Free Iraq

Turkish Troops Enter Iraq Seeking Rebels: Supported by air power, Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq on Friday in their first major ground incursion against Kurdish rebel bases in nearly a decade. But Turkey sought to avoid confrontation with U.S.-backed Iraq, saying the guerrillas were its only target.

The offensive, which started late Thursday after aircraft and artillery blasted suspected rebel targets, marked a dramatic escalation in Turkey's fight with the PKK rebel group even though Turkish officials described the operation as limited.

A military officer of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq said on condition of anonymity that several hundred Turkish soldiers had crossed the border. The coalition has satellites as well as drones and other surveillance aircraft at its disposal.
 

Turkish troops launch offensive in northern Iraq: Turkish troops entered northern Iraq to hunt Kurdish separatist rebels after fighter jets struck at their bases, the Turkish army said Friday.

Some 10,000 troops penetrated 10 kilometers (six miles) into the autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq, the NTV news channel said.

The operation started late Thursday when tanks were reported heading for the frontier and came as the region is in the thick of winter with sub-zero temperatures.
 

U.S. troops setting down roots in Mosul
 

Iraq's Kurds Move in on Oil Stronghold Kirkuk
 

British troops executed 20 captives in southern Iraq in 2004, say lawyers
 

Permanent U.S. Army command taking shape in Kuwait: U.S. Army Central is establishing a permanent platform for “full spectrum operations” in 27 countries around southwest Asia and the Middle East, its commander says.

Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace said the Army has diverse capabilities here now but plans to reach a complete level of operational effectiveness by July.

The restructuring, which offers more flexibility for offensive, defensive and stability operations, is a major piece of transformation worldwide, said Lovelace.

The 3rd Army participated in the drive to Baghdad five years ago but was renamed U.S. Army Central in October 2006. Officials opted to keep the old patch as a nod to the 3rd’s rich tradition, which dates to Gen. George Patton.

Among targeted objectives, he said: Helping Kenya deal with volatility in neighboring Somalia, facilitating Patriot missiles in Qatar and Bahrain to discourage attacks from Iran, and assisting Kuwait with plans to start a navy.
 

For news / perspective not in the MSM . . .
 

Iraqi Kurdish troops surround Turkish base: Iraqi Kurdish troops on Thursday encircled Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq and threatened to open fire in the most serious standoff since Turkey threatened late last year to go after guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party sheltering in Iraq.

The standoff began when Turkish troops in tanks and armored vehicles left one of five bases they've had in Iraq since 1997 and moved to control two main roads in Dahuk province, Iraqi officials said.

Kurdish soldiers from the peshmerga, a militia loyal to the Kurdish Regional Government, moved to stop the Turkish troops. For an hour and a half, the two sides faced off before the Turkish soldiers retreated to their base, which is about 27 miles northeast of the city of Dahuk. The peshmerga surrounded the base and remained there late Thursday.

The Turkish troop movement was accompanied by artillery and airstrikes that targeted mountain areas held by rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is known by its initials as the PKK. A spokesman for the peshmerga, Jabar Yawar, said the shelling began at about 11 a.m. and continued past midnight. Two bridges were knocked out over the Great Zab River, he said.

"This is a matter of the sovereignty of Iraq and the unity of Iraq," said Falah Bakir, the head of the foreign relations department of the regional government. "We hope that there will be no clashes – the Kurdistan Regional Government has done enough to show our goodwill to Turkey."

The growing tension between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan has wedged the United States between two allies. Turkey is a NATO member, and the Iraqi Kurds have been among the biggest supporters of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

But the PKK, which has battled Turkey for decades for an autonomous Kurdish region in southern Turkey, also has broad support in northern Iraq, despite being labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.
 

If Kosovo, why not Palestine?
 

9/11 is the Litmus Test: It all comes down to 9/11. Everything that has happened has happened based on a lie. Everyone in government; in the media, in entertainment, in organized religion, in the public eye and in the public who accepts and promotes the official story is either a traitor or a tool. Everyone who does not stand forth and speak truth to power is a coward, a liar and complicit in mass murder. Everyone- everywhere can be measured according to this litmus test.

Measure everyone by their position and their comments or lack of comments concerning this signal event. Measure everything they say in relation to their position on this event. For those of you who know that this is all a lie, I ask you not to go to work on March 19th in protest of this event and all of the events that have followed. I ask the residents of every nation on Earth to take this day off from your usual duties and stand down in protest of the terrible lies and events that cloud our existence and circumscribe our freedoms. Send a message. Stop the machine. See your power and in seeing it, expand it.

Have I got it Right? Talking 9/11 Blues (Play music here)
Lyrics -
let me see if I have got this right
some stone age arabs hi-jacked four commercial flights
then flew them all at high speed into targets on the ground
and none of them were stopped cause, uh... no one was around?
[ . . . ]

Something stinks in Denmark or more likely in D.C.
manipulated by alerts that never came to be
they marched into Afghanistan now the opium can flow
who's the mind behind it all you think you'll ever know

He marched into Iraq cause of some immediate threat
and what about those WMD's? nah they ain't found them yet
Then he marched out with his crotch stuffed to proclaim the victory
soldiers die now every day so you can drive an SUV

He fell of the Sedgeway like a drunken vaudeville clown
and then he picked your pocket while on his way down
he took all your money and then gave it to the rich
he drove the country off the road and right into a ditch

the polls are getting bad and the country is confused
people now are thinking that maybe they got used
but when power is an absolute and keeping it is too
there really is no limit to what these men might do.

And the twin towers burned
and nothing have been learned
and the cloak of darkness fell
over the bodies in the well.
 

'Reformed Muslim Terrorists' Preach Christ to College Kids ( Making all 'them' jes like all 'us'. )
 

The new invasion of Iraq: The incursion is embarrassing for the US, which tried to avert it, because the American military provides intelligence to the Turkish armed forces about the location of the camps of Turkish Kurd fighters. Immediately before the operation began, the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, called President George Bush to warn him.

The US and the Iraqi government are eager to play down the extent of the invasion. Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, a US spokesman for Iraq, said: "We understand [it] is an operation of limited duration to specifically target PKK terrorists in that region." The Iraqi Foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, claimed that only a few hundred Turkish troops were in Iraq.

But since last year Turkey has succeeded, by making limited incursions into Kurdistan, in establishing a de facto right to intervene militarily in Kurdistan whenever it feels like it.

Many Iraqi Kurdish leaders are convinced that a hidden aim of the Turkish attack is to undermine the Kurdish region, which enjoys autonomous rights close to statehood. Ankara has always seen the semi-independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Kurds' claim to the oil city of Kirkuk, as providing a dangerous example for Kurds in Turkey who are also demanding autonomy.
 

Israeli warplanes breach Lebanese airspace
 

Turkey Invades Iraq;
Sadr Renews Freeze;
Bombings in Baghdad, Green Zone
 

Iraqis: 'Surge' Is a Catastrophe : Hundreds died in a series of explosions in Baghdad last month. This was despite the strongest ever security measures taken by the US military, riding the "surge" in security forces and their activities.

The death toll is high, according to the website icasualties.org, which provides reliable numbers of Iraqi civilian and security deaths.

In January this year 485 civilians were killed, according to the website. It says the number is based on news reports, and that "actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers recorded on this site."
 

The Zionist - Kurdish Connection
 

Hamas sources: “An Imam dies due to torture in a Palestinian interrogation facility”
 

Canada, U.S. agree to use each other's troops in civil emergencies ( COMMENT by WRH: "One has to wonder if these so-called "civil emergencies" include the imposition of martial law here in the US, as foreigners will have less angst about being ordered to shoot to kill.

One certainly did not see anything about the signing of this treaty in either most of the major papers, and certainly not on lamestream television news." )
 

What A Stroke Of Luck! As Europeans set about colonizing the planet over the past 500 years, we were extremely lucky: all the people we enslaved/raped/murdered turned out not to value human life like we do. If they HAD valued human life like we do, then we would have had to either stop doing it, or feel bad about ourselves. Fortunately, it turned out neither was necessary. We could carry on with the enslavement/rape/murder, and do it with a light heart.
 

"You've got to admit, we have a great record at finding the people who don't care whether they live or die, and then killing them."
 

Going Insane At Guantanamo
 

Brussels: New court to try Israel for war crimes: Civil court established by human rights organizations to begin operations in Belgium Friday. First issue on the agenda: Israel's alleged war crimes in Lebanon, Gaza
 

The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence: All of a sudden, DC establishment figures care about "international law" when it suits their interests in Kosovo.

News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law.
 

IRAQ:
In Tatters Beneath a Surge of Claims - Unidentified bodies of Iraqis killed by militias continue to appear in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The Iraqi government has issued instructions to all security and health offices not to give out the body count to the media. Dozens of bodies are found every day across Baghdad, residents say. Morgue officials confirm this.
 

Video (43 min), Dahr Jamail - Beyond the Green Zone
 

Oil giants are poised to move into Basra: Brown's business envoy says that investment is the next step in bringing stability to the region
 

A TALE OF TWO EMBASSIES: Serbia has been the recipient of many vile actions from the U.S. In 1999, the country was heavily bombed, leaving as much depleted uranium behind per square mile as there is in Iraq.

The U.S. then negated the election of Slobodan Milosevic as president and gave the opposition $42 million to defeat him. When Milosevic lost the rigged elections, Madeleine Albright said, "It was the best $42 million we have ever spent." Shortly after, Milosevic was sent to the International Court in the Hague to be tried for war crimes. After years of defending himself, speculation was that he would be acquitted. However, just before the final verdict, he died of poisoning. The U.S. said he poisoned himself. This is highly improbable knowing that he would be a free man in the near future.

The U.S. has done the same with Serbia that it did with Iraq: it implemented a stooge government. But, even the U.S. friends in power in Serbia did not like the U.S. pushing through the independence of a part of Serbia called Kosovo. The Serbs called "foul." The U.S. said, "tough shit."

A few day ago, Serbian protestors torched part of the U.S. embassy in Belgrade. The U.S. was not happy and gave the Serbian government, even those who kiss the U.S. backside, an unusually stern warning.

If only these stooges would realize that the U.S. will turn on them at any given time. It happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once their appointed leaders decided to grow a backbone and criticize the U.S., they were both in Washington within 24 hours, reading prepared statements in English to the world declaring their thanks to the U.S.

Despite all the news about the current burning of the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, few people have mentioned the attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. U.S. bombs destroyed the building and killed innocent civilians. The outcome was much more dire than that of the current damaging of the U.S. embassy.
 

Israel braces for invasion: As gas ran out over the weekend in Gaza again, Haaretz reported fears amongst the Israeli military establishment of a mass civil protest, this towards Gaza's border with Israel.

The Army apparently "beefed up troops along the border with Gaza, fearing thousands of Palestinians may march on the border in protest Israel's economic sanctions."

Many people have been calling for such a mass march, seeing it as the most effective way to break the blockade and draw global attention to the plight of Gaza.
 

The Israel Agenda 2008: The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv’s tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight. The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state’s political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of ‘survival’ and ‘existential threats’. The key postulate of Israeli Middle East policy is to destroy or intimidate the principle adversaries of its Zionization of Palestine and its expansionist Middle East policy. ...

The second task of the ZPC in pursuit of Israel’s agenda is to ensure no major political candidate debates or questions Israeli genocidal policies toward the Palestinians and its military ambitions in the Middle East. ...

The third task of the ZPC is to use their strategic positions in the White House, Treasury, Pentagon and State Department to undermine Iran’s economy, politically isolate it and provoke internal and external confrontations.
 

Obama and the Jews
( Useful info: The author, Marc Zell has as his law partner one Douglas Feith. Perhaps Obama really wouldn't be "good for Israel". )
 

OBAMA BASHING REACHES NEW LOW (Nice photo ops!)
 

Video (2 min), The CIA Truth about Kos - Daily Kos
 

UK: Iraq minutes 'should be released'
 

Russia abides by international law in its support for Serbia - FM
 

Who will end the American Empire and its neocon crazies before they end the world?
 

Turkish warplanes pound Kurdish rebels in Iraq
 

Gazans form 'human chain' to protest Israeli blockade
 

Palestinians should seek reparations from Germany
 

False Flag Prospects, 2008 -- Top Three US Target Cities (Answer: Houston, Chicago & Portland)
 

The Oil factor in Kosovo independence
 

Fortunes of War: Death and Chaos No Problem for Profit-Seekers in Iraq
 

- Facebook- the CIA conspiracy

- CIA 'launches Facebook for spies'

- And now, ladies & gentlemen: Canada tells troops not to post Facebook info; could prompt attacks by groups such as Al Qaeda
 

Jews to sue US Gov’t for $40 billion: Peter Wolz, who describes himself as an attorney for Jewish survivors of Auschwitz and their heirs, is appealing for Hungarian victims of the death camps and their heirs to contact him over a possible class action.

... The class action concerns the failure of the Allies to bomb the railway bridges between Hungary and Auschwitz during the Second World War. ...
---------------------------------

Interesting, suing the U.S. for places NOT bombed. HERE's a list of some of the things that have been keeping us busy since WWII. Lots of "class action" material -

1946 Iran Troops deployed in northern province.
1946-1949 China Major US army presence of about 100,000 troops, fighting, training and advising local combatants.
1947-1949 Greece US forces wage a 3-year counterinsurgency campaign.
1948 Italy Heavy CIA involvement in national elections.
1948-1954 Philippines Commando operations, "secret" CIA war.
1950-1953 Korea Major forces engaged in war in Korean peninsula.
1953 Iran CIA overthrows government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Read More
1954 Vietnam Financial and materiel support for colonial French military operations, leads eventually to direct US military involvement.
1954 Guatemala CIA overthrows the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.
1958 Lebanon US marines and army units totaling 14,000 land.
1958 Panama Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.
1959 Haiti Marines land.
1960 Congo CIA-backed overthrow and assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
1960-1964 Vietnam Gradual introduction of military advisors and special forces.
1961 Cuba CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
1962 Cuba Nuclear threat and naval blockade.
1962 Laos CIA-backed military coup.
1963 Ecuador CIA backs military overthrow of President Jose Maria Valesco Ibarra.
1964 Panama Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.
1964 Brazil CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government of Joao Goulart and Gen. Castello Branco takes power. Read More
1965-1975 Vietnam Large commitment of military forces, including air, naval and ground units numbering up to 500,000+ troops. Full-scale war, lasting for ten years.
1965 Indonesia CIA-backed army coup overthrows President Sukarno and brings Gen. Suharto to power.
1965 Congo CIA backed military coup overthrows President Joseph Kasavubu and brings Joseph Mobutu to power.
1965 Dominican Republic 23,000 troops land.
1965-1973 Laos Bombing campaign begin, lasting eight years.
1966 Ghana CIA-backed military coup ousts President Kwame Nkrumah.
1966-1967 Guatemala Extensive counter-insurgency operation.
1969-1975 Cambodia CIA supports military coup against Prince Sihanouk, bringing Lon Nol to power. Intensive bombing for seven years along border with Vietnam.
1970 Oman Counter-insurgency operation, including coordination with Iranian marine invasion.
1971-1973 Laos Invasion by US and South Vietnames forces.
1973 Chile CIA-backed military coup ousts government of President Salvador Allende. Gen. Augusto Pinochet comes to power.
1975 Cambodia Marines land, engage in combat with government forces.
1976-1992 Angola Military and CIA operations.
1980 Iran Special operations units land in Iranian desert. Helicopter malfunction leads to aborting of planned raid.
1981 Libya Naval jets shoot down two Libyan jets in maneuvers over the Mediterranean.
1981-1992 El Salvador CIA and special forces begin a long counterinsurgency campaign.
1981-1990 Nicaragua CIA directs exile "Contra" operations. US air units drop sea mines in harbors.
1982-1984 Lebanon Marines land and naval forces fire on local combatants.
1983 Grenada Military forces invade Grenada.
1983-1989 Honduras Large program of military assistance aimed at conflict in Nicaragua.
1984 Iran Two Iranian jets shot down over the Persian Gulf.
1986 Libya US aircraft bomb the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including direct strikes at the official residence of President Muamar al Qadaffi.
1986 Bolivia Special Forces units engage in counter-insurgency.
1987-1988 Iran Naval forces block Iranian shipping. Civilian airliner shot down by missile cruiser.
1989 Libya Naval aircraft shoot down two Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra.
1989 Philippines CIA and Special Forces involved in counterinsurgency.
1989-1990 Panama 27,000 troops as well as naval and air power used to overthrow government of President Noriega.
1990 Liberia Troops deployed.
1990-1991 Iraq Major military operation, including naval blockade, air strikes; large number of troops attack Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait.
1991-2003 Iraq Control of Iraqi airspace in north and south of the country with periodic attacks on air and ground targets.
1991 Haiti CIA-backed military coup ousts President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
1992-1994 Somalia Special operations forces intervene.
1992-1994 Yugoslavia Major role in NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
1993-1995 Bosnia Active military involvement with air and ground forces.
1994-1996 Haiti Troops depose military rulers and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office.
1995 Croatia Krajina Serb airfields attacked.
1996-1997 Zaire (Congo) Marines involved in operations in eastern region of the country.
1997 Liberia Troops deployed.
1998 Sudan Air strikes destroy country's major pharmaceutical plant.
1998 Afghanistan Attack on targets in the country.
1998 Iraq Four days of intensive air and missile strikes.
1999 Yugoslavia Major involvement in NATO air strikes.
2001 Macedonia NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.
2001 Afghanistan Air attacks and ground operations oust Taliban government and install a new regime.
2003 Iraq Invasion with large ground, air and naval forces ousts government of Saddam Hussein and establishes new government.
2003-present Iraq Occupation force of 150,000 troops in protracted counter-insurgency war
2004 Haiti Marines land. CIA-backed forces overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
 

Wayne Madsen Report (entire) -
February 26, 2008 -- Behind the media smoke screen in the Middle East: Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell tipped his hand just a bit when he recently opined that Syria may have been responsible for the February 12 car bombing in Damascus of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. McConnell, according to WMR's Middle East sources, provided only a small part of the intelligence cooperation that actually occurs in the Middle East between the Syrians, Iranians, Israelis, and Americans.

It is becoming apparent that the head of Syrian military intelligence, Assef Shawkat, and a group of his operatives in Syria and Lebanon have been carrying out a number of car bombings, including that of Mughniyeh and Lebanese politicians, in order to provide "plausible deniability" and a firewall between Syria and the Israelis and Americans. Significantly, Shawkat is the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

WMR's sources report that a faction within the Iranian military decided to help the Shawkat faction take out Mughniyeh in order to avoid an outbreak of war between Hezbollah and Israel in south Lebanon and a possible concurrent "shock and awe" US air strike on Iran. Hezbollah's operational command maintains close links with the Iranian embassies in Syria and Lebanon. In addition, Hezbollah's Special Security Apparatus is provided with weapons, military training, and money by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Al Qods force of the IRGC.

Shawkat has maintained close ties with the CIA providing the agency with extraordinary rendition prisons and torture rooms for individuals grabbed by CIA operatives around the world, including Canadian citizen Mahar Arar, a native of Syria. In September 2006, a Canadian Commission of Inquiry concluded that Arar, who was kidnapped while transiting JFK Airport in New York, was tortured by Syrian military intelligence. The report stated that Shawkat's service tortured Arar "while interrogating him during the period he was held incommunicado at the SMI’s [Syrian Military Intelligence's] Palestine Branch facility.”

After the car bomb hit on Mughniyeh in Damascus, Shawkat's intelligence operatives ensured that the scene of the bombing was completely cleansed by first light the next morning. The only signs that the bombing had occurred were some black marks on the street and some minor damage to adjacent walls.

What is lost on the Western media is that there are covert channels between Israeli, Syrian, and Iranian intelligence. The Secretary of the conservative Islamic Coalition Society and close friend of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei is Habibollah Asgaroladi, a radical Muslim who rejected attempts by former President Mohamad Khatami to improve relations with the United States. Khatami's entreaties were also rejected by the neocons in the George W. Bush administration.

Asgaroladi is a member of the Expediency Council, an influential advisory group in the country chaired by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who was the main Iranian interlocutor between the Americans and Israelis in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s. More noteworthy is the fact that Asgaroladi, counted as one of Iran's richest men, converted to Islam from Judaism during the time of the Shah's reign.

According to WMR's Iranian sources, beyond his radical rhetoric, Asgaroladi serves as an important back channel to Israel, especially in matters of trade matters. Asgaroladi's position in Iran has been likened by WMR's Middle East sources to the large number of Turkish leaders whose families converted from Judaism to Islam before and after the Turkish secular revolution of Kemal Ataturk. In fact, knowledgeable Turkish sources report that Ataturk, himself, was one such convert. These Turkish leaders provide much of the support for close Turkish-Israeli relations, including military and intelligence links.

Our Middle East sources report that the Syrians, Israelis, and Iranians prefer that U.S. intelligence remain largely ignorant of the covert and subtle links between Israel, the minority Alawite Muslim regime in Damascus, and the mullahs in Tehran. However, it is just that ignorance by the United States that could propel America into a disastrous military action in Iran.
 

Obama (more or less in his own words)
 

IOF troops kidnap 49 Palestinians most of them children in Beit Hanun
 

A Nightmare World of Torture and Prison Guard Suicides: Confessions of a Gitmo Guard
 

Pentagon Official Who Spoke of Rigging Gitmo Trials Resigns
 

Did the Secret Service set up Barack Obama for assassination?
 

The Arab-Israeli Conflict - Vienna: 26 February 1930: Letter to the Keren Hajessod (Dr. Chaim Koffler) by Dr. Sigmund Freud: ... I do not think that Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of the wealthy. I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.
 

Video (1 hr 13 min), German "Unter Falscher Flagge" with English subtitles
 

Obama defiantly announces his candidacy for the NMWFYJP: Barack Obama has semi-publicly ('off the record', but with a transcript made available by his campaign!) announced (found via here) that he is running as a candidate for the No More Wars For the Jews Party (an announcement made in front of an Jewish audience in Cleveland). Of course, he had to reveal his candidacy in code, as the More Wars For the Jews Party, the party of McCain and Clinton, doesn't officially exist, and thus the No More Wars For the Jews Party can't exist either. For similar reasons, watch for the announcement to be ignored by the mainstream American media. [ . . . ]
(I think I've just now had to change my position. And I say, "Brave man.")