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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of September, 2005.
Viewing Iraq War NEWS articles 1 through 66 of 66.
- The Pentagon, according to the report, is currently spending $5.6 billion per month on operations in Iraq, an amount that exceeds the average cost of $5.1 billion per month (in real 2004 dollars) for U.S. operations in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972. - The constitution that was endorsed by Iraq’s presidential council on Sunday, and is to be put to a referendum by October 15, is an outrage against the Iraqi people. From beginning to end, it has been written to advance US imperialist ambitions in the Middle East, notably long-term control over Iraq’s oil reserves and permanent military bases in the country.
- Iraqi authorities plan to put Saddam Hussein on trial within five days after the 15 October referendum on the new constitution, an official says. - U.S. forces in Iraq suffered at least 74 combat deaths in August, more than in any month since November and the third-highest total for any month of the war, according to Pentagon figures. - Beneath the giant dome of a Baghdad palace, facing his team of scientists and engineers, George Tenet sounded more like a football coach than a spymaster, a coach who didn't know the game was over. "Are we 85 percent done?" the CIA boss demanded. The arms hunters knew what he wanted to hear. "No!" they shouted back. "Let me hear it again!" They shouted again. The weapons are out there, Tenet insisted. Go find them. Veteran inspector Rod Barton couldn't believe his ears. "It was nonsense."
- The guerilla war, a strategy chosen and planned out by Saddam Hussein before his fall, is functioning perfectly. It has proven to be a "great trap" against those who have undertaken this monstrous new crusade. - For the last four years, the anti-war movement has been seriously handicapping itself with its "We support the troops but we're against war" mantra of qualified dissent. Initially, the phrasing of this message was a reflexive attempt to fit into the context of pro-militarism created by the Neocon spinmeisters who quickly established a flag-waving, "Support our troops" litmus test in the aftermath of the tragedies of September 11th. - Stampede that killed pilgrims could trigger vicious fighting between Shias and Sunnis
- In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily. - WMR has learned that the US embassy in Baghdad is checking into reports that U.S. troops in Iraq, including National Guardsmen, Army and Marine Corps Reserves, and regular military troops from Louisiana and Mississippi, have mutinied against their officers and are demanding to be immediately sent back home to help their families. - The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad. The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina.
- U.S. influence in the process of drafting a constitution for Iraq is excessive and "highly inappropriate", a United Nations official says - And the police have not yet solved the mystery behind any of the previous 55 murders of Iraqi university professors.
- Fears that lawless postwar Iraq is becoming a haven for international drug trafficking have escalated after the country's biggest seizure of heroin.
- Is it really true that Saddam Hussein "gassed his own people" while committing genocide against Iraqi Kurds, images that have become woven into the fabric of the American perception of Iraq? - Seven British soldiers entered a small southern Iraqi village and killed an 18-year-old man during a "gratuitous" and "unprovoked" attack on a group of civilians, it was alleged in court today.
- Historically, constitutions have always been written in order to consolidate the principle of nationhood, nationalism and citizenship; and establish a single identity that binds a single sovereign state together with its people. A given constitution also seeks to fulfil the aspiration of the people in terms of equality and justice. The draft constitution for Iraq, which was recently put before the parliament, came in total contradiction to the above axiomatic basics.
- The largest US military offensive on an urban area since the attack on Fallujah last year has been underway since September 2 in the city of Tal Afar, an ancient metropolis with a predominantly Sunni Muslim, ethnic Turkish population of some 300,000. - The US Defense Department failed to secure sources of radiological material in Iraq for six months after the US invasion in 2003, during which period some were looted or scattered, a congressional watchdog said.
- There are now at least 36 foreign security companies -- most from the United States and Britain -- and 16 Iraqi firms registered to operate here, according to the Interior Ministry, and as many as 50 more are believed to have set up shop illegally. Their total workforce is estimated at 25,000; many are military veterans, though levels of experience vary. As of December, contracts to provide security for U.S. government agencies and reconstruction firms in Iraq had surpassed $766 million, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
- "The Americans are seemingly bombing the city with chemical weapons." - The largest oil consignment smuggled out of Iraq took place with US approval just weeks before the April 2003 invasion, according to a United Nations report.
- "Bush was quick to criticize the UN over millions of dollars stolen from the Oil-for-Food Program under Saddam. But the CPA, as the successor to Oil-for-Food Program, aka Development Fund for Iraq, involves the swindling of billions of dollars."
- While the world has been falling all over itself to remember the victims of 9-11 and digging deep in its pockets to aid the wealthiest nation on the planet recovering from a natural disaster, a ferocious man-made onslaught on a town in northeast Iraq is being virtually ignored
- Iraq's justice minister has condemned the U.S. military for detaining thousands of Iraqis for long periods without charge and wants to change a U.N. resolution that gives foreign troops immunity from Iraqi law. - An interview with Shalal el Kaissi, who has become a symbol of U.S. torture.
- Iran’s top military commander accused the United States and Israel of planning the non-stop bomb attacks that killed thousands of civilians in Iraq. - Quoting a source from the Red Cross Organization, hospital sources indicated that two cases of rape have been confirmed, and two minor girls were assaulted and raped on the hands of the US Cavalry division which is involved in attacking the Iraqi City since the last few days.
- 75 PERCENT OF IRAQIS DETAINED LATER FREED FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE
- The 18-member National Sovereignty Committee, made up of legislators chosen in national elections in January, said the only way Iraq could achieve sovereignty was for multinational forces to leave. The report called for setting a timetable for the troops to go home and referred to them as "occupation forces," a first.
- Norway's incoming Prime Minister has told US President George W Bush that he will order Norwegian troops to leave Iraq as soon as he takes office, the NTB news agency reported. - Some U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq interrogated prisoners "using techniques they literally remembered from the movies," according to documents from a U.S. military report released by the American Civil Liberties Union.
- The report documents warnings the Bush administration received about the dangers an American invasion posed to Iraq’s cultural heritage. In February and April 2003, the International Council of Museums warned the Department of Defense of its responsibility to protect cultural property.
- On the verge of America's invasion of Iraq, four left-wing Irish Catholic activists went into the vestibule of their suburban Army recruiting center and poured vials of their blood, about four ounces each, onto the walls, windows and American flag. - - by Michel Chossudovsky - ...if Al Qaeda in Iraq, the intelligence asset, is (indirectly) controlled by the Pentagon and/or the CIA, it cannot reasonably constitute a real resistance movement directed against the US military occupation.
- The New York City Police Department forcibly broke up this afternoon's rally for Cindy Sheehan, moving in as Cindy was speaking at about 3 p.m. in Union Square. - The decision comes as ministers prepare to announce an unexpected redeployment of up to 6000 members of the 7th Armoured Brigade — the renowned Desert Rats — in the conflict zone next month. - British soldiers used 10 armored vehicles to break down the walls of the central jail in this southern city Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen, witnesses said.
- According to various sources, several British soldiers were involved in the jailbreak of two other uk soldiers arrested by Iraqi police who were wearing Arab clothing and allegedly fired on police at a checkpoint.
- "They refused to say what their mission was."
- So, the next time you read or hear about crazed "al-Qaeda in Iraq" terrorists blowing up children or desperate job applicants, keep in mind, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, the perpetrators may very well be British SAS goons who cut their teeth killing Irish citizens. - These actions are inexcusable and embarrassing; however, they should make you think. If a country like the United Kingdom is willing to commit acts of terror, what kind of false-flag operations do you think the United States is capable of? - Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. - ... the men are members of the SRR, or Special Reconnaissance Regiment. The insignia shows a Greek helmet with a sword thrust through the mouth and up through the back of the skull. - Army recruiters now have a wider pool to find future soldiers in. The Army is reaching out to a slice of America’s youth long ineligible to serve: non-high school graduates who don’t have a General Equivalency Diploma
- As the anti-war movement arrives in Washington this weekend, many top Democrats are leaving. The only Democratic officeholders who plan to address the rally are Reps. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and John Conyers of Michigan.
- The Arabic-language channel al-Arabiya has demanded the release of a reporter who has been held without charge since being arrested at a family funeral in Iraq.
- As expected, the British and the corporate press are blaming Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army for the recent troubles in Basra, obscuring the fact two SAS undercover troublemakers were caught red-handed readying a terrorist attack against Iraqi Shi’ites. - The decade of false-flag terrorism in Italy in the 1970s, clearly documented through various trials and parliamentary investigations, is attributed by most Italians to planned interference by foreign powers (mainly American) in tandem with opportunistic pro-American, home-grown national elements and various parties' that sold out to create a state of civil war and terror whereby the population would consent to a loss of civil rights and welcome the "shadow government" of powerful corporate, right-wing forces, friendly to American interests. - An Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for two British undercover soldiers who were freed after a controversial British raid in the city of Basra, an Iraqi lawyer said on Saturday.
- Protest organisers from the group Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (Answer) estimated the crowd peaked at 250,000 people, while police said attendance was probably closer to half that number. - US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel. - Not a single member of the so-called mainstream media have bothered to report the murder of an Iraqi woman in her home.
- An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt. - Sheehan and several dozen other protesters sat down on the sidewalk after marching along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests. - "That blood was already on the flag," Clare Grady testified. "We just made it visible." - Young boys run across a Baghdad garden firing plastic guns at each other in a timeless game enjoyed around the world. But in Iraq, pretending to kill each other is much more than child's play. - No reporters were allowed into the town during the military operations except for the official Al-Iraqiya channel. Military units were given strict orders not to let reporters into the city under the pretext of protecting their personal safety.
- Just a few weeks ago, a highly significant judicial decision was handed down by the German Federal Administrative Court but barely mentioned in the German media. With careful reasoning, the judges ruled that the assault launched by the United States and its allies against Iraq was a clear war of aggression that violated international law. - Few failures in Iraq 30 months after the fall of Saddam Hussein infuriate Iraqis more than the continuing shortage of electricity. - A second Iraqi journalist working for Reuters has been ordered detained indefinitely by a secret tribunal and the news agency demanded on Monday that he be released or given a chance to defend himself in open court.
- The US-led occupation forces in Iraq are widening the campaign of repression being "No" in the October 15 referendum called to ratify a draft constitution. - An international human rights lawyer who is among a group of lawyers trying to get official status to represent Saddam Hussein believes that the former Iraqi leader's legal rights have been trampled, even before his trial begins next month. - The conduct of U.S. troops in Iraq, including increasing detention and accidental shootings of journalists, is preventing full coverage of the war reaching the American public, Reuters said on Wednesday.
- The written ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit filed in 2003 by civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, over treatment of U.S.-held detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
- Not unlike the regime of Saddam Hussein and from the relative security of the U.S.-protected Greenzone, today’s Iraqi government hands out cash to visiting dignitaries. And just as before, the source of the funds and where these monies are ultimately deposited remains a mystery, according to the article from Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper.
Pages for September, 2005
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