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Saturday, May 13, 2006

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, May 13, 2006 Photo: Oh. My. God. This is amazing—I don't why I didn't think of this. Meet Myra's truck—and check our her new vanity plates! [the acronym ITMFA, standing for “Impeach The Motherfucker Already!", is being printed in buttons, T-shirts, lapel pins, and bumper stickers. -- zig] Bring ‘em on: A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed May 13 at approximately 4 a.m. when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in south Baghdad. Clashes erupted between two Iraqi army units following a roadside bombing north of the capital, and Iraqi police said a Shiite solder was killed in an exchange of fire with a Kurdish unit. The U.S. military and Iraqi police provided differing accounts of the incident, which began with a roadside bombing near Duluiyah, about 45 miles north of Baghdad. The Americans said one soldier from the Iraqi army's 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 4th Division was killed and 12 were wounded in the attack. But Iraqi police 1st Lt. Ali Ibrahim said four were killed and three others wounded. He identified the soldiers as Kurdish but did not specify their unit. According to both accounts, the wounded were rushed to the U.S. military hospital in Balad. Police said that when the Kurdish soldiers drove up to the hospital, they began firing weapons to clear the way, and one Iraqi Shiite civilian was killed. When security rushed to the scene, the Kurds decided to take their wounded elsewhere, Iraqi police said. Iraqi troops from a separate Shiite unit tried to stop them and shots were fired, Iraqi police said. OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTS Baghdad: In Baghdad, police found the bodies of three Iraqi men who had been tortured. Gunmen killed the son of Iraq's top judge along with two of his bodyguards and dumped their bodies in one of Baghdad's Sunni Arab neighbourhoods. A roadside bomb went off near a passing police patrol in the Zaafaraniyah neighborhood in southern Baghdad. Three policemen and three civilians were wounded in the attack, he said. A mortar round landed on the area of Alawi Garage, where buses line up to pick up passengers, wounding a civilian and damaging several vehicles. Unknown gunmen opened fire at a crowd of construction workers,who gathered to be hired for daily work, in Baghdad's southern Doura district, killing one of them and wounding two others. During an exchange of fire in the Shiite residential area of Amiriah in Baghdad, one Iraqi was killed and his brother wounded. Unknown armed men gunned down a retired police lieutenant in the district of Doura. Gunbattle kills police officer in Baghdad. Najaf: Police found the body of a 60-year-old Iranian Shiite pilgrim in the holy town of Najaf. Baqubah: The bullet-riddled bodies of four Shiites were found dumped near Baqouba. Hilla: Apoliceman was killed at dawn today when an explosive device planted in his home in al- Mussayeb, a suburb of Hillah, exploded. The policeman's brother was injured in the blast. Mosul: Suspected insurgents riding in what looked like a taxi shot and killed a local tribal sheik, as he drove his car. A drive-by shooting killed four Iraqis and wounded one who were driving to the city from another part of Iraq. Gunmen ambushed and killed two policemen and wounded two others in Mosul. Two civilians were also wounded. Kirkuk: Gunbattle killed a local official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in Kirkuk. An explosive device blew up as a patrol for the multi-national forces was driving by along Baghdad Road near a mosque in Kirkuk during which three civilians were wounded and damages occurred to several vehicles. al-Hashimiya: (S. of) An oil tanker exploded today south of Baghdad killing one person and injuring seven others. The cause of the explosion in al-Hashimiya, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, was unknown. Kani Masi: Artillery for the Turkish forces shelled a border village in Kani Masi area in north east Dahouk in northern Iraq. A source in the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the area said that the Turkish forces raided the village of Douri but no damages have been reported. >> NEWS Iraqi Cartoonists Facing Death Threats: The threats — which come by e-mail, phone and even cell phone text messages — have forced many cartoonists to flee the country. Others, like [Diaa al-Hajar, a cartoonist for the government newspaper Al-Sabah], are thinking about leaving. Some have shifted to biting complaints about general problems — corruption, power shortages, garbage collection — without necessarily pointing the blame at individuals or specific groups. >> REPORTS FAMILIES HUNT FOR IRAQ'S 'LOST' At the small, crowded prisoner-tracking department of the Ministry of Human Rights (MOHR), tears often flow freely. "He was arrested from his house on December 25," sobs Jameela Abdullah Hikmet, who was looking for her brother, Jameel Abdullah Hikmet. With thousands of Iraqis kidnapped and arrested over the past three years, often in murky circumstances, the MOHR has become one more place Iraqis look for missing relatives. More than 34,000 Iraqis, according to MOHR figures, are held at one of the dozens of prisons across the country run by either the US military or the Iraqi Ministries of Interior, Defense, and Justice. The system has become more organized in recent months, but prisoners are still "lost," says one Iraqi official. read in full... >>COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS THE NON-SECTARIAN IRAQI RESISTANCE
IRAQI SHIA RESISTANCE FIGHTERS SURFACE IN VIDEO For those who have been chasing their tails and calling the Iraqi "Insurgency" a Sunni manifestation, check out the video below: Video Here. From Ogrish website:
"Daisy Chain type IED strike on Security contractors The Imam Ali Alhadi group, a shiite iraqi insurgency group, released a video of a daisy chain style Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack against Security Contractors in Iraq. The daisy chain style of attack allows for a much larger blast area of the attack allowing for much more damage. The shiite group is not the first of its kind the Medhi Army is also a shiite group in Iraq fighting against occupying forces in Iraq"
read in full… THE RESISTANCE IS MADE OF ALL PARTS OF THE IRAQI NATION Except from an interview with Ibrahim Ebeid, an Editor with the Arab website, Al-Moharer.net. Most mainstream media analysts argue that the Resistance is a purely Sunni phenomenon. Do you believe this? If not, why not? The main stream media is very biased. It is part of the occupation forces and mostly ignorant of Iraq and its people. The media correspondents are spoon-fed by the Generals of the “Green Zone”. They report only what is said to them and what suits the interests of the occupation. They do not see the battles; they do not talk to the people. Not only Sunni Arabs are part of the Resistance. The Resistance is made of all parts of the Iraqi nation. It has Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Muslim Shias and Muslim Sunnis. It is made up of the legitimate Iraqi Army, Republican Guards, Baath Party, Saddam Fedayeen, Arab Nationalists and Islamists. It is not true that the Resistance only exists in the "Sunni Triangle". It is in the North, in the Center, in the South, in the East and West. In every city and in every part of Iraq and it is growing. You have published an article in your books, Neo-CONNED, by Mr. Baghdadi a Shia Muslim from Iraq in which he states that 60% of the Baath party was Shia Muslim and likewise in the Iraqi Armed Forces. These people are part of the Resistance. Those who are part of the sectarian parties are either of Iranian origin or are pro-Iran and pro-occupation. read in full…
BUSH DOES TAL AFAR VERSION OF "BRING 'EM ON" A 1st Armored Division soldier was killed Sunday near Tal Afar, U.S. military officials said Monday. Attacks have increased in the ethnically mixed city over the past few weeks, particularly in the north. Some soldiers speculate that insurgent fighters stepped up their attacks after President Bush held Tal Afar up as a model city during speeches earlier this year. read in full... THE ACCIDENT-PRONE U.S. MILITARY The latest incident:
Four Marines drowned when their tank rolled off a bridge and plunged into a canal, the military said Friday, adding that while the accident occurred in a Sunni insurgent stronghold, it was not the result of an enemy action.
One of the only reasons I post this here, in the midst of soldiers dying every day, is how indicative it is of the attitude towards truth of the U.S. military. They apparently "know" these deaths were "not the result of an enemy action," even though later in the article we learn: The accident was under investigation, and the military said no other information was immediately available, including what kind of operation the Marines were taking part in and whether fighting with insurgents was under way in the area at that time. So basically they know nothing whatsoever, other than that a tank went off a bridge and four Marines are dead, yet their first inclination is not to simply state the truth ("we're not sure what happened, we're looking into it") but to deny that the Iraqi resistance had anything to do with it. Which, frankly, borders on the preposterous. read in full… EUPHEMISM OF THE DAY Over lunch I was watching C-SPAN, listening to a press conference by Lt. Gen. Robert Fry, British Deputy Commander of the MultiNational Forces in Iraq. Gosh it makes me embarrassed to be an American every time I hear someone from England (or most other countries) speak. But I digress. Fry's ability to actually speak, and answer questions without evasion, didn't prevent him from uttering this gem:
"There's been a three-year period since our entry into Iraq."
Some might go for the cheap sexual joke here, but not me. The rape of Iraq by the "MNF" has been far too deadly to be a joke. "Entry" indeed. As the sign said in the post below: "Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime". With a bigger sign, the words "and Blair and Howard" would certainly have been appropriate. read in full… CINDY SHEEHAN: THIRD REICH TYRANTS Most of our kids did not volunteer to go to Iraq to guard special contractors or kill innocent people to cushion the retirement of the CEO of Exxon. And, newsflash, our recruiters are still lying to our young people telling them that if they enlist they won't have to go to Iraq and other despicable lies. When the recruit signs on the dotted line, the contract becomes binding only on him/her: those kinds of unilateral contracts are not even legal. Our young soldiers, if they are refugees fleeing an organization that does not reflect their values, should not have to go to prison, no matter what the conditions are. With Amnesty International saying that violations are rampant in "enemy" combatant detention centers, then why should Canada think that our soldiers are any better off in a place that they should not be in the first place. read in full THE IRAQI APOCALYPSE There is no logic in getting rid of tyranny through cooperation with a foreigner who will later turn into an invader. I am not naïve. The naïve Iraqis are those who were misled into believing that foreign troops would end tyranny. Little they knew that these foreigners would occupy the country and wreak havoc as it is the case now. Our former dictator had vowed that he would prefer to have Iraq burned down rather than surrendering it to a foreign power. Some say the tyrant’s prophecy did not materialize as the country still had some means of life before the coming of the invaders. The dictator did not mean that he would burn the country himself. He said the country would implode once foreign troops arrive because the target was not solely having him or his tyranny removed. Our country is burning now. And the atrocities of the former leader, in one way or another, are being replicated and perhaps on a larger scale. read in full… VIDEO
THE UNTOLD STORY OF FALLUJA The American attack on Falluja, and the subsequent costs to the people there, has been a humanitarian, social, moral and ethical disaster; yet the American government and media have largely ignored the plight of the innocent victims. The refugees of Falluja risked their lives in order to tell their story to the world through the groundbreaking new documentary film, Caught in the Crossfire. read in full… POLICE STATE AMERICA Short video shows how police use surveillance of U.S. citizens who participate in Anti-War protest. link
>> BEYOND IRAQ TOP PHYSICISTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST BUSH’S WAR ON TERROR On April 17, 2006, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that the United States had tabled plans to employ tactical nuclear weapons against Iran to halt their burgeoning nuclear program. A letter had been sent to President Bush that same day, condemning what its authors worried would be a radical departure from the official US nuclear weapons policy of "only as a last resort." The 19 signatories of the document were neither weapons experts nor policy wonks; rather, all were physicists, "members of the profession that brought nuclear weapons into existence." These individuals, including six Nobel laureates, were asserting the parental rights to their brainchild as Oppenheimer, Einstein and others had once done after WWII. The nation's physicists, whether the government cares to acknowledge them or not, are increasingly willing to speak out on the "moral consequences" of the Bush Administration's hawkish maneuvers. In the past year, 1,800 physicists have attached their names to another letter denouncing the use of nuclear weapons as a general policy. This past week, the American Physical Society, representing some 45,000 physicists from around the globe, joined the chorus by noting that the use of "nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states threatens to undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty." In their statement, they further called for policy makers to "engage in a dialog with scientists." read in full… YOU CAN STOP TALKING ABOUT ALL THAT 'HYPERPOWER' CRAP NOW Back in the early days of this decade, pundits of both stripes, progressive and reactionary, loved to bloviate at great length about the U.S. as some new kind of 'hyperpower' - the progressives to engage in 'America the criminal'-style handwringing, the reactionaries to further their 'might is right' manifest destiny crapola. Well it appears that China is finally stepping up to the plate and saying 'no' to the so-called hyperpower regarding Shrubya's attempt to get another UN figleaf for the invasion of Iran. You know, that's the fundamental flaw with the whole 'might-makes-right' thing - it all works great when you're the bully with the club, but it really sucks when your erstwhile victims start dictating terms to you. Thanks Preznit Dumbass for blowing our aura of invincibility! read in full THIS TIME, IT REALLY IS ORWELLIAN Given George W. Bush’s history of outright lying, especially on national security matters, it may seem silly to dissect his words about the new disclosure that his administration has collected phone records of some 200 million Americans. But Bush made two parse-able points in reacting to USA Today’s story about the National Security Agency building a vast database of domestic phone calls. "We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said, adding "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities." In his brief remarks, however, Bush didn’t define what he meant by "ordinary Americans" nor whether the data-mining might cover, say, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, just not "millions." For instance, would a journalist covering national security be regarded as an "ordinary American"? What about a political opponent or an anti-war activist who has criticized administration policies in the Middle East? Such "unordinary" people might number in the tens of thousands, but perhaps not into the millions. read in full… QUOTE OF THE DAY: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible." -- George Orwell

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