Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category
September 17, 2009
Foreigners must frequently look at the United States and shake their heads, wondering how such a great nation could have sunk so low due to a disproportionate and essentially misguided response to a terrorist attack eight years ago. The attackers who carried out 9/11 succeeded through a lot of luck and a mixture of complacency and incompetence on the part of America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Terrorism did not threaten our form of government or our way of life then and does not do so now. An assessment by France’s highly regarded Paris Institute of Political Studies last week suggested that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not.
Continues >>
Tags:Afghan war, Congressman Howard L. Berman, Iraq, McChrystal’s comment, no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Philip Giraldi, Ros-Lehtinen, terrorism, United States, war
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September 16, 2009
Zeidi Reports Torture in Prison
Just over six months after the Iraqi government sentenced journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi to a three-year prison term the reporter turned international celebrity was released from an Iraqi prison today, and promptly fled the nation.
Zeidi, a relatively anonymous reporter who rose to fame in December when he pelted outgoing President George W. Bush with shoes, had his sentence eventually reduced to a single year, and then was released three months early on the basis of his failing health.
The journalist delivered a brief statement before reporters regarding his mistreatment in Iraqi custody, then boarded a private flight to Syria, his first stop on the way to Greece where he will seek treatment for torture.
Though his brother Uday had previously reported that Zeidi had been subjected to torture in government custody, including being forced to write an “apology” letter publicly delivered by Prime Minister Maliki which claimed there was a secret “mastermind” behind the plot, this was the first time Muntadar himself had been heard on the matter.
Zeidi, who is missing a tooth since his arrest in December, says he was whipped and electrocuted, and even subjected to waterboarding by Iraqi security forces in the wake of his arrest. The reporter now says he fears for his safety and is concerned that either Iraqi government forces or US intelligence services will attempt to have him “liquidated.”
Tags:Iraq, mistreatment in jail, Muntadar al-Zeidi, shoes at Gerge W Bush, torture
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September 15, 2009
By Mutadhar al-Zaidi, Counterpunch, Sep 15, 2009
Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush gave this speech on his recent release.
In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.
Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.
Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.
But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland’s) sons under its boots, whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few years, more than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and the country is now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because of displacement inside and outside the country.
Continued >>
Tags:dead and homless in Iraq, Iraq, massacres, Mutadhar al-Zaidi, occupation and oppression, occupation and sectarian conflicts, occupation of Iraq, President George W. Bush, shoes at Bush, torture
Posted in Human rights, Iraq, torture, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war, war crimes | Leave a Comment »
September 3, 2009
Replacement ‘Not Ready to Take Over’ for Banned Group
The US State Department has announced today that it has asked Blackwater, which was banned by the Iraqi government earlier this year, to continue its operations in Iraq because the contractors for its replacement Dyncorp weren’t ready to take over.
Blackwater contractors were implicated in charges of “improper conduct” related to their 2007 massacre of 17 civilians in Baghdad, leading to considerable outrage over their continued presence by the Iraqi government, which was finally able to ban them outright in January.
Despite the ban, the group has been operating without a license in Iraq on behalf of the State Department since then, though the Iraqi government has been impatient with the delay, it has ruled out a long term presence amid reports that the State Department had made arrangements for a replacement.
But now that replacement says that equipment shortages are keeping it from being able to do the job, leaving the infamous group, which has since changed its name to Xe in an attempt to rebrand itself as something other than a band of brutal mercenaries who play fast and loose with the rules of engagement, filling the role for an unknown period of time. It seems even a formal ban couldn’t get rid of the organization.
Tags:Blackwater, brutal mercenaries, contractors, Iraqi government, US State Department
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Iraq, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »
September 3, 2009
By Missy Comley Beattie
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Online Journal, Sep 3, 2009,
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My sister, Laura Comley, and I joined Cindy Sheehan on Martha’s Vineyard last week to participate in events to breathe life into the antiwar movement. Cindy’s project is a mission of hope which she calls International People’s Declaration of Peace. She spent a portion of her time on the island drafting her message to be circulated around the world.
Meanwhile, Gen. Stanley McCrystal has acknowledged failure in Afghanistan and is calling for a new strategy. Those of us who subscribe to the Gandhi principle that “There is no path to peace. Peace is the path,” believe that the only strategy for war-torn Afghanistan is complete withdrawal of troops. Same for Iraq, a humanitarian and environmental disaster. No more drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These unmanned instruments of torture drop missiles that have killed entire wedding parties instead of the intended “target.”
Continues >>
Tags:Afghanistan, Americans, Barack Obama, Cindy Sheehan project, drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iraq, mercenary army, Missy Comley Beattie, peace, support for Zionism
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, imperialism, Iraq, Palestine, Peace Movement, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
September 2, 2009
Immanuel Wallerstein, Agence Global, September 2, 2009
There is a firestorm ahead in the Middle East for which neither the U.S. government nor the U.S. public is prepared. They seem scarcely aware how close it is on the horizon or how ferocious it will be. The U.S. government (and therefore almost inevitably the U.S. public) is deluding itself massively about its capacity to handle the situation in terms of its stated objectives. The storm will go from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Israel/Palestine, and in the classic expression “it will spread like wildfire.”
Continues >>
Tags:Afghanistan, Immanuel Wallerstein, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, NATO forces in Afghan war, Pakistan, PM Nouri al-Maliki, SOFA agreement, Taliban, United States
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, imperialism, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, President Barack Obama, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
August 28, 2009
The US public largely opposes America’s foreign wars and economic meddling. They need a voice in US foreign policy
Mark Weisbrot | The Guradian/UK, Aug 27, 2009
Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem, but rather the experts.
The latest polling data is making this clear once again, as a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan, but the Obama administration is escalating the war, and his military commanders may ask for even more troops than the increase to 68,000 that the adminstration is planning by the end of this year.
Continues >>
Tags:foreign occupations, foreign wars, merican Civil Liberties Union, military contractors, more troops, opposition to Afghan war, prisoners abuse byCIA, U.S. wars, US foreign policy, US public, Walter Russell Mead
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Human rights, Iraq, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war, warmongers | Leave a Comment »
August 22, 2009
by James Petras, Dissident Voice, August 21st, 2009
The US seven-year war and occupation of Iraq is driven by several major political forces and informed by a variety of imperial interests. However these interests do not in themselves explain the depth and scope of the sustained, massive and continuing destruction of an entire society and its reduction to a permanent state of war. The range of political forces contributing to the making of the war and the subsequent US occupation include the following (in order of importance).
Continues >>
Tags:1.3 million Iraqi civilians killed, academics slaughtered, assassinations, destruction of an entire society, escalting Af-Pak wars, Iraq, Iraqi civilization, Iraqi intellectuals destroyed, Kellogg-Brown and Root, Obama, occupation of Iraq, role of Israeli advisers, Sabra and Shatila massacres, universities, US war in Iraq, Zionist Power Configuration, Zionists
Posted in crime, imperialism, Iraq, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war, war crimes, War Criminals | 3 Comments »
August 18, 2009
By Sherwood Ross | Consortiumnews.com, Aug 17, 2009
Editor’s Note: Except for some die-hard neocons, it’s widely recognized that the Iraq War has been a debacle for the United States – paid for in unnecessary loss of Iraqi and American lives, international opprobrium, and the diversion of an astronomical sum of money from domestic priorities to warfare.
However, some military contractors have done quite nicely, thanks; so too have many oil companies, even as the ancillary costs of the $1 trillion-plus war continue to ripple through a devastated U.S. economy, as writer Sherwood Ross describes in this guest essay:
“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. … I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.”
Quite a few oil company CEO’s and “defense” industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea why that war is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm’s profits 231 percent: “It’s the Gold Rush.”
Continues >>
Tags:Blackwater, costs of war in Iraq, defense contractors, Halliburton/KBR, Halliburton’s Army, Iraq war, oil, Sherwood Ross, United States, warplanes
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August 18, 2009
Jon Letman | Inter Press Service, Aug 18, 2009
KAUAI, Hawaii, 17 Aug (IPS) – Six months into Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. public’s display of antiwar sentiment has faded to barely a whisper.
Despite Obama’s vow to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq before September 2011, he plans to leave up to 50,000 troops in “training and advisory” roles. Meanwhile, nearly 130,000 troops remain in that country and more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers occupy Afghanistan, with up to an additional 18,000 approved for deployment this year.
So where is the resistance?
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Tags:"The Will to Resist", Barack Obama, Dahr Jamail, Iraq, killing, Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome, U.S. troops, United States, US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
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Peace and Justice Post 
War Without End
September 17, 2009Foreigners must frequently look at the United States and shake their heads, wondering how such a great nation could have sunk so low due to a disproportionate and essentially misguided response to a terrorist attack eight years ago. The attackers who carried out 9/11 succeeded through a lot of luck and a mixture of complacency and incompetence on the part of America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Terrorism did not threaten our form of government or our way of life then and does not do so now. An assessment by France’s highly regarded Paris Institute of Political Studies last week suggested that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not.
Continues >>
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Tags:Afghan war, Congressman Howard L. Berman, Iraq, McChrystal’s comment, no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Philip Giraldi, Ros-Lehtinen, terrorism, United States, war
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