Iraq Heading Toward Disintegration

[Anwaar]

Saudi FM warns of Iraq disintegration

WASHINGTON: Iraq is heading toward disintegration, raising fears of a wider regional conflict, says Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.

The minister said he did not believe the country was engulfed in full-scale civil war but the trend was moving in that direction.

The comments to journalists marked the second time in two days Saud spoke publicly of his alarm over developments in Iraq and appeared to reflect a growing disagreement between the kingdom and the Bush administration.

Source : www.jang.com.pk/thenews/index.html

[dana]

Learning something each day. — In another thread on this forum, I expressed my dismay at the recent cooperation between Turkey and Israel, in the Middle East and behind the scenes, in Washington; struck by how unusual it seemed. It turns out that there is, in fact, historical precedent for such an alliance. Ah, yes, Jewish diaspora and the Ottoman Empire.

The following book review, by Wayne Madsen, delivers little-publicised information that would tend to support the idea that one of the unspoken goals in the Iraq endeavor may be to break the country apart.


September 26, 2005 -- Must read, An Alliance Against Babylon, by John K. Cooley, (University of Michigan Press). Longtime ABC News Middle East correspondent John Cooley, who is unmatched in his understanding of the historical, political, and religious currents of the Middle East and the Muslim world, has written an important expose of what really lies behind the Bush administration's disastrous invasion of Iraq. Cooley's previous two books, Payback: America's Long War in the Middle East and Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism broke though the din of disinformation that permeates America's publishing world. In fact, during the 1990s, the CIA, under its two proto-neocon directors, James Woolsey and John Deutch, unsuccessfully tried to prevent publication of Unholy Wars because of its exposure of the CIA's role in nurturing Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the Mujaheddin war against the Soviet Union.

Cooley has had a unique view of the Middle East during his long and distinguished career. That comes from the personal relationships he had with the Middle East's most notable leaders: Ben Gurion, Anwar Sadat, King Hussein, Hafez Al Assad, Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani,

Cooley presents the current American and British occupation of Iraq in a historical context -- and a very old one at that. He explains Israel's long affinity for the land once known as Babylon. Jews had lived for 70 years in Babylon during the Biblical era "Babylonian Captivity." A number of Jews decided not to return to Palestine following the captivity, choosing to live in Mesopotamia as a minority community, which flourished during the Abbasid Caliphate. Jews in Mesopotamia were even permitted to establish an autonomous government under a government called the exilarch. The exilarch was said to be headed by a hereditary direct descendant of the Israeli King David, who reigned 1000 years before Christ.

Before World War I, Cooley writes that Mesopotamia attracted the interest of European Zionists, including the General Jewish Colonization Association that interceded with the Turks to permit the mass migration of Jews from Europe to Ottoman-ruled Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, and Eastern Anatolia. Cooley describes the British ambassador in Istanbul reporting to London that the Zionist group wanted to establish "an autonomous Jewish state in Mesopotamia." Cooley's in depth research into the roots of modern Zionism helps explain why their ideological descendants in the George W. Bush and Tony Blair governments were keen to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and create a "new Iraq" (the proposed flag for which, since scrapped, strongly resembled the flag of Israel).

An Alliance Against Babylon by John K. Cooley: Exposes the true intentions of those who engineered the war against Iraq

Cooley also points out the chief post-World War II instigators of the bad blood that developed between Iraq's Hashemite monarchy and the newly-independent Jewish state in Palestine were Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri as Said and Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Iraq's thriving Jewish community were uprooted to Israel as a result of Mossad's first two major external operations, code named Ezra and Nehemiah. Another secret plan, Operation Babylon, extracted additional Jews from Iraq to pre-independence Palestine. The Hashemite kingdom only permitted Iraq's Jews to leave after they turned over all their cash and assets. When Iraq's Jews arrived in Israel, they were penniless wards of the fledgling state.

Cooley also recounts the experiences of an Iraqi-born Jew and ex Mossad agent in Iraq named Naiem Giladi. Upset at the treatment Jewish immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries received from European settlers, Giladi later described that terrorism and violence directed against Jews in Iraq in 1950 and 1951 was fomented by Mossad agents in order to speed up the emigration of Jews to Israel. Giladi reported that Iraqi Jewish synagogues and other property in Baghdad and other cities were bombed by Mossad agents but blamed on the Iraqi government. Ben Gurion covered up the entire operation.

Cooley points out that the disinformation used against Iraq by the Ben Gurion government in the 1950s would later creep into the neoconservative doctrine that Iraq represented a major military threat to Israel (and later, to the United States and Britain). In 1973, Israeli Air Force General Ezer Weizman (a later President of Israel) said that his wish was that "Israel had bases on the Euphrates." The whole Iraqi WMD contrivance and the use of the neo-con operative Ahmad Chalabi and his truckload of false intelligence used to justify an attack on Iraq was a continuation of the years of false propaganda about Iraq.

As early as 1993, the neo-con apparatus in Washington, DC was fueling the notion that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Proto-neo-cons in the Clinton administration, like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, did nothing to counter the disinformation about Iraq. By the time the arch neo-cons took power in 2001, the stage was set for a fateful confrontation with Iraq and a resulting bloody quagmire for the United States in the heart of the Middle East. The Knesset's Defense and Intelligence Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz held hearings on the faulty intelligence about Iraq. Although the final report is secret, Cooley recounts that one committee member told him that the report contained damning proof of the systematic exchange of false intelligence about Iraq between the Israeli and U.S. intelligence communities.

Israel continued to be active in Iraq's internal affairs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The Mossad, in cooperation with the Shah of Iran's intelligence service SAVAK, helped establish a Kurdish intelligence service called PARASTIN. The support network for the Kurds continued up until 1975 when during a March 6 meeting between Saddam Hussein and the Shah met at an OPEC conference in Algiers. Cooley recounts what one senior Kurdish leader told him about Saddam and the Shah, "they dumped the Kurds into shit."

Cooley reminds us of how a young Saddam Hussein received support from the CIA in his attempt in October 1959 to assassinate Iraqi President Adel Karim Kassem. After Saddam was given exile in Cairo by President Nasser, Saddam was a frequent visitor to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo where he was protected by the CIA's top Middle East covert operator, James Critchfield. The CIA wanted Kassem out because he was a populist who wanted to use Iraq's oil revenues to build public housing for the poor. Kassem's main allies were the Iraqi Communists. Nasser, who despised the Communists because they were rivals of Nasser's own brand of pan-Arab nationalism, eagerly supported the 1963 Baathist Socialist coup against Kassem. During the coup, a secret CIA transmitter in Kuwait broadcast the names of Iraqi Communists. After the success of the coup, the Communists were rounded up, tortured, and executed. The CIA-engineered Baathist coup helped propel Saddam into power -- he became President in 1979 and was considered the best person to lead Iraq for U.S., British, and French oil companies: a leader nurtured by the CIA who was now in charge and in a position to reward his old friends with lucrative contracts.

This and other first hand knowledge gems of American Middle East hypocrisy, which are found in An Alliance Against Babylon should put this book at the forefront of every academic and personal reading bookshelf. No one, not even careerists in the CIA and State Department, has the unique insights of the Middle East that John Cooley has gathered after a career of covering every major event that has transpired throughout this critical region. The fact that the U.S. corporate media has instituted a virtual blockade on reviews of this book and other coverage of its contents means it contains information the Bush administration and its allies in the Middle East do not want you to read.

www.waynemadsenreport.com/

[michelle]

With all the unfavorable criticism directed towards Bush, in his Saturday radio address
the President paints a sunny picture of the situation in Iraq. If Bush says it's true, then
it must be so. George, are you that delusional or is this an attempt to refocus our attention
on what you do best? Lie, get people worried about terrorism, and make war.

Bush sees progress in Iraq war effort
Posted 10/1/2005 10:06 AM Updated 10/1/2005 8:38 AM
From: USAToday.com

President Bush hopes to shift his public focus back to Iraq and to the anti-terror fight.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Saturday he is encouraged by the increasing size and capability of the Iraqi security forces, touting progress on a key measure for when U.S. troops can come home.

Read at: usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+Bush+sees+progress+in+Iraq+war+effort&expire=&urlID=15735040&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fwashington%2F2005-10-01-bush-radio-address-iraq_x.htm&partnerID=1660

Sorry, you'll have to copy and paste the article, the original was just as long. Michelle

[jay paulson]

Might be interesting article about US-Iraq integration:

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government
05 October 2005
www.legitgov.org/
All links to articles as summarized below are available here:
www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

Cars stolen in US cities used in Iraqi suicide attacks 04 Oct 2005 The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials. The FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, Inspector John Lewis, said the investigation did not prove the vehicles were stolen specifically for car bombings in the Middle East, but there was evidence they were smuggled out of the US by [Bush's] organised criminal networks that included terrorists and 'insurgents.' [Yeah, Iraqi terrorists and insurgents are trolling impounded vehicle lots (under police watch) in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Houston - able to provide proper paperwork to release stolen vehicles and get them into Iraq for bombing missions. LOL!]


Address to receive newsletter: www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg
Please write to: [e-mail] for inquiries. lrp/mdr

CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, General Manager. Copyright © 2005, Citizens For Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.

[jay paulson]

Just ran across the following; might help us understand US policy:


SADDAM, SHARON, and the USA
Wed - 19 Oct - JUSTICE DENIED and IMPERIALISM ASSAULTED: In 1982 after an assassination attempt the brutal ruthless Saddam Hussein had maybe 150 Iraqi men and boys arrested, tortured and killed. For that today he finally goes on trial. In 1982 after very public American promises to protect Palestinian refugees in Israeli-invaded Lebanon, the brutal and ruthless Ariel Sharon coordinated the massacre of thousands of defenseless Palestinian woman and children by the Christian Lebanese Phalange fighting on Israel's side. Though an official Israeli Commssion of Inquiry found Sharon 'indirectly responsible' and recommended he never again serve in government Sharon is today the Prime Minister of Israel. More recently in 1988 Saddam Hussein ordered chemical weapons used on the Kurdish city of Hallabjah and many thousands of civilians were horribly killed. But Saddam is not being tried for this more horrendous crime, and that may be because Saddam was not only then the ally of the United States but the weapons he used were purchased from, and the money he used to do so came from, the U.S. and other western countries. Selective crimes and prosecutions make the trial of Saddam Hussein that begins today more than problematical. And what is taking place today in heavily occupied by American troops Baghdad is hardly to be considered justice.
Meanwhile brigades are training in Venezuela, Iran, and Syria for anticipated U.S. attacks if further CIA 'regime-change' efforts fail, as they did in Iraq for more than a decade.....Read more at:

blogwashington.com/!1.html

[michelle]

VIDEO | Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre
A Film by Sigfrido Ranucci
Rainews24
11.08.05
WARNING: This video contains graphic and possibly disturbing footage.
www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110805Z.shtml


Published: Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Bylined to: Mary MacElveen

Why are they not in front of their cameras calling Bush a butcher?

VHeadline.com commentarist Mary MacElveen writes: I first want to thank Mark Parent and LiveJournal.com for bringing this video feed to the attention of many (English Version from Italian TV): US Chemical Weapons Attack on Iraqi Civilians.

But before you watch this video which is 27 minutes in length, I want to strongly caution you that what you are about to see is so horrific and if you have children, under no circumstances are they to view this feed.

While I have seen graphic photos of the “Bush War” in Iraq, I have never seen such a horrendous feed like this one. Feeds such as this one are not being seen by the American people and they should be.

America deserves to know the truth!

In a recent VHeadline.com article: Bush brought death and destruction to Iraq...images speak for themselves. I called the readers attention to a grainy video feed showing a bombed out Fallujah. This one is far more devastating than that!

When President Hugo Chavez states that our government is “imperialist” in nature ... or where he calls Bush “Mr. Danger” ... I feel, after viewing this feed, that he is using the wrong adjectives. If he were to view it, he would be using much stronger terms to describe what our US government did to an innocent people. As I watched it, I was horrified, sickened beyond belief and I cried a multitude of tears.

When can citizens of the United States stop hanging their heads in shame for Bush?, I asked pointed questions of our elected American officials:

Do you finally get it now?

Is this the best leadership we can present to the world?

Are you in the least embarrassed and abhorred by these video feeds?

The set of questions I would ask now are:

Why do you continue to support Bush?

Is this leadership or war crimes?

Shouldn’t you be calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq?

Haven’t we done enough damage already?

But here is the most important question of them all: Shouldn’t you be doing everything in your power to IMPEACH Bush? The killing of innocent Iraqi citizens by the use of chemical weapons is not fighting the war on terrorism. What it proves is that we are the terrorists. As I once wrote the Iraqi citizens are suffering a 9/11 on a daily basis for over two and a half years.

To the American media you continually refer to President Hugo Chavez as a ‘leftist’ leader again let me remind you of this fact ... he is a democratically-elected President.

As you write every negative article about President Chavez, let me also remind you that he did not do anything comparable to what Bush has done.
If the American media sat down and watched this video feed ... and after seeing such horrifying images ... wouldn’t they at least be ashamed of using any derogatory term related to President Chavez especially?

Why are they not in front of their cameras calling Bush a butcher?
Why are they not at their keyboards using similar terms to describe Bush? Where is the morality?

When Pat Robertson was given a podium by the American media citing that President Chavez was a threat to our nation, what the American media failed to see is that Bush is truly the threat to all humanity ... our mainstream American media has failed us all by not reporting these facts.

Contained within this horrific feed one former soldier asserts that the commanders were waiting for the election results to launch their bloody campaign against Fallujah. They were eager to get in there, get the job done to bring death and destruction to the citizens of that town. They did not want to have to wait for any election results between Bush and Kerry to go on as it did between Bush and Gore. When Kerry conceded, it was their green light to go in to this city and use provable weapons of mass destruction on an innocent people. After viewing this feed, Kerry should have dragged the results on for weeks and months on end.

As you will see and as reported by RAI News 24's investigative story: They present “eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident.”

What I do find maddening are these facts as presented in this video feed: “In the investigative story, produced by Maurizio Torrealta, dramatic footage is shown revealing the effects of the bombardment on civilians, women and children, some of whom were surprised in their sleep. The investigation will also broadcast documentary proof of the use in Iraq of a new napalm formula called MK77. The use of the incendiary substance on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty which the US signed in 1997”

So, if the use of these chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty we signed under Clinton: Isn’t Bush committing a crime now by using these same weapons of mass destruction?

Aren’t our elected officials turning their backs on war crimes such as this?

A while back the full Senate appropriated US$82 billion more for this war and where just recently they appropriated another $50 billion. Isn’t the United States government turning their backs on a treaty we signed and shouldn’t they be held accountable?

I would love to ask Pat Robertson who exactly the real threat is...

From what I have seen, it is not President Hugo Chavez, but George W. Bush.
What I have seen in Bush is not a man that should be allowed to roam free, with our government’s permission and ours. The only place I can think of is a cell right next to Saddam Hussein. At the very least George W. Bush deserves to be tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity ... the citizens of Kosovo toppled their leader Slobodan Milosevic then sent to him to The Hague for similar crimes.

I am asking all our readers to send this video feed to everyone you know ... I am asking that this crime be exposed.

How can we call ourselves a civilized nation if we can do this to innocent civilians that included women and children as they slept?

Bush brought down death and destruction ... and the images speak for themselves.

www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46804

Thanks to Mary from my RapidResponse Group......Michelle

[michelle]

SEEMS LIKE THE U.S. HAS ADOPTED TACTICS USED BY THE KHMER ROUGE IN CAMBODIA; GENOCIDE OF INTELLECTUALS....Michelle

Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals assassinated by death squads
By Sandy English
6 March 2006

Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals have been assassinated since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a petition to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions from the European peace group BRussells [sic] Tribunal on Iraq.

The petition has been signed by Nobel Prize winners Harold Pinter, J. M. Coetzee, José Saramago, and Dario Fo, as well as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Cornel West, and Tony Benn. A Green party member of the European Parliament from Britain, Caroline Lucas, has called for support for the investigation.

The exact figure of deaths is unknown; estimates range from about 300 to more than 1,000. According to Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana, writing in the Guardian last month, Baghdad universities alone have lost 80 members of their staffs. These figures do not include those who have survived assassination attempts.

Intellectuals from all regions of Iraq have been killed. They include specialists in physical education, journalism, Arabic literature, and the sciences. Physicians have also been targeted at a high rate.

The victims have been Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, and Turkomans, and they have held a variety of political views. They have been shot down at work, at home, and in their cars or have simply disappeared.

Zarngana writes that Abdul Razaq al-Na’as, a Baghdad University professor, was murdered on January 28 when two cars blocked his entrance and gunmen fired on him. He was a vocal opponent of the occupation on al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya television.

Dr. Abdullateef al-Mayah, a well-known academic, was killed in 2004, 12 hours after he criticized the Iraqi Governing Council on al-Jazeera television.

In the Independent over a year ago, Robert Fisk had already noted the growing trend. “The dean of the college of law in Mosul, murdered last month, was the most gruesome killing. ‘She was in bed with her husband when they came for her,’ a Baghdad colleague told me yesterday. ‘They coolly shot both of them in their bed. Then they cut off both their heads with knives.’”

The BRussells Tribunal website www.brusselstribunal.org contains a number of letters from Iraq about the situation. One describes the murder of Professor Nawfal Ahmed from the Institute for Fine Arts in Baghdad on December 26, 2005: [NOTE: YOU CAN SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT THE ABOVE LINK]

“Unknown armed men had assassinated a university professor of the institute of fine arts, on Monday morning in Toopchy district in Baghdad. A source from the ministry of defense said that; armed men fired a stream of bullets towards professor Nawfal Ahmed, on eight morning, while he was getting out of his house, heading to his working office.”

Another letter from Tara Al-Hashimi, the daughter of the late Dr. Wissam Al-Hashimi, a geologist and internationally known expert in carbonates, says:

“[M]y father (Dr. AL- Hashimi) has died. He was kidnapped early in the morning on the 24th Aug 2005 while going to work, his recent papers were stolen. A ransom was given but unfortunately he was shoot twice in the head and died. May his soul rest in peace. As his ID was taken from him it took us about 2 weeks to find his body in one of Baghdad’s hospitals.”

The murders have forced Iraqi professionals to leave the country in large numbers. Death threats, often letters accompanied by a single bullet, are common.

In January, the Washington Post reported the case of a leading Iraqi cardiologist, Dr. Omar Kubasi, now an exile in Amman, Jordan:

“Kubasi left Baghdad after he and nine other doctors received letters, written in a childish hand, telling them they would be killed if they did not stop working in their native Iraq. He and his colleagues had been objects of threats before, but the last carried a foreboding urgency.”

No one has been prosecuted or even arrested in any of the murders. No group has claimed responsibility. A variety of organizations are widely suspected by Iraqis, including the Israeli Mossad (which assassinated Iraqi scientists working on the country’s nuclear program in the 1970s and 1980s), the American military (which has harassed and beaten Iraqi academics) and, in the north, the Kurdish Peshmerga.

There are clearly a variety of groups operating, but the evidence points to a leading role of death squads organized by the supporters of the pro-American government, especially in the Interior Ministry, in conjunction with Shiite fundamentalist militias such as the Badr Brigade.

The same groups, believed to be responsible for the recent anti-Sunni pogroms, are popularly called the “black crows” because of their black uniforms.

“They’re also called the men in black. Nobody dares identify them although everybody knows who they are. They are groups selected by some political parties that have infiltrated the Interior Ministry and directly report to it,” remarked Mutahana Hareth Al-Dari, a spokesman of the Iraqi Association of Muslim Scholars, in this week’s issue of the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly Online.

The immediate reason is not hard to find: most of these intellectuals opposed the American occupation of their country.

As Haifa Zangana notes: “Most were vocally opposed to the occupation.... Like many Iraqis, I believe these killings are politically motivated and connected to the occupying forces’ failure to gain any significant social support in the country. For the occupation’s aims to be fulfilled, independent minds have to be eradicated.”

This is a part of a program of cultural destruction, and it emanates from Washington.

The appearance of death squads in Iraq stepped up after the installation of John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq in June 2004. Negroponte was the ambassador to Honduras at the height of the American-sponsored counter-insurgencies in Central America in the 1980s. He is an experienced operative in creating and managing extra-judicial killings, the so-called Salvador option.

Similarly, veterans of US “dirty wars” in Latin America—James Steele, who oversaw counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador during the height of the killing there 20 years ago, and Steve Casteels, who worked with US anti-guerilla and anti-drug operations in Colombia, Peru and elsewhere—were brought in to oversee the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s operations.

The goal, however, is not simply to silence critics of the puppet regime. The assassination policy is an attempt to create a tractable population.

It includes weakening Iraqis even on the physical level. The murders and emigration of physicians have been particularly devastating in a country once known for the high quality of its health care system that now confronts electricity shortages at hospitals and skyrocketing incidences of infectious disease and traumatic injury.

But the killing of art historians, geologists, and writers must be explained as an attempt to destroy the intellectual health of Iraq.

The loss of academics “is causing a drop in the quality of higher education,” according to the UN’s IRINnews.org. “ ‘The best professors are leaving the country and we are losing the best professionals, the real losers are the next generation of students—the future of Iraq.’ Abbas Muhammad, a student of Pharmacology at Baghdad University said.”

The country’s intelligentsia was already depleted in the period from 1990 to 2003, when an estimated 30 percent had left the country for economic reasons.

The goal now, encouraged or allowed by Bush administration, and implemented by its stooges in Iraq, is to destroy the historical consciousness of the Iraqi people, as a means of further subjugating them to US imperialism and its Iraqi supporters.

According to the UN’s International Leadership Institute, “84% of Iraq’s higher learning institutions have been burnt, looted or destroyed.” The thefts from the Iraqi Museum of April 2003, the untrammeled looting of hundreds of archaeological sites and the burning of libraries place Iraqi’s access to culture, history, and science in grave danger. The assassinations and the flight of Iraqi professionals are the most criminal part of this process.

See Also:
Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech: a brave artist speaks the truth about US imperialism
[9 December 2005]
The sacking of Iraq's museums: US wages war against culture and history
[16 April 2003]
How and why the US encouraged looting in Iraq
[15 April 2003]

www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/acad-m06.shtml

[michelle]

DNC: Cheney Cherry Picks Iraq Facts

3/19/2006 2:41:00 PM

Contact: Karen Finney of the DNC Press Office, 202-863-8148

WASHINGTON, March 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Vice President Cheney today marked the third anniversary of the war in Iraq by using cherry-picked facts to paint a rosy picture that doesn't match the reality on the ground in Iraq. Echoing his claim three years ago that our troops would "be greeted as liberators" and his claim ten months ago that the Iraqi insurgency was "in its last throes," Vice President Cheney today said insurgents had "reached a stage of desperation." (Meet the Press, 3/16/03; Larry King Live, 5/30/05; Face the Nation, 3/19/06)

But the facts on the ground simply do not support Cheney's rhetoric. As American troops begin their fourth year in Iraq with the largest air assault since the invasion, the country is slipping into civil war and basic services aren't being provided to the Iraqi people. As Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha noted on Meet the Press, Iraqis have electricity just 10 hours a day, only 30 percent of Iraqis have clean water, and 40 percent of Iraqis are unemployed. (Meet the Press, 3/19/06)

"Just like this Administration cherry-picked intelligence to build their case for war, Vice President Cheney today tried to cherry-pick the facts to paint a rosy picture that simply doesn't match the reality in Iraq," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney. "The American people can see the truth for themselves every day. We don't need more of the same permanent commitment to a failed strategy from this Administration. The American people know that we need to change course in Iraq, so 2006 can be a year of transition in which the Iraqi's truly take control of their country."

The following is a fact sheet from DNC Research on Vice President Cheney's irrational exuberance on Iraq:

Cheney's Irrational Exuberance

This weekend marks the third anniversary of start of the war in Iraq. Today, Vice President Cheney appeared on Face The Nation to discuss the war in Iraq, and refused to give straight answers to basic questions about the Iraq war. Instead, he continued the Bush Administration's commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq.

CHENEY: I don't (agree that Iraq is in a civil war), Bob. I think the assessment that we get from General George Casey who is our man commanding in Iraq, from the Ambassador.from John Abizaid who is the General in charge of Central Command doesn't square with that. (Face The Nation, 3/19/06)

Former Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Said Iraq Was In Civil War. Iyad Allawi former Interim Iraqi Prime Minister and leader of the Iraqi National List, a secular nationalist party made up of Sunnis and Shiites, said that Iraq was already in a civil war. Allawi said, "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." (BBC, 3/19/06)

Experts Say Iraq Has Been In A Civil War Since 2004. "'By the standard that political scientists use, there's been a civil war going on in Iraq since sovereignty was handed over to the interim government in 2004,' said Stanford University's James Fearon.American military analyst Stephen Biddle says U.S. policy- makers make a mistake if they 'miss the nature of the conflict, which in Iraq is already a civil war between rival ethnic and sectarian groups.'" (AP, 3/15/06; Los Angeles Times, 2/25/06; Washington Times, 3/15/06)

CHENEY: Clearly there is an attempt underway by the terrorists, by Zarqawi and others to foment civil war. That's been their strategy all along, but my view would be they've reached a stage of desperation from their standpoint. (Face The Nation, 3/19/06)

CIA: Iraq Is Insurgency's Most Effective Training Camp. A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat. (New York Times, 6/22/05)

CHENEY: The Iraqis met every single political deadline that's been set for them. They haven't missed a single one. (Face The Nation, 3/19/06)

Iraqis Missed Four Deadlines On Creation Of Iraqi Constitution. The Iraqi constitution was finally signed by Shite and Kurdish negotiators on August 28, 2005, after missing four deadlines that had been set for delivery of the document. Sunni negotiators refused to sign the document and pledged to fight against it. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni negotiator said, "I think if this constitution passes as it is, it will worsen everything in the country." (AP, 8/28/05)

CHENEY: On the security front we've seen major progress in terms of training and equipping Iraqi forces.That's the reality. (Face The Nation, 3/19/06)

Iraqi Police Are Infiltrated By Criminals, Religious and Ethnic Militia. "Religious and ethnic militias and criminal organizations have infiltrated police in some areas, further undermining the fledgling force's effectiveness and credibility. Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority has accused some units of the Shiite Muslim-dominated force of kidnapping, torturing and murdering Sunnis." Sectarian militias replaced Iraqi government forces in some areas after one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines was bombed. In other areas, Shiite militiamen or members of Sunni insurgent groups have infiltrated police and military units. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/6/06; Knight Ridder, 2/24/06)

Iraqi Police Hobbled By Corruption. General George Casey said the command has declared 2006 as the "year of the police," a tacit acknowledgment that the more than 80,000-strong Iraqi force has been hobbled by incompetence, corruption, sectarianism and low morale. (AP, 2/8/06)

CHENEY: (Iraqis have) been very successful now in terms of training and equipping over 100 battalions of Iraqi troops and it continues to improve day by day.(Face The Nation, 3/19/06) We Can't Even Get Straight Answers About How Many Trained Iraqi Troops There Are. The Bush Administration's estimates of how many Iraqi troops have been trained continue to change:

-- February 2004: Rumsfeld says the number of Iraqis serving in the security forces was over 210,000, and that the number may grow to over 226,000 by April. (State Department, 2/24/04)

-- September 2004: Rumsfeld says the "latest number, last week was 105,000. Now it looks to be 95,000 - that is to say that are trained and equipped." (DOD Briefing, 9/7/04)

-- February 2005: Rumsfeld says ".the fact of the matter is that there are 130,200 who have been trained and equipped.That's a fact. And how do I know that? I know it because General Petraeus counts them." (Fox News, 2/1/05)

-- June 2005: Rumsfeld says the" fact of the matter is the number's (of trained troops is) 168,000." (ABC News, 6/26/05)

-- July 2005: General Casey told told Congress that only three of the approximately 100 Iraqi army battalions are taking on the insurgents by themselves. Three battalions is approximately 700 soldiers. (Associated Press, 7/22/05; Knight Ridder, 11/30/05)

-- November 2005: President Bush says, "40 Iraqi battalions are taking the lead in the fight." He said a battalion is typically comprised of "between 350 and 800 Iraqi forces," which would bring the latest estimate of fully trained Iraqi troops to somewhere between 14,000 and 32,000. (Bush Speech in Annapolis, 11/30/05)

-- December 2005: When asked how many Iraqi troops were now able to stand alone without the backing of U.S. troops, President Bush said there were "about 200,000-plus capable" forces. He continued by saying that " Now, not all of them are ready to take the fight to the enemy." (Bush Speech, 12/12/05)

-- March 2006: President Bush says, "60 Iraqi battalions are taking the lead in the fight." He previously said a battalion is typically comprised of "between 350 and 800 Iraqi forces," which would bring the latest estimate of fully trained Iraqi troops to somewhere between 21,000 and 48,000. (Bush Speech, 3/13/06)

Instead of American Troops Being Drawn Down, 700 Additional Troops Sent to Iraq. "Concerned about escalating violence as Iraq struggles to form a new government, the U.S. military has sent several hundred troops with tanks and other armor from Kuwait to the Baghdad area. It is the first time extra troops have been sent since December's parliamentary election, which was followed by a period of political wrangling and a wave of sectarian violence triggered by the bombing of a Shiite shrine on Feb. 22. Moving an Army battalion of about 700 soldiers from Kuwait is part of a broader plan, dubbed "Scales of Justice," that includes the repositioning of several thousand U.S. and Iraqi security forces inside Iraq.(G)eneral (Casey) did not say whether more troop increases might be needed this spring." (AP, 3/15/06)

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

[michelle]

US killing of Iraqi civilians 'deliberate'
By Drew Brown, Washington
May 19, 2006

PENTAGON report will show the shooting and killing of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians by US troops in November last year was deliberate and worse than first reported, a US congressman has claimed.

US military authorities in Iraq initially reported that one marine and 15 Iraqi civilians travelling in a bus were killed by a roadside bomb in the western Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Haditha. They said eight insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight.

"There was no firefight. There was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed those innocent people," Democrat John Murtha — who is a former marine colonel but has yet to read the report — said on Wednesday.

"Our troops over-reacted because of the pressure on them. And they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. That is what the report is going to tell."

The comments were the first on the record by a US official characterising the findings of military investigators still looking into the November 19 incident.

The ranking Democrat on the defence appropriations subcommittee and an opponent of US policy in Iraq, Mr Murtha said he had learned about the report's findings from military commanders and other sources.

Military spokesmen said the investigation was not completed.

"There is an ongoing investigation," said Lieutenant-Colonel Sean Gibson, a marine spokesman at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. "Any comment at this time would be inappropriate."

Both Colonel Gibson and Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said the military had yet to decide what, if any, action might be taken against marines involved in the incident.

Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, the ground commander of coalition forces in Iraq, ordered an investigation into the incident on February 14 after a Time magazine reporter told military authorities of allegations that the marines had killed innocent civilians.

Three marine commanders — Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and two of his company commanders, captains James Kimber and Lucas McConnell — whose troops were involved in the incident were relieved of their duties in April. The marines did not link their dismissals to the incident, saying only that confidence in their ability to command had been lost.

After CNN broke the news of the initial investigation in March, military officials said the civilians were not killed in the initial blast but were apparently caught in the crossfire of a subsequent gun battle as 12 to 15 marines fought insurgents from house to house over the next five hours. At that time, military officials said four of the civilians killed were women and five were children.

Subsequent reports revealed a still different account of events, with survivors describing marines breaking down the door of a house and indiscriminately shooting the occupants.

Mr Murtha said nothing indicated that the Iraqis killed in the incident were at fault.

"One man was killed with an IED," he said, referring to a marine killed by the roadside bomb. "And after that, they actually went into the houses and killed women and children."
Source: tinyurl.com/lbyod
***************************************************
IRAQ:
A Word from the Islamic Army
Brian Conley and Muhammad Zaher

BAGHDAD, May 16 (IPS) - Call them terrorists, call them resistance fighters. A significant member of one such group spoke to IPS about why he joined.

Abu Ayoub, a 35-year-old living in Baghdad, is a member of the Islamic Army. He spoke to IPS in the Adhamiya neighbourhood.

"When the occupation forces entered Baghdad, they killed my brother in front of my eyes. He was wounded and bleeding but the occupation forces didn't allow me to save him. When I tried to save him they began shooting at me and after a few minutes my brother died. After that I swore to fight them to the death."

Many resistance groups have been identified since the beginning of the war in March 2003. They range from the well-known Ansar al-Sunna, first noticed in northern Iraq after its members fled Afghanistan, to smaller groups like the Revenge Brigade involved in the kidnapping of Jill Carroll, correspondent with the Christian Science Monitor..

"I think 80 percent are from the Islamic resistance, because Islam orders Muslims to fight against the enemy and against everyone who came to occupy our country," Ayoub said.

After his brother was killed, friends just came up to support him in his resistance fight, he said. "At first I was fighting in a small group, because we didn't trust many people to join with us. But now, after three years fighting, we became part of Islamic Army. Now everything has become organised, we make good plans before any attack."

There are some groups, both Sunni and Shia, who believe the time for violent resistance has passed, Ayoub said. Sunni groups such as the Iraqi Accordance Front, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Muslim Scholars Association seem to be pushing for a political process, and participated in the December elections.

But the Islamic Army will never negotiate with the United States or the Iraqi government, Abu Ayoub told IPS. He believes negotiators with the coalition and Iraqi government include only resistance fighters from the Ba'ath party.

"The Ba'ath resistance fight for Saddam, not for Islam or for Iraq. We are against this. They aren't representative of the Iraqi resistance."

Abu Ayoub believes that the occupation cannot be ended either by a political process or by other peaceful means. Only Iraqis fighting back can liberate Iraq, he says.

"The occupation forces will discover after this negotiation that nothing will change. The resistance will grow more and more till the end of occupation. They came by force, and they will never leave, except by force."

Ayoub said he is not allowed to say how he joined the Islamic Army. But he was willing to say a little about his organisation. "The Islamic army is very big and we fight all over Iraq. We have groups everywhere in Iraq, but I have no connection with other groups. Only our leaders have connections between each other, this is for our security."

Abu Ayoub said that after he joined the Islamic Army it was much easier to receive support such as guns. He told IPS there are "special people" whose work it is to bring weapons. His duty is only to fight the enemy, he said.

When asked why he was fighting the U.S. forces, he said: "I want you to ask this question to the U.S. forces, not to me. They came from the other side of the world and crossed the ocean to occupy my country. Bush and Blair lied to all the world when they spoke about weapons of mass destruction. All the world knew very well their governments were lying, but no country said 'no'. Most of the world supported them to occupy my country."

Ayoub dismisses claims by U.S. President George W. Bush parroted closely by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that their goal in Iraq is to establish democracy and liberate the Iraqi people.

"They don't have credibility, they came to Iraq for many reasons, to destroy Islam, steal oil, save the east front of Israel, control the Middle East and establish bases near Iran and Russia. I want to ask them, 'where is the democracy?' Three years of occupation and Iraqi condition is from bad to worse."

Ayoub is not just angry with the coalition forces. He believes it was wrong for Iraqis to join the new army or police force.

"They are not a real army like the Iraqi Army before the occupation. The occupation forces built this new army to protect them from resistance. I think any honest Iraqi should not join this fake army."

The army was acting against the people, he said. "You can see what they did in Fallujah. They were like a hand of the occupation. They killed many innocent people there and they did that in many other cities in Iraq, like Ramadi, Tal Afar, Hit, Rawa and Haditha. Go there and see how many children, old men and women were killed by the Iraqi Army's hand."

Abu Ayoub believes the police should be called the militia. "Ninety-five percent of them are Shia and work with the Badr militia, and they work for Iran's benefit. They killed many Sunni people just because they were Sunni, to create tensions between Sunni and Shia, and to make civil war after."

But Ayoub believes it is still not right to attack members of the Iraqi army and police. "First we must liberate Iraq from occupation forces and then we can judge each one of them who committed crimes."

There will be no civil war in Iraq if the occupation retreats, Abu Ayoub says. "We will control Iraq and push out all the militias and Iraqi politicians who came on American tanks. Then we will find many honest Iraqi politicians to lead Iraq. But for now you can see how the Iraqi people are between two hammers, the occupation and the militia -- or even the Iraqi government, because they support them." (END/2006)
Source:
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33246

[michelle]

Blair joins Bush to defend Iraq occupation and back preemptive action vs. Iran
By Chris Marsden
27 May 2006

President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair utilised their latest summit meeting to insist that the occupation of Iraq be maintained and the campaign of provocations against neighbouring Iran be stepped up.

The meeting demonstrated their contempt for the antiwar sentiment of the people of both the United States and Britain.

Bush’s poll ratings have fallen to around 30 percent, while Blair is facing demands that he stand down as prime minister sooner than the two-year deadline he set for himself. Popular opposition to both leaders, centred on their decision to wage war against Iraq based on a tissue of lies, has deepened along with the military and political disaster facing the US and Britain in the occupied country.

Yet at their May 25 joint press conference, even while Bush admitted that “The war has affected [the] mentality of the country,” the two demanded that the world line up behind the puppet regime in Baghdad and back an even more bloody drive to smash the popular insurgency.

Bush acknowledged in passing that a few “errors” had been made in Iraq, such as the failure to “find the weapons of mass destruction” and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. But while the press made a great deal of this orchestrated admission of “mistakes,” it downplayed the central thrust of the press conference—the insistence that there would be no change in policy “as long as I’m standing here as the commander in chief, which is two-and-a-half more years.”

Bush left it to Blair to do the rhetorical heavy lifting. One of the advantages for Blair in making a joint appearance with the US president is that it enables him to appear, by contrast, a master of English prose.

On this occasion Blair was even more bellicose than Bush. He stated that the main mistake made had been a failure to adequately confront the insurgency—“the very forces that are creating this violence and bloodshed and terrorism in Iraq ... in order to destroy the hope of that country and its people to achieve democracy, the rule of law and liberty.”

This was now to be rectified. There will be no timetable for a military withdrawal, but instead efforts to strengthen the newly imposed government in Iraq. Blair declared, “The first thing that we need is a strong government in Baghdad that is prepared to enforce its writ throughout the country... what they intend is to come down very hard on those people who want to create the circumstances where it’s difficult for the Iraqi forces to be in control.”

Moving on to Washington’s plans for Iran, Bush told reporters that “one of the goals that Tony and I had was to convince others in the world that Iran, with a nuclear weapon, would be very dangerous, and therefore, we do have a common goal.”

The US has secured the backing of France, Germany and Britain for diplomatic moves against Iran over the demand that Tehran dismantle its nuclear programme. But Bush wants to go much further. He said that he and Blair had “spent a lot of time upstairs talking about how to convince the Iranians that this coalition we put together is very serious... And we strategized about how do we convince other partners that the [United Nations] Security Council is the way to go if the Iranians won’t suspend like the EU3 [Britain, Germany and France] has asked them to do.”

His reference to the Security Council, together with calls for an “enhanced package of measures” against Iran, makes clear that Washington’s ultimate goal is to secure UN authorisation for military action. Such an endorsement is even more important for Blair. He has tied British foreign policy to a military and diplomatic alliance with the US, but he fears that the Bush administration’s readiness to act unilaterally could produce a political backlash in Europe, as occurred with the invasion of Iraq. His efforts continue to be dominated by an attempt to provide a legal justification for the US doctrine of pre-emptive war and to secure international support for US objectives.

To this end, Blair delivered a speech Friday at Georgetown University, setting out his proposals for “reconciliation in the international community” around a strategy of “progressive pre-emption” to combat terrorism and promote “democratic values.” He called for changes in the remit of the Security Council to allow it to authorise pre-emptive intervention by member states, stressing, “We have to act, not react; we have to do so on the basis of prediction, not certainty; and such action will often, usually, indeed, be outside of our own territory.”

He again urged an end to arguments “about the merits of removing Saddam,” saying, “The war split the world. The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it.”

He then made a direct appeal for the leaders of the imperialist powers to stand firm against popular demands for an end to the occupation in the face of mounting bloodshed. “Here is where we have to change radically our mindset,” he continued. “At present, when we are shown pictures of carnage in Iraq, much of our own opinion sees that as a failure, as a reason for leaving. Surely it is a reason for persevering and succeeding.”

But securing Iraq was not enough, he warned. “I now think that we need a far more concentrated and concerted strategy across the whole region. The United States rightly began this with its Broader Middle East Initiative. However, the more I examine this issue, the more convinced I am that to protect our future, we need to help them to theirs. For example, I don’t believe we will be secure unless Iran changes.”

The statements made by both Bush and Blair were chilling in their implications, presaging new atrocities in Iraq and even greater crimes throughout the Middle East.

Their attempt to justify retroactively their decision to wage war on Baghdad as having given birth to democracy is a transparent lie. Blair’s essential argument is that whether or not one believes the war against Iraq was justified, and even if it has produced a disaster, it cannot be undone. One must accept it as an accomplished fact. It is time to forget the past and unite in the struggle to build “democracy.”

But if the war against Iraq was waged on the basis of false claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, then not only have those who organized it perpetrated a war crime for which they should be brought to justice, but the regime that has been set up on the basis of an illegal invasion is itself illegitimate.

The invasion was, in fact, a war of aggression, whose primary objective was the establishment of US hegemony over the Middle East and its oil resources. It was prepared through a deliberate campaign to deceive the American and British people.

Yet Blair now maintains that an occupation established through such illegal actions has produced democratic rule. In contrast, the insurgency is nothing more than “terrorism.” In the course of the May 25 press conference, Blair and Bush branded the opposition to foreign military occupation in Iraq as “terrorism” two dozen times. In similar fashion, they portrayed the forces opposing the government in Baghdad as representing the sole danger of sectarian violence.

This turns reality on its head. The insurgency is not the product of a handful of religious extremists, but mass popular opposition provoked by the war and neo-colonial occupation of Iraq. Equally, it is the occupation that is chiefly responsible for fuelling the sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias that has developed in the absence of any genuinely democratic representation.

Far from representing a means of achieving national unity, the administration headed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al Maliki will only accelerate the descent into civil war. The government being lauded by Bush and Blair is, in fact, founded on the basis of sectarian divisions and is encouraging the dismemberment of Iraq along ethno-communal lines—a Kurdish enclave in the north and a carve-up of the remainder of the country between rival Sunni and Shia groups.

Maliki is the representative of a Shiite faction that is intent on securing dominance over Iraq through the brutal suppression of the largely Sunni-based insurgency. He has made clear that he wishes the Shia militias to be incorporated into the security apparatuses rather than disbanded.

As for US efforts to divide resistance to the occupation by bringing on board Sunni representatives, this serves only to bring an echo of the communal conflicts into the structures of the executive—so much so that the government has not been able even to agree who will occupy key security posts.

There is a clear parallel between the situations facing Bush and Blair. Both are reviled in their own country and internationally. Both head administrations that are widely seen to have been a disaster and are careening into an ever deeper crisis. They can nevertheless continue in office because they share another strange parallel.

Whilst disaffection with the governments headed by Bush and Blair is widespread within the ruling elites of both countries, there is broad agreement with their basic aims. The deteriorating situation in Iraq has provoked growing concern, but the Democrats in the US and the Conservative-led opposition in Britain supported the war and continue to defend the occupation. No one is prepared to countenance a withdrawal that might weaken America’s grip on the oil riches of the Middle East. Rather, the occupation must be secured at all costs, as preparations for war against Iran are advanced in order to consolidate Washington’s stranglehold on the region.

Equally, all factions within the ruling circles of both countries are determined ensure that the political opposition of broad masses of working people to militarism and war find no political outlet.

SOURCE:
www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/bush-m27.shtml

[michelle]

Iraqi Girl Tells Of Surviving US Attack In Haditha (Video)
tinyurl.com/hbsmx

Mission Rejected (Book)
When AWOL Is The Only Way Out
The Sight Of U.S. Troops Kicking The Heads
Of Decapitated Iraqis Around 'Like A Soccer Ball'
Made Army Soldier Joshua Key Desert To Canada
by Peter Laufer

The following text is an excerpt from Peter Laufer's new book, "Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq" (Chelsea Green, 2006):

"We was going along the Euphrates River," says Joshua Key, a 27-year-old former U.S. soldier from Oklahoma, detailing a recurring nightmare -- a scene he stumbled on shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "It's a road right in the city of Ramadi. We turned a real sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over here and U.S. troops in between them. I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, what in the hell happened here? What's caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?' We get out and somebody was screaming, 'We fucking lost it here!' I'm thinking, 'Oh, yes, somebody definitely lost it here.'"

Joshua says he was ordered to look around for evidence of a firefight, for something to rationalize the beheaded Iraqis. "I look around just for a few seconds and I don't see anything." But then he noticed the sight that now triggers his nightmares. "I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, I can't be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did it happen? That's just my question: Why did that happen?"

READ MORE: tinyurl.com/m4m3r

[michelle]

CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM---DEATH IN THE DESERT
Flash video
www.chris-floyd.com/isahaqi/

Furious Iraq Demands Apology
As Us Troops Are Cleared Of Massacre
by Brian Brady
news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=824382006

Return to Ishaqi:
The Pentagon's Shaky Self-Exoneration
by Chris Floyd
Saturday, 03 June 2006
*This piece has been extensively revised since its original posting, with the latest material added on June 4.*
SNIP:
By the way, this is what the powerful -- and their sycophants -- always fail to understand: no genuine dissident is happy about dissenting. You dissent because you see injustice, crime, corruption and needless death being wrought by the power structures of your own society. You dissent because so many lies have been forced down your throat, and you just want to know the truth, as far as it can be known, you just want to speak the truth, whatever it may be. You dissent because of the reality that you see. And this is a painful thing; it's like watching a family member go bad, like learning your own father is a killer, that your mother is thief. No one wants to believe evil of their own country, their own society; but sometimes the very ideals that you were given by your society -- a commitment to justice, to truth, the belief in the inherent worth and moral agency of every individual human being -- compels you to confront the reality of the crimes and corruption of the leaders and institutions of that same society.

It isn't fun; there's no pleasure in it. Especially if, with Dostoevsky, you believe that "each is responsible for all," that you yourself are implicated in every failure of humanity. Bob Dylan captured the essence of this kind of dissent well when he sang of the great iconoclast, Lenny Bruce:

He fought a war on a battlefield
Where every victory hurts.

So yes, it would be nice to be able to accept at face value the Pentagon's exonerating version of the incident at Ishaqi. (Relatively speaking, of course; that is to say, in the murderous context of the vast atrocity that is the Iraq war itself, it would be better to accept the Pentagon's assertion that the deaths of up these innocent people were simply the inevitable and unintended by-product of urban warfare, rather than the more grisly alternative. It would be good to have this slight mitigation of the general horror.) But a commitment to the truth -- and a refusal to succumb to historical amnesia -- prevents such an automatic acceptance.
READ IT ALL: www.chris-floyd.com

[michelle]

Cindy Sheehan, Dick Gregory, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn
and Hundreds More Launch Hunger Strike to End the Iraq War
t r u t h o u t | Press Release

Tuesday 27 June 2006

On July 3, 2006, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Global Exchange and Gold Star Families for Peace will announce a historic hunger strike against the war in Iraq. At 5pm, they will sit down in front of the White House to eat their last meal and hold a press conference before beginning the fast at the same location in the morning of July 4 at 10am.

We've marched, held vigils, lobbied Congress, camped out at Bush's ranch. We've even gone to jail. Now it's time to do more, says peace mom Cindy Sheehan. While others are celebrating July 4th with barbeques, we'll be showing our patriotism by putting our bodies on the line to bring our troops home.

Hundreds of celebrities, veterans, mothers, and concerned citizens across the country will participate in a rolling fast. Strikers include musicians Willie Nelson and Michael Franti, actors Danny Glover, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, Gold Star parents Cindy Sheehan and Fernando Suarez, legendary faster and comedian Dick Gregory, environmental activist Diane Wilson, Iraq war veteran Geoffrey Millard and Gulf War vet Michael McPherson, labor leader Dolores Huerta and CODEPINK cofounders Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans and Gael Murphy.

The organizers call on a long history of fasts for political purposes, claiming their place among the Suffragettes, Mahatmas Gandhi and Cesar Chavez. In honor of this rich history, the fasters will gather at the Gandhi memorial statue a Massachusetts and 21st NW on July 3 at 3pm, then march to Pennsylvania Avenue for the meal and press conference at 5pm. In other parts of the country, people will engage in rolling fasts, passing the fast from person to person every 24 hours.

Diane Wilson, who has engaged in several hunger strikes in her history as an environmental activist, says she will not set an end date to her fast. My goal is to bring the troops home. I don't know how long I can fast, but I'm making this open-ended, she says. I plan to take this as far as I've ever taken anything in my 58 years. I fear our future is at stake, and I'm ready to make a major sacrifice.

The fast will last until September 21, International Peace Day, when activists around the country will initiate a week of nonviolent actions against the war as part of the Declaration of Peace.

--------

For more information, including a full list of fasters, please see www.troopshomefast.org.

Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062706G.shtml

[michelle]

The Hidden War on Women in Iraq

I believe it is important to focus on the comments made by Ruth Rosen about rape not being connected to sexual lust but rather it is used as a form of power and control over another. My heart goes out to the Iraqi women who have been raped, by anyone. They are in a double bind. They not only have to deal with the physical and psychological effects of rape but they also must deal with the inability to take legal action against their attackers and imposed moral shame due to twisted religious fervidness. Is this not just another form of control to keep women "in their place?" Victims of rape in the United States have fought a long battle to put rape in its proper perspective. It is NOT the woman's fault; women do not cause men to rape them due to appearance or behavior. It is an act of extreme aggression against another done for control or to make the perpetrator feel power and like they are in control. I understand the sensitivity towards this in the Muslim community but to make women feel shame and humiliation to the point of not being able to take legal action or even to drive them to suicide because of religious zealotry is simply heartless and wrong. Women throughout history have been repeatedly robbed of their true power and place in society due to male dominated controls whether they be militant, political, religious, or societal.....Michelle


Tomgram: Ruth Rosen on Sexual Terrorism and Iraqi Women

Five American soldiers have been charged in a horrendous rape and murder case in Iraq (and a sixth for not reporting it). In the United States, rape is now a public crime. Cases are regularly discussed and followed in the media; victims are far less often blamed; if you turn on a TV program like Law & Order: SVU, rape cases are national drama and even entertainment.

In Iraq, rape remains a crime largely kept out of the sight of a society that finds it almost too heinous to imagine (which doesn't necessarily make it uncommon). Consider, for instance, the comments of an Iraqi journalist, Raheem Salman, who works for the Los Angeles Times and who interviewed the first relative to enter the house of the 14 year old victim after she had been raped and murdered, and her body partially burned by American soldiers:


"Well, indeed, to tell you frankly that it has a great impact upon the whole society, upon all Iraqis. This is one of the worst crimes, you know, to be committed against a girl in this age. Some people describe this murder and rape as horrible and gruesome and disgusting, indeed. Others describe it even as a brand of shame, even in the American Army's history. Others consider it as example of the atrocity of some of the soldiers. Among the lawmakers here in our parliament, some female lawmakers, you know, protested strongly under the dome of the parliament. They asked the parliament to call the prime minister and the minister of interior. They also asked for a real participation of the Iraqi side in the investigation, and not only the Americans."

Or consider the young Sunni blogger, Riverbend, who writes Baghdad Burning and now seems to live as a semi-shut-in in an Iraqi capital caught in a heightening state of civil war. ("It's like Baghdad is no longer one city, it's a dozen different smaller cities each infected with its own form of violence.") In a post in which she discusses the death of a friend -- a twenty-six year-old civil engineer caught in sectarian violence in his neighborhood -- she also turns to the rape case in this fashion:


"Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest -- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?"

Finally, consider the fine reporter Nir Rosen, who has spent much of the last three years as an independent journalist in Iraq -- and who looks Iraqi enough (his father was Iranian) to have been able to experience both sides of the occupation. He has been embedded with U.S. troops, but also embedded with ordinary Iraqis. ("My skin color and language skills allowed me to relate to the American occupier in a different way, for he looked at me as if I were just another haji, the "gook" of the war in Iraq.") At the Truthdig website, he writes a summary account of the American occupation ("creating enemies instead of eliminating them") as he encountered it that has to be read to be believed. He concludes:


"In reality both Abu Ghraib and Haditha were merely more extreme versions of the day-to-day workings of the American occupation in Iraq, and what makes them unique is not so much how bad they were, or how embarrassing, but the fact that they made their way to the media and were publicized despite attempts to cover them up. Focusing on Abu Ghraib and Haditha distracts us from the daily, little Abu Ghraibs and small-scale Hadithas that have made up the occupation. The occupation has been one vast extended crime against the Iraqi people, and most of it has occurred unnoticed by the American people and the media."

In a similar way, the now highly publicized rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by American soldiers focuses attention on one horrifying case of sexual terrorism, but not on the larger issue of what has actually happened to the majority of Iraqi women in the wake of the American invasion and occupation of their country. Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, as well as the author of a superb history of the modern women's movement, The World Split Open, explores this distinctly under-reported but crucial topic: What, in fact, has the Bush administration's "liberation" of Iraqi women meant since 2003? Tom


The Hidden War on Women in Iraq
By Ruth Rosen

Abu Ghraib. Haditha. Guantanamo. These are words that shame our country. Now, add to them Mahmudiya, a town 20 miles south of Baghdad. There, this March, a group of five American soldiers allegedly were involved in the rape and murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza, a young Iraqi girl. Her body was then set on fire to cover up their crimes, her father, mother, and sister murdered. The rape of this one girl, if proven true, is probably not simply an isolated incident. But how would we know? In Iraq, rape is a taboo subject. Shamed by the rape, relatives of this girl wouldn't even hold a public funeral and were reluctant to reveal where she is buried.

Like women everywhere, Iraqi women have always been vulnerable to rape. But since the American invasion of their country, the reported incidence of sexual terrorism has accelerated markedly. -- and this despite the fact that few Iraqi women are willing to report rapes either to Iraqi officials or to occupation forces, fearing to bring dishonor upon their families. In rural areas, female rape victims may also be vulnerable to "honor killings" in which male relatives murder them in order to restore the family's honor. "For women in Iraq," Amnesty International concluded in a 2005 report, "the stigma frequently attached to the victims instead of the perpetrators of sexual crimes makes reporting such abuses especially daunting."

This specific rape of one Iraqi girl, however, is now becoming symbolic of the way the Bush administration has violated Iraq's honor; Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has already launched an inquest into the crime. In an administration that normally doesn't know the meaning of an apology, the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., both publicly apologized. In a fierce condemnation, the Muslim Scholars Association in Iraq denounced the crime: "This act, committed by the occupying soldiers, from raping the girl to mutilating her body and killing her family, should make all humanity feel ashamed."

Shame, yes, but that is hardly sufficient. After all, rape is now considered a war crime by the International Criminal Court.

It wasn't always that way. Soldiers have long viewed women as the spoils of war, even when civilian or military leaders condemned such behavior, but in the early 1990s, a new international consensus began to emerge on the act of rape. Prodded by an energized global women's movement, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 1993. Subsequent statutes in the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, as well as the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court in July 2002, all defined rape as a crime against humanity or a war crime.

No one accuses American soldiers of running through the streets of Iraq, raping women as an instrument of war against the insurgents (though such acts are what caused three Bosnian soldiers, for the first time in history, to be indicted in 2001 for the war crime of rape).

Still, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has had the effect of humiliating, endangering, and repressing Iraqi women in ways that have not been widely publicized in the mainstream media: As detainees in prisons run by Americans, they have been sexually abused and raped; as civilians, they have been kidnapped, raped, and then sometimes sold for prostitution; and as women -- and, in particular, as among the more liberated women in the Arab world -- they have increasingly disappeared from public life, many becoming shut-ins in their own homes.

Rape and sexual humiliation in prisons

The scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib focused on the torture, sexual abuse, and humiliation of Iraqi men. A variety of sources suggest that female prisoners suffered similar treatment, including rape.

Few Americans probably realize that the American-run prison at Abu Ghraib also held female detainees. Some of them were arrested by Americans for political reasons -- because they were relatives of Baathist leaders or because the occupying forces thought they could use them as bargaining chips to force male relatives to inform on insurgents or give themselves up.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, the secrecy surrounding female detentions "resulted from a collusion of the families and the occupying forces." Families feared social stigma; the occupying forces feared condemnation by human rights groups and anger from Iraqis who saw such treatment of women by foreigners as a special act of violation.

On the condition of ,anonymity and in great fear some female detainees nevertheless did speak with human rights workers after being released from detention. They have described beatings, torture, and isolation. Like their male counterparts, they reserve their greatest bitterness for sexual humiliations suffered in American custody. Nearly all female detainees reported being threatened with rape. Some women were interrogated naked and subjected to derision and humiliating remarks by soldiers.

The British Guardian reported that one female prisoner managed to smuggle a note out of Abu Ghraib. She claimed that American guards were raping the few female detainees held in the prison and that some of them were now pregnant. In desperation, she urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail in order to spare the women further shame.

Amal Kadham Swadi, one of seven Iraqi female attorneys attempting to represent imprisoned women, told the Guardian that only one woman she met with was willing to speak about rape. "She was crying. She told us she had been raped. Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off, and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.'"

Professor Huda Shaker, a political scientist at Baghdad University, also told the Guardian that women in Abu Ghraib have been sexually abused and raped. She identified one woman, in particular, who was raped by an American military policeman, became pregnant, and later disappeared.

Professor Shaker added, "A female colleague of mine was arrested and taken there. When I asked her after she was released what happened at Abu Ghraib, she started crying. Ladies here are afraid and shy of talking about such subjects. They say everything is OK. Even in a very advanced society in the west it is very difficult to talk about rape."

Shaker, herself, encountered a milder form of sexual abuse at the hands of one American soldier. At a checkpoint, she said, an American soldier "pointed the laser sight [of his gun] directly in the middle of my chest… Then he pointed to his penis. He told me, 'Come here, bitch, I'm going to fuck you.'"

Writing from Baghdad, Luke Hardin of the Guardian reported that at Abu Ghraib journalists have been forbidden from talking to female detainees, who are cloistered in tiny windowless cells. Senior US military officers who have escorted journalists around Abu Ghraib, however, have admitted that rapes of women took place in the cellblock where 19 "high-value" male detainees were also being held. Asked how such abuse could have happened, Colonel Dave Quantock, now in charge of the prison's detention facilities, responded, "I don't know. It's all about leadership. Apparently it wasn't there."

No one should be surprised that women detainees, like male ones, were subjected to sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib. Think of the photographs we've already seen from that prison. If acts of ritual humiliation could be used to "soften up" men, then the rape of female detainees is hardly unimaginable.

But how can we be sure? In January, 2004, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. military official in Iraq, ordered Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba to investigate persistent allegations of human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. The Taguba Report confirmed that in at least one instance a U.S. military policeman had raped at least one female prisoner and that guards had videotaped and photographed naked female detainees. Seymour Hersh also reported in a 2004 issue of the New Yorker magazine that these secret photos and videos, most of which still remain under wraps by the Pentagon, show American soldiers "having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner." Additional photos have made their way to the web sites of Afterdowningstreet.org and Salon.com. In one photograph, a woman is raising her shirt, baring her breasts, presumably as she was ordered to do.

The full range of pictures and videotapes are likely to show a great deal more. Members of Congress who viewed all the pictures and videotapes from Abu Ghraib seemed genuinely shaken and sickened by what they saw. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn called them "appalling;" then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle described them as "horrific." Ever since the scandal broke in April 2004, human rights and civil liberties groups have been engaged in a legal battle with the Department of Defense, demanding that it release the rest of the visual documents. Only when all those documents are available to the general public will we have a clearer -- and undoubtedly more ghastly -- record of the sexual acts forced upon both female and male detainees.

Sexual Terrorism on the Streets

Meanwhile, the chaos of the war has also led to a rash of kidnappings and rapes of women outside of prison walls. After interviewing rape and abduction victims, as well as eyewitnesses, Iraqi police and health professionals, and U.S. military police and civil affairs officers, Human Rights Watch released a report in July, 2003, titled Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad. Only months after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, they had already learned of twenty-five credible allegations of the rape and/or abduction of Iraqi women. Not surprisingly, the report found that "police officers gave low priority to allegations of sexual violence and abduction, that the police were under-resourced, and that victims of sexual violence confronted indifference and sexism from Iraqi law enforcement personnel." Since then, as chaos, violence, and bloodletting have descended on Iraq, matters have only gotten worse.

After the American invasion, local gangs began roaming Baghdad, snatching girls and women from the street. Interviews with human rights investigators have produced some horrifying stories. Typical was nine-year-old "Saba A." who was abducted from the stairs of the building where she lives, taken to an abandoned building nearby, and raped. A family friend who saw Saba A. immediately following the rape told Human Rights Watch:

"She was sitting on the stairs, here, at 4:00 p.m. It seems to me that probably he hit her on the back of the head with a gun and then took her to building. She came back fifteen minutes later, bleeding [from the vaginal area]. [She was still bleeding two days later, so] we took her to the hospital."

The medical report by the U.S. military doctor who treated Saba A. "documented bruising in the vaginal area, a posterior vaginal tear, and a broken hymen."

In 2005, Amnesty International also interviewed abducted women. The story of "Asma," a young engineer, was representative. She was shopping with her mother, sister, and a male relative when six armed men forced her into a car and drove her to a farmhouse outside the city. They repeatedly raped her. A day later, the men drove her to her neighborhood and pushed her out of the car.

As recently as June 2006, Mayada Zhaair, spokeswoman for the Women's Rights Association, a local NGO, reported, "We've observed an increase in the number of women being sexually abused and raped in the past four months, especially in the capital."

No one knows how many abducted women have never returned. As one Iraqi police inspector testified, "Some gangs specialize in kidnapping girls, they sell them to Gulf countries. This happened before the war too, but now it is worse, they can get in and out without passports." Others interviewed by Human Rights Watch argued that such trafficking in women had not occurred before the invasion.

The U.S. State Department's June 2005 report on the trafficking of women suggested that the extent of the problem in Iraq is "difficult to appropriately gauge" under current chaotic circumstances, but cited an unknown number of Iraqi women and girls being sent to Yemen, Syria, Jordan, and Persian Gulf countries for sexual exploitation.

In May 2006, Brian Bennett wrote in Time Magazine that a visit to "the Khadamiyah Women's Prison in the northern part of Baghdad immediately produces several tales of abduction and abandonment. A stunning 18-year-old nicknamed Amna, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail, says she was taken from an orphanage by an armed gang just after the US invasion and sent to brothels in Samarra, al-Qaim on the border with Syria, and Mosul in the north before she was taken back to Baghdad, drugged with pills, dressed in a suicide belt and sent to bomb a cleric's office in Khadamiyah, where she turned herself in to the police. A judge gave her a seven-year jail sentence ‘for her sake' to protect her from the gang, according to the prison director."

"Families and courts," Bennett reported, "are usually so shamed by the disappearance [and presumed rape] of a daughter that they do not report these kidnappings. And the resulting stigma of compromised chastity is such that even if the girl should resurface, she may never be taken back by her relations."

Disappearing women

To avoid such dangers, countless Iraqi women have become shut-ins in their own homes. Historian Marjorie Lasky has described this situation in "Iraqi Women Under Siege," a 2006 report for Codepink, an anti-war women's organization. Before the war, she points out, many educated Iraqi women participated fully in the work force and in public life. Now, many of them rarely go out. They fear kidnap and rape; they are terrified of getting caught in the cross-fire between Americans and insurgents; they are frightened by sectarian reprisals; and they are scared of Islamic militants who intimidate or beat them if they are not "properly covered."

"In the British-occupied south," Terri Judd reported in the British Independent,"where Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi's Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death."

Invisible women -- for some Iraqi fundamentalist Islamic leaders, this is a dream come true. The Ministry of the Interior, for example, recently issued notices warning women not to go out on their own. "This is a Muslim country and any attack on a woman's modesty is also an attack on our religious beliefs," said Salah Ali, a senior ministry official. Religious leaders in both Sunni and Shiite mosques have used their sermons to persuade their largely male congregations to keep working women at home. "These incidents of abuse just prove what we have been saying for so long," said Sheikh Salah Muzidin, an imam at a mosque in Baghdad. "That it is the Islamic duty of women to stay in their homes, looking after their children and husbands rather than searching for work---especially with the current lack of security in the country."

In the early 1970s, American feminists redefined rape and argued that it was an act driven not by sexual lust, but by a desire to exercise power over another person. Rape, they argued, was an act of terrorism that kept all women from claiming their right to public space. That is precisely what has happened to Iraqi women since the American invasion of Iraq. Sexual terrorism coupled with religious zealotry has stolen their right to claim their place in public life.

This, then, is a hidden part of the unnecessary suffering loosed by the reckless invasion of Iraq. Amid the daily explosions and gunfire that make the papers is a wave of sexual terrorism, whose exact dimensions we have no way of knowing, and that no one here notices, unleashed by the Bush administration in the name of exporting "democracy" and fighting "the war on terror."

Historian and journalist Ruth Rosen teaches history and public policy at U.C. Berkeley and is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute. A new edition of her most recent book, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (Penguin, 2001), will be published with an updated epilogue in 2007.

Copyright 2006 Ruth Rosen

Source:
www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=101034

[michelle]

Lest we forget Iraq and the INSANITY going on there. Anwaar posted an article the other day at FH which made me cry:
'Neighbors Are Killing Neighbors' malakandsky.blogspot.com/2006/07/neighbors-are-killing-neighbors.html
This isn't all about U.S. troops or the actions of out of control governments anymore. Deep seated hatred between various groups is surfacing more and more throughout our world. Special intrests groups may start wars but they play on and inflame what is already present. A quote from a higher being, whose messages I read:
"How many lessons do the different nations have to go through before they wake up. All wars make for losers and there is no real gain that will be lasting. Nations often reflect the desires of their people, and war is invariably the result of hatred and greed. It simply results in their fragmentation, and the repercussions have an effect for many years. Yet Man seems not to learn from personal experience, or a history that shows the sorrow and deprivation of your ancestors. You are your ancestors, and you have trod this path many times and deep down you know what it is like to be involved in wars."
......Michelle