[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 01 May 2006]

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Bush’s hand in the Terror War
Mike Whitney
Robert Fisk has pulled the shroud off Bush’s Iraq policy and exposed the
rotting corpse below. In his latest article "Seen through a Syrian Lens".
Fisk fingers the US as the driving force behind the present "alleged"
sectarian violence in Iraq. He’s produced information from a trusted
"security source" that America is "desperately trying to provoke a civil
war around Baghdad in order to reduce its own military casualties". It is a
charge we’ve heard before but never qui! te as persuasively as from a
veteran journalist who his relied on for "getting it right" (...) Americans
are sending unsuspecting Iraqis in vehicles to crowded areas, detonating
the explosives, and then pinning it on Zarqawi or some other racist
invention...

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IRAQ: “THE OCCUPATION IS THE DISEASE”
Sarah Meyer
The following information is from three highly esteemed Iraqi professional
people. Their lives are in danger. Two people’s names and professions have,
by request, thus been withheld. ONE: "There is no way out of this 'Camp
Iraq.’ " Iraq is worse than during sanctions … "By February 2006, 224
(health professionals) had been killed. 1000 had left the country. Since
February, I personally know six more highly specialised doctors who have
been killed … Many in ! medical training have also left Iraq … Post
graduate studies have closed down because of lack of teaching staff. So a
(generation) gap has been created. Experienced doctors are unable to pass
on their experience to new doctors … Specialised health services have
declined. The airport road used to be a lovely area, with trees and roses.
Families used to go there for picnics. An American soldier threw a stone at
me because I didn’t stop. My architect friend was killed – shot dead on
this road by Americans. If you don’t stop, the Americans will shoot you …
The US kill civilians and blame the resistance …

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Iraq Body Count – The acceptable face of slaughter?
William Bowles
...Thus Sloboda, who claims to be anti-war and progressive had this to say
about the current slaughter taking place in Iraq: He [Sloboda] says IBC’s
figures have been used and cited by mainstream news organizations, British
politicians in Parliament and even Tony Blair. "More recently, our data –
rather than us being branded as some kind of anti-war, pro-Islam, communist
exaggerators – has entered the mainstream," he says. "Our figures are now!
taken by most responsible media as the best data there is, in fact the only
data there is on civilian casualties in Iraq." Responsible media? I can
only take this to mean the corporate and state-run media which, having
given IBC the stamp of approval makes it (the IBC) the acceptable face of
slaughter. Worse still, is the fact that Sloboda’s claim that his numbers
have entered the mainstream belies the fundamental principle of the
illegality of the war itself, something IBC never, ever mentions (...) Add
to this IBC’s ad hominem attacks and unfounded slurs on progressive
commentators and we find that the IBC, whether by accident or design has
become a weapon of the warmongers...



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GI Special 4E1: "They Were Not Mindless War Machines" - May 1, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
To some viewers, "Sir! No Sir!" will come off as a surefire liberal
manifesto, but to those who really know what we’re talking about, "Sir! No
Sir!" is a documentation of a group of soldiers who served their country,
but then decided they just couldn’t do it anymore because it was unjust, so
they stood up for their rights and decided they would fight no longer, and
were crucified at the stake. Along with it came a domino effect o! f more
and more protestors, gathering of activist organizations, and incidents
that would further test their wills. But they stood up for their beliefs,
and in that process, they became real heroes that chose not to kill. And
yes, there are the ever present parallels to the Iraq war...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=23001&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23001


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 1 May 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice.
In a dispatch posted at 1:40pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat
al-Islam reported that Iraqi Resistance forces gave the Iraqi puppet army
72 hours to leave the city of al-Qa’im, located in western Iraq near the
Syrian border, or meet death as supporters of the occupation. The al-Qa’im
correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that notices had been posted !
on the ar-Rahman Mosque and the old al-Qa’im Mosque threatening the puppet
army soldiers with death if they fail to leave the city within 72 hours.
The notice, signed by the Mujahideen of al-Qa’im, said: "Failure of the
Iraqi Shi'i sectarian army to leave the city will result in the killing of
the Iraqi [puppet] army troops."...

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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR MONDAY, May 1, 2006
Today in Iraq
...Wife and daughter of a former construction and housing minister
kidnapped in Baghdad. Clashes between U.S. forces and gunmen in Ramadi,
leave at least two civilian bystanders dead. In Ramadi, gunmen attacked
three policemen traveling in a car carrying the salaries of police in
Fallujah, killing one, wounding another, and kidnapping the third with the
bag of money. Two people killed by gunmen in two separate incidents in a
suburb in Baquba, 60 kilometres nort! heast of Baghdad...

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Happy 3rd birthday, Mission Accomplished
Sploid
...On May 1 of 2003, America had lost 139 troops to the invasion and
occupation of Iraq. Today that number stands at 2,400. In the three years
since we won the war, 17,000 more soldiers have been wounded -- many of
them mangled beyond recognition and doomed to live their remaining days
without arms or legs. The victory pushed "insurgent attacks" up from eight
per day back in 2003 to 75 per day in 2006 (...) But there's some good news
for the president on this third ! anniversary of the victory in Iraq:
Despite everything that's happened and everything that's known, he remains
a free man and still occupies the White House. Amazingly, Bush and his team
have yet to be removed from office, prosecuted, convicted of treason,
imprisoned or executed...

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Iraq Still Below Pre-Invasion Levels: US Report
IslamOnline.net
Iraq's electricity supplies, economic and social living standards are still
below pre-invasion levels as the construction process has been stumbling
over corruption and unabated violence, a US congressional inspection team
has said in a new scathing report. Many Iraqis still have no access to
clean water and lack proper health care systems in a country stricken by
serious shortage in hospitals and health centers as well as power outages
mainly in Bag! hdad, Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq
reconstruction (Sigir) assigned by Congress, said in his detailed report,
Britain's the Guardian newspaper reported Monday, May 1...

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“Out of Iraq, Into Darfur”?
Just Saying No to Imperialist Intervention in Sudan
Gary Leupp, www.dissidentvoice.org
At the huge, inspiring antiwar march in New York yesterday, I noticed many
placards with the massage, "Out of Iraq, Into Darfur." They were held by
members of a group called "Volunteer for Change," described as "a project
of Working Assets." I wasn’t sure what to make of the slogan. Was it
somehow satirical, playing on "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" and
warning about a future Som! alia-like intervention in Africa? Or was this
really a call to take US troops out of Iraq and deploy them instead in
"humanitarian" "peacekeeping" in western Sudan?...

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Maverick
Interview with Israel Shamir
Kim Petersen
Israel Shamir is a prominent and controversial Russian-Israeli thinker,
writer, and translator who lives in Jaffa. Shamir brings to his political
writing a refreshing candor, sharp insight, and inspiring humanity. His
principled stand supporting the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and
the rebuilding of their destroyed villages led to his firing from the
"progressive" Israeli newspaper Haaretz (...) Shamir has renounced Judaism
and embraced Chris! tianity. He is a strong proponent of the "One Man, One
Vote, One State" solution for a united Israel-Palestine. I interviewed the
unflinching maverick writer Israel Shamir...


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US Pays for 150 Iraqi Clinics, and Manages to Build 20
James Glanz, The New York Times
A $243 million program led by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to
build 150 health care clinics in Iraq has in some cases produced little
more than empty shells of crumbling concrete and shattered bricks cemented
together into uneven walls, two reports by a federal oversight office have
found. The reports, released yesterday, detail a close inspection of five
of the clinics in the northern city of Kirkuk as well as a ! sweeping audit
of the entire program, which began in March 2004 as a heavily promoted
effort to improve health care for ordinary Iraqis. The reports say that
none of the five clinics in Kirkuk and only 20 of the original 150 across
the country will be completed without new financing...

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Chalabi involved US, Iran policy making again, current and former
intelligence officials say
Larisa Alexandrovna
Ahmed Chalabi, the man who helped provide cooked intelligence on Iraq to
the Pentagon and the New York Times in the lead-up to war, is once again
being engaged in US policy decisions, current and former intelligence
officials say. According to two former high level counterintelligence
officials, one former senior counterterrorist official and another
intelligence officer, Chalabi is acting as broker be! tween the US
Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Iranian officials in what are now
stalled diplomatic efforts between the US and Iran...

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Families Hunt for Iraq's "Lost"
David Enders, The Christian Science Monitor
At the small, crowded prisoner-tracking department of the Ministry of Human
Rights (MOHR), tears often flow freely. "He was arrested from his house on
December 25," sobs Jameela Abdullah Hikmet, who was looking for her
brother, Jameel Abdullah Hikmet. With thousands of Iraqis kidnapped and
arrested over the past three years, often in murky circumstances, the MOHR
has become one more place Iraqis look for missing relatives. More than 34!
,000 Iraqis, according to MOHR figures, are held at one of the dozens of
prisons across the country run by either the US military or the Iraqi
Ministries of Interior, Defense, and Justice...

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GI Special 4D30: 1% Of Iraqis Trust US Troops - April 30, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
A majority of Iraqis say their country is in dismal economic shape and
getting worse, with 3 of 4 respondents also describing security in the
country as poor, according to a new poll conducted by a conservative
American think tank. Only 1 percent said they trust U.S.-led coalition
forces for their personal protection. The poll reveals a population with
little optimism about its economic future. The findings show that Iraqis
believe jo! bs are harder to find, electrical service is poorer, and
corruption has increased dramatically since last year...

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Covert American killing of Iraqi civilians
Imad Khadduri
...One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a
policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive
and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a
week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to
drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the
car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to
where he received a bet! ter signal. Then his car blew up...

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Ignoring Colbert: A Small Taste of the Media's Power to Choose the News
Peter Daou
...The AP's first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago
Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert's performance is
sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted,
humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media.
The story could just as well have been Bush and Laura's discomfort and the
crowd's semi-hostile reaction to Colbert's razor-sharp barbs. In fact, I
would g! uess that from the perspective of newsworthiness and public
interest, Bush-the-playful-president is far less compelling than a comedy
sketch gone awry, a pissed-off prez, and a shell-shocked audience. This is
the power of the media to choose the news, to decide when and how to shield
Bush from negative publicity. Sins of omission can be just as bad as sins
of commission...

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Photos fuel probe into how Iraqi civilians died
Barbara Starr, CNN
Military investigators are reviewing photographs indicating that Iraqi
civilians, including women and children, may have been shot deliberately by
U.S. Marines in Haditha last November, according to a military source
familiar with the ongoing investigation. It is not clear how many
photographs are being reviewed. But the source told CNN the photos are
evidence that the Iraqis did not die in a roadside blast as the Marines had
originally said...

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Arabiya airs video of Saddam aide body "desecration"
Reuters
Al Arabiya television showed on Monday footage of what it said was the body
of a detained aide to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein being trampled at
an Iraqi state-run morgue. It said it was the body of Mohammed al-Zubaidi
-- a prime minister during Saddam's era. Zubaidi was number 9 on the U.S.
list of most wanted former regime leaders and had been detained in April
2003. Zubaidi died in U.S. custody in December 2005 and was handed over to
Iraqi auth! orities. The Dubai-based television said the "body was
subjected to desecration apparently by Iraqis". It showed the head being
trampled repeatedly (...) Arabiya said U.S. forces said their
responsibility for Zubaidi ended with his body's handover. But Khalil
al-Dulaimi, the lead attorney in Saddam's trial, told Arabiya: "They (U.S.
forces) shoulder the moral and criminal responsibility."...

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Calculating the dead in Iraq
Jim Silva, Lompoc Record, CA
Documenting the number killed in a war zone is "hard work." It takes
something called a large scale mortality study. Only one has been done in
Iraq, published in the British medical journal, "The Lancet," and released
two days before the 2004 election. It did not get much press coverage,
partly because its timing drew suspicions of partisanship. Also, the figure
was much larger than other estimates at the time, but the more I learn
about the study, the mor! e likely it is that 100,000 was the best
estimate, and if anything, low. The study was done by a team of public
health researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health, the Columbia University School of Nursing, and the College of
Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Dr. Roberts, the lead
author, has testified before Congress and is a recognized world expert in
counting war dead. His Congo study found 1.7 million civilians killed, a
figure cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Tony Blair before
Parliament (...) In a February 2006 update to the Lancet study, Dr. Roberts
estimated 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion...

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"United 93": What Happened on the Planes?
Michel Chossudovsky, Globalresearch.ca
This article was first published in August 2004, following the release of
the 9/11 Commission Report. Our findings cast doubt on the Commission's
narrative regarding what actually happened on board the planes. This
narrative, which describes in detail the 9/11 Arab hijackers, is almost
entirely based on recorded cell phone conversations. The telecom industry
is unequivocal. Given the wireless technology available on September 11 20!
01, these cell calls could not have been placed from high altitude. What
happened on the planes is now the object of an "an exhilarating, somber and
heroic" Hollywood docu-drama entitled "United 93". Directed by British
filmmaker Paul Greengrass, the film describes, taking the "findings" of of
the 9/11 Commission at face value...

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In the Air
Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition
...Many of us have been intuiting spoilers to the story arc of the Iraq War
for years: The death squads and black ops creating untenable chaos,
sectarian strife and intentional failure to the bogus "mission" of
democracy, with the objective of generating the "regretable inevitability"
of partition. "Civil War" was talked up, because the End Game for Iraq was
always division into impotent colonial Bantusans. We just knew it. It seems
like the End Game has arrived, because! suddenly partition, which "just
months ago was largely dismissed as a fringe thought," is now being
described by the usual suspects in the Pravdas of this empire as being the
"surest - and perhaps now the only - way to bring stability to Iraq." And
just as The Washington Post chimes in, Joe Biden shows up in The New York
Times with an editorial contending that Iraq should be split into three
separate ethnographic regions...

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