miller took was ! her regular Times
paycheck. But this doesn't mean that We The Taxpayers weren't ultimately
footing the bill for Miller's propaganda. We were, since Miller's stories
mostly came from the defectors proffered her by Ahmad Chalabi's group, the
Iraqi National Congress, which even as late as the spring of 2004 was
getting $350,000 a month from the CIA, said payments made in part for the
INC to produce "intelligence" from inside Iraq...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18604&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18604


Probe into Iraq coverage widens
Rick Jervis and Zaid Sabah, USA TODAY
A U.S. investigation into allegations that the American military is buying
positive coverage in the Iraqi media has expanded to examine a press club
founded and financed by the U.S. Army. The Baghdad Press Club was created
last year by the U.S. military as a way to promote progress amid the
violence and chaos of Iraq, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military
spokesman...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18607&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18607


Sunni cites more secret prisons
Sharon Behn, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlaq said yesterday that a second and possibly a
third secret prison had been discovered in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood,
charges that threaten to ratchet up Sunni-Shi'ite tensions just days before
Thursday's election of a new parliament. "More than 1,000 people were kept
in one place like sheep, worse then sheep, they could not sleep except by
lying on top of one another," Mr. al-Mutlaq told The Washington Times...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18602&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18602


Where is the Iraq war headed next?
Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker
...A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s
public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced
by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a
way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi
combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the
number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are
withdrawn, t! he over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi
fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who
bombs what...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18600&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18600


An Honorary Degree in Child Sacrifice?
Madeleine Albright and US Foreign Policy
JOHN RYAN
After all these years one would hope that Madeleine Albright, that baleful
specter who haunted us almost as destructively as the current crop of
malevolent functionaries, would have the decency to disappear, but no such
luck. She continues to get a series of honorary degrees and no one has
taken the time to put an effective spoke into her wretched wheel of legacy.
Her latest coup is to get an honorary degree in Can! ada this past October
from the University of Winnipeg (...) The unrelenting mean-minded toughness
of her resolve was revealed in an interview on 60 Minutes, on May 11, 1996.
The interviewer Lesley Stahl asked: "We have heard that half a million
children have died [as a result of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean, that is
more children than died in Hiroshima . . . Is the price worth it?"
Albright's response: "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we
think, the price is worth it." The draconian sanctions lasted some 13 years
and were in their way as devastating to Iraq as the current Bush
administration's war on that country...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18598&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18598


Bush Trashes Constitution, Few Notice
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
Here in Oceania, if something does not appear in the New York Times or
mentioned on Fox News, it did not exist. For instance, it is reported that
our fearless leader believes the Constitution is little more than a
worthless piece of paper. "Last month, Republican Congressional leaders
filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk
about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act," writes Doug Thompson for
Capito! l Hill Blue. "GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew
the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives
still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House
Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court"...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18597&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18597


The Torture Administration
Anthony Lewis
...The pictures from Abu Ghraib, first shown to the public on April 28,
2004, evoked a powerful reaction. Americans were outraged when they saw
grinning US soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners. But it was seeing the
mistreatment that produced the outrage, or so we must now conclude. Since
then the Bush Administration and its lawyers have prevented the release of
any more photographs or videotapes. And the public has not reacted
similarly to the disclosure, without pictures,! of worse actions, including
murder. The American Civil Liberties Union released documents on forty-four
deaths of prisoners in US custody, twenty-one of them officially classified
as homicides. For example, an Iraqi prisoner died while being interrogated
in 2004. He had been deprived of sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures,
doused with cold water and kept hooded. The official report said
hypothermia may have contributed to his death...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18611&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18611


Four U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq Violence
BASSEM MROUE, AP
nsurgents killed four American soldiers in separate attacks Saturday as
violence mounted five days ahead of national elections. U.S. officials
announced the release of 238 detainees but said the move was unrelated to
demands by kidnappers of four Christian peace activists to free all
prisoners...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18596&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18596


Rahm jets
Xymphora
Rahm Emmanuel, in control of the purse strings of the Democratic Party, is
using those purse strings to replace anti-war Democrat candidates with
candidates in favor of continuing American involvement in Iraq. Whatever
you might hear from Israel concerning a desire that Americans withdraw,
don't believe it. Israel wants American troops to stay (so they will). This
explains the extraordinary position of the Democrats, who would have a
slam-dunk political win if they just advocated immediate and ! complete
withdrawal - 'withdrawal' with continued presence of American troops, or
'withdrawal' with a continuation of the semi-secret aerial (or here)
bombardment of civilians or American-sponsored death squads, doesn't count
- but can't bring themselves to do so...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18595&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18595


Benn: war 'unwinnable'
DeHavilland, UK
Tony Benn MP opened an international peace conference in London today with
an attack on the war in Iraq as "illegal, immoral and unwinnable". The
noted Labour politician called for coalition troops to withdraw from Iraq
and a ban on any attacks on Iran or Syria. Of the peace movement, he said:
"This is the biggest political movement in my lifetime. "It represents 60
per cent of US opinion now and the same in Britain"...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18594&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18594


Sheehan joins peace activists in Britain
Associated Press
Hundreds of anti-war protesters, including American Cindy Sheehan, attended
an international peace conference in London on Saturday to condemn the Iraq
conflict. Tony Benn, a veteran leftist politician in the governing Labour
Party, opened the one-day meeting by calling the war "illegal, immoral and
unwinnable." He said the peace movement wants to see coalition troops
withdrawn from Iraq, justice for Palestinians and a ban on any Western
military attacks o! n Iran or Syria...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18593&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18593


From Creating Realities to Refusing Questions: White House Liars on the
Defensive
Gary Leupp, www.dissidentvoice.org
In those heady months building up to the War-Based-on-Lies, New York Times
columnist Ron Suskind made some remarks about then-White House
Communications Director Karen Hughes. These bothered the administration. So
a senior official (Karl Rove?) took Suskind to task, and as Suskind
recounted later in an October 17, 2004 NYT piece, mocked him for being "in
what we call the reality-based community." T! hese are people, the official
elaborated, who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality." The bullying Bush insider warned against such belief,
dismissing it as naive: "That’s not the way the world really works
anymore," he declared. "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality. And while you’re studying that reality, we’ll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how
things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will
be left to just study what we do." Suskind says he "didn’t fully
comprehend" this now famous remark at the time (summer 2002). But he
believes "it gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency." I think so
too...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18612&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18612


Torture and the Lawless “New Paradigm”
Lisa Hajjar, Middle East Report Online
The president who campaigned on a pledge to "restore honor and dignity to
the White House" has now been compelled to declaim: "We abide by the law of
the United States, and we do not torture." In the closing months of 2005,
President George W. Bush has been forced to repeat this undignified denial
several times, most recently with the head of the World Health Organization
standing beside him, because a dwindling number of people believe! him. In
fact, as witnessed by the International Committee for the Red Cross and as
verified by numerous US military and intelligence officers, during the
ongoing "war on terror" the United States has repeatedly employed
interrogation tactics that constitute torture and inhumane treatment and
are proscribed by the Geneva Conventions and US law...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18591&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18591


Torture and the CIA
Serendepity
Torture has been in the news quite a bit lately. Many (perhaps most)
Americans first heard that U.S. soldiers tortured prisoners when the Abu
Ghraib scandal broke (in April 2004). Of course, U.S. operatives have been
torturing prisoners for decades. There's even a course in it, which is
taught at the US Army School of Americas (now renamed the "Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation") in Fort Benning, GA...

<http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18590&s2=11>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=18590




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