Free Iraq

Our Congratulations and Prayers for a speedy recovery for a true friend and a true Iraqi patriot
 

Alef MABROOK to Walid
 

Dear Dr. Imad,

No matter how rare those glimpses had become..
I am pleased to read about a candle light amidst an Arab desert..!
 

Imad

It was very touching seeing King Abdulla assisting Walid up to the podium to receive his award. People who know Walid must have felt great pride at that moment and admiration.

As far as the King...We in Lebanon know that He is a great Man and his humility and humbelness is unsurpassed.
I watched with Awe and wished that world Leaders will Learn humility from this Great Human Being
 

Radioactive Ammunition Fired in Middle East May Claim More Lives Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki
 

Art of Mental Warfare
 

US plans case against AP photographer
 

War Is a Government Program
 

The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years: When will the US and the UK tell the truth about Israeli weapons? Iran isn't starting an atomic arms race, it's joining one .
 

Concentration Camp, pure & simple -
Palestinian child dies as result of Israeli imposed sanctions: In addition to the demise of Al-Yaziji, 13 Palestinians died this month in hospital as Israel has imposed a travel ban for anyone seeking medical attention.
 

Absolutely delighted for Walid and all of us his friends. May God protect him and his family and give him a speedy recovery.
 

Dear Dr. Walid,
We, your friends, are proud and jubilant for the award that you, deservedly, received. We pray to God to preserve you for Iraq, and grant you good health, long life and continuous success.
 

IDF: Gaza fuel cuts don't violate humanitarian duty: ... [T]he cuts do not "harm the humanitarian minimum to which Israel is committed." (Understandably. The minimum is none, as in no humanitarian benefits whatsoever.)
 

One Human Being Honoring Another: In a rare scene, the King left his seat at the stage and rushed forward to Khdouri to greet him and hand him his award in his place, and then to help him ascend the platform to take his seat among the honored guests who included prominent media figures. Right there, the heads of state and other guests stood through a humane moment and applauded a human Kind who appreciated a fellow human who deserved much more than honoring.

(I regret that this doesn't appear at the top of my postings.)
 

Iraq's Laboratory of Repression: The Bush administration is turning Iraq into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, from sophisticated biometrics that track populations to devastating weapons systems that combine night-vision optics from drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging and deadly firepower from the sky to kill suspected insurgents.

These high-tech capabilities, when mixed with loose rules of engagement that allow U.S. troops to kill Iraqis at the slightest sign of hostility, have contributed to what U.S. generals and a growing number of American journalists are hailing as an improving security situation.

Or, as President George W. Bush reportedly told Australia’s deputy prime minister in September, “We’re kicking ass.” [ . . . ]

Having tasted a measure of success in Iraq, the neocons now are raising their sights toward an even wider war in the Muslim world.
 

Fallujah under a different siege: Since the November 2004 US-led attack on the city, named Operation Phantom Fury, which left approximately 70% of the city destroyed, the US military has required residents to undergo retina scans and finger-printing to gain a bar-code for identification.

"This isolation has destroyed the economy of the city that was once one the best in Iraq," Professor Mohammad al-Dulaymi of al-Anbar University told IPS. "All of the other cities in the province used to do their wholesale shopping in Fallujah, but now they have to find alternatives, leaving the city's businesses to starve," he explained.

All of the residents interviewed by IPS were extremely angry with the media for recent reports that the situation in the city is good. Many refused to be quoted for different reasons.

"Fallujah is probably the city that has had the most media coverage in the history of the occupation," Hatam Jawad, a school headmaster in Fallujah, told IPS. "People are tired of shouting and appearing on TV to complain, without feeling any change in their sorrowful living situation. Some of them are afraid of police revenge for telling the truth."

Many residents told IPS that US-backed Iraqi police and army personnel have detained people who have spoken to the media.
 

Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist" as a Jewish State
 

Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
 

Wealthy nations in Gulf rethink peg to dollar
 

Iraq: No trace found for thousands of manuscripts U.S. troops discovered in 2003: The collection ... was “the largest and the most valuable in the whole Middle East.”


Missing Iraqi documents
 

Two soldiers killed in US helicopter crash in Iraq: Nearly 70 helicopters have crashed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussain, about half of them because of hostile fire.
 

Olmert and Abbas to meet on Tuesday at Annapolis


Syria wants Golan on agenda at Middle East talks: The United States has not yet announced who will be invited to the November 26-27 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, which will focus Palestinian peace. (Waiting for Israel to tell us!)
 

"We Must Fight the Net": Information Operation Roadmap Part 3: The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".

The 2003 Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006. A detailed explanation of the major thrust of this document and the significance of information operations or information warfare was described by me here.
 

Maps -
The Mideast Pipelines That Americans Are Dying Over: In the end you will have a monstrous pipeline that runs from the Iran oil fields right to Haifa, Israel. The Zionists will control the world because of that oil.
 

AP Lawyers Will Go to Iraq Next Week to Defend Photographer -- Press Group Raises Concerns
(See comment above: November 20, 2007 3:46 PM)
 

Alarm Over Case Against AP Photographer: Hussein has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months.
(I'm not sure what a 'terrorist' looks like. But my imagination doesn't conjure up this man's face.)
 

Award-winning Photojournalist Held Incommunicado in Iraqi Torture Dungeon: Operation Mockingbird “was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news outlets,” explains Alex Constantine. “Activists curious about the workings of MOCKINGBIRD have since been appalled to find in FOIA documents that agents boasting in CIA office memos of their pride in having placed ‘important assets’ inside every major news publication in the country. It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field.”

Most consumers of the corporate media were — and are — unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs. A network anchorman in time of national crisis is an instrument of psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media. He is a creature from the national security sector’s chamber of horrors. For this reason consumers of the corporate press have reason to examine their basic beliefs about government and life in the parallel universe of these United States.

It appears Bilal Hussein’s crime is he ran up against this determined and long-term “salting of public opinion” with his award-winning photographs of “the aftermath of attacks and the daily lives of Iraqis in the war zone,” images rarely if ever shown to American television audiences.
 

MOCKINGBIRD
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
 

New al-CIA-duh Created to Fight Old al-CIA-duh: The US is considering a plan to create gangs of mercenaries from local population in the border areas of Pakistan to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban, emulating its tactics in Iraq’s Anbar province.
 

Zogby Analyst Says Ron Paul Strongest Contender to Beat Hillary (I support Ron Paul. But the Powers-that-Be will NEVER allow him to occupy the Presidency. No matter what it takes.)
 

Bin Laden talks of victory, not defeat (Lovely. Bin Laden alive!!! See MOCKINGBIRD .)
 

All The President's Liars: Where the Hell are The Washington Post and New York Times on McClellangate?! (Skip the article. See MOCKINGBIRD ! ! !)
 

Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence
 

George W Bush's Humble Foreign Policy?
 

Five children, mother killed in Basra rocket attack
 

Did you forget about Fallujah? Fallujah didn't forget
 

Palestinian blindfolded, beaten by Israeli forces in Hebron
 

Wayne Madsen Report (in full) -
November 21-22, 2007 -- Massive fraud at US Army forward base: Knowledgeable sources have informed WMR that there is massive fraud in contracts awarded for work at the U.S. Army Forces Central Command (ARCENT) base at Camp Arifjan, south of Kuwait City. The construction of what has been advertised as a $200 million base, the funds coming from the Kuwaiti government, is being handled jointly by the ARCENT, US Army Corps of Engineers, and the US Central Command. Although the base is said to have cost $200 million, the contracts laundered through base work are valued at over $4 billion.

Sources have told WMR that U.S., Saudi, Dubai, and Kuwaiti contractors are involved in massive bribes and other fraud in work at the base. Some $2.8 billion in contracts have already been awarded for work on the base.

The Army is actively investigating the fraud but the massive amounts of money and personnel involved has swamped Army criminal investigators and auditors. In July, an Army major at Arifjan was indicted for bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy for accepting $9.6 million from contractors in exchange for the awarding of contracts. Last December, another major reportedly shot herself after admitting that she took some $225,000 in bribes.

Regardless of the current Army investigation, Camp Arifjan is said to still be operating as a virtual "Wal-Mart" of contract fraud, money laundering, and bribes. On September 4, 2006, Army Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez, the chief logistics officer at Arifjan who was investigating over-payments for goods and services and other fraud, supposedly committed suicide in his base quarters after supposedly ingesting prescription sleeping pills and anti-freeze.
----------------------------------

(Keep "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Blank checks preferred.)
 

Hi-tech Torture: Just when it seems that things cannot get any worse, we learn that U.S. military commanders in Iraq are seeking permission to use a new weapon system. This will be the ultimate torture weapon. Its purpose is to cause excruciating pain, but leave no evidence of wounds on the victim. (What an achievement.)
 

Saudis back sentence of 200 lashes for gang rape victim
 

Suicide car bomber strikes Ramadi

(How does one know that this was the work of a 'suicide car bomber'? Did anyone actually see the driver?)
 

Arizona firm targets Muslims
 

Diamonds and Pearls and... Ron Paul
 

Zionism Must Be Dissolved For Peace: ... The systematic destruction of some 460 Palestinian towns and villages by Israel (1948-52) was a Nazi act of the highest order. It embodied total disregard and total denial of “the other” on no ground other than that the victims were non-Jewish (The relics of some of these towns can still be seen even today and are meticulously documented in Walid Khalidi’s monumental work All That Remains.).

Unfortunately, this modus operandi of hateful racism and terror remains Israel’s central policy toward the Palestinian people. There is no clearer proof of Israel’s malicious intent than the intensive building of hundreds of Jewish-only settlements on occupied land. Yes, everything here is “Jewish-only.” Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only pools, even Jewish-only rights, since non-Jews are viewed by a growing segment of Israeli Jews as children of a lesser God or even outright animals.

In addition to the settlements, inhabited by the most violent and racist-minded Jews anywhere in the world, Israel has always sought to make Palestinian lives so unbearable in order to coerce them to immigrate.

To effect this evil goal, successive Israeli governments (Labor and Likud alike) employed every conceivable legal trick, including the introduction of dual justice systems, a liberal one for Jews and a harsh one for non-Jews.

One expression of this judicial apartheid is the open-ended incarceration of thousands of Palestinian activists, students, professionals and college professors as well as politicians, including lawmakers and cabinet ministers, without charge or trial (since 1967, Israel has arrested over 800.000 Palestinians).

When the notoriously insidious system of institutionalized repression failed to make significant numbers of Palestinians emigrate, Israel resorted to brazen physical harm in the form of terrorizing and killing the Palestinians at the slightest “provocation,” very much like Hitler’s forces did throughout Nazi-occupied Europe more than sixty years ago.

Needless to say, Israeli “pacification” raids and incursions leave many children and women killed, homes destroyed, farms pulverized, furniture vandalized and roads and infrastructure thoroughly bulldozed. In short, everything, every conceivable crime is committed by this Nazi-like entity, all under the rubric of fighting "terror" followed by much of the Western media just parroting the Israeli narrative as if the Israeli army spokesmen were the paragons of veracity and honesty.

In the final analysis, when Jews (or anybody else) behave like Nazis, they should be compared to Nazis. Indeed, a country that sends its F-16 fighter-bombers in the middle of the night to drop one-ton bombs on apartment buildings, where children and women are asleep, is not morally far apart from the Gestapo mentality.

Today, Israel, like the Gestapo did to the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, is barring millions of Palestinians from accessing food and work. In Gaza, Israel, under the pretext of freeing a captured Israeli soldier, has bombed or destroyed the bulk of civilian infrastructure there, including schools, colleges, streets, bridges, charities as well as thousands of homes. Israel has also destroyed the only power station in Gaza, forcing 1.4 million Gazans to live in total or partial darkness.
 

300,000 Iraqis sign petition condemning Iran: "They have targeted our national interests and began planning to divide Iraq and to separate the southern provinces from Iraq."
 

Israel acts to boost Abbas ahead of US conference
 

Video (40 min), Israel is an unfinished business: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
 

Video (1 hr), Clash of Worlds : Britain and Palestine: BBC Documentary focusing on the relationship between Britain and Palestine, the resulting foundation of the state of Israel, and the effects felt to this day.
 

Guantanamo detainees' testament to the power of the human spirit
I am sorry, my brother.
The shackles bind my hands
And iron is circling the place where I sleep.

I am sorry, my brother,
That I cannot help the elderly or the widow or the little child.

Do not weigh the death of a man as a sign of defeat.
The only shame is in betraying your ideals
And failing to stand by your beliefs.
 

Wayne Madsen Report -
November 22-23, 2007 -- Washington Madam civil case put on hold: was getting too close to Cheney
(The headline will suffice)
 

Britain is a US client state and should not forget it, says the neocons' oracle
 

Demolition Decimating Palestinian Village
 

Bush on how quickly his presidency is passing: "You know, just last year I was thinking about, how to deal with Iraq, I -- you know, I was, I was part of the people who didn't approve of Iraq. And when they asked the endless questions -- 'Do you approve of Iraq?' -- I was one, no, I didn't approve of what's going on. And wanted to do something about it and was confronted with a serious decision. It was just a year ago ... that I was, you know ... listening to people and getting ready to make the -- make the decision, and it just seemed like ... it was just yesterday, I mean it's unbelievable how much time's passed."
 

Islamofascism, the Imaginary Adversary: Like the pejorative term from which it derives, Islamofascism means whatever the person deploying it wants it to mean. It is ultimately not an attempt at description or explanation but a demon word designed to generate visceral, irrational reaction.
 

Ultimatum, or laughing stock: ... If the Americans don’t put an ultimatum to the Israelis, they haven’t got the balls to run an Empire, and American irrelevance will continue to spiral out of control. ... Watch out for the lite Zionists, who are preparing to blame the inevitable failure of Annapolis on lack of Palestinian unity. This is nonsense, of course.
 

Twenty missile shells land in Baghdad''s Green-Zone: KUNA's correspondent said he heard at least 20 missile shells land in the area and smoke was seen there, along with the sound of sirens heard as a result of the attack.
The correspondent also added he could not locate the exact location of the firing attack, nor was he able to determine human casualties or material damage.


Extremists attack pro-US Sunnis: Shortly before sunset, a series of rockets or mortars crashed into the Green Zone, sending up plumes of smoke into the sky as the sounds of the detonations reverberated through the center of the city.

The attack, the biggest against the Green Zone in weeks, occurred as many Americans were marking the Thanksgiving holiday. Loudspeakers in the Green Zone warned people to "duck and cover" and to stay away from windows.
 

Impeachment is Back on the Table: The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself.

--Excerpt from Scott McClellan's forthcoming book "What Happened"
 

Horrifying ad for Amnesty's campaign against torture:
Warning - Some viewers may find this disturbing
 

Zionism as a classic conspiracy
 

Wayne Madsen Report (in full) -
November 23-25, 2007 -- Hariri targeted by US/Israeli circles beginning in 1996: WMR has learned from knowledgeable Middle East intelligence sources that former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri earned the wrath of neocon circles in the United States and Israel as early as 1996. Eventually, after the 9/11 attacks when U.S. foreign policy was being dictated by neocon circles in Washington and Jerusalem, a false flag operation was launched that resulted in the 2005 car bombing assassination of Hariri in Beirut and subsequent blame being placed on Syria.

In April 1996, Israel launched a military blitz against targets in Lebanon's south and in Beirut in a military campaign known as Operation Grapes of Wrath. The operation coincided with a campaign to derail Middle East prospects by a group of American neocons that culminated in a policy paper titled, "A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm."

The blueprint called for an end to the Middle East peace strategy that began with Camp David and the Carter administration. It would serve as the underpinnings for the extreme foreign policy of incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Behind the scenes, the "Clean Break" was also endorsed by leading neocons inside the Clinton administration, including a number of pro-Israeli foreign policy-makers destined for a possible future Hillary Clinton administration.

Grapes of Wrath ended with an agreement known as the "April Understanding," a tacit agreement on April 26, 1996, between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel (with the support of France, Syria, and Lebanon) that both sides would refrain from attacking each other's civilian targets. One of the events that prompted the agreement was the Israeli attack on the UN compound at Qana in south Lebanon where 106 Lebanese women, elderly, and children refugees from the fighting were killed in an Israeli attack.

During this time, Hariri lobbied hard for Paris, other European Union capitals, and Washington to accept Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah as a negotiating partner and grant Hezbollah international recognition. Although the April Understanding represented a virtual agreement by Israel to respect cease fire on civilian targets with Nasrallah and Hezbollah, the agreement did not sit well with neocons and their allies in Israel (including then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres) and the United States. In fact, the Clinton administration began to undermine Hariri immediately.

Middle East intelligence sources have confirmed that not only was Hariri targeted by the neocons in retaliation for the lobbying for Nasrallah and brokering the April Understanding but that this revenge targeting was ultimately implemented in the car bombing of Hariri on February 14, 2005. In addition, the neocons, using Mossad agent-of-influence President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as their conduit, successfully achieved the punishment of former French President Jacques Chirac, a supporter of Hariri, and Chirac's then-presidential secretary, former Foreign Minister Dominique deVillepin. Both Chirac and deVillepin have been indicted as part of the neocons' and Mossad's revenge operations.

The ruse that there was some type of coordinated U.S. and Israeli attack, code-named Operation Orchard, on a suspected Syrian nuclear installation at Dayr az-Zwar was yet another neocon plot to discredit Syrian President Bashar Assad after attempts to link him with the car bombings of Hariri and several other Lebanese politicians fell under suspicion by several of the world's intelligence agencies. In the case of the attack on the so-called Syrian nuclear site, WMR's intelligence sources report at the most, the site was a missile construction center. Syria said it was a desertification research center. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rejected suggestions that the site was a nuclear center.
 

Another Prime Bush Ally Dumped-- Aussie Howard "Suffers Humiliating Defeat"
 

Report: US will not force Israel's hand in Annapolis (Well, now. There's a surprise!)
 

Amazon.com has just reclassified "The Israel Lobby" by Harvard and Chicago U profs as a "conspiracy theory" book
 

Crackpot realism is riding high: In 1958, the New Left sociologist C. Wright Mills made a seminal contribution to political science in his book The Causes of World War Three, by introducing the concept of “crackpot realism.” He applied the notion specifically to the intellectual outlook of top government officials, especially the ones known as the “serious people,” who have proven their capacity for dealing with important practical affairs by, say, managing a giant corporation, such as Halliburton or G. D. Searle, or a huge educational institution, such as Texas A&M University or the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Mills’s key insight was that although such people have indeed been movers and shakers, they have moved and shaken within such a constricted milieu of experience and training that in most respects they are fools. Despite having developed supreme confidence in their own judgment and a corresponding contempt for other people’s views, they are astonishingly ignorant of many workaday aspects of the world and bewildered in the face of unexpected difficulties. As government leaders responsible for matters of war and peace, they have a tendency to paint themselves into corners of their own making and, then, seeing no way out, to conclude that their only escape lies in dropping bombs on somebody. As Mills observed, “instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplification of known catastrophe.”

Crackpot realists never learn anything, even when the lessons are cuffing them roughly about the head and shoulders. They continue to pile on more of the same actions that got them into trouble in the first place, expecting to be seen as Churchillian heroes for staying the idiotic course they have set. They keep spinning the bad news, year after year after year, wearing out entire battalions of press officers, until they finally escape from the morass by leaving office. Afterward, they heap blame on their successors for “losing China” or “cutting and running.”

Although the crackpot realists are neither wise nor honest, they are politically shrewd and personally vicious. When their malfeasances are exposed, they toss subordinates to the wolves and prepare the ground for their own pardons, understanding that the political winds may shift sharply against them later on. They are not squeamish: they digest mass murder as easily as they consume their eggs and toast, and they do not lose sleep by agonizing over the cannon fodder they sacrifice in the service of their own aggrandizement. Other people’s children go to war; theirs go to Harvard and Yale. Being busy people, they cannot waste time on pity, except when a photo op requires its feigned expression.

Imperialism appeals to them: if controlling the economic heights at home is good, controlling them throughout the entire world is better. ...
 

U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity (See above article.)
 

American-backed killer militias strut across Iraq (And have been, since 2003)
 

Australian vote winner to pull combat troops from Iraq (When did Bush last speak of 'The Coalition of the Willing'?)
 

Iraq nullifies Kurdish oil deals
 

Bahrainiparliament calls to boycott Israel: "Most of the parliament is in favor of cutting off any contact with Israel," Abd-Ali Muhammad Hassan, a member of Bahrain's Chamber of Deputies, told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Manama. "We are not going to recognize Israel and have any dealings with them until the rights of the Palestinians are achieved," he said.

At least one of Hassan's parliamentary colleagues, Jalal Fairooz, already appears to be implementing the decision.

Contacted by the Post, Fairooz said that he refused to be interviewed by a newspaper published in Israel. "I am not willing to speak to a newspaper that is published in the occupied territories," he said, after which he hung up.
 

U.S. Navy steps up fuel deliveries to Gulf forces
 

Jerusalem Post partners with Wall Street Journal (More informed & unbiased journalism!)
 

Photos I long to see on the front page of any U.S. daily -
Impeachment: If not now, when?