Friday, June 17, 2005

IRAQ: ETHNIC CLEANSING

WSW: State Department cable details ethnic cleansing by US-backed forces in Iraq

US-backed Kurdish police and security units have kidnapped hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmen in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, according to a confidential State Department cable leaked to the Washington Post.

Quoting from the cable, the Post on Wednesday reported that the kidnappings, accompanied in some cases by torture and ransom demands, were part of a “concerted and widespread initiative” by the two leading Kurdish parties “to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner.”

The Kurdish parties are playing a role analogous to that of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the US and NATO military assault on Serbia in 1999. The Clinton administration intervened in the former Yugoslavia using the abuses of the Milosevic government in Serbia as a pretext.

Wahington Post:
Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.

IRAQ

ICH: The bright, shining lie

Sometimes the truth of a large, confusing historical enterprise can be glimpsed in a single news report. Such is the case in regard to the Iraq war, it seems, with the recent story in the Washington Post by Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru called"Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable". Shadid and Fainaru did something that is rarely done: they spent several days with a unit of Iraq's new, American-trained forces. (The typical treatment of the topic consists of a few interviews with American officers in the Green Zone in Baghdad, leading to some estimation of how long it will take to complete the job.) The Post story starts with the lyrics of a song the soldiers of the unit, called Charlie Company, were singing out of earshot of their American overseers. It was a ballad to Saddam Hussein, and it ran:

We have lived in humiliation since you left
We had hoped to spend our life with you

CHECK IT

DEAD SCIENTISTS

Rense: Now 88 Dead Scientists And Microbiologists

While some of these deaths may be purely coincidental and seem to pose no connection, many of these deaths are highly suspicious and appear not to be random acts of violence. Many are just plain murders.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Liberty has never come from the government.
Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.
The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

-Nadia Boulanger

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

LIES LIES LIES

byethetimes: 237 Administration Lies

''Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003

''U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003

''We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003

''Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003

DEMOCRACY

Yahoonews: Russia, US blocked NATO call for probe into Uzbek massacre: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Russia and the United States blocked NATO last week from calling for an international probe into last month's clashes in Uzbekistan, in which hundreds of people were believed killed, The Washington Post said.

US officials at a meeting Thursday of defense ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia and Ukraine discussed violence-torn Darfur.

A closing statement said security issues in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, had also been discussed without further details.

Defense officials prevailed over the State Department view that a probe was in order by arguing that an investigation could compromise US access to a military base in Uzbekistan they said was crucial in the fight against international terrorism, the daily said.

Democracy - Just for our enemies.

DOWNINGSTREET MEMO

Times: The leak that changed minds on the Iraq war

Six weeks ago The Sunday Times published the leaked minutes of a July 2002 Downing Street meeting in which Tony Blair committed Britain to war in Iraq months before parliament was consulted. They detailed a secret pledge to President George W Bush to help oust Saddam, showed that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, had warned such action could be illegal and that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, had thought the case for war was “thin”. By any standards these were fascinating revelations. Nothing, however, could have prepared us for what a worldwide impact the story would have. More than a month later it still features in the daily top 10 most popular stories on our website, with 330,000 people estimated to have logged on to read it.

Tompaine.com: Downing Street II
by Ray McGovern

Yesterday, London's Sunday Times published the text of another SECRET UK EYES ONLY briefing document prepared for senior British officials. This one was dated July 21, 2002, two days before British intelligence chief Richard Dearlove gave Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security advisers a briefing based on discussions with American counterparts in Washington. The minutes recording the discussion at the July 23, 2002, meeting, published by the Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times on May 1, 2005, included Dearlove's matter-of-fact report that President George W. Bush had decided to bring about "regime change" in Iraq by military action; that the attack would be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" (weapons of mass destruction); and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Lewrockwell: Administration's Offenses Impeachable

Let's consider an item from the news of about two weeks ago:
A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday Times. The memo was of the written account of a meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the U.S. from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." "Fixed" means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped – the product of whole cloth fabrication.

IRAQ WAR: LIES, LIES, LIES

ICH: Bombshell As Six More British Documents Leaked

Six new secret British documents have been leaked and are provided below. These were retyped from the originals to protect the source, RawStory.com has verified the authenticity .

Iraq options paper: Full text
The following, titled "IRAQ OPTIONS PAPER," was prepared and dated March 8, 200. It presents possible courses to war

British foreign secretary Straw says case for Iraq is weak
he following is purported to have been penned by the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw--U.S. equivalent of Secretary of State--concerning a possible war in Iraq. Straw indicates the case for war is weak; that the Iraq situation has remained unchanged; and that the United States would not have gone to war without September 11

Condi committed to regime change in early 2002
The following, is purported to be written by Blair foreign policy advisor David Manning, indicates that now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was committed to "regime change" in early 2002. It also outlines some problems a postwar Iraq might face

Iraq: The British legal background
The following was said prepared as an Iraq legal background for war. It is not dated

'What has changed is not the pace of Saddam's WMD programs
This memorandum, said from Blair political director Peter Ricketts and dated Mar. 22, 2002, indicates the challenges that an Iraq war would face. It indicates that it would have been carbon copied to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and President George W. Bush. "The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programmes," the document says

'The need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors'
The following is said from Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to the US from 1997 through February 2003, and dated in March of 2002. Strikingly, the document speaks of a "need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors" and suggests British intelligence and diplomacy draws a great deal on articles written by Sy Hersh in the New Yorker. It also describes a meeting with then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz

check also www.downingstreetmemo.com
The Downing Street "Memo" is actually a document containing meeting minutes transcribed during the British Prime Minister's meeting on July 23, 2002—a full eight months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. The Times of London printed the text of this document on Sunday, May 1, 2005, but to date US media coverage has been limited. This site is intended to act as a resource for anyone who wants to understand the facts revealed in this document











IRAQ WAR

Sunday Times: Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

USA: ECONOMY

Baltimore Chronicle: The US Labor Force: One Foot in the Third World
by Paul Craig Roberts

In May the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73,000 private sector jobs: 20,000 jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21,000 jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance. Local government added 5,000 for a grand total of 78,000.

Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service. With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth. The country continues to eat its seed corn.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration

911

arcticbeacon: Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition And 'Inside Job'

Highly recognized former chief economist in Labor Department now doubts official 9/11 story, claiming suspicious facts and evidence cover-up indicate government foul play and possible criminal implications.June 12, 2005

former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus,' saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7."If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling," said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.