Free Iraq

Iraq crash exacts heavy toll from U.S.: Two colonels, one lieutenant colonel and two command sergeants major were among the 12 soldiers killed last weekend in a Black Hawk helicopter crash northeast of Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

It appeared to be the largest number of key officers and command sergeants killed in a single incident during since the Iraq war started nearly four years ago.

Ten of the dead were members of the National Guard, making it the deadliest single combat incident for the Guard since at least the Korean War ...
 

RECALL: 9/11 started everything :

- Christopher Bollyn, The Israeli Prime Minister's Connection to 9/11

- Christopher Bollyn, 9/11 — Who Put Thermate in the World Trade Center? If Arab terrorists did not pre-position Thermate in the secure computer rooms and throughout the Twin Towers and WTC 7, who did?

- CNN Interviews Christopher Bollyn, 9/11 Researcher: The CNN interviewers were very interested in knowing why Bollyn did not believe the official version. They were also keenly interested in why he thinks agents of the state of Israel were involved in the terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
 

Video, Our Own Weapon of Mass Destruction: This disturbing documentary by former “60 Minutes” producer Barry Lando chronicles the horror that 13 years of U.S.-backed sanctions wrought on Iraq, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands—many of them children.
 

('Democracy of None')
Chris Floyd, Death and Dishonor: Bush's New Assassination Order:
Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq (WP) - The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort...

Three officials said that about 150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq at any given time. There is no evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, intelligence officials said...The new "kill or capture" program was authorized by President Bush in a meeting of his most senior advisers last fall.

... The only new wrinkle here is the specific authority given to the U.S. military to carry out these "extrajudicial" assassinations -- a license to kill that had hitherto been reserved for the security organs.

For assassination -- Phoenix-program style -- is definitely what we're talking about here. ...

It is certain that any Iranian "agent" connected to the Tehran government is in Iraq with the full knowledge of the "sovereign" Iraqi government and/or the "legitimate" political factions in that government -- the same government which Bush himself has empowered and supports, the government for which more than 3,000 Americans and 600,000 Iraqi civilians have given their lives to create. The factions controlling the Bush-backed Iraqi government openly declare their friendship with Iran -- naturally so, as many of these groups were formed, sustained, trained and armed by the Iranian government during their years in exile.

Iraq's top leaders travel to Tehran, seeking aid, trade and closer ties between the governments. It is the clear, demonstrable, undeniable wish of the "sovereign" Iraqi government to welcome the assistance of the Iranian government. How then is it "illegitimate" for Iranian agents to be operating in Iraq? ...

What Bush has done with this order is to turn the American military into his own private death squad. It is an act of breathtaking dishonor, of unspeakable moral filth. That this pathetic little man and the jumped-up thugs around him – especially the hulking, smirking, lying coward Dick Cheney – are allowed to show their faces among civilized people, much less exercise power over a mighty nation, remains an unfathomable mystery...and a source of deep shame for all Americans.
 

Clinton L. Cox, Gangsters for Capitalism: Although benign U.S. intentions are an article of faith among many Americans, theft, murder and oppression have always been central to U.S. policies and practices in the non-white world. George Bush’s crusade for ‘democracy’ is yet another chapter in the shameful saga.

The history of the U.S. destruction of democracy would be tragic enough if it had stopped at this country's actions in Haiti and Latin America. Or even if it had stopped with the 1953 coup against the prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, because he had nationalized his country's oil industry and was going to make sure most of the profits went to the Iranian people rather than to multinational oil corporations. His overthrow was engineered by Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, thus continuing the family tradition of subverting democracy and spreading imperialism.

But the most massive destruction of democracy by the United States is being done in the name of spreading democracy in the Middle East: its invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the measures it has taken to control Iraq's oil. One consultant – in referring to the deposits in Iraq's vast Western desert – called them the "Holy Grail" of the oil industry, a view echoed by most big oil executives.

U.S. oil companies have said that passage of a new Iraqi oil law is even more important than security concerns in deciding when they will move into Iraq. Many people, therefore, see the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq as necessary both to pressure Iraqi lawmakers to pass the new law, and to try and guarantee security for the oil companies.
 

Video (3 min.), Battle For Haifa Street: Why does CBS refuses to show U.S. television audiences this report exposing the slaughter and destruction of civil life in Baghdad?
 

Ali Abunimah, Leaked Israeli document gives frightening glimpse of apartheid: President Jimmy Carter angered Israel and its friends by describing "the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank."

Now, The Electronic Intifada has obtained an Israeli Ministry of Defense Powerpoint presentation which provides a frightening glimpse into the mindset of the bureaucracy of apartheid.

... [T]he Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported on January 22, the Israeli army "admitted on Sunday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West Bank villages did not actually exist."

What does exist, and is plain for all the world to see, is a horrifying regime of totalitarian control of millions of Palestinians who remain prisoners of Israel's racist system and the army and settler militias that enforce it.

Download the presentation [PDF, 4.4 MB]
 

US Troops died after, not in, sneak attack


Bush: U.S. troops may protect selves from Iranians (Who will protect 'selves' from Bush?)
 

A Tiny Revolution, Dominion Over The World; Also, Be A Good Person - If you haven't yet, I hereby assign you to read Arthur Silber's on-going series "Dominion Over the World":
Part I: "Iraq is the Democrats' War, Too"
Part II: "Why the Stories We Tell Matter So Much"
Part III: "The Open Door to Worldwide Hegemony"
Part IV: "A 'Splendid People' Set Out for Empire"
Part V: "A Global Empire of Bases"
 

Cheney: Senate Resolution "Won't Stop Us" (No surprises here.)
 

ElBaradei warns on Iran nuclear facilities attack
 

War of words halts Iraqi Parliament: The parliamentary clash took place as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presented his arguments in favor of the US-backed security plan he called a Strategy to Impose the Law. The plan would leave no safe havens for militants, regardless of religious or political affiliations, he told lawmakers.
 

The "Wipe Israel Off The Map" Hoax
 

Loose Change on Front page of London Guardian Film Supplement
 

Video (50 min.), Illuminati: The Hidden Agenda for World Government
 

Video (1 hr. 26 min.), Loose Change
 

Iraq in Talks With Chevron, Exxon: In an interview Thursday, Iraq's minister for industry and minerals Fowzi Hariri said the discussions with Chevron and Exxon began this week in Washington and are at an early stage.

Hariri said Iraq was also in discussions with San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. over engineering contracts, but did not elaborate. The company recently said it was leaving Iraq after suffering through a spree of violence that killed 52 workers. The departure of the company served as another sobering reminder of how the carnage in Iraq has scrambled the United States' ambitions to rebuild the country.
 

Sami Moubayed, Lebanon: Shadow of civil war looms again
 

Zia Mian, The Three US Armies in Iraq; Grunts, Contractors and Laborers: America's three armies in Iraq exceed a quarter of a million. (emphasis added) It is a commitment of people and money that is comparable to the Vietnam war. But it has not proved to be enough. The experience of Vietnam showed that adding more troops (or changing the local leadership, which may be the next US policy initiative in Iraq) cannot rescue a doomed mission. America's imperial adventure in Iraq has failed. The choice is now whether the United States will accept defeat and withdraw quickly or, as in Vietnam, become more ruthless, turn against the very people it once claimed to protect, and seek to widen the war. As the violence grows, politics will fall silent and hasten an end that is becoming more pitiless, bloody, and bitter.
 

Palestinian villagers helpless in face of settlers' land grab: For more than 20 years this small agricultural area has served as an example of how Israeli military occupation and right-wing Jewish settlement have ground away at the lives of Palestinian civilians.
 

Democracy is what it's about. George & Nancy, et al, do you get the picture?
Antiwar protesters target Congress: Organizers expect more than 300,000 people to converge in Washington this weekend seeking more than resolutions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the main political target. War protesters want something tougher than nonbinding resolutions opposing the "surge" in additional US forces. Some want hearings on the controversial basis for the war itself, perhaps leading to the impeachment of President Bush.

It's not just the nation's capital, where busloads of people from at least 30 states are headed to make their voices heard.

Around the country, lawmakers' district offices are feeling the heat as well through Quakers' peaceful "vigils" and the occasional act of civil disobedience. In one recent case, the Episcopal bishop of northern California was arrested for blocking the door of the federal office building in San Francisco. ...
 

"We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them"