[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 21 Dec 2004]

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FALLUJAH -The End Of Warfare
ABHAY MEHTA / outlookindia.com - Iraqwar
...The Iraqi resistance has put an end to "the end of history". A new
history is being written.Yes indeed it has been written.Not just another
chapter but an entirely new book. One may see the the beginning of the
great American retreat across the oceans, if they are lucky. Over 50,000
American soldiers have been medically evacuated out of Iraq till Nov. 2004
(interesting number, is it not?)...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8300&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8300


An Interview with Stan Goff
M. Junaid Alam
Recently, Left Hook co-editor M. Junaid Alam was able to fire off some
questions to Stan Goff, a former U.S. Special Forces Master Sergeant with
more than two decades of military experience who is now heavily involved in
anti-war work with Military Families Speak Out and the Bring Them Home Now
campaign, and is also the author of Full Spectrum Disorder and Hideous
Dream. Below, he offers his sharp insights on recent tactical, military,
and political developments taking place in Iraq, discusses the very real
growing signs of discontent within the armed forces, and what the anti-war
movement should do about it.

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8296&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8296


Israel and US Moves in the Middle East: Pimps and Whores
Xymphora
...Every single aspect of what the Israelis do can only be understood in
the light of their massive project (which I'll call the 'Project'), which
may take fifty or a hundred years, to create Greater Israel in a swath
across the Middle East from the Nile to the Euphrates. The coalition of
Likud and Labour just clarifies that there is really no democracy in
Israel, just an insane government force committed to this one goal. The
hundred thousand or so dead Iraqis in the Israeli-inspired attack on Iraq
are just a down payment on the millions of people who are going to have to
die in the Middle East and elsewhere before Greater Israel is finished...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8288&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8288


22 killed in blast at US base in Iraq
AFP
About 22 people were killed and more than 50 injured in a blast at a US
military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, US media
reported, citing Pentagon officials (...) Fox News reported that three
rockets attacked a dining hall on the base during lunch, causing multiple
casualties. CNN said that those killed included US troops, Iraqi forces and
other employees working at the base...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8295&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8295


Report: French Reporters Released in Iraq
AP
Two French reporters held hostage for four months in Iraq have been
released and handed over to French authorities, the Foreign Ministry said
Tuesday. The reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were in
the hands of French authorities in the Iraqi capital, ministry spokesman
Herve Ladsous said...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8297&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8297


Fallujah - The Refugee Disaster & Refugee Work
Donna Mulhearn, Electronic Iraq
The statistics on the whiteboard looked frightening. There were columns of
Arabic words in black pen and rows of various numbers in bright red.
Asterisks, arrows, ticks and crosses. The whiteboard squiggles presented a
scenario that appeared chaotic and overwhelming. But still it did not
convey the human horror of the Fallujah refugee situation...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8290&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8290


Richard Vigurie, the Neo-Cons and the Destruction of America
Sam Hamod
... They are the ones who feel they can not only control America, but by
their devious behavior and public campaigning through media lies, that they
can control the rest of the world as well. The problem for the Vigurie
group and his neo-con friends is that the world has caught on to the game
and these other countries can counteract the lies being told from
America—something the poor American people cannot do because most of our
population is b eing held captive by a lying media at all levels and are
thus easily manipulated to believe the lies rather than seeing that we are
living in an Orwellian nightmare like 1984 that gets progressively worse.
Thus, as this group tries to 'win" all over the world, we will lose more of
our soldiers in wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq and wherever else we try to
send troops...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8289&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8289


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 20 December 2004
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member editorial board The
Free Arab Voice.
In a dispatch posted at 11:30pm Monday night Mecca time, Mafkarat al-Islam
reported that ferocious battles raged Monday morning in al-Fallujah from
about 1:30am until 9am. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that
US aircraft took part in the fighting with heavy air raids from 5am until
9am on the neighborhoods of ash-Shuhada', al-'Askari, al-Jubayl, an d parts
of al-Jawlan. Thirteen Resistance fighters were martyred in the fighting
and nine others wounded...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8294&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8294


News From Saddam`s Lawyers
Genocide Charges Against Saddam Hussein Dropped
Jude Wanniski
...As most of you know, I have for the last two years argued that whatever
else Saddam Hussein did for good or ill as Iraq's president since 1978,
there is no evidence that he committed genocide. That he "never gassed his
own people," i.e., the Iraqi Kurds, which has been an assertion that has
been repeated so often by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the
American press that I'm sure 99.9% of the people believe it is gospel. The
news from Mohammed Al-Obaidi today is that the team prosecuting Saddam for
crimes against humanity has dropped the genocide charge "due to
insufficient evidence"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8287&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8287


FBI Email Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Torture
ACLU
A document released for the first time today by the American Civil
Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order
authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in
Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including
a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense
Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of
the FBI that rais es concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8286&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8286


Torture's Path
Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Hirsh, Newsweek
...Yet memos reviewed by NEWSWEEK and interviews with key principals show
that Gonzales's advice to the president reflected the bold views laid out
in the Aug. 1 memo and other documents. Sources close to the Senate
Judiciary Committee say a chief focus of the hearings will be Gonzales's
role in the so-called "torture memo," as well as his legal judgment in
urging Bush to sidestep the Geneva Conventions. In a Jan. 25, 2002, memo to
Bush, G onzales said the new war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's
strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." (...) By several
accounts, Gonzales and his team were constantly looking to push legal
limits, to widen and maximize Bush's powers...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8285&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8285


Bush admits Iraq bombers are having effect
James Harding, Financial Times
President George W. Bush on Monday acknowledged with unusual candour the
obstacles to progress in Iraq, noting the toll that car bombs are taking on
morale and the desertions from Iraqi security forces under fire. But Mr
Bush insisted that "the terrorists will fail, the elections will go forward
and Iraq will be a democracy"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8281&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8281


FBI Agents Complained of Prisoner Abuse, Records Say Documents obtained by
ACLU show continued reports of mistreatment in Iraq and Cuba
Richard Serrano
FBI agents have lodged repeated complaints of physical and mental
mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, saying in reports that
military officials have placed lighted cigarettes in detainees' ears and
humiliated Arab captives by wrapping Israeli flags around them, according
to new documents released Monday...



<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8282&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8282


US air strike on Iraqi town kills civilians
Aljazeera.net
US warplanes have launched air strikes on the Iraqi town of Hiyt, west of
the capital, killing six Iraqi civilians and wounding nine others. Hospital
officials said a woman and child were among those wounded in the strikes
which began on Monday night on the Jamaiya and al-Sinai districts on the
eastern edges of the town, which lies about 170km west of Baghdad...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8276&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8276


The Iraq War—A Catastrophic Success
Robert Higgs
On the campaign trail last October, Vice President Dick Cheney created a
small stir when, speaking of the Iraq war, he declared: "I think it has
been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been
accomplished overall." (...) In sum, when we ask ourselves who took the
United States to war in Iraq (and keeps it engaged there) and what those
individuals hoped to gain by doing so, we quickly come to appreciate what a
roaring success this venture has been, and continues to be, for all of
them. In view of the endless death and destruction being visited upon the
hapless people of Iraq, however, not to mention the great and growing
number of deaths, injuries, and mental disorders being suffered by U.S.
troops in the Mesopotamian killing fields, we might well describe this
adventure as a catastrophic success...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8280&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8280


Disgraced by Silence
When will the president respond to the cascading allegations of prisoner
abuse by the military?
EDITORIAL, Los Angeles Times
A Marine guard in Iraq sprayed an alcohol-based liquid on a detainee,
struck a match and ignited the prisoner, burning and blistering the man's
hands. Another Marine held wires from an electric transformer to a
detainee's shoulders, so that the man "danced as he was shocked," according
to military documents made public this month. In photographs now un der
investigation, Navy SEALs appeared to sit on a hooded and handcuffed Iraqi
prisoner and to point a gun at another, bleeding detainee...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8279&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8279


Over 100,000 Dead? The Likely Death Toll in Iraq
Milan Rai, www.dissidentvoice.org
The Lancet, the world's leading medical journal, has published an estimate
that 98,000 Iraqis have died because of the invasion and occupation of
Iraq. This estimate (usually approximated to 100,000 deaths) includes Iraqi
civilians and insurgents, and includes all causes of death, both violent
and nonviolent. The 100,000 figure is likely to be an under-estimate...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8283&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8283


Indifferent to Suffering Caused by "Our" Side
An Army Without Compassion
ROBERT FISK, The Independent
It was the insouciance, the absolute indifference of the British military
press office in Basra that shocked me. Here I had documents--one of them
signed by a British officer--stating that Baha Mousa had died in British
custody, another that Mousa's colleague had been "assaulted" when he too
was a prisoner and suffered "acute renal failure", the statement of his
father that the British army waited three days before admitting to the
family that he was dead--and the British spokesman said he couldn't help...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8278&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8278


US warplanes strike Falluja
Aljazeera.net
The US military has renewed its aerial assault of Falluja amid reports of
fierce clashes with the city's resistance, an Iraqi journalist said.
According to independent Iraqi journalist Fadhil al-Badrani, US warplanes
targeted Falluja's eastern and southern districts. He said fierce clashes
had broken out in the city centre between US forces who have been in the
city since 8 November and Iraqi fighters who had infiltrated back in across
the Euphrates river...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8277&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8277


A press release by the Defence and support for President Saddam Hussien and
His Comrades
www.albasrah.net
...Other issued raised by President Saddam during the meeting:
1. He inquired about the Iraqi people conditions under occupation.
He inquired also about the Palestinian people, conditions in particular,
and the Arab peoples in general.
Regarding the Palestinian people he quoted a verse of the Holy Quran:
" If Allah stands up for you, no body can ever conquer you"
2. He stressed the need to defend all detainees and all who were harmed by
the crime of occupation.
3. He confirmed the need to keep continues contacts with popular and
governmental Arab organizations to activate their performance.
4. The President asserted the integrity of both the Iraqi people and the
Iraqi territory.
5. The President sent his greetings for members of leadership giving this
special importance in the absence of any contact with them.
6. He praised the attitudes of some Arab figures and all freedom loving
people in the world.
7. The president urged Iraqi men of religion regardless of their sects to
hold their historical responsibilities towards Iraq during this critical
phase...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8275&s2=21>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8275




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information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts
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