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Viewing Iraq War NEWS articles 376 through 450 of 1126
- Rome prosecutors are investigating the March 4 death of Nicola Calipari, who was killed by U.S. gunfire near a checkpoint as he headed to the Baghdad airport with Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was held hostage by militants for a month.
- Sunni Arabs alleged Tuesday that last week’s parliamentary elections were fraudulent, especially in Baghdad province, and they said if the irregularities are not corrected, new balloting must be held in Iraq’s largest electoral district. - Barzan, Saddam's half-brother and co-defendant, repeatedly interrupted the court, protesting at one stage that much of what he was saying was being edited out of video footage of the trial which is being broadcast on televisions with a 20-minute delay.
- The composition of the next Iraqi government will not...be primarily determined by the votes that were cast on December 15. Rather, the regime in Baghdad will be decided by dealing-making and US arm-twisting to ensure that its leading figures implement Washington’s demands. Above all, US plans involve opening up the Iraqi oil industry to foreign investors, crushing the anti-occupation insurgency and establishing permanent American military bases to extend US influence more broadly in the Middle East. - These 24 people should have been freed in December 2004 (not that they ever should have been in jail), but remained jailed (and, based on what we know of other cases, quite likely in solitary confinement) for nearly a full year in order to "ease the political pressure." I wonder if they agreed to sacrifice a year of their lives for that noble goal.
- The latest figures released by US Central Command show a dramatic rise in the number of air raids carried out in Iraq. - On Saturday, eight "high value" Iraqis held without charge for over two years by the United States were released.They included Dr Huda Ammash, a distinguished internationally renowned, environmental biologist, Professor at Baghdad University, whose earned her PhD at the University of Missouri. Arrested by US troops, this brave, gentle woman suddenly became "Mrs Anthrax" and featured on America's assinine playing cards of their "most wanted", in the wild west, last chance saloon, Iraq became after April 2003.
- Leaders of the United States, Britain and Australia are criminals who have committed crimes against humanity and should be hauled up and tried for war crimes, according to two law professors. - As the Occupation of Iraq is approaching three years, the mass murder of Iraqi civilians is not questioned, but normalised in Western conscience. President Bush reached the stage where he is able to make his own figure of Iraqi deaths, with no remorse or sadness. The war was not the result of "wrong intelligence"; the war was an illegal act of aggression, and a premeditated mass murder. "Democracy" is used as a tool to manipulate the public and justify war crimes.
- Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Western corporate media have deceptively reported and portrayed the Occupation as a necessary vehicle to "spread democracy" and "fight terrorism"; however the carving up of Iraq's wealth and oil assets is deliberately avoided. The media hype over "reconstruction effort" and illegitimate elections is a cover up for the colonisation of Iraq and Iraq's economy.
- The problem for the U.S. backed oligarchy in Bolivia is that the indigenous people have steadily become more educated and understand as never before what their puppet governments have done to them.
- US ambassador "will remain the critical behind-the-scenes power," says New York Times
- In Qaim, near the Syrian border, Newsweek found American soldiers blasting Metallica's "Enter Sandman" at detainees in a shipping crate while flashing lights in their eyes. Near Falluja, three Iraqi journalists working for Reuters were seized by the 82nd Airborne. They charged that "deafening music" was played directly into their ears while soldiers ordered them to dance. And back in Mosul, Haitham al-Mallah described being hooded, handcuffed and delivered to a location where soldiers boomed "extremely loud (and dirty) music" at him. Mallah said the site was "an unknown place which they call 'the disco.'" Disco isn't dead. It has gone to war. - "I done kilt me 10 times as many as old Osama ever done," Exults Bush
- The entire US-controlled political process this year—the January 30 elections for a transitional government, the drafting of a new constitution and the referendum on October 15—has been aimed at giving the veneer of legal legitimacy to the plunder of the country’s oil and gas and the formation of a puppet government that will sanction an indefinite US military presence in Iraq. - If George W. Bush's policies on Iraq are mystifying, fret not -- there's a method to his organized chaos after all. - Why is the media not reporting crucial information about U.S. bombing runs in heavily-inhabited parts of Iraq? - The most striking fact is that the majority of those killed were not sciencists (thus targeted for the alleged knowledge of Iraq’s weapon’s programme) but were involved in field of humanities (such as law, geography and history). The motives for these assassinations are unknown.
- Thirteen of the prisoners needed hospital treatment amid torture claims. An Iraqi official speaking anonymously said 12 of the 13 men in hospital had suffered torture, including electric shocks and the loss of finger nails. - It's a shocking charge...Pentagon casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that...the reports skip a horrible panoply of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma.
- The government wants to postpone the investigation to help its favoured candidate Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, in the election on 15 December. The money disappeared during his administration. - Opiates - and cannabis - produced in Afghanistan transit through Iraq before being distributed in Europe. Their consumption is growing in Baghdad and elsewhere...narcotics seem to stubbornly want to surge through the wake of the American Army.
- "This insurgency has got roots, it's got money, and it's got motivation," says a U.S. intelligence official, in an assessment echoed by military officers and insurgent leaders alike. "And the life span of this insurgency could be years." - Instead of a requirement that the former Iraqi President’s guilt be proved, there is an assumption of Saddam’s guilt that pervades the American media. And there is a very strong reason for that- It serves as a secondary rationale for the U.S. illegal war on Iraq, with the argument that "no one can say that Iraq isn’t better off without Saddam Hussein." - While the Iraqi people are struggling to end the U.S. military Occupation and its associated violence, the fate of their food sources and agricultural heritage is being looted behind closed doors. Unless the colonisation of Iraq ends, the U.S. Occupation of Iraq will continue to have lasting and disastrous effects on Iraq's economy and Iraq's ability to feed its people.
- The US military is continuing a controversial "information operations" program that paid Iraqi newspapers to run favorable stories even as it investigates the effort, US defense spokesmen said Wednesday. - Former President Jimmy Carter says he doubts whether the U-S military will ever completely pull out of Iraq... - In three different British courtrooms yesterday, three ordinary people stood accused of three very different crimes, but all based simply on their opposition to the war in Iraq. - Three men threatened Saddam Hussein’s chief lawyer as he boarded a plane from Baghdad to Jordan today, and they were removed from the flight, said the Iraqi lawyer and his colleague, ex-US. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. - "PSAs are effectively immune from public scrutiny and lock governments into economic terms that cannot be altered for decades..."
- Young Iraqi surgeon testifies about the horrors of the Iraq war - Explosive anger in Ramadi after US marines stripped naked a wife in front of her husband. - One of the many rarely spoken reasons why conservatives in Washington won't let us leave Iraq is the old notion of civilizing a primitive nation.
- "Expect black days. Elections won't change anything. This is a long-term struggle. We will fight for the next 20 years," said Abu Mohammed, who used that name as an insurgent. - The officer, 2nd Lt Erick Anderson, 26, was charged in 2004 after two soldiers under his command alleged he gave permission to kill Iraqi civilians. - At his trial, Mr. Hussein is charged with crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 men and teenage boys from the Shiite town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein there in 1982. But Mr. Clark suggested that Mr. Hussein's secret police had reason to act harshly against Shiite assassins who, he said, almost certainly had political links to Shiite-ruled Iran, then in the early stages of an eight-year war with Iraq. He compared the actions of Mr. Hussein's secret police with the muscular behavior of an American president's security detail.
- Who to believe? - Major US news outlets are dodging the extent of the Pentagon's bombardment from the air, an avoidance all the more egregious because any drawdown of US troop levels in Iraq is very likely to be accompanied by a step-up of the air war. - For Ali, 18, his pills allow him to forget his problems. "I float along in another world," he said. "The unbearable conditions of daily life, whether in society or in my family, pushed me to find an escape," he added.
- A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves: Edward R Murrow - Allawi is promoted by the U.S. and British government for the upcoming December elections, because he fits Western image of the "educated technocrat" who serves Western interests at the expense of the Iraqi people. Allawi provides the best Arab façade of acting on behalf of his masters. Like his relative, Ahmed Chalabi, Allawi is a conman, committed crimes against the Iraqi state and the Iraqi people, and should be held accountable for his crimes. - Whoever is responsible for the assassination of academics must also have access to sophisticated intelligence techniques that allow for the widespread targeting of a particular grouping of civilians. - "These Rules of Engagement allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances. All incidents of the use of such escalation of force which includes the use of firearms are logged and investigated to ensure that there has been strict adherence to the Rules of Engagement. " - Iraqis, rather than foreign fighters, now form the vast majority of the insurgents who are waging a ferocious guerrilla war against United States forces in Sunni western Iraq, American commanders have revealed.
- The war on terror is a fabrication so large and all-encompassing that it includes both political parties, the Pentagon, the main-body of corporate and financial elites, and virtually the entire western media. It is the underlying myth that animates the American war-machine and breathes life into the coercive apparatus of state terror. - War Crimes—It's Not Just Torture - "Pacified" Fallujah looks like a dead six year-old child in that city, shot by a US sniper in the Al-Dubbat neighborhood on December 1st, according to Al-Sharqiyah. - Capitalism is alive and well in Iraq. With a 70% unemployment rate, soaring housing costs, and late or non-existent government rations driving up the prices of food staples and energy necessities, the Iraqi people are ‘just lovin it’. Yes, capitalism is alive and well. - A Norwegian company begins drilling in the north without approval from Baghdad. - The Bush administration's covert plan to help energy companies steal Iraq's oil could be just weeks away from fruition, and the implications are staggering: continued price-gouging by Big Oil, increased subjugation of the Iraqi people, more US troops in Iraq, and a greater likelihood for a US invasion of Iran. That's just for starters.
- Recently, news reports in US and European newspapers have suggested that Washington and London are considering a major reduction in their forces in Iraq...most of these reports don't bother to state that if the troops are pulled back from the front and brought home, the Pentagon plans to replace their combat capability with air power. - ...what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy? - A U.S. Army officer who served with the U.S. governing administration in Iraq was arrested on charges involving bribery, money laundering and a fraud scheme... - While the United States spends billions on troop support in Iraq, the people serving the meals, scooping the ice cream, and washing the dishes make as little as 50 cents an hour. - Private Israeli security firms have sent experts to Iraq's northern Kurdish region to give covert training to Kurdish security forces, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.
- Iraq has the second-largest oil deposits in the world, but Iraqis are forced to sit in excruciatingly long lines, waiting for a meager amount of petrol. - Bulgaria and Ukraine will begin withdrawing their combined 1,250 troops by mid-December. If Australia, Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland and South Korea reduce or recall their personnel, more than half of the non-American forces in Iraq could be gone by next summer. - Iraqis have asked Saddam Hussein's defence team to mull the possibility of fielding the ousted dictator as a candidate for future elections, according to one of his lawyers. .
- The authorization for the death squads comes straight from the Oval Office. - An illegal court - It should be remembered that the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was also kidnapped as she prepared to interview survivors of Fallujah, now admitted to have been attacked with chemical weapons and a napalm derivative. - As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
- Aegis is run by former British Scots Guard officer Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, an international mercenary who has been involved in UN sanctions busting in Sierra Leone and Bougainville invasion planning in Papua New Guinea. Spicer's firm, Aegis, was awarded a $293 million security contract in Iraq. Spicer's men also stand accused of shooting teenager Peter McBride in the back in Belfast in 1992. - The increased use of Joint Direct Attack Munitions against the Iraqi insurgency is creating a shortage of such precision-guided weaponry for the U.S. military. - It should come as no surprise murderous yahoos working for Aegis Defense Services randomly shoot up innocent Iraqis... - This video shows how US soldiers in Iraq, with the help of a robot, blow up a standing car that appears to have had an accident, while a young man, well alive but probably trapped, is still sitting in that car.
- Just before the U.S. forces attacked Qaim last 29 August, a thriving town of 150,000 people in western Iraq, they cordoned it off, cut electricity, water and food supplies. Then they indiscriminately and disproportionately blanketed the town, from the ground and from the air, with artillery shells, cluster bombs and napalm bombs with the full knowledge that civilians, particularly women and children, would be killed. - The Bush administration is considering a plan to put America's awesome airpower at the disposal of Iraqi commanders, as a way of reducing the number of US troops on the ground. The plan is causing consternation among commanders in US air force, who say it could lead to increased civilian casualties and lead to airstrikes being used as means of settling old scores. - In Bushzarro world, where Saddam “dead-enders” have morphed into wild-eyed al-Qaeda Muslims, you need a scorecard just to keep track of the convoluted twists and turns of the story as the Pentagon and the neocons make it up as they go along. - The trial was delayed to allow time to find replacements for two defence lawyers who were slain and another who fled from the country after he was wounded. - The continuing destruction of Iraq's history - ancient and modern - of homes, lives and civil society under the watch of and at the hands of US and British troops - in defiance of a swathe of international law - is an uncanny and chilling mirror image of Pol Pot'sYear Zero. - The US, largely through the CIA, has a long history of involvement with genocidal intelligence operations, from Indonesia under Suharto, through Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, to present-day Colombia. The current mass arrests in Iraq and subsequent killings bear all the hallmarks of such an operation. By analogy, one can reasonably guess that the current flood of victims will include anyone opposing US hegemony, such as the hundreds of teachers and academics who have already been assassinated...
- Saddam Hussein's lawyers plan to argue when his trial resumes on Monday that the court is not legitimate because Iraq is not a sovereign country, and therefore the process should be adjourned. - While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection. - "People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse..." << < 6 7 8 9 10 > >>
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