McClatchy Washington Bureau | 12/02/2006 | Roundup of violence in Iraq - 2 December: Roundup of violence in Iraq - 2 December By Laith Hammoudi McClatchy Newspapers The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers Special Correspondent Laith Hammoudi in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.
1- Baghdad.. The source MOI operation room.
· police said that 51 people at least were killed and other 90 were injured in three car bombs in Sadriya neighborhood and Hafidh Al Qadhi neighborhood downtown Baghdad. the three cars exploded at about 4 pm Baghdad time when so many people were shopping.
· 44 anonymous bodies were found in different neighborhoods in Baghdad today, 33 bodies were found in Karkh part of Baghdad ( the west part) and 11 bodies were found in the eastern part ( rosafa .
· A civilian was killed and 6 others were injured (including 2 police members) when insurgents shot fire targeting police patrol near Al Yarmook hospital downtown Baghdad.
· Insurgent shot dead today early morning an officer in the ministry of interior affairs in Baghdad Al Jadida neighborhood east of Baghdad
· An IED explosion targeted an police patrol working for the ministry of electricity killing a police man and wounding 6. two vehicles were destroyed in the explosion. The explosion happened in Yousifiya town south of Baghdad
· Official sources in the PUK party ( the Kurdish party of the Iraqi president Jalal Talbani ) said that A beshmarga member who works in the president office was killed and another two were injured while their convoy was passing in Al Shaab neighborhood north of Baghdad.
· 2- Salah Edeen province
· police sources in Dujail city north of Baghdad said that 5 civilians were killed and a sixth man was injured when insurgent set up a faked check point on the main road between Balad town and Dujail town. The same source in Dujail city said that an iraqi police patrol found today early morning 10 anonymous bodies on the same road between Balad and Dujail towns. The source said that signs of torturing and bullets were obvious on the bodies. The bodies were delivered to Balad hospital.
3- Basra city · the spokesman of the MNF captain Tan Dunlop that some insurgents were injured in clashes with a British patrol south of Basra city south of Iraq. the spokesman didn't mention an exact number of the injured insurgents. The spokesman also said that the British base in the presidential palaces downtown Basra city was attacked with Katyosha rockets last night but casualties recorded. Blair and Bush to hold Iraq handover summit - Sunday Times - Times Online: Blair and Bush to hold Iraq handover summit
TONY Blair will fly to Washington this week for a summit with President George W Bush to discuss the gradual handover of Iraq, amid renewed doubts about Britain’s influence over the US, write David Cracknell and Sarah Baxter.
The prime minister will travel to the White House on Wednesday for a two-day visit, with attention likely to be focused on the publication of a major review of US policy in Iraq.
[snip]
A British official suggested that Blair might offer to be a “bridge” between the United States, Syria and Iran. But Bush is resisting efforts by the Iraq Study Group to pressure his administration into talks.
[Well why not he's used to having everyone walk on him, hell he likes it.- mfi ]
[snip]
If Bush insists that US forces must stay in Iraq British troops are likely to remain, at least until he leaves office at the start of 2009, simply to protect US lines of supply from Kuwait.
We’re not top dog ... but we don’t have to be a poodle - Sunday Times - Times Online: We’re not top dog ... but we don’t have to be a poodle
Michael Portillo [British conservative - former Defense Secretary - mfi]
After a US State Department analyst had described his country’s relationship with Britain as “totally one-sided”, his government issued a quick denial, asserting that the relationship “is indeed a special one”. The problem with that riposte is that it lacks any tangible examples.
The Americans cannot argue that Tony Blair succeeded in persuading them to accept a major role for the United Nations in Iraq. Nor that he convinced the president to restart the roadmap peace discussions between Israel and the Palestinians. Our extradition treaty with America is wildly unequal and there are few British companies with contracts to “rebuild” an Iraq still in the process of being destroyed.
The prime minister has sacrificed his career by supporting George W Bush. He has humiliatingly offered to fly around the world preparing the way for Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state. British body bags continue to arrive back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Blair has nothing to show for it.
[snip]
Britain accepts the role of poodle because successive governments have believed that that is better than playing no part at all. Politicians assume that voters would be unhappy if we did not sit at some real or imagined top table. Again the metaphor is applied to nuclear weapons: if we did not have them, we might lose our seat on the UN security council.
There is no evidence that Irish people or Luxembourgeois are unhappier than Britons because their country is never thought about in world affairs. Presumably with an enormous GDP per head they feel just fine.
But status matters to the British because we still have a residual feeling we should be top dog. That sense of national destiny must by now be genetic since most people alive today cannot recall the glory days of a Royal Navy whose writ ran throughout the world, and a map largely coloured red.
[snip]
Maybe the critical difference between Thatcher and Blair is that while both are fired by messianic self-confidence, Thatcher believed in Britain and Blair does not. Everything in her upbringing taught her that Britain was best, and what we lacked in military power she could make up for with a swing of the handbag. Blair is from the generation that found British pretensions absurd. To the limited extent that Blair was interested in British history, there was much in it that would embarrass him. Just last week he was expressing his “deep sorrow” about the slave trade.
[snip] Blair has been the most faithful exponent of the “don’t choose” policy, but ironically one of the least successful. Lacking Thatcher’s national self-confidence, he never presses home his demands with Bush, a failure readily leaked to the press by civil servants. In Europe, Blair has lost his influence not so much because he is regarded as pro-American, but because he carries no influence with the Americans.
The bridge that we are meant to provide between America and Europe is “disappearing before our eyes” (as Myers said) not because the policy is ill-conceived or bankrupt, but because of exceptional obtuseness in Washington and unprecedented fawning from Downing Street.
[snip] - [all emphases added by me - mfi]
Telegraph | Comment | There can be no rewinding of history in Bush's slaughterhouse: There can be no rewinding of history in Bush's slaughterhouse By Niall Ferguson
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/12/2006 [Ferguson loudly sang the praises of the war - rat - ship - sinking - mfi]
In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, the hero has a hallucination — or, perhaps, a vision. A witness of the strategic bombing of Germany, he turns on his television to be confronted by the uncanny spectacle of history played in reverse: "American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
[snip]
I wonder if a similar vision has ever flickered tantalisingly through the mind of James A Baker III: a vision of the Iraq War in reverse. He and former Democratic congressman Lee H Hamilton have spent the last few months co-chairing a 10-member Study Group, charged with sorting out the slaughterhouse that is Iraq in 2006. The simplest way would, of course, be to turn the clock back, Vonnegut style.
American soldiers, some dead, some maimed, would pick themselves up from the dust of Anbar province and the backstreets of Baghdad. Excited Iraqi insurgents would suck the rocket-propelled grenades out of the American Humvees, and allow them to reverse all the way back to their bases. Sunnis would help to revive murdered Shias, and vice versa, after their bodies had been exhumed and carried through the streets by jubilant crowds. Happy refugees would return to their homes, which teams of Americans would effortlessly rebuild with powerful vacuum tubes, capable of extracting mortar shells from their walls and roofs.
Saddam Hussein would be freed from jail, then taken to a special hole in the ground where his beard would withdraw back into his chin. After a while, all the Americans would gather in Baghdad and cheer as a statue of Saddam was put back on a plinth. Symbolically, a Stars and Stripes flag would be used to unveil it. Then, after a spectacular firework display, the Americans would leave, reversing their vehicles all the way back to the Iraqi borders. As a parting act of philanthropy, their planes would suck dangerous explosives from Iraqi power stations, ridding the country of the only weapons of mass destruction that were ever there. United Nations weapons inspectors would then return to verify that the Americans had left none behind.
[snip]
Unfortunately, time's arrow travels in only one direction, though its precise arc can never be predicted. We are where we are, and there is no going back. So the Iraq Study Group will this week present President Bush with some recommendations designed to move the United States and Iraq forward to a happier future. It seems there will be three main proposals.
[snip]
Gulfnews: Iraq intervention: Saudis say no truth in article: Iraq intervention: Saudis say no truth in article [rats - ships of desert - ships of desert guaranteed to sink in American built quaqmires - don't want to sink - our troops should go where? r u effin' kidding me habibi? - mfi]
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia said there was no truth in an article by a Saudi security adviser suggesting the kingdom would back Iraq's Sunnis in the event of a wider sectarian conflict.
Nawaf Obaid, a security adviser to the Saudi government, said on Wednesday the kingdom would intervene with funding and weaponry to prevent Shiite militias attacking Iraq's Sunnis once the United States begins pulling out of Iraq.
"There is no basis in truth to the article by the writer Nawaf Obaid in the Washington Post," the Saudi Press Agency quoted an "official source" as saying.
"The writer does not represent any official body in Saudi Arabia. What he published only represents his personal opinion and does not in any manner at all represent the policy or positions of the kingdom," it added.
A senior Iraqi Shiite leader who is meeting US President George W. Bush tomorrow rejected a suggestion for an international conference on Iraq, saying yesterday that it is "illegal" and "unrealistic".
Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, who is due to have a White House meeting with Bush to discuss ways to end the Sunni-Shiite violence raging in Iraq, also played down fears that his country is facing civil war.
Al Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, categorised the conflict in Iraq as "political" rather than sectarian. Post Article on Iraq Baseless: Kingdom: Post Article on Iraq Baseless: Kingdom Siraj Wahab, Arab News [rats - ships of desert - ships of desert guaranteed to sink in American built quaqmires - don't want to sink - our troops should go where? r u effin' kidding me habibi? - mfi]
JEDDAH, 3 December 2006 — Saudi Arabia has strongly rejected the contents of an article carried by The Washington Post which alleged that the Kingdom would arm Sunnis in Iraq in the event of a wider sectarian conflict in the US-occupied country.
“The article is utterly baseless,” an official source told the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) referring to the Op-Ed piece written by Nawaf Obaid in the US daily on Wednesday.
“The writer does not represent any official agency in Saudi Arabia. What he published is his own personal opinion and does not in any way represent the policy or positions of the Kingdom,” SPA quoted the official source as saying. “Riyadh has always reiterated its support for Iraq’s security, unity and stability with all of its sectarian groups,” the source added.
At the end of The Post article, Obaid was described as an adviser to the Saudi government. Yesterday’s denial, however, made it amply clear that he represents no official agency in Saudi Arabia.
[snip]
Saudi academics and analysts were taken aback by Obaid’s comments and said the official rejection and denial should make things clear.
[snip]
“I know this article doesn’t represent Saudi policies,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki on Thursday. “I am in contact with the Saudi government and they realize the necessity of protecting the democratic process.”
AP Wire | 12/02/2006 | Fort Leavenworth MP unit bound for Iraq to oversee internments: Fort Leavenworth MP unit bound for Iraq to oversee internments
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. - The first active duty unit to be deployed from Fort Leavenworth since World War II will head to Iraq with a specific mission: to do well overseas what it's done for decades in the U.S.
After all, officials noted during a deployment ceremony Friday, the men and women of the 705th Military Police Internment and Resettlement Battalion are considered the experts in military corrections.
In Iraq, the battalion will oversee operations at an internment camp in an undisclosed location.
Until recently, the mission of Fort Leavenworth's MP unit was largely limited to corrections work inside the well-known U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. The mission was modified in 2005 when the unit became eligible for work overseas following revelations about Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi prison where some military personnel abused detainees. [Some? Some?? Some??? - mfi]
Army officials have said the incidents did not play a role in the reassignment decision. However, the scandal was clearly on the minds of the battalion's leaders, who mentioned the prison several times at the departure ceremony.
Members of the 705th work daily in the military's maximum security prison and understand "dignity and respect issues" within detention center walls, said Lt. Col. Patrick Williams.
"If we execute what we do here, we'll have no problem," Williams said.
The battalion underwent training that included cultural sensitivity, in an effort to avoid even the appearance of problems. [Problems such as those caused by putting people on leashes like dogs, getting dogs to bite them, degrading them, using electrodes on them, killing blindfolded detainees, violent anal sexual assault on young males in Camp Bucca, and taking "trophy" photos of all the "fun" to add to their degradation are what I presume they mean here yeah I can see how that might be seen as a bit insensitive even by most American troops in Iraq, or maybe not, maybe they just see it as counter-productive (now that they've lost) and are wondering how the hell they'll manage to retreat unscathed, unbitten, unburnt by cigarettes, unshocked by electrodes, undrilled, etc .... - mfi] A detachment will ensure security at Fort Leavenworth.
[snip]
White House fights pressure for early Iraq withdrawal - Sunday Times - Times Online: White House fights pressure for early Iraq withdrawal Sarah Baxter, Washington
THE White House is resisting efforts by an advisory commission on Iraq strategy to force the pace on troop withdrawals and negotiations with Iran and Syria.
At the Pentagon, the joint chiefs of staff are also determined not to be pushed into “managing defeat” after the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, the former secretary of state, and former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton, reports this week.
A backlash from the right against the long-awaited report is gathering force. The neo-conservative journal, The Weekly Standard, has derided the Baker group’s work as “a fancy way of justifying surrender”. A photo-shoot last week of the co-chairmen by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz for Men’s Vogue magazine has been greeted with much amusement.
The Men’s Vogue Study Group, as the 10-member commission was soon renamed, is long on puffery and short on military expertise, critics point out. “They are a lot of greybeards with little knowledge of military operations,” said Dan Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia. “This group is all about creating a political consensus among the elite.”
This week is pivotal for American policy on Iraq with confirmation hearings opening into the nomination of Robert Gates, a former CIA director, as the new defence secretary, followed by the release of the 100-page Iraq Study Group (ISG) report on Wednesday. Tony Blair will fly in that day for a White House summit.
[snip]
Despite the convergence in tactics, Bush is alarmed by the potentially damaging impression given by the Baker group that America is determined to exit from Iraq come what may. He also repeated last week that Iran would have to give up its nuclear programme before the US would be willing to enter into direct talks.
The joint chiefs are said to be concerned that “if you declare Iraq a failure and you want to negotiate with Iran and Syria, it is horrible for all the parents who believe their children died for something”, according to a defence source. [Their children did die for something - they died for Cheney's company Haliburton. - They also died because of something, or to be more precise somethings including the cowardice of those joint chiefs. So where's the problem REMFs? - mfi]
A phased withdrawal is being tested in Kurdish areas, where General Benjamin Mixon is set to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis by the spring of 2007, following roughly the same timetable as for Britain’s departure from Basra in the south.
Some State Department officials are suggesting that America should stop trying to appease Sunni insurgents and concentrate on shoring up the Shi’ite-led government. Bush is to meet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the powerful head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) in Washington tomorrow. “If we have to pick sides, it will be the Shi’ites,” said Goure. “It is the only strategy because they are the majority.”
Corruption: the 'second insurgency' costing $4bn a year | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited: Corruption: the 'second insurgency' costing $4bn a year - One third of rebuilding contracts under criminal investigation - Julian Borger in Washington, David Pallister - Saturday December 2, 2006
The Iraqi government is in danger of being brought down by the wholesale smuggling of the nation's oil and other forms of corruption that together represent a "second insurgency", according to a senior US official. Stuart Bowen, who has been in charge of auditing Iraq's faltering reconstruction since 2004, said corruption had reached such levels that it threatened the survival of the state.
"There is a huge smuggling problem. It is the No 1 issue," Mr Bowen told the Guardian. The pipelines that are meant to take the oil north have been blown up, so the only way to export it is by road. "That leaves it vulnerable to smuggling," he said, as truckers sell their cargoes on the black market.
Mr Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), cites Iraqi figures showing that the "virtual pandemic" of corruption costs the country $4bn (£2.02bn) a year, and some of that money goes straight to the Iraqi government's enemies. A US government report has concluded that oil smuggling abetted by corrupt Iraqi officials is netting insurgents $100m a year, helping to make them financially self-sustaining.
"Corruption is the second insurgency, and I use that metaphor to underline the seriousness of this issue," Mr Bowen said. "The deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, told Sigir this summer that it threatens the state. That speaks for itself."
[snip]
But Mr Bowen's office has found that the insurgents and militias have also been abetted by US incompetence. A recent audit by his inspectors found that more than 14,000 guns paid for out of US reconstruction funds for Iraqi government use could not be accounted for. Many could be in the hands of insurgents or sectarian death squads, but it will be almost impossible to prove because when the US military handed out the guns it noted the serial numbers of only about 10,000 out of a total of 370,000 US-funded weapons, contrary to defence department regulations.
Jim Mitchell, a Sigir spokesman, said: "The practical effect is that when a weapons cache is found you're deprived of the intelligence of knowing if they were US-provided, which might allow you to follow the trail to the bad guys."
[snip]
A culture of waste, incompetence and fraud may be one legacy the occupiers have passed on to Iraq's new rulers more or less intact. Mr Bowen's office found that nearly $9bn in Iraqi oil revenues could not be accounted for. The cash was flown into the country in shrink-wrapped bundles on military transport planes and handed over by the ton to Iraqi ministries by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) run by Paul Bremer, a veteran diplomat. The money was meant to demonstrate the invaders' good intentions and boost the Iraqi economy, which Mr Bremer later insisted had been "dead in the water". But it also fuelled a cycle of corruption left over from Saddam Hussein's rule.
"We know it got to the Iraqis, but we don't know how it was used," Mr Bowen later told Congress.
In the Hillah region a defence department contract employee and two lieutenant colonels were found to have steered $8m in contracts to a US contractor in return for bribes. The Pentagon contract employee, Robert Stein, pleaded guilty earlier this year, admitting he and his co-conspirators received more than $1m in cash, help with laundering the funds, jewellery, cars and sex with prostitutes. Stein also admitted that they simply stole $2m from the construction fund, accounting for the money with receipts from fictitious construction companies.
Hillah just happened to be the district Mr Bowen's inspectors examined in depth. It is still far from clear how much reconstruction money has gone missing around the whole country.
A potentially far more serious problem has been the way the US government decided to give out reconstruction contracts. It split the economy into sectors and shared them out among nine big US corporations. In most cases the contracts were distributed without competition and on a cost-plus basis. In other words the contractors were guaranteed a profit margin calculated as a percentage of their costs, so the higher the costs, the higher the profits. In the rush to get work started the contracts were signed early in 2004. In many cases work did not get under way until the year was nearly over. In the months between, the contractors racked up huge bills on wages, hotel bills and restaurants.
[snip]
Part of the reason big US contractors have been able to get away with so much is that there has been limited proper supervision. CPA employees were picked not for their financial expertise but for their political loyalty.
[snip]
Mr Bowen bristles at the suggestion that Mr Bush might have had a hand in the attempt to close his office. "I'm doing exactly what the president expects me to do," he said.
Independent Online Edition > UK Politics: [File under: Snort | giggle | thieves falling out - mfi]US pressured Blair into arms bribery inquiry By Francis Elliott Published: 03 December 2006
A bribery investigation threatening the future of 50,000 British jobs followed heavy pressure on Tony Blair from George Bush's administration, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Saudi Arabia says it will scrap an order with BAE Systems for 72 Eurofighter Typhoons worth around £40bn unless the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) stops probing previous arms deals with the company.
The Arab nation has reportedly set a deadline that expires this week for the investigation to be called off.
Now documents released under US freedom of information laws reveal how the probe followed arm-twisting by the Bush administration.
They show how Britain's most senior defence civil servant was taken to task by the Pentagon over "a longstanding, widespread pattern of bribery allegations involving BAE systems" in July 2002.
Sir Kevin Tebbit, then the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, had an uncomfortable meeting with the US Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, E Anthony Wayne.
Mr Wayne said that, though it had signed up to international anti-bribery agreements, "the UK was slow to take action to correct perceived deficiencies".
[ Snip| pot kettle pot kettlepot kettle pot potkettle kettle pot kettle]
A memo, setting out his "MUST DO" items, declared: "Ask what the British government has done to investigate allegations of bribery by BAE, not only in connection with recent projects, but in connection with older contracts for which bribe payments may still be ongoing ... In the US, this volume of allegations would have triggered a Department of Justice Criminal Division investigation long ago".
[snip]
BAE Systems denies any wrongdoing and insists that it does not tolerate "unlawful, dishonest or harmful" behaviour, while the British government maintained that it had tightened up anti-bribery legislation. Bloggy StuffIf you read nothing else today click the link to read this in its entirety : African American (Black) Political Pundit G.W. Bush Iraq Policy ~ Stupid Is as Stupid Does: Yes, Stupid Is as Stupid Does
African American Political Pundit says: The headlines read, “Three Car Bombs Hit Central Baghdad Market. - Explosions target busy shopping district in a predominantly Shiite area of the Iraqi capital. Officials report 43 killed and 91 wounded.
- President Acknowledges Iraq News is ‘Unsettling’
[snip]
I immediately thought about George W. Bush. [snip]
Stupid Is as Stupid Does
Atrocities
“Never in human history have such genocide and cruelty been witnessed. Such a genocide was never seen in the time of the pharaohs nor of Hitler nor of Mussolini”
~ Mehmet Elkatmi, head of Turkish parliament’s human rights commission on Bush’s genocide in the Iraq war. 2004-11-28
Spreading Democracy
1. Six US soldiers have been charged with gang raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl then murdering her, and her 5-year old sister and her parents. Accused include Pcf. Steven Green of Midland Texas, Spc. James Barker, Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, Pfc. Bryan Howard and Sgt. Anthony Yribe. If these men are convicted, it would be fitting if they were treated for the rest of their lives as dangerous sex offenders and driven out of every town they try to live.
2. The four soldiers — Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard and Spc. Juston R. Graber have been accused of killing blindfolded Iraqi detainees for sport.
3. Col. Michael Steele ordered his soldiers to “kill all military age males”.
4. Lining up unarmed civilians and shooting them execution style, just as the Nazis did.
5. American soldiers used white phosphorus in the operation Phantom Fury attack on Fallujah. Though white phosphorus is not specifically banned, all incendiaries were banned by the UN in 1980. White phosphorus spreads on the skin and catches fire. It cannot be extinguished or washed off with water. See photos of the people killed with white phosphorous in Falluja. In military slang, white phosphorus is known as Willy Pete. or Whiskey Pete. Italian TV broke the story. The Boston Globe, All Headline News and Reuters reported the story. Italian TV did a documentary on the American use of white phosphorus on the citizens of Fallujah. You can play a low-res version of the movie on-line click to watch. You can download a higher quality version of the movie with BitTorrent in either Microsoft click to watch or Apple QuickTime format click to watch The movie deserves to be shown in IMAX, so please try for the hi-res version. Last revised on 2005-11-08.
6. Mark 77 Incendiary bombs All incendiaries have been banned by the UN since 1980. : source. The department of defence has admitted to using MK-77 in Iraq. MK-77 is just napalm in canisters.
7. Bush has completely ignored the Geneva conventions in this war. He has behaved even worse that Hitler in that regard. Read them for yourself the Geneva Conventions treaty the USA signed at the UN that it is flagrantly violating.
8.
“You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like… victory.”
~ Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now 1979
American soldiers used napalm in the attack on Fallujah. Napalm has been banned by the UN since 1980. The Iraqi puppet government made this complaint against the USA. Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist Americans shot at with 400 bullets, accused the Americans of using napalm in Fallujah. : source source
9. mustard gas: even Hitler refused to use this.
10. nerve gas: even Hitler refused to use this. On 2005-03-01, Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli of Iraq’s Ministry of Health made the revelation at a Baghdad press conference: U.S. forces used mustard gas, nerve gas and other burning chemical weapons against Iraqi civilians in their November assault on the city of Falluja.
11. Depleted Uranium: click to watch featuring Pulitzer prize winner John Hanchette and Pentagon DU expert Dr. Doug Rokke, a serving officer for 30 years. It is mostly about the experiences with DU in the first Gulf War. America, Britain, Russia and Pakistan all convert their nuclear power plant wasted into DU weapons and sell them on the international market. A DU round is 10 pounds of solid uranium, contaminated with plutonium, americium, neptunium and uranium-236. It catches fire the instant it leaves the barrel. On impact, 40-50% spalls (breaks off into tiny bb sized shrapnel). The oxides form a fine inhalable powder. One third of the Gulf War vets are on permanent disability. [The Gulf War soldiers were in Iraq a tiny fraction of the time the soldiers are being kept in Iraq.] Rokke says he was ordered to lie about DU, because the military was determined to continue using it, despite the danger to US troops. Bush sent troops to Iraq with known defective gas masks. In the Iraq heat, the sweat breaks contact at the side of the face. Since the Iraq war started in 2003, American forces have fired at least 120 tons of shells packed with depleted uranium.
12. American soldiers used poison gas in the attack on Fallujah. Chemical weapons are banned.
13. According to the prestigious medical journal Lancet, American soldiers killed over 100,000 civilians, most of them children.
14. In one month of the war, Associated Press tallied 3,240 civilians deaths in Iraq. The count was fragmentary, and the complete toll is sure to be significantly higher.
15. Before the war started, the World Health Organisation estimated that 100,000 Iraqi civilians could be wounded and another 400,000 hit by disease after the bombing of water and sewage facilities and the disruption of food supplies.
16. The UN estimate was 100,000 people would be injured in the Iraq war.
17. As of 2006-06-05 the estimate was at least 251,102 killed and 532,715 seriously wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
18. Iraqi ex-patriates who were in Iraq that I talked to estimated the number of civilian deaths as a result of the sanction bombings between 1 and 2 million. I find testimony of the victims more credible than that of the perpetrator of a crime.
19. “How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.”
George W. Bush, 2005-12-14.
20. Killing 2/3 of the people in Fallujah. Not even Hitler was that ruthless.
21. American soldiers tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay detention centre. The FBI corroborated. The story was carried by UPI, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, the New York Times and counterbias.com. Sgt. Erik Saar has written a book called Inside the Wire about his six months torturing POWs at Guantánamo.
22. American soldiers sexually abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
23. American soldiers raped children, both male and female.
24. American soldiers are issued candy that they hand out to Iraqi children to attract them to form a human shield.
25. U.S. soldiers held Iraqi women hostages in order to pressure male relatives to surrender.
26. American soldiers cut off water supplies, bombed electric plants and sewage plants causing epidemics of cholera, dysentery and typhus.
27. American soldiers have forbidden Iraqi farmers to grow anything unless they buy the seed containing terminator genes (to make the seed sterile) from American companies such as Monsanto.
28. American soldiers bombed hospitals, mosques and private residences.
29. Bush bombed the water treatment plant in Basra in order to kill children. This is a repeat of this same Geneva convention violation during the sanction bombings. This is deeply shameful thing to do because it targets children specifically. They die faster from lack of water and they die more quickly from drinking polluted water. This is a particularly grievous war crime. Dying of thirst is a hideous torture millions of times more painful than you would ever imagine. I have experienced being tortured this way personally. You must stop this.
30. Ongoing burning crops using fireballs dropped from Apache helicopters.
31. Assassinated the ITV news team after threatening both the ITV and BBC teams. They did not arrest, they blew them to tiny pieces.
32. Shut down websites that showed any of the dead soldiers, civilians or destruction. They shut down yellowtimes.org. They shut down whatreallyhappened.com after PayPal cut them off so they could not receive donations. They shut down thenausea.org. I suspect they have a Denial of Service attack going on aljazeera.net. You can sometimes find the censored materials by searching with google and selecting cached.
33. Destroyed the cameras of the Lebanon news team that discovered 40 dead Americans.
34. The proposed Oregon anti demonstrator bill that provides a 25 year sentence without parole for any demonstrator, if anyone in a demonstration interferes with commerce or is rowdy, even if that person was a plant. By this law Martin Luther King would have got life at his first lunch counter protest.
35. Dropped three precision bombs “by accident” on Iran. They claim these thing are accurate to the foot, but they could not even get the right country three times.
36. Dropped five precision bombs “by accident” on Syria 300 miles away from Baghdad. Strangely, no bombs at all fell “by accident” on Israel which is 200 miles from Iraq.
37. Landed five precision Tomahawk missiles “by accident” on Saudi Arabia.
38. Sent a missile into a Kuwait shopping center.
39. Bombed Children’s Hospital in Rutbah.
40. illegal ammunition: used by military contractors.
41. The United States stopped firing missiles at Iraq through Turkish airspace Friday after a missile in flight fell in southeastern Turkey.
42. The American soldiers destroyed the Iraqi TV broadcasting station. The American government has intimidated, shut down or killed most of the effective voices opposing the war.
“The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.”
~ Joseph Sobran
43. On 2003-04-02 US aircraft hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad, the city’s trade fair, and other civilian buildings killing several people and wounding at least 25, At least five cars were crushed with drivers burned to death inside.
markfromireland 05:31 03/12/2006 |
