Free Iraq

Thank you Dr. Imad for those articles-messages that reflect pure national love.

Thanks Li LAH that our Arab World still beats with devoted blood and souls.

Such nation, and bilad will thrive and survive, no matter how long lasts the dark nights of Iraq and Palestine.!

My special regards to Shalash Al Iraqi.
 

A Citizen of Mosul, Another Collateral Killing. More pictures


An Iraqi Tear, Answer Depends on You!: Say NO to Bush the terrorist.. ask your congressmen and your conscious to define the word "TERRORISM".. is targeting and killing the children terrorism? the answer depends on your humanity..
 

We have read the massacre reports.
We have seen the pictures (Citizen of Mozul & Iraqi Tear - both above).
We know the truth of what is being done in our name.
HOW CAN WE NOT RESPOND?

Check out this link: Congress.org. Here you will find a wealth of contact details for, among others,
- The President & Vice President
- Congress
- State Officials
- Media all across the country.

And this is just one starting point. Wherever you live, you know how to contact relevant people / organizations / newspapers / officials. DO IT!!!!

"The answer depends on your humanity.. "

 

A REFRESHER: Previous Posts:
-- Iraqi Video Details End of Alleged Attack
-- US Troops Shooting Any Iraqi Who Moves
-- Aid agencies unable to enter Samarra
-- Video, The Aftermath Of A Massacre
-- Precise Collateral Damage
-- One Morning in Haditha
-- Iraqis Detail Deadly U.S. Marine Raid
-- Operation Swarm of Lies
-- 'Goodbye My Beloved Father, Martyred By the Americans'
-- Military Investigating Deadly Raid in Iraq
-- Iraqi police say U.S. troops executed 11, including baby
-- Killing Women and Children: The “My Lai Phase” Of The Iraq War
-- HAVE YOU GOT KIDS? So much for targeting insurgents
-- What happened to me is happening to many others
 

Kurt Nimmo, Haditha and My Lai: Same Killer Dynamic
 

Extract -
Mike Whitney, Tal Afar; war crimes in Bush’s dystopia: The siege of Tal Afar began on September 2, 2005. It was the largest military offensive since the assault on Falluja a year earlier. In 2004, the US military attempted to take over the city but was rebuffed by heavy fighting. After that, the guerilla movement inside the city intensified expecting a future attack.

Approximately, 5,000 American and Iraqi troops sealed off the city, enclosing it behind a massive wall of sand with military checkpoints. Then the city’s people were forcefully evacuated, leaving them to fend for themselves. The Red Cross was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the exodus and was unable to provide shelter, water, or food for many of those who fled. Regrettably, thousands of people chose to stay and withstand the withering assault, rather than expose themselves to the Shiite death squads from the Interior Ministry who were operating in conjunction with the American forces. The city was then relentlessly pounded for more than a week by Abrams tanks, F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, and heavy artillery. At least four mosques were bombed and the Sarai area was hammered persistently with 500 and 1,000 lb bombs. The Iraqi newspaper Azzaman reported, “Eyewitnesses spoke of ‘scores of casualties due to indiscriminate bombing.'”

The siege was executed according to the normal protocols; massive destruction of personal property, leveling areas where resistance appeared, snipers picking off anything that moves on the city streets, and the routine rounding up of anyone who seems at all suspicious.

“Thousands of Tal Afar residents were trapped inside Sarai by the cordon of tanks and barbed wire that was flung up around the district to prevent resistance fighters from escaping.” (James Cogan WSWS)

“Significant parts of Tal Afar are reported to be in ruin. Electricity and phone services have been cut off and hospitals are breaking down. The Iraqi human rights center issued an urgent appeal to the Iraqi government to stop the assault and allow rescue teams to access the area to deliver food, water and medical supplies.” (James Cogan WSWS)

IslamOnline.net reported, “Residents of Tal Afar have sent out an SOS to the international community to interfere with the continuing bombing of their devastated city, revealing a terrible humanitarian crisis.”

“'The Americans are bombing the city with chemical weapons,' one unidentified man said, adding that other residents are complaining of suffocation and other health problems related to exposure to US ordinance."

The report is consistent with evidence of banned weapons that were used in an earlier attack on Falluja.

The widely respected Council of Nineveh issued a statement from the Brussels Tribunal that was ignored in the western media but is worth reiterating here: “The truth of what is happening in Tal Afar of the extreme use of force and the use of internationally forbidden weapons of poison gases, cluster, microwave, and napalm bombs, we demand that autopsies be carried out on the corpses of our sons who fell in the barbaric aggression to verify the inhuman practices carried out by the American forces and the [Iraqi] militias that participated in the massacre of Tal Afar.”
 

Kurt Nimmo, God Forgive America: God forgive monsters who slaughter the peacemakers. God forgive Americans who tune out reality in preference for televised football games and sit-coms while a pathological government kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people in their names. If you believe in God, now is the time to ask for forgiveness. Now is the time to get off the sofa and out of the gym or mall and demand that your government stop murdering not only Iraqis and Afghans, but the entire planet with depleted uranium and other war-making toxins and poisons.
 

Draft letter:
Dear (Senator/Congressman/. . . )

IRAQ WAR: PROFOUNDLY UNAMERICAN ACTIVITY

Iraqis are pleading for us to stop the killing.

How in God's name can we turn a deaf ear? How can we retain any lingering vestige of pride as Americans while the killing and mutilation and annihilation of hope continue unabated.

We have no "mission" in Iraq and we never had. All reasons for the invasion and occupation of that country have been proven false. Our actions there are profoundly unAmerican. Never will the death and destruction buy us peace, security or national dignity.

Our troops, who I'm sure love the United States as much as you and I, deserve to be brought home from the killing fields of Iraq. Iraq must be restored to Iraqis.

You have been elected to serve the best interests of your constituents and your country. I beg you: Do whatever it takes to stop the carnage. Tell our President it must stop. Tell Dick Cheney it must stop. Tell Donald Rumsfeld it must stop.

Already we have too much blood on our hands. Iraqi parents and children live in terror because of us. STOP THE CARNAGE.
 

FUNNY!

http://drawmohammed.com
 

At Least 56 Dead in Latest Iraq Violence


New York Times details secret US military torture operation


Another Abu Ghraib trial leaves top brass unscathed
 

John Pilger, The War Lovers: For me, one of the more odious characteristics of Blair, and Bush, and Clinton, and their eager or gulled journalistic court, is the enthusiasm of sedentary, effete men (and women) for bloodshed they never see, bits of body they never have to retch over, stacked morgues they will never have to visit, searching for a loved one.
 

The Land of the Braves, and yet to be Free

“Before he left, Sulaiman told his 26-year-old epileptic son: "Don't worry, they are a bunch of cowards, and your father is a strong man."”

Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor. March 23, 2006

“Bassim Sulaiman never calls that momentous day in April 2003 the "fall of Baghdad." Instead he calls it the "fall of Saddam," because it was then he knew that he would never again have to entice customers to the downstairs gallery of his antique shop - as he did to this correspondent just before the war - to whisper curses against the Iraqi dictator.

The regal antiquary didn't want war in his country, but he grew up taught by Jesuit Fathers, had known a number of Americans, and tasted their generosity. He wanted to give the self-described "liberators" of Iraq a chance.

"When people would speak badly about the Americans, I said: 'No, don't be so quick to judge them,' " recalls Sulaiman. "I used to give them excuses: 'They are young, they can make mistakes. They can't tell good Iraqis from bad Iraqis.'"...

...Sulaiman says he first started to see mistakes, such as the arrival of exile Iraqis slotted into positions of power; they were people who had been away so long that their accents had changed. Violence also began to take root, making it more difficult for Sulaiman to travel from his house in upmarket Mansour neighborhood to his shop elsewhere in Baghdad...

...That disdain is not just reserved for Iraqis and their ineffective politicians. Sulaiman's optimism about the Americans began to deflate with a small incident in late 2004.

He watched as a Humvee rear-ended a car in his district. "The [Iraqi] man got out - he was probably feeding seven kids - his bumper falls off, and his mouth was wide open," says Sulaiman. "The American comes out, and laughs, and says, 'Oh, sorry,' and drives off. Ever since then, I have been disturbed."...

...But Sulaiman's concerns were soon pushed to the limit. While his family of four slept in one room in June 2005, US forces launched an overnight raid. Soldiers fast-roped from helicopters, used explosives to blast open three entrances to the house, and within seconds had their guns trained on Sulaiman.

"They made a mess of the house, a real mess. You couldn't walk because of the glass," says Sulaiman. The soldiers asked for the name of a man he did not know, and then bundled him into a Humvee for questioning. Before he left, Sulaiman told his 26-year-old epileptic son: "Don't worry, they are a bunch of cowards, and your father is a strong man."
When the US troops took off his blindfold at a facility near the airport, they scolded him: "You were talking and cursing, when guns were pointed at you."

"Yes, because I am in my country. You are not in your country," Sulaiman retorted. "I told them: 'I was raised by Americans, they were hospitable. But I have never met any like you.'”

The soldiers eventually realized their mistake, apologized, paid $500 to cover the cost of damage, and showed him a map with his house marked out in red - thanks to a false tip-off, they said, from a neighbor. A final bottle of white table wine, as a goodwill gift, was not enough to change his mind; Sulaiman's $6,000 claim has been filed with the US embassy in Amman.

"If they turned the country into something livable I would forgive them - I would love them!" exclaims Sulaiman. "But from what I see, it is worse and worse."”

---------------------------

The Iraqi brain drain

Jonathan Steele, Guardian. Friday March 24, 2006

“Still ashen-faced six days after escaping death, Dr Ali Faraj pulls his hair aside to display a scar above his left ear. One of Iraq's top cardiologists, he was seeing a patient when a group of kidnappers wearing ski-masks stormed into his Baghdad clinic, knocked his receptionist to the floor and when he emerged to investigate the noise, ordered him to come with them.

To his surprise, they said they were taking him to the Interior Ministry. "I know the minister so I said I would check if it was really necessary. I put out my hand to pick up the phone, but they knocked my arm aside and struck me on the head with a pistol butt. They dragged me to the front gate where a car was waiting," he says, safe now in Jordan...

...The growing insecurity has set off a massive brain drain, as more and more Iraqis slip away from the country, perhaps never to return. While the fall of Saddam Hussein opened the door for an earlier generation of Iraqi exiles to go home, now the flow is going the other way again. Kidnap survivors are the lucky ones. Hundreds of Iraqi professionals are being murdered in what some Iraqis see as a deliberate campaign to destroy the country's best and brightest. The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research says that 89 university professors and senior lecturers have been killed since 2003, and police investigations have led to nothing.

Iraqi academics have compiled a longer list of up to 105 names of assassinated colleagues. The most recent was Professor Ali Muhawesh, the dean of the engineering college at Mustansiriya University, one of Baghdad's two main campuses. He was shot this week.

The rate of killing is increasing. Some 311 teachers have been murdered in the past four months alone, according to the Ministry of Education. It is not only Baghdad that is suffering. The medical college in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq, has lost nine senior staff...

...Dr Azzam Kanbar-Agha, a British-educated surgeon, still makes the journey, though he too escaped a kidnapping last September. "My whole life has changed. My family is shattered. I'm a sociable person. I enjoyed sitting in cafes, meeting friends and talking politics, but that's all over now. It's too insecure in Iraq," he says...

...One family that has strong evidence that the police are involved in hostage-taking are the Hilmis. The father, mother, and four children in their 20s have had to swap their capacious home in a prosperous Baghdad suburb for a small flat in Amman. Ahmed, 21, who was in his last year at university, was with one of his sisters in their father's medical supply store last autumn in Karrada, a busy Baghdad shopping area near the river Tigris. His sister had the safe open in the back room when four men arrived. They displayed official IDs from an anti-terrorist squad. They put handcuffs on Ahmed and marched into the back room where they took $40,000 from the safe. Then they blindfolded him and bundled him into a vehicle for a 15-minute drive.

Ahmed could not identify the place where he was held but says it must have been a government building since the electricity was never cut. He suspects it was the notorious Jadriyah detention centre, run by the Interior Ministry, where the Americans discovered close to 200 people in December whose bodies showed multiple signs of torture.

His family was asked to produce 25 daftar, or notebooks, a slang phrase for a bundle of 100 $100 bills - in other words, $250,000. The amount was too much, but they managed to raise $40,000. Ahmed was lucky. He was only held for five days. He was not mishandled in detention, and his kidnappers accepted the "reduced" amount of $40,000. When the family got the money together, he was dumped back on the street.

The next day, the Hilmis fled after quietly moving suitcases to the homes of relatives. They did not dare tell their neighbours they were leaving. Their house is closed up and their new fear, they say, is that if the Americans hear it is empty, they may smash the door and search it, leaving it open to looters once they go.

Similar stories can be heard from families in rented rooms throughout Amman. By some estimates, there are a million Iraqis in Jordan (compared with 300,000 at the time of Saddam's overthrow). Thousands of others have moved to Syria, Egypt, and the Gulf States.

In one flat I found an elderly gynaecologist and her dentist husband, both with post-graduate qualifications gained in Britain. They left Iraq last year with their four children, all fluent English-speakers with university degrees. Now they are lost to Iraq. "I love my patients. I didn't want to leave them," says the doctor.

The last straw, says her younger son Ahmed Kamal (not his real name), was when his mother had severe heart pains one evening and they could not get her to hospital because of the daily curfew which starts at 8pm. "There are not enough ambulances. So I tried to drive her myself. We stopped at a police station for an escort because I was afraid we would be shot on the way. The police said they were too busy to help, so we had to go home," he says.

With their various degrees - in electrical engineering, chemistry and agronomy - one might think a family like this could be an asset in Jordan and quickly settle in. But every Iraqi complains of Jordan's tough immigration rules, under which they only get tourist entry permits for three days or a week. "They hardly ever give residency permits to Iraqis. They're afraid of competition," says Kamal. "So we have to take work illegally at a quarter of our Iraq salaries. Employers like it that way."

The Jordanian authorities impose a fine of 1.50 dinars (about £1.25) a day for every foreigner who overstays his or her permit. When they leave, the border police count the time since they came in and charge them. As a result, once in Jordan, many Iraqis say they cannot afford to leave. "We're trapped here. We can't work and we can't leave," says a car mechanic from Najaf...

...In another Amman flat, I met Muhammad Taha Yahir, the owner of a mini-market in Mosul, who had arrived in Jordan the previous day. "I decided to leave Iraq a month ago. I kept hoping things would improve, but now it's hopeless….

… He has never received any threats, but has two friends who were killed on successive days last week. They had been kidnapped but their families could not raise the ransom. Both happened to be from Mosul's Christian community. One ran a hardware store, another a shop selling electrical appliances. In the last few months before leaving, Taha Yahir rarely visited his own shop for fear of being abducted. His staff ran everything for him”........
 

Action in the third anniversary of Rachel Corrie's killing


BC Students Stage Die-In On Iraq War Anniversary


Modified Ribbons Distributed Across Boston in Remembrance of Lives Lost in Iraq


Anti-Recruitment Demonstrations Mark Third Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq


Photos, Boston March 18 anti-war protest
 

AIPAC Study -- HARVARD PULLS IT!!!!! ++++POLL: Read [download] the study now before all copies are destroyed. ---

John J. Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy Abstract:
In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.
 

Financial blackmail in play at Harvard: Yesterday’s issue of The New York Sun reported that an “observer” familiar with Harvard said that the University had received calls from “pro-Israel donors” concerned about the KSG paper. One of the calls, the source told The Sun, was from Robert Belfer, a former Enron director who endowed Walt’s professorship when he donated $7.5 million to the Kennedy School’s Center for Science and International Affairs in 1997. ("Lifted" from WhatReallyHappened.com)
 

New York Zionists close down "My name is Rachel Corrie"


Rachel Corrie Memoriam Website


Google: My Name Is Rachel Corrie
 

Christian Science Monitor, Israeli media condemn, discuss report on US-Israel ties: The New York Jewish weekly Forward writes that Jewish organizations in the US, while furious over the paper, are "holding fire in order to avoid generating publicity for their critics." American pro-Israel activists are also fuming, but have also decided to work behind the scenes to counteract the report.

The Jewish Weekly of New York reports that Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is concerned that the report will promote the claim that "Jewish and pro-Israel groups played a major role in pressing for the Iraq war in 2003."

In an editorial, Ha'aretz also calls for a debate on the paper, saying that even with its flaws, "it would be irresponsible to ignore the article's serious and disturbing message."

In an interview published Friday with Forward, Prof. John Mearsheimer alleges that the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and Stephen Walt would never have been able to find an American publisher for their paper.
 

Remi Kanazi, US media bias: Covering Israel & Palestine: On July 18, 2005, 14-year-old Ragheb al-Masri sat in the back of a taxi with his parents at the Abo Holi checkpoint. An Israeli bullet penetrated his back and cracked open his chest. His mother screamed as his body lay lifeless. Have you heard his name? . . . I understand why The New York Times and CNN report the way they do. They are media hacks run by the corporate dollar.
 

Joshua Frank, The Democrats' quandary: War opposition or party allegiance?: Feingold’s fight to restore integrity in Washington (if there ever was such a thing) is hindered by his party allegiance and reluctance to break rank. The same can be said for every other DC Democrat who is willing to criticize Bush, including Rep. John Conyers. At the end of the day Conyers, like Feingold, McKinney and Kucinich -- is still a member of a party that supports the occupation of Iraq and Bush’s war on civil liberties.
 

Michael Carmichael, Islamophobia at Downing Street; Tony Blair's Bipolarity: To date, let it be noted that Blair has not called out in public for the genocidal extermination of the entire Islamic population of the world. Let it also be noted that Adolf Hitler did not publicise his plan for the final solution to what he perceived as the problem posed by the Jews he hated and feared. ... We keenly await Blair's future pronouncements on Israel and Palestine.
 

Irving Wesley Hall, Depleted Uranium For Dummies
 

xymphora, How much is a Palestinian child worth?: From jews sans frontieres, the Israeli government has finally set the official bounty amount for dead Palestinian children. ...
 

Al-Ahram, Blaming the lobby: Unless the Jewish lobby loosens its grip on Washington's foreign policy, the US should expect a change in its standing among Arabs.


NEW RESEARCH PAPER BY TWO DISTINGUISHED PROFESSORS SHOWS HOW THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY MANIPULATES AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY: The paper's three main conclusions are that:
(1) the pro-Israel lobby inside the U.S. has managed to convince American lawmakers, officials, and U.S. public opinion to support Israel "no matter what," even though this support runs counter to America's own national interests;
(2) pro-Israel officials inside the Bush administration - namely, neocons Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser - were behind the push for war with Iraq, and pro-Israel lobbying groups were a driving force in encouraging the Bushites to invade Iraq; and
(3) the pro-Israel lobby actively suppresses American public debate about U.S. Middle East policy by disingenuously accusing everyone who disagrees with their pro-Israel positions of being "anti-Semitic."


HOW ISRAEL CONTROLS WHAT YOU READ
 

An Iraqi Tear, Appeal For Help:Sectarian Cleansing and Coercive Displacement: [ . . . ]
Initial Statistics
The coercive displacement practiced by the ministry of interior, the state-backed militias and foreigners against the people of Nahrawan is on the increase. The number of the Sunni families who have fled their homes is as follows:
Al-Jboor Village, 50 families.
Jabir Hummadi Village, 60 families,
Shakha Village No. 5, 12 families
Shakha Village No. 7, 30 families
Al-Khalisa Village, 50 families
Al-Fursan Village, 60 families
Jasim Ibrahim Al-Battawi Village, 33 families,
Bani Zed Village, 100 families
Al-Mujamma’ Village, 100 families.

The tragedy is mounting. People are deprived of basic needs. The aid workers are helpless. The UN and humanitarian NGOs must act and do the following:
a) Send a Fact Finding Committee of the UN, the Arab League or International Organizations.
b) Send Peacemaking forces to protect the civilians and put an end to genocides, sectarian cleansing and coercive displacement.
c) Control the east borders of Iraq to stop the acts of terrorism perpetrated by foreigners, who have been pouring to Iraq through the Iranian borders and raid and search the villages harbouring them.
d) Launch a relief program by neutral trusted parties.
 

يوم هرولنا باتجاه موكب النائب

شلش العراقي
عندما قدم صدام الى الثورة في شهر شتائي من عام 1978 ، كنا اطفالا وركضنا مع الراكضين نستقبله بالهتافات الشائعة انذاك، وصلنا قطاع عشرين حيث اختاره السيد النائب محطة للقاء اهالي المدينة الحزينة وهم يتدافعون لاستقبال سيادته، لاننا صغار واجسامنا هزيلة، رمتنا الحشود في زاوية بعيدة نراقب هذا الرجل الغريب، الرجل الذي يخاف منه حتى اباؤنا الذين كنا نتصورهم قادرين على قتل الاسود والوحوش والسعالي والطناطل. اكثر شيء لفت انتباهنا نحن مجموعة الاطفال، كان منظر حمايته...

http://daawanajaf.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=61