[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 28 Dec 2004]

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Imperial march hits snag in Iraq
Ayaz Amir
...They have destroyed a country and its infrastructure and continue to
bomb, kill and torture but even if there is one American dead to every
fifty or hundred Iraqis killed, there is no end to American outrage. Anyone
fighting the Americans is an "insurgent" — a label implying rebellion
against established and legitimate authority. But one mistake the Americans
are not making. Compared to the Vietnam War they are practicing an
insidious form of censorship which is succe! ssfully shielding the American
people, and the rest of the world, from the true horrors of this American
exercise in liberation. Instead of spreading light, 24-hour news is
obscuring reality...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8465&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8465


CRIMINI DI GUERRA
Washington Post - Comedonchisciotte.net
Grazie ad una causa giudiziaria sollevata dall'Unione Americana per le
Libertà Civili e da altri gruppi per i diritti dell'uomo, migliaia di
pagine di documenti del governo che sono stati pubblicati questo mese hanno
confermato alcune delle dolorose verità riguardanti gli abusi perpetrati su
detenuti stranieri da parte dell'esercito degli Stati Uniti e della CIA --
verità che la amministrazione Bush si era rifiutata implacabilmente di
riconoscere. Fin dall! a pubblicazione delle fotografie sugli abusi che si
sono verificati alla prigione di Abu Ghraib in Iraq, i ripulitori‚ della
amministrazione guidati dal Segretario della Difesa Donald H. Rumsfeld ˆ
avevano sostenuto la scorsa primavera che questi crimini erano stati
commessi da alcuni riservisti di basso-rango, che si erano verificati
limitatamente al turno di notte durante un periodo caotico durato alcuni
mesi ad Abu Ghraib nel 2003, che non erano relazionati agli interrogatori
dei prigionieri e che non si era verificato alcun caso di tortura alla
prigione nella Baia di Guantanamo

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8482&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8482


Dead Osama Gives Mythical al-Zarqawi a Promotion
Kurt Nimmo
Osama bin Laden — who is dead and buried — has released yet another audio
tape from the grave "endorsing" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—the mythical Jordanian
of Palestinian heritage and super-terrorist who is everywhere yet
nowhere—as his "deputy in Iraq," according to the Associated Press. The
voice on the tape described al-Zarqawi as the "emir," or prince, of
al-Qaida in Iraq and said Muslims there should "listen to him."
(...)Moreover, now that al-Zarq! awi is the "emir" of the resistance, Bush
and the Strausscons can tell the world that the occupation of Iraq is part
and parcel of the bogus "war on terrorism"...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8484&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8484


Disappearing Act
Fallujah and the Media
MIKE WHITNEY, CounterPunch
...The collective punishment and wholesale savagery of the Falluja campaign
cannot be understood without recognizing the economic forces that are
driving the repression. The military is nothing more than the enforcement
arm of American commercial interests. As Emad Mekay reports for Inter Press
Service, "The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government
continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social
subsidies,! full access for U.S. companies to the nation's oil reserves and
reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France
and Russia." The first of these changes will involve the privatizing of the
Iraqi National Oil Company so that Iraq's prodigious oil wealth will be
directly owned by foreign corporations...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8464&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8464


The "Spanish Inquisition" Made in America
Michel Chossudovsky, www.globalresearch.ca
..."Legal opinions" drafted on behalf of war criminals are being used to
"legalize" torture and redefine Justice. War criminals legitimately occupy
positions of authority, which enable them to redefine the contours of the
judicial system and the process of law enforcement (...) Media
disinformation instills within the consciousness of Americans that somehow
the use of torture, the existence of concentration camps, extra judicial!
assassinations of "rogue enemies", all of which are happening, are "under
certain circumstances" "acceptable" and perfectly "legal" because the
Justice department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), says "it's legit"...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8474&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8474


Iraq 2004 Looks Like Vietnam 1966
Adjusting body counts for medical and military changes.
Phillip Carter and Owen West
...The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, for example, last
July downplayed the intensity of the Iraq war on this basis, arguing that
"it would take over 73 years for US forces to incur the level of combat
deaths suffered in the Vietnam war." But a comparative analysis of U.S.
casualty statistics from Iraq tells a different story. After factoring in
medical, doctri! nal, and technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq
circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa
1966—and in some cases more lethal...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8479&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8479


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 26 December 2004, and Monday,
27 December 2004
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member editorial board The
Free Arab Voice.
Dr. Tamir Salih al-'Ani, who is in charge of the morgue in al-Fallujah
General Hospital has reported that emergency teams in al-Fallujah Hospital
have recovered 700 bodies of Iraqis from the ruins of houses destroyed in
the course of the US aggressors' offensive on the city. Dr. Salih confirmed
that among the 700 bodies were 504 b! odies of women and children. The rest
are the bodies of elderly and middle aged men...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8485&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8485


It's time to support the troops
Sheila Samples, Media Monitors Network
...It's easy to conclude that Bush and Rumsfeld are either sadistic liers
or they are totally out of touch with reality. Or both. There is also
something intensely obscene about a deaf, dumb and mute Congress, whose
members stand by, knowing they are being lied to but refusing to accept
their Constitutional responsibility. I have a considerable stash of words,
but none sufficiently harsh to describe the contempt I feel for these
Democrat and ! Republican legislators who silently lowered their heads --
who turned their backs -- and allowed Bush and Rumsfeld to send their young
constituents to their deaths (...) It's time to truly support American
troops. Bring them home...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8486&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8486


Sunni Party Pulls Out of Iraq Vote As Doubts Grow
Karl Vick, Washington Post Foreign Service
The largest political party representing Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority
announced Monday that it would drop out of the Jan. 30 election, dealing a
fresh blow to the vote's credibility on the same day the top Shiite Muslim
candidate survived a car bombing...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8487&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8487


Multiple Tikrit blasts kill many police
Aljazeera.net
At least 18 Iraqi policemen have been killed and many others injured in
attacks on police stations and checkpoints around Tikrit. Aljazeera said
police stations and a checkpoint south of the city were attacked by
fighters at about 7.30am (0430 GMT). "They attacked with heavy weapons,"
Major Ali al-Tikriti said. "It was not clear if the attackers suffered any
casualties"...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8483&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8483


Iraqi cleric's intentions in vote a mystery
Sadr said to have dozens on ballot
Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times
Mercurial Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr once again has everyone
guessing about his next move. Officially, the young religious leader --
whose summer standoff with US troops in Najaf threatened to spark a Shi'ite
rebellion across Iraq -- said he is not participating in next month's
national elections. Supporters, however, say he has dozens of candidates on
various slates (...) ''I suspect tha! t Moqtada Sadr has a plan to position
himself for whichever way he wants to go," said a Western diplomat in
Baghdad, speaking on the condition of anonymity...


<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8481&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8481


The Many Fictions of Iraq
Marc Krug, Counterbias.com
...Additionally, killing hundreds of Iraqis so that free and open elections
can be held seems to contradict what the whole democratic process is
supposedly all about. The question becomes — is it a free and open election
if all those opposed to it must be killed before it can be held?
Furthermore, we have once again been reminded to our shame and
embarrassment that we systematically abused Iraqi prisoners as a matter of
policy (...) To make matters worse, we a! ppear to be losing this war,
despite our best intentions...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8480&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8480


Five shot dead in Iraq
Reuters
INSURGENTS shot dead five men in the restive Iraqi city of Ramadi overnight
and left their corpses in the street with a handwritten note identifying
them as police, witnesses said. Residents said they found the bodies this
morning. Reuters television footage showed them lying in jeans and sweaters
in the centre of the western city that is a hotbed of insurgent activity
against the US-backed government...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8478&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8478


The US falls for the Soviet trap in Iraq
Amin Saikal.
...In comparison, the record of the US-led occupation of Iraq appears to be
somewhat worse. An assessment over the past 20 months clearly reveals that
proportionally the US has caused more damage to Iraq and its people and has
incurred more human and material costs than the Soviets did in
Afghanistan...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8477&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8477


History will show U.S. lusted after oil
Linda McQuaig
..."The plan to take over Iraq is a revival of an old plan that first
appeared in 1975. It was the Kissinger plan," James Akins, who served as
U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under Kissinger, told me in an interview in
Washington in 2003. Dyer insists that the Iraq invasion wasn't about oil,
but about extending U.S. power. But these goals go hand in glove. Gaining
control over oil is crucial to extending U.S. power, and will be even more
so in the coming year! s as the world's easily-accessible oil reserves are
depleted, creating ever fiercer competition for what remains...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8476&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8476


CIA Resists Request for Abuse Data
Charlie Savage
The CIA is refusing to disclose any information about abuse of detainees in
Afghanistan and at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, invoking a
legal precedent that involved a secret project by billionaire Howard Hughes
to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine in the 1970s. The CIA
allegedly oversaw interrogations of top-level detainees, and some
investigators think the agency's tactics are at the heart of the question
of whether the Bush administration h! as authorized torture...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8475&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8475


"Civilization" vs. "Barbarism". An Interview with Noam Chomsky
M. JUNAID ALAM, CounterPunch
...But what was dramatic about Fallujah was that it was not kept secret. So
you could see on the front page of the New York Times, a big picture of the
first majorstep in the offensive, namely the capture of the Fallujah
general hospital. And there's a picture of people lying on the ground,
soldier guarding them, and then there's a story that tells that patients
and doctors were taken from - patients were taken from their ! beds,
patients and doctors were forced to lie on the floor and manacled, under
guard, and the picture described it...

<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8466&s2=28>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info?p=8466




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