23 novembre 2007 5 23 /11 /novembre /2007 05:35
Uruknet

Avez-vous oublié Falloujah ? Falloujah n'a pas oublié. Ville Martyre devenue Camp de Concentration High Tech du XXI ème Siècle
Avez-vous oublié Fallujah ? Fallujah n'a pas oublié
 
Traduction par planetenonviolence de l'émission de la chaîne Al Jazeera « Without Frontiers » (Sans Frontière) présenté par Ahmad Mansour diffusé dans la première semaine de novembre. Invitée : Scilla Elworthy Ph.D, fondatrice de l'organisation Peace Direct et a également fondé et préside le Oxford Research Group qui a étudié le cas de Falloujah. Le présentateur Ahmad Mansour donne quelques informations sur les destructions infligées à la ville de Falloujah lors de l'attaque par les forces américaines il y a trois ans avant de commencer la discussion.

Destructions
  • 36 000 maisons
  • 9000 boutiques
  • 65 mosquées
  • 60 écoles
  • La librairie historique
  • Tous les bureaux du gouvernement
  • Toute l'infrastructure de la ville
  • Toutes les stations d'électricité
  • La station d'épuration de l'eau
  • Le système de communication
 
capt-sge-jps77-261104204252-photo04-photo-default-380x245-jpg.jpg

En ce qui concerne le nombre de tués dans la bataille de Falloujah qui a duré d'avril 2004 à novembre 2004, il s'élève à plus de 6000 morts et au moins autant de blessés. Pour ce qui est des 300 000 habitants de la ville, ils ont été soit tués soit sont devenus sans abris des réfugiés désespérés, en quête d'un toit.



Certains disent que la bataille de Falloujah était la plus grande bataille menée par les forces armées américaines en Irak. Certains disent que c'était la plus grande bataille livrée depuis le Vietnam.

Mais ce que beaucoup de personnes ne savent pas c'est que depuis sa destruction en 2004 jusqu'à maintenant, Falloujah est restée assiégée par les forces armées US qui n'autorisent personne à rentrer sauf la population de la ville. Celle-ci peut sortir et rentrer depuis 3 ans en utilisant des cartes d'identité magnétiques, un scanner de la rétine, les empreintes digitales et des fouilles corporelles poussées. Falloujah est devenue la plus grande prison d'Irak. Comme Gaza, ces deux endroits sont devenus deux gigantesques camps de prisonniers, sous le regard silencieux et la complicité du monde entier.

searching-Fallujah-jpg-copie-1.jpg
Pourquoi la ville de Falloujah et ses habitants paient-ils ce prix exorbitant ? Pourquoi Falloux est-elle devenue un camp de 300 000 prisonniers irakiens ? Pourquoi le monde est-il si silencieux et même complice de cette punition collective infligée à 300 000 personnes, pour la plupart des femmes des enfants, des vieillards ?




cilla :

Les médias de par le monde ont complètement oublié Falloujah. Quels sont les articles nous racontant qu'environ 50 000 habitants ne sont pas revenus à Falloujah. Avant l'attaque il y avait entre 350 000 et 500 000 habitants. Maintenant pour entrer dans Falloujah et se déplacer à l'intérieur de la ville, vous devez avoir une carte d'identité spéciale et devez vous soumettre à un scanner de la rétine. Les voitures particulières ne sont plus autorisées à circuler dans les rues et les gens doivent utiliser les chevaux pour le transport. La situation est très mauvaise. J'ai obtenu des chiffres aujourd'hui de l'hôpital principal de Falloujah qui parle d'un nouveau phénomène parmi les enfants âgés d' 1 à 6 ans n'existant pas antérieurement. On a observé 114 cas de malformations de la moelle épinière, en plus de malformations du foie et les docteurs lient cela à l'utilisation d'armes illégales.

Le présentateur :

Effectivement, des armes illégales ont été utilisées dans Falloujah et les forces armées US ont interdit aux médias d'entrer à l'exception de leurs journalistes complices incorporées aux troupes. Même les organisations internationales n'ont pas été autorisées à voir ce qui s'est réellement passé. Il y a deux ans, la TV italienne la RAI a dévoilé par le biais d'informations qui lui ont été confiées par des soldats de l'armée US que des armes au phosphore blanc ont été utilisées ainsi que des armes chimiques interdites. Pensez vous que les conséquences de l'utilisation de telles armes vont apparaître physiquement sur les personnes à un moment ou un autre ?

Scilla :

Bon, je ne suis pas professionnelle de santé, mais je peux vous dire que des rapports sur l'utilisation de telles armes ont déjà commencé à émerger de l'intérieur de l'armée US... Incluse l'utilisation de l'Uranium Appauvri. (...)

Falloujah maintenant est comme une immense prison. Elle est entourée par les troupes US et a 5 points de contrôle US par lesquels les gens doivent passer à une heure spécifique pour soit entrer soit quitter Falloujah. Les gens à Falloujah sont complètement paralysés économiquement et socialement et n'ont aucune liberté de mouvement comme cela est normal dans une ville. Falloujah continue de payer un lourd tribut suite à l'attaque US de 2004. Les rues de Falloujah sont détruites ou bloquées par les forces armées US. Les marchés sont en ruine. Un grand nombre des habitants originels de la ville qui se sont enfuis sont revenus et vivent dans des circonstances terribles… Mais ils n'avaient pas vraiment le choix. Les rues sont bloquées par des blocs de béton que les forces armées US décorent actuellement en affirmant que ce sont des « œuvres artistiques ». Chaque quartier de Falloujah est séparé l'un de l'autre et c'est évident qu'il y a une certaine complicité entre les forces de sécurité et certaines personnes de Falloujah. (...)

Fadel :

Personne n'est autorisé dans Falloujah peut importe d'où il est sauf s'il a le badge donné par les Marines et après être passé par la base militaire US de Falloujah pour montrer ses papiers, passer un scanner de la rétine et un test d'empreinte digitale pour vérifier que cette personne n'est pas recherchée par les forces armées US… Beaucoup de Falloujiens n'ont pu rentrer parce que les forces US rendent le processus encore plus dur et mènent une guerre psychologique contre eux. Laissez moi illustrer : cela pourrait vous prendre une semaine pour obtenir le badge nécessaire pour entrer Falloujah… Puis en entrant, à un point de contrôle, les forces US peuvent vous demander pour une raison ou une autre d'aller à un autre point de contrôle pour entrer… vous faisant marcher et marcher toute la journée. Vous pourriez passer des jours à marcher juste pour essayer de re-entrer dans Falloujah. Les gens sont très irrités et éprouvent du ressentiment.

Wake Up - 19 novembre 2007

Source Uruknet
Lien Wake Up
Titre introduction traduction Mireille Delamarre pour www.planetenonviolence.org
Les emphase sont d'IN.
_______________________

En complément, lire :
Guerre totale, radiologique, chimique et électromagnétique contre l’Irak

http://bellaciao.org/fr/article.php3?id_article=20754

http://www.stopusa.be/scripts/texte.php?langue=1&id=24140


http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-14016853.html

 

 

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21 novembre 2007 3 21 /11 /novembre /2007 12:22
ImpeachCheney.org
is a Project of AfterDowningStreet.org




477326762-6797fbcd80-m.jpg54% of Americans want Cheney impeached
, and 64% of Vermonters.


H. Res. 333, Articles of Impeachment Against Dick Cheney (reintroduced on Nov. 6, 2007, as H Res 799), is sponsored by the following Members of Congress: Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Keith Ellison, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Albert Wynn, William Lacy Clay, Dennis Kucinich, Yvette Clarke, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Bob Filner, Sam Farr, Robert Brady, Tammy Baldwin, Donald Payne, Steve Cohen, Sheila Jackson Lee, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Ed Towns, Diane Watson, Danny Davis. Please thank them and encourage them to whip their colleagues.



You'll want to say it even more after watching our video with the evidence for impeachment right there.

phoneshirt-0.gifDick Cheney has been a malevolent force on the checks and balances of American government for over six years. He has subverted government processes to lead us into this tragedy in Iraq, and is now seeking to do the same with Iran. Two countries, mind you, he did business with while CEO of Halliburton.


We are at an important moment in American history.  For if we don't take action in light of the High Crimes and Misdemeanors committed by one Richard Cheney, we might as well throw the word away. Because there will never be a time when it is more justified.


Sign the petition.


14 representatives already support H. Res 333, the articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney.  Your signatures will be used to get other House members to to sign on.  We are working with a substantial and growing coalition led by Democrats.com and AfterDowningStreet.org.


Let's make this travesty a turning point in our history. Please join us in restoring democratic principles to our government by IMPEACHING DICK CHENEY.




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28 octobre 2007 7 28 /10 /octobre /2007 19:16

CouOctober 26, 2007

Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians
Home of the Brave?

By DAVE LINDORFF

0000-00-jpg-copie-1.gifSeveral years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

 

I also predicted that the result of this switch in tactics would lead to higher civilian casualties in those two countries.

 

We're now seeing those results.

 

In the latest reports from Iraq, we had 15 women and children slain, mostly in their homes by rockets and bullets fired from helicopter and fixed-wing gunships which were allegedly in pursuit of some supposed "al Qaeda" fighters, and as many as 17 civilians killed in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood when US forces called in air strikes after seeing a group of men they deemed to be hostile. Again those airstrikes ended up killing more civilians than alleged enemy fighters.

 

The casual use of the term "air strikes" belies the horror of what is happening. It's one thing to call in airstrikes during a battle out in the desert or the mountains, where the enemy is isolated and readily identified. It's another to call in the bombers and gunships in the heart of a densly-populated city. Such tactics are guaranteed to kill innocent people in large numbers.

 

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, where there is even less media coverage than in Iraq, the casual slaughter of innocents by American forces has become routine--so much so that even British officials are complaining. The US command simply "regrets" the "loss of innocent life," making it sound like the after-effects of a natural disaster, when it fact the killings are the predictable result of the cold calculus of mass murder by a technologically advanced military inflicted on an impoverished Third World country. It is unacceptable to argue, as the Pentagon does all the time, that the enemy "uses civilians as shields." Maybe they do, but that's the reality, and the military has to accept it, not ignore it. If a gunman is holding a baby, you can't just shoot the baby and blame the gunman.

 

In both countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, the slaughter of civilians by US forces has been so outrageous that even their puppet leaders have been compelled to speak up, demanding that the US stop being so aggressive and indiscriminate.

 

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The problem is, if the US stops using its gunships and its fighter-bombers to do its fighting, it will have to either quit and go home, or put more troops out on patrol, where they are vulnerable to attack. In fact, the Pentagon may not even have that option. Already, it has been reported that troops in Iraq have coined the term "search and avoid" for missions where they go out under orders, but then spend their time avoiding danger.

 

What would one expect? The rank-and-file troops know that the war is lost in both countries, and that the American public doesn't support what they are doing anyhow, so who's going to want to die for that? You'd have to be a real chump to let yourself be killed just to provide political cover for a politically challenged president and vice president--especially a president and vice-president who famously ducked their own duty during the Vietnam War.

 

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

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28 octobre 2007 7 28 /10 /octobre /2007 17:34
 
Mondialisation.ca

Le 26 octobre 2007
 
 
Lors de son séjour à Paris, une plainte pour torture et mauvais traitements à Guantanamo et à Abou Ghraib a été déposée contre l’ancien Secrétaire d’Etat à la Défense.

 

La Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme (FIDH), le Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), l’European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) et la Ligue française des droits de l’Homme (LDH) viennent de déposer une plainte auprès du Procureur du Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, contre l’ancien secrétaire d’Etat à la Défense, Donald Rumsfeld, pour avoir ordonné et autorisé la torture.

 

26102007.jpgRumsfeld se trouvait à Paris à l’occasion d’un débat organisé par la revue Foreign Policy.

 

“Le dépôt de cette plainte en France est une nouvelle indication que nous n’arrêterons que lorsque les autorités américaines impliquées dans le programme de torture seront traduites en justice. Donald Rumsfeld doit comprendre qu’il n’a nulle part où se cacher. Un tortionnaire est un ennemi de l’humanité”, a déclaré Michael Ratner, président du CCR.

 

“La France se trouve dans l’obligation d’enquêter et de poursuivre Rumsfeld pour sa responsabilité dans les crimes de torture commis à Guantanamo et en Irak. La France n’a d’autre choix que d’ouvrir une enquête lorsqu’une personne présumée avoir commis des crimes de torture se trouve sur son territoire. J’espère que la lutte contre l’impunité ne sera pas sacrifiée au nom de la raison d’Etat. Nous appelons la France à refuser de se transformer en paradis pour criminels”, a déclaré Souhayr Belhassen, présidente de la FIDH.


 

“Nous luttons contre l’impunité et demandons l’ouverture d’une enquête et des poursuites pénales dans tous les pays compétents pour connaître des crimes de torture dénoncés” a déclaré le Secrétaire général de l’ECCHR Wolfgang Kaleck.

 

« L’impunité d’un gouvernant criminel est toujours intolérable. Parce que les Etats-Unis sont l’hyper-puissance de ce début de siècle et surtout parce qu’ils sont une démocratie, l’impunité de Donald Rumsfeld est plus insupportable encore que celle d’un Hissène Habré ou d’un Radovan Karadzic », a déclaré Jean-Pierre Dubois, président de la Ligue française des droits de l’Homme.

 

La présente plainte se fonde sur la défaillance des autorités judiciaires américaines et irakiennes pour connaître des crimes dénoncés à l’encontre de Donald Rumsfled et d’autres hauts responsables américains devant un tribunal indépendant et ce, malgré une documentation très détaillée et l’existence de mémorandums engageant directement leur responsabilité dans les crimes de torture. Les Etats-Unis ayant refusé de ratifier le Statut de la Cour pénale internationale, il ressort des obligations des Etats tels que la France de connaître de ces cas.

 

La plainte se base sur la Convention contre la torture de 1984, ratifiée par les Etats-Unis et par la France et utilisée à de nombreuses reprises par le passé en France pour connaître de crimes de torture commis à l’étranger.

 

La France a par conséquent une compétence établie pour connaître de la responsabilité pénale individuelle pour crimes de torture s’ils sont présents sur le territoire. [1]

 

C’est la première fois qu’une plainte est déposée, alors que Rumsfeld est présent dans le pays ce qui renforce l’obligation de la France en vertu du droit international d’enquêter et de poursuivre.

 

La présence de Rumsfeld sur le territoire français donne compétence aux tribunaux français pour le poursuivre en ce qu’il a ordonné et autorisé la torture et autres traitements inhumains et dégradants sur des détenus de Guantanamo, d’Abu Ghraib et d’ailleurs.

 

De plus, ayant démissionné de son poste de Secrétaire américain à la défense il y a de ça un an, Rumsfeld ne saurait faire valoir son immunité en tant qu’ancien Secrétaire d’Etat ou fonctionnaire du gouvernement. En outre le droit international ne reconnaît aucune immunité quel que soit le rang officiel dans les cas de crimes internationaux, y compris de crimes de torture.

 

Janis Karpinski, ancien Brigadier Général de l’armée américaine en charge du Centre de détention d’Abu Ghraib ainsi que d’autres prisons sous autorité américaine en Irak, a soumis son témoignage écrit au Procureur de Paris en soutien à la mise en cause de la responsabilité de Rumsfeld dans les crimes perpétrés contre des détenus.

 


- Contexte :

 

Il s’agit de la cinquième plainte déposée contre Rumsfeld pour son implication dans des actes de torture dans le contexte du programme de torture élaboré après le 11 septembre 2001 par l’administration Bush.

 

Deux plaintes pénales avaient été déposées en Allemagne en application du principe de compétence universelle, permettant à l’Allemagne de poursuivre les responsables de crimes internationaux graves, indépendamment du lieu de la commission des crimes et de la nationalité des responsables ou des victimes. Une plainte avait été introduite en automne 2004 par le CCR, la FIDH et l’avocat berlinois Wolfgang Kaleck ; cette affaire a été définitivement rejetée en février 2005, suite à des pressions officielles venant des Etats-Unis, en particulier du Pentagone.

 

La deuxième plainte avait été déposée en automne 2006 par les mêmes groupes, ainsi que des dizaines d’organisations nationales et internationales des droits de l’Homme, des Prix Nobel et l’ancien Rapporteur spécial des Nations unies sur la torture. La plainte de 2006 était introduite au nom de 12 citoyens irakiens qui avaient été détenus et torturés à la prison d’Abu Ghraib en Irak et un citoyen d’Arabie saoudite toujours en détention à Guantanamo. Cette plainte a été rejetée en avril 2007, décision qui fera l’objet d’un appel la semaine prochaine.

 

Deux autres plaintes contre Rumsfeld ont été introduites en Argentine en 2005 et en Suède en 2007.

Note d'IN :  la comparaison entre les crimes imputés  à Rumsfeld  et ceux des personnages cité ne nous paraît pas adéquate.
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24 octobre 2007 3 24 /10 /octobre /2007 14:46

"There is no such thing as a little bit of torture."

Alfred W. McCoy, author "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror"


The familiar and disturbing pictures of torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison raise many troubling questions: How did torture become an accepted practice at Abu Ghraib? Did U.S. government policies make it possible? How much damage has the aftermath of Abu Ghraib had on America's credibility as a defender of freedom and human rights around the world?


Acclaimed filmmaker Rory Kennedy (HBO's "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable") looks beyond the headlines to investigate the psychological and political context in which torture occurred when the powerful documentary GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB.


"How could ordinary American soldiers come to engage in such monstrous acts?" Kennedy asks. "What policies were put into place that allowed this behavior to flourish while protections granted to prisoners under the Geneva Conventions were ignored?"





"These photographs from Abu Ghraib have come to define the United States," says Scott Horton, chairman, Committee on International Law, NYC Bar Association. "The U.S., which was viewed as certainly one of the principal advocates of human rights and...the dignity of human beings in the world, suddenly is viewed as a principle expositor of torture."


For the first time, GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB features both the voices of Iraqi victims (interviewed in Turkey after arduous attempts to meet with them) and guards directly involved in torture at the prison. Conducted by Kennedy, these remarkably candid, in-depth interviews shed light on the abuses in an unprecedented manner.


Through these interviews, the film traces the events and the political and legal precedents that led to the scandal, beginning with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.


While the White House and Pentagon claimed that the situation at Abu Ghraib was "a kind of animal house on the night shift," other on-site participants and observers maintain that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were part of a general pattern of a "gloves off" interrogation policy that had been put in place after 9/11.


GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB strongly suggests that, far from being an unauthorized, isolated event by rank-and-file soldiers acting on their own initiative, the physical and psychological torture employed at the prison was an inevitable outgrowth of military and government policies that were implemented in a climate of fear and chaos, inadequate training and insufficient resources.

The interviews with soldiers who took part in and observed the torture at Abu Ghraib show them to be intelligent and articulate young men and women, not gun-happy, sadistic torturers - challenging what viewers may think they know about what took place at the prison. For the most part, soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib were not trained as prison guards, yet as few as 300 of them were put in charge of up to 6,000 prisoners, who were held in squalid and dangerous conditions.


"If there were no photographs, there would be no Abu Ghraib," said Javal Davis, an MP stationed at Abu Ghraib, who was later court-martialed.


After numerous investigations, 11 low-ranking MPs and Military Intelligence corpsmen were court-martialed. Only one high-ranking officer has been penalized to date: Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was demoted to colonel and has since retired from the military. At the same time, other high-ranking officials associated with the scandal have been promoted and the chain of command has not been subject to an independent investigation.


Ultimately, the film raises serious questions about what happened, why it happened and whether it was an isolated incident, as the government continues to maintain. Using footage from famous obedience experiments performed at Yale by eminent social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, the film suggests that under orders most people are capable of perpetrating inhumane and unjust acts against others.


As one of the Abu Ghraib MPs says in the film, "That place turned me into a monster." Another remarks, "It's easy to sit back in America or in different countries and say, 'Oh, I would have never done that,' but, until you've been there, let's be realistic: You don't know what you would have done."


The feature-length special was an official selection in the American Documentary Competition at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.


Rory Kennedy, co-founder and co-president of Moxie Firecracker Films, is one of the nation's most prolific independent documentary filmmakers, focusing on issues such as poverty, domestic abuse, human rights and AIDS. Kennedy's work has been featured on numerous broadcast and cable outlets, including HBO, A&E, MTV, Lifetime and PBS. She has directed and produced more than 20 films, including the HBO specials "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," which examines the potential for a nuclear disaster in New York City's backyard; "Pandemic: Facing AIDS," a five-part series that follows the lives of people living with AIDS throughout the world (nominated for two primetime Emmy® Awards); "American Hollow," which documents an Appalachian family caught between tradition and the modern world (nominated for a Non-Fiction Primetime Emmy® Award and Independent Spirit Award); and "A Boy's Life," about the troubling forces shaping the life of a young child in impoverished Mississippi. She executive produced "Street Fight," which was nominated for an Academy Award® for documentary feature in 2006.


THE GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB is a Moxie Firecracker Films production of an HBO Documentary Film; directed and produced by Rory Kennedy; produced by Liz Garbus; written and produced by Jack Youngelson; director of photography, Tom Hurwitz; editor, Sari Gilman; original music, Miriam Cutler. For the Fledgling Fund: executive producer, Diana Barrett. 

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/ghostsofabughraib/synopsis.html

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-13305748.html
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16 octobre 2007 2 16 /10 /octobre /2007 19:15

CounterPunch

 

868-jpg.jpg
Something is Rotten in Iraq
and the Pentagon

 

By Dave Lindorff


 


10/15/07 "
Counterpunch" -- -- Isn't it odd that in the air attack that the US military claims killed 19 high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and 15 civilians, all the slain Al Qaeda members were men and all the men were Al Qaeda, while all the civilians were women (6) and children (9)?

 

Think about this a minute.

 

This means that no women were Al Qaeda--and yet we know that women also fight, and also blow themselves up as suicide bombers. Yet these women were all civilians. The children, of course, were children.

 

And we're to believe that there were no men who were innocent bystanders? All those adult males who were killed were "bad guys."

 

Yet there were innocent bystanders: the women and the children. Somehow, any innocent bystanding men managed to duck out of the way, or the bullets and bomb fragments (and I'm sure they were fragmentation bombs that were used, as well as a withering spray of machine-gun fire) that hit all those poor women and kids, just somehow (magically?) missed the men.

 

Pretty amazing huh?

 

Except that it's an absurd claim that should insult our intelligence.

 

It's not like the Pentagon has a list of all the enemy fighters, after all. What actually happens is the military has people come in after an action, and they find all these dead people. They look at the guys and have to decide, are they fighters or are they civilians? If the guy's got a gun in his hand, or nearby, they might assume he's a fighter, but is that a good test in a country where every guy has an AK47? And if he doesn't have a gun? Do you honestly think all 19 of those dead guys had a gun with him? I doubt it. These were people fleeing an attack by US troops and planes. They were--whether fighters or ordinary citizens--fleeing for their lives in a surprise attack. If they didn't have a gun with them at the time, they wouldn't have stopped to get one.

 

And since they don't let reporters travel independently to these battle sites and check what happened, who knows if they even bother looking for evidence. (And this doesn't even get to the point that they call every kill a "terrorist" or member of Al Qaeda, when odds are that if they are combatants they are neither, but rather some other insurgent group or other just fighting to drive the US out.)

 

It's clear to me that what we're getting is a big lie. Just as in Vietnam the troops would just count the bodies and turn in a report saying that was how many VC were killed, in Iraq (and Afghanistan), they count the men and call them the enemy.

 

Nobody calls them on this. Certainly nobody in what used to be called the free press.

 

The numbers are simply accepted as fact and dutifully reported to us.

 

The truth: we are conducting a slaughter of innocents in Iraq that is as bad as anything the Nazis did in their Eastern Front campaign.

 

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

 

He can be reached at: dlindorff@mindspring.com

 
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16 octobre 2007 2 16 /10 /octobre /2007 17:55

October 16, 2007

 
0000-00-jpg.gifBlackwater Security, Bush's Private Waffen SS
 
 

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

 

Why has not the Turkish parliament given tit for tat and passed a resolution condemning the Iraqi Genocide?

 

As a result of Bush's invasion of Iraq, more than one million Iraqis have died, and several millions are displaced persons. The Iraqi death toll and the millions of uprooted Iraqis match the Armenian deaths and deportations. If one is a genocide, so is the other.

 

It is true that most of the Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing one another. But it was Bush's destruction of the secular Iraqi state that unleashed the sectarian strife.

 

Moreover, American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents. The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as "informants" and by Sunnis setting up Shi'ites and Shi'ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes.

 

Not to be outdone, Bush's private Waffen SS known as Blackwater Security has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the "unlawful combatant" designation?

 

One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened 90 years ago.

 

People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East.

 

Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

 

The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

 

Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

 

Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush's wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the "rapture evangelicals" and the "Christian Zionists."

 

I remember when Christianity was about saving one's soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a "warlike religion."

 

Americans are so full of themselves that they are blind to their extraordinary hypocrisy.

 

The US government has broken every agreement with Russia by withdrawing from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, pushing NATO to Russia's borders, conniving to place missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, and buying governments in former Soviet republics and installing US military bases therein.

 

When Russian President Putin finally has enough and protests, the US Secretary of State blames Putin for being difficult and restarting the cold war.

 

Few Americans realize it, but they take the cake.

 

International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else. The rest of the world knows that the wars are about US and Israeli hegemony and that the US and Israel are prepared to engage in whatever acts of terror are necessary to achieve hegemony.

 

That is the bare fact.

 

When the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US empire will come to an abrupt end. Sooner or later the rest of the world will realize this and, in an act of self-protection, dethrone the dollar.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10162007.html
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15 octobre 2007 1 15 /10 /octobre /2007 17:10


Tyre, Lebanon - The explosion ripped through the tiny garden in rural south Lebanon, hurling Naemah Ghazi to the ground. The shrapnel from the bomb sliced through her legs, and she rapidly lost consciousness. “There was a lot of blood,” her mother Khadija recalls. “All her body was bleeding.”


Naemah, 48, lived quietly with her mother in the border town Blida since her father passed away nearly 30 years ago. She was still a teenager when she gave up a future of marriage and kids to take care of her mother full time.



On the morning of Sep. 11, Naemah was out picking vegetables for the evening meal when the bomb — an Israeli-made M85 cluster munition with a ’self-destruct’ mechanism, buried a mere ten metres from her back door — exploded under her feet.

Naemah was rushed to Sidon’s Labib Medical Centre two hours drive away. The doctors amputated her right leg just below the knee, but saved the other within a construct of metal rods.

A month later, Naemah is still in hospital; small and frail on her white metal bed. She is on painkillers and antibiotics, and has become depressed, says hospital supervisor, Shadi Hanouni. The wounds on her left leg are infected, and nurses change her dressings every five hours.

Blida is a small and poor town. Most residents rely on tobacco and olive harvests, and money sent by relatives abroad to keep financially afloat. Occupied until 2000 by Israel and its local proxy army, the SLA, it was one of the first targets for cluster munition strikes last summer.

Cluster bombs in Blida have injured town leader Suleiman Majdi, and Naemah’s six-year-old nephew Abbas Yousef Abbas, along with three other children he was playing with. All have survived, but barely — Majdi and Abbas bear deep scars across their stomachs and limbs.

Lebanon has a devastating cluster bomb problem. Hit hard during the final days of last summer’s conflict with Israel, hundreds of thousands of unexploded munitions are strewn throughout the south’s rural towns and fertile fields and valleys. Although there have been 255 civilian and de-mining casualties to date, official requests for Israel’s cluster bomb strike data have gone unanswered.

“The reality of the situation is we simply don’t know how many there are, and we will never know until the Israelis tell us how many they fired,” says Chris Clark, the United Nations programme manager for the Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC), the official body tasked with coordinating munitions clearance with the Lebanese Army in the south.

So far the clearance teams working under the MACC have destroyed over 131,000 cluster bombs. While U.S. munitions manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s are the majority found and destroyed, Israeli M85 cluster munition strikes have been discovered mostly in fields and towns like Blida along the Blue Line, the UN demarcated border between Israel and Lebanon.

Stockpiled by the U.S., Britain and Germany among others, the M85 cluster bomb is shaped like a miniature tin can with a white ribbon on top that spins to load the bomb once it’s airborne. While older versions have a single fuse, the current model is equipped with a second; a ’safety’ fuse that detonates automatically if the initial one fails.

“For some years there has been a humanitarian concern about the post-conflict problems caused by the use of cluster bombs — it goes back to Kosovo and the use of them there,” says Clark. “In an attempt to mitigate that, the Israelis took the basic nucleus of the (U.S.-made) M77 and M42 design, smartened it up a bit and added a self-destruct mechanism.”

Its manufacturers cite the contemporary M85’s failure rate at less than one percent — results that countries like Britain hold up for justifying their continued use. However, independent studies since conducted in ‘real’ — as opposed to laboratory — conditions have determined the figure to be more like 5 to 10 percent.

Clark seconds this finding. “What we have established here (in Lebanon) is that the average failure rate is at least 6 percent. So for the users of this system to continue to use them on a basis that they have a negligible failure rate is clearly foolish.”

The push to ban cluster munitions worldwide by 2008 was kicked off in Oslo earlier this year. Spearheaded by the Britain-based Cluster Munition Coalition representing hundreds of civil society groups, the conferences have successfully recruited 80 countries — including producers, users and stockpilers — to sign on so far.

But top weapons manufacturers and exporters — the U.S., China and Russia — are staying away, and Britain, although a participant, is fighting hard for the exclusion of the M85 from the ban. “They’ve been arguing this for several months now,” says Thomas Nash, coordinator for the CMC. “Although it is proven they do not work, and are a huge danger to the civilian population.”

With the next meeting due this December in Vienna, tobacco and olive harvesters in Blida, and throughout the south of Lebanon, continue to harvest their crops in fear. “Blida was the place where the first civilians were injured,” says Nash when told about Naemah. “The symmetry post-conflict is just tragic.”

© 2007 Inter Press Service


Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/15/4541/

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