Iraq - Today..*and tomorrow?*

[Ocean Breeze]

Is Iraq a nation or one giant prison??

October 3, 2005

All the Iraqis are terrorists until the occupation authorities will prove it!! Every Iraqi mother could not sleep the night; she stays worrying until the morning; fearing of the after midnight unwelcomed visitors.
There are continuous raids, especially at nights, every where in Iraq. American forces and Iraqi National Guards have the right to enter any house without asking permission. We are being ruling by the American Terrorism Act.
I heard that my friend Amel Kadhim Swadi was arrested with her younger son Safa, 17 years old. The both stayed in custody the whole night in Baghdad air port. By the way one of the American giant achievements in Iraq we should admit is that they converted the all Iraq civilian and military air ports to jails; then by the cooperation with the Iraqi authorities they managed to make the whole Iraq a prison; the largest prison in the world which is worthy to genius book; a prison with 26 million prisoners capacity.
Amel, a well known lawyer who used to defend the Iraqi detainees, lives in Al-Khadhra neighborhood west Baghdad. Last Saturday, at 8pm, she was driving to the near supermarket with her daughter and two sons; the elder Zaid is a lawyer too.
As soon as she left the garage; she was astonished by an American patrol and a strong spot light on her face. She decided to return home but a loudspeaker ordered her to stop.
She did. Many American soldiers came to check. They searched them. Then they used detector pads and deciding that they suspected the younger son whom they will arrest. Amel tried to protect her son asking them to arrest her with him because she knew that her son did nothing. They blocked the area; cuffed the hands of the son and the mother. About 10pm, many humvees came to the location. Ten of the Americans created a human shield beginning another round of searching. Then they decided to detain the son and the mother. Amel was put in a humvee blind folded while her hands cuffed behind her back. The son, Safa, was taken by another humvee; again he was blind folded and his hands cuffed behind.
They were taken to Baghdad air port to be investigated. They were asked many questions.
"Are you Shiite or Sunni?" they asked. "I am a Moslem", she answered. "You should answer Shiite or Sunni?", a Moslem, Amel insisted. "From where you are?" they asked. "I am from Misan, Emara", Amel said. "So you are a Shiite". "We are Moslems, my husband is from Mosul, and we live in Baghdad", Amel told them adding, "You are trying to separate Sunnis and Shiites to destroy my country". Then one of them recognized her. "As if I saw you before" told her. "Sure because I am the layer of the detainees and visit all your prisons", she said adding, "In your country you could not meet a lawyer without a previous date; but here you are insisting on humiliating the Iraqis".
Then they opened her eyes began behaving politely.. Amel and son were freed at 5am. While leaving the agte, a female American soldier put her hand in Amel's pocket!! At home she discovered that she put $20 in her pocket.. She did not know how to explain this $20! Did the American soldier was trying to apologize and finding no other way? Was she trying to give her the rent of a taxi back to home? Or she was trying to humiliate her again?
Amel has no clue. Now she is looking for a house close to her family to feel safe. Amel told me," Now I will intensive my work more and more. I know that most of the Iraqi detainees are being detained for doing nothing. They arrest any body then they forget him in the jail".
Last March, at 4.30 am, the curfew ends at 5am, my door was knocked strongly. I opened the door. 18 ING with their officer asked me to allow them in. "with whom are you living here?" the officer asked politely. "With my son", I answered. "do you let us to search the house?". "Yes".
Then the officer asked again, "Is ………. Your son?". "yes". "where is he?" " Sleeping in his room."
I felt as if he will go to awake him. So I asked him to let me awake him. As soon as I entered my 22 years old son room; the officer radioed his commander," Sir we arrested the TARGET".
I was astonished telling them," My son did nothing. You could not take him alone. I will come with him."
They refused. My son asked them to let him change his clothes. "We are not taking you to a picnic", one of the soldiers told him.
The officer felt my agony; he asked the soldiers to not cuff his hands in front of my hands.
I will never ever forget my son looking at me asking by his eyes if I am going let them to take him alone.

Written on Oct. 1st

As soon as they took my son, I began praying. I do not what to do, whom to call. With the dawn call of prayer I begged AL-MIGHTY ALLAH to bring my son back. My phone began ringing. The porter of our building asked me down to "receive" my son.
There was no power. I went 13 floors down. The officer apologized saying that they had a report accusing my son; but they discovered that he is a university student who did nothing; still he should take care of his behavior!! I had nothing to say but alhamdulklilah "thank to Allhah".
It is easy to write now but then only Allah knows how much I cried; how many bad thoughts I had. Till now, whenever my door being knocked I become afraid.

a question this Iraq mess poses.: How many neo con war supporters are packing their bags to move to this new (and "improved"-US style) Iraq??? Would Iraq not be the current US frontier to inhabit??? (and rape, pillage until it has been drained dry......before moving on to repeat the same elsewhere.)

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/

open letter to Amnisty International........

excerpt from above:

We would like to congratulate Amnesty International on its courageous stand against the massive human rights violations inflicted upon the people of Iraq by the US-led occupation forces, as stated in the Amnesty International annual report of 2005.

“US-led forces in Iraq committed gross human rights violations, including unlawful killings and arbitrary detention, and evidence emerged of torture and ill-treatment. Thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed during armed clashes between US-led forces and Iraqi security forces on the one side, and Iraqi armed groups on the other.

Armed groups committed gross human rights abuses, including targeting civilians, hostage-taking and killing hostages. Women continued to be harassed and threatened amid the mounting daily violence. The death penalty was reinstated in August by the new interim government.”

The recommendations made by Amnesty International ‘s chief Mr. Schulz in the aftermath of this report were very clear:

"If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal," said Schulz, who added that violations of the torture convention, which has been ratified by the United States and some 138 other countries, can be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.”

 

[PoisonPete2]

I wonder if our 'prime minister' paul martin realizes just what an insult to freedom and world peace this american regime has become.

 

[Scape]

indeed

 

[Ocean Breeze]

A Central Pillar of Iraq Policy Crumbling
Bush's administration has insisted that political progress would quell the insurgency. But the reverse may be true, U.S. analysts say.

by Tyler Marshall and Louise Roug

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency gripping the country.



We're short of time — it's the fault of the Americans. They are always insisting on short deadlines. It's as if they're [making] hamburgers and fast food.

Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman
The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course.

But within the last two months, U.S. analysts with access to classified intelligence have started to challenge this precept, noting a "significant and disturbing disconnect" between apparent advances on the political front and efforts to reduce insurgent attacks.

Now, with Saturday's constitutional referendum appearing more likely to divide than unify the country, some within the administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, could actually strengthen the insurgency.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey, has acknowledged that such a scenario is possible, while officials elsewhere in the administration, all of whom declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, say they share similar concerns about the referendum.

Iraq's Sunni Muslim Arabs, who are believed to form the core of the insurgency, are bitterly opposed to a constitution drafted mainly by the country's majority Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds. Yet from all indications, the Sunnis will fail to muster enough votes to defeat it.

"It could make people on the fence a little more angry or [make them] come off the fence," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity.

A growing number of experts outside the administration and in Iraq agree with such assessments.

"If the constitution passes in a non-amicable way, the violence will increase," said Ali Dabagh, a member of Iraq's transitional National Assembly who is believed to be close to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari.

The White House has consistently linked the building of democracy in Iraq and the broader Middle East with the defeat of the insurgency.

President Bush repeated that assertion Thursday in a policy address to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. "If the peoples of [the Middle East] are permitted to choose their own destiny and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women," he declared, "then the extremists will be marginalized and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow and eventually end."

Vice President Dick Cheney has put it more succinctly. "I think … we will, in fact, succeed in getting democracy established in Iraq, and I think when we do, that will be the end of the insurgency," he told CNN in June.

Those comments echoed an assertion put forward earlier by the Pentagon: U.S. forces could not defeat the insurgency through military might alone; success required redeploying troops to protect the nascent democratic process. That process, commanders said, together with military force, would eventually smother rebel violence.

Despite what Bush on Thursday called "incredible political progress" in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's fall 2 1/2 years ago, the Iraqi insurgency has grown in strength and sophistication. From about 5,000 Hussein loyalists using leftover Iraqi army equipment, it has mushroomed into a disparate yet potent force of up to 20,000 equipped with explosives capable of knocking out even heavily armored military vehicles.

"The surface political process has stumbled forward, but the insurgency came up and kind of stayed that way," said a U.S. government analyst with access to classified intelligence. Several analysts, who spoke on condition of anonymity while discussing intelligence, indicated that initial evidence of the disconnect began to surface in the spring — after Iraq's first national elections on Jan. 30 — and it has gradually become clearer since.

Doubts about such a central pillar of Iraq policy come at an awkward time for the White House: Polls show eroding public confidence in Bush as a leader and in his management of the war. In recent days, Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have tried to shore up public support for staying in Iraq.

But Middle East experts say they have found little correlation between Iraq's emerging democracy and the rebellion's strength.

"The democratic process as it has worked so far has certainly done nothing to undermine the insurgency," said Nathan Brown, who researches Middle East political reform at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Robert Malley, co-author of a September report by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that deals with conflict resolution, concluded that approval of the draft constitution could make things worse. Malley called the administration's Iraq policy "a case study of pinning too much hope on an electoral process without doing so much of the other work."

Success in Iraq "is not about democracy or non-democracy; it's about reaching consensus on a political pact that all parties agree to," said Malley, a former advisor to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs. "If they don't agree, the political process won't help."

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, is reportedly trying to broker eleventh-hour changes in the draft to ease Sunni concerns, but even if he succeeds, the effect of such concessions would not be immediately clear, analysts said.

A Western diplomat in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a government that is unable to provide for basic needs such as security, electricity, potable water and jobs commands little loyalty.

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism specialist at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica, said that a cursory look at history shows "there is no guarantee that political progress diminishes political violence." He cited Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Northern Ireland, noting that insurgencies have lasted for decades in those functioning democracies with educated populations.

He said those militant movements were driven by various factors, including the political goals of aggrieved groups, profitable criminal activities and a lack of economic opportunities. Jenkins and others believe that Iraq's insurgency has already developed several motivating strands that would probably sustain it for years.

With the divisive constitutional referendum only a week away, the first trial of the deposed Hussein scheduled to begin this month and the prospect that the December election will produce a Shiite-dominated parliament, upcoming events may only further distance Sunni Arabs from Iraq's emerging democratic state, analysts say.

Sunnis, largely excluded from this summer's crucial negotiations on the constitution, see the document as rigged against their interests. They fear, for example, that blunt language outlawing Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party could be used to block them from jobs in the public sector. The draft also appears to open the door to a loosely federated system that could deprive Sunni Arab regions of the benefits of the country's huge oil reserves.

Some Iraqis accuse the Bush administration of sacrificing a unifying political process in favor of speed and arbitrary deadlines needed to sustain American public support for the war and justify the politically important reduction in U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

"We're short of time — it's the fault of the Americans," Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman said. "They are always insisting on short deadlines. It's as if they're [making] hamburgers and fast food."

Othman added: "If we'd had more time, it would have been possible to get Sunni participation. When Oct. 15 comes, many won't even have seen the constitution."

Marshall reported from Washington and Roug from Baghdad. Times staff writer Mark Mazzetti in Washington contributed to this report.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/09/opinion/edsaikal.php


Iraq conflict(s) causing further ME splits....

( pandora's box has been opened......... :evil: .......and "we" have the bush(jerk) to "thank" for this. His idiocy will reflect on Iraq and the US for YEARS to come... & no amount of "ostrich syndrome" is going to change that reality.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

October 11, 2005

It’s about time that the average U.S. citizen drop the line "well what about 9-11?" when they speak of the administration’s desire to cleanse the world of evil. That incident occurred more than four years ago and will never duplicate itself. Nineteen Islamic fundamentalists got lucky because the U.S. let its guard down in its airport security. No amount of killing people on foreign soil will change 9-11-2001 and rewrite history. All that will do is incite others to attempt another 9-11.

Despite all the logic and clear-thinking about the reality of 9-11, most U.S. citizens still cite that date and keep trying to avenge the incident. Recently, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a letter from Christy King of Lakeside, CA, a suburb of San Diego. It was titled "Remember Sept. 11" and it stated:

I wonder where all you non-Bush supporters were on 9/11. How could you have not seen the horrific terror attack on our Free America? How can you forget that nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed? Our president and our uniformed forces are keeping the war off our soil to protect everybody, even you.

The Bush administration salivates every time it reads letters like this. The neo-cons even wished, in writing, prior to 9-11, that a "Pearl Harbor-like" incident would occur under the Bush watch. Not only did it occur, but it still is occurring in the feeble minds of many Americans.

If Ms. King were true to her philosophy, she should be decrying the innocent people who have been killed in Iraq since 1991 at the hands of three U.S. administrations, both Democrat and Republican. And, if she read only a few newspapers, even the propagandistic pro-Bush ones, she would realize that the 19 martyrs were not attacking a "Free America," but an imperialistic America that had caused havoc in the Arab and Muslim world.

Since August 2, 1990, the U.S. has killed almost three million Iraqis. The first Gulf War, the encompassing embargo and the current fiasco combine for between 2.5 million and three million deaths. In other words, Iraq has suffered ONE THOUSAND nine-elevens. That’s right, one thousand.

If Ms. King had watched the news over this time, she would have seen incinerated babies dragged from bomb shelters. She would have seen Iraqi cities imbedded in filth because the U.S. would not allow the Iraqis to import chlorine to purify the water system. And, the U.S. bragged about this when Schwarzkopf took to the microphone shortly after the Gulf War hostilities began and stated, "We’ve knocked out their drinking water. Soon, they will begin to acquire diarrhea and malnutrition." All the time, he was smiling when he forecast the dismal future for Iraq.

If Ms. King went a little further and, instead of surfing the Internet for Bible interpretation sites, looked for information about Iraq, she would have seen the headless bodies of eight-year-olds or the brains oozing out of a head that once belonged to a 10-year-old girl. She would also have seen the skeleton-like bodies of kids suffering from malnutrition.

Malnutrition was a long-forgotten disease in Iraq. I say "was" because it re-appeared after the Gulf War and stayed on with a vengeance. Before the 1991 slaughter, there had not been a case of malnutrition in Baghdad for decades. By the time of the March 2003 invasion, the Iraqi government, although still under blockade, had almost eradicated malnutrition again, only for it to once more become rampant after the illegal invasion and occupation.

Who cares? It seems no one in the U.S. government. And, for those Democrats who call the G.O.P. warmongers and uncivilized, it was Madeleine Albright, the Democrat Secretary of State who, in 1997, while being interviewed by Leslie Stahl and asked if the embargo was worth the deaths of almost a million children, coldly and precisely answered, "Yes."

Genocide is a term that has been liberally thrown around in the past decade. Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya have all been linked to the word. However, many, many more people have died in Iraq during this period, yet the word "genocide" is rarely heard, despite it being accurate: the targeting of a particular people for destruction.

Genocide was, is, and will be occurring in Iraq. The Jewish population always says, "Never again," in referencing the genocide perpetrated against their people in WWII. "Never again" are the most hollow words the Jews have uttered because they not only are quiet about the genocide being perpetrated against Iraq, many cheer it on.

A few years ago, it was discovered that Israel had perfected a biological weapon that could kill Arabs, yet was harmless to Jews. In addition, it could target Iraqi Arabs. All this sounds like science fiction, but because of the distinct differences yet closeness of Arab and Jewish DNA (Semites include about 95% Arabs and 5% Jews), it is now possible to create such a doomsday weapon. Israel has it. I guess "never again" does not apply to Arabs.

No, Iraq has undergone 1,000 nine-elevens. However, their thousand is even much more diabolical than if the U.S. had suffered that number of incidents.

At least after 9-11-2001, the American public could go on with life in the same manner as it had prior to that date: work, attend school, play sports, purchase goods, eat, drink, and whatever else was a part of a daily routine. Since March 1991, the Iraqis have not had that luxury. A country in which poverty had been eradicated and that was the crown jewel of modernity in the Arab world, became destitute and the once-thriving middle class quickly became the poor. For 12 years, the embargo not only killed millions, but it kept those still alive in a state of limbo between starvation and deprivation.

Today, it is even worse. No electricity; no gasoline; no heat in buildings; no jobs. Plenty of violence.

More than 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been and still are imprisoned. They have been brutalized, sodomized, victimized and whatever other ized there are. At least after 9-11, unless you are a Muslim, nobody was forced into prisons in the U.S.

No, each of the Iraqi 1,000 nine-elevens makes the one U.S. nine-eleven pale in comparison. The ongoing destruction of Fallujah is no exception. And, this is being performed in the name of Jesus.

For two days before the last year’s November invasion began in earnest, the U.S. Marines held a Christian revival on their base. Loudspeakers blared with Christian music and Christian speakers talking about God’s will. Chaplain-after-chaplain gave speeches telling the Marines they were going to kill on the side of God. The enemy was "Satan."

Maybe it’s my feeble atheist brain, but I can not conceive how the U.S. military could be transformed into a religious unit. I don’t believe that Jesus Christ ever existed, but, for sake of argument, let’s assume he did. Most Christians say they interpret Jesus Christ as a spokesman for love and tolerance. To us heathens, this is an honorable message. How then, can a bunch of Marines be chomping at the bit to kill for Christ? The mind boggles.

After the major fighting in Fallujah, my friend Dahr Jamail, the only un-imbedded and independent journalist in Iraq, wrote to me and described the devastation. He then told about the method of burying the dead in Fallujah: "Rather than burying full bodies, residents of Fallujah are burying legs and arms, and sometimes just skeletons as dogs have eaten the rest of the body."

I have yet to hear of an American citizen being eaten by a dog after 9-11-2001.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

What Iraqis Really Think About The Occupation
by Tom Hayden

The lack of critical media coverage at the beginning of the Iraq War is widely acknowledged. But the media's failure to cover Iraqi voices of opposition is arguably a greater default.

The mainstream media convey the impression that there are two categories of Iraqis--the handful of fanatical jihadist terrorists and the majority who showed their yearning to be free during January's election. In this paradigm, our troops are seen as defending, even cultivating, a nascent democracy. Not surprisingly, a Fox News poll in February revealed that 53 percent of Americans believed the Iraqis wanted our troops to stay while only 35 percent thought the Iraqis wanted us to leave.

To a public fed this distorted narrative and nothing more, the actual facts may be too jarring to believe. There has been little or no coverage of these realities:

A majority of Iraqis in polls favor US military withdrawal and an end of the occupation. At the time of January's election, 69 percent of Shiites and 82 percent of Sunnis favored "near-term withdrawal." Surveys done for the Coalition Provisional Authority in June 2004 showed that a 55 percent majority "would feel safer if US troops left immediately."
A recent summary of numerous Iraqi surveys, by the independent Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, concluded that a majority of Iraqis "oppose the US presence in Iraq, and those who strongly oppose it greatly outnumber those who strongly support it." The PDA report went on to say that "the fact that [these surveys] have played little role in the public discourse on the Iraqi mission imperils US policy and contributes to the present impasse."

The only Iraqis who strongly support the US occupation are the Kurds, less than 20 percent of the population whose semi-autonomous status is protected by the United States, and who are represented disproportionately in the Iraqi regime. By backing the Kurds and southern Shiites, the United States is intervening in a sectarian civil war. The US-trained Iraqi security forces are dominated by Kurdish and Shiite militias.

In mid-September of this year, the eighteen-member National Sovereignty Committee in the US-sponsored Iraqi parliament issued a unanimous report calling for the end of occupation.

In June, more than 100 members of the same parliament, or more than one-third, signed a letter calling for "the departure of the occupation." They criticized their regime for bypassing parliament in obtaining an extension of authority from the United Nations Security Council.

In January, US intelligence agencies warned in a "grim tone" that the newly elected Iraqi regime would demand a timetable for US withdrawal, which indeed was the platform of the winning Shiite party. After the election, nothing came of the worry. The winners simply abandoned the campaign pledge that helped elect them.

In June, the former electricity minister of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Aihim Al-Sammarae, created an organization to begin dialogue with eleven insurgent groups. The London Times reported that high-ranking US military officials joined one round of talks.

In 2004, twenty Iraqi political parties formed a National Foundation Congress to become a public voice for withdrawal. In May 2005 it held a second Congress, releasing a three-point platform demanding a withdrawal timetable, an interim international peacekeeping force, and internationally supervised elections.

Virtually none of these realities have been reported in the American media, with the exception of articles by Nancy Youssef of Knight-Ridder.

These various Iraqi peacemakers deserve to be heard by Congress and the American people. Some of them are risking their lives. Al-Sammarae reportedly discovered a car bomb next to his Baghdad home. Another high-status Iraqi leader, who asked that his name not be used, wrote of being "active in trying to bring the US & UK embassies to negotiate with heads of the opposition in Iraq...[but] unfortunately had been dismissed by representatives of both countries. He did meet with some of the US senators who visited Baghdad some time ago and suggested ideas but it seemed that no one was really interested in settling the issue and military force was believed to be the only means of stopping the uprising and insurgency."

What could account for the failure of the mainstream media either to report these facts or interview these respected opponents of the war? There are apologists like Charles Krauthammer, who falsely asserted in the Washington Post that "there is no one to negotiate with," as if military suppression is the only option. But what accounts for the failure of more objective reporters to notice what is before their eyes? Are they embedded in the biased assumptions of empire? Supportive of the American troops? Blinded by the paradigms presented them?

From its beginning, this war has been one of perception. Perhaps the media elites, whose collaboration with the Pentagon gave public justification during the 2003 invasion, now worry that if they report that a majority of the Iraqis we are supposedly "saving from terrorism" are actually calling for our departure, any remaining support for the war will collapse.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

US Forces Starving Iraqi Civilians: UN
IslamOnline.net




BAGHDAD, October 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The UN special rapporteur on the right to food has accused the US-led occupation forces of starving Iraqis civilians in besieged cities and depriving them of water to force them.

"A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population," Jean Ziegler told a press conference Friday, October 14, reported Reuters.

He stressed that Iraqi and US-led forces cut off or restricted food and water to force residents in Fallujah, Tal Afar and Samarra to flee before onslaughts allegedly targeting entrenched resistance fighters.

The Iraqi army announced Thursday, September 22, the end of the "successful" Tal Afar offensive, which involved 6,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by 4,000 US troops and claimed the lives of 157 "rebels".

US air strikes and bombardment have sent residents into panicky flight from the city, ending up in a refugee camp on the city’s peripheries where they faced serious shortages of clean water, food and medicine.

Resistance hub Fallujah was the scene of one of the bloodiest US raids in November 2004 with at least 700 people killed, including children and women, and thousands injured.

Amnesty International has harshly criticized the US for killing dozens of civilians in a number of deadly consecutive air strikes into the war-battered city.

Law-breaching

Ziegler, a former Swiss sociology professor, lashed out at the American practice as "a flagrant violation of international law".

He underlined that the Geneva Conventions on warfare, which form the basis of international humanitarian law, not only forbid starving civilians, but actually make the occupying force responsible to provide it.

Two 1977 protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which lay down rules of conduct in armed conflicts, ban using deprivation of food or water as a weapon of war.

They also prohibit destruction of food stocks or interruption of food supply lines.

Ziegler said that he had been in touch with British authorities on the issue, and "a channel seems to be opening", but that attempts to start a dialogue with US authorities had been fruitless.

He would present a report on 27 October at the UN General Assembly in New York expressing his personal "outrage" at the practice and calling on countries to "condemn this strategy" in a resolution.

The UN official presents an oral report each autumn at the UN General Assembly and a written report each spring at the 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission.

Denial

The UN official said Iraqi and US-led forces cut off or restrict food and water to force residents in besieged towns to leave.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt-Col Steve Boylan, dismissed the criticism as inaccurate.

"Any accusations of coalition forces refusing basic needs from the citizens of Iraq are completely false," he said.

Boylan maintained that they "take all precautions to ensure that the Iraqi people are taken care of".

"There have in the past ... been some supplies that have been delayed due to combat operations, but they were due to transit the area once it was deemed safe. It does not do relief supplies any good if you have them going into a firefight."

Yet, Ziegler insisted that civilians who could not leave besieged cities and towns for whatever reason should not suffer as a result of this strategy.

In a report to the UN Human Rights Commission in September, Ziegler concluded that twice as many children are malnourished in Iraq now as there were when the US invaded Iraq in March 2003.

"Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8 percent by the end of 2004," the report said.

rule of thumb...... don't believe a word from the USRegime. How sad that it has gotten this bad.

The US could care less about the Iraqi people......... as all it wants is to "control" them in a ME powerhold. Starving, Torture and gosh knows what else..... is the name of the US game.

(totally UNCIVILIZED )

 

[Ocean Breeze]

"It Is Worse Than Vietnam, Because The Enemy Is Punier And The Original Ambitions Greater"



There should be nothing surprising about the unpopularity of the occupation. How many occupations have been popular? Even Robespierre, no shrinking violet when it came to inflicting violence on others, pointed out to fellow French revolutionaries occupying foreign lands that "nobody likes armed missionaries."



A policeman guarding a petrol station in this area explained that he was going home at 8pm "because the resistance takes over then and I will be killed if I stay".



14 October 2005 By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent (UK) [Excerpt]



The American and British governments seem disconnected from the terrible reality of Iraq. Tony Blair says the time scale for withdrawal is "when the job is done." But stop any Iraqi in the streets of Baghdad and the great majority say the violence will get worse until the US and Britain start to pull out. They say the main catalyst for the Sunni Arab insurrection is the US occupation.



A deep crisis is turning into a potential catastrophe because President George Bush and Tony Blair pretend the situation in Iraq is improving. To prove to their own voters that progress is being made, they have imposed on Iraq a series of artificial milestones. These have been achieved but have done nothing to halt the ever deepening violence.



The latest milestone is the referendum on the new constitution - the rules of the game by which Iraq is to be governed.



The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history.



It is worse than Vietnam, because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater. At the time of the invasion in 2003 the US believed it could act alone, almost without allies, and win. In this it has utterly failed. About 1,950 American soldiers have been killed, 14,900 have been wounded, and its military command still has only islands of control.



It is a defeat more serious than Vietnam because it is self-inflicted, like the British invasion of Egypt to overthrow Nasser in 1956.



The US would take control of a country with great oil reserves. It would assume quasi-colonial control over a nation which 15 years previously had been the greatest Arab military power.



Few governments can resist the temptation to fight a short victorious war that will boost their standing at home. It enables them to stand tall as defenders of the homeland. Domestic political opponents can be portrayed as traitors or lacking in patriotism. The Bush administration had been peculiarly successful in wrapping the flag around itself after 11 September and later during the war in Afghanistan. It intended to do the same thing in Iraq in the run-up to 2004 presidential election.



When US troops began to spread out into Iraq after the fall of Baghdad they made a surprising discovery. Most people were armed, often with high-powered modern weapons. Saddam Hussein was reduced to introducing a buy-back programme in the early 1990s to cut down on the number of heavy weapons on the streets. Even so, his officials in south-east Iraq were astonished when a tribe turned up with three tanks - presumably purloined during the Iran-Iraq war - which they were prepared to turn over for a sizeable sum of money.



It was not until three years after the British army captured Baghdad in 1917 that the first serious rebellion took place. In the case of the US occupation in 2003 the rebellion started in three months.



But the two uprisings have a point in common: Iraqis do not like foreign rule or occupation any more than the people of any other country.



The vast majority of them did not support Saddam Hussein. By and large they did not fight for him. They do not feel the military victors had any rights over them as Germans or Japanese may have done in 1945.



Strangely, the Americans and the British never seem to have understood the extent to which the occupation outraged Iraqi nationalism, though anger might take a different form in the Sunni and Shia communities.



In Sunni areas anybody resisting the occupation - including bigoted and fanatical Sunni groups - could expect a degree of protection. Former members of the Baath party and the security services - never popular institutions in Iraq - may have provided a skeleton organisation for the resistance. But this would not have been enough to mount a widespread uprising if it had not enjoyed popular support.



A private poll conducted for the coalition, in effect the US and Britain, in February this year showed that 45 per cent of Iraqi Arabs supported armed attacks on the coalition forces.



Presumably to the American and British officials cut off in the Green Zone, the day-to-day friction between Iraqis and the occupation forces was not visible.



But for anybody living in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004 the ferocity of Iraqi-Arab hatred for the occupation was very evident. Local people would dance and rejoice when a bomb or a rocket hit an American vehicle. The US was outraged in the spring of 2004 when the burnt bodies of four American contractors were hung from a bridge in Fallujah. But they were mutilated not by the insurgents who killed them but by townspeople, day labourers waiting by the road for a job. The same savage joy was visible on the faces of the Shia crowd setting fire to a British armoured vehicle in Basra on 19 September.



There should be nothing surprising about the unpopularity of the occupation. How many occupations have been popular? Even Robespierre, no shrinking violet when it came to inflicting violence on others, pointed out to fellow French revolutionaries occupying foreign lands that "nobody likes armed missionaries."



Given that the Americans are probably no stupider or more crooked than anybody else, why was the occupation regime so dysfunctional? The answer is probably that the senior US officials who ran Iraq owed their positions to the exigencies of American, not Iraqi politics. They knew how to function in Washington but not Baghdad. If they failed to deliver a better life to Iraqis their careers suffered no damage; but if they displeased the White House they were fired.



It was extraordinary to watch the US occupation unravel.



In the first year and a half of the war it was still possible to drive out of Baghdad and talk to people in Sunni Arab towns and villages.



From early days they were full of rage against the American army. US generals seemed to pride themselves on their ignorance of local customs. Many innocent farmers were being shot dead. They often died because when they heard a loud knocking on their door in the middle of the night they would open it with a gun in their hand.



This was because, ever since the Saddam Hussein closed the banks in 1990 and the Iraqi dinar collapsed in value, Iraqis kept their money at home and in hundred dollar bills. Even a modest household might have $20,000 in cash, perhaps the life savings of an extended family. Farmers feared robbers and were usually armed. When a US soldier knocked at the door of a house in the middle of the night and saw an armed Iraqi in front of him he would open fire.



It was typical of the cast of mind of the US Army at this time that they thought they had dealt with questions about the number of Iraqi civilian deaths by simply not counting them. It might have public relations advantages in the US - though even this was dubious - but the Iraqis themselves knew how many of their people were being killed. And this was in a country where the tribal tradition is that a man must seek vengeance against the killer of anybody related to him over five generations. American soldiers on the ground eventually came to understand if they accidentally killed an innocent Iraqi then they would be the targets of a retaliatory attack a few days later.



The US military commanders and their civilian equivalents were in a state of denial in Baghdad. Every few days they would hold press briefings in which they would describe the insurgents as either foreign fighters or the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, the "bitter-enders" in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary.



Every escalation in attacks was described as the insurgents' last desperate convulsion. The chasm between this rosy picture of the war and the bloody reality became ever deeper.



One day I heard a rumour that there was an uprising in Baiji, a Sunni Arab oil refining town north of Baghdad. The US military had not said anything about it. When I got there I found the police station and the mayor's office burnt out and the police fled. Thousands of people were on the streets chanting pro-Saddam slogans and setting fire to Turkish fuel trucks that they claimed were stealing Iraqi oil.



Back in Baghdad the US generals at their daily briefings in the Convention Centre in the Green Zone were refusing to admit that Iraq was out of control. They must have believed their own propaganda, which would explain why they were sending convoys of vulnerable fuel tankers through guerrilla-controlled territory.



There is a great sump of misery in Iraq. And until the lives of people in general improve the political crisis will not end. Given such deprivation and corruption, why should soldiers fight for the government, particularly if they only joined the army or police for a job?



Government leaders frequently travel to Washington and London to give a rosy picture of Iraq slowly emerging from the present bloody chaos. Living behind the walls of the Green Zone, protected by US troops and foreign security companies, they seldom have little idea themselves of life in Iraq.



Mr Jaafari must give 24 hours' advance warning to his security detail if he leaves the Green Zone to visit President Talabani, whose heavily defended house is just five minutes' drive away. Iraqis do not enjoy many jokes, but the disappearance of so many cabinet ministers abroad on essential business has been a source of general amusement in the last two years.



In far-flung capitals across the globe they bid the insurgents defiance and tell them their days are numbered.



In reality security is getting worse. Insurgents are tightening their grip in Sunni-dominated districts in south and west Baghdad. A policeman guarding a petrol station in this area explained that he was going home at 8pm "because the resistance takes over then and I will be killed if I stay".



Neither Mr Bush nor Mr Blair want to reveal the depth of the quagmire into which they so confidently plunged in 2003. They also presumably believe that at any moment they may touch bottom. Iraqi governments, dependent on foreign support, parrot whatever they believe Washington or London wants to hear at the time. Iraq is full of mirages.



Much of the Iraqi government exists only on paper. It is more of a racket than an administration. Its officials turn up only on pay day. Elaborate bureaucratic procedures exist simply so a bribe has to be paid to avoid them.



The fact that so many Iraqis blame the US occupation for their ills does not mean they are right. But, having spent most of my time in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, I believe that the biggest mistake being made by the US and Britain is a very simple one:



They do not realise the unpopularity of the occupation. No people wants to be ruled by another.



The occupation exacerbates a crisis it purports to cure.



Mr Blair says British and American troops will stay until the job is done, but their very presence means Iraq will never be at peace.

what is AMAZING is that the americons simply DON'T GET It. Iraqis do not want you there. They did not ask you to "liberate"....aka occupy them. They did not ask you to destroy their country with bombs. and nor did they ask you to kill so many of THEIR FELLOW IRAQIS. (or maim so many) Will YOU ever learn not to meddle where you don't belong. ??? Or are you all so dense ,you can't see anything beyond your own obsessive causes?? Had thought the Blair was smarter than bush.......but given his posturing......not so sure.

 

[no1important]

RE: Iraq - Today..*and to

America never gets anything. They are brainwashed from day 1 how they are the greatest that ever lived and will live. But the reckoning is near. The rest of the world knows what they are up too and won't stand for it much longer. It will be the cause of ww3 thanks to "W" and company.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Iraq - Today..*and to

America never gets anything. They are brainwashed from day 1 how they are the greatest that ever lived and will live. But the reckoning is near. The rest of the world knows what they are up too and won't stand for it much longer. It will be the cause of ww3 thanks to "W" and company.

sadly they don't get the fact that Rome fell for the same reasons the US will tumble. ........and it will....We just don't know when or how yet. The US has all the earmarks of the glory days of Rome before it too got out of control. ....too egotistical, too arrogant and too deluded by its belief in itself. ( self grandization)

sadly (in a way) the signs of deterioration are beginning to show......to the outside world. One safety valve to prevent another major war is to keep in mind just how much in debt the US is in now. That alone reduces its power. It cannot afford to continue many of its domestic programs now. Yet it over spends on wars and military equipment. Seems it is living on borrowed time and money.

 

[jimmoyer]

Our deficit is 3.3 percent of our GDP.

But no nation remains strong when it's biggest manufactured item is flipping hamburgers, now considered to be part of our manufacturing sector when the macro-economists go over the numbers. This stat was by governmental decree in the 90s.

I think I'm a few fries short of a happy meal.

Supersize that !!

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Iraq and the LAWS of WAR

Iraq and the Laws of War

By Francis A. Boyle
Professor of Law, University of Illinois

10/14/05 "ICH" -- -- On 19 March 2003 President Bush Jr. commenced his criminal war against Iraq by ordering a so-called decapitation strike against the President of Iraq in violation of a 48-hour ultimatum he had given publicly to the Iraqi President and his sons to leave the country. This duplicitous behavior violated the customary international laws of war set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention on the Opening of Hostilities to which the United States is still a contracting party, as evidenced by paragraphs 20, 21, 22, and 23 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956). Furthermore, President Bush Jr.'s attempt to assassinate the President of Iraq was an international crime in its own right. Of course the Bush Jr. administration's war of aggression against Iraq constituted a Crime against Peace as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as by paragraph 498 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).

Next came the Pentagon's military strategy of inflicting "shock and awe" upon the city of Baghdad. To the contrary, article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defined the term "War crimes" to include: "... wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity..." The Bush Jr. administration's infliction of "shock and awe" upon Baghdad and its inhabitants constituted the wanton destruction of that city, and it was certainly not justified by "military necessity," which is always defined by and includes the laws of war. Such terror bombings of cities have been criminal behavior under international law since before the Second World War: Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Dresden, London, Guernica.

On 1 May 2003 President Bush Jr. theatrically landed on a U.S. aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego to declare: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." He spoke before a large banner proclaiming: "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." As of that date, the United States government became the belligerent occupant of Iraq under international law and practice.

This legal status was formally recognized by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483 of 22 May 2003. For the purpose of this analysis here, the relevant portions of that Security Council Resolution 1483
(2003) are as follows:

Noting the letter of 8 May 2003 from the Permanent Representatives of the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the President of the Security Council (S/2003/538) and recognizing the specific authorities, responsibilities, and obligations under applicable international law of these states as occupying powers under unified command (the "Authority"), ....

5. Calls upon all concerned to comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907;...

In that aforementioned 8 May 2003 letter from the United States and the United Kingdom to the President of the Security Council, both countries pledged to the Security Council that: "The States participating in the Coalition will strictly abide by their obligations under international law, including those relating to the essential humanitarian needs of the people of Iraq." No point would be served here by attempting to document the gross and repeated violations of that solemn and legally binding pledge by the United States and the United Kingdom from that date until today since it would require a separate book to catalog all of the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and grave human rights violations inflicted by the United States and the United Kingdom in Iraq and against its people. Suffice it to say here that no earlier than President Bush's 1 May 2003 Declaration of the end of hostilities in Iraq, and certainly no later than U.N. Security Resolution 1483 of 22 May 2003, both the United States and the United Kingdom have been the belligerent occupants of Iraq subject to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) or respectively its British equivalent, the humanitarian provisions of Additional Protocol One of 1977 to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the customary international laws of war.

I do not take the position that the United States is the belligerent occupant of the entire state of Afghanistan. But certainly the laws of war and international humanitarian law apply to the United States in its conduct of hostilities in Afghanistan as well as to its presence there. It is not generally believed that the United States is the belligerent occupant of Guantanamo, Cuba. But those detainees held there by United States armed forces who were apprehended in or near the theaters of hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq are protected by either the Third Geneva Convention protecting prisoners of war or the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians. In any event every detainee held by the United States government in Guantanamo is protected by the International Covenant on a Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a contracting party. A similar analysis likewise applies /pari passu/ to those numerous but unknown torture and detention facilities operated around the world by the Central Intelligence Agency. America's own "Gulag Archipelago." No wonder the Bush Jr. administration has done everything humanly possible to sabotage the International Criminal Court!

The United States government's installation of the so-called Interim Government of Iraq during the summer of 2004 did not materially alter this legal situation. Under the laws of war, this so-called Interim Government of Iraq is nothing more than a "puppet government." As the belligerent occupant of Iraq the United States government is free to establish a puppet government if it so desires. But under the laws of war, the United States government remains fully accountable for the behavior of its puppet government.

These conclusions are made quite clear by paragraph 366 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956):

366. Local Governments Under Duress and Puppet Governments

The restrictions placed upon the authority of a belligerent government cannot be avoided by a system of using a puppet government, central or local, to carry out acts which would be unlawful if performed directly by the occupant. Acts induced or compelled by the occupant are nonetheless its acts.

As the belligerent occupant of Iraq, the United States government is obligated to ensure that its puppet Interim Government of Iraq obeys the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956), the humanitarian provisions of Additional Protocol One of 1977 to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the customary international laws of war. Any violation of the laws of war, international humanitarian law, and human rights committed by its puppet Interim Government of Iraq are legally imputable to the United States government. As the belligerent occupant of Iraq, both the United States government itself as well as its concerned civilian officials and military officers are fully and personally responsible under international criminal law for all violations of the laws of war, international humanitarian law, and human rights committed by its puppet Interim Government of Iraq such as, for example, reported death squads operating under its auspicies.

Furthermore, it was a total myth, fraud, lie, and outright propaganda for the Bush Jr. administration to maintain that it was somehow magically transferring "sovereignty" to its puppet Interim Government of Iraq during the summer of 2004. Under the laws of war, sovereignty is never transferred from the defeated sovereign such as Iraq to a belligerent occupant such as the United States. This is made quite clear by paragraph 353 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956): "Belligerent occupation in a foreign war, being based upon the possession of enemy territory, necessarily implies that the sovereignty of the occupied territory is not vested in the occupying power. Occupation is essentially provisional."

If there were any doubt about this matter, paragraph 358 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) makes this fact crystal clear:

358. Occupation Does Not Transfer Sovereignty

Being an incident of war, military occupation confers upon the invading force the means of exercising control for the period of occupation. It does not transfer the sovereignty to the occupant, but simply the authority or power to exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. The exercise of these rights results from the established power of the occupant and from the necessity of maintaining law and order, indispensable both to the inhabitants and the occupying force....

Therefore, the United States government never had any "sovereignty" in the first place to transfer to its puppet Interim Government of Iraq. In Iraq the sovereignty still resides in the hands of the people of Iraq and in the state known as the Republic of Iraq, where it has always been. The legal regime described above will continue so long as the United States remains the belligerent occupant of Iraq. Only when that U.S. belligerent occupation of Iraq is factually terminated can the people of Iraq have the opportunity to exercise their international legal right of sovereignty by means of free, fair, democratic, and uncoerced elections. So as of this writing, the United States and the United Kingdom remain the belligerent occupants of Iraq despite their bogus "transfer" of their non-existent "sovereignty" to their puppet Interim Government of Iraq.

Even U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546 of 8 June 2004 "Welcoming" the installation of the puppet Interim Government of Iraq recognized this undeniable fact of international law. Preambular language in this Resolution referred to "the letter of 5 June 2004 from the United States Secretary of State to the President of the Council, which is annexed to this resolution." In other words, that annexed letter is a legally binding part of Resolution 1546 (2004). Therein U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged to the U.N. Security Council with respect to the so-called Multinational Force (MNF) in Iraq: "In addition, the forces that make up the MNF are and will remain committed at all times to act consistently with their obligations under the law of armed conflict, including the Geneva Conventions." Pursuant thereto, the United States and the United Kingdom still remain the belligerent occupants of Iraq subject to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Hague Regulations of 1907, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) or respectively its British equivalent, the humanitarian provisions of Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the customary international laws of war.

This brings the analysis to the so-called Constitution of Iraq that was allegedly drafted by the puppet Interim Government of Iraq under the impetus of the United States government. Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare flatly prohibits the change in a basic law such as a state's Constitution during the course of a belligerent occupation: "The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country." This exact same prohibition has been expressly incorporated in haec verba into paragraph 363 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956). To the contrary, the United States has demonstrated gross disrespect toward every law in Iraq that has stood in the way of its imperial designs and petroleum ambitions, including and especially the pre-invasion 1990 Interim Constitution for the Republic of Iraq.

As for any subsequent Security Council Resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has no power or authority to alter one iota of the laws of war since they are peremptory norms of international law. For the Security Council even to purport to authorize U.S. violations of the laws of war in Iraq would render its so-voting Member States aiders and abettors to U.S. war crimes and thus guilty of committing war crimes in their own right. Any Security Council attempt to condone, authorize or approve violations of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the 1907 Hague Regulations, the humanitarian provisions of Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the customary international laws of war by the United States and the United Kingdom in Iraq would be ultra vires, a legal nullity, and void ab initio.

In fact, the United Nations Organization itself has become complicit in U.S. and U.K. international crimes in Iraq in violation of the customary international laws of war set forth in paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956): "... complicity in the commission of, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes are punishable." The United Nations Organization is walking down the path of the League of Nations toward Trotsky's "ashcan" of history. And George Bush Jr. and Tony Blair are heading towards their own Judgment at Nuremberg whose sixtieth anniversary the rest of the world gratefully but wistfully commemorates this year. Never again!

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois

 

[Ocean Breeze]

and the US KILLING goes on

Dozens of Iraqis die in US air strikes


Monday 17 October 2005, 14:40 Makka Time, 11:40 GMT


A US army statement says there were no civilian casualties



Related:
High Sunni turnout at Iraq polls
Six US servicemen killed in Iraq
Iraq begins vote count
US soldier charged again in Iraq case
Iraq vote turnout may cross 10 million



Tools:
Email Article
Print Article
Send Your Feedback



US warplanes and helicopters have bombed two villages near the city of Ramadi where witnesses say at least 39 civilians have been killed, while the US army says the air strike has killed an estimated 70 fighters.


On Sunday, a group of about two dozen Iraqis gathered around the wreckage of a US vehicle destroyed the previous day by a roadside bomb. The people were hit by the US air strikes, the military and witnesses said.

The air strike hit the crowd which had gathered around to look at the wreckage of the vehicle and to pick pieces off it - as often occurs after an American vehicle is hit. The vehicle was destroyed on election day.

Chiad Saad, a tribal leader, and several witnesses who refused to give their names to protect their security, said 25 civilians were killed in the attack.

Basim al-Dulaimi, a doctor at Ramadi hospital, said he had received 25 dead and eight wounded and said relatives had told him the victims had been hit in aerial bombardments.

Heavy gunfire

Residents reported heavy gunfire and clashes in central and eastern parts of the city, which is west of Baghdad, throughout Sunday.

The US military, however, said the crowd was setting another roadside bomb in the location of the blast that killed the Americans the day before.




Ramadi has been the scene of
frequent attacks on US soldiers


The US statement also said there were no reports of any US or civilian casualties in the operation.

F-15 warplanes hit them with a precision-guided bomb, killing about 20 people described in the statement as "terrorists".

The other deaths occurred in the nearby village of Al-Bu Faraj.

The US military said a group of armed men opened fire on a Cobra attack helicopter that had spotted their position. The Cobra returned fire, killing about 10 people.

The men ran into a nearby house, where armed men were seen unloading weapons. An F-18 warplane struck the building with a bomb, killing 40 fighters, the military said.

Witness account

Witnesses said at least 14 of the dead were civilians.

First, one man was wounded in an air strike, and when he was brought into a nearby building, warplanes struck it, said the witnesses, refusing to give their names for concern about their safety.

An Associated Press stringer later saw the 14 bodies and the damaged building.

The weekend's US military fatalities brought to at least 1976 the number of US service members who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Published on Monday, October 17, 2005 by the Associated Press
'Civilians Killed' as US Targets Militants
by Thomas Wagner

US warplanes and helicopters bombed two villages near the Iraq city of Ramadi, killing an estimated 70 militants, the military said today. But witnesses said at least 39 were civilians.


Iraqis relatives of US airstrikes victims grieve during their funeral in Ramadi, Iraq, Monday Oct. 17 2005. U.S. warplanes and helicopters bombed two villages near the restive city of Ramadi, killing an estimated 70 militants, the military said Monday, though witnesses said at least 39 of the dead were civilians.(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

The bombings occurred a day after Iraq voted on — and apparently passed — a landmark constitution that many Sunnis opposed. On referendum day, a roadside bomb killed five US soldiers in a vehicle in the Al-Bu Ubaid village on the eastern outskirts of Ramadi, said to be a hotbed of Sunni-Arab insurgents west of Baghdad.

Yesterday, a group of about two dozen Iraqis gathered around the wreckage of the US vehicle destroyed the day before by the roadside bomb and were hit by the airstrikes by US warplanes, the military and witnesses said.

The military said in a statement that the crowd was setting another roadside bomb in the location of the blast that killed the Americans. F-15 warplanes hit them with a precision-guided bomb, killing around 20 people, described by the statement as "terrorists".

But several witnesses and one local leader said the people were civilians who had gathered to gawk at the wreckage of the US vehicle or pick pieces off of it — as often occurs after an American vehicle is hit. The airstrike hit the crowd, killing 25 civilians, said Chiad Saad, a tribal leader, and several witnesses who refused to give their names to protect their security.

The other deaths occurred in the nearby village of Al-Bu Faraj.

The military said a group of gunmen opened fire on a Cobra attack helicopter that had spotted their position. The Cobra returned fire, killing around 10. The men ran into a nearby house, where gunmen were seen unloading weapons. An F/A-18 warplane struck the building with a bomb, killing 40 insurgents, the military said.

Witnesses said at least 14 of the dead were civilians. First, one man was wounded in an airstrike, and when he was brought into a nearby building, warplanes struck it, said the witnesses, refusing to give their names for concern about their safety.

An Associated Press stringer later saw the 14 bodies and the damaged building. He said residents, many of them crying, removed the bodies from the scene and buried them, some wrapped in white cloth, others in wooden coffins. One of the bodies was that of a boy who appeared to be between the ages of 10 and 15, the stringer said.

Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, is a stronghold for Sunni insurgents, and few people cast ballots there during Saturday's referendum — either out of fear of militants' reprisals or out of rejection of the new constitution.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

US military massacres dozens in wake of Iraq referendum
By James Cogan
18 October 2005
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

In the space of a few hours on Sunday, less than a day after voting finished on the draft constitution in Iraq, the US military used laser-guided bombs and helicopter gunships to massacre as many as 70 people in two incidents in the predominantly Sunni Arab city of Ramadi.

The killings expose the utterly cynical character of the Bush administration’s propaganda that the October 15 referendum marked a genuine step toward democracy and sovereignty. Iraq is a conquered country, where US occupation troops are using the most ruthless methods to intimidate any opposition by the Iraqi people and force them into accepting neo-colonial American rule.

In the first incident, at least 25 people were blown to pieces when an F-15 dropped a bomb on a crowd that was gathered around the wreckage of an American humvee. It had been destroyed on Saturday by an insurgent roadside bomb, killing five marines and two soldiers of the Iraqi government armed forces and taking the total of US fatalities in Iraq to 1,976.

The US military asserted the airstrike resulted in the “death of terrorists” who had been planting another bomb. Witnesses and Ramadi hospital staff, however, have insisted that the casualties were young people and children who were pulling parts from the wreck.

Ahmed Fouad told the Washington Post that his son and eight-year-old daughter were among the dead. “She was killed with her brother when they were near the humvee. Her mother had a stroke out of shock,” he said. A local police officer told Reuters: “Their bodies were completely ripped apart.”

On Sunday evening, at least another 50 people were killed in the village of Al-Bu Faraj, on the outskirts of Ramadi. The US military claimed that helicopter gunships monitoring an alleged “terrorist safe house” killed 10 armed men who fired on them. The house was then destroyed by a precision-guided bomb dropped by an F/A-18 fighter, claiming the lives of a further 40 people.

Witnesses told Associated Press that at least 14 of those killed in the house were civilians. A local told Reuters: “The planes came and bombed us right after prayers. These are innocent civilians. To hell with this constitution.”

Usage of the word “terrorist” has assumed the same character in Iraq as the term Viet Cong or “VC” during the Vietnam War. It is the convenient label applied to any casualty caused by the occupation forces. As far as the US military is concerned, the entire population is the enemy in areas such as Ramadi. Civilians are being butchered and their deaths included in the body-counts reported by the Pentagon to try to convince the American people that the war is going well.

The reality is that Sunday’s attacks—like the numerous atrocities committed against civilian communities in Vietnam—are acts of collective punishment by the US military for opposition to the occupation and the support in cities like Ramadi for the armed Iraqi resistance.

Ramadi is the most populous city and capital of the western province of Anbar, which has a predominantly Sunni Arab population and has been a focus of the insurgency since the 2003 invasion. The province has endured continuous repression. Tens of thousands of people—men, women and children—have been killed or wounded, or dragged off to US-run concentration camps. The city of Fallujah was laid waste last November by American marines. Ramadi has also been the target of brutal anti-insurgency operations.

Over the past several months, towns and villages along the Syrian border and in the Euphrates Valley have been subjected to US offensives, aimed at disrupting the ability of Sunnis to vote in the referendum. Tens of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee from cities such as Tal Afar, Qaim and Haditha by operations named “Iron Fist” and “River Gate”.

Contradicting the constant propaganda claims of the White House that the insurgency is the work of “foreign terrorists”, marine Major General Stephen Johnson told a press conference on October 7 his troops had been fighting “largely locally based insurgents”:

“[T]he insurgent we fight here is from here, he’s from those communities in which we are engaging them. They are generally young people, 20 to 30-years old. They are day laborers, agricultural workers. They are disaffected and there’s a lot of unemployment. But they’re local people and they can come and go within the community.”

The chaos, dislocation and instability caused by the US operations ensured that as many as one third of the polling stations in Anbar province did not open on Saturday. Nevertheless, those who could vote, overwhelming opposed the constitution. In Fallujah, where initial results have been reported, 97 percent rejected the document, while at the same time making clear they viewed the entire process as illegitimate.

The British Guardian reported on October 17: “Voters in Fallujah said they would continue supporting the insurrection. ‘The resistance will go on,’ said Hamid Jassim, 60, queueing to vote at al-Khansa primary school. Those within earshot nodded vigorously. ‘God willing it will go on,’ they said.” Initial reports indicate a similar rejection of the constitution in other Sunni areas and determination to continue fighting the occupation.

The massacres on Sunday are a foretaste of what is to come over the coming weeks and months. Iraqis of all backgrounds—Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish—face disastrous conditions of life, none of which will be altered by a constitution or the new government to be elected in December. While at present the resistance is concentrated in Sunni areas, it can only spread as the resentment and hostility to the occupation and the political parties collaborating with US imperialism intensifies across the country.

In order to crush the opposition to its war aims, and to a puppet government in Baghdad that hands over territory and oil to US interests, the American ruling elite is prepared to slaughter tens of thousands more Iraqis.

 

[jjw1965]

Are we going to war with Iran?

Tuesday October 18, 2005


The Sunday Telegraph warned last weekend that the UN had a last chance to avert war with Iran and, at a meeting in London last week, the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, expressed his regret that any failure by the UN security council to deal with Iran would damage the security council's relevance, implying that the US would solve the problem on its own. More...

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Are we going to war with Iran?

Tuesday October 18, 2005


The Sunday Telegraph warned last weekend that the UN had a last chance to avert war with Iran and, at a meeting in London last week, the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, expressed his regret that any failure by the UN security council to deal with Iran would damage the security council's relevance, implying that the US would solve the problem on its own. More...

sure did not take Bolton long to "define" the perimeters. :evil: :x He has absolutely no regard for the UN.....and his appointment is a sham. ......but he has his own (the USNC ) agenda here and it is most likely to diminish the UN even further.......creating inroads for more USNC control. All about power and control now. everything else is window dressing/smoke and mirrors.

 

[Jo Canadian]