IRAQ

Truth Dig: Iraqis Finally Unite—Against the U.S.
By Robert Scheer

You have to hand it to Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., for having the chutzpah to cite the fiercely anti-American rally that dominated the anniversary of Iraq’s fourth year of U.S. occupation as evidence that the troop “surge” is working. As opposed to Lieberman, who continues to act as Bush’s overeager lap dog, his masters in the White House knew better than to celebrate at this depressing moment.

After a weekend in which 10 U.S. soldiers were killed—four more were killed on Monday, bringing the total to 45 already in April—and the citizens of once bustling Baghdad cowered in their homes under a U.S.-imposed round-the-clock curfew, President Bush had the good sense for once to say not a word about the glorious “liberation” of Iraq. Instead, as Dana Milbank noted in The Washington Post, the president never mentioned Iraq in a 24-minute speech he gave on the happier subject of illegal immigration, nor did any of his top aides touch on the topic. The White House website ignored Iraq entirely under the heading “LATEST NEWS,” instead featuring Clifford the Big Red Dog’s romp at the South Lawn’s annual Easter egg hunt.

Meanwhile, back in liberated Iraq, the anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow was marked by only one sign of public response: In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, hundreds of thousands gathered to burn American flags and otherwise denounce the United States. “Yes! Yes! Iraq. No! No! America,” chanted demonstrators organized by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, reported the BBC. “We were liberated from Saddam. Now we need to be liberated again. Stop the suffering. Americans leave now.”

IRAQ: Divide and Conquer

Independent: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad
by Robert Fisk

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

PR WATCH: HPV Vaccination

Guardian: Vaccination campaign funded by drug firm

A campaign fronted by doctors and celebrities to persuade European governments, including the UK, to vaccinate all young girls against cervical cancer is being entirely funded by the drug company that markets the vaccine.

Sanofi Pasteur MSD, which markets Gardasil in Europe on behalf of the drug giant Merck, spent millions on what was billed as the "first global summit against cervical cancer", held in Paris on Thursday with doctors and patient organisations from across Europe.

"The "first global summit against cervical cancer" was held in Paris on March 22 and promoted the need for national vaccination programmes for girls.

The cost of the summit, estimated at millions of dollars, was "entirely funded" by Sanofi Pasteur MSD, the company with the European license to market Merck's Gardasil vaccine, reports Sarah Boseley.

Gardasil is effective against the most common strains of human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer.

The "Coalition Against Cervical Cancer" was launched at the summit, and promoted by a video news release produced by the PR firm Euro RCSG and distributed by AP Television News.

"Celebrities, doctors and journalists were shipped in from across Europe and the United States by PR agencies working for Sanofi," Boseley reports.

Diane Harper, a professor at Dartmouth medical school in New Hampshire, flagged potential concerns and described a mass vaccination program as being "a great big public health experiment."

via PRWATCH.ORG

IRAN: Secret War

ABC News: The Secret War Against Iran

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.

IRAN: Crisis

India Enews: US to attack Iran by end of April: report

The US is planning to attack Iran's nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities by the end of this month, the Kuwait-based Arab Times newspaper reported Wednesday.

Citing anonymous sources in Washington, it said that various White House departments had started preparing the political speech to be delivered by the US president later this month, announcing the military attack on Iran.

The speech will provide the 'evidence' and the 'justification' for the US to resort to the military option after failing to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions, said the report.

IRAN: Sailors Freed

Reuters: Britons head for London, ending Iran standoff

TEHRAN (Reuters) - The 15 British military personnel who had been held by Iran left Tehran on a flight to London on Thursday, ending a two-week standoff that raised international tension and rattled financial markets.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference broadcast round the world on Wednesday he had decided to forgive and free the 15 sailors and marines even though Britain was not "brave enough" to admit they had strayed into Iran's territory.

IRAN: Hostage Crisis, Britain faked Map?

Daily Mail: How I know Blair faked Iran map
By CRAIG MURRAY, Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Head of the Foreign Office's Maritime

"But what about the map the Ministry of Defence produced on Tuesday, with territorial boundaries set out by a clear red line, and the co-ordinates of the incident marked in relation to it?

I have news for you. Those boundaries are fake. They were drawn up by the MoD. They are not agreed or recognised by any international authority.

To put it at its most charitable, they are a potential boundary. It is accepted practice, where no boundary exists, to work by a rule-of-thumb idea of where a boundary, based on a median line between the two coasts, might be.

But to elevate that to a hard and fast boundary, and then base a major international incident on being a few hundred yards one side or the other, is out of order."

Read Craig Murray's blog here

Iran: US Raid led to Hostage Crisis

Independent: The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
by Patrick Cockburn

Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

IRAN: Coincidence? Iranian Hostage released

Tvnz.co.nz: Iranian hostage released in Iraq

An Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped in Iraq in February has been released and has returned home, Iran's official news agency has reported.

Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped the diplomat in February and Tehran blamed the US military for his abduction.

"Jalal Sharafi, second secretary of Iran's embassy in Baghdad, who was kidnapped in Baghdad on February 4, was released on Tuesday," IRNA reported, adding that he arrived back in Tehran where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

IRAQ: 650'000 Civilian Deaths - Lancet was right

Guardian: A monstrous war crime

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its lies

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

IRAN CRISIS

Asia Times: British pawns in an Iranian game
by Pepe Escobar

This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats. From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed.

The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It's almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.

Online Documetaries

I added a Link List for Online Video Documentaries.

Please feel free to send me more links to interesting Videos.

- FH451

IRAN: Oil Currency Switch

Int. Herald Tribune: Iran presses oil customers to pay in currencies other than dollars

BEIJING: Iran is pressuring its oil customers to start paying in currencies other than U.S. dollars and many have begun to comply, people in the oil industry here with knowledge of the practice said.

Zhuhai Zhenrong Trading, a Chinese state-run company that is the biggest buyer of Iranian crude oil worldwide, began paying for its oil in euros late last year as Tehran moved to diversify its foreign exchange reserves away from U.S. dollars. The company, which buys more than a tenth of the oil exports from Iran, has changed the payment currency for the bulk of its contract of roughly 240,000 barrels per day, the people said.

IRAN CRISIS

RIA Novosti: Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

IRAN CRISIS

AP: Blair warns of 'different phase' in Iran standoff

Prime Minister Tony Blair warned today that his government could make public evidence that a British navy crew was in Iraqi waters when it was captured by Iran, saying he was prepared to take the standoff to a "different phase" if diplomacy fails to win their release.

Iran said the 15 British sailors and marines were being treated well, but refused to say where they were being held, or rule out the possibility that they could be brought to trial for allegedly entering Iranian waters.

IRAN WAR

Rense: Operation Bite - April 6 Sneak Attack By US Forces On Iran Planned - Russian Military Sources Warn
by Webster Tarpley

The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

RUSSIA: Putin Adress at Munich Conference

The Guardian: Unilateral force has nothing to do with global democracy
by Vladimir Putin

The US has overstepped its borders in every way. We must build a new world order to ensure security and prosperity for all

The universal, indivisible character of security can be expressed as the basic principle that "security for one is security for all". As Franklin D Roosevelt said at the onset of the second world war: "When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries is in danger."

"These words remain relevant today. Only two decades ago the world was ideologically and economically divided and it was the huge strategic potential of two superpowers that ensured global security. This global standoff pushed the sharpest economic and social problems to the margins of the world's agenda. And, just like any war, the cold war left behind live ammunition, figuratively speaking. It left ideological stereotypes, double standards and other remnants of cold war thinking."

ISN: Russia: New behavior for a great power

Putin's accusations that the West is plotting to become the world's 'single master' are a taste of what is to come as Moscow asserts itself as a great power that will not allow a bipolar order.

"Yuri Sharandin, head of the Federation Council's Constitutional Law Committee, said Putin's remarks reflected the true state of global affairs and offered the international community a chance to stand back and view its own reflection.
Kremlin-connected analyst Gleb Pavlovsky said that far from being confrontational, Putin's speech would likely be received at home as "diplomatic" due to increasing anti-Americanism in Russia. Putin suggested continued dialogue but made it clear that Russia was prepared for any eventuality, Pavlovsky said."

Iran: New Proposal

Asia Times: Iran, the EU and the Swiss way out
by Pepe Escobar

The United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment is only one week away. While for the White House escalation hysteria is the name of the game, Europe once again has nothing better to do than to demonstrate its paralysis over bottles of Bordeaux.

"Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, at the sidelines of the Munich security conference this past Sunday, told Javier Solana, the European Union's top foreign-policy diplomat, that "Tehran is ready to unite all its nuclear activities in a consortium with other countries". Larijani could only have made this offer under instructions by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Solana admitted publicly that the meeting was "constructive"."

Iran: US Propaganda Debunked

Asia Times: US's smoking gun on Iran misfires
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The first major effort by the administration of US President George W Bush to substantiate its case that the Iranian government has been providing weapons to Iraqi Shi'ites who oppose the occupation undermines the administration's political line by showing that it has been unable to find any real evidence of an Iranian government role.

"US intelligence had proof of Iranian government responsibility for the supply of such weapons, the unnamed officials who briefed the media on Sunday admitted that the claim is merely "an inference" rather than based on a trail of evidence. Although it was clearly not the intention, moreover, the briefing revealed for the first time that the Iranians and Iraqis detained by US forces in recent months did not provide any evidence implicating either the Iranian government or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in the acquisition of armor-piercing explosive devices and other weapons by Iraqi Shi'ite groups."

IRAN: Propaganda Watch

AFP: Iranian bombs have killed 170 Iraq coalition troops: US

AGHDAD (AFP) - Sophisticated Iranian-built bombs smuggled into
Iraq have killed at least 170 US and allied soldiers since June 2004 and wounded 620 more, senior US defence officials have said.

The allegation, made Sunday at a background briefing in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, comes as Washington steps up its criticism of
Iran and will feed a fierce debate over relations with the Islamic republic.

"Iran is involved in supplying explosively formed projectiles or EFPs and other material to Iraqi extremist groups," a senior official from the US-led multinational coalition told journalists.

As the Shiites still do not kill U.S Soldiers en masse, Iran must be delivering his arch foe i.e the Sunni Guerilla Movement with those mean devices...c'mon get real.

IRAN: U.S Propaganda War in full Swing

AP: US: Iraq roadside bombs came from Iranian gov't

The US military has detected a significant increase in the number of sophisticated roadside bombs appearing in Iraq and believes that orders to send components for them came from the "highest levels" of the Iranian goverment, a senior intelligence officer said Sunday.

The officer, briefing reporters on condition he not be further identified, that that between June 2004 and last week, more than 170 Americans had been killed by the sophisticated bombs, referred to by the military as "explosively formed projectiles."

The officer said American intelligence analysts believe the EFPs are manufactured in Iran and smuggled into Iraq on orders from the top of the Iranian government. He did not elaborate.

Watch out for more Propaganda by unnamed intelligence/goverment officials in the next few weeks

IRAN: Brzezinski: Bush seeks pretext to Attack Iran

WSWS: A political bombshell from Zbigniew Brzezinski

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally.

Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” [Emphasis added].

This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.

IRAN: The Path to War

Toronto Sun: Fight against Iran too familiar
by Eric Margolis

While the Bush/Cheney administration seems hell-bent on provoking war with Iran, Americans appear far more alarmed by the dangers of global warming. Many of them must regret not voting for "Ecological Al" Gore in 2000.

While icebergs melt, the U.S.-Iran confrontation is getting very dangerous. The heaviest concentration of U.S. naval strike forces since the 2003 war against Iraq is concentrating off Iran.

IRAN: Nuclear Scientist assassinated by Mossad

Sunday Times: Iranian nuclear scientist ‘assassinated by Mossad’

A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.

An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

IRAQ: Sadr City Showdown?

Channelnewsasia: Tanks, troops deploy in east Baghdad

BAGHDAD : Iraqi and US forces are preparing to launch a massive crackdown in Baghdad to end the sectarian carnage pushing Iraq toward civil war as at least another 30 people died in a surge of violence.

The sustained bloodshed came after nearly 200 people were killed over the weekend, mostly in the war-torn capital.

Iraqi soldiers and National Guard police were deployed on Baghdad's main eastern highway leading to the Shiite bastion of Sadr City, a repeated insurgent target, he said.

IRAQ: Resistance downs US Helicopter

Reuters: Website shows helicopter crash

Feb. 4 - A video alledgedly showing a U.S. helicopter being shot down in Iraq has been shown on an Islamic militant website.

The U.S. military says it is adjusting its tactics in Iraq after four helicopters were shot down over the past two weeks, killing 21 servicemen and private contractors.

USA

Guardian: History is not preordained: a new cold war can be averted
watershed in international relations has occurred in recent months. Indeed, the past year may well have seen the end of an entire era in world affairs - the post-cold war period of unilateralism and missed opportunities.

When the cold war ended, avenues opened up for progress toward a better world. Major powers, particularly the United States, the Soviet Union and China, were working constructively together in the United Nations security council. International conflicts, including those in Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cambodia, were brought to an end. Nuclear and conventional arms control agreements were concluded, and democratic changes were under way in dozens of countries in Asia, Latin America and central and eastern Europe.

Occupied Territories

Washington Post: A New Chance for Peace?
by Jimmy Carter

The clear fact is that Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighboring occupied territories and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights

Occupied Territories

Electronic Intifada: Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
by Illan Pappe

On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.

"This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded."

"a must read"

Escalation

Counterpunch: Escalation Against Iran

The pieces are moving. They’ll be in place by the end of February. The United States will be able to escalate military operations against Iran.

The second carrier strike group leaves the U.S. west coast on January 16. It will be joined by naval mine clearing assets from both the United States and the UK. Patriot missile defense systems have also been ordered to deploy to the Gulf.

Bansky: Free Art

Banksy offers Hi-Res Images of his Works for free Printing

Banksy.co.uk

Everything in the shop is free. All the images can be downloaded to print or use as a desktop.

Serving suggestion:
Prints look best when done on gloss paper using the company printer ink when everyone else is at lunch

The coming Attack against Iran

Moscow News: Russian Admiral Says U.S. Navy Prepares Missile Strike on Iran

U.S. Navy nuclear submarines maintaining vigil off the coast of Iran indicate that the Pentagon’s military plans include not only control over navigation in the Persian Gulf but also strikes against Iranian targets, a former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin has told the Interfax news agency.


Jerusalem Post: Rice: UN sanctions on Iran 'not enough'

Talk of a military strike against Iran shows how serious it would be for the Iranians to continue down the path of nuclear development, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Channel 10 Sunday evening.


Raw Story: Major investment bank issues warning on strike against Iran

Warning that investors might be "in for a shock," a major investment bank has told the financial community that a preemptive strike by Israel with American backing could hit Iran's nuclear program, RAW STORY has learned.

The banking division of ING Group released a memo on Jan. 9 entitled "Attacking Iran: The market impact of a surprise Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities.


Arab Times: US military strike on Iran seen by April ’07

KUWAIT CITY: Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources. The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add. Recent statements emanating from the United States indicate the Bush administration’s new strategy for Iraq doesn’t include any proposal to make a compromise or negotiate with Syria or Iran. A reliable source said President Bush recently held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.

Online Video: "Liberal Media"

Elite Propaganda

The Myth of the Liberal Media and The Propaganda Model of News



Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky demolish one of the central tenets of our political culture, the idea of the "liberal media." Instead, utilizing a systematic model based on massive empirical research, they reveal the manner in which the news media are so subordinated to corporate and conservative interests that their function can only be described as that of "elite propaganda."

Middle East: Juan Cole

Mercury News: Misreading the Enemy
by Juan Cole

The president cannot seem to let go of his fixation on Al-Qaida, a minor actor in Iraq, and his determination to confront Iran and Syria. He still assumes that the insurgents are outsiders to their neighborhoods and that U.S. troops can chase away the miscreants and keep them out, acting as a sort of neighborhood watch in khaki. In fact, Iraq's Sunni Arab elite is playing the spoiler, and until a deal is negotiated with its members, no one will be allowed to enjoy the new Iraq.

*a must read*

Escalation in the Middle East

ICH: Escalation in the Middle East
By Rep Ron Paul

While the president’s announcement that an additional 20,000 troops would be sent to Iraq dominated the headlines last week, the real story was the president’s sharp rhetoric towards Iran and Syria. And recent moves by the administration only serve to confirm the likelihood of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

The president stated last week that, “Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity- and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria.” He also announced the deployment of an additional aircraft carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, and the deployment of Patriot air missile defense systems to countries in the Middle East. Meanwhile, US troops stormed the Iranian consulate in Iraq and detained several Iranian diplomats. Taken together, the message was clear: the administration intends to move the US closer to a dangerous and ill-advised conflict with Iran.

Saddam: He is already History

Guardian: 'He is already history'

In this remarkable dispatch, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, one of the few journalists who can still move freely about Baghdad, watches the execution with Sunni insurgents

Saddam Execution

ICH: Selective Justice Aand The Execution Of Saddam Hussein
By Gregory Elich

Hailed by President Bush as an act of "justice," former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was executed on the morning of December 30. Hussein's trial, Bush averred, had been a "fair" one.

Yet there was little that could be regarded as fair and legal about the proceedings.

The court itself was established at the Bush Administration's behest. U.S. dollars financed the proceedings, and U.S. officials provided aid, training and direct involvement.

The trial was fraught with problems. Three of Hussein's lawyers were murdered and many defense witnesses were intimidated into silence.

The trial was a U.S.-directed effort, intended to paint the occupation of Iraq in the best light. The U.S. and British invasion had, we are reminded by Western officials, overthrown this particular tyrant.

But tyrants, like war criminals, are in the eye of the beholder, and actions that might win praise and support for one man might be condemned for another. Saddam Hussein found himself on both sides of that equation at one time or another.

Unofficial Video of Saddam Hanging

After he falls through the trap, abruptly cut off in his recitation of the Muslim profession of faith, someone in the room cries "The tyrant has fallen!" and the film shows the 69-year-old former strongman swinging on the rope, his eyes open and his neck twisted at a 90-degree angle to his right.

WARNING

Some viewers may find the video disturbing. It should only be watched by a mature audience.

Saddam Takes his Secrets to the Grave

Independent: He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him
by Robert Fisk

How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal