Peace and Justice Post

Citizens or terrorists and militias?? Why aren’t they on the US “terror” list?? Don’t they qualify?

Home-made Israeli settler rockets

Israeli settlers are not content that they are living on illegally occupied territory and in illegally-built settlements. They are not content that they are allowed to roam the streets of Israel armed to the teeth… killing, mutilating and torturing Palestinian citizens and children without accountability while the IDF, mainstream media and the ‘civilized’ world pretend not to notice. Israeli settlers now are building their own home-made rockets and are firing them at Palestinian refugees because they do not agree that Israel should withdraw from any of the occupied territories or make any concessions to the Palestinians in order to achieve a state of peace. As far as they are concerned, anyone living between the Nile and the Euphrates should vacate so that the ‘holy’ settlers can loot their lands, homes and properties as they’ve always done throughout history and suck every drop of blood from their victims until they explode.

Yesterday Israeli settlers fired 2 home-made rockets near a school in the village of Burin which is located between 2 illegal settlements. The rockets were named ‘Sharon 1’ and ‘Sharon 2’. How appropriate indeed. The entire IDF is not enough for the settlers. The land which was allocated to Israel by the UN as well as the land which Israel annexed illegally in the various wars it launched against its neighbors is also not enough for those settlers. These vicious, extremist, nasty and greedy blood-suckers are now developing their own rockets in order to keep and expand their illegal settlements against International Law and against every international agreement, resolution or convention that govern or apply to the Arab/Israeli conflict. Will the UN condemn the Israeli settlers’ actions? I hardly think so. It never condemned them for any of their previous horrific crimes so why would it condemn them for starting to make their own rockets. The UN might even justify the settlers’ actions as “self defense” just as it justified practically all of Israel’s actions as “self defense” for the past 60 years. It seems that Israel and its settlers need to blow up the entire Middle East and beyond in their quest for ‘peace’ and pursuit of “self defense”.

Continued . . .

Reuters, July 4, 2008
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Twenty-two civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led forces on Friday in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nuristan, an official said.

The attack happened on a road in Want district while the noncombatants were traveling in two vehicles, the district chief, Zia-Ul Rahman, told reporters.

“The civilians were evacuating the district as they were told by the U.S.-led troops to do so because they wanted to launch an operation against the Taliban,” he said.

“The civilians were in two vehicles when killed by the air raid,” he added.

The U.S. military confirmed the mission, but said there was no report of civilian injuries. It said the strike was in response to an attack by militants against NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops.

“An ISAF RC-East combat outpost in Nuristan province received indirect fire from militants today. Coalition helicopter support was used to locate the militants,” it said in a statement.

“The militants were moving in two vehicles when Coalition attack helicopters were used to destroy (them) killing the combatants. No reports of noncombatant injuries” were received, it added.

The incident comes amid an upsurge of violence in Afghanistan in the past two years, the bloodiest period since the overthrow of Taliban’s government in 2001.

The issue of civilians killed by foreign troops is a sensitive one in Afghanistan as it undermines public support for the presence of around 71,000 international troops in the country and the government of President Hamid Karzai.

In the first six months of this year, 698 civilians were killed, 255 of them by Afghan government and foreign forces. In the same period last year, a total of 430 civilians were killed, the United Nations said last week.

(Reporting by Rohullah Anwari; Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Jerry Norton)

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – No sooner had Bush started speaking at the naturalization ceremony welcoming new American citizens than protesters began shouting at him, calling him a “war criminal.”

The President paused in his remarks and then responded, “To my fellow citizens, we believe in free speech in the United States of America.”

One woman moved towards the stage before being stopped by security, but other protesters still made their voices heard.

Only minutes later, another protester shouted expletives at the President, while still another called Bush “a fascist”.

By the time Bush finished his 10-minute remarks, at least nine protesters had been escorted out of the event by law enforcement.

Although Bush did not mention the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his final Fourth of July speech as President, he did thank the troops, while paying tribute to the author of the Declaration of Independence, who died on this day in 1826.

“We honor Jefferson’s legacy by aiding the rise of liberty in lands that do not know the blessings of freedom,” Bush said. “And on this Fourth of July we pay tribute to the brave men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America,” prompting a standing ovation from the assembled crowd.

Bush congratulated the new citizens participating in the naturalization ceremony, more than 70 men and women from about 35 different countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Norway, and Burma.

“From this day forward the history of the United States will be part of your heritage, the Fourth of July will be part of your Independence Day, and I will be honored to call you a fellow American,” said the President.

While in Charlottesville, Bush toured Monticello with Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, a Democrat. Early in the afternoon, Bush returned to the White House to celebrate Independence Day, a holiday which falls right at the start of his birthday weekend.

“Thomas Jefferson once said he’d rather celebrate the Fourth of July than his own birthday,” said Bush, who turns 62 on Sunday. “To me it’s pretty simple, the Fourth of July weekend is my birthday weekend.”

Protesters also lined the President’s motorcade route, chanting “Arrest Bush” as he drove to and from the Monticello ceremony.

Copyright © 2008 ABCNews Internet Ventures

Cesar Chelala | uruknet.info, July 4, 2008

Friday, 4 July, 2008, 01:32 AM Doha Time NEW YORK: A just released report by the US Army makes a severe indictment of the planning and conduct of the Iraq war. Both the civilian and military planning for a post-Saddam Iraq was inadequate, and that the US Army commanders didn’t foresee the full spectrum of operations needed to bring stability to the country, it said. In the civilian arena, this is particularly true in the case of refugees, millions of Iraqis who had to flee their own country in desperation. According to official estimates Iraqi refugees now total almost 5mn people, and are part of one of the most tragic humanitarian crises in the region. According to Amnesty International, countries are evading their responsibility towards Iraqi refugees by promoting a false sense of security in Iraq, which is neither safe nor suitable for their return. The organisation stressed that the world’s richest countries are failing to provide necessary assistance to Iraqi refugees, “most of whom are plunged in despair and hurtling towards destitution”. According to the most recent estimates of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Iraqis who have fled their homes has now reached 4.7mn. This is the highest number since the US-led invasion and the subsequent internal armed conflict in Iraq. Neighbouring countries, particularly Syria and Jordan, have received most refugees. However, lack of support from the international community has obliged those countries to restrict their entry and to deport Iraqis, even those who may be at risk of persecution in their own country. The same policy of deportation back to Iraq is now being attempted by several European countries, who intend to send Iraqis back to the most dangerous parts of the country, such as the south and central regions. Even Sweden, host to the largest number of Iraqi refugees in Europe, which was once hailed as a positive example, has now changed its asylum policies and is denying protection to large numbers of Iraqis. This is happening while people continue being killed in large numbers by armed groups, the Multinational Force, Iraqi security forces and private military. In desperation, many Iraqis still try to flee their country, which has become now more difficult to do following recent visa restrictions on Iraqis by Jordan and Syria. Many families are forced to have the children work in the streets or resort to prostitution in a desperate attempt to help them survive. In a scathing report on the situation, Refugees International states: “Since the beginning of the crisis, the government of Iraq has proven to be unwilling and unable to respond to the needs of vulnerable Iraqis. Although it has access to large sums of money, it is divided along sectarian lines, lacking both the capacity and the political will to use its important resources to address humanitarian needs. As a result, the government doesn’t have any credibility left with Iraqis.” Continued . . .

Herb Keinon, jpost.com staff and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST, July 3, 2008

This week’s warnings from US President George W. Bush and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, against an IDF strike on Iran are a sign that Washington is concerned that Jerusalem may indeed attack the Islamic Republic, Israeli government officials said Thursday.

Also on Thursday, Channel 2 analyst Ehud Ya’ari reported that Iran had expressed readiness to freeze its uranium enrichment program in return for the lifting of the international sanctions imposed on it.

Citing unnamed Western officials, he said the Iranians had conveyed messages indicating they could accept the latest incentive package offered by the West in return for halting its enrichment program.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman said the US was sticking to its demand that Iran halt uranium enrichment as a precondition for US participation in negotiations with the Islamic republic over its nuclear program. He added, however, that the US would not rule out early consultations with Iran before official talks begin on resolving its standoff with the West.

The spokesman went on to say that Washington would not dismiss the option of Iran stopping enrichment for a limited time in exchange for the removal of sanctions. However, he stressed that Teheran must first give a detailed response to the EU incentive package, Israel Radio reported.

The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the report.

Mullen said late Wednesday that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be a high-risk move that could destabilize the Middle East. At a Defense Department news conference, he refused to say what Israeli leaders had told him during meetings last week about any intentions to strike Iran.

Asked whether he was concerned Israel would strike before the end of the year, Mullen said: “This is a very unstable part of the world and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”

Israeli officials said the fact that Mullen gave a press conference on the matter indicated he was not reassured by what he heard on his visit to Israel.

One of the purposes of his visit was to see whether recent comments made here, such as those made by Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who said Israel might have no choice but to act against the Islamic Republic, were “just words” or indicated real intent.

Israel’s large air force exercise over the eastern Mediterranean in the first week of June, which was widely described as a “dress rehearsal” for an attack on Iran, has also caused concern in Washington, the officials said.

Mullen’s visit was his second in seven months. Prior to December, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs had not been in Israel in more than 10 years.

He said Thursday that opening a third front now, with the US military already stretched thin by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “would be extremely stressful on us.”

“I believe they’re [the Iranians] still on a path to get nuclear weapons and I think that’s something that needs to be deterred,” and that this should be done through diplomatic, financial and economic actions by the US and other nations, Mullen said.

But, he added, “I think that just about every move in that part of the world is a high-risk move.”

In a news conference earlier in the day, President Bush was also asked about increasing speculation that Israel will launch a strike, and said that all options are on the table but that military action would not be his first choice.

“I have made it very clear to all parties that the first option ought to be solving this problem diplomatically,” Bush said. “And the best way to solve it diplomatically is for the United States to work with other nations to send a focused message – and that is: You will be isolated, and you will have economic hardship, if you continue to enrich” uranium for a bomb.

Israeli officials said Iran was also the main topic of conversation when Bush called Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday to express his condolences for the victims of the bulldozer attack in Jerusalem.

“All this is designed to throw cold water on any possible Israeli intentions,” the officials said.

“They are worried by the atmosphere in Israel, and that reports of an inevitable attack have suddenly started to dominate the debate.”

ACLU Releases Navy Files On Civilian Casualties In Iraq War ACLU

July 2, 2008

Public Has A Right To Unfiltered Information About The Human Cost Of War, ACLU Says

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today released thousands of pages of documents related to Navy investigations of civilians killed by Coalition Forces in Iraq, including the cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. Released today in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the ACLU filed in June 2006, these records provide a vivid snapshot of the circumstances surrounding civilian deaths in Iraq.

“At every step of the way, the Bush administration and Defense Department have gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “Our democracy depends on an informed public and that is why it is so important that the American people see these documents. These documents will help to fill the information void around the issue of civilian casualties in Iraq and will lead to a more complete understanding of the prosecution of the war.”

The ACLU obtained documents from eight Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigations. One of the files documents the investigation of the death of Mohammed al-Sumaidaie, a cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S, Samir al-Sumaidaie. In 2006, the ambassador accused Marines of “intentionally” killing his cousin and today’s records shed light on al-Sumaidaie’s NCIS investigation for the first time. Among the findings uncovered in this file are conflicting accounts of events, questions of credibility, possible command influence issues and cover-ups.

“As these files remind us, many charges of war crimes in Iraq have not seen the light of day,” said Michael Pheneger, a retired Army intelligence colonel who is also a board member of the ACLU. “There are many discoveries here that should bring pause to any American who cares about this country and hopes to restore the United States’ respected role in the world. It is time to bring the facts about this war into the sunlight and end practices that go against our laws and national values.”

Through its FOIA project, the ACLU has made public information on Defense Department policies designed to control information about the human costs of war. These practices include:

• Banning photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers killed overseas; • Paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort; • Inviting U.S. journalists to “embed” with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review; • Erasing journalists’ footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan; and • Refusing to disclose statistics on civilian casualties.

Today’s documents are available online at: http://www.aclu.org/natsec/foia/NCIS_log.html

Attorneys involved in this project are Bargzie, Ben Wizner and Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU National Security Project. In a separate lawsuit, the ACLU sued for records concerning the abuse of prisoners held by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. To date, that request has resulted in the release of more than 100,000 pages, all of which are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia

By Con Coughlin | Telegraph.co.uk, 04/07/2008

There are two ways of interpreting this week’s warning by America’s top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, that opening a new front in the Middle East by launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be “extremely stressful”.

Either the United States, with the help of its favoured Middle Eastern proxy, Israel, is already preparing to take out Iran’s main nuclear facilities, and is simply preparing public opinion for the likely consequences of such action.

Or America’s top brass, who already have their work cut out prosecuting two major military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are trying to pre-empt any thoughts President George W. Bush, the nation’s commander-in-chief, might have about ordering his armed forces into action against the mullahs.

Senior military officers, whether in Britain or America, specialise in the art of understatement, and what Mr Mullen means by “extremely stressful” is what most laymen would take to be “catastrophic”.

It’s not just that such an attack could, in the words of Mohammed elBaradei, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, turn the region into a fireball.

The Iranians have made it abundantly clear that they would do their utmost to close the Straits of Hormuz in the Gulf, the main shipping channel for 60 per cent of the world’s oil.

With oil prices yesterday tipping $146 a barrel and most Western economies already struggling to cope with the inflationary consequences of soaring oil prices, it is not difficult to imagine the effects the strangulation of the main oil export artery would have on the world’s economy.

The Russians call World War II “The Great Patriotic War.” The current longest of our wars could well be called the same thing. It is a war that originated in the orgy of patriotism (“U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”) that followed the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and has been sustained by the patriotism of those who support it (“Our soldiers are defending American freedom”) and false promises of some latter-day prophets (“We are winning the war in Iraq.”) It is likely to be revived by the Iranian attack that the McCainites see as their main chance of winning the election.

The president was right in his spontaneous reaction when he first heard of the attack — “This is war!” The subtext was, “Now I’ll be a wartime president and people will forget about Florida and how Antonin Scalia stole the election.” The Arabs had killed 3,000 Americans; we had to kill at least that many of them.

The issue was: Which Arabs? The obvious target was Saudi Arabia. Most of the terrorists were from that country, indeed products of the religious education that the country provided for its devout young men. But the Saudi royal family has excellent relations with the American oil companies. So very early in the discussions the neo-cons in the administration began to promote the idea of attacking Iraq. The road to Jerusalem, they argued, is through Baghdad. The administration’s neo-cons were (and are) very heavy thinkers. They write great memos. The days when the country was hesitating, some of them found a story about cooperation between al-Qaida and the Iraq government that seemed to legitimate an attack on Iraq. Some of their allies in the media, most notably the Wall Street Journal, insisted that this fable was true.

Much of the literature on the Longest War finds it hard to explain how the decision was made to attack Iraq. Poor Scott McClellan had it part right in his book. The administration, influenced by the memos of the neo-cons, decided that toppling Saddam Hussein would restructure the Middle East to American advantage. But that was a thesis too complicated to sell to the American people. Therefore, the desire for patriotic revenge was used in combination with fear of Iraq’s (as it turns out nonexistent) weapons to launch a great patriotic war. The Republican Party continues to rely on this lethal combination to win elections.

National security means kill Arabs. We get our revenge by protecting our children. We start a patriotic war in the name of self-protection and spread patriotic gore by killing Arabs. Neat!

It is not the first patriotic/revenge war on which the country has embarked. Remember the Maine. Remember the Alamo. Remember Fort Sumter. Remember Pearl Harbor. The psychology for whipping up revenge in the name of patriotism has always worked. World War II was a just war, but the mix of patriotism and revenge made it easy for the American military to firebomb out of existence 50 Japanese cities and to destroy a couple more with atom bombs.

Are the American people guilty of a war crime because of the Iraq war? Surely the leaders who cooked up the excuses for the war are. So, too, are the national media that allowed patriotism to silence them. So, too, are those ordinary Americans who almost insisted on some kind of patriotic gore. On this weekend in which we glorify — with good reason — our patriotism, we might examine our conscience about what phony patriotism has caused us to do. A third of the American population supported the war and has now changed its mind. It might be wise for such folk to prepare answers to the kinds of questions God might ask about phony patriotism.

Andrew Greeley is a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Chicago. for 52 years, a columnist for 40 years, a sociologist for 45 years, a novelist for 28 years, distinguished lecturer at the University of Arizona for 28 , research associate at National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for 46 years.

© Copyright 2008 Digital Chicago, Inc.

Editor’s Note: The Soviets called the heroic struggle the Red Army and the people of the USSR waged to defend their country against the Nazi war of aggression as ‘The Great Patriotic War’. They did not call the Second World War started by Hitler ‘The Great Patriotic War’.

TEHRAN – Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi warned the West on Thursday against launching a military attack against Iran or imposing economic sanctions over its contested nuclear programme.

“We not only are against military action on Iran but are also against economic sanctions,” Ebadi said in a speech in Tehran.

“They would spread destitution in Iran and we will do our best to prevent this disaster occurring,” the 2003 Nobel peace prize winner said, according to a transcript of her speech.

Her address marked the formation of a “National Peace Council” of around 70 dissident Iranian politicians, social activists and intellectuals.

The list of people who signed on as founding members of the council included figures like Ibrahim Yazdi, head of the outlawed but tolerated Freedom Movement and Hashem Aghajari, who was sentenced to death but pardoned for apostasy.

Also included is the film director Jafar Panahi, winner of the top prizes at the Berlin and Venice film festivals and Iran’s leading female film-maker Rakhshan Bani Etemad.

“We must have a society with a sustainable peace and we should avoid being in a situation where there is no war but also no peace,” Ebadi said.

Ebadi’s call and the formation of the council come at a time when US President George W. Bush has said that “military options remain on the table” in the five-year nuclear standoff with the West.

Iran has rejected Western charges it is seeking a nuclear weapon and has warned any military aggression against its soil will be met with the fiercest response.