Free Iraq

DECEPTION AND DEFIANCE FROM U.S. ADMINISTRATION, NOT SADDAM HUSSEIN
 

Moqtada al-Sadr orders Iraq PM out of Basra
 

The Secret American-Iranian Security Deal In Iraq: How it connects to McCain’s visit to Israel
 

US Moves Towards Engaging Iran
 

US airstrike kills 5, including Iraqi judge
 

Latest violence leaves 55 dead across Iraq
 

Olmert: We still opt for Iran attack
 

Anti-war Campaigners Have To Change Electoral Tactics
 

Fever Named After Blackwater: Iraqi doctors in al-Anbar province warn of a new disease they call "Blackwater" that threatens the lives of thousands. The disease is named after Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. mercenary company operating in Iraq.

"This disease is a severe form of malarial infection caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which is considered the worst type of malarial infection," Dr. Ali Hakki from Fallujah told IPS. "It is one of the complications of that infection, and not the ordinary picture of the disease. Because of its frequent and severe complications, such as Blackwater fever, and its resistance to treatment, P. falciparum can cause death within 24 hours."

What Iraqis now call Blackwater fever is really a well-known medical condition, and while it has nothing to do with Blackwater Worldwide, Iraqis in al-Anbar province have decided to make the connection between the disease and the lethal U.S.-based company which has been responsible for the death of countless Iraqis.

The deadly disease, never before seen in Iraq on at least this scale, seems to be spreading across the country. And Iraq lacks medicines, hospitals, and doctors to lead a campaign to fight the disease.

"We informed the ministry of the disease, but it seems that they are not in a mood to listen," a doctor from the al-Anbar Health Office in Ramadi told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are making personal contacts with NGOs in an attempt to get the necessary medicines."

The three doctors who spoke to IPS in Fallujah and in Ramadi in al-Anbar province that lies west of Baghdad, seemed sure that the Iraqi government would do little to face the plague.

"They have not even made any announcement so that people can take precautions," one of the doctors from Fallujah told IPS.

The doctor said a patient usually suffers three stages of malarial infection. "First is the cold stage where the patient will have chills and shaking, the second is the hot stage when fever takes over, and the third is the sweating stage.
 

$36+ Billion Dollars to Develop Biological Weapons: At the A&M University Bio-Weapons Lab in College Station Texas, an investigation six weeks after the Bio lab was flooded revealed open vials, numerous flaws in oversight, working conditions, and security, including missing vials of select agents, unauthorized research with recombinant DNA, access to the lab by unauthorized personnel, and exposures of lab workers to bacteria that cause brucellosis and Q fever that went unreported to the CDC. On April 20, 2007 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a cease-and-desist order for Texas A&M's work with the Brucella bacterium. On June 30, the order was expanded to include all work with select agents and toxins. The CDC then conducted a five-day comprehensive inspection of the A&M labs and issued a report on August 31, 2007 revealing the complete lack of control at this Bio-Weapons Facility. The lab had been conducting research into so-called "select agents," i.e. biological agents that the government thinks can be turned into biological weapons. The university's efforts are part of a multi billion federal program to develop vaccines, the key to Biological Weapons Development.

Developing Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction is a prime objective of our insane government. As the world's foremost terrorist Nation, the Federal government is massively stepping up to develop Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Bush Administration has thrown about $36 Billion on the table and initiated a multiagency feeding frenzy to get part of this $36 Billion to build Biological Weapons Development facilities across the country.

As frightening, biologists working on these programs are mysteriously dropping like flies. The mad scientists are turning up dead from 'suicides', 'car accidents', 'murder', 'hit and runs'. ...

Many observers and experts . . . are speculating that the New World Order Oligarchy are preparing to release killer plagues on the earth. Biologists developing these weapons are naturally risks for information leaking out to the public. ...
 

Spokesman for Baghdad security plan abducted
 

Bush: Iraq violence is a 'very positive moment'
 

Shattering a 'national mythology': According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.

In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. ...

"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."

If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?

"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. ...

"In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I and my children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a more egalitarian situation - I will have done my bit.

"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it."
 

US Document Confirms Iraq Dungeon: A classified memo written by the top U.S. military officer in western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic “minimal levels of hygiene for human beings.”

“The conditions in these jails are so bad that I think we need to do the right thing in terms of caring for the prisoners even with our own dollars, or release them,” says the memo, written in late February by Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S forces in western Iraq.

The classified document, leaked to the Web site Wikileaks where whistleblowers can "reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations," was authenticated by the organization and has not been challenged by the U.S. military when asked about it.

The memo contains other shocking revelations about conditions at the jail, including a massive shortage of food and water. The prison is said to be run by Iraqi officials. U.S. Marines oversee operation of the facility.
 

Rabbi: Hang Arab children from trees
 

Two-Front War: Troops In Iraq For Surge May Be Needed In Afghanistan
 

Gunmen Blow Up Another Oil Pipeline in Southern Iraq
 

Sadr Offensive Shows Failure of Petraeus Strategy (MSM: 'We're winning!')
 

(Oops. Not 'winning'?)
Military Tells Bush of Troop Strains
 

Spencer Ackerman On Bush Plans For Permanent Occupation: If you don't know the background, here's what's been happening up to now:

U.S. troops currently operate in Iraq under a UN Security Council mandate. The mandate has been renewed annually since 2004. It gives coalition troops the legal authority to use force there.

A majority of the Iraqi parliament wants the US to leave Iraq, and for several years has been trying to prevent the mandate from being renewed unless it includes a specific timeframe for us to depart.

The executive branch of the Iraqi government (ie, Prime Minister Maliki and friends) wants the US to stay indefinitely. That's because we want to stay, and Maliki is our puppet. Maliki therefore successfully got the UN to renew the mandate at the end of 2007, even though the Iraqi parliament opposed it and, under the Iraqi constitution, must approve all treaties. Maliki is exactly like Bush in this way; the legislative branch tries to assert its constitutional rights, and Maliki tells them: fuck you.

The mandate is now set to expire again at the end of this year. It would be near-impossible for Maliki and Bush to get another year's extension, because the Iraqi parliament has now gotten its act together. And even if it could be extended, it's undesirable from the administration's perspective, because it doesn't tie the hands of the next president.

Thus, Bush is attempting to create a bilateral "agreement" with Iraq via Maliki. It won't be called a treaty, because as noted that would require the Iraqi parliament to approve it; even worse, under the US constitution, it would require the two-thirds approval of the US Senate.

So what the administration tried to do was quietly institute this accord between itself and Maliki (essentially between itself and itself), and write it so it was a treaty in all but name, giving the US the right to "protect" the Iraqi government from foreign and domestic threats.

However, Congress has actually been doing its job and pushing back on this—holding hearings, asking questions—and the administration has been somewhat stymied. That's where Ackerman picks up the story.
 

You Tend to Forget: Cassandra Was Right
 

Soldier Suicides: veterans are killing themselves in record numbers
 

Areas of Baghdad fall to militias as Iraqi Army falters in Basra
 

Baghdad under curfew amid clashes
 

Thousands in Baghdad Protest Basra Assault
 

Jordan MPs Want End to Peace Treaty With Tel Aviv: The draft gave several reasons for scrapping the treaty, including that Israel “does not honor the agreement and is still a threat to Jordan.” It said the Jewish state “has committed premeditated crimes in Jordan, and genocide in Palestine.”
 

US jets drop bombs in Basra
 

Truth In War Is Always Subversive
 

Frontline: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late: Frontline’s “Bush’s War” on PBS Monday and Tuesday evening was a nicely put-together rehash of the top players’ trickery that led to the attack on Iraq, together with the power-grabbing, back-stabbing, and limitless incompetence of the occupation.

Except for an inside-the-beltway tidbit here and there—for example, about how the pitiable secretary of state Colin Powell had to suffer so many indignities at the hands of other type-A hard chargers, Frontline added little to the discussion. Notably missing was any allusion to the unconscionable role the Fourth Estate adopted as indiscriminate cheerleader for the home team; nor was there any mention that the invasion was a serious violation of international law. ...

... Someone not already aware of how our media has become a tool of the Bush administration might have been shocked at how Frontline could have missed one of President George W. Bush’s most telling “signing statements.” Underneath the recent Defense Authorization Act, he wrote that he did not feel bound by the law’s explicit prohibition against using the funding:

“(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or

“(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”
 

In Iraq, Was I a Torturer? The prisons in Iraq stink. Ask any guard or interrogator and they'll tell you it's a smell they'll never forget: sweat, fear and rot. On the base where Ben Allbright served from May to September 2003, a small outfit named Tiger in western Iraq, water was especially scarce; Ben would rig a hose to a water bottle in a feeble attempt to shower. He and the other Army reservists tried mopping the floors, but the cheap solvents only added a chemical note to the stench. During the day, when the temperature was in the triple digits, the smell fermented.

It got even hotter in the Conex container, the kind you see on top of 18-wheelers, where Ben kept his prisoners. Not uncommonly the thermometer inside read 135, even 145 degrees. The Conex box was the first stop for all prisoners brought to the base, most of them Iraqis swept up during mass raids. Ben kept them blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties, without food or sleep, for up to 48 hours at a time. He made them stand in awkward positions, so that they could not rest their heads against the wall. Sometimes he blared loud music, such as Ozzy or AC/DC, blew air horns, banged on the container, or shouted. "Whatever it took to make sure they'd stay awake," he explains.

When he was first ordered to soften up detainees, "it didn't seem so weird," Ben says; nothing in the war zone was normal. "You don't think about what you're doing until later." He was asked to stand in on dozens of interrogations to help intimidate the subject: one more body, one more gun. The small room was usually crowded with guards, military intelligence officers, and OGAs. They were told to wear T-shirts, not uniforms that would signal their rank. Under the single bulb, the interrogator would loom above a prisoner seated in a child-size chair. Sometimes the room suddenly went dark and strobe lights flashed on. Other times the soldiers would bang pots and pans in the detainee's face, blare loud music, blast air horns and sirens. The sounds were meant to disorient, but also to mask the screams. More than half the time, even if they were cooperative, the detainees were beaten, kicked out of their chairs, punched in the windpipe or gut, pulled by the ears -- blows that wouldn't leave lasting marks. Occasionally things got out of hand, but with their medical training, the military intelligence officers could stitch up or bandage injuries, avoiding a call to the medics and an entry in the logbooks that the Red Cross could read.
 

Operation Permanent Presence: The Civil War "Surge" in Iraq: The current esclation of the Iraqi civil war -- first in Basra and now all across the occupied land -- seems to be a perfect dovetailing of the complementary but not identical strategic needs of the Bush Administration and its client government in Baghdad. The regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hoping to destroy or cripple -- or outlaw -- its principal political rival in the south before elections later this year. The Bush regime -- which is intimately involved in every step of the Basra operations, despite its rote denials -- is trying to keep the war boiling on a high simmer. This is the only option it has left to achieve its primary war aim: a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Bush (and the ever-compliant press) portray the operation as an attempt to show that the Iraqis can handle their own security problems. A successful demonstration of this in Basra would then hasten the withdrawal of (some) U.S. troops -- so the story goes. But in fact, the operation seems expressly designed to prove the opposite point: that the Iraqi government can't possibly control its own country, and thus a major U.S. presence is still needed.

... [G]iven the demonstrated gutlessness of Obama, Clinton and the Democrats on the war in Iraq, it is plain that this abomination will go on and on. The only possible move that could even potentially defuse the situation at this point is the total withdrawal of American forces. This could, perhaps, compel the various Iraqi factions to come to some accomodation. It is unlikely that such an accomodation would be reached without bloodshed; but blood is being shed copiously now. And as along as the American presence remains, as an artificial, alien -- and ever-aggravating -- factor, skewing the playing field, taking sides, killing people, and serving as a focus and fomenter of nationalist rage (and a handy pretext for avoiding accomodation), the situation will only grow worse. And certainly no other possible resolution -- internal negotiation, a UN or pan-Arab peacekeeping force, etc. -- will ever be possible as long as American forces remain in Iraq.
 

THERE WILL BE NO MUSIC AT ISRAEL’S 60th…..
 

Palestine Is Still The Issue
 

Winter Soldier 2008: A Marine Mom’s Eyewitness Account of the Testimony: Watching and listening to the testimony made me very ill. Here were these young men and women, handsomely dressed, some wearing medals, talking about how they shot civilians who were holding nothing more threatening than a cell phone, groceries, a shovel, a white flag, or a pair of binoculars. Anyone deemed suspicious by the particular soldier or Marine on watch was fair game, subject to the orders, “Take ‘em out!” The Rules of Engagement, as stated by Garrett Rapenhagen were “a joke and disgrace, and ever changing.”

Members on the panel recounted how, when they were bored, they blew up dogs and other animals to keep themselves entertained. All too well I had heard these stories, which gave me the creeps more than anything else. I also heard the testimony of former Cpl. Matt Childers, who said that after American soldiers had already beaten and starved detainees in their custody, one of them removed a hat from one of the detainees’ heads and smeared it with his own feces, before feeding it to one of the prisoners who was so hungry that he actually attempted to eat it.

(With horror, revulsion and reluctance do I make these postings.)
 

Britain admits its troops abused Iraqi prisoners
 

Bush: Iraq is returning to normal (Absolutely no printable comment here)
 

Stalled assault on Basra exposes the Iraqi government's shaky authority
 

US-led forces bomb Shiite fighters as PM offers cash
 

U.S. forces drawn deeper into Iraq crackdown
 

McCain: Israel would suffer in Iraq pullout (And your point is . . . ?)
 

Wayne Madsen Report (entire) -
March 28-30, 2008 -- Innocent man to describe Guantanamo torture on 60 Minutes: IN HIS FIRST U.S. TELEVISION INTERVIEW, FORMER TERROR DETAINEE SAYS AMERICANS HELD HIM IN GUANTANAMO FORYEARS DESPITE EVIDENCE OF HIS INNOCENCE – “60 MINUTES” SUNDAY

A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways – including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television in a 60 MINUTES interview to be broadcast on Sunday, March 30 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam, and wound up in Pakistani police custody. It was three months after 9/11, and Kurnaz says the U.S. was offering bounties for suspicious foreigners. Kurnaz says he was “sold” to the Americans for $3,000 and brought to Kandahar, Afghanistan as terrorist suspect. He claims American troops tortured him in Afghanistan by holding his head underwater, administering electric shocks to the soles of his feet, and hanging him suspended from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar where he was kept alive by doctors. “Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down and the doctor came,” he recalls. “He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart and when he said ‘okay’ then they pulled me back up,” he tells Pelley.

The Pentagon refused to comment on the allegations. “Doesn’t matter whatever they will say. The truth will not change,” says Kurnaz.

Kurnaz says he was questioned in Afghanistan about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He answered truthfully, he says, and told them repeatedly to call the German government and verify who he was. But they continued to torture him, he says. “They used to beat me when my head was underwater…they beat me into my stomach….I had to inhale the water,” he tells Pelley.

“It's dark inside. No lights. And they can punish you in isolation… by coldness or by the heat. They have special air conditioners over there. Very strong. They can turn it very cold or very hot.” He says he was then brought to Guantanamo as one of the first “enemy combatants.” His treatment there, he says, included repeated beatings at the hands of soldiers in riot gear, sleep-deprivation and solitary confinement.

After a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2004, Kurnaz was visited by an American lawyer, who successfully sued the U.S. government to release his classified file. That file contained information from the FBI, German Intelligence and even the U.S. military pointing to his innocence. But after a series of Kafkaesque military tribunals and review boards, he remained in Guantanamo for another three-and-a-half years.

Kurnaz’ lawyer, Baher Azmy, says there may be many more cases like Kurnaz’s at the offshore prison. “In Guantanamo, no detainee has ever been able to genuinely present evidence before a neutral judge and so as absurd as Murat Kurnaz;s case is, I assure you, there are many, many dozens just as tenuous,” Azmy tells Pelley.
Murat Kurnaz Claims he was held Underwater, Shocked, and Suspended from Ceiling by U.S. Troops
 

Gates Orders Nuclear Inventory
 

When a Great Power Goes Mad: With the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. dead, the nation has been awash with news retrospectives on the war and speeches by politicians, mostly offering sanitized versions of what's transpired.

With a few exceptions, these media/political reflections have had the feel of self-rationalizations, more than self-criticisms. They’ve conveyed a sense that the U.S. system is doing just fine, thank you, although a few mistakes were made.

So, you have President George W. Bush, the chief author of this catastrophic war, declaring that “normalcy is returning back to Iraq” even as fighting rages across much of the country and rockets rain down on the highly fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.

Bush’s comment invited comparisons to the acronym coined by U.S. Army soldiers during World War II: SNAFU for “situation normal, all fucked up.”

In the news media, there were specials, including a much-touted PBS Frontline two-parter on “Bush’s War” which followed the mainstream line of mostly accepting the Bush administration’s good intentions while blaming the disaster on policy execution – a lack of planning, bureaucratic rivalries, rash decisions and wishful thinking.

An obvious reason why the mainstream U.S. press can’t handle this truth is that to do so would mean that President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, a host of other U.S. officials and even some prominent journalists could be regarded as war criminals.

To accept that reality would, in turn, create a moral imperative to take action. And that would require a great disruption in the existing U.S. power structure, which hasn’t changed much since Bush won authorization from Congress in October 2002 to use force and then invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Not only are Bush and Cheney still in office – and two of the three remaining presidential candidates, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, voted for the war – but the roster of top Washington journalists remains remarkably intact from five years ago.

Iraq War hawk Fred Hiatt still runs the Washington Post’s editorial pages where you can still read the likes of Charles Krauthammer, David Ignatius, Richard Cohen and a bunch of other columnists who pushed for the war.

The same is true for the New York Times’s op-ed page, where writers like Thomas Friedman have prospered despite their erroneous war judgments and where one of the few changes has been to recruit prominent neoconservative William Kristol, who has used his column to chide Americans who won’t hail Bush’s courageous war leadership.

In listening to the measured tones of the Frontline narration – not to mention the well-dressed ex-government officials and the well-spoken mainstream journalists – I was left with the feeling that a new synthetic “reality” was being lowered in to replace the older discredited version.

It was as if the bloody madness that President Bush inflicted on the people of Iraq – aided and abetted by many witting and unwitting American accomplices – was being drained of its crimson hue and stripped of its human horrors.

Forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and maimed. Forget the innumerable lives destroyed and the millions displaced. Forget the bizarre forms of torture at Abu Ghraib and the widespread mistreatment of detainees at other Iraqi prisons.

After all, we were being told, the war’s architects were honorable and reasonable men and women who were trying to do the right thing, but sadly they were undermined by bureaucratic inertia, back-biting and, yes, incompetence. It was just one big SNAFU.

But, with a few changes here and there – a new general or two, a tweaked counter-insurgency strategy, some more U.S. soldiers and a bit more patience – everything will work out just fine.

No need for national guilt. No need for accountability. No reason to purge the editorial offices of leading newspapers and TV networks. No reason to talk about impeachment or war-crimes tribunals for committing the "supreme" crime against world peace. No need for any of that.

As President Bush said on March 27, “normalcy is returning back to Iraq,” if you don't take note of the mayhem all around. One might add that a similar form of “normalcy is returning back to Washington,” if you don't take note of all the lies and the self-deceptions.
 

Wayne Madsen Report (entire) -
March 28-30, 2008 -- UN panel says Hariri killed by "criminal network": A UN panel headed by former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare has concluded that former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated by a "criminal networK" and not by either Syrian and Lebanese intelligence or Lebanese Hezbollah as proffered by the neocon propaganda mill operating out of Washington, DC and Jerusalem.

The UN panel said that a "Hariri Network" had the ex-Prime Minister under surveillance before the Beirut massive car bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people in November 2005.

WMR previously reported that the "criminal network" was composed of Lebanese and rogue Syrian intelligence agents connected to Israel's Mossad and a White House operation run by National Security Council senior staff member Elliott Abrams, the formerly convicted Iran-contra figure.

Although for political reasons the UN refrained from identifying the members of the "criminal element," WMR has reported it included rogue Syrians, Druze, and Palestinian intelligence operatives in Lebanon, as well as mercenaries linked to now jailed international arms smuggler Viktor Bout and members of the Russian-Israeli "organizatsiya" criminal syndicate.

WMR was criticized by the neocon press when it first reported on the actual elements behind Hariri's assassination and charges of "anti-Semitism" were the rule rather than the exception.

The UN revelations about Hariri's assassination removes a large predicate being pushed by the neocons for a military attack on Syria.
 

Americans in Green Zone under siege: Fighting between militants and the Iraqi government has threatened what was once the best-secured district in Baghdad
 

Are We Headed For Jericho? If I accurately picked up the basic plot of the show, average, freedom-loving citizens in the Western U.S. are fighting against tyrannical elements of their own government, including military forces. The State of Texas has declared its independence from the corrupt new government and another civil war is breaking out in America. And all this was predicated upon a nuclear attack, which some believed was an inside job. Am I close?

Contributing further to my amazement was the way Jericho used real-life political events to depict America's fall into tyranny. I was flabbergasted to see the characters of Jericho refer to the Continuity of Government act as the foundation for the government's declaration of martial law after the nuclear attack had occurred.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Continuity of Government (COG) act is not television make-believe: it is the real deal.

To read up on COG, go to Wikipedia's entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Operations_Plan

In addition, I have reported the potential problems associated with COG in this column.

See http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20070112.html

See also http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20070525.html

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia entry: "The George W. Bush administration put the Continuity of Operations plan into effect for the first time directly following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75 to 150 senior officials and other government workers from every Cabinet department and other parts of the executive branch in two secure bunkers on the East Coast . . . .

"The Bush Administration officially admitted the implementation of the plan on March 1, 2002. Key congressional leaders say they didn't know this government-in-waiting had been established.

"On July 18, 2007 Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., a member of the U. S. House Committee on Homeland Security, was denied access to the classified version of the continuity of government plan. Though members can access classified information, this is the first time documents have been denied."
 

US sends in back-up for Iraqi offensive
 

British warplanes fire on Basra as civil war looms with Shia militia
 

Iraqi police in Basra shed their uniforms, kept their rifles and switched sides
 

Fighting Spreads Across Baghdad
 

1 killed, 6 wounded in mortar attack on VP's office
 

428 casualties in Sadr City clashes – medic
 

Video (10 min), From Worship To War (Reverend Wright Sermon): "We want revenge, we want payback and we don't care who gets hurt"
 

Sam Husseini's article is excellent and hits the nails on their pointy heads.
NPR is no longer anything but a shill for the Bush machine. It's practically and politically worthless. Independent media needs a huge housecleaning. it seems stuck in the 60s and we need new solutions today. Very discouraging for all the many, many foot soldiers out here in the states.
We can stand on our heads in the middle of town squares -- we can work our buns off to effect real changes in our communities -- and we get NO COVERAGE WHATSOEVER.
Not by the Corporate Media, not by the Indy media, not by University media. And so, the same old stuff keeps going on and on and on. HOWEVER, LET ONE THING BE SAID: WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP!
 

Five Years and Counting: Ten Unpleasant Truths About the War in Iraq (My only problem with these 10 truly "unpleasant truths" is their total omission of the horror inflicted upon Iraq and Iraqis. Other than that . . . )
 

Analysis: Iraqis' Basra fight not going well: A closely held U.S. military intelligence analysis of the fighting in Basra shows that Iraqi security forces control less than a quarter of the city, according to officials in both the United States and Iraq, and Basra's police units are deeply infiltrated by members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army.
 

Murdering Iranians: Terrible rumors from Russia continue to swirl around the Middle East that the Cheney-Bush junta has decided to bomb Iran on April 4th or 6th, targeting not only nuclear-power research facilities but ships, planes, antiaircraft installations, and the Iranian pentagon. Apparently the nuclear-power reactor being built by Russian companies will be spared, but not much else.
 

Laser plane could destroy tanks from 10 miles
 

Video (1 min), Hillary Clinton’s New Video Game: 3AM Call of Duty
 

US gave $300m arms contract to 22-year-old with criminal record (To quote one of my betters: 'So'?)
 

ARE WE SEEING THE BEGINNING OF THE END IN IRAQ AS AN ALLIANCE OF SHIITE INSURGENTS JOIN FORCES AGAINST THE U.S.?
 

Iraq's Maliki backs off ultimatum to militants (Time for Maliki to round up his money and emigrate to . . . someplace?)
 

Police refuse to support Iraqi PM's attacks on Mehdi Army
 

Bush: US will show Iran who rules: “The reason why it's ... important to be successful in Iraq, is because, one, we want to help establish a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, the most volatile region of the world," President George W. Bush said at a White House news conference with visiting Australian Premier Kevin Rudd.

"Two, we want to send a clear message to Iran that they're not going to be able to have their way with nations in the Middle East,” he continued.
 

Basra militants 'worse than al-Qa'eda', says Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki (Is anyone beginning to sense that we have a problem on our hands?)
 

US marine's Haditha case dropped: Military prosecutors have dropped all charges against a US marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi women and children in the town of Haditha in 2005.
 

Syrian president slams Israel for its military offensive in Gaza
 

Syria, Saudi Arabia conciliatory on Lebanon
 

Barak fears Hamas West Bank takeover: Defense Minister Ehud Barak has warned the United States that gestures Israel is making to the Palestinians - including approving the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of weapons and armored vehicles, and allowing the deployment of PA policemen in West Bank cities - could ultimately backfire because Hamas could come to power in the West Bank and be better equipped to turn on Israel.

Barak issued the warning during a recent meeting with the US special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Gen. James Jones. The Israeli defense establishment has drawn up a list of further gestures together with Jones that are set to include deploying 600 Jordanian-trained PA policemen in Jenin and the possible removal of dirt roadblocks.

"We need to keep in mind the possibility that after all we have done, Hamas will take over the West Bank, not only by force but even in the upcoming general elections," Barak told Jones, according to defense officials. "This is certainly a possibility."

Barak plans to present the list of gestures to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is set to arrive in Israel on Saturday night, during their meeting the next day.
 

'Your Turn Is Next,'
Gadhafi warns Arab leaders after US toppling of Saddam (And nobody believes him?)
 

Sadr urges support for 'resistance'
 

A great leap backward: By responding to Washington's call to arms, Nouri al-Maliki will be seen in Iraq as the tool of a deeply unpopular occupation

Whoever they are, the people who planned and put in motion the onslaught on Basra have yet again dragged themselves into the quicksands of the Sadr movement. If the US vice president, Dick Cheney, fresh from a visit to Baghdad in the days before the biggest troop deployment of the US-trained Iraqi armed forces, doesn't phone the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to demand a hasty retreat, then Iraq is heading for a major uprising.

Many Iraqis are linking what they regard as a premeditated and unprovoked attack on a relatively peaceful city with Cheney's visit and Washington's insistence that the US-trained Iraqi armed forces should do more of the ground-fighting, while the occupation forces resort to air attacks and emergency support.

They are also linking it to the fact that oil and dock workers' unions, declared illegal, are in full control of the ports and the major oil fields. These unions are strongly opposed to the US-backed oil law to privatise the Iraqi industry and allow the major oil companies to control production and marketing. The law is also opposed by the Sadr movement, which was expected to win a decisive victories in forthcoming elections.

Once again, the occupiers have miscalculated the depth of resentment in Iraq. And once again, the occupation is seen by many Iraqis as a divisive force, the root of the bulk of the violence. For most Iraqis, it is the occupation which threatens to ignite civil war. Only an end to the occupation and complete withdrawal can put Iraq on the long and tortuous path of rebuilding its tormented lands.
 

Why Do Western Journalists Give Israel a Free Pass? The 'Rogue Entity' - Twenty Questions Radio/TV interviewers avoid asking about Israel

On Rockets and Sieges
(1) The numbers of home-made Qassam rockets launched at Israel are diligently counted and quoted, but how many sophisticated munitions have Israel's F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, armed drones, tanks, occupation troops and navy patrol boats fired into the crowded humanity that packs the Gaza Strip? We are never told.

(2) Why should we believe the claim that the siege of Gaza is about rockets "raining down" on Sderot? Palestinians in the West Bank don't fire rockets yet the Israelis are still in occupation after 40 years, still stealing their land and water, and now dumping their toxic waste there.

(3) Israelis say that if the rockets stop, things will be OK.... Does that mean Gaza will be able to trade freely with the outside world like any other country, and people will be able to come and go freely? Will you and I be able to visit Gaza without Israeli hindrance?

On the Collective Punishment of Gazans
(4) Why can't Gaza's 3,000 licensed fishermen put to sea and earn their living without being harassed and fired on? What is the status of Palestinian territorial waters under international law? Why are half the hospitals' dialysis machines out of action and the chronically sick dying in agony for want of proper medication?

(5) Which parts of the Declaration of Human Rights and Geneva Conventions don't Israelis understand?

On the War on Christianity
(6) Israelis use 'administrative' controls to disrupt the life and work of the Christian Church in the Holy Land. No Muslim or Palestinian Christian living outside Jerusalem is allowed to visit the Holy Places in the Old City without special permission. Christian priests, many of whom are Jordanian, cannot go home to see their families because Israel's new visa policy would prevent them returning to their parishes. The Catholic priest in Gaza has been trapped there for 9 years knowing that if he visits his folks the Israelis won't allow him back into the Strip. "We seek a life of freedom—a life different from the life of dogs we are currently forced to live," he says. What should be our response to attempts by Israel to paralyse the Church?

(7) Is it not shameful that our elected politicians, who are mostly Christian themselves, show so little concern? Is it not doubly shameful how the leaders of western Christendom seem oblivious to the Israeli government's war against Christian communities? Beware those pseudo-Christians in high places, who talk the talk but won't walk the walk. How many top brass have visited Gaza to show solidarity with the flock? At the present rate there will soon be no Christians left in the place where Christianity began, and churchmen will wake up one morning to find the Holy Land, from which their whole power and purpose are derived, stolen from under their noses.

On illegal Settlements
(8) Israel has expropriated agricultural land and key water resources in the Palestinian West Bank for its own use. More than 38% of the territory now consists of Israeli settlements, outposts, military bases and closed military areas, Israeli-declared nature reserves or other infrastructure that's off-limits to Palestinians. Jews-only highways linking settlements to Israel, and the 580 checkpoints and roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities, blocked access to their lands and severely restricted movement. How can this be right?

(9) The freezing and dismantling of Israeli settlements are a cornerstone of major peace initiatives. The most recent, the Quartet's 2003 'roadmap' endorsed by the UN Security Council, is perfectly clear on the question of illegal settlements. Israel is under an obligation to.... a) immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001, b) freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) consistent with the Mitchell Report, c) take "no actions undermining trust, including confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property".

Why have none of these obligations been met?

(10) A year ago the General Assembly reaffirmed that Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, "are illegal and an obstacle to peace" and demanded "the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities". Why is Israel still stealing Palestinian land for more illegal construction? By vowing to press ahead with settlement building, Israel's prime minister Olmert again signals contempt for international law and world opinion… further proof (if ever it were needed) that Israel isn't interested in peace.

On the Evil of the Wall
(11) In 2004 the International Court of Justice, sitting at the request of the UN General Assembly, concluded that the route chosen for the Separation Wall "gives expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements". The ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and declared that it should be dismantled where it encroaches onto Palestinian land. Why hasn't this been done? Why is Israel still building it? If Israelis feel a wall is necessary for security reasons why don't they build one on their own territory?

On House Demolitions and the Right of Return
(12) In 1948 the newly established state of Israel began demolishing the homes of Palestinian refugees to prevent their return. More than 125,000 houses were systematically destroyed. Since 1967 18,000 more have been demolished, making another 100,000 Palestinians homeless. Demolishing homes is a deliberate Israeli strategy to....

* inflict collective punishment and break the Palestinians' will to resist the occupation
* achieve a silent ethnic transfer
* ensure that Israel's control of the Occupied Territories and their resources becomes permanent

Apart from the fact that these acts breach every rule in the book, every convention and every declaration governing civilised conduct, how would the Israelis like it if they were the victims?

(13) Why can any Jew from anywhere in the world, who has never before lived in Israel and whose ancestors have never lived in Israel, go and live in Israel – or 'squat' in an illegal outpost in Palestine with Israel's blessing - while Palestinians who can prove title to their former houses may not?

On Imprisonment
(14) Nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, have been abducted and languish in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial. 30+ Palestinian parliamentarians, democratically elected, are also imprisoned. What civilised country would do this?

On Ethnic Cleansing
(15) The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, begun in the months before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is still going on in and around Jerusalem and in Gaza. Israel's Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger argues for an ethnic cleansing programme to transfer Gazans out and dump them in the Sinai desert. Haaretz reports that he wants Britain, the EU and the US to assist in the construction of a Palestinian state in the middle of nowhere. "They will have a nice country, and we, the Jews, shall have our country and we shall live in peace." This leading advocate of ethnic cleansing says Muslims should recognize that "our land is the Holy Land and Jerusalem belongs to us". Do we in Britain wish to associate with people who hold such views?

On Terror
(16) Since the land occupied by Israel was taken by terrorist means, employing gangs such as the one that blew up the British mandate government in the King David Hotel in 1946 killing 90, by what moral yardstick do British and other western leaders 'do business' with the Israeli Government but not with Palestine's democratically elected Hamas leadership?

(17) Remembering that most Israeli prime ministers have been responsible for authorising war crimes against the Palestinian people, why are the words 'terrorist', 'militant' and 'extremist' applied only to Palestinians? They fit successive Israeli governments like a glove, and given Israel's lawless and inhuman conduct in Palestine and Lebanon, which has outraged world opinion, why isn't it branded a terrorist state?

On our (uncritical) Support
(18) For decades Occupied Palestine has received British and European aid. If Palestinians had been left in peace, free to trade and develop in the normal way, there would no need for aid. In effect British and EU taxpayers are subsidising Israel's illegal occupation and the economic strangulation it imposes. Why should we think this acceptable and continue to pick up the tab?

(19) Why is there such strong support for Israel at the heart of British government? Why have so many MPs and MEPs allowed themselves to be drawn into the 'Friends of Israel' web? How can supposedly bright people with information at their fingertips still be ignorant of Israel's apartheid practices, wholesale land thefts, careless slaughter of children and other atrocities? Can we take it that they approve of the slow genocide inflicted on defenceless civilians, the middle-of-the-night snatch squads, the house demolitions, the torture and assassinations, and the crushing of Christian and Muslim communities? Is it not foolish and insulting for them to claim we share Israel's beliefs and values, and should even share foreign policy? A well-respected Jewish MP recently called the Israeli government "a gang of amoral thugs". Isn't that about right?

On the Two-State solution
(20) Israel and its Zionist stooges are pushing for a two-state solution… eventually, when it suits them and their land grab is complete. To warped minds this will give the racist regime and its supremacist ideals some kind of seal of approval. By that time the shrunken and shredded remnants of Palestine will have become a permanently impoverished and ghettoized mini-state, trashed and raped of its resources, traumatised, subservient, easy to control and never capable of prospering. Israel's scheming allies, who include western governments (though not western peoples), go along with this grubby plan. Can someone please explain why we, the citizens of a Christian democracy once mandated with responsibility for Palestine's future wellbeing, would wish to soil our hands with it? The ethical choice, surely, is a single state with Jews living alongside their Arab neighbours as equal citizens and sharing the land within a common legal and democratic framework. That, after all, was the original intention, and the developments of the last 60 years are a gross perversion and betrayal. Only the Palestinians themselves have had the courage to resist it.
 

US State Department Tightens Restrictions on Embassy in Baghdad Amid Rocket Attacks: The U.S. State Department on Saturday tightened restrictions on embassy staff in Baghdad, ordering all employees to sleep inside reinforced structures and to use only armored vehicles when traveling in the Green Zone due to incoming rocket fire.

In a memo sent to embassy personnel on Saturday, the State Department reiterated the previous requirements and added that all personnel must limit their time outside "hardened facilities" and travel in the Green Zone only in armored vehicles.
 

Al-Sadr: I am in control of militia
 

Video (56 min), LIVE INTERVIEW WITH CARLOS LATUFF (Wonderful interview - if you have the time - right to the very last seconds ! ! ! )
 

PALESTINE REMEMBERED ~~ 60 YEARS LATER ~~ DEIR YASSIN
 

Baghdad's Green Zone attacked again
 

Report: US Embassy moving elsewhere. Sunni group claims GreenZone attacks
 

Nouri al-Maliki humiliated as gamble to crush Shia militias fail
 

Iran Brokers Call for Ceasefire: Bush reduced to Irrelevancy in Iraq; Fighting Continues
 

The Decline And Coming Fall Of US Hegemony
 

Those who control oil and water will control the world
 

Why al-Maliki attacked Basra
 

Green Zone Defeat? 'Handed Over' to a Government Called Sadr: Occupation forces no longer control the Green Zone

Despite the huge media campaign led by U.S. officials and a complicit corporate-controlled media to convince the world of U.S. success in Iraq, emerging facts on the ground show massive failure.

The date March 25 of this year will be remembered as the day of truth through five years of occupation.