Free Iraq

Kurt Nimmo, Tim Spicer's License to Kill Iraqi Motorists: It should come as no surprise murderous yahoos working for Aegis Defense Services randomly shoot up innocent Iraqis, as a video currently posted on the Prison Planet site reveals. “The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis,” reports the London Telegraph.

Aegis is run by a former British soldier and a one-time member of the Scots Guards, Tim Spicer, who made a sum of money violating a UN arms embargo in Sierra Leone and touching off a coup in Papua New Guinea. Spicer is apparently so good at what he does—apparently including randomly murdering Iraqis—the Pentagon awarded him a $293 million contract to have his hired thugs act as bodyguards (or maybe we should call them what they are—spree killers).

Spicer has a bad habit of rubbing elbows with cutthroat psychopaths. For instance, in Belfast in 1992, two men under Spicer’s command killed an unarmed teenager and father of two children, Peter Mc Bride. ...
[ . . . ]

... Now Tim Spicer is plundering the American taxpayer while his goons shoot up Iraqi cars with Elvis Presley’s Mystery Train playing in the background. As noted at the outset, it should come as no surprise high-paid mercenaries are killing innocent Iraqis. “Foreign mercenaries make up the third biggest ‘coalition partner’ in Iraq after the United States and Britain,” writes Aaron Glantz. “Many of them are from former secret police agencies of since-overthrown police states like Pinochet’s Chile and apartheid South Africa. ...
[ . . . ]
 

Wayne Madsen Report, November 29, 2005 -- British mercenary firm with Pentagon contracts exposed in civilian shooting incident in Iraq: A souvenir video has surfaced on the Internet showing private security contractors working for Aegis Defense Services "Victory" Group firing indiscriminately at Iraqi civilian motorists in Baghdad. The video was reportedly taken by an Aegis employee and posted on a web site run by an ex-Aegis employee. The video has since been removed from the site. The video contains four clips showing Aegis mercenaries firing at civilian automobiles. ...
[ . . . ]

The Pentagon has had a longstanding relationship with Spicer. The Pentagon's love affair with mercenary firms began in the 1990s when they were viewed with favor for their military activities, including sanctions busting, in Africa. Under the Clinton administration, mercenary firms blossomed. Under George W. Bush, they have flourished. On June 24, 1997, the Defense Intelligence Agency sponsored a seminar titled "The Privatization of National Security Functions in Sub-Saharan Africa." This conference ushered in the present cooperation between mercenaries, oil companies, diamond and other mineral companies, U.S. intelligence agencies, the military, and non-government organizations (NGOs), including the always suspect Human Rights Watch, an NGO that often obscures and obfuscates important facts, as it did with the causality of the Rwandan genocide and as it is currently doing with regard to offering an incomplete list of CIA prisoner aircraft in Europe.*

WMR has obtained the attendee list [Page One Page Two] for the 1997 Pentagon mercenary seminar. Spicer attended along with two colleagues from Sandline International (for which Spicer served as CEO), a mercenary firm that had already been implicated in illegal Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea operations.

Mercenary firms, which in neo-con "Newspeak" are referred to as "Private Military Contractors," "Private Security Contractors (PSCs), and Personal Security Details/Detachments (PSDs), are viewed by informed observers as the future military forces that will continue to protect US business interests in Iraq after the planned withdrawal of a large number of U.S. troops next year. These companies are not governed by any military regulations or international legal constraints. According to informed sources within the security contractor community, three U.S. firms, Phoenix, Anteon, and Sytex, should be looked at closely by U.S. authorities for their interrogation operations in Iraq.* Sytex is currently advertising for interrogators for the US Central Command's Area of Responsibility (AOR), which includes Iraq and Afghanistan. Military interrogators who were charged with sexually humiliating prisoners at Guantanamo and Iraq are now working for firms like Anteon and Phoenix Consulting Group.
------------------------------
* Emphasis added.
 

Liberation? . . .
Dahr Jamail, Hospitals Come Under Siege: "Hospital personnel are reporting regular raids and interference by the U.S. military as fighting continues in the volatile Al-Anbar province of Iraq."
 

Mike Whitney, OpEdNews, Death squads, Devastation and the Corporate Media: "The death squads are in fact just one part of a three-pronged strategy to crush the resistance and establish Iraq as a corporate-colony of American energy giants. The other phase of the operation involves the systematic decimation of Sunni cities.*

"In the last few months the US military has carried out numerous assaults on Sunni cities to break the resistance and destroy its ability to wage war. ...

"The death squads and the intentional destruction of the Sunni heartland comprise the first two parts of the three-pronged strategy to defeat the Iraqi resistance. The final leg on the stool is the propaganda war that is being directed against the American people to conceal the details of the military’s war crimes.* The arrest or liquidation of independent journalists reporting from the front has allowed the Pentagon’s “embedded” legions to shape a narrative of benign intervention in the name of fighting terrorism. According to the Washington Post not one of the more then one thousand prisoners captured in Tal Afar was a foreign fighter. This should put to rest the Pentagon’s spurious claim that Sunni cities are “Al Qaida strongholds.”

"American media now functions as an annex of the War Department.* ...

"The Bush administration’s three-pronged strategy for Iraq precludes a political solution because it is designed as a model for future wars.* The Washington warlords and their boardroom constituents have no intention of negotiating the terms of global rule; that is the exclusive duty of the White House mandarins."
-------------------
* Emphasis added.
 

Who benefits?
Dahr Jamail, CPT: "Four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Baghdad have been abducted and taken hostage recently. This event is horribly dismaying for me, as I’ve known members of CPT since before I ever ventured to Iraq.
[ . . . ]

"Back in November of 2003, while sitting in Amman, Jordan waiting to go into Iraq, I met a member of CPT who had been working in Palestine. He told me he was walking with Palestinian children as they went to school, in order to prevent them from being attacked by Israeli settlers.

"Later I would learn that this same individual had returned to Palestine and was beaten so severely by Israeli settlers that he was hospitalized for several weeks.

"Last Thanksgiving, November 24, 2004 I shared a meal with members of their team in Baghdad, along with several of our Iraqi friends. We gave thanks together for being in Baghdad in solidarity with our Iraqi brothers and sisters. All of us – the CPT members and myself -- were then and remain fully committed to getting out the truth about the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq.

"Each of the members of CPT in Iraq I have met are committed to non-violence and being a truthful witness to the ravages of war and occupation. They have been accused by their captors of being spies or missionaries. This is simply not the case. If there is any group operating in Iraq today who works tirelessly to end the suffering of Iraqis, it is CPT."
 

NOMINATE Cindy Sheehan for Time Magazine's 2005 Person of the Year. Cindy's decency and total commitment to restoring Iraq to Iraqis makes it possible to use the word 'honor' without wanting to throw up! Take a minute or two to tell Time why she deserves the award.
 

Tim Howells, Online Journal, How our governments use terrorism to control us: "The sponsorship of terrorism by western governments, targeting their own populations, has been a taboo subject. Although major scandals have received cursory coverage in the media, the subject has been allowed to immediately disappear without discussion or investigation. Therefore the appearance this year of two major studies of this subject is a welcome breakthrough, and provides essential reading for anyone struggling to understand the events of September 11, 2001 and the post September 11 world.

"The studies are complementary. NATO's Secret Armies, Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe by Daniele Ganser concerns terrorism sponsored by American and British intelligence in Western Europe and Turkey between the end of World War II and 1985. The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed chronicles the cultivation and sponsorship of militant Islamic terrorism by the intelligence services of the United States, Britain and Russia from 1979 to the present. Both studies are models of scholarship -- meticulously documented and carefully reasoned -- but the world they reveal will boggle the mind of the most wild-eyed conspiracy theorist."

(With the following section headings)

- Creating "Communist" Terrorism to Fuel the Cold War
- Creating "Islamic" Terrorism for the Post-Cold War Era
- Sergeant Ali Mohamed Joins al-Qaeda
- The Pentagon Brings al-Qaeda to the Balkans
- The CIA Brings al-Qaeda to the Philippines
- The Grand Design
- And Then There Is September 11 Itself . . .
- The Future of the Strategy of Tension

"The books reviewed herein document a continuous history over the last 40 years of the United States and other governments fostering and manipulating terrorism for their own ends. Terrorist organisations have been used to destabilise inconvenient regimes around the world, and to sow chaos, which can then serve as a pretext for military intervention.

"Even more importantly, terrorism is used to create a crisis atmosphere at home under cover of which the crimes and corruption of government officials go unpunished, civil liberties are easily abandoned, and major wars can be launched under false pretences. Although at present there appears to be no reason for the terror-masters in Washington to consider changing their tactics, the publication this year of these two illuminating books raises the hope that the Strategy of Tension, which can only thrive in darkness and confusion, will ultimately have to be abandoned."
 

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout, Mystery Train: "The Abu Ghraib images were bad enough.

"Now we have these videos, these so-called Aegis videos, allegedly showing contractors in Iraq driving the road between Baghdad and the airport. In the video, men speaking with Irish or Scottish accents use an assault rifle to indiscriminately blast other cars on the road. The video shows cars peppered with bullets careening to and fro, crashing into each other and rolling into the trees. In the background, Elvis Presley can be heard singing 'Mystery Train.'

"The road where these videotaped attacks took place . . . 'has acquired the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the world because of the number of suicide attacks and ambushes carried out by insurgents against coalition troops. In one four-month period earlier this year it was the scene of 150 attacks.'

"That last paragraph begs the obvious question: who exactly is doing the attacking along route Irish, and elsewhere in Iraq for that matter? The fact that this unspeakable act was captured on video, soundtrack and all, does not in any way preclude the probability that this was not the first time a non-Iraqi decided to pass the time by slaughtering innocent people*."
-------------------------
* Emphasis added.
 

Kurt Nimmo, Pentagon Black Ops: Abducting Peacemakers in Iraq: One look at the CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) in Iraq website and it becomes obvious who abducted Kember and his associates and why. CPT has worked as “an alternative voice to the reporters ‘embedded’ with Coalition forces,” have used “their bodies to protect critical civilian infra-structure such as water treatment facilities, electrical plants, and hospitals,” have documented “abuse of detainees by Coalition forces,” and “have ventured forth in response to urging from Iraqi human rights workers in Karbala.” No doubt all of this Christian activity sincerely upsets the Pentagon and the Bushcons.
 

Good news. . .
US military planting stories in Iraqi newspapers: "The task force has even bought an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, a military official said, refusing to name the outlets to protect their staff from insurgent attacks."
 

The Gospel According to George . . .
This 38-page .pdf file (National Strategy for Victory in Iraq) contains the following memorable quotes:

"The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people."

"Since the fall of Saddam, hundreds of new independent media outlets have sprung up in Iraq. Their presence is a testament to the vitality of a free press, but their quality is often uneven and their level of professionalism could be improved. Together with our international partners, we are working to promote civic understanding and enable Iraq's public and private media institutions to flower*."

Looking for something new in this National Strategy? As a reference point, November 2005 crops up twice only:
- Cover Page: November 2005
- Pg. 23: "Iraqi forces are growing in number. As of November 2005, there were more than 212,000 trained and equipped Iraqi Security Forces, compared with 96,000 in September of last year."

The word 'terror'** (or some form: terrorist/terrorism): 103 occurrences.
'Oil': 6 occurrences (I guess oil is not so important after all).
----------------------------
* See US military planting stories in Iraqi newspapers (above - 11:13 AM)
** See How our governments use terrorism to control us (above - 8:56 PM)
 

'Liberation': Two-faced -
Zen Toro, Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches, Triumph of the Beast (Extract): Torture is as much a common a practice in Bush’s “war on terrorism” as it was during the Spanish Inquisition. Heretics were burned at the stake, executed on cartwheels, suspended on poles. Labor was forced and the religious aristocracy spit upon any declaration of human rights. Putting a ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment has its clear implications, as it is written in the new Iraqi Constitution.

I doubt many Americans have taken the time to read the complete translated version, though they have paid billions and homeland lives for its implementation. Few are aware of the provisional loopholes, the inconsistencies and obvious language manipulations, such as the regional segregation of the parliamentary two-thirds vote clause that allows the occupation to dictate the type of “sovereignty” they want to form in this holy cradle of humanity. There is no “one person, one vote” for the Iraqis to chose their president. The contract for democracy in Iraq is a sanitized document, not surprisingly meant to pervert any safeguard for human rights with gray areas of interpretation that promote a monarchy, not democracy.

Moreover, it is blatantly clear that U.S. troop presence is violating the democratic provisions of the newly approved constitution. After December 31, 2005, when the new Iraq government takes power, it will be interesting to note just exactly how Bush plans on orchestrating control and accountability, without violating the very democracy principles he boasts to have put in place. ...

Today, the preamble to the Iraqi [Constitution] reads: “Sons of Mesopotamia, the land of prophets, resting place of the holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet, the cradle of arithmetic” and “inspired by the injustice against the holy cities… create a new Iraq, Iraq of the future, without sectarianism, racial strife, regionalism, discrimination or isolation.”

The medieval writ of habeas corpus stated, “You (shall) have/hold the body to be subjected to (examination)” and though reflected somewhat in Iraq’s constitutional wording, there is no explicit clarification that holds accountable the current human rights infractions of the U.S. occupation.

Article (17): Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality. 2nd – The sanctity of the home is protected. They cannot be entered or searched or violated except by judicial decision and in accordance with the law.

Another provision, if applied to U.S. military forces, would put an end to “cordon and search” operations in urban settings. Iraqis know this technique well, as their homes are are raided at night, occupants herded into one room, while still in their bed clothes, and the men are filed out, some being taken away in cuffs.

Article (19): 5th – The accused is innocent until his guilt is proven in a just, legal court. The accused cannot be tried for the same accusation again after he has been freed unless new evidence appears. “Unless new evidence appears” seems to be an ominous telling as well as there is no provision for a swift and speedy trial.

Under 12 –a (Arbitrary) detention shall not be allowed.

Article (21): 1st – An Iraqi shall not be handed over to foreign bodies and authorities.

For the past four years the CIA has established a network of covert prisons in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe at abandoned Soviet compounds. Known as “black sites” in White House jargon, the existence and locations are known only to a handful of officials in the U.S., including the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country, the Washington Post reports. Citing national security issues, the CIA and the White House has dissuaded Congress from open testimony about the conditions and captives being held.

Part Two of the constitution, it clearly states that torture will not be tolerated.

Article (35): 1st – (a) The freedom and dignity of a person are protected. (b) No one may be detained or investigated unless by judicial decision. (c) All forms of torture, mental or physical, and inhuman treatment are forbidden. There is no recognition of any confession extracted by force or threats or torture, and the injured party may seek compensation for any physical or mental injury that is inflicted. 2nd – The state is committed to protecting the individual from coercion in thought, religion or politics, and no one may be imprisoned on these bases.

Article (44): All individuals have the right to enjoy the rights stated in international human rights agreements and treaties endorsed by Iraq that don’t run contrary to the principles and rules of this constitution.
 

Al Mendhar, Badr Organization Threatens Palestinians in Iraq
 

TRANSCRIPT, President Bush's Speech on the War on Terrorism (Delivered at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., Nov. 30, 2005) : "If we're not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders." (Sound familiar?)
 

TomDispatch.com, Dreyfuss on Bush's Deadly Dance with Islamic Theocrats: "Nearly three years into the war in Iraq, the Bush administration tells us that it wasn't about weapons of mass destruction or Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, but about America's holy mission to spread democracy to the benighted regions of the Middle East. However, postwar Iraq is anything but a democracy. In fact, if Iraq manages to avoid all-out civil war, it is likely to end up with a government that is fiercely undemocratic -- a Shiite theocratic dictatorship that rules by terror, torture, and armed might.

"What President Bush has wrought in Iraq is just the latest in a long string of U.S. efforts to make common cause with the Islamic right. But like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, the Mickey Mouse character whose naïve and inexperienced use of magic blows up in his face, American efforts to play with the forces of political Islam have proved to be dangerous, volatile, and often uncontrollable."

With these section headings:

- Shiite "Islamofascists" Rule Iraq
- Syria: The Muslim Brotherhood Waits
- Middle Eastern Dominos?
- A Formula for Endless War in the Middle East
 

Riverbend, No Voice...: [ . . . ]

I intend to spend the rest of the night reading about Bush’s ‘strategy’ for Iraq. I haven’t seen it yet, but I expect it’ll be a repetition of the nonsense he’s been spewing for two and a half years now. Don’t Americans get tired of hearing the same thing?

It’s unbelievable that he’s refused to set a timetable for withdrawal (is he having another "Bring it on..." moment?). It’s almost as if someone is paying him to intentionally sabotage American foreign policy. With every speech he seems to sink himself deeper into the mire. A timetable for complete withdrawal of American forces would be a positive step- it would give Iraqis hope that, eventually, sovereignty will return to Iraq.

As it is, people fear the Americans will be here for the next twenty years- unless they are bombed and attacked out of the country. Although many Iraqis support armed resistance in theory, I think that the average Iraqi simply wants to see them go back home in one piece- we feel sorry for them and especially sorry for their families at times. There are moments when you forget the personal affronts- the raids, the checkpoints, the fear of bombing, the detentions, etc. and you can see through it all to the actual person behind the weapons and body armor... On the other hand, you never forget that it's a foreign occupation and will meet with resistance like all foreign occupations.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice can all swear that American troops will not pull out of the country no matter how many casualties they sustain, but history has proven otherwise…
 

Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide: Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bush’s “victory” plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic destruction of the Sunni minority for resisting its U.S.-induced transformation from the nation’s ruling elite into second-class citizenship.

The Sunnis, an Islamic sect that makes up about 35 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, are being confronted with a stark choice, either accept subordination to the less-educated Shiite majority or face the devastation of Sunni neighborhoods, the imprisonment of many Sunni males and the deaths of large numbers of the Sunni population.
[ . . . ]

U.S. officials also acknowledge that hard-line Shiite militiamen, who have penetrated the government’s security forces, are operating “death squads” to terrorize Sunnis.

The killings and disappearances are reminiscent of the bloodshed in Central America in the 1980s when right-wing regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador unleashed security forces to round up, torture and kill suspected leftists.

That violence, however, was primarily defined by political ideology, rather than race, religion or ethnicity. An exception was the slaughtering of a Mayan Indian tribe in the Guatemalan highlands as part of a military scorched-earth campaign that later was investigated by a truth commission and denounced as “genocide.” ...

In Iraq, the religious component of the nation’s incipient civil war is already apparent, although Bush often has presented the Iraqi conflict to the American people as a war largely between foreign Islamic “terrorists” and freedom-loving Iraqis.

Bush finally dropped that distorted analysis in his Nov. 30 speech about his plan for “victory” in Iraq. He divided the “enemy in Iraq” into three groups* – the Sunni “rejectionists,” who resent having lost their privileged status; the Sunni “Saddamists,” who retain loyalty to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein; and the foreign “terrorists,” who have entered Iraq to fight the American invaders and generally spread chaos.

U.S. military analysts estimate that more than 90 percent of the forces battling American troops come from the first two Sunni categories, with the foreign jihadists representing only from 5 to 10 percent of the armed opposition. Though Bush didn’t give percentages, he did list the groups in declining order by size, with the “terrorists” the smallest.

Yet what is problematic about Bush’s analysis in terms of the genocide issue is that he identifies the vast majority of the “enemy” as Sunnis. That means both Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government and U.S. forces in Iraq are already targeting a religious minority for defeat, establishing one of the first conditions for the definition of genocide.*

The next element in the equation will be how far the war against the Sunnis goes – or put differently, how stubbornly the Sunnis resist.

For his part, Bush reiterated that he will only be satisfied with “complete victory,” which suggests he is resolved to break the back of the Sunni resistance at whatever cost.

The Bush administration also wants to keep a tight hold on information that might put the U.S. war effort in a negative light. That means the American people can expect to be shielded from many of the worst secrets in Iraq, much as the White House has continued to fight release of video showing abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

According to U.S. military experts I’ve interviewed, a great deal of emphasis in the future will be on “perception management,” the concept of shaping how both Iraqis and the American people perceive the events in Iraq.

This media manipulation, combined with secretive “death squads,” adds even more to the recipe necessary for war-time atrocities that might cross over into genocide.
[ . . . ]
---------------------------
* Emphasis added.
 

Linda S. Heard, Online Journal, A frightening "Strategy for Israel": The other day I was handed the translation of a paper written by Israeli journalist Oded Yinon as far back as 1982. ...

Yinon, who was attached to Israel's Foreign Ministry, published his paper, titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," in Kivunim (Directions) a "journal for Judaism and Zionism," ...

The basic premises of the plan are these: In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might.

"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel's primary target in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target," he writes.

"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets," says Yinon. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel."

"Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon. In Iraq, three or more states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul.

Was Yinon's paper the precursor of the 1996 "Clean Break: A new strategy for securing the realm" document authored by current and former Bush administration leading lights, such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith as well as David and Meyrav Wurmser on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu?

"Clean Break" advised the Israeli government to "publicly question Syria's legitimacy," contain Syria and strike selected targets, and "reject" the land for peace concept related to the Golan Heights.

It was also proposed that Syria should be isolated and surrounded by a friendly regime in Iraq, while Arab states should be challenged as "police states" lacking legitimacy. Isn't this exactly what is happening today as part of Bush's democratization policy?
 

AKI, IRAQ: RUMSFELD BANS THE WORD 'INSURGENTS': Rumsfeld suggested substituting: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government."

"When questioned about torture by the Iraqi authorities, Rumsfeld said 'obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility.'"
 

Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue, Pentagon, intel pros tell Bush war cannot be won: "Bitterness grows within the military and intelligence establishment over Bush’s unwillingness to listen to reason on Iraq. Analysts called to the White House to provide intelligence briefings on the situation in Iraq dread the trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where an honest assessment of the war brings anger and sharp rebukes from a President who doesn’t like to hear bad news.

"That belief the war itself has been a mistake is one shared by a growing number of those whose job it is to wage war – the pros at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community and the same pros that George W. Bush ignored in his headlong march into a losing war in Iraq."
 

(An interesting, quick! read.)
Cytations, Are Most Terrorism Files Forged?: "Ever wondered why 'Islamic terrorism' cases fall apart?"
 

Guardian, Cheney 'may be guilty of war crime' : " Mr Wilkerson told the Associated Press that the vice-president must have sincerely believed Iraq could be a spawning ground for terrorism because 'otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard'."
 

Watching America, America Ushers In Era of 'sectarian Affiliation': "Calling the operations of the Iraqi government 'comparable to the former Taliban regime,' this op-ed article from Iraq's Azzaman newspaper laments that if it was Washington's hope to create a non-sectarian government based on merit - it has utterly failed to do so."
 

Malcom Lagauche, Saddam for President: On November 30, 2005, Al-Jazeera News ran an article called "Saddam ‘Urged’ to Contest Elections. ...

Can Saddam run for president if he is the legal president? If he runs for president, what entity would he represent? The current Iraqi government is not a government. Bizarre.

One thing is certain, however. Saddam Hussein is still admired by many Iraqis. The U.S. "liberated" Iraq from Saddam because, in the eyes of the U.S., the people hated him. This has been shown to be a big lie.

What is the U.S. afraid of? If Saddam is so hated, he would garner few votes. This is a chance the U.S. will not take and even if Saddam put his hat in the ring, he would not be allowed to run. If he did, the results would be an overwhelming embarrassment for the U.S.

In 2003, the U.S. made a law in Iraq that promised two years imprisonment for anyone publicly displaying a picture of Saddam Hussein. Is this a move to democracy? Of course not, but most people do not question such anomalies.

Despite the draconian measures imposed by the U.S., Iraqis have recently taken to the streets in pro-Saddam demonstrations. This upsets the U.S. because, according to the imperialists, nobody supports Saddam. More embarrassment.
 

Imad

Gawd I wished we could stop the killing in Iraq.. it is all so senseless and in this day and age.. gawd damn it... those poor people .. my heart just aches for them to be rid of the USA occupation.

I cry myself to sleep every night wondering how it must be to be in Iraq now.. how shameful we are by not helping more.. we just don't know what to do.. we tried protesting March 17th 03 .. but no media covered us in DC..

I traveled 23 hours non stop to get there to march.. I am a mother & grandmother of 3 little wee ones.. to see those babies with arms blown off.. faces full of cuts .. it just breaks my heart..

Please tell the Iraqi people that many of us here do not agree with this Bush Cabal..

We are so very sorry we have let bush ruin their country.. some of the pictures I have seen of the real action in Iraq.. the deaths .. well, I call them war crimes. We just need to impeach the bush cabal... all of them & then fix our country & the areas in which Bushies destroyed or corrupted !

I guess they won't leave until they finish the pipeline?
I heard they have built 14 air bases .. that all the reconstruction money is going for that.. building for greed & power
did not the military poison the water in Iraq?

I heard Iraq sits on one of the largest water sources in the area.. that Israel is out of water & lives the lives of the RICH & FAMOUS .. with swimming pools & many car washes.. water wasters.. so they want Iraqi water..

so Oil & Water does mix?

pitiful

keep up the good work
Chil
 

CRY MY BELOVED COUNTRY *

Cry for my non-existent childhood
Cry for my stolen youth
Cry for my uprooted olive trees
Cry for my village which lost its name
Cry for the maimed children
Cry for the widowed mothers
And cry for the raped land.
A land I tended with my tears

Yes, cry, as I am crying
For non-caring kin
Yes, cry as I am crying
For non-caring humanity
Cry because I stopped crying
I have no more tears to spare
I need them for my children’s graves

My children have gone to war
They will not come back alive
They think their blood will bring back the olive trees
They think that their blood will wipe out the infamy
Of kin who did not raise a finger
Of humanity which did not utter a word
To protect my olive trees
-------------------------

* By Raja Mattar
Theme inspired by the title of the South African writer Alan Paton’s book “Cry the Beloved Country”
 

We are not alone: WE are the majority! Exclusive interview with Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator SOS Iraq and member of the Executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal
By Gabriele Zamparini

“War does not determine who is right.
Only who is left.” - Bertrand Russell
 

Insurgents* Attack U.S. Bases in Iraq
* Substitute: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government", as per D. Rumsfeld (7:42 PM - above)
 

Iraqi rebels launch assault in Ramadi, seize streets
 

A Citizen of Mosul, The electionnaire - which party is yours? : "Iraqi citizens confused those days because the hear a lot of promises for correction, reconstruction, and so and so from the parties sharing in the coming election. The streets are full of signs with different statement explain what the will do if the win the election.

"We know for sure that most of these signs are not more than lies, and every thing will be forgotten after the election. Any way there is an Internet electionaire which could match your beliefs with the the parties ideology, you could know which party is more represent you.

"You can try it just for fun, or for real, that is up to you.
Here is the URL of the site.

"This is an interesting questionnaire which could help you to know which one of the many Iraqi parties fit your political beliefs.

"One important note, don't believe all what you hear from political groups or parties because they say what they thing is useful to their goal (propaganda)."
 

Kurt Nimmo, Bushcons Sunny Side the Horror of Iraq: "For some unexplained reason, the discovery of fake news stories planted by the United States government is now considered scandalous, or at least momentarily shocking in the current news cycle. It must be a slow news day—or week, month, year, most assuredly a decade or more. Fake and heavily spun news has emanated from the corporate media since (and before) the CIA launched Operation Mockingbird in the late 40s. ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc., ad nauseam, have worked hand-in-glove with spooks and government overlords for decades, since before I was a tike in short pants.
[ . . . ]

"... Bush’s neocon gangsters may fool a few Americans and even themselves, but the Iraqis are not buying into the scam, especially if they have malnourished kids and relatives dying from cancer due to the profligate use of depleted uranium. No 'upbeat' fake news stories will make the tumors disappear or magically render clean drinking water from dirty or provide consistent electricity. It will not paper over the random shooting of Iraqi motorists by hired 'security' thugs or trigger-happy checkpoint soldiers who are indistinguishable to average Iraqis from Israeli border guards."
 

UPI, Analysis: Bush wants to 'Vietnamize' Iraq
 

IPS, IRAQ: Armed Forces Sinking into Sectarian Chaos: "A spate of articles in the mainstream U.S. media since the discovery two weeks ago by U.S. troops of a secret underground prison in the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where some 170 Sunni Arab men and boys had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, has detailed the existence of death squads in the largely Shiite police and special commandos or operating with their support.

[ . . . ]

"But while U.S. military commanders were willing to tell reporters about the abuses, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld discounted the reports as 'unverified' during a press conference here Tuesday.

"'There's ...a political campaign (in Iraq) taking place, and we ought to be aware of that, that there are going to be a lot of charges and countercharges and allegations,' he told a reporter who asked about the death squad reports.

"'And they may very well be timed -- as they are in every country in the world that has a free political system -- they may be timed in a way to seek advantage,' he said."
 

Simply to note . . .
Hypocrisy Democracy And Lord Rumsfeld
 

Juan Cole, TruthDig, At Hussein's Hearings, U.S. May Be on Trial: [ . . . ]

"When the Dujail case is resolved and the tribunal trying Hussein goes on to other crimes, sooner or later the issue of chemical weapons use must arise. ... When the issue arises, it will be difficult for Donald Rumsfeld to avoid sharing the docket, at least symbolically, with his old friend, Hussein. Rumsfeld helped to forge the U.S. alliance with Iraq that lasted from 1984 until Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August of 1991. ... The pogrom against the Shiites of Dujail was a horrible crime. Far more horrible ones, in which the U.S. government was intimately complicit, were to follow."
 

Gabriele Zamparini, Global Research, The mysterious case of white phosphorous - Or: how the BBC learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
 

Siddharth Varadarajan, Global Research, If you can't shoot the messenger, lock him up: IF THERE were any doubts about the authenticity of the Daily Mirror story on President George W. Bush wanting to bomb the head offices of Al Jazeera, the British government would appear to have cleared them up by threatening editors with prison if they publish the text of the confidential memo from which the London tabloid sourced its account.

After all, if the White House's line about the story being "outlandish" were really true, why on earth would Tony Blair — whose conversation with the American President last April is the subject of the memo — invoke the Official Secrets Act to prevent its publication? I can think of only two reasons, neither of which does Mr. Blair or Mr. Bush any credit. Either the American President did threaten to blow up the Qatar-based Arabic news channel because he was upset at its coverage of U.S. counter-insurgency operations in Fallujah. Or he did not, in which case the British Prime Minister wants to suppress the memo because it records Mr. Bush admitting — or threatening — something even more terrible.

Tempting though it is to dismiss the alleged threat against the Arabic broadcaster as a "conspiracy theory" (as Mr. Blair is suggesting) or a "joke" on the part of the U.S. President, there is the unsettling coincidence of Al Jazeera having been hit by American bombs twice before.

[ . . . ]
 

'Liberated' FROM Food, Water, Electricity, Employment, Medical Services, Security & LIFE -
Dahr Jamail & Harb Al-Mukhtar, Iraq Dispatches, Where People Cannot Afford Their Country
 

British mercenary firm exposed in civilian shooting incident in Iraq

Indiscriminate Killings of Civilians

by Wayne Madsen

December 1, 2005