Free Iraq

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To take the example at hand, what we did not see in the last several weeks was independent media asking questions about Winter Soldier at the White House press conferences, or at the Pentagon or State Department. Had they done so, the administration spokesperson's words would likely have led to more attention to Winter Soldier than all the work of all the people who labored on it for months. A serious debate between the veterans speaking out at Winter Soldier and the administration and its allies may well have ensued. This would have likely led to a dramatically different dynamic around the fifth anniversary of the war.

But no one asked at the news conferences, so none of that happened.

As it is, Winter Soldier likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on, and it was a very important, historic event, but it so far has not reached beyond those who likely already agreed with much of what was said. Web activism and other worthwhile efforts might build on what was done, but the lack of challenging government officials at the crucial time makes a world of difference.
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Nor is the failure limited to U.S.-based independent media. Al-Jazeera (both Arabic and English) has scores of staffers in Washington, but not one gets into the White House to ask a tough question. Al-Jazeera reporters in Afghanistan and Iraq have braved U.S. missiles, but Al-Jazeera reporters in Washington have not braved White House news conferences.
Similarly, the BBC and CBC and tons of other media from around the world simply report out of Washington, but do not really change the landscape.
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There needs to be lots of independent media doing much more than "preaching to the choir." The most obvious thing to do is set up the structures to question and scrutinize officials. It will not only lead to a broader dialogue, but will force independent media to get to specifics, to not rely on demonizing Bush and sloganeering. This is the way to get to the truth: challenge, scrutinize, repeat.
Isn't that what real independent media should be?"
Iraq Winter Soldier Hearings Show Weakness of Independent Media Sam Husseini on March 25, 2008

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"· The aim of the book is to present a clear analysis with emphasise on illegality of the trial of Saddam Hussain briefly covering the background to the invasion, the setting up of the tribunal and ending with analysis of the trial procedures.
· The book is necessary because it is the first time since the UN was created that a sovereign state has been invaded, the system changed and its head of state has been put on trial by an occupying power. It is very important to assess the dangers of such a precedent.
· I am not aware of any other book on the market attending to that angle of the trial. Furthermore, I believe that simply judging by the interest in the US and the UK there is a real public interest which would make it marketable if not highly demanded."
The Trial of Saddam Hussain Dr. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani


The book is now available.

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On the occasion of the fifth bitter anniversary of the occupation of Iraq:

• I participated in an Al-Jazeera English channel program, "Inside Iraq", on Friday march 14, 2008. This is Part 1, and Part 2 (videos, 12 minutes each) of that program.


• My daughter, Nofa, wrote an article on Corporate Genocide.

This is Nofa's sentiment five years ago (January 2003) on America's bringing of Democracy to the Iraqi people that she refers to in the above article.

These are three previous articles by Nofa before and after the occupation.
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PS: From an email by a friend, Kamil Al-Adhadh, March 21 2008

"Dear Dr. Imad,
Though I enjoyed your interview with AlJezzera, Nofa`s sensuous articles grabbed me with admiration and surprise, not only for their eloquence, but also for the patriotic zeal and linguistic excellence, given her unfolding age. She is definitely a talented and essentially noble Iraqi girl, no matter what new nationality she may acquire now. I congratulate her and, of course, you , because she is your breed and the offspring of your cultivation.

My comments on the interview is that the invaders did what they did because vested interests surpass any ethics or concepts of justice. Yet, the greatest felony falls on the state of disintegration of our society, and the despicable quality of the new politicians; these conditions existed before the invasion, so when it came, the arena was ready for the monsters to reign! Best wishes."

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"A month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and – given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people – the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six – even nine – suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.

This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush's invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available.
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One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death."
Robert Fisk: The cult of the suicide bomber March 14, 2008
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Updates:
"Al-Qaida is in Iraq to stay. It's not a conclusion the White House talks about much when denouncing the shadowy group, known as al-Qaida in Iraq, that used the U.S. invasion five years ago to develop into a major killer.
The militants are weakened, battered, perhaps even desperate, by most U.S. accounts. But far from being "routed," as Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed last month, they're still there, still deadly active and likely to remain far into the future, military and other officials told The Associated Press.
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Al-Qaida in Iraq, which did not exist as a coherent group before U.S. troops invaded in March 2003 (emphasis added), probably now numbers no more than 6,000, according to U.S. intelligence estimates. It may have been closer to 10,000-strong before the severe pummeling it took last year, when it lost its main bases of Sunni Arab support. It controls no cities but is still active in pockets through much of central and northern Iraq."
Al Qaeda In Iraq Far Stronger Than Bush Administration Admitting, March 15, 2008
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This is side stepping the other US created Death Squads that are killing Iraqi civilians:
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"The top counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq advocates practicing a "global Phoenix Program," alluding to the notorious Vietnam-era CIA operation that provoked a worldwide uproar because of the detention, torture and execution of thousands of Vietnamese.
The mainstream media has never reported on the use of the "global Phoenix program" in Iraq, perhaps because the explosive terminology has largely disappeared from the writings and résumé of Lt. Col. David Kilcullen after he first being referred to it in a forty-eight-page strategy paper, "Countering Global Insurgency" published in the obscure Small Wars Journal in September-November 2004.
Kilcullen, an Australian PhD who served for twenty-one years in the Australian army, was the "chief adviser on counterinsurgency operations" to Petraeus in planning the 2007 US troop surge. He also served as chief strategist in the State Department's counterterrorism office in 2005 and 2006, and has been employed in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.
In the section titled "A Global Phoenix Program" in his 2004 article, Kilcullen describes the Vietnam Phoenix program as "unfairly maligned" and "highly effective." Dismissing CIA sponsorship and torture allegations as "popular mythology," Kilcullen calls Phoenix a misunderstood "civilian aid and development program" that was supported by "pacification" operations to disrupt the Vietcong, whose infrastructure ruled vast swaths of rural South Vietnam. A "global Phoenix program," he wrote, would provide a starting point for dismantling the worldwide jihadist infrastructure today. Phoenix was far from an "aid and development" program. To achieve deniability, the CIA trained and transferred operational authority to the South Vietnamese national police, who tortured suspects indiscriminately. CIA officer William Colby, founder of the program, told a Congressional committee in 1971 that the Phoenix operation had killed 20,587 Vietcong suspects in two years (emphasis added).An official Pentagon evaluation in 1968 found that "the truncheon and electric shock method of interrogation were in widespread use, with almost all [US] advisors admitting to have witnessed instances of the use of these methods...[and] 'turned their backs on them.' " A Naval Institute historian later found that "the large majority of South Vietnamese interrogators tortured some or all of the communist prisoners in their care" as well as Vietnamese suspected of collaboration with the Vietcong.
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Kilkullen sees the problem in terms of a biological model of disease control. In a flattering 2007 New Yorker interview with George Packer, he compared the US military surge to extending the use of antibiotics after the disease is apparently suppressed: "you keep taking it as long as possible, even after the symptoms are gone, to kill the underlying infection.
Now in his 80s, Sheinbaum shakes his head about such analogies. As he wrote in 1966 (emphasis added) in Ramparts, "Where is the source of serious intellectual criticism that would help us avoid future Vietnams?... Our failure in Vietnam was not one of technical expertise, but of historical wisdom."
Reviving Vietnam War Tactics March 13, 2008
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"The CIA's lost tribe, the 7,000 Hmong are still hiding in the mountains and jungles of Laos, including some former CIA fighters.
Under constant threat of attack by the army – they are a lost tribe – forgotten by the world for more than three decades".
The Lost Tribe March 6, 2008 (with YouTube videos)
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".... One consequence of the [subprime] crisis is that while the Fed has been cutting the interest rate it controls — the so-called Fed funds rate — the rates that matter most directly to the economy, including rates on mortgages and corporate bonds, have been rising. And that’s sure to worsen the economic downturn.
What’s going on?
Mr. Geithner described a vicious circle in which banks and other market players who took on too much risk are all trying to get out of unsafe investments at the same time, causing “significant collateral damage to market functioning.”
A report released last Friday by JPMorgan Chase was even blunter. It described what’s happening as a “systemic margin call,” in which the whole financial system is facing demands to come up with cash it doesn’t have (added emphasis).
(A financial joke making the rounds, via the blog Calculated Risk: “Who is this guy Margin that keeps calling me?”)
The Face-Slap Theory March 10, 2008

How sweet it sounds.
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Update on the previous posting "Why the Resistance?" February 13, 2008 on Norman Finkelstein's interview in Beirut.

This is the full interview, not the above MEMRI doctored version of it:
American Political Scientist Norman Finkelstein: "Israel Has to Suffer a Defeat"
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How MEMRI Doctored Finkelstein's Interview to portray him as a "Holocaust denier"
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"Is it possible to convict a group of people of the highest possible crime simply by editing together public statements that they made while planning it?
If so, the best attempt at doing so that I imagine I'll ever see is found in a new 72-minute film available for viewing free online or by purchasing a DVD at http://www.leadingtowar.com
"Leading to War" begins and ends with a very few words of text on the screen. The rest is almost entirely clips of public statements at rallies, in television interviews, and at press conferences, statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Blair, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the gang between September 11, 2001, and March 19, 2003. There is some little-known footage included, and the sequence of the clips tells a coherent and compelling story.
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Just by watching this film, we are reminded or informed that:
--Iraq told the world truthfully in 2002 and 2003 that it had no WMDs,
--the world was broadly opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq,
--Iraq was willing to sit down and talk, but the United States was not,--Cheney didn't want inspectors in Iraq,
--Cheney and his cronies predicted joyful throngs greeting "liberators",
--Scott Ritter rejected the WMD lies and made it onto television doing so,
--Bush pushed the British claim that Iraq could attack us within 45 minutes,
--Bush told us Iraq could attack us with unmanned aerial vehicles,
--all of these people made their assertions about WMDs repeatedly and with absolute certainty,
--Bush and Rice said we risked waking up to a "mushroom cloud" if we didn't attack Iraq,
--Iraq cooperated with inspectors,
--most nations of the world and huge crowds of people around the world opposed an attack on Iraq,
--Rumsfeld swore the whole thing would cost under $50 billion,
--Bush said we should attack Iraq because Saddam Hussein used torture: "If this is not evil," said Bush (who was already torturing people himself), "then evil has no meaning,"
--the goal Bush said he had in launching an aggressive war was "a free and peaceful Iraq...an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," and
--most nations in the world saw no imminent threat from Iraq, and the United Nations refused to support an aggressive attack by the United States, which tried very hard to win U.N. approval but then attacked without it.

The film closes with some text indicating, among other things, that no WMDs were ever found, that the occupation has been costly, etc.
These claims are all crafted to avoid any possible objections, to the point in some cases of erring wildly on the side of war supporters. When every serious study done finds over 1 million Iraqi deaths, this film grotesquely puts the count at 100,000."
Petards of Mass Destruction February 29, 2008
PS: Petard means: "A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall"
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You may either Watch Online For Free شاهد الفلم باللغة الإنكليزية , requires Flash 8.0. [get Flash here], in streaming video - the film will play in a new window starting with parts 1 and 2.

Or, you can scroll down the languages to Arabic لتشاهد الفيلم بالعربية مجاناً and watch the four parts with Arabic subtitles. .

New biography of shadowy Iraq figure Chalabi recalls ties to McCain March 7, 2008

The "Dirty Dozen" are listed as the top 12 Neocons in America: Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney Jr.

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"Two former high-ranking Shiite government officials charged with kidnapping and killing scores of Sunnis were ordered released Monday after prosecutors dropped the case. The abrupt move renewed concerns about the willingness of Iraq's leaders to act against sectarianism and cast doubts on U.S. efforts to build an independent judiciary.
The collapse of the trial stunned American and Iraqi officials who had spent more than a year assembling the case, which they said included a wide array of evidence.
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Many of the witnesses agreed to testify only because they believed their names would be kept secret, but their names were leaked and supporters of the former Health Ministry officials threatened to kill them or their families if they didn't recant their testimony, American officials said. Many of the witnesses did not show up at the trial, though Iraqi law allows their testimony to be read if they do not attend. "
Case Is Dropped Against Shiites In Sunni Deaths March 4, 2008
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PS: From a comment by JJ

"I feel awful about Iraq already. Now this? Worst part is no one I know gives a damn. They're outraged by the puppy thrown off a cliff but not a word of sentiment about the millions of Iraqis who have had their lives shattered by bush's madness."

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This is a very sobering article about a new book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes:
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"Appetites whetted, Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper, and what they have discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, is that in fact Bush's Iraqi adventure will cost America - just America - a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. The rest of the world, including Britain, will probably account for about the same amount again. And in doing so they have achieved something much greater than arriving at an unimaginable figure: by describing the process, by detailing individual costs, by soberly listing the consequences of short-sighted budget decisions, they have produced a picture of comprehensive obfuscation and bad faith whose power comes from its roots in bald fact. Some of their discoveries we have heard before, others we may have had a hunch about, but others are completely new - and together, placed in context, their impact is staggering. There will be few who do not think that whatever the reasons for going to war, its progression has been morally disquieting; following the money turns out to be a brilliant way of getting at exactly why that is.
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Next month America will have been in Iraq for five years - longer than it spent in either world war. Daily military operations (not counting, for example, future care of wounded) have already cost more than 12 years in Vietnam, and twice as much as the Korean war".
The true cost of war February 28, 2008

Bush has something to say about that. See a recent posting: Cash for Iraqi blood February 20, 2008
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