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*IRAQ: latest news and developments

No public enquiry into FMD and none into WMD - needless slaughter has to be covered up at all costs. So they can carry on with LMD - Letting Ministers Deceive.
 
It should also be noted that the purpose of attacking Iraq cannot have been liberal intervention to depose Saddam Hussein. The pretext was always WMD as was stated just before the war Tuesday, 18 March, 2003, 21:02 GMT.

The United States says American forces will enter Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction even if President Saddam Hussein complies with an ultimatum to leave.

President George W Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer said that allied troops would go into the country "no matter what", but warned the Iraqi leader that if he did not leave it would be his "final mistake". ..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2862273.stm

One might also note the timing follows an Arab proposal (5 March) suggesting Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Iraqi leadership leave their country within 14 days in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Iraq would then be put under the control of the United Nations and the Arab League.

Not a latest development but I want people to remember this since its so easy to have a short memory and thus be manipulated by news agenda propaganda which is currently stressing the "Saddam was a bad man - it was a war to get rid of a bad man" angle.
 
[Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair

Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.]

http://www.sundayherald.com/34491

[Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs'

Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987.
---

During his whistle stop tour of the Gulf, Europe and Russia, Blair repeatedly briefed journalists that the trailers were germ production labs which proved that Iraq had WMD.]

http://warmwell.com/2jun9trucks.html
 
Iraqis Protest over Oil Jobs for Asians

Around 500 Iraqis demonstrated Monday in the southern capital of Basra against the employment of Asian oil workers by the US company Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), an AFP correspondent reported. "No to foreign workers at the expense of our workers," read one banner outside the headquarters of British coalition forces in the city
http://www.riyadhdaily.com.sa/cgi-b...ay+-+10+June+2003&section=Front+Page&id=33867
 
Former Counsel to the President of the United States John Dean: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?
To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.
Click to expand...
source: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html
 
Unfortunately, Nixon's misuse of public agencies was for his own or his party's benefit. The Bush administration can claim that if they falsified their justification for war (not that they would admit that) it was motivated by concern for the good of the state. Much has been made of this as a sort of carpet-bagger enterprise but it's hard to make the case that this was the primary impulse. It's part of the background but not really what they were up to.
 
There is a tremendous amount of explosive content in the charge of lying to and misleading the populations over WMDs on both sides of the atlantic WR[2] democracy is not yet completely dead. Because of this I think the USG will be compelled to plant fake evidence in order to support their crumbling position and bolster their deminishing credibility, that is if they haven't already done so. This Administration's motto is lie, lie and lie some more, so watch out for an amalgam involving captured Iraqi military/intelligence officers pointing to a "secret" location where WMDs are hidden, or some similar equaly cynical fabrication!
 
LaRouche Says Charges Against Cheney Constitute Grounds For Impeachment
In a statement released through his national spokeswoman, Debra Hanania-Freeman, LaRouche was quoted as saying,

"Let there be no mistake about it. The nature of these charges constitute hard grounds for impeachment. The question has to be taken head on. It is time for Dick Cheney to come clean. I want to know exactly what Dick Cheney knew and when he knew it. The charges are grave and specific and leave no wiggle room, Determining who knew what and when is, at this time, an urgent matter of national security."

Freeman, citing LaRouche's own track record in challenging the avalanche of disinformation and "spun" intelligence products thrown up by the Straussian neo-conservative network inside the Bush Administration, to launch the recent war against Iraq, said that LaRouche was uniquely positioned to hold not only the Administration itself, but also the other Democratic Presidential candidates accountable for their uncritical endorsement of what amounts to an ongoing fraud against the Congress and the American people.

She said that the chronology of events documented in the Waxman letter, indicates that Vice President Cheney was among the first Administration officials to be informed that the Niger documents were forgeries, and that he nevertheless continued to assert the Niger-Iraq uranium story as fact._ "This kind of witting,repeated fraud against the Congress and the people of the United States represents a crime of the highest order. And, as such, I can tell you that Mr. LaRouche will see to it that a determination is made and made quickly, and that he will not back off until appropriate and severe action against those perpetrating this fraud is taken."
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source: http://larouchein2004.net/pages/pressreleases/2003/030607cheney.htm
 
Breakdown of Iraqi Civilian Death Count
Breakdown of Associated Press' Count of Iraqi Civilian Deaths

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030610_1096.html

When the explosion came, Mohammed Abed fought his way against a hot wind into a marketplace in ruins. Storefronts were twisted, bodies were strewn across the street and the injured wailed for help.

http://www.620ktar.com/news/article.aspx?article_id=157562&cc=012345


I wonder what the true figure is - those that died but were never recorded anywhere - and what is the number of those seriously injured.
 
[Downing Street faces fresh pressure this week to explain why an intelligence report saying there was no proof Saddam Hussein posed a growing threat to the West was suppressed.
MPs said yesterday the Prime Minister and Alastair Campbell should be forced to appear before a parliamentary committee to explain why the intelligence dossier produced in March last year was shelved. The six-page report, from the Joint Intelligence Committee staff, said there was no evidence Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991.
It was written in the same month Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications and strategy chief, told journalists in America the Government would produce evidence within two weeks proving Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. The report was delayed, but six months later Tony Blair said Saddam was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons.]
http://warmwell.com/2jun9wmd.html



Top 11 reasons Tony Blair cribbed his last Iraqi threat assessment from online journals (including typos).

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/top11/plagiarized_intelligence.htm
 
would it be nearly time to launch a successor thread about the threats to iran, to track the path to "regime change" there?

not being pessimistic, of course.
 
I think that would be a good idea PM or else one for monitoring developments in the ME in general. It's worth remembering also that the Iraq story is by no means exhausted. Defeated conventionally in an asymetric turkey shoot the Iraqi people are compelled to develop new forms of struggle aginst the neo-colonialist forces of occupation.
 
Yes, excellent idea.

There seem to be some excellent newfinders on this site. They are always posting news items that I would never see otherwise.

This is one of my favourite threads!!!

<edited to say...Thanks for all your hard work :) >
 
''Mobile Lies''

The UK sold the Iraqi army an Artillery Meteorological System.
During CNN's Late Edition with Colin Powell, reported by the Toronto Star on June 9, 2003, Powell claimed that "the two alleged mobile biological weapons labs, which are being studied by allied inspectors now in Iraq, are the same ones he described to the world last Feb. 5 at a U.N. presentation which was the result of four days and four nights of meetings with the CIA." "I stand behind that presentation," he said.

He further asserted, "I'll give you the killer argument why these vans were exactly what I said they were. I can assure you that if those biological vans were not ... what I said they were on the 5th of February, on the 6th of February Iraq would have hauled those vans out, put them in front of a press conference, given them to U.N. inspectors to try to drive a stake through the heart of my presentation."

Only if the Iraqis knew which vans he was talking about.

In an article published on the same day as Powell's interview, Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett reported in the Observer that there is mounting indications that these vans were for "balloons, not germs."

The Iraqis concur.

According to the article, "Senior Iraqi officials of the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that the trailers were used to produce hydrogen chemically for artillery weather balloons. Artillery balloons are essentially balloons that are sent up into the atmosphere and relay information on wind direction and speed, allowing more accurate artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile. The Observer has discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. In 1987, Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an Artillery Meteorological System or Amets for short."
Click to expand...
source: http://yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1411&mode=thread&order=0
 
Newspaper trades charges with coalition over alleged rape of two Iraqi girls
BAGHDAD, June 9 (AFP) - An Iraqi newspaper run by Sunni Muslims traded charges Monday with the US-led occupation authority over the alleged rape of two Iraqi girls by US soldiers, a claim denied by the coalition.

According to the daily As-Saah, the girls, aged 14 and 15, were talking to American soldiers in Suwaira, 180 kilometers (115 miles) south of Baghdad, on Friday when the soldiers suggested theyaccompany them to their camp to take pictures but then collectively raped the pair.

This allegation is "absolutely false," the US Central Command said in a statement.

"We take any claim of this nature extremely seriously, have looked into the allegations and found nothing whatsoever to substantiate the accusations -- including checking local hospital records," it said.

As-Saah said one of the girls died after she was raped by 18 soldiers while the other was killed by her family. Editor Naama Abderrazzak told AFP two of the daily's reporters had talked to residents of the area and seen the bodies of the two girls.
Click to expand...
source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3739.htm
 
Originally posted by bigfish
As-Saah said one of the girls died after she was raped by 18 soldiers while the other was killed by her family.
Click to expand...
Fucking Hell!!

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place! :eek:
 
Pinter blasts 'Nazi America' and 'deluded idiot' Blair
Angelique Chrisafis and Imogen Tilden
Wednesday June 11, 2003
The Guardian

The playwright Harold Pinter last night likened George W Bush's administration to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, saying the US was charging towards world domination while the American public and Britain's "mass-murdering" prime minister sat back and watched.

Pinter, 72, was at the National Theatre in London to read from War, a new collection of his anti-war poetry that had been published in the press in response to events in Iraq.

In conversation on stage with Michael Billington, the Guardian's theatre critic, Pinter said the US government was the most dangerous power that had ever existed.

The American detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where al-Qaida and Taliban suspects were being held, was a concentration camp.

The US population had to accept responsibility for allowing an unelected president to take power and the British were exhausted from protesting and being ignored by Tony Blair, a "deluded idiot" Pinter hoped would resign.
Click to expand...
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,975048,00.html
 
New Reports Implicate Soldiers in Death of Journalists
By Ian Urbina,_
June 10, 2003: (Asia Times) On April 8, two journalists were killed in Baghdad. By this date, only weeks into the conflict, the death toll for journalists in Iraq was an alarming 10, more than double the total killed in the entirety of the first Gulf War in 1991. But what was especially worrisome about the deaths of Ukraine-born Reuters cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, and Spanish photographer Jose Couso, was that neither man was near the front lines.

Both were in their hotels. Alongside roughly 100 other journalists from virtually every major international news outlet in the country at the time, Protsyuk and Couso were recouping in an officially recognized safe zone--the Palestine Hotel. But an American tank on the opposite bank of the Tigris River, roughly three-quarters of a mile away, fired directly at the hotel anyway.

The U.S. military stated that the incident was a regrettable though unavoidable mistake. However, with the recent release of an investigation by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists there is new evidence that the incident was in fact entirely avoidable, and a Spanish judge is being asked to file formal extradition charges against the three US military officers responsible.
Click to expand...
source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3742.htm
 
Britain: Blair, advisor boycott parliamentary inquiry
Blair doesn't simply face the somewhat pathetic opposition seen during the June 4 parliamentary debate--which saw all but 11 Labour MPs line up behind him. The exposure of the lies used to justify the war is being played out before millions of workers who opposed the war for oil waged by the US and Britain.

And if the government is found to have deliberately lied about Iraqi WMD programmes, then the war must be deemed to be an illegal war of aggression and Blair, President George W. Bush and their cohorts must be charged as war criminals.

A case against Blair charging him as a war criminal has already been placed before the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague by the Athens Bar Association. And now Rabinder Singh QC, a leading international and human rights barrister at Matrix chambers, has called for a judicial review to be set up on the ground that no weapons of mass destruction have been found.

Blair's wife, Cherie, is one of the partners in the Matrix chambers.

A June 8 article in the Observer based on Singh's legal opinion--prepared for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other peace groups--argues that the original view of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, that the war was legal is no longer valid because it was based on the need to disarm nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The summary of his legal opinion states, "The allegations made by former members of the Cabinet in the recent past, that the evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction was exaggerated by the UK and the US prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, call into question the factual foundation for the Attorney General's view that the invasion was lawful in international law. In our view there is therefore a strong case for establishing a judicial inquiry to examine that legal question."

Singh concludes, "Without any disrespect to the two parliamentary inquiries which are to take place, we consider that there is a strong case for establishing a judicial inquiry to examine what are essentially legal questions... It is quintessentially the task of independent judges to decide questions of law and to assess evidence."

CND and other groups are to use Singh's legal opinion to push for a judicial review in the High Court. The Observer comments, "If an action was successful, it could lead to the Prime Minister being prosecuted for war crimes in an action led by his wife?s chambers."
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source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/blar-j12.shtml
 
US troops seize 397 in 3-day raid
By Ellen Barry, Boston Globe Staff, 6/12/2003

DULUIYAH, Iraq -- In a three-day blitz named Operation Peninsula Strike, US troops saturated and searched a small city north of Baghdad this week, mounting a systematic sweep for the shadowy enemies who have dogged the occupation but angering some townspeople with their aggressive tactics.

Late Sunday night, a battalion of Army rangers arrived in this spit of land on the Tigris River, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, and blocked the bridge that provided the only exit.

As they began house-to-house searches for weapons and gunmen, Army engineers were patrolling the cloudy Tigris, where they caught several people who tried to escape the search by water, said Major Stephen Michael of the 503d Infantry Regiment, second battalion of the 173d Airborne Infantry Brigade.

By yesterday, the operation had resulted in 397 arrests, US Central Command reported.

In their houses in this riverside city, angry Iraqis displayed doors that had been forced open, splintering the wood around locks, and cupboards whose doors had been torn off their hinges.

The raids at Duluiyah could provide a model for the occupation in communities where nightfall routinely brings sneak attacks on US troops. Attacks in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, west of Baghdad, have become an almost nightly occurrence. One soldier was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade Tuesday night in a suburb of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.
Click to expand...
source: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/163/nation/Sweep_of_Iraqi_town_yields_arrests_anger+.shtml
 
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