A Citizen Of Mosul

New Iraqi Poem (in arabic)

2008-04-22T16:30:00.003+03:00

قـُلْ لي ، وموتُ العـراقـيـِّينَ ما نـَضَبا أستـَلهـِمُ الحُـزنَ ، أم أستـَلهـِمُ الغـَضَبا؟

الشاعر العراقي: عبدالرزاق عبدالواحد

قـُلْ لي ، وموتُ العـراقـيـِّينَ ما نـَضَبا أستـَلهـِمُ الحُـزنَ ، أم أستـَلهـِمُ الغـَضَبا؟
أم أسـألُ الـدَّمَ مِلْءَ الأرض ِفي وطني عـلى الشـَّوارع ِوالجـُدران ِمـا كـَتـَبــا
خَمسٌ مَضَيـنَ فـَهَل جَفـَّتْ مَلابسـُهـُم أم لم تـَزَلْ يا دَمَ الأحـبابِ مُنـسـَكـبـا؟
ولم تـَزَلْ كلُّ أثـوابِ الصِّغـارِ بـِهـا شيءٌ يـُقـَطـِّرُ م ِالأردان ِمُـنـسـَرِبـا؟
أكـُلُّ ما يَـلعـَبُ الأطفـالُ فـيـهِ دَمٌ وفـيـهِ جـُرحٌ لِحَـدِّ الآن ما قـُطـِبا؟
اللهَ يـا دَمَ أهـلــي .. كـيفَ أ ُنـْصِفـُه مِن عَثرَتي بَعدَ أن أصبَحتُ مُغتـَرِبا؟!
وكـانَ بـَيـنَ شـَـرايـيـني وأورِدَ تي يَجري فـَأبـقى بـِه ِلِلفـَجرِ مُضطـَرِبا
وَكيفَ أجزي الـعـراقيـِّينَ عن زَمَن كانـُوا بـِهِ لـِلمَعـالي صـايـَة ًوَعـَبـا!*
وَغـُترَة ً، وعـِقالا ً.. كلـَّما هـَزَجـُوا ألـقـَتْ جـَلالا ًعلى أكـتـافـِهـِم عَجَبا!
أيــَّامَ كنتُ بـِصَوبِ الكرخ ِأرقـَبُهـُم وهُم يَشعُّون في سُوح ِالوَغى شـُهُبا
والشـِّعرُ يَهمي كـَسَيل ِالنـَّارِمِن قـََلمي تـَكـادُ مِن وَقــْدِهِ الأوراقُ أن تـَـثـِبـا
كانُوا يُحيطونَ بي صَوتا ً،وأحضُنُهُ مَجـامِرا ً..أملأ ُ الـدُّنـيـا بـِها لـَهـَبـا
حتى إذا انـتـَصَروا في أيِّ مَعرَكـَة ٍ وَسـَّدتُ قـَلبي على أقـدامِهـِم حـَدِبـا!
اللهَ يـا دَمَ أهـلـي .. كـيفَ أ ُنـْصِفـُه مِن عـَثرَتي بَعدَ أن أصبَحتُ مُغتـَرِبا؟
أأكـتـَفي يا بلادي أن أقـولَ لـَهُـم وَهـُم يَموتـون ، أفـديكـُم أخـا ًوأبـا ؟
أفـديكـُمو وَلـَـدا ً شـِـلـْوا ً، وَوالـِـدَ ة ً تـُدني لـِجـُثـمانـِه ِالأثوابَ والـلـُّعـَبا
صَمـَّاءَ بـَكماءَ مِن رُعبٍ ،وأعيـُنـُها وِسْعَ السـَّماواتِ يَجري دَمعُها سُحُبا
أأنـتـَخي لـِلـعـراقـيـِّيـنَ مَحـْضَ فـَم ٍ يـَبكيهـُمو أنَّ عـالي زَهـْوِهـِم ذهـَبـا
وأنـَّهـُم بَـيـنَ مَذبـوح ٍ ، وَمُحـتـَجـَز ٍ وَهارِبٍ ، وَطـَعـيـن ٍعـِرضُهُ سـُلـِبا
أو لاجيءٍ في ديارِ الله مُحـتـَسـِـبٍ أنْ لـَفَّ مِن حـَولـِهِ أطفالـَه ُالزُّغـُبا
وَفـَرَّ يـَحـمِـلُ لـِلمَنـفى مَصائِـرَهـُم مِن بَعـدِما كلُّ شيءٍ عـِندَهـُم نـُهـِبـا؟
أأنـتـخي لـِلـعـراقـيـِّيـن مَحـْضَ فـَم ٍ يـَبكـيهـُمُ أنـَّهـُم قـَد أصبَحوا عـُصَبا
وأنـَّهـُم بـُعـثِروا بعدَ الـصَّفـا شـيـَعـا وأنـَّهـُم صُنـِّفوا بعـدَ الـوَفـا رُتـَبـا
مَجـالـِسـا ً، وَمِليشـياتٍ ، وأفـدَحُها مَذاهـِبٌ كـُلـُّهـُم راحـُوا بـِهـِنَّ هـَبا
بَعضٌ يـُذ َبـِّحُ بَعـضا ًلا أبا لـَكـُمو وَقـاتـِلـُوكـُم عليكـُم أصبَحـوا رُقـَبا
هُم يَبذ ُرونَ الوَبا..يَستـَمطِرونَ لـَهُ دماءكـُم .. ثمَّ يَسـقونَ الـدِّماءَ وَبـا
فـَيَـقـتـُلـونَ بـِذا هـذا ، وذاكَ بـِذا ويُصبـِحونَ هُمُ الأخيـارَ والـنـُّجُبا
أولاءِ أنتـُم بـَني أ ُمِّي ، بـِأيِّ فـَم ٍ أبكي لكُم والقـَوافي أصبَحَتْ تـَعـَبا؟
أفـديـكَ يا دَمَهـُم .. بـَيني وبَيـنـَهُمو بَحرٌ من المَوتِ حتى الصَّوتُ فيهِ كـَبا
وأدَّعي ، وأنا في الشـَّام ِلي وطنٌ أنـِّي غريبٌ ، وهُم في أرضِهِم غـُرَبا!
أستـَمطِرُ الحُزنَ،أم أستمطِرُ الغـَضَبا أم أترُكُ الأرضَ والجُدرانَ والتـُّرَبا
تـَحكي،كما حَدَّثـَتـْني،عن مَواجعِها وكنتُ أ ُرهِفُ سَمعَ الرُّوح ِمُنتـَحِبا
قالـَتْ تـَأمَّلْ ، فـَهـذا اللـَّونُ تـَعرِفـُهُ يـا ما مَلأتَ بـِهِ الأوراقَ والـكـُتـُبـا
لـكـنـَّـهُ الآنَ لا ذاكَ الـكـَتـَبْـتَ بـِهِ تـلـكَ القصائدَ أيـَّامَ الـعـراقُ صَبـا
فـَصالَ لـِلمَجدِ كلِّ المَجدِ صَولـَتـَه وكنتَ تأتي بـِذاكَ الـدَّمِّ مُعـتـَصِبـا
يكادُ حَـرفـُكَ مِمـَّا فـيـهِ مِن وَهـَج ٍ وكـِبريـاءٍ يـَهـُزُّ الكـَونَ مُصطخِبا
وذلـكَ الـدَّمُ يَهـمي مِن مَـفـاصِلـِه ِ ضَوءا ًيُعانـِقُ وَجـهَ اللهِ مُحتـَسـِبا
اليَوم يَنسابُ مَقـهورا ً ، نـَوازِفـُهُ تـَصيحُ بالناس كونوا مَرتعا ًخَصِبا
أسقيهِ كي تـُورِقوا في لـَيل ِمِحنـَتِكُم لا هذهِ الـنـَّارَ والأحجارَ والنـُّصُبا
قـالـَتْ لـِخـَمسـَةِ أعـوام ٍ يـُلـَبـِّدُني هذا الدَّمُ المُرُّ ،لا ألوى ،ولا شـَحُبا
كأنـَّهُ يَسـتـَغـيـثُ الكـَونَ أجمـَعـَهُ لـِكي يـُعيدَ لـَهُ الزَّهـوَ الذي ذهـَبـا
*
يا ضَوءَ عيني العراقيِّين..يا شُهُبا ً يَبقى بها اللـَّيلُ ،عُمرَاللـَّيل ِ،مُنشَعِبا
ما حاقَ يَوما ًبـِنـَجم ٍمِن مَجَرَّتـِها إلا رماهُ بـِسـَهم ِالضَّوءِ فانـثـَقـَبـا!
لكنـَّهُ الغـَدرُ،غَدرُالأهل ِيا وطني وهيَ الخيانـَة ُ..يَكفي الخائنينَ غـَبا
أنَّ الـمآسي التي رِيعَ العراقُ بـِها ما حـَرَّكـَتْ منهمو رأسا ًولا ذ َنـَبا
فـأوقـَدوا مَرَّة ًأ ُخرى مَجـامِرَهـا لـِيُصبحوا مَرَّة ًأ ُخرى بها حَطـَبا!
وَيُصبحونَ وَرَبِّ البَيت.. تـَذبَحُهُم هذي الرِّقابُ التي قد قـُطـِّعَتْ إرَبا
هـذي دماءٌ يَجـِلُّ اللهُ خـالـِقـُهـا عن أن يُرى وَجهُهُ عنهُنَّ مُحتجـِبا! *
أمـَّا بَـنـو عـَمِّنـا .. اللهُ يَحـرُسـُهُم فـَخَيرُهُم لم يَزَلْ بالصَّمتِ مُنتـَقـِبا
هُم أشعَلوا النـَّار..هُم كانوا مَواقِدَها وَمِنهُم المَوتُ نحوَ الـرَّافِـدَيـن ِدَبى
تـَعـاوَنـُوا كـُلـُّهُم كي يَذبَحوا وَطنا ً صُدورُ أبنـائِه ِكانـَتْ لـَهـُم حُجُبـا
تـَقـَوَّسـَتْ حَولـَهُم أضلاعُنا زَرَدا ً وَخـَيـَّمَتْ فـَوقـَهُم أرواحُـنا قـُبَـبـا
وكلُّ أولادِنـا كانـوا لـِمُقـلـَتـِهـِم جَفنا ً، فـَلـَو راوَدَتهـا نـَسمَة ٌوَثـَبا
فـَأجمَعوا أن يَفـُونا دَيـنَ نـَخوَتِـنا بأنْ غـَدَوا كـُلـُّهُم في ذ َبحِنا سـَبَبا
مِن كلِّ بَيتٍ تـَعـَرَّى مُخـْفـيا ًيـَدَهُ نصلٌ لِيَطعَنَ طفلا ًفي العراق ِحَبا
وكلُّ بـَيـتِ أ ُعـَيْرابٍ أسـالَ لـَنـا سَهما ًرَهيفا ًبـِجَنبَيْ طفـلـَةٍ نـَشِبا
بَلْ جَسـَّدواهُم لأمريكا خَواطِرَها فـَنـَفـَّذوا ما أحـَط ُّ المُجرمينَ أبى
تـَناهَبُوا ضِعفَ ما جَيشُ العـِدا نـَهَبا وأرعَبوا ضِعفَ ما جيشُ العِدا رَعَبا
وَنـَحـنُ نـَزعُـمُ أنـَّا أ ُمـَّة ٌعـَرَبٌ الـحـَمْـدُ للهِ كـُنـَّــا أ ُمـَة ًعـَـرَبـــا!
لـَوأنَّ وَجْهَ الحـَصى يَبتـَلُّ مِن خَجَل ٍ أعـمامُنـا لـَن تـَرى وَجها ًلـَهُم رَطِبا!
إلا دمشق..وباسم ِالنـَّاس ِفي وطني أقـولُ أَ دَّ ى بـَنـو بَشــار ما وَجـَبـا
وَما يَزالون..نـَدري الحِملُ أبهَظـَهُم فـَآثـَروا الـصَّبرَ والأخلاقَ والأدَبـا
وآثـَروا أن يَظلـُّواالأهلَ ما نـَكَصُوا وأنْ يَكونوا لـَنا في عـُسـرِنا نـَسـَبا

Health statistic of Mosul

2007-11-14T15:39:00.000+03:00

Last week, while I was doing some work, looking in the health statistic of Ninevah governorate. I found those figures, which look interesting to me.

Total inhabitance of the governorate = 2637327

The number of governmental hospitals = 14. Only 9 inside Mosul city and the other are in the related rural areas.

The total number of beds in those hospitals = 2712

There are 3 private hospitals in the city (not included in this statistic)

The statistic is for the year 2005.

The figures which interested me are:

1- Number of patients consulted the out patient departments during the year 2005= 1254905, and = 3438/day

2- Number of cases to the ERs for different causes = 314619, = 861/day

3- Free of charge operations (including the casualties from military activities) = 161 per day.

4-The number of born baby = 88916, that’s mean 243 new born baby per day,
Two third of them were in the Hospitals and one third at homes.

5-The number of deaths from different causes = 10180 per year, that is 28 per day.

6- The born/death ratio is = 9 (very high figure)

This figure, the born/death ratio is very high, in the developed country it is around 1. The cause is unknown, but I have an opinion in my mind that it may has some relation to the general situation of the city.

The "curfew", force people to stay at homes from the early evening.
The "no electricity" force people to go to bed too early.
The "no heating feul" keep the people close to each other to get some warm.

The Mystery of Mosul Dam

2007-11-11T15:54:00.000+03:00

Last week the Washingtonpost write a report about the Mosul Dam.
The report include the following

"AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq -- The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

Water rushes down a spillway at Mosul Dam. As engineers monitor the structure to determine leakage, machines constantly pump grout deep into its base.
Water rushes down a spillway at Mosul Dam. As engineers monitor the structure to determine leakage, machines constantly pump grout deep into its base. (U.s. Army Corps Of Engineers)

At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam's deficiencies.

"In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," the Army Corps concluded in September 2006, according to the report to be released Tuesday. "If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely."

The Iraqi media and other media spread the report, it made a terror in the city,, some people even planed to leave the city!. why not if a wave of 65 feet will cover the city?.

Next day, Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager, said :"There is no danger from the dam!!".
How can we believe him, while the report said " 3 trillion gallons of water" may cover the city at any time ?

I wrote to my cousin, an engineer who have enough knowledge, asking him for advice.
He wrote to me:

"I hope all is OK with you and all the family.
There is a possibility of the dam failure. I don't thing it is imminent. Also if it fails the danger to the city of mosul and Baghdad is minimal. That is because Mosul is higher than the river channel and baghdad is too far for the wave to reach it before it is flatened.
I will get the technical report and read it as soon as I can. I will let you know what I find.

Best wishes to all.

The next day he send me another e.mail:

"I have done more research about Mosul Dam. I found out that there is no danger to Mosul or Baghdad in the event that the dam has a catastrophic failure. That is a sudden total col laps. The reason that the reservoir now only holds 3 billion cubic meter. The dam was designed to hold 11 BCM.
With only 3 BCM the dam will not fail and if it fails there will be no danger of flooding.

Best wishes"

OK, now we can sleep comfortably thinking only in the home raids, roadside bombs, and bombed cars. At least those may kill only few tens of people, while the flood my kill more than 500 000 people.

One question in my mind. What is the purpose of this article? Is there any hidden objective?
May be I became very suspicious about any thing come from the American side.

warning or...?

2007-11-02T10:12:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, we received an official warning from the directorate of health.
They send us a note with a piece of paper written in the upper line "Top Secrete".

This warning came through the governorate of Nineveh from the Ministries of Intern and Health.

They inform our hospital as well as other hospitals that there are some drugs used for the treatment of some patients with Diabetes, are found to be contaminated with AIDS virus.

They give a description of the containers.
The drug is Insulin, written on the label of the container "made in Iran"

I my self prefer a thing like this should be announced publicly, and written on all the News papers Magazines and broad casted all over the country through the Radio and TV. and a signs put on every hospital and pharmacy in the country.

The question!, why this subject regarded as a top secret, has no answer till now.

Any body has an idea?.. please let me know.

An Iraqi poem....very impressive

2007-10-19T10:05:00.000+03:00

يا صبر أيوب
للشاعر العراقي عبد الرزاق عبد الواحد
(من مأثور حكاياتنا الشعبية، أن مخرزاً نسي تحت الحمولة على ظهر جمل..)

قالوا وظلَّ.. ولم تشعر به الإبلُ
يمشي، وحاديهِ يحدو.. وهو يحتملُ..
ومخرزُ الموتِ في جنبيه ينشتلُ
حتى أناخ َ ببابِ الدار إذ وصلوا
وعندما أبصروا فيضَ الدم جَفلوا
صبرَ العراق صبورٌ أنت يا جملُ!

وصبرَ كل العراقيين يا جملُ
صبرَ العراق وفي جَنبيهِ مِخرزهُ
يغوصُ حتى شغاف القلب ينسملُ

ما هدموا.. ما استفزوا من مَحارمهِ
ما أجرموا.. ما أبادوا فيه.. ما قتلوا
وطوقـُهم حولهُ.. يمشي مكابرةً
ومخرزُ الطوق في أحشائه يَغـِلُ
يا صبر أيوب.. حتى صبرُه يصلُ
إلى حُدودٍ، وهذا الصبرُ لا يصلُ!

يا صبر أيوب، لا ثوبٌ فنخلعُهُ
إن ضاق عنا.. ولا دارٌ فننتقلُ
لكنه وطنٌ، أدنى مكارمه
يا صبر أيوب، أنا فيه نكتملُ
وأنه غُرَّةُ الأوطان أجمعِها
فأين عن غرة الأوطان نرتحلُ؟!
أم أنهم أزمعوا ألا يُظلّلنا
في أرضنا نحن لا سفحٌ، ولا جبلُ
إلا بيارق أمريكا وجحفلـُها
وهل لحرٍ على أمثالها قَبـَلُ؟

واضيعة الأرض إن ظلت شوامخُها
تهوي، ويعلو عليها الدونُ والسفلُ!

وكان ما كان يا أيوبُ.. ما فعلتْ
مسعورة ً في ديار الناس ما فعلوا
ما خربت يد أقسى المجرمين يداً
ما خرّبت واستباحت هذه الدولُ
هذي التي المثل العليا على فمها
وعند كل امتحان تبصقُ المُثُلُ!

يا صبر أيوب، ماذا أنت فاعلهُ
إن كان خصمُكَ لا خوفٌ، ولا خجلُ؟
ولا حياءٌ، ولا ماءٌ، ولا سِمةٌ
في وجهه.. وهو لا يقضي، ولا يكِلُ
أبعد هذا الذي قد خلفوه لنا
هذا الفناءُ.. وهذا الشاخصُ الجـَلـَلُ
هذا الخرابُ.. وهذا الضيقُ.. لقمتُنا
صارت زُعافاً، وحتى ماؤنا وشِلُ

يا صبر أيوب.. إنا معشرٌ صُبًُرُ
نُغضي إلى حد ثوب الصبر ينبزلُ
لكننا حين يُستعدى على دمنا
وحين تُقطعُ عن أطفالنا السبلُ
نضجُّ، لا حي إلا اللهَ يعلمُ ما
قد يفعل الغيض فينا حين يشتعلُ!

يا سيدي.. يا عراق الأرض.. يا وطناً
تبقى بمرآهُ عينُ اللهِ تكتحلُ
لم تُشرق الشمسُ إلا من مشارقه
ولم تَغِب عنه إلا وهي تبتهلُ
يا أجملَ الأرضِ.. يا من في شواطئه
تغفو وتستيقظ الآبادُ والأزلُ

يا حافظاً لمسار الأرضِ دورته
وآمراً كفةَ الميزان تعتدلُ
مُذ كوّرت شعشعت فيها مسلّته
ودار دولابه، والأحرُفُ الرسلُ
حملن للكون مسرى أبجديّته
وعنه كل الذين استكبروا نقلوا!

يا سيدي.. أنت من يلوون شِعفتَه
ويخسئون، فلا والله، لن يصلوا
يضاعفون أسانا قدر ما قدِروا
وصبرُنا، والأسى، كل له أجلُ

لكنهم، ما تمادوا في دناءتهم
وما لهم جوقةُ الأقزامِ تمتثل
لن يجرحوا منكِ يا بغداد أنمُلةً
ما دام ثديُك رضاعوه ما نَذلوا!

بغدادُ.. أهلُك رغم الجُرحِ، صبرهمو
صبرُ الكريم، وإن جاعوا، وإن ثـَكِلوا
قد يأكلون لفرط الجوع أنفسهم
لكنهم من قدور الغير ما أكلوا!
شكراً لكل الذين استبدلوا دمنا
بلقمة الخبز.. شكراً للذي بذلوا
شكراً لإحسانهم.. شكراً لنخوتهم
شكراً لما تعبوا.. شكراً لما انشغلوا
شكراً لهم أنهم بالزاد ما بَخَلوا
لو كان للزاد أكّالون يا جَملُ!

لكن أهلي العراقيين مغلقةٌ
أفواههم بدماهم فرط ما خُذِلوا
دماً يمجّون إمّا استنطقوا، ودماً
إذ يسكتون، بجوف الروح، ينهملُ!

يا سيدي.. أين أنت الآن؟ خذ بيدي
إني إلى صبرك الجبارِ أبتهلُ
أيا هذا العراق الخصيبُ دما
وما يزال يلالي ملأه الأملُ
قل لي، ومعذرةً، من أي مبهمةٍ
أعصابُك الصمُ قُدت أيها الرجلُ؟!

ما زلت تؤمن أن الأرض دائرةٌ

وأن فيها كراماً بعدُ ما رحلوا

لقد نظرت إلى الدنيا، وكان دمي

يجري.. وبغدادُ ملءَ العين تشتعلُ

ما كان إلا دمي يجري.. وأكبرُ ما

سمعتُهُ صيحة ً باسمي.. وما وصلوا!

وأنت يا سيدي ما زلت تومئ لي

أن الطريق بهذا الجبِّ يتصلُ

إذن فباسمك أنت الآن أسألُهم

إلى متى هذه الأرحام تقتتل؟

إلى متى تترعُ الأثداء في وطني

قيحاً من الأهل للأطفال ينتقلُ؟

إلى متى يا بني عمي؟.. وثابتةٌ

هذي الديارُ.. وما عن أهلها بَدَلُ؟

بلى... لقد وجد الأعرابُ منتـَسَباً

ومائة ملةً في دينها دخلوا!

وقايضوا أصلهم.. واستبدلوا دمهم

وسُوّي الأمر.. لا عتبٌ، ولا زعلُ!

لقد غدا كُلُ صوت في منازلنا

يبكي إذا لم يجد أهلاً لهم يصلُ!

يا أيها العالم المسعورُ.. ألفُ دمٍ

وألفُ طفل ٍ لنا في اليوم ينجدل

وأنت تُحكِمُ طوقَ الموت مبتهجاً

من حول أعناقهم.. والموت منذهلُ!

أليس فيك أبٌ؟.. أمّ ٌ يصيح بها

رضيعُها؟؟ طفلةٌ تبكي؟ أخٌ وجِلُ؟

يصيح رعباً، فينزو من توجّعه

هذا الضميرُ الذي أزرى به الشلل؟

وأنت يا مرفأ الأوجاع أجمعها

ومعقلَ الصبر حين الصبرُ يُعتقلُ

لأنك القلب مما نحن، والمُقـَلُ

لأن بغيرك لا زهوٌ، ولا أمل

لأنهم ما رأوا إلاّك مسبَعةً

على الطريق إلينا حيثما دخلوا!

لأنك الفارع العملاقُ يا رجلُ

لأن أصدق قول فيك: يا رجلُ!

يقودني ألفُ حب.. لا مناسبةٌ

ولا احتفالٌ.. فهذي كلها عللُ!

لكي أناجيك يا أعلى شوامخها

ولن أرددَ ما قالوا، وما سألوا

لكن سأستغفر التاريخَ إن جرحت

أوجاعُـنا فيه جرحاً ليس يندمل

وسوف أطوي لمن يأتون صفحته

هذي، لينشرها مستنفرٌ بطلُ

إذا تلاها تلاها غيرَ ناقصة

حرفاً... وإذ ذاك يبدو وجهك الجـَذِلُ!

يا سيدي؟؟ يا عراقَ الأرض.. يا وطني

وكلما قلتها تغرورقُ المقل!

حتى أغصّّ بصوتي، ثم تطلقه

هذي الأبوة في عينيك والنـُبـُلُ!

يا منجمَ العمر.. يا بدئي وخاتمتي

وخيرُ ما فيّ أني فيك أكتهلُ!

أقول: ها شيبُ رأسي.. هل تكرمُني

فأنتهي وهو في شطيك منسدلُ؟!

ويغتدي كلّ شعري فيك أجنحة

مرفرفاتٍ على الأنهار تغتسلُ!

وتغتدي أحرفي فوق النخيل لها

صوتُ الحمائم إن دمع ٌ، وإن غـَزََلُ

وحين أغفو... وهذي الأرض تغمرُني

بطينها... وعظامي كلُها بلل

ستورق الأرضُ من فوقي، وأسمعُها

لها غناءٌ على أشجارها ثملُ

يصيح بي: أيها الغافي هنا أبداً

إن العراق معافى أيها الجملُ!

Please read this .

2007-08-25T07:47:00.000+04:00

Imad Khadduri (Free Iraq)wrote at August /23/ 2007 an interesting article, will you please read it.

Change of Address

2007-08-21T18:30:00.000+04:00

Dear reader

My blog has been "hacked" by vandals, the URL has been change without my knowledge to a new address; "moslawi9.blogspot.com"

The old URL address opens the site of the hacker now.
It is an example of freedom of speech brought to us with the occupation.

The blogger team advice a impossible steps to regain the real address. So I will accept the change temporarily till I create a new blog with different title and URL address.

Update

The bolog is back at it's rightful URL at http://moslawi.blogspot.T com

Thanks to all who help to restore it back.

With profits like these, Why should any One consider ending the war?

2007-06-27T16:30:00.000+04:00

Here are four minutes of video which the Republican war mongers succeeded in having banned from a Congressional hearing that took place earlier this month. It tells the story the mainstream "news" media has been expert at NOT telling:

Why does the war in Iraq go on and on?

One reason is that it is immensely profitable for the Bush family and its friends.

These four minutes from the documentary "Iraq for Sale" were specifically banned by from being shown during a Congressional hearing by concerted action from Republican politicians.

See the Video

News from Al-Mosul website News Desk

2007-06-11T17:04:00.001+04:00

Another professional assassinated in Mosul and the toll of death rises in Nineveh.
Monday 11 June 2007

12:45
A body of an American soldier was found slaughtered in Mosul.
According to eyewitnesses the body of an US soldier was seen slaughtered today Monday 10/6/2007 near Mosul Al-Jadeeda district near to Abou A-Yassi roundabout (circle) west of Mosul. US forces imposed a seal on the area blocking all roads leading to the scene.
09:38
Car bomb at Tel Kaif Garage
A car bomb went off this morning 10/6/2006 inside Tel Kaif Garage, Mosul. Large number of civilians were killed and wounded.

08:55
Assassination of Mr Khairuldeen Sabri, Manager of Al-Mosul Branch of the Central Bank of Iraq in Mosul.
The manager of the Central Bank branch in Mosul, Mr Khairuldeen Sabri, was assassinated this morning with two of his aids in front of his residence which is situated in Al-Hadbaa' district in Mosul.

08:48
Katyusha rocket
A Katyusha rocker fell on a house in Bab Al-Saraei region in Tellaafer. A man and his wife were killed and 5 more were injured.
An explosive device in Tellaafer
An explosive device went off on a police patrol in the Al-Ayadhiya region neat Tellaafer wounding 2 policemen.
Two civilians murdered in Mosul on the night of 9/6/2007
Two civilians killed last night (Sunday 9/6/2007) in Al-Quds district, left bank of Mosul by unknown gunmen.
For the latest news from Mosul, Iraq click

http://www.almosul.org/000_Mosul_Observer.htm

AL-Mosul website News Desk
Courtesy of Iraqiyoun News Agency, Mosul

This and the previous two posts are just a simple example about the current situation in Mosul.

Mosul is a very safe city in comparison to Baghdad.

Baghdad is living it's worst days since the invasion of Holako.

Baghdad is a smashed city, the title of an email sent to Dahir Jamail from one of his friend after visiting Baghdad. He describe the situation in better English than mine.

"Baghdad is a smashed city..."

Below is an email I have just received from my close friend and translator Abu Talat. While he has fled Baghdad with his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is left of his former life (his car, belongings from his house, etc.) before returning back to Syria. His note is instructive as to the current living conditions in the capital city of Iraq. Here is the full text of his message:

"Habibi…

Baghdad is a SMASHED city…no roads to drive on…most of them are closed off by concrete obstacles with concertina wire. In addition, the presence of the Iraqi military, who cover their faces with black masks and hold their guns in such a way that when you see them you will definitely be afraid that they will shoot you.

The shops in most of the area I went to see are closed. I asked one of the shop owners I know, 55-year-old Abu Fadhil, since I heard that his shop was robbed. I found his door closed and locked and he was nowhere to be found.

Later, on my way to Sadr City, I found that two of the three roads which lead all the way from south to north Baghdad are either partially or totally closed in some places. You still remember the highways in Baghdad…well now most of them are closed, or at least fenced off with obstacles, yet they say there is some progress in the security situation inside the city! Everyday two or three cars explode across Baghdad, killing big numbers of civilians.

When I returned to my neighborhood of al-Adhamiya, I couldn’t get in unless the soldiers checked my ID and my car, even though the guards are from the same neighborhood and they know me personally. But they had to check it to ensure that no car bombs might happen. Nevertheless, daily mortars shell my neighborhood and those are out of control, despite this concrete wall placed by the Americans which now surrounds our neighborhood. Despite all that they do, they cannot bring security to our small neighborhood.

Needless to say, Baghdad has been changed into THE CITY OF GARBAGE. You can find it everywhere. You can smell the stench of dead bodies wherever you go.

Talking of electricity, there is now only one hour daily. That’s it. From where we’re staying in the city center, in Bab al-Muadham, I can see from the balcony that people sleep nearly naked on their rooftops because it is so hot and there is no electricity to run fans or air conditioners. Thank God that there are two large generators that maintain electricity in our building.

Everyday by 2-3 pm the buildings where we are staying are closed so that noone can leave or enter. That way it is kept secure, and this is how it remains until the next morning.

As far as my family life in this condition, we are as though we are in jail from 2-3 pm until the second morning where the doors are opened at 7 am.

My son goes to the hospital to work, but for the last two days he finds it without any running water. [His son works in Baghdad Medical City, the largest hospital in Iraq] For the last 2 weeks, as he told me, the hospital has been without any air conditioning and almost without patients, although it’s the biggest hospital in Iraq.

My sons wife, who is also a doctor, has to go to another hospital just to try to assist since there is a drastic lack of Gynecologists. She stays in her hospital for three days continuously before my son picks her up with his car on the fourth day to bring her home, in order to insure her safety so she doesn’t have to take a bus or taxi.

As for my daughter, she has not passed out the doorway of this apartment where we are staying for the last week except for one time for some work she had to accomplish.

My wife left here only once, when she went to her job (which she has been on leave from since we left to Syria) in order to apply for a full year vacation. Thank God she got it.

As for me, I found my car ruined, so I had to repair it. For that I called the mechanic to come to my home and repair it, since I couldn’t take the car to him since all the mechanics shops are closed and there is no place to have a car repaired. All of those shops are totally closed.

When I saw the mechanic he said, “We cannot live anymore, and there is no job we can find.”

Dahr, this short letter gives you just a glance of the current situation in Baghdad. With the next letter I will tell you some more."

What you feel about this?, is it the price of liberty?, of democracy? or the price of the imported freedom?

More news from Mosul

2007-06-10T18:55:00.001+04:00

Every day there are new news, more explosion, more killing and less security.

No body know what will be the end of this situation.

The following news were taken from official and neutral source.

Saturday 9 June 2007
17:56
Iraqi forces killed two suicide bomber and blow up the car carrying them
An official source in Nineveh Police announce that the Police succeeded in killing two suicide bombers and destroying their car which was loaded with a bomb today Saturday 9/6/2006. The car was targeting the headquarters of the Third Regiment of the Fourth Division of the Iraqi Army in Al-Intisar district, west of Mosul. The civilian casualties reported from the explosion was 2 dead, 7 injured.

A car bomb driven by a suicide bomber exploded today Saturday 9/6/2007 in Al-Karama district roads, east of City of Mosul near Abdul-Rahman Al-Ghafiki School. Several casualties and considerable material losses were reported.

12:23
The Iraq Flag flies on North Kurdistan once again.
According to informed sources at the Iraqi Turkish borders that the Local Kurdish Authorities has brought down the Kurdistan Flag and replace it with the Iraqi Flag. It has been thought that this was an attempt by the Kurdish Authorities to regain Iraq's support to stop Turkey from penetrating deep into the Kurdish territories. Turkish Authorities had doubted whether the Iraqi Flag will ever be flown again in the Norhtern Iraqi territories.

11:54
Two explosive devices exploded in Mosul today 9/6/2007
One of the devices exploded on s on a National Guard patrol unit near the railway in Bab Sinjar, right bank of Mosul. The score of the casualties in not known yet as a result of the security seal of the area. A second device exploded on a police patrol without causing any casualties.

Mortar attack on Aden (Eden) road crossings in Mosul today 9/9/2007
A mortar attack was reported today in Mosul. The missile fell on Eden crossings, left bank of the City killing 2 people, one of whom was a policeman. Six more were injured in the attack among whom were to policemen.

News from Mosul.

2007-06-08T23:31:00.000+04:00

There are always bad news, I hesitate to report them but as I have no new post since long time, I decided to post some of the recent news.

Wednesday 6 June 2007
20:42
Three bodies found by the police in Mosul
Nineveh Police found today 3 bodies in different parts of Mosul. One was for an Army Lieutenant and the others were unidentified.
Two civilians injured in MosulTwo civilians were wounded accidentally from as a result of random shooting in Al-Arabi district, north of Mosul according to a source from the Accident and Emergencies Hospital in Mosul.
Mortar missiles falls of Mosul Radio & TV Station
Four mortar missiles fell today on the building of Mosul Radio & TV Station in Naynawa (Nineveh) district of Mosul. No information available yet on the number of casualties and the extent of the damage caused by the attack.

Thursday 7 June 2007
18:38
Four dead bodies found in Mosul today 7/6/2007
Brigadier Saied Ahmed AL-Jubouri, Director of Information in Nineveh Police stated that Police found today 7/6/2007 4 bodies
One of the bodies was of a policeman and was found in Al-Intisar District, east of Mosul. The other 3 were unidentified and were found in Al-Hay Al-Sinaie, south east of Mosul

11:04 and follow up at 18:32
Two car bombs in Rabi'a District, Nineveh. Five British nationals dead
Two car bombs exploded on the district of Rabie'a 120km north west of Mosul on the Syrian borders. The first bomb targeted the District's police directorate and the second a US military barracks. Preliminary number of casualties in this accident was estimated to be 8 injured civilians, according to Brigadier Mohamed Al-Waggaa', Commander of Nineveh's Police in Mosul.

A later statement by Brigadier Al-Waggaa', stated that 5 British nationals workings of a foreign construction contractors were killed in the car bomb
were killed in theemployee of a foreign construction contactors.

Saher Al-Haidari, a woman journalist killed in Mosul today 6/6/2007
Saher Al-Hidari, a journalist was killed in Al-Hadbaa' district, north east of the City of Mosul. The worked for Voices of Iraq News Agency.

Friday 8 June 2007

12:16
Explosion wounds 4 policemen and one civilians in Mosul today 8/6/2007
In a statement by Brigadier Abdul Kareem Al-Jubouri, Head of Operations in Nineveh Police, an explosive from a device in Al-Arabi district, targeted a joint Iraqi Army/Police patrol unit north of Mosul wounded 4 police personnel and a civilians.

As you see there is no 24 hour pass without a blood shed in the city, the same is at all regions of Iraq.
There is a very important question: Why all these happened in the past four years and not before?
Does the democracy which brought to us by the occupation causes this?
Does the freedom (US style) is the cause?
Are all the Iraqi people terrorist?
Or there is another cause for this chaos?

In my opinion, the occupation is the only cause, and the chaos will not end unless the last foreign soldier leave Iraq.

Sick Strategies For Senseless Slaughter

2007-05-25T17:34:00.000+04:00

Sick Strategies For Senseless Slaughter: "www.globalresearch.ca"

Sick Strategies For Senseless Slaughter The murderous fools are not trying to end the war - they're trying to keep it going as long as they can.
By John Kaminski skylax@comcast.net 5-25-5

The cat is out of the bag now. It happened quite by accident, as most revelations do. And it is seen by most of the world as the most revolting of the American/Israeli atrocities in the past few years, although it's hard to prioritize that claim because of the level and frequency of barbaric acts that are committed on a regular basis by those affluent automatons who call themselves the good guys. Yet everyone but the comatose American populace - blinded by its Orwellian media and stupefied by its demented diet of physical and mental poisons - can see it. So permit me to spell it out for those cowardly people who say they're living in the freest country on Earth, but absolutely refuse in their silent ignorance to see the blood they're spilling. No country that condones deliberate torture for any reason can ever be trusted. The first hint came in Imad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.net on May 11. The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on the Web, www.uruknet.info, which I try to read every day, and www.globalresearch.ca, which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking and more analytical news. I consider these two sites essential to keeping up with the real news of the world, and highly recommend that you monitor them, too. Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq. Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can't be understood by straightforward explanations. I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite, it makes no sense. Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship. Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue to insist. So who's doing all these demented deeds? As if we didn't know .... Khadduri's report went like this: "A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour. At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: 'OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work". The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated "hideous attack by foreign elements". The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along with the driver's license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told to go to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the way to the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives." If this were the only example of this type I heard, I might have let it pass as just a story. But it wasn't. There was also the sorry tale of the Iraqi man who saw American soldiers plant a bomb which shortly thereafter exploded, and when he said so out loud for all to hear, he was hauled away, never to be seen again. This story was reported on arguably the most authentic and riveting source of news from Iraq, the heart-rending "Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq," which is compiled by someone known only as Riverbend or Iraqi Girl . Again, recommended reading. She recounts, "the last two weeks have been violent .... The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations - bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard. The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics - several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later - apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind. But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher's shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman. I didn't think much about the story - nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper - hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away. The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs - they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir. In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then the wails begin - the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris. Then there was this one. On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes. Haj Haidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad. A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers. The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point. He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes. He immediately recognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier. Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car. Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear. He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago. Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head. He thanked God for giving him the courage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb. "They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or 'insurgents' or who call themselves the 'Resistance'. I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tell you the story. They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint the Resistance after failing to defeat it militarily. Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobody but God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir." The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined in Frank Morales' piece on globalresearch.ca: "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi 'Insurgents' - and Global Terrorism," by Frank Morales clearly demonstrates how Donald Rumsfeld said he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did. Morales writes: Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence. We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others. Nor have we ever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitated one of the great slaughters in history. Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a real person or just another bin Ladenesque boogeyman. Nor if the al-Qaeda website which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run by the CIA. Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion and destruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City. The purpose of all these despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans have been doing all along to the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it. There is not now nor ever was an Arab terror threat. That was all invented by Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and Warren Buffett. These people are all traitors to not only their countries but to humanity in general, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately. And so should the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by their complicity or their ignorance, support them. The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understand how the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience, thrives on war and profits from the misery of others. The neocon murder menace has been for months ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we need to invade Iran - which some predict will happen in June - and just this week, rumors of troop movements in the Caribbean and lockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur an imminent invasion of oil-producing Venezuela. The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding. By our silent complicity and cowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior in the name of profit, we are all accessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society, not to even mention the extinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to be safe and secure in the homes of our choice. So now that you know, what are you going to do about it? You know if you do nothing, these same things will one day happen to you. John Kaminski is a writer whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the world. These stories have been compiled into two anthologies, "America's Autopsy Report" and "The Perfect Enemy." In addition, he has written "The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001," a booklet written for those who still believe the government's cynical lies about that tragic day. All three books are available at http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Invasion has raised ranks of America's foes

2007-05-03T16:06:00.000+04:00

May 01, 2007

Doug Bandow: Invasion has raised ranks of America's foes

The first step to fighting anti-Western terror is to get out of Iraq

AS the conflict in Iraq has worsened, most Americans have come to realise that the war was a mistake. Many Australians feel much the same way. There were no weapons of mass destruction to seize. There was no operational relationship with al-Qa'ida to disrupt. There was no cohesive, democratic Iraqi nation to reclaim.

Nevertheless, President George W. Bush claims: "To protect our citizens at home, we must defeat the terrorists." Prime Minister John Howard has taken much the same position. Yet it was the invasion of Iraq that unleashed the domestic insurgents and foreign terrorists he now says we must suppress. Indeed, the war is making the problem of terrorism worse across the world.

Too many Americans apparently believe that Osama bin Laden and others hate them because they are so free and prosperous. Others ascribe to Islamic jihadis an ideology of world domination akin to that of Soviet communism.

If these arguments were true, Islamic jihadis should be targeting the entire world, hitting Europeans especially hard since they are even more morally licentious than Americans. But as historian Thomas E. Woods Jr notes: "I don't see anyone flying planes into Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower." Indeed, in one of his videotapes, bin Laden scoffed: "Contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom ... why don't we strike Sweden?" Because the US, not Sweden, is an interventionist superpower, routinely acting well beyond its own borders.

The Madrid and London bombings (as well as the Bali bombings in Indonesia, largely directed against Australia) responded to decisions by other nations to join the US.

Terrorism became a common tactic throughout the 20th century, used to achieve specific geopolitical objectives. The Islamists who have focused their transnational attacks on the US and its allies are no different.

To state the obvious in no way justifies terrorism. But it is important to understand why terrorists act as they do. Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst, points to the US's earlier military presence in Saudi Arabia, support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, sanctions against Iraq and support for a variety of corrupt, undemocratic Arab governments. Because of these policies, bin Laden said in his October 2004 video: "It entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy the towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted, and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children."

Many of the most celebrated strikes against US forces were retaliation for US intervention. For instance, the 1983 bombing of the marine corps barracks in Lebanon followed US support for the minority Christian government in a civil war, in which US warships bombarded Muslim villages. Other attacks, such as 9/11, were a response to broader US Middle Eastern policies.

Unfortunately, the invasion and occupation of Iraq have made the problem worse. Daniel Benjamin of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, warns that "the invasion of Iraq gave the (jihadis) an unmistakable boost".

London's Royal Institute for International Affairs, or Chatham House, similarly concludes that the Iraq conflict "gave a boost to the al-Qa'ida network's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising".

What the US Government has done does not justify terrorism but it has helped motivate people to become terrorists.
The US and its allies must kill and capture those who would kill Americans. But, in the longer term, grievances should be addressed when possible and, more important, not created in the first place.
The continued occupation of Iraq guarantees more terrorists and more terrorism across the world.

To defeat terrorism, the US (and its coalition partners) must withdraw from Iraq.

Doug Bandow, a former special assistant to president Ronald Reagan, is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire (Xulon Press, 2006)

IVAW Will Launch New Strategy to End the War in Iraq

2007-04-27T11:02:00.000+04:00

An e-mail from Kelly Dougherty - IVAW

Dear IVAW Supporter,

IVAW Will Launch New Strategy to End the War in Iraq

Dear IVAW Supporter,

After months of intensive planning and training of over one hundred of our members nationwide in a series of strategy retreats, IVAW is preparing to launch our “Bring the War Home” campaign – a series of actions that will galvanize the national movement to end the war and convince everyday Americans that to support the troops, we must end the war now. IVAW members, along with the invaluable help of our allies, have the unique power to debunk the myth that to support the troops, you must support the war. We will be organizing within the military and veteran communities to send a message loud and clear: Members of the military are not supporting the war in Iraq. Our “Bring the War Home” campaign consists of the following elements:

IVAW will support active duty men and women who refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. We will put ourselves on the line to protect these brave men and women of conscience and use the media to dramatize their decision not to go to Iraq. The Pentagon estimates that there are 40,000 soldiers who have gone AWOL since September 11th, 2001.
IVAW members will bring our truth-in-recruiting campaign to military recruiting centers, schools and college campuses around the country to let potential recruits know about the realities of military service and the Iraq war. Thousands of recruits don’t know they can change their mind even after signing their military contract.
IVAW will kick off a summer bus tour visiting military bases and their surrounding communities to recruit new IVAW members and inform servicemen and women about their rights and ability to oppose the Iraq war. A 2006 Zogby poll of the troops in Iraq showed 72% supported withdrawal within a year.

We Found a New Office – Your Financial Support Desperately Needed!

IVAW is growing faster than ever. We receive on average 10 new members each week, and we have developed 4 new IVAW chapters in a little over one month. IVAW held 4 strategy retreats between January and early April and are preparing to launch a compelling series of highly publicized actions this summer. And all of this from a tiny 9 foot by 19 foot shoebox of an office! As you can imagine, it has become physically impossible for our 4-person team to function effectively in these tight quarters. We have finally secured a new larger office that can accommodate our need for growth, but we won’t be able to make this move without knowing we have the funds to pay rent. Please click here to make a donation today to support this critical need.

IVAW is Growing Fast – 4 New Chapters in 5 Weeks!

We are happy to announce the formation of our first chapter on an active-duty military base – Ft. Drum, NY. Other recently formed chapters include Philadelphia, PA; Burlington, VT; and Denver, CO. This brings the total number of IVAW chapters to sixteen.

IVAW Members Use Art to Tell Their Stories

Last weekend, IVAW members participated in the Warrior Writers project which brings together Iraq vets to do creative writing about their military and war experiences. The project was launched at the opening of an art exhibit at Green Door Studio in Burlington, VT which featured an exhibit of work by and about IVAW members. For photos and interviews from this event, check out this link: www.sevendaysvt.com/features/2007/peace-talks.html.

Up-Coming IVAW Events, April 27-29

This weekend, there will be two events in Watertown, NY near Fort Drum featuring IVAW member and Marine Corps veteran, Liam Madden, organizer of the Appeal for Redress and Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq, The Logic of Withdrawal. For more information on these events, go to: www.ivaw.org/ivawevents.

Also, IVAW has been invited by the band, Rage Against the Machine to appear at the Coachella Music Festival, where Rage will re-unite for the first time in seven years. IVAW will speak from the stage and have a table set up in Rage’s tent, reaching a potential audience of the over 180,000 people expected to gather for this annual three-day event in Indio, CA.

As always, I thank you for your on-going support. As friends and allies of IVAW, you are the ones truly supporting the troops.

Warmest Regards,

Kelly Dougherty
Former Sergeant, Army National Guard
Executive Director
Iraq Veterans Against the War

What you think about these pictures?

2007-04-01T21:55:00.000+04:00

No comments

2007-03-21T22:25:00.000+03:00

"It Struck Me Then That We, The American Soldiers, Were The Terrorists"

2007-03-10T21:04:00.000+03:00

Feb 7, 2007 By JOSHUA KEY. Excerpt from The Deserter’s Tale, published by House Of Anansi

Joshua Key, 28, was a poor, uneducated Oklahoma country boy who saw the U.S. army and its promised benefits -- from free health care to career training -- as the ticket to a better life. In 2002, not yet 24 but already married and the father of two , Key enlisted. He says his recruiting officer promised he'd never be deployed abroad, but a year later he was in Iraq.

Only 24 hours after arriving, as Key recounts in The Deserter's Tale (Anansi), he experienced his first doubts about what he and his fellow soldiers were doing there:

In December 2003, Key went home on a two-week leave. He never returned to Iraq. Instead, Key went into hiding. The following March, he and his family crossed the Canadian border at Niagara Falls.

****************************************************

I was scared out of my wits that first day in Ramadi.

Our own air force had just finished bombing these people, but as soon as we got out of our vehicles we began patrolling their streets, on foot. With nearly 100 lb. of weaponry, equipment and clothing on my back, I was about as mobile as a cow.

It was just my platoon, 20 guys, walking single file through streets full of Iraqis. I could not stop thinking that anywhere, at any time, some half-starved sniper on a roof could have taken me out in no time flat. Iraqi kids surrounded me in swarms, hands out, asking for water and food.

I kept hearing the last words (my wife) Brandi said to me before I flew out: "Don't you let those terrorists near you, Josh. Even if they are kids. Get them before they get you."

I was awakened at 3 a.m. that first night and told to get my ass up quickly because in one hour we were going to raid a house full of terrorists.

Capt. Conde and some sergeants showed me and my squad mates a satellite photo of a house and a drawing of the layout of the inside. Our assignment was to blow off the door, burst into the house, raid it fast and raid it good -- looking for contraband, caches of weapons, signs of terrorists or terrorist activity, then rounding up the men and getting out damn fast. The longer we stayed in any one location, the longer somebody would have to put us in the sights of a rocket-propelled grenade or lob mortars at us.

I had no idea what to expect.

Would I charge through the door, only to be blown to bits by a grenade? Would somebody with an AK-47 knock my Oklahoman ass right back out that door?

Would some six-year-old terrorist with two days of gun training be waiting to put me in his crosshairs?

The minutes ticked on, and I wanted the hour to speed forward so we could get on with it. One or two guys did push-ups to pump themselves up. I borrowed Mason's portable CD player and bombed out my eardrums to the beat of Ozzy Osbourne. It got me going.

High and ready for action. I checked my watch, wished it would accelerate, and stuck some dip -- Copenhagen, bourbon flavor -- behind my lip. You can't manage a cigarette when you've got an M-249 automatic weapon on your arm. So dip was best. Makes your mouth black as sin, and rots the roots right out of your gums, but dip was my nicotine hit of choice going into that raid.

I committed our instructions to memory. I knew the angles of the house, what door I would help blow down, how many floors were in the house, and who would do what when we busted inside.

I would be third in the door, which means I was the second most likely to get shot if anybody had a mind to take us down, and I'd head to the left. Always, for every raid, I would be third in, heading left.

I gripped my M-249. Yes, it could belt out 2,000 rounds a minute but only in theory. You couldn't really hold your finger down that long. When you were blazing away like that, the bullets turned the barrel as hot as Hades. And if you held your finger down too long, it would warp the barrel.

It took thirty seconds for Jones and me to put the charge of C-4 plastic explosive on the door.

Then we dashed around to the side of the house so we wouldn't blow ourselves up. You'd be fried meat if you were anywhere near the explosion. I set off the blast, and then the six of us charged in. Jones went first -- that skinny, red-haired Ohio boy was always hot to trot. With Jones leading the way we burst into the house, armed to the hilt. Kevlar helmets, flak jackets, machine guns, combat boots, the whole nine yards.

I'd never been inside an Iraqi's house before.

We charged through a kitchen. I had been told by squad leader Padilla to check everything, so I even opened the fridge. Perhaps, I thought, I would find guns or grenades hidden inside. No such luck.

In the fridge, all I saw was a bit of food. In the freezer I found big slabs of meat, uncovered. No wrapping. No plastic. Frozen, just like that. We ran into a living room with long couches, one along each wall.

In this room with the couches we found two children, a teenager, and a woman. We also found two young men in the house. One looked like a teenager and the other was perhaps in his early 20s -- brothers.

We hollered and cussed. I spat dip on the floor and screamed along with the other soldiers at the top of my lungs. I knew they didn't understand, but I hollered anyway.

"Get down," I shouted. "Get the f--k down. Shut the f--k up."

They didn't know what "get down" meant, so we knocked the two brothers to the floor, face down.

We put our knees on their backs, pulled their hands behind them, and faster than you can bat an eye we zipcuffed them.

Zipcuffs are plastic handcuffs that lock on tight. They must have bit something fierce into those young men's skin. There was no key, nothing -- the only way to get them off was to slice them with cutters.

We pushed the brothers outside, where 12 other soldiers from our platoon were waiting.

The Iraqi brothers were taken away to an American detention facility for interrogation.

I don't know what it was called, and I don't know where it was. All I know is that we sent away every man -- pretty well every male over five feet tall -- that we found in our house raids, and I never saw one of them return to the neighbourhoods we patrolled regularly.

Inside, we kept on ransacking the house.

The more obvious it became that we would find no weapons or contraband, the more we kicked the stuffing out of the house.

We knocked over dressers, sliced into mattresses with knives, kicked our way through doors, raiding the three bedrooms on the second floor, then raced up to the third floor.

We turned over everything we could and broke furniture at random, searching for contraband, weapons, proof of terrorist activity, or signs of weapons of mass destruction.

We found nothing but a CD.

Soldiers initially said it showed proof of terrorist activity, but it turned out to have nothing on it but a bunch of speeches by Saddam Hussein.

Once we had everybody outside the house and had done our initial job of ransacking, another squad took over inside.

They kept raising hell in there, breaking and turning over more furniture, looking for weapons that we might have missed.

Outside, under a carport, I was assigned to watch the women and children. We weren't arresting them, but we weren't allowing them to go anywhere either. The family members couldn't go back inside, and they couldn't wander off into the neighbourhood. They had to stay right there while we tore the hell out of their house.

A girl in the family -- a teenager -- started staring at me. I tried to ignore her.

Then she began speaking to me. Inside, when we had been screaming at her and the others, I'd assumed that nobody understood a word of English. But this young girl spoke to me in English, and her eyes bored holes right through me.

She was skin and bones, not even 100 lb., not yet a full-grown woman, but something about her seemed powerful and disturbing.

I feared that girl, and I wanted to get away from her as fast as I could, but it was my job to stay right there and make sure she didn't move. I had my weapon ready. She was wearing a blue nightgown and had a white scarf covering her hair. She had no veil, so I could see her face perfectly. Her eyes were coal black and full of hatred.

In English, she asked me, "Where are you taking my brothers?"

"I don't know, Miss," I said.

"Why are you taking them away?"

"I'm afraid I can't say."

"When are you bringing them back?"

"Couldn't tell you that either."

"Why are you doing this to us?"

I couldn't answer that.

I hoped she would not raise a fuss. I didn't want her to start screaming, which could attract the attention of my squad mates. One or two, I feared, would be more than happy to use a rifle butt to knock out her teeth.

I hadn't been in Iraq more than 24 hours and already I was having strange feelings.

First, I was vulnerable, and I didn't like it.

Even with all these soldiers and all this equipment, I knew that anywhere, at any time, any Iraqi with a gun, a wall to hide behind, and one decent eye could pick me off faster than a hawk nabs a mouse.

Second, with hardly one foot into the war, I was also uneasy about what we were doing there. Something was amiss.

We hadn't found anything in this girl's house, but we had busted it up pretty well in 30 minutes and had taken away her brothers. Inside, another squad was still ransacking the house. I didn't enjoy being stuck guarding this girl under the carport, in the cool April air before dawn in Ramadi.

Her questions haunted me, and I didn't like not being able to answer them -- even to myself.

Busting into and ransacking homes remained one of my most common duties in Iraq. Before my time was up, I took part in about 200 raids.

We never found weapons or indications of terrorism.

I never found a thing that seemed to justify the terror we inflicted every time we blasted through the door of a civilian home, broke everything in sight, punched and zipcuffed the men, and sent them away.

One raid was far worse.

It was a handsome two-storey house and quite isolated.

As usual, I put the charge of C-4 explosives on the door and we blew it in. As we rushed into the house, women were staggering out of their rooms. Three teenage girls screamed when they saw us.

Some of my squad mates grabbed them and held them at gunpoint, and the rest of us ran through the house. We found no men at all, just six more women in their 20s and 30s. The guys in my squad couldn't find a thing, not even any guns -- and it seemed that the more incapable they were of locating contraband, the more destructive they became. They smashed dressers, ripped mattresses, broke cabinets, and threw shelves to the floor.

Outside I found Pvt. 1st Class Hayes with a woman under an empty carport. He pointed his M-16 at her head but she would not stop screaming.

"What are you doing this for?" she said.

Hayes told her to shut up.

"We have done nothing to you," she went on.

Hayes was starting to lose it. I told her that we were there on orders and that we couldn't speak to her, but on and on and on she bawled at Hayes and me.

"You Americans are disgusting! Who do you think you are, to do this to us?"

Hayes slammed her in the face with the stock of his M-16. She fell face down into the dirt, bleeding and silent. The woman lay still on the ground. I pushed Hayes away.

"What are you doing, man?" I said to him. "You have a wife and two kids! Don't be hitting her like that."

He looked at me with eyes full of hatred, as if he was ready to kill me for saying those words, but he did not touch the woman again.

I found this incident with Hayes particularly disturbing because during other times I had seen him in action in Iraq, he had showed himself to be one of the most level-headed and calm soldiers in my company. I had the sense that if he could lose it and hit a woman the way he had, any of us could lose it too.

Then something happened that haunts my dreams to this day.

All the women were led back inside the house and our entire platoon was ordered to stand guard outside it. Four U.S. military men entered the house with the women. They closed the doors. We couldn't see anything through the windows. I don't know who the military men were, or what unit they were from, but I can only conclude that they outranked us and were at least at the level of first lieutenant or above.

That's because our own second lieutenant Joyce was there, and his presence did not deter them.

Normally, when we conducted a raid, we were in and out in 30 minutes or less. You never wanted to stay in one place for too long for fear of exposing yourself to mortar attacks.

But our platoon was made to stand guard outside that house for about an hour. The women started shouting and screaming. The men stayed in there with them, behind closed doors. It went on and on and on.

Finally, the men came out and told us to get the hell out of there.

It struck me then that we, the American soldiers, were the terrorists.

We were terrorizing Iraqis.

Intimidating them.

Beating them.

Destroying their homes.

Probably raping them.

The ones we didn't kill had all the reasons in the world to become terrorists themselves.

Given what we were doing to them, who could blame them for wanting to kill us, and all Americans?

A sick realization lodged like a cancer in my gut.

It grew and festered, and troubled me more with every passing day.

We, the Americans, had become the terrorists in Iraq.

Amazing question!

2007-02-06T16:47:00.001+03:00

It was a long time since I wrote my last post.
I fed up from the daily events, or I may say, the blood shed. But we used to the sounds of explosions and to the smell of smoke, the sound of bullets is not differ
from the sound of the jammed traffic. In addition to the very very bad electricity, not more than 2 hours a day, the neighborhood generators stop working because there is no fuel. To make it short, I decided not to write any more till the situation change to the better.
A question from one of the readers make me change my mind. The question is:
((it always amazes me when America gets blamed for suicide bombers, kidnappers, people beheading innocents, murdering militias, et al.))

My answer is that:(( before the occupation (i.e. before the american came to us), ther were no suicide bombers, no kidnappers, and no murdering militias. All these came with the occupation, and America failed or didn,t want to control the situation.
America is the only responsible for the blood shed in Iraq. and the Iraqis will never forgive it for that.))

Changing place to safer one

2006-09-24T12:49:00.000+04:00

Hi my friends

I know it was a long time since my last post, but I am very busy those days.

I closed my own clinic because of the security situation in the neighborhood, and I am changing the place to more secure and safer one, in addition the new place is close to my house and needs no transportation, and therefore no extra gasoline expenses.

I am in the process of rebuild the place to make it more suitable for clinic. I promise you to post again when get enough time.

News from Mosul.

2006-08-17T23:09:00.000+04:00

On 15 August, I took my Daughters Najma, and Aya's mother with me to the hospital, in order to make the medical examination for Najma prior to present her paper to the college.
About 10 AM we hear a loud sound of explosion, but we can check each other by cellphone we didn't know where the explosion.
On returning home we have to cross the bridge to the other side of the city, we did so, but ofter that we face a block in all the roads leading home.

I became an expert in the side ways and detours, but all the efforts failed to take us home. We took our lunch in an popular restaurant and then spend the time in one of my brothers house. The problem was with my older daughter who is still breast feed her second baby Mo'men, three months old Aya's brother.

Later and before the dark we managed to go home.
The reason for this problem is in the following report.

15 August 2006 via INA

- A major explosion in Mosul this morning just before noon. This was the result of a car bomb in a trailer driven by a suicide bomber before noon today targeting the headquarters of the Kurdish National Union in Al-Ta'meem district east of Mosul. This resulted in heavy casualties with some 20 to 30 people injured in addition to a large number of dead. The severity of the explosion, which hit a nearby petrol station, led to the collapse of several nearby buildings in the neighborhood, hence the large numbers of bodies, many are still under the rubble. At least 17 cars were burnt whilst queuing at the petrol station, queues now are a normal occurrence given the fuel crisis which has been biting hard over the last few months in Mosul .

Next day I went to the hospital as usual, but this time all the five bridges of Mosul were closed in front of vehicles, so we have to cross the bridge on feet, it was very hot day and the distance was to long but we did it.
Again there was a reason for that and it is in the following report.

16 August 2006

- Several parts of the right bank of Mosul witnessed arm confrontation between gunmen and the police this morning. The clashes lasted about 2 hours in Al-Amel, Mosul Al-Jadida, Souq Al-Ghanem and other areas. A source in Nineveh police constabulary stated that the local authority closed the 5 bridges across Tigris in Mosul as a precaution. The police was able to kill 5 gunmen and arrest 6 others in addition to destroying several of the gunmen cars and confescating large amount of arms and ammunitions.
- In Al-Nabi Younis (Profit Jona) district, left bank of Mosul, an explosive device went off targeting an American Convoy. The area was soon surrounded by US forces sealing the area, hence the inability to know the number of causalities and the amount of damage caused.

Today afternoon A Doctor whose clinic are opposite of mine, are kidnapped in the middle of the day from his clinic. The kidnapper put him in the rear luggage box of the car and run a way, fortunately the door open accidentally while the car was very fast, he jump from the car and injured his head and may be some of his ribs.

Those are not a typical days of our life, but samples of what the Americans Freedom and Democracy brought to us.

Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?

2006-08-07T10:28:00.000+04:00

What exactly is being defended? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state?

By Oren Ben-Dor
(Israeli citizen teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy at University of Southampton)

Published: 26 July 2006
The Independent

As its citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defense. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Maharaja, as justifying this claim.

While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.

What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.

Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.

The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible.

Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.

Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the
destabilization that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews.

To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.

Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas - the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause - the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence.

The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis - all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.

The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon, which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.

Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak.

In Hebrew, the word "elem" (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word "almut" (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.

A courageous voice of reason and sanity from Israel!

2006-08-05T12:32:00.000+04:00

I know and always said that a goodness is present in the soul of men what ever their natinal or ethnic differences.

I read this article in the Internet, I found it deserve to be read by other as it throw some light on the darkness of the mind of some people.

Morality is not on our side

By Ze'ev Maoz

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the
North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth
must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective
memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without
distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole
purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are
on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah
"started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international
border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our
side.

Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and
occupied its capital in 1982. In the process of this occupation, we
dropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground and sea, while
wounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000
civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to
a conservative estimate. The majority of these civilians had nothing
to do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war.

In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the mass
flight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on each
occasion. There are no exact data on the number of casualties in these
operations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, we
bombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103
civilians. The bombing may have been accidental, but that did not make
the operation any more moral.

On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, we
kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held these
two people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as
"negotiating chips." That which is permissible to us is, of course,
forbidden to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah crossed a border that is recognized by the international
community. That is true. What we are forgetting is that ever since our
withdrawal from Lebanon, the Israel Air Force has conducted
photo-surveillance sorties on a daily basis in Lebanese airspace.
While these flights caused no casualties, border violations are border
violations. Here too, morality is not on our side.

So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider current
affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas
into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force
bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli?
The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages,
alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilian
population. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a
result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon,
the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with
Hezbollah, is more than 300.

Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations,
bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilian
population into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physically
harming civilians. The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal -
namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN Security
Council Resolution 1559 - is an attempt at political blackmail, and no
less than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim of
bringing about a prisoner exchange.

There is a propaganda aspect to this war, and it involves a
competition as to who is more miserable. Each side tries to persuade
the world that it is more miserable. As in every propaganda campaign,
the use of information is selective, distorted and self-righteous. If
we want to base our information (or shall we call it propaganda?)
policy on the assumption that the international environment is going
to buy the dubious merchandise that we are selling, be it out of
ignorance or hypocrisy, then fine. But in terms of our own national
soul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybe
we will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will make
some diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage,
and we have no special status.

The writer is a professor of political science at Tel Aviv university.

A Refuge That Became a Place of Death

2006-07-31T09:43:00.000+04:00

A Refuge That Became a Place of Death

Killings at Qana - Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone From Yahoo! News

2006-07-31T09:15:00.000+04:00

Killings at Qana - Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone From Yahoo! News

U.N. council: 'Shock' over Lebanon deaths - Yahoo! News

2006-07-31T09:12:00.000+04:00

U.N. council: 'Shock' over Lebanon deaths - Yahoo! News

STATEMENT OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (BAMA), LONDON 26th July

2006-07-28T23:59:00.000+04:00

The British Arab Medical Association (BAMA), a society for Arab Doctors
and allied professionals in the UK, express their utter condemnation of
the Israeli attacks against Lebanon, and abhor the continuous
destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure and the bombardment of its
civilian districts.

We extend our heartfelt support to those hundreds of families who have
lost their loved ones, or been made homeless, through this mindless saga
of destruction.

The social impact of the devastation of whole neighbourhoods, schools
and the dislocation of communities is of great concern to us, and we
call upon the governments of all nations to demand a halt to Israeli
aggression to put an end to this tragedy.

The Middle Eastern governments should bear their share of responsibility
in ensuring stability and provide comprehensive logistic support to
achieve peace for Lebanon, Iraq and the region in general.

BAMA believes that the region needs a genuine pragmatic initiative to
stop the region from sliding further back into a social and political
wilderness - Iraq and Sudan were the tragedy of yesterday, sadly it
seems Lebanon's turn today, who is next?

Lebanon presents us all with a social and humanitarian tragedy, as much
as a political dilemma. It is clearly a human rights issue, where
population are denied their basic human rights by such relentless aerial
bombardment of civilian districts.

It is imperative that western governments give outright condemnation of
the actions of Israel's government and give moral and economic support
for Lebanon to recover from this wholesale destruction.

President of BAMA and Council members

Depleted Uranium, again but now in Lebanon

2006-07-28T23:51:00.000+04:00

Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens Requiring Immediate Action
By President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert

Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD.
former Director, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium project
July 26, 2006

The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon will result in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east. Israeli tank gunners are also using depleted uranium tank rounds as photographs verify.

Today, U.S., British, and now Israeli military personnel are using illegal uranium munitions- America's and England's own "dirty bombs" while U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, and British Ministry of Defence officials deny that there are any adverse health and environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material - depleted uranium.

The use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the world and all governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use. I must demand that Israel now provide medical care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU contamination.

U.S. and British officials have arrogantly refused to comply with their own regulations, orders, and directives that require United States Department of Defense officials to provide prompt and effective medical care to "all" exposed individuals. Reference: Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93, Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004, and section 2-5 of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. Israeli officials must not do so now.

They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive Contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48: "Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin- TB 9-1300-278: "Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., JULY 1996). Specifically section 2-4 of United States Army Regulation-AR 700-48 dated September 16, 2002 requires that:
(1) "Military personnel "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE" (radiologically contaminated equipment).
(2) "Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible."
(3) "Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment" and
(4) "All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48" (Note: Maximum exposure limits are specified in Appendix F).

The previous and current use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment, and releases of industrial, medical, research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposures. Therefore, decontamination must be completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations.

The extent of adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones but includes facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured or tested including Vieques; Puerto Rico; Colonie, New York; Concord, MA; Jefferson Proving Grounds, Indiana; and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Therefore medical care must be provided by the United States Department of Defense officials to all individuals affected by the manufacturing, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions. Thorough environmental remediation also must be completed without further delay.

I am amazed that fifteen years after was I asked to clean up the initial DU mess from Gulf War 1 and over ten years since I finished the depleted uranium project that United States Department of Defense officials and others still attempt to justify uranium munitions use while ignoring mandatory requirements. I am dismayed that Department of Defense and Department of Energy officials and representatives continue personal attacks aimed to silence or discredit those of us who are demanding that medical care be provided to all DU casualties and that environmental remediation is completed in compliance with U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. But beyond the ignored mandatory actions the willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is illegal (http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf) and just does not even pass the common sense test and according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is a dirty bomb. DHS issued "dirty bomb" response guidelines, http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html
, on January 3, 2006 for incidents within the United States but ignore DOD use of uranium weapons and existing DOD regulations. These guidelines specifically state that: "Characteristics of RDD and IND Incidents: A radiological incident is defined as an event or series of events, deliberate or accidental, leading to the release, or potential release, into the environment of radioactive material in sufficient quantity to warrant consideration of protective actions. Use of an RDD or IND is an act of terror that produces a radiological incident." Thus the use of uranium munitions is "an act or terror" as defined by DHS. Finally continued compliance with the infamous March 1991 Los Alamos Memorandum that was issued to ensure continued use of uranium munitions can not be justified.

In conclusion: the President of the United States- George W. Bush, the Prime Minister of Great Britain-Tony Blair, and the Prime Minister of Israel Olmert must acknowledge and accept responsibility for willful use of illegal uranium munitions- their own "dirty bombs"- resulting in adverse health and environmental effects.

President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert should order:
1. medical care for all casualties,
2. thorough environmental remediation,
3. immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who demand compliance with medical care and environmental remediation requirements,
4. and stop the already illegal the use (UN finding) of depleted uranium munitions.
References- these references are copies the actual regulations and orders and other pertinent official documents:

http://www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html
http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html
http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html
http://cryptome.org/dhs010306.txt
Photo by David Silverman (Getty Images ) Image 71440735 http://editorial.gettyimages.com

A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War - by Paul Craig Roberts

2006-07-21T22:54:00.000+04:00

A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War - by Paul Craig Roberts

From Israel To Lebanon

2006-07-21T22:50:00.000+04:00

From Israel To Lebanon

Take No Prisoners

2006-07-05T22:53:00.000+04:00

Take No Prisoners

AP Wire | 06/30/2006 | U.S. troops accused of killing Iraq family

2006-07-05T22:16:00.000+04:00

AP Wire | 06/30/2006 | U.S. troops accused of killing Iraq family

American Freedom in Iraq

2006-07-05T22:03:00.000+04:00

7/02/06-CFL ALERT:

US TROOPS IN NEW WAR CRIME SCANDAL.

Five American soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Regiment are being investigated for raping an Iraqi woman and then murdering her and her family members in the city of Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad, this past March. U.S. officials say that this appears to be a premeditated crime.

*A U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity says that the soldiers had not been attacked by insurgents and that they studied the family for a week before carrying out the attack. The soldiers apparently entered the home, raped the woman, set fire to her body and then killed three other family members, one of the victims was a small child. Please take a moment to send our prewritten letter to your elected officials asking them to support the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Remind your elected officials that their support for the war also translates into support for human right violations and war crimes against Iraqi civilians—which is what we are now claiming we removed Saddam Hussein from power for. Tell your elected officials that you are morally outraged by the crimes being perpetrated against Iraqi civilians and that you believe security at home will be compromised as long as we continue to occupy Iraq. To read more:

U.S. troops accused of killing Iraq family
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/14939611.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

SPECIAL REPORT: Haditha, My Lai and the Media
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002764163

U.S. losing terror war because of Iraq, poll says
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/national-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/06/29/20060629-A3-00.html

==============================
Citizens for Fair Legislation
www.cflweb.org

The Security Situation in Iraq

2006-06-24T21:08:00.000+04:00

No body can believe what is going on in Iraq those days.

100 workers kidnapped together during their way home after they finished their work, next day at the same place and the same time and from the same company 150 workers kidnapped !!!

I wonder, who have such capability of kidnapping more than 200 persons?, where they put them? And how they hide them? What they feed them? And how?
I can't think of who did it, unless he is as powerful as a government or work for the government. But why the government kidnapped it's own workers!?

Other strange thing that a General Director in the Ministry of Health kidnapped inside the Ministry building!!, isn't that suspicious?

A prof. from the University of Mosul went for some business to the Ministry of Intern. He shot dead at the front door of the ministry when he is in his way out!!

I will not mentions the number of bodies discovered every day at the streets of the main cities. Or the organized killing of the Doctors, the Scientists and the University lecturers.

I don't want to mention the explosions and the bombs targeted the Mosques and the shopping markets of both Sunnis and Sheeis.

All these and more happened at the hearing and the sight of the American troops which should be responsible for security in this occupied country.

YOU American if you can't control the security situation, leave now and let us solve our problems in our own way.

It will never be worse than the current situation.

Three years of occupation and despite the daily statements of the US official about the progress in the security, the condition progress from bad to worse.
Every day is worse than the previous.

Can any body imagine how the US super power together with the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police and the allied forces from so many sources are all failed to control the chaos in this country.

This country was controlled in peace and security by the power of single Dictator.
Don't believe that this dictator killed people in his 35 years of control more than what was killed in 3 years of freedom and democracy under the US controls.

Back to Iraq

2006-06-24T20:23:00.000+04:00

Amidst all the events in Iraq now, I feel it is complete irresponsible to write about the beauty of France and neglect the hill Of Iraq.

For those who want to see the picture of France and read my impression about it. They can find it here

Chateau De Versailles

2006-06-13T22:37:00.000+04:00

In Versailles, we started our training program at the site of the GE company, 20 min. from our hotel by car.
Every day we left hotel about 7:30 am to reach the place before 8:00 am. The workstation started at 8:00 am till 5:30 pm with a break for the lunch at about 12:00 am. when we left the company we have to call for the taxi company to take us to the hotel, usually we reached the hotel about 6:00 pm or later. Surprisingly all the shops in the city closed at 7:00 pm except the restaurants.
After 7:00 pm we have only the park of the Chateau to go and enjoy the beautiful gardens and the fresh air. Even the park closed at 9:00 pm. when we go to our hotel for the diner which last at least two hours, and then went to sleep.
At the first weekend we visited the Chateau from inside, It is unbelievably wonderful.
I will show you some pictures of it.

More pictures.

2006-06-13T22:00:00.000+04:00

Versailles ... a beautiful city

2006-06-10T21:29:00.000+04:00

When we reached Versailles, we were tired and disappointed from what we faced in the airport.
But this feeling gradually disappeared when we see the beauty of this city. It is small city with narrow streets and old buildings, but it's spirit was so wonderful that make any body feel as he is in another world.
Our hotel was few minutes from the famous palace of Versailles, they called it chateau De Versailles.

This is a picture of the Chateau De Versailles showing the left wing only, my camera is so small and I cant put it all in one picture and show the details at the same time.

The Chateau have a fantastic garden, with plenty of statues scattered here and there, they definitely represent some historical tales, but we don't know those tales, we just enjoy our selves with the calm and beauty of the park.

This is a view of very small part of that magnificent park

A statue in the middle of a lake

I have a lot of pictures at the park and inside the palace.
I will try to show them to you in the next posts.

More pictures.

2006-06-10T21:20:00.000+04:00

A visit to France .... cont.

2006-06-09T22:54:00.000+04:00

The plane take off at its scheduled time, we reached the Amman international airport, in Jordan. the company correspondent, Ahmad, (is his name) was with us, he took us to the Hyatt grand hotel. We reached the hotel at 7:00 pm we were very tired, as we were on our feet from 9:00 am, and without lunch except the food served in the plane.

After we took a rest we gathered in the lobby of the hotel, Ahmad invite us for a dinner in one of the restaurant in the hotel, it was Thailand restaurant, serve special Asian food, mainly sea food. For the first time in my life I ate Shrimp and other Sea food, for the truth some of it was very delicious. we went to sleep at 12:00 pm to be ready for the next trip to Paris at 5:00 am.
We were ready at time, Ahmad took us to the airport, but unfortunately, he couldn't get the Visa to accompany us to Paris.

He gave us the tickets, the reservation in the Hotel in France and the phone number of the responsible person in Paris who suppose to meet us at the airport.
The direction of the plane was toward the west, so we gain two hour, the time difference between Iraq and France. The trip last 4.5 hours.
We reached Paris, there were a heavy rain in Paris at that time, the airport was over crowded. but we didn't found any body in the airport from the company, we keep looking for any sign or any thing to know if there is any one to take us to our hotel. All of us were in Paris for the first time, no one of us speak french, which was a big problem their.

After an hour or so of fruit less waiting, we called the number Ahmad gave us, when we informed that no body came to meet us because it was Sunday and it is weekend, but we get confirmation that the hotel reservation is OK, and we have to take taxis to the hotel by ourselves, and cars will be waiting for us next morning to take us to the company.

We took 3 taxis, gave the address to the drivers, they took us to our hotel which was in the city of Versailles. it take about an hour to reach the hotel in that rainy day.

We are now in France, Versailles is one of the most beautiful city I have ever seen.

to be continue

A visit to France

2006-06-04T23:02:00.000+04:00

The Iraqi Ministry of Health bought a Gamma Cameras for the Nuclear Medicine centers in Iraq.
One of these Cameras was for Mosul Nuclear Medicine.
The Cameras we bought are up to date and need special skills and knowledges to operate it, and to interprete the results.

They chose two doctors from Mosul to train on the usage of this Camera in the country where it has been build (France), I was one of those two doctors.

April 30/2006 was the date in which we suppose to take the plane to Paris. the company correspondence in Iraq supposed to take care of the visa and the plane reservation. He took our passport for this purposes.

He sent me an e mail to be in Baghdad in a well known place where other doctors from Baghdad are gathered, to take special cars to take us to the airport. our date was at 9:00 am on 4/30/2006. our plane take of at 3:30 pm.
The extra time was to overcome any difficulties or problems in the road to the airport.

As you may know, the road from Mosul to Baghdad is not save, and not always easy to reach Baghdad. so we decided to go to Baghdad one day in advance just in case there is any problem in the road.

We arrange a taxi with a professional driver to pick us at 6:00 am just after the end of the curfew.
At 6:30 we were in the taxi ready to go, but all the bridges of the city were closed for no clear reason.
We stayed in the car waiting for the bridge to open till 11:00 am where they allow the cars to cross the bridge, but one at a time, we cross the bridge and so we pass the first obstacle, as we knew later the bridges closed again few minutes later for the rest of the day.

At the city of Baiji, mid way to Baghdad there was an explosion and the main street was closed, we forced to take a detour in an unpaved side way, after we left Baiji by few tens of kilometers there was a three American vehicle closing the high-way and all the car are forced to drive in the farms where there is no distinct way, just find a way to drive your car through and go on. It take about 45 minute in such a miserable sandy way.

After that the road to Baghdad was open with no problem except when we met an American high-way patrol, they move very slowly and don't allow any car to pass them, cars wait till they took an exit or change their way to move in their ordinary speed. We reached Baghdad about 6:00 PM. It was a 12 hours trip,usually take only 4 hours.

The next day we were all ready at the specified place , but a little problem arise, our passports are still in the French embassy for the Visas, the company correspondence suppose to pick the visa in the morning and meet us at 9:00 am. but he didn't show up. at 11:00 am we get him at his mobile phone, he told us that there were fire-shoot at the vicinity of the embassy and the road to the embassy is closed and he couldn't reach it, at 1:00 pm he call us saying he reached the embassy and waiting there for the passports and Visas. at 2:00 pm he arrived with the Taxis to take us to the airport.

We reached the Airport safely and completed the necessary arrangement and took our seats in the plane just at time.

Thanks God we are now in our way to Paris.

To be continued

I am back

2006-06-04T22:50:00.000+04:00

Hi every body

I am back. I am writing from mosul now after a 33 day out,in France.
It was a an afficial bussiness visit, but there were a lot of fun and social activities.
I am preparing my self for a new posts describing my impression about what I saw there.
It is difficult to describe all the beuty and charm of France in few words, but I will try.

One month break

2006-04-29T21:41:00.000+04:00

Hi every body.

I will be out of Iraq for official bussiness for one month (May).
During this month I don't know if I could find time for further posting or for moderation of comments.

Don't be worry about me, I will be back at the beginning of June. Till then, good bye, and have a good time

The new Iraq

2006-04-23T09:52:00.000+04:00

On Saturday,April 21, 2006. The Iraqi parliament meet to announce the new head of the parliament, the new president and the new prime minister.

There were voting for these positions!, although they announce in advance the names!.
The end result end with a clear sectarian partitioning of the posts!

The head of the parliament is Sunni Arab with two deputies, one Kurd and the other Sheii Arab!.

The president, a Kurd with two deputies, one Sunni Arab and the other Sheii Arab!

The prime minister is A Sheii Arab, he is; Nory Kamil Al-Ali, "AKA Jawad Al-Maliky"
He is from the same party and the same list as the previous PM Al-Jaafari.
He promised the parliament and the Iraqis that he will form the new government depend on qualification not on sectarian factors, that sound very good for me, and for all the Iraqis also, but we look foreward to see it on the ground in the form of acts not just a nonsense promises that stay as "ink on paper" as the well known Arabic proverb said.

All what we can do today is just wait and see, it is only 30 days till the new government will announce and every thing will be as clear as the Sun.

The U.S. Military is in DU Denial

2006-04-17T19:47:00.000+04:00

The U.S. Military is in DU Denial
by Susu Jeffrey

"My name is John Marshall. I was exposed to DU (depleted uranium). I am 100 percent disabled and I am pissed-off. In fact, I was advised by a couple of my counselors not to do this [interview] because I'm so angry with the government -at the VA system, at the way I'm treated and other veterans are treated. It's very impersonal. They don't give you any time. They ask us to go fight their wars, do the dirty work and then they can't take care of you."

Most people don't believe the U.S. has been poisoning its own troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or they've heard about uranium "tipped" bombs-like fingernail polish painted on the outside of a shell casing. On the contrary, these are solid uranium core projectiles.

"I got a thank you (letter) from some lieutenant colonel. 'Thank you for serving our country. We express our deepest gratitude but we believe you were one of these men who were exposed to depleted uranium either through shrapnel or inhalation of dust.'

"I'm 35, I take 17 medications, I've had cancer-lymphatic cancer, Hodgkin's disease-Lennert's lymphoma was the initial diagnosis-immune system."

Mission Accomplished

2006-04-04T11:22:00.000+04:00

I recieved the following article by e-mail from a friend.
It deserve reading.

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools
THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
by Greg Palast
for The Guardian

20 March 2006

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation." O.I.L.
How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing
Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States rdering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other
words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was an Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

**********

It makes me laugh

2006-03-26T21:19:00.000+03:00

There is a proverb in Arabic means "The worse catastrophe is which makes you laugh"
You should read this and laugh.

Someone Should Tell Bush Why We Went to War

By Scott Galindez
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 22 March 2006

After yesterday's presidential news conference, I am beginning to wonder if George W. Bush knows why we went to war with Iraq. He should just come clean and admit that we went to war because Dick, Wolfie, and Rummy told him to.

Three years into the war and the President still can't answer the question of why we went to war in the first place. It is perfectly clear now why he can't meet with Cindy Sheehan. Imagine him saying to Cindy, "after September 11th, we realized killers could destroy innocent life." Hmmmm, we have a president who didn't know that prior to 9/11?

Imagine him telling Cindy that we invaded Iraq because "the Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained...." Someone also needs to tell George that the Taliban probably wanted Saddam out of power too; bin Laden did. Of course he knows the Taliban were in Afghanistan, doesn't he?

When he finally got to Iraq, he rewrote history again. "We worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it" said Bush.

The world didn't agree, that's why there was no vote at the UN authorizing the war. I seem to remember inspectors in Iraq until we warned them that it wouldn't be safe for them to remain. I also want to know what Iraq was supposed to disclose if they had no WMD?

Please, one of you neo-cons, brief the President on the real reason for the war in Iraq, so the next time a reporter asks him a real question he doesn't embarrass us again.

Excerpted from the transcript of yesterday's press conference:

Helen Thomas: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet - your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth - what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil - quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

The President: I think your premise - in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist - is that - I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect -

Helen Thomas: Everything -

The President: Hold on for a second, please.

Helen Thomas: - everything I've heard -

The President: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We - when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq - hold on for a second -

Helen Thomas: They didn't do anything to you, or to our country.

The President: Look - excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained -

Helen Thomas: I'm talking about Iraq -

The President: Helen, excuse me. That's where - Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences -

Helen Thomas: - go to war -

The President: - and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

Scott Galindez is the Managing Editor of truthout.org.

Another Collateral Killing. More pictures

2006-03-22T23:17:00.000+03:00

I am sorry to publish those pictures.
But I think all American citizens should see how their brave soldiers defeated the terrorists Iraqi children.

Another Collateral Killing

2006-03-16T11:16:00.000+03:00

Precise Collateral Damage .... المحتلون الأمريكان يـَفنون عائلة كاملة مع أطفالهم

This news item is now reported by the Associated Press:

"An unidentified relative mourns over the bodies of children, reportedly killed during a U.S. raid, as they arrive in a hospital in Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, March 15, 2006. Eleven people, most of them women and children were killed when a house was bombed during a U.S. raid north of Baghdad early Wednesday, police and relatives said. The U.S. military acknowledged four deaths in the raid that they said netted an insurgent suspect (emphasis added) in the rural Isahaqi area, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital. (AP Photo/Bassim Daham)
Iraqis Say U.S. Raid Kills 11 People March 15, 2006

This news item has a picture gallery of this massacre. Can the U.S. military count? or are they in their usual low level mode of 'counting' killed U.S. soldiers, instead of declaring the true figures of dead soldiers?
.
يـُعرض مع هذا الخبر بالإنكليزية عدة صور للضحايا الأطفال. يقول الجيش الأمريكي بأن عدد الضحايا هو أربعة فقط، بضمنهم "المشتبه" فيه. ألا تستطيع قوات الإحتلال الأمريكية العــدّ بالنظر المـُجرّد الى هذه الصور؟ أم أنها على سجيتها في "التقليل" من العدد المـُعلن لضحايا جنودها الذين يـُقتلون على أيدي المقاومة؟"ـ
.
The Iraqi version:

"Amer Fiadh, the Councillor of Al-Ishaqi (pronounced Al Is-haqi) District in Salah Al-Din province said that the American forces have executed eleven people belonging to one family, including a six-months old baby and four children who were less than eleven years old.
Fiadh further stated today that these people were executed in front of their home, after having their hands tied behind their back and summarily shot. After their execution, American helicopters then strafed the family's home levelling it to the ground."
The Councillor of Al-Ishaqi District claims that the American forces have executed eleven members of one family (In Arabic) March 15, 2006
.
ـ" قال عامر الفياض مدير ناحية الاسحاقى فى محافظة صلاح الدين العراقية ان القوات الامريكية اعدمت أحد عشر شخصا من عائلة واحدة من بينهم طفل عمره ستة اشهر واربعة اطفال لا تتجاوز اعمارهم 11 سنة.ـ
وقال الفياض فى تصريح اليوم ان الاشخاص اعدموا امام منزلهم بعد ان اوثقت القوات الامريكية ايديهم واطلقت النار عليهم مضيفا ان المروحيات الامريكية قصفت بيت العائلة بعد عملية الاعدام ودمرته تدميرا كاملا ."ـ
مدير ناحية الاسحاقي يقول ان القوات الامريكية اعدمت 11 شخصا من عائلة واحدة
ـ15 آذار، 2006

Iraqis Say U.S. Raid Kills 11 People

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press WritersWed Mar 15, 6:30 PM ET

A U.S. raid north of the capital Wednesday killed 11 people — most of them women and children, said police and relatives of the victims. The American military confirmed the attack but said only four people died — a man, two women and a child.

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed said the attack near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, involved U.S. warplanes and armor that flattened a house in the village of Isahaqi.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said the roof of the house had collapsed, three cars were destroyed and two cows were killed.

The 11 victims were wrapped in blankets and driven in three pickup trucks to the Tikrit General Hospital, about 45 miles to the north, relatives said.

AP photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives. The victims were covered in dust with bits of rubble tangled in their hair.

The U.S. military said the target of the raid was a man suspected of supporting foreign fighters of the al-Qaida in Iraq terror network, and he was captured.

"Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," said Tech. Sgt. Stacy Simon, a military spokeswoman. "Coalition forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets."

Riyadh Majid, who identified himself as the nephew of Faez Khalaf, the head of the household who was killed, told AP at the hospital that U.S. forces landed in helicopters and raided the home early Wednesday.

Khalaf's brother, Ahmed, said nine of the victims were family members who lived at the house and two were visitors.

"The dead family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children," he said. "The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death."

The Sadr city massacre ... A Black Operation by the American Intelligence?

2006-03-14T14:22:00.000+03:00

Free Iraq an Iraqi blogger, published this post on March 13.
It contains very important facts. It may shed more light on those who are benifited from the Iraqi civil war.

The Sadr city massacre ... A Black Operation by the American Intelligence?

مجزرة مدينة الصدر .... هل هي من عمليات فرق موت ( السي آي أيه ) الأمريكية ؟

Muqtada Al-Sadr has pointed out that:

"the American forces had provided an air cover, with several drones circling the Sadr city, and then cutting off all wireless communication throughout Sadr city, just before the setting off of the six car explosions that resulted in the death of around 60 people and the injury of 200 others in Sadr city on Sunday."
Al-Sadr: The cars exploded under American air cover (In Arabic) March 13, 2006
.

ـ"وكان الصدر قد إتهم القوات الاميركية بتوفير غطاء جوي لتفجير ست مفخخات بمدينة الصدر في بغداد امس وهدد بالانسحاب من العملية السياسية، وقال ان القادة السياسيين منشغلون بتوزيع المناصب والشعب العراقي يذبح يوميا. وفي مؤتمر صحافي له بمنزله وسط مدينة النجف (160 كم جنوب بغداد) اليوم حمـّل الصدر، الذي يقود التيار الصدري وله 30 مقعدا في مجلس النواب الجديد، القوات الاميركية بتوفير غطاء جوي لتنفيذ ست مفخخات في مدينة الصدر معقله الشيعي من اجل زعزعة الاوضاع في المناطق الشيعية وقال ان طائرات التجسس الاميركية كانت تحلق في سماء مدينة الصدر وقطعت الاتصالات ثم جرت التفجيرات التي أدت الى مقتل حوالي 60 شخصا واصابة 200 اخرين."ـ

الصدر : مفخخات أمس بغطاء جوي أميركي

الإثنين 13 آذار، 2006

.

'President' Talabani, meanwhile (in the same item above), accused "Takfiris (aka Al-Qaida) and Saddamist terrorists" for the attack, not mentioning that Al-Mahdi Army is in total control of Al-Sadr city (on the ground but not over its air space), and would only allow known 'faces' to enter their city.

في حين إتهم الطالباني من جهته " الإرهابيين من تكفيريين وصداميين " بالقيام بتلك المجزرة مـُتغاضياً عن التنويه بأن جيش المهدي هو المـُسيطر على أمن مدينة الصدر ( على الأرض وليس على أجوائها )، وإنهم لا يسمحوا بالدخول إلى المدينة، وخاصة عقب الأحداث الأخيرة، سوى الأشخاص "المعروفة وجوههم" لهم.ـ

There is also a recent report that a police patrol in Basrah had captured, last Thursday (March 9, 2006) night, three persons in the act of planting a bomb near the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in Basrah. Upon investigation, they found out that the three were British wearing Arabic garb in disguise. Immediately afterwards, the British army arrived and arrested the police patrol along with their captives. The British then released the British captives and detained the Iraqi policemen.

Basrah police capture three British wearing Arabic garb (In Arabic) March 12, 2006

فضيحة اخرى لفرق الموت الاميركية البريطانية
شرطة البصرة تعتقل 3 بريطانيين متنكرين بزي عربي لدى محاولتهم نسف مقر الحزب الاسلامي

الأحد 12 آذار، 2006

والعـِبرة لـِمن إعتـَبر ....ـ

What happened to me is happenning to many others.

2006-03-09T22:23:00.000+03:00

I wrote a post about what happened to me when an American soldier shot at me. That post brought a lot of comments from many Americans, some felt sorry for that action, others tried to find an excuse or to justify it.

But what happened yesterday, (Thursday) afternoon, about 5:00 PM is beyond justification.

My uncle, the only living one from my mother’s side, is about 80 years old, a healthy, handsome and good looking gentleman. He was in his way to bring his wife home; she was in a visit to her parents, when he was shot by American soldiers, he was alone in his car, no eye witness, several bullets penetrate his car, three of them penetrate his body, he died immediately.

Iraqi police were there, they found his ID, and his mobile, with phone list, they called my cousin, a university Prof. who went to the postmortem unit at the main hospital to receive the body, the American officer there told him "we are sorry."

It is as simple as this, they are sorry and every thing is settled, no problems, as far as the victim is an Iraqi.

There is another similar accident when the American Soldiers shot a family consist of a man, his wife and his daughter and killed them all.(this happened this week at Alhadba district in Mosul)

At the funeral, I heard many similar stories, all of them contain the same subjects but different detailes, innocent Iraqi civilians were killed at the hands of American soldiers for no obvious reasons. Or just because a scared boy holding a gun and and hidding behind his Stryker is protected from the law, this what changed him from a human to a monster.

GO HOME AMERICANS, WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE

What happened in Samarra

2006-02-23T21:33:00.000+03:00

Ziad Khalaf write an article about what happened in Samarra.

The truth is still a mystery. Iraq for all news published the "strange" statement of the Interior Minister explaining what happened.

The Interior Minister has issued a statement (In Arabic) stating that "the terrorist unit controlled the shrine on Tuesday night, February 21, 2006 at 7:55 p.m. (local time)" but that "the two bombs exploded on Wednesday morning, February 22 at 6:40 a.m." while stating that "the shrine is guarded by 35 police guards".

The Interior Minister statement (in Arabic)

وزير الداخلية يصدر بيانا حول تفجير ضريحي الامامين علي الهادي و الحسن العسكري في سامراء
و كالة الاخبار العراقية : : 2006-02-22 - 18:49:02

وزير الداخلية يصدر بيانا حول تفجير ضريحي الامامين علي الهادي و الحسن العسكري في سامراء

22 شباط فبراير /و.خ.ع/ بيان / داخلية :

اصدر وزير الداخلية بيانا بخصوص تفجير ضريحي الامامين علي الهادي و الحسن العسكري في سامراء فيما يلي نصه:

"في كل يوم يبرهن الطائفيون التكفيريين الإرهابيون ومن يقف وراءهم بأنهم أعداء الله والإنسانية فقد قامت مجموعة إرهابية مساء الثلاثاء 21/ شباط في الساعة السابعة وخمسين دقيقة أحدهم يرتدي ملابس عسكرية مرقطة وثلاث يرتدون بدلات سوداء وسيطروا على ضريح الإمامين علي الهادي والحسن العسكري عليهما السلام وقاموا بوضع عبوات ناسفة داخل الضريحين المقدسين.

وفي الساعة السادسة و40 دقيقة صباح هذا اليوم 22/ شباط تم تفجير العبوتين مما أدى إلى هدم القبة بشكل كامل وجزء من الجدار الشمالي للضريح وعلى الفور تحرك لواء المغاوير في سامراء إلى محل الحادث وتمت السيطرة على الموقف.

وتود وزارة الداخلية أن تبين أن قوة حماية الضريح تبلغ 35 عنصر من قوة حماية المنشآت

إننا في الوقت الذي نستنكر فيه مثل هذا العمل الجبان الذي استهدف مقدسات المسلمين في مشارق الأرض ومغاربها ندعوا الجميع إلى توخي الحذر في تصرفات هؤلاء الطائفيين التكفيريين الذين يحاولون الإساءة إلى العراقيين الشرفاء والنيل من الوحدة الوطنية وعلى الفور شكلنا لجنة تحقيقية للوقوف على مجريات الحادث وسيتم إشعاركم بالاجراءات

I personally feel very sorry for this criminal action, and condemned who planed and who executed this act.
Till now there are more than 160 mosques attacked and some set to fire by men in black, claimed they are belong to the Mehdi army ( armed militia under the controll of Moqtada Al Sader). Tens of dead bodies were found at different places near Baghdad.

Congratulation America you did what you are came for.

This happened to me.

2006-02-04T22:34:00.000+03:00

The New York Time web journal Published the story of the American soldier who shot to kill me.
It is a real story happened to me at the first day following the holiday of the Eid, as I was in my way home.

"A cowboy on his steel horse shot at me.
This Happened to Me

The four days of the Eid al-Adha holiday were calm and peaceful – no explosions, no roadside bombs, no clashes in the streets. But all that changed on Saturday, January 14th, the first day after the holiday.
I was driving home from my clinic around 5:15 p.m., the time I usually return home, because it's not safe to be out past sunset. I was 50 meters away from my house – which is located on a service road parallel to a main street. The street and the service road are separated by a curb two meters wide.
While I was driving slowly on the service road, an American patrol, which consisted of three armored-car Strykers, passed by on the main street, moving in the same direction as I was. When the first Stryker passed me, a soldier riding on top fired two shots in my direction. One bullet came in through the half-opened driver's window and hit the window of the opposite door, smashing it to pieces. Thank God, somehow it missed me.
I stopped the car and got out, thinking that the soldiers might stop and explain why they had shot at me. But they didn't. They kept on driving. There were no other people in the vicinity, except a neighbor at a shop nearby, who saw the whole thing. The next morning I went to replace the broken window. Nearly every person I met in the repair shop had a similar tale to tell.
I wonder now, if the shot had had killed me, how would the troops have explained it? Would I have become a terrorist killed while trying to explode himself near an American patrol? Or perhaps I would only be collateral damage, killed while soldiers chased a terrorist? Or maybe a terrorist had killed me, and the Americans chased him, though he managed to escape.
I will leave you to decide. In the chaos of this occupation, innocents are killed by all sides. But don’t we have the right to hate the people who are now occupying our country. Shall we celebrate the freedom and democracy brought to us by the occupation in spite of the perils our citizens face?
Questions need answers. Who will answer them?

Cartoons and Hypocrisy

2006-02-03T15:47:00.000+03:00

Fury Continues in Muslim World Over Cartoons
By VOA News
03 February 2006

Angry Muslims are stepping up demonstrations against the publication of cartoons in European newspapers depicting the Islamic Prophet Mohammed.

In Islamabad Friday, Pakistani lawmakers unanimously passed a resolution condemning the caricatures, saying they "hurt the faith and feeling of Muslims all over the world."

In Indonesia, at least 70 members of the Islamic Defenders' Front forced their way into the lobby of a building housing the Danish Embassy and threw eggs at the embassy's symbol. The group left without incident a short time later.

Protests are also reported Friday in several other regions, including the Palestinian territories, Iran and Malaysia.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has summoned foreign envoys to Copenhagen for a meeting to discuss the protests. The drawings of Mohammed originally appeared in a Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September.

Protests ignited Wednesday after several European newspapers including papers in Spain, France and Germany reprinted the drawings in a show of solidarity for press freedom.

Danes Finally Apologize to Muslims (But for the Wrong Reasons)

By RACHARD ITANI
02 February 2006

In many European countries, there are laws that will land in jail any person who has the chutzpah to deny not only the historicity of the Jewish holocaust, but also the method by which Jews were put to death by the Nazis. In some of these countries, this prohibition goes as far as prosecuting those who would claim or attempt to prove that less than 6 million jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. In none of these countries are there similar laws that threaten people with loss of freedom and wealth for denying that large percentages of gypsies, gays, mentally retarded, and other miscellaneous "debris of humanity" were also eliminated by the Jew-slaughtering Nazis.

Quickly now: what defines a hypocrite? Answer: a person who follows the letter of the law, but not its spirit. The laws against anti-semitism are just that: laws against anti-semitism enacted by hypocritical Europeans with blood on their hands from the genocides in their recent and distant past, and much guilt to atone for in their hearts and minds.

The spirit of the law, which would extend this protection to Muslims as well, if not indeed other religious groups, is nowhere to be found in the Western legal code. You can curse the Prophet of the Muslims at will and with total impunity. However, approach the holocaust at your own risks and perils if you do not include in your discussion the standard, ritualistic incantations about the six million Jewish victims of the European Nazis. There is a word for this in the English language: hypocrisy.

I used to have a lot of respect for the Dutch, the Danes, and the Norwegians, and still do. However, I cannot claim that this respect is not more nuanced today. The coloring started when the Dutch, who are invariably and automatically described as being amongst the most "tolerant" people in the West, if not the world, proved that their tolerance was little more than skin deep. Their reaction to the murder of Theo Van Gogh was anything but driven by tolerance. They behaved as a mob in reaction to the criminal, despicable action of an extremist and murderer, by painting the whole Dutch muslim community with the same broad brush that Vincent Van Gogh would have eschewed. They burnt Muslim schools and mosques. They directed opprobrium at Muslims in their midst, calling on them "to go home" though many had been born in the Netherlands. No subtlety in the Dutch reaction. Just collective anti-semitism which they directed not at the Jews, but at the Jews' cousins, the Muslims.

Then the Danes, who must have felt left out, decided to go the Dutch one better: a Danish paper published cartoons that are no less offensive to Muslims than anti-semitism is to Jews. The cartoons were described by Danish politicians and the press as not provocation, but a principled case of free speech, although many Danish and Scandinavian newspaper editors are on record stating that they published the cartoons as an act of defiance against "radical Islam." This is akin to these ignorant morons recommending that the U.S. ought to nuke Tehran because that would teach Iranian President Ahmadinejad a lesson.

What free speech are we talking about here? The law says thou shalt not utilize or publish anti-semitic language or imagery. Consequently, Danish (and other European) papers will refrain from doing so, lest they fall foul of the law and offend Jewish sensitivities. The law does not say: thou shalt not offend muslims or use imagery that may be deeply offensive to them. So Danish papers will not refrain from doing so, in fact they will go out of their way to offend Muslims both in Denmark and around the world, in the name of "free speech." And the Norwegians? Well, they just decided to follow the Danes down perdition lane, all in the name of holy hypocrisy, so a Norwegian paper also published the offending cartoons. The statement about "confronting radical Islam" was in fact made by the Norwegian editor of a newspaper that is described as a "Norwegian Christian Paper." And now that other European papers and Magazines have also followed suit, if there was any doubt that this affair is one of anti-Muslim bias, it was swept away by the statements of the Editor in Chief of Die Welt, the German magazine, who declared that the right to publish the cartoons was "at the very core of our culture" and that Europeans cannot "stop using our journalistic right of freedom of expression within legal boundaries." It's the "legal boundaries" qualifier that gives the game away: there are no legal boundaries in Europe protecting Muslims from the same ignominies that the law protects Jews from.

And what further argument does Die Welt put forward to justify its "legal" action? " It pointed out that "Syrian TV had depicted Jewish rabbis as cannibals." You can imagine how helpful a similar argument would hold up in a court of law: "But your honor, I only killed one guy and raped two women: the other guy killed four and raped 10!" That a German editor-in-chief of a major German paper should use the "legal" argument to justify offending the religious sensitivities of Muslims, when that same "legal" framework would see him thrown in jail faster than he could spell the word legal if he offended the sensitivities of Jews, may be a testament at least of his own deep-seated contempt for Muslims. That so many European papers have now reprinted the offensive cartoons is an indication that the contempt for Muslims does not stop with the editor-in-chief of Die Welt.

This whole affair is nothing but an over-reaction to a simple cartoon, you say? Not if you remember a certain other cartoon that appeared in the British newspaper, The Independent, on 27 January 2003. It depicted Prime Minister Sharon of Israel eating the head of a Palestinian child while saying: "What's wrong? You've never seen a politician kissing babies before?" Jews in Britain and around the world erupted with indignation, arguably because the depiction reminded them of millennial charges levied against them by Christians who accused them of using the blood of babies in ritualistic killings. You see, Sharon can actually kill, maim and spill the real, actual blood of Palestinian babies: that is not offensive to Zionist Jews and their apologists in the West. But let Sharon be depicted in a cartoon metaphorically as the ogre that he has proved to be in his real life, symbolically eating a Palestinian child, and the world will erupt in offended indignation. A cartoon that is offensive to Muslims, on the other hand, is depicted as nothing but an expression of "free speech." There is a word for this in any language: hypocrisy.

Before the Danish cartoon incident started to evolve into a growing international crisis, the Danish Prime Minister and the publisher of the Danish newspaper that first published the offending cartoons both declared that they would never apologize on grounds of free speech and because publishing the cartoons had not broken any Danish laws. (Yes, the "no law broken" argument again.) Yesterday, however, they both ended up apologizing in the face of a growing tsunami of protests on the part of Arab and Muslim governments, some of whom withdrew their Ambassadors from Copenhagen. The Danish prime minister did not apologize because his moral compas suddenly found True North again. The real reason, of course, is that he understood, though a tad too late, the potential economic consequences of a widespread boycott of Danish goods on the part of one billion people. There is a word for this in the Danish language: realpolitik.

Muslims and other reasoning people around the world understand well that European laws against anti-Semitic speech, writing, and behavior, were enacted for two reasons. The stated reason was to protect the Jews from the continued onslaught of anti-Semitic attacks, both verbal and physical, which culminated historically in the repeated pogroms that Christian Europeans launched against Jews repeatedly through the centuries. (Historically, it was the Arabs who protected the Jews and took them in whenever they fled Christian barbarity, especially in the Middle Ages.) The real reason, of course, is to protect the Europeans from the pangs of their own conscience, which has very good reason to feel guilty indeed, given what Europeans did to Jews in the last millennium, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, not to mention what they did to the indiginous people of the Carribean and the Americas since the 1600s, and to the people of Asia, Africa and Oceania as well. I have long thought that it's European Christians, more so than Jews, who ought to observe Yom Kippur, or adopt a similar atonement observance of their own.

While the spirit of the law is that Europeans shalt not offend any ethnic or religious groups including Muslims, this seems to be lost only on the Europeans themselves, or at least the Danes, the Germans and their ilk amongst them, who only care about, or fear, the letter of the law. Why should we therefore be shocked when Muslims depict Europeans as nothing but a bunch of hypocrites? Why shouldn't Governments of Muslim countries recall their Ambassadors to Denmark in protest, as some did? The only disappointment is that no Western or non-Muslim government, the meek complaints to a French newspaper by the French Foreign Office excepted, had the moral and ethical courage to publicly, unequivocally and forcefully condemn an act that is as deeply offensive to Muslims as the desecration of a Torah scroll, or of a Jewish cemetery, is offensive to all civilized people in the world, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Animist, or Atheist.

There are two ways for Europeans to redeem themselves: the immediate temptation would be to call on their national parliaments to extend the protections of the laws against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denying to Islam and Muslims, as well as any other religious group . That would be the wrong recommendation however. The right recommendation would be to repeal the laws that govern holocaust denying and other laws that favor one group over another, so that the issue truly becomes one of free speech. And if Europeans are the civilized people they claim to be, then their politicians and newspaper publishers ought to find it easy to immediately apologize when they have unwittingly offended the taboos of any human community, be it religious or otherwise.

Muslims and Arabs have suffered enough hypocrisy on the hands of European Christians, just as Jews suffered in the past on the hands of these same Europeans, and as Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike are suffering today on the hands of Americans, Europeans and, of course, Zionist Jews, both Sephardim and Ashkenazi. If Europe thinks of itself as a civilized society, then it ought to do its utmost to redress the wrongs that too many people around the world have suffered as a result of European misbehavior and often outright criminal actions, most especially since the 1400s.

Muslims deserve nothing more nor less than for Christians in the U.S. and Europe, and Zionist Jews in Israel, to simply abide by the golden rule: treat others as you would have others treat you. So far, Christians and Zionist Jews have proven that they only abide by the alternative definition of this rule: "They who have the gold, make the rule." The gold in this case is a combination of economic and military might. Of this, Europeans, Zionist Jews and their American overlords have aplenty in reserve. Were it that they also had an equal reserve of un-hypocritical, civilized morality and ethical behavior to underpin their feelings of sanctimonious superiority.

And the other measure that Europeans can adopt to redeem themselves? The European people can start by throwing out of office, and initiating criminal proceedings against, any politician responsible for sending a single soldier to invade, occupy, and initiate pogroms against the people of Iraq: these politicians have been guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which makes them unfit for the honors that continued office holding bestows upon them. Europeans can also give the boot to any politician who has approved or turned a blind eye to a single rendition flight that sent any person to the torture chambers of the Americans or their surrogate torturers in some Arab or Muslim countries. These are the same countries whose religious sensitivities we should all respect as strongly as we respect Jewish sensitivities when it comes to the Jewish holocaust, not because the law says so, but because it's the right thing to do. These are also the same countries whose human rights trespasses Europeans ought to condemn as equally and vehemently as they should condemn the continued human rights abuses and state terrorism perpetrated by the Israeli government in Palestine/Israel, and by some European governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other out-of-sight/out-of-mind places like Haiti, Africa, and elsewhere.

In other words, Europeans can start by applying the simple rule of one weight and one measure to both friends and foes, equally to themselves and to the rest of the world, because policy and politics, both domestic and foreign, ought to be based upon and subject to principled moral considerations, not expediency of the economic, financial or religious kind.

Is that such an unreasonable moral proposition to consider?

Rachard Itani can be reached at: racharitani@yahoo.com

Is torture standard?

2006-01-24T21:55:00.000+03:00

Denver Post.com published an article by Jim Spenser.
I wish you all read it, and judge the US justice

If torture is standard, we're in for it

By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Staff Columnist

Fort Carson

Every American should be forced to see the autopsy pictures of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush now on display at the trial of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr.

Welshofer is charged with murdering the Iraqi general during a November 2003 interrogation. But what's playing out in a Fort Carson courtroom is a nation's shame, not just an individual's.

The autopsy photos of Mowhoush make the now-infamous images from Abu Ghraib prison look like a costume party. Bruises and welts cover Mowhoush's dead body. Doctors ruled that Mowhoush was smothered. Officials charge that Welshofer stuffed him inside a sleeping bag, bound him with an electric cord, sat on his chest and covered his mouth. Still, there is no question that Mowhoush also was savagely beaten.

The United States, which sanctimoniously lectures the rest of the world about human rights, did this. America's political and military hierarchy approved harsher handling of military detainees after the 9/11 attacks. This is what we got.

The prosecution and defense in Welshofer's trial continue to argue about who bears responsibility. Capt. Elana Matt, a prosecutor, claimed Welshofer "abandoned the moral high ground" in his handling of Mowhoush. As testimony drones on, it looks increasingly like America's moral high ground has turned to quicksand.

Welshofer deserves punishment for killing Mowhoush. But the presidential administration and Army chain of command that lets military prisoners be stuffed in sleeping bags or wall lockers or held down to have water poured down their mouths and noses won't get their due. The "non-military" folks (read CIA) whom a witness said beat Mowhoush two days before he died have not even been charged.

Welshofer's company commander knew he was using the so-called "sleeping-bag technique."

Mowhoush probably was a "high-value facilitator of the insurgency in Western Iraq," to use the intelligence-speak of the chief prosecution witness, Chief Warrant Officer Jefferson Williams. But, as military judge Col. Mark Toole reminded everyone, "the victim is not on trial."

American principles are. Williams testified after prosecutors dropped his murder charge in Mowhoush's death. Testifying, as Williams did, under a grant of immunity, Sgt. Justin Lamb, the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment's chief interrogator, talked about "fear up" inquisitions. That's why he invented the sleeping-bag trick. Along with packing prisoners in wall lockers, he used it to induce claustrophobia.

You slip the end of a sleeping bag over the prisoner's head and tie the bag in place, Lamb explained. Then you roll the prisoner back and forth while asking questions.

And, allegedly, if you're Lewis Welshofer, when the prisoner doesn't give you what you want, you also sit on his chest and cover his mouth.

Prosecutors claimed this was not business as usual, that it was the cowboy misbehavior of a lone outlaw. Then their star witness, Williams, took the stand and described how the sleeping-bag technique was no more extreme than many other interrogation techniques he had witnessed. Williams also said he walked away from the eight to 10 "spooks" as they started to clobber Mowhoush with rubber hoses two days before the general died. Williams admitted to hearing screams after he left. He also said he saw "four to five men" carrying the general back to his "cage" afterward.

Similarly, when Welshofer invited Williams to be part of the eventually fatal interrogation of Mowhoush, Williams agreed, but said he had to get a cup of coffee first. Williams went for a second cup of Joe as Welshofer lowered the sleeping bag over Mowhoush's head.

It was, apparently, no big thing.

For as long as it isn't, this question about the humane treatment of military prisoners remains open for all Americans:

If the sleeping-bag technique was used against your soldiers, would you consider it wrong?

daily Selection of IRIN Middle East reports, 1/15/2006

2006-01-17T23:20:00.000+03:00

In response to my lasat post, I recieved an e-mail from a friend contain the following report.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) - 1995-2005 ten years serving the humanitarian community

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - IRAQ: Activists call for protection of academics

BAGHDAD, 15 January (IRIN) - A network of human rights activists and journalists has called for the protection of local academics and higher level educational institutions.

The appeal, launched this month by the Brussells Tribunal, a worldwide network devoted to campaigning against the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, notes the "systematic liquidation of the country's academics."

According to conservative estimates, over 250 educators have been assassinated while hundreds more have disappeared, the network's website states.

Thousands of other academics have reportedly fled the country, in the belief that they are being targeted because they are well educated.

The Brussells Tribunal further notes that the disappearance of trained educators has led not only to "a major brain-drain," but also to the decimation of the secular middle class.

"Anyone who has the ability to imagine a secular future for the country is forced to flee," said Hana al-Bayaty, a member of the network's executive committee.

The assassinations have targeted women and men countrywide, with little reference to political or religious affiliations.

"The most striking fact is that the majority of those killed where not scientists. but were involved in the field of humanities," the anti-war organisation notes, adding that, "the motives for these assassinations are unknown."

In April 2005, the United Nations University published a report noting that 84 percent of Iraq's higher education institutions had been burnt, looted or destroyed since the start of the US-led invasion in 2003.

It went on to point out that four dozen academics had been assassinated, while many more faced daily threats.

In addition to the destruction of vital infrastructure, only 40 percent of which is under reconstruction, other problems facing Iraqi higher learning included an isolated and under-qualified teaching staff; poorly equipped libraries and laboratories; and a fast-growing student population, said the UN report.

A third of the nation's teachers held only bachelors' degrees, despite official requirements of at least a Master's degree, it added.

"The devastation of the Iraqi system of higher education has been overlooked amid other cataclysmic results of the war, but it represents an important consequence of the conflict, economic sanctions and ongoing turmoil in Iraq," noted Jairam Reddy, the study's author and director of the Jordan-based International Leadership Institute.

"Repairing Iraq's system of higher education is in many ways a prerequisite to the long-term repair of the country as a whole," Reddy added.

Iraq's educational system was formerly recognised as being one of the best in the region.

In the meantime, the campaign is calling for an international investigation into the killings and urging academic institutions in other countries to forge links with Iraqi educators, both in exile and at home.

As "an occupying power, and under international humanitarian law, final responsibility for protecting Iraqi citizens, including academics, lies with the United States," the Brussells Tribunal concluded.

Al-Bayaty said the impact of the lack of protection for academics could be felt for two to three decades: "It's a developing country so they need the brains that can contribute to the development of their society," she said.

[ENDS]

URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS

2006-01-09T17:40:00.000+03:00

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Iraqacad/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Truth Teller

Who are the terrorists

2006-01-05T23:40:00.000+03:00

A Terrible Crime Committed by the " Maghawir" Police Forces in the Village of Abou-Deshir - Warning to the Readers - The Rapport includes some Horrible Pictures.

"In the poor popular district of Abou-Deshir where the simple people lives, some of the agents of the 'Maghawir ' Police, of The Ministry of Interior, have committed a terrible crime, which could be added to the crimes of sectarian militias working under covered as Security Forces and under full American protection.

On Friday 11th of December 2005, The Police arrested 11 young man at 10 A.M. and drove them from their homes to a near place used as a headquarters, under allegations of been part of the Security Forces of the so-called (Big Crimes). A place which became a house of torture and execution , inspite of his outer look of worship house ."

Happy New Year

2005-12-31T09:59:00.000+03:00

Happy New Year, a statement every body around the world wish to say to his friends, relatives, and neighbors. They welcome the New Year and say goodbye to the old year. They exchange this statement of greeting with joy, happiness and may kiss each other. It is a universal tradition, almost every where except in my country.
This year, the day 31 December 2005 is a tragedy (as any other day). We say good by to 2005 and welcome to 2006 with the sound of bullets and fire exchange (not the type of fire people used to use here to express their happiness in some occasions as marriage). But it is toward each other.
You have the right to say, “oh ... look ... how ignorant and uncivilized people are there in Iraq”
But the reality is that the ignorant and the uncivilized people, which make up a considerable portion of the population, do not share this conflict.
Those who shared it are the people most concerned with the future of the country (from both sides). Each according to his own viewpoint is fighting to protect the sovereignty of Iraq, as he understands it.

The pro occupation forces (The Iraqi army, the policemen, the ING, the peshmerga and the armed militias of the ruling parties) together with the US troops from one side, and the anti occupation fighters (the insurgents and the resistance) from the other side.

On the other hand there are other groups which take advantages from the unstable situation and take a great share in the chaos and those are ; the thugs and the gangsters who kidnapped people for ransom, their sole goal is to collect money, they found the chaos as a good medium for their crimes, and as far as there is no power of law, they will continue to grow and increas in number as the poverty and the rises of prices and the jobless people are increasing.
Another group which may have the greatest inflict on the situation, is the Terrorists.
The terrorists are working for political reasons, which is most of the times not in the benefit of our country. Those are usually non-Iraqis, they come here because they know that a strong and free Iraq is dangerous to them. Those are who killed innocent people, exploded mosques, schools and market places, their real target is to plant fear and terror in the country to protect their own benefit.

We are looking forward to peaceful Iraq, where we can share others their happiness and live the life we want without supervision from other in a free and sovereign Iraq.

Happy New Year. To all of you.

Fraud ... Fraud ... and Fraud

2005-12-24T13:19:00.000+03:00

At the days following the election, many people and I are very optimistic that there will be deviation to the political processes instead of armed confrontations. This was because of the easiness and peaceful ballot. But it lasted for no more than two days, then the explosions and the clashes started again. You know why? ... I will tell you … I know.

Seven days since the election, every new day we hear news of frauds in the process of voting. There are more than 1250 claims of illegal and cheating acts during the process of voting. All the cheating are done by the militias of the puppet government, (the Badr militia in the middle and the south and the Peshmerga in the north), both are supported by the current government. Many of the complaint are really serious

At Tuesday 20, they announced primary results of the vote; the results are disappointing to all that shared in the election except the United Iraqi Alliance, and the Kurdish alliance. And since then, the tension come back to Iraq, there are demonstrations daily in many of the Iraqi provinces refusing those results and demanding of rerun the ballot

More than 35 fronts and parties reject the results announced by the Electoral commission, including the list of former premier Iyad Allawi

The government from its side, and to camouflage the chaos, announced an increase in the prices of oil products, The Gasoline, the Kerosene and the Diesel fuels. The increase is varying from 5 to 11 folds.

There are two kind of angry demonstrations one against the election's results and the other against the increase in the prices of the oil products

Another quiet day

2005-12-17T22:21:00.000+03:00

Today is Saturday, at 6:00 am this morning the curfew for the vehicles ended, this is only in Mosul, there were no curfew for vehicles in other city except for the election day, but in Mosul it was for five days, from Tuesday at 10:00 pm till Saturday at 6:00 am Fr. Friday and Saturday are the week end holiday. At the previous time we have only one day (Friday), week end, now we have two days.
As Saturday is a holiday we used to see the road semi empty at the morning and the movement gradually increased as the day proceed. But today there were a heavy traffic movement from the early morning (The people get bored from staying in house for five days), but the most important cause is here in Mosul, ,most of the people except the Government employees earn their income day by day, when the can't go for work, that day there is no income, and five days break are too long with out work.

I went to my clinic early this afternoon, because I have no morning work. The street are overcrowded with cars, people are busy shopping. One thing looked different is there are no kids in the streets, no bicycles, and no more football. I returned home late, about 5:30 pm, it is still scary to drive at night, you cant differentiate the American car from faraway, you may unintentionally get closer than 100 m. from them and expose your self to fire, but thanks God the only American cars I met were in the opposite direction, and I can recognized them early.
Tomorrow the schools will open their doors to receive the students, men and women will go to their work as they used to do. We hope the peacefulness will continue. It remind us with the old days when we go to work with no fear from roadside bombs, or bombed cars in our way.

The election and the people

2005-12-16T20:41:00.000+03:00

Another day of freedom from danger, no explosions and no exchange of fire. The only thing disturbs the peacefulness is the sound of the police cars and the American convoys passing at high speed every now and then.

After the end of the voting, we stayed anxious for the results. The people responsible said that the result will be announced after 2 weeks.
Un official news leaked out, and every body claim that his list are winning. I count more than four groups each claim a great result. There seem to be no loser in this election.
I feel comfortable because the group I voted for, claims he get excellent result in several provinces including Nineveh.
The supervisor authorities said all the result announced till now are not official, and probably not correct.

On the other hand, the kids in the neighborhood was very happy, the curfew make all the kid to get out of their houses and to play in the main street by their bicycles, or to make the street a football (soccer) yard.
The teenagers make two teams and play Flying ball in a secondary road.
The men are gathered in front of one of the houses and exchange thought about the election and related subjects, the most attractive subject is the claims of almost all the candidate about the fraud which they claim happened in the election process.

As a truth we don't know for sure if this is just a rumors, or there are really a frauds. But as every body said that, we think there should be some truth in it.

I found one report looked to be written by an unbiased side enumerate several events of frauds in many center in different province, the report is in Arabic and I can't translate it so you can read it at this site

The election day

2005-12-15T19:20:00.000+03:00

Today is a holiday, it is the third day of the five days break we have for the sake of the election. It was not just a holiday, it is a curfew from 10:00 pm till 6:00 am of the next day, in addition it is a curfew for all form of vehicles starting from 10:00 pm at Tuesday till 6:00 am of next Sunday (all the days of the holiday).

Early in the morning, all the election centers open their doors to receive the people who come to vote. It was a calm day except for very few sounds of explosion and shooting fire. No report for casualties up to my knowledge.

At about 10:00 am I went to the nearby center for voting. After they searched me, they allow me in, where I saw the supervisor of the center who told me that I have no right to vote here (although the center is only 300 meter from my house), because I registered in another center about 10 km away from my house, from where I received my food ration (according to Oil for Food program). There aren't any means of transportation.
I returned home, thinking with my self is it safe to go there walking, despite my heart problem and the hypertension I had.? When a friend call me, he have the same problem, he heard in the TV that it is possible to vote in the nearby center if our center is far away.

I go to the nearby center again, they told me they heard the news but they can't depend on it, they want a written order.
"Just wait for an hour or two, then come again" they told me. So I did that.
I went again at 3:00 pm, this time with my wife, they accept us and let us vote.

The result will appear at the end of this month as expected, but we all know for sure who will win and why.
If you ask me why I vote, while I know the result in advance ?
It is because of an e-mail I received from an American friend telling me his feeling when he face a similar situation, he said:

" Now it seems certain that my vote will be for the losing side. I find that incredibly frustrating.
Even so, I will vote. I will lose, but I will vote."

I feel just as he felt, and I decided to do what he did, so I voted. Thank you my friend.

Another unbelievable story !!

2005-12-14T21:02:00.000+03:00

Dar Babel for Studies and Information December 13, 2005

And then there are the American 'Liberators':

"A reliable source has confirmed that at 12 o’clock noon on Thursday December 8, 2005, occupants of a black BMW sedan commenced to shoot at random on civilians and passers by in the area of Imam Qasim in Kirkuk. Two policemen and three civilians were injured by the shootings.
Upon receiving retaliatory fire from the police and passing pedestrians, the car sped off in the direction of Sulaimania.
An Azadi police patrol sped after it in pursuit and managed to kill two of the attackers in the car near the Rabi’ district, about 20 kilometers from Kirkuk on the Sulaimania road.
Upon further firearms exchange, a fire erupted in the BMW. At that moment, an American helicopter landed near the burning car and dragged the two dead bodies and the other two survivors and flew them away.
This was carried out in full view of the Iraqi police who watched in disbelief as these Americans were shooting innocent civilians (not insurgents) in Kirkuk.
After this incident, some of the Azadi police officers and rank submitted their resignation from the force and decided to fight the Americans."

This is the translation of the real story, as published in Free Iraq blog.

Below is the original story in Arabic. From Dar Babel for studies and information.

خبر : 13/12/2005 خاص دار بابل

أكد مصدر موثوق أنه في يوم الخميس المصادف 8/12/2005 الساعة الثانية عشر ظهرا قامت سيارة نوع (BMW) سوداء اللون حجم 735 بإطلاق النار العشوائي على المواطنين في منطقة (امام قاسم) في كركوك وجرحت عدد 2 من الشرطة و3 مواطنين مما أدى ذلك إلى إطلاق النار عليها من قبل المواطنين في المنطقة ولاذت بالفرار إلى طريق السليمانية فأعقبتها مفرزة من شرطة ازادي و قتل اثنان ممن كانوا في السيارة (BMW) في منطقة ناحية الربيع التي تبعد حوالي 20كم عن كركوك على طريق السليمانية. واثر إطلاق النار الكثيف اندلعت النار في السيارة .وفي هذه الأثناء هبطت (مروحية أمريكية) وأخذت الجثث التي كانت في السيارة واثنان آخرين لم تصبهم نيران الاطلاقات النارية .كان ذلك بمرأى الشرطة العراقية التي أصابها الذهول لان هؤلاء كانوا أمريكان وينفذون عمليات إرهابية ضد المواطنين الأبرياء في كركوك على أنهم (مقاومة).بعد الحادث قدم عدد من الضباط والشرطة استقالاتهم وقرروا مقاتلة الأمريكان.

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

2005-12-13T22:36:00.000+03:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "Speaking at a November 24 rally in Damascus, white supremacist and former US State Representative from Louisiana David Duke called the US a land 'occupied' by Zionists.

'The Zionists occupy most of the American media and now control much of American government. It is not just the West Bank of Palestine, it is not just the Golan Heights that are occupied by the Zionists, but Washington DC, and New York, and London, and many other capitals in the world,' the former KKK member said."

Susanne Osthoff

2005-12-13T13:20:00.000+03:00

Ireceived the following e-mail few days ago, but because of the current situation, I can't take any step forward to help.

Hello,

I appreciate your blog - politically and from a human point of view. Living as a swiss citizen in germany, interdisciplinary holistic medical therapist and consultant, I am busy also with peace issues much as I can (I wish t do more) Today I phoned the sister of kidnapped german archeologist Susanne Osthoff. Both of us are feeling things are going not in a good direction. Both of us are opposing the US war on Iraq, we are friends of chancellor Schröders no towards this war and we are very much concerned chancellor Merkel will change this no into more yes. And in some ways this issue seems to be connected to the fate of Susanne Osthof - a great lover and humanitarian worker for Iraq. Her sister told not one bitter or hateful word about Iraq - she tries to understand, full of compassion. She, and myself too, so we - are thinking: this means to rethink our stand here regarding Iraq and USA - and to forecome, to avoid a terrible shift towards Bush's global policy, which is damaging human and international rights by any means!
I am sorry to disturb you with this problems, but perhaps you can help us or link us to useful sources or informations. We will appreciate this very much indeed. I will not finish without expressing my deepest feelings and best wishes for your work as an MD in Iraq - I wish this terrible situation in your country could change soon as possible. (I heard from an Ingenieur recently, located in Baghdad - Iraqi MD's are cut of from new medical magazines since a long time and this problem is not changed after US forces brought "freedom" (I don't think this is true) to your country. Please let me know too, if this issue regarding medical magazines is changed.
Best regards
and may be peace between us in future-
therefore we have to take steps now-

Please if any one could help in any way, let me know.

Iraqi officials find more abused prisoners | csmonitor.com

2005-12-12T22:44:00.000+03:00

Iraqi officials find more abused prisoners | csmonitor.com: "For the second time in two months, an Iraqi government search of a prison near Baghdad has found prisoners who appeared to have been tortured. The Washington Post reports 600 prisoners were cramped into a small space and that 13 prisoners were found in a condition that required immediate medical attention"

Five days to election

2005-12-10T20:07:00.000+03:00

The election of the new parliament will hold next Thursday.
The situation in the city of Mosul is very stressful. The US convoys wandering through out the city day and night. The police cars full of policemen holding gun aiming at the pedestrians and firing their guns at any car which fail to stop or approaching the convoy.

From the other side there were explosions every where, masked gunmen attacking the US soldiers and the Iraqi police. The roads are blocked by either a concrete blocks or barbed wires making the moving in the city streets very difficult and dangerous.

In Mosul there are five bridges across the river Tigris joining the two sides of the city together, during the last few days, all the bridges are either blocked completely or there were a check points at the beginning of the bridges to search all the cars which attempt to cross the bridge. This make the movement across the bridge very very difficult.

Me for example, my house and the hospital in which I work are in different side of the city, that means I have to cross the bridge twice. Most of the time I reached the hospital about an hour or more late. This is true for all the staff.
At the end of the day I have to go home for lunch and then to the clinic, I have to cross the bridge again, and I shall consider that I must leave the clinic before the Sunset for security reasons (all the Doctors and Pharmacists closed their clinics and Pharmacies before Sunsetmy), I stayed in the clinic for very short period of time.

The patients and sick people will suffer more if they have to go to the hospital at night. The curfew started at 10:00 PM after that, if they go out of their houses they may get killed before they reached the hospital, even the ambulance can't get out after the curfew. The City roads look empty just after the Sunset, it is too dangerous to wander in your car after the Sunset. Many people had been killed or seriously injured, just because they can't recognise an American car at dark or fail to stop at an appropriate distance from a check point.

Early this month two persons, one of them is a Surgeon kidnapped by a gangs which asked for ransom to free them. The Surgeon pay the ransom, but the other guy managed to escape from the kidnappers and go to the police, They did nothing except the declare in Nineveh TV that the police rescued a victim from his kidnappers.

We wait the result of the election, although we know it in advance, but just to see what will happen to the security after the new government take over the control.

U.S. Helps Some Iran-Backed Terror

2005-12-09T13:45:00.000+03:00

Inter Press Service (IPS)
Dahr Jamail and Harb al-Mukhtar

*BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (IPS) - After the U.S. forces and the bombings, Iraqis are coming to fear those bands of men in masks who seem to operate with the Iraqi police.*

Omar Ahmed's family learnt what it can mean to run into the police, their supposed protectors.

Omar was driving with two friends in the Adhamiya district of Baghdad at night Sep. 1 when they were stopped at a police checkpoint.

"The three of them were arrested by the police even though there was nothing in the car," an eyewitness told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity.

They did not return home for days, and the family began to search the morgues, common practice now when someone is arrested by the Iraqi police and does not return.

"Five days after they were arrested we found Omar's body in the freezer in a morgue, with holes in the side of his head and shoulders," a friend of the family told IPS.

"We don't know if the other two men are dead or alive," he said. "But we know these men were guilty of nothing other than driving their car at night. We have no security and the problem is that police are killing and disappearing the Iraqi people every day now."

The 'death squads' as they have come to be called are getting more active with just a week to go before the Dec. 15 election.

On Tuesday this week Iraqi police said they found 20 bodies dumped at two different locations in western Iraq, according to the al-Sharqiyah television network.

Eleven bodies of men wearing civilian clothes were found dumped on the main road between Baghdad and the Jordanian border. The bodies were found near al-Rutbah city, with their hands tied behind their backs.

Police said that nine bodies, also of civilians, and riddled with bullets, were found on the side of a road near Fallujah on Monday.

Signs are emerging that such killing is the work of death squads backed by Iran-backed Shia forces that dominate the government, and therefore the police.

Abdullah Omar, a 39-year-old unemployed engineer who now sells petrol and cigarettes on the black market says he survived one such Shia squad.

"I was sleeping on the roof of my house one night because it was so hot and we had no electricity as usual," Omar told IPS. "I was awakened by a loud explosion nearby, and immediately surrounded by strange men wearing night-vision goggles."

Omar says he was thrown to the ground by the men, handcuffed and blindfolded. "They started to beat me using the end of their guns," he said. "Then they searched my house, took my gun which I told them I had, then they took me away."

His 32-year-old wife Sumia, a teacher, was also handcuffed and taken away.

Omar says he saw about ten pick-up trucks carrying at least 100 men wearing black masks before a bag was placed over his head. He was taken to the back of a truck, and beaten up until he fainted.

Sumia was beaten up too. "I received so many kicks to my stomach," she told IPS. "I heard Abdullah screaming in pain, so I fought until they handcuffed me and beat me until I couldn't do anything else."

The two were taken to the Iraqi police station in Suleakh, Baghdad, where they were interrogated and accused of owning a mortar.

"I explained to them that I don't know anything about mortars," said Omar. "And that I have never had anything to do with the resistance, but they said so many insulting words to me, and beat me further."

Sumia, who was also interrogated, pleaded with the policemen to let them return home to care for their young children. "They would not give me a headscarf to cover my head," she told IPS. "They kept asking me about mortars and wouldn't let me go to look after my children. We know nothing about any mortars.."

Omar said the next morning he was moved into another room where he saw men lying handcuffed, with their heads covered with sacks. "They were lying on the ground without a blanket or pillow."

In a while, he said he saw 14 men wearing black masks enter the room carrying whips. "I watched them beat the prisoners. They told them this was their breakfast."

Abdullah and Sumia were later taken home, and warned that if security forces were attacked in their neighbourhood, they would be detained again.

Omar said the men who detained him and his wife were members of the Shia Badr Army, a militia affiliated with Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Tensions in Baghdad run high, as people who live in areas not controlled by the Badr Army face daily threats of being kidnapped or killed by members of the militia.

"The Badr Army is conducting a campaign to destroy other political parties and their electoral advertisements," said Saleh Hassir, a doctor at a Baghdad medical centre. "We see black paint and tears on ex-prime minister Allawi's posters and those of the Sunni groups, but pictures of al-Hakim remain unaffected."

The doctor says the Americans have helped bring in new Iran-backed terror.

"So many of us are against Iraq being controlled by these fundamental Islamic Iranian loyalists like al-Hakim," the doctor told IPS. "Now we are seeing the suffering and ultimate dictatorship they have brought us here with the help of the Americans."

(Isam Rashid contributed to this article)

An Update

2005-12-07T23:09:00.000+03:00

Today I heard more detail about the incident of yesterday (The killing of the traffic policeman by the US soldier).

Another eyewitness said

"The convoy was coming toward the intersection with very laud warning horn, they usually come too fast expecting the police to open the street for them by blocking the movement in the other directions and keeping the way free for them. This poor policeman was either un aware of the convoy or he intentionally don't care,when they come to the intersection it wasn't completely free. And he deserve to be executed for his unforgivable sin."

Freedom and democracy in the American way.

Unbelievably strange

2005-12-06T20:31:00.000+03:00

This a very strange news, I heard from an eyewitness, but it happened at the middle of the day in front of crowd of people, many policemen among them.

He is my neighbor, A previous army officer, he was near an intersection where the insidence happened. He said

"A convoy of 3 strykers was approaching an intersection at crowded hour of the day, I was in my car when we noticed the convoy coming, all the car stopped in caution afraid from the un predictable behavior of the US soldiers. I heard a single shot fired from one of the US strykers, after they pass the intersection, the policemen run to the intersection where a traffic policeman lying dead in a lake of blood. No body know why they shoot him, they never stop to help him."

A new wave of lies and intimidation

2005-12-05T21:24:00.000+03:00

Bush’s counteroffensive on Iraqi WMD:

"A series of three extraordinary opinion polls released within the last week have all shown the same thing: at least 6 out of every 10 Americans believe Bush is a liar—and better than 7 out of 10 think that Cheney is one—and that the overriding reason for this belief is the war in Iraq.

One of the polls, conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, found that 57 percent of Americans—nearly 6 in 10—believe that the Bush administration lied to the American public about the reasons for war."

"The administration appears to have a default position: when previous lies unravel, prop them up with more lies. Neither the Senate investigation into Iraqi WMD intelligence nor the commission appointed by Bush and headed by Judge Laurence Silberman dealt with how the administration “manipulated intelligence and misled the American people,” but only the nature of the intelligence itself.

On this score, the Silberman panel concluded that the intelligence was “dead wrong” and constituted one of the “most damaging intelligence failures in American history.” A failure, it should be added, for which no one was ever held accountable, precisely because false intelligence is what the administration wanted"

Peter Phillips: Death By Torture

2005-12-05T21:06:00.000+03:00

Peter Phillips: Death By Torture

Military autopsy reports provide indisputable proof that detainees are being tortured to death while in US military custody. Yet the US corporate media are covering it with the seriousness of a garage sale for the local Baptist Church.

A recent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posting of one of forty-four US military autopsy reports reads as follows:

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

2005-12-03T21:06:00.000+03:00

"For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again – unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.
Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry's spokesman – an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn't matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

The electionnaire - which party is yours?

2005-11-30T23:23:00.000+03:00

Iraqi citizens confused those days because the hear a lot of promises for correction, reconstruction, and so and so from the parties sharing in the coming election. The streets are full of signs with different statement explain what the will do if the win the election.

We know for sure that most of these signs are not more than lies, and every thing will be forgotten after the election. Any way there is an Internet electionaire which could match your beliefs with the the parties ideology, you could know which party is more represent you.

You can try it just for fun, or for real, that is up to you.
here is the URL of the site.

This is an interesting questionnaire which could help you to know which one of the many Iraqi parties fit your political beliefs.

One important note, don't believe all what you hear from political groups or parties because they say what they thing is useful to their goal (propaganda).

U.S. paying Iraqi editors to print favorable news

2005-11-30T20:45:00.000+03:00

U.S. paying Iraqi editors to print favorable news - baltimoresun.com: "WASHINGTON // As part of an extensive information offensive inside Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspaper editors to publish stories written by U.S. troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission within Iraq."

_____________________________________________________

Daniel Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington, said that he did not believe that planting stories in Iraqi media was wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency.

"I don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it," he said. "I just question whether it's effective." Link

_____________________________________________________

Iraqi news papers being paid to run pro-military stories

LOS ANGELES - The U.S. military secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to plant favorable stories about its efforts to rebuild the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying many of the stories in Iraqi newspapers are written by U.S. troops and while basically factual, sometimes give readers a slanted view of what is happening in Iraq. Some expressed fears that use of such stories could hurt the credibility of the U.S. military worldwide, the newspaper said. Link

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?

2005-11-28T23:56:00.000+03:00

A Journey That Ended in Anguish

Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions.

By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

November 27, 2005

"War is the hardest place to make moral judgments."

Col. Ted Westhusing, Journal of Military Ethics

WASHINGTON — One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

His death stunned all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.

His friends and family struggle with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself. He was a loving father and husband and a devout Catholic. He was an extraordinary intellect and had mastered ancient Greek and Italian. He had less than a month before his return home. It seemed impossible that anything could crush the spirit of a man with such a powerful sense of right and wrong.

On the Internet and in conversations with one another, Westhusing's family and friends have questioned the military investigation.

A note found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?

Even at Jenks High School in suburban Tulsa, one of the biggest in Oklahoma, Westhusing stood out. He was starting point guard for the Trojans, a team that made a strong run for the state basketball championship his senior year. He was a National Merit Scholarship finalist. He was an officer in a fellowship of Christian athletes.

Joe Holladay, who coached Westhusing before going on to become assistant coach of the University of North Carolina Tarheels, recalled Westhusing showing up at the gym at 7 a.m. to get in 100 extra practice shots.

"There was never a question of how hard he played or how much effort he put into something," Holladay said. "Whatever he did, he did well. He was the cream of the crop."

When Westhusing entered West Point in 1979, the tradition-bound institution was just emerging from a cheating scandal that had shamed the Army. Restoring honor to the nation's preeminent incubator for Army leadership was the focus of the day.

Cadets are taught to value duty, honor and country, and are drilled in West Point's strict moral code: A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal — or tolerate those who do.

Westhusing embraced it. He was selected as honor captain for the entire academy his senior year. Col. Tim Trainor, a classmate and currently a West Point professor, said Westhusing was strict but sympathetic to cadets' problems. He remembered him as "introspective."

Westhusing graduated third in his class in 1983 and became an infantry platoon leader. He received special forces training, served in Italy, South Korea and Honduras, and eventually became division operations officer for the 82nd Airborne, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

He loved commanding soldiers. But he remained drawn to intellectual pursuits.

In 2000, Westhusing enrolled in Emory University's doctoral philosophy program. The idea was to return to West Point to teach future leaders.

He immediately stood out on the leafy Atlanta campus. Married with children, he was surrounded by young, single students. He was a deeply faithful Christian in a graduate program of professional skeptics.

Plunged into academia, Westhusing held fast to his military ties. Students and professors recalled him jogging up steep hills in combat boots and camouflage, his rucksack full, to stay in shape. He wrote a paper challenging an essay that questioned the morality of patriotism.

"He was as straight an arrow as you would possibly find," said Aaron Fichtelberg, a fellow student and now a professor at the University of Delaware. "He seemed unshakable."

In his 352-page dissertation, Westhusing discussed the ethics of war, focusing on examples of military honor from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Israeli army. It is a dense, searching and sometimes personal effort to define what, exactly, constitutes virtuous conduct in the context of the modern U.S. military.

"Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge," he wrote in the opening pages.

As planned, Westhusing returned to teach philosophy and English at West Point as a full professor with a guaranteed lifetime assignment. He settled into life on campus with his wife, Michelle, and their three young children.

But amid the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he told friends that he felt experience in Iraq would help him in teaching cadets. In the fall of 2004, he volunteered for duty.

"He wanted to serve, he wanted to use his skills, maybe he wanted some glory," recalled Nick Fotion, his advisor at Emory. "He wanted to go."

In January, Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops.

Westhusing's task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.

In March, Gen. David Petraeus, commanding officer of the Iraqi training mission, praised Westhusing's performance, saying he had exceeded "lofty expectations."

"Thanks much, sir, but we can do much better and will," Westhusing wrote back, according to a copy of the Army investigation of his death that was obtained by The Times.

In April, his mood seemed to have darkened. He worried over delays in training one of the police battalions.

Then, in May, Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.

The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis.

A USIS contractor accompanied Iraqi police trainees during the assault on Fallouja last November and later boasted about the number of insurgents he had killed, the letter says. Private security contractors are not allowed to conduct offensive operations.

In a second incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager "did not want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk."

Westhusing reported the allegations to his superiors but told one of them, Gen. Joseph Fil, that he believed USIS was complying with the terms of its contract.

U.S. officials investigated and found "no contractual violations," an Army spokesman said. Bill Winter, a USIS spokesman, said the investigation "found these allegations to be unfounded."

However, several U.S. officials said inquiries on USIS were ongoing. One U.S. military official, who, like others, requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the inquiries had turned up problems, but nothing to support the more serious charges of human rights violations.

"As is typical, there may be a wisp of truth in each of the allegations," the official said.

The letter shook Westhusing, who felt personally implicated by accusations that he was too friendly with USIS management, according to an e-mail in the report.

"This is a mess … dunno what I will do with this," he wrote home to his family May 18.

The colonel began to complain to colleagues about "his dislike of the contractors," who, he said, "were paid too much money by the government," according to one captain.

"The meetings [with contractors] were never easy and always contentious. The contracts were in dispute and always under discussion," an Army Corps of Engineers official told investigators.

By June, some of Westhusing's colleagues had begun to worry about his health. They later told investigators that he had lost weight and begun fidgeting, sometimes staring off into space. He seemed withdrawn, they said.

His family was also becoming worried. He described feeling alone and abandoned. He sent home brief, cryptic e-mails, including one that said, "[I] didn't think I'd make it last night." He talked of resigning his command.

Westhusing brushed aside entreaties for details, writing that he would say more when he returned home. The family responded with an outpouring of e-mails expressing love and support.

His wife recalled a phone conversation that chilled her two weeks before his death.

"I heard something in his voice," she told investigators, according to a transcript of the interview. "In Ted's voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime and being alone."

Westhusing's father, Keith, said the family did not want to comment for this article.

On June 4, Westhusing left his office in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone of Baghdad to view a demonstration of Iraqi police preparedness at Camp Dublin, the USIS headquarters at the airport. He gave a briefing that impressed Petraeus and a visiting scholar. He stayed overnight at the USIS camp.

That night in his office, a USIS secretary would later tell investigators, she watched Westhusing take out his 9-millimeter pistol and "play" with it, repeatedly unholstering the weapon.

At a meeting the next morning to discuss construction delays, he seemed agitated. He stewed over demands for tighter vetting of police candidates, worried that it would slow the mission. He seemed upset over funding shortfalls.

Uncharacteristically, he lashed out at the contractors in attendance, according to the Army Corps official. In three months, the official had never seen Westhusing upset.

"He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," the official recounted. Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this."

The meeting broke up shortly before lunch. About 1 p.m., a USIS manager went looking for Westhusing because he was scheduled for a ride back to the Green Zone. After getting no answer, the manager returned about 15 minutes later. Another USIS employee peeked through a window. He saw Westhusing lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

The manager rushed into the trailer and tried to revive Westhusing. The manager told investigators that he picked up the pistol at Westhusing's feet and tossed it onto the bed.

"I knew people would show up," that manager said later in attempting to explain why he had handled the weapon. "With 30 years from military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to get bumped and go off."

After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing's death a suicide. A test showed gunpowder residue on his hands. A shell casing in the room bore markings indicating it had been fired from his service revolver.

Then there was the note.

Investigators found it lying on Westhusing's bed. The handwriting matched his.

The first part of the four-page letter lashes out at Petraeus and Fil. Both men later told investigators that they had not criticized Westhusing or heard negative comments from him. An Army review undertaken after Westhusing's death was complimentary of the command climate under the two men, a U.S. military official said.

Most of the letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

"Death before being dishonored any more."

A psychologist reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded that the anonymous letter had been the "most difficult and probably most painful stressor."

She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw.

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."

One military officer said he felt Westhusing had trouble reconciling his ideals with Iraq's reality. Iraq "isn't a black-and-white place," the officer said. "There's a lot of gray."

Fil and Petraeus, Westhusing's commanding officers, declined to comment on the investigation, but they praised him. He was "an extremely bright, highly competent, completely professional and exceedingly hard-working officer. His death was truly tragic and was a tremendous blow," Petraeus said.

Westhusing's family and friends are troubled that he died at Camp Dublin, where he was without a bodyguard, surrounded by the same contractors he suspected of wrongdoing. They wonder why the manager who discovered Westhusing's body and picked up his weapon was not tested for gunpowder residue.

Mostly, they wonder how Col. Ted Westhusing — father, husband, son and expert on doing right — could have found himself in a place so dark that he saw no light.

"He's the last person who would commit suicide," said Fichtelberg, his graduate school colleague. "He couldn't have done it. He's just too damn stubborn."

Westhusing's body was flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Waiting to receive it were his family and a close friend from West Point, a lieutenant colonel.

In the military report, the unidentified colonel told investigators that he had turned to Michelle, Westhusing's wife, and asked what happened.

She answered:

"Iraq."

November 27, 2005

latime: World News

Allawi: Iraq abuse 'as bad as Saddam era

2005-11-27T20:52:00.000+03:00

The former Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has called for immediate action against human rights abuses.

Iyad Allawi is preparing himself to the comming election on Dec 15. Allawi past history is well known to most Iraqis as he was a previous Baath's member.

"(By the way, the first 'political kidnapping' in Iraq took place in 1962 by Adil and Allawi, both staunch Ba'athist at the time. They kidnapped the Medical University Dean because he refused to declare a holliday on a Finals test day to accomodate a Ba'athist demonstration)." "Adil " is Adil abdul Mahdi the current Vice President.

"So which cynic was it who said that the war in Iraq was launched to replace an anti-American tyrant by a pro-American tyrant?

Long Live Democracy!"

The bloodshed continued

2005-11-24T23:02:00.000+03:00

IOL: Suicide car bomb kills 30 outside Iraqi hospital: "the bloodshed continued"

Many killed in Iraq car bombing

2005-11-24T22:45:00.000+03:00

My niece is a doctor in the general hospital in Mahmudiya, she was in duty at the time of the explosion helping a pregnant woman to bear, few moment after she finished her job, and just after she left the delivery room, the explosion happened killing the newly born baby and his mother among others.
My niece, a nurse and a senior doctor were the only survivors of the accident in that department.
The complete story can be found her

Mirror.co.uk - News - LAW CHIEF GAGS THE MIRROR ON BUSH LEAK

2005-11-23T22:49:00.000+03:00

Mirror.co.uk - News - LAW CHIEF GAGS THE MIRROR ON BUSH LEAK

CBC News: Britain gags report that Bush targeted Arab TV

2005-11-23T22:34:00.000+03:00

CBC News: Britain gags report that Bush targeted Arab TV

The news that Bush had thought about bombing Al-Jazeera network is very interesting. It really reflect the Bush style freedom and democracy.

Here in Iraq and the Middle East, we Know very well the double standard of the US policy, so we didn't surprised from this news, on the contrary we surprised why he didn't bombed it till now. His allies in the Iraqi government didn't wait that much before finishing the hostile to their interests.

I will assure him, what ever he (Mr. Bush) and they (the Iraqi government) did, the voice of truth will be heard all over the world.

Nice picture

2005-11-19T22:11:00.000+03:00

Who Appologized to whom and why???

I know for sure that there are as good people in America as in any other place. The fact that we don't know about them didn't change the reality.

What happening in Iraqi prisons

2005-11-19T21:43:00.000+03:00

During the last two days, there were a news of abuse and torture to detainees in the Ministry of Interior.
The news said there were more than 170 detainees badly beaten, some had die from the torture, in at least one of the ministry under ground shelters.

Yesterday the Minister appears on the TV to deny the news. He confess the torture but of only seven men whom he described as very dangerous terrorist who came from out side Iraq. To support his claim of only seven detainee he showed the passports of them, The number of passports are much more than seven.

A rumors said that Iranian officers are doing the torture, but the Minister said, they are all Iraqi, he have 29 Iraqi officers to torture the seven detainees !!!
That mean for every one detainee, there was at least four officers responsible for his discomfort.

He threatened the religious leaders that he will apply the anti terrors law against them.

It is the freedom and democracy of the new Iraq. Viva America.

US USED WHITE PHOSPHORUS AND A FIREBOMB SIMILAR TO NAPALM AGAINST IRAQI CIVILIANS IN FALLUJAH.

2005-11-10T13:16:00.000+03:00

Sorry to bother you, but you have to read this:

"A report released on 11/8/05, by Italian state sponsored RAI television claims that the US used chemical weapons against Iraqi civilians in Fallujah last November. I am appalled by the information found in this report and I am horrified that US government indiscriminately used these weapons against Iraqi men, women and children. "

CFL ALERT: US USED WHITE PHOSPHORUS AND A FIREBOMB SIMILAR TO NAPALM AGAINST IRAQI CIVILIANS IN FALLUJAH.

Citizens for Fair Legislation
For Immediate Release
November 9, 2005
********************************

Italian state sponsored television broadcaster, RAI released a report on 11/8/05 stating that the United States used white phosphorus and a substance similar to napalm against Iraqis in Fallujah in November of 2004. This report included interviews with two American soldiers who also acknowledged use of these chemical weapons against civilians in Iraq. To see the report in its entirety

http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/default_02112005.asp

Pdf file shows U.S. military boasting about what the Pentagon is now denying doing, using white phosphorus on and in Falluja:

http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/Previous_Editions/05/mar-apr05/PAGE24-30.pdf

TALKING POINTS, TAKE ACTION NOW.

*Tell your representatives in Congress and the Senate that you are appalled that chemical weapons were used against civilians in Iraq and demand that they begin an inquiry immediately into what happened in Fallujah last year. Tell your representatives that the RAI documentary showed images of bodies recovered in Fallujah of men, women and children who were burned to the bone. A former soldier in the US 1st Infantry Division in Iraq has gone on record as saying, "I do know that white phosphorus was used." He also said he saw, "burned bodies, burned children and burned women.” RAI also reported that the US used the Mark 77 firebomb, a weapon similar to napalm, in Iraq. A former soldier in the Iraq war told RAI news correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci this, "I received the order to use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Fallujah." White phosphorus burns the human body on contact, to the bone. Medics and humanitarian workers who entered Fallujah after the offensive say they found people with "bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact."

*The RAI report shows that contrary to US State Department statements, white phosphorus was dropped indiscriminately and in massive quantities throughout Fallujah. Footage is also shown of the effects of this chemical substance on civilians--women and children who were burned to death while sleeping. RAI also discovered the use of a napalm-like formula called MK77, which has been banned since a 1980 UN treaty and which the US signed in 1997.

*Tell your representatives that you are deeply disturbed by the use of chemical weapons against Iraqis. Ask that they immediately hold the government accountable for the lies leading up to the war in Iraq and for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians. Ask your representatives what it will take for them to speak out against the atrocities occurring in Iraq. The RAI report includes footage of these chemical weapons being dropped on Fallujah, it includes footage of the burned corpses of men, women and children, and it includes interviews with American soldiers admitting that these chemicals were used. Ask your representatives how long they will remain silent about the war crimes occurring in Iraq.

*Remind your representatives that many pointed to Saddam's use of biological weapons against the Kurds in Halajba as reason enough to wage war against Iraq. Ask them what the difference is between Saddam using biological weapons against Kurds and the US using chemical weapons against Iraqis. Tell your representatives that while it is too late to help the people of Fallujah who were killed by our chemical weapons that at the very least they need to speak out and condemn the use of these chemicals and hold the current administration accountable for the war crimes they are committing in Iraq.

===============================
EMAIL AND OR CALL THE WHITE HOUSE
WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS LINE: 202-456-1111
WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: 202-456-1414
WHITE HOUSE FAX: 202-456-2461
===============================
Citizens for Fair Legislation is a grassroots organization committed
to encouraging a fair domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on
the US/Arab world.
www.cflweb.org

Some thing to read

2005-11-06T17:55:00.000+03:00

According to the Oct. 20 Washington Times, in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ms. Rice said "that it was always the Bush administration's intent to redesign the Middle East after the September 11 attacks, which exposed a 'deep malignancy growing' in the region, and that the Iraq was part of that plan."

Read this and this.

In 2003, tired of the US media’s inaccurate portrayal of the realities of the Iraq War, independent journalist Dahr Jamail headed to the conflict himself. Instead of following in the footsteps of mainstream media’s embedded, "Hotel Journalists," Jamail hit the Iraqi streets to uncover the stories most reporters were missing. His countless interviews with Iraqi citizens and from-the-ground reporting have offered a horrific look into the bowels of the US occupation. From covering the bloody siege of Falluja to breaking a story on Bechtel’s failure to reconstruct water treatment plants, his writing and photographs depict an Iraq that is much worse off now than it was before the US invasion.

Read this.

More pictures

2005-11-02T12:32:00.000+03:00

More pictures

2005-10-30T20:30:00.000+03:00

I quess those pictures get acceptance by most of my reader. A friend of mine, (An American friend), send me more pictures but this time the crowd is of thousands of protesters.
Here are some of the new pictures.

More and more sounds against the occupation, from every where, maily from the Americans veterans.

Read this:

"I Was Saying, See These Oil Fires? This Is Why We're Here, Guys. We're Not Defending Freedom"

And this:

"This Job Isn't Done" - "It's Our Responsibility, As Soldiers To See It Carried Out Till Every American Knows The Truth Of Why This War Has To Stop"

Not all the Americans are warmongers.

2005-10-29T22:30:00.000+03:00

I have heard about the protest at som eof the American cities, against the war.

I looked in the internet and found some pictures of those protests.

Washington DC

"On Saturday, a Not in Our Name contingent made up of folks from across the country joined the sea of people that staged the largest protest yet in Washington DC against the unjust war and occupation of Iraq. Over a quarter of a million people marched by the White House gates."
" Thousands of Puget Sound anti-war activists marched down the streets of Seattle on Saturday, September 24th, demanding an end to the war in Iraq."

California

In San Francisco, Not in Our Name Bay Area marched along with tens of thousands in a youth-led funeral procession which included dozens of musicians, a dozen coffins draped in black to represent the thousands killed by the blatant aggression and neglect of the Bush Administration, and non-stop lively chants. Die-ins were staged along the route -- that, along with the coffins, made compelling visual representations of the human costs of the policies of the Bush Regime."

Colorado

"Two thousand people gathered in at the state capitol in Denver to demand "Get US Out Now!" The rally and march through downtown was organized by the recently formed 3 November Movement.

Not in Our Name national staff person Jeff Paterson spoke of his resistance to the first Gulf War as an active duty Marine, about those within the military who are objecting today to an unjust war, and the tactics that military recruiters are using to enlist the 200,000 troops needed yearly to sustain the war machine -- while not taking care of the veterans of this or past wars.

Local featured speakers included State Representative Morgan Carroll, union organizer Scott Silber, Mark Turner of Ripples Cross, high school students, Hashim Malik of Bay of Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, Vietnam Veteran Mike Collins, Mike Miles, and Nita Gonzales of Escuela Tlatelolco -- with musican David Rovics."

Hawai'i

"More than 350 people - ages 1 to 87 - stepped into Honolulu's streets on Saturday to march against the war. The march, organized by Not in Our Name-Hawai`i, was joined by groups from labor, churches, the Democratic Party, World Can't Wait and more. There were pacifists, Hawaiian independence activists, communists, high school and college youth, Iraq war veterans, military families, active duty military personnel, business people and college professors. We missed a lot of the faces we usually see at the marches, but were really happy to see that many people who had not come out before had joined us."

"Friday, September 23, Not in Our Name joined the People Power Can End the War Collective for a direct action at the downtown Oakland Armed Forces Recruiting Station."

More pictures are still waiting to be published.

Who and Why...??

2005-10-28T19:36:00.000+03:00

At June 2005, and in one of my blog, there was a discussion about the population of Mosul, does the majority of them Kurds or Arabs. I said the majority are Arabs, while the other idea was the majority are Kurds, mainly in the east side of the city. At that time I checked the Encyclopedias, mainly the Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of the Orient, in which they said the residents of Mosul are mainly Kurds with minority of Christians and Turkomans, there were no mention of Arabs !!!. I excused the opponent commenter as he know nothing about Mosul but from the net and from what other told him.

What surprise me most is that I came accidentaly to the Wikipedia again, this time I saw the following:

"Wikipedia
Mosul

Mos?l (Arabic: موصل al-Mawsil), Kurdish: MÃ»sil, or Nineveh (Syriac: ?????) is a city in northern Iraq/Central Assyria. It stands on both banks of the Tigris River, with five bridges liking the two sides, some 396 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

The population of the area is largely Kurdish, but the majority of the city's inhabitants are Arabs. In 1987 the city's population was 664,221 people; the 2002 population estimate was 1,739,800.[1]"

majority of the city's inhabitants are Arabs.!!! The previous statement didn't mention the Arabs altogether!!!

I checked again the encyclopedia of the Orient and I found this:

"Mosul (m?'s?l, m?s?l') , Arab. al Mawsil, city (1987 pop. 664,221), provincial capital, N Iraq, on the Tigris River, opposite the ruins of Nineveh. It is the largest city in N Iraq and the third largest city in the country. Trade in agricultural goods and exploitation of oil in the nearby oil fields are the two main occupations of the inhabitants. Mosul has an oil refinery; its productivity in the 1980s was hindered by the Iran-Iraq War. While most of the urban population is Arab, the surrounding region has a large Kurdish population. The city is the seat of Mosul Univ. and a center of Nestorian Christianity."

While most of the urban population is Arab!!!. A big change!! isn't it?

I wonder, Did the American Encyclopedias are so ignorant, that they didn't know the real inhabitants of the city of Mosul.? Or, there were other things made them wrote that statements?
Did the referendum on the constitution had any relation to that issue.? If not. What make them change their mind.?

I really want to know.

Fraud and Corruption

2005-10-25T16:47:00.000+03:00

The constitution passed the stage of obstructed labor. The biggest fraud in the history of Iraq. Don't say the referendum at Saddam time was bigger, NO, although those who vote yes to Saddam were 99.96%, they vote yes because they can vote nothing but yes.
In this referendum we vote "No" but the result appeared "Yes".
It is a miracle !!!.
The preliminary count early after the referendum revealed 80% "No" in Mosul, but the result 10 days later appeared 55% "Yes".
Did you know what that mean, it mean the puppet government won.

Why we don't want this government? Not only because it allied with the occupation. But also because it is a corrupted one.
you want a prove? Read this.

"There are widespread accusations that the interior ministry and SCIRI, with the complicity of US advisors, are behind a wave of terror being unleashed against people believed to be supportive of the armed anti-occupation resistance or critical of the Baghdad government."Link

"In June, Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee was shot dead
by a sniper at a US checkpoint just days before a major story he had researched with Tom Lasseter was published. The story documented accounts of killings and torture by the interior ministry police commando unit known as the Wolf Brigade, which was recruited from former members of HusseinÂs Iraqi Republican Guard."

"In July, the British Observer published allegations that the interior ministry was carrying out extra-judicial killings and widespread torture in the prisons under its control."

"On August 2, a witness identified one of the men who abducted and murdered American journalist Steven Vincent as an interior ministry employee. Vincent had written several exposures of extra-judicial killings by Shiite militias linked to SCIRI."

"There are widespread accusations that the interior ministry and SCIRI, with the complicity of US advisors, are behind a wave of terror being unleashed against people believed to be supportive of the armed anti-occupation resistance or critical of the Baghdad government."
Link

"The interior ministry of the pro-US government in Iraq is being directly accused of carrying out the murder of Sadoun Antar Nudsaif al-Janabi, a keydefensee lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others that began on October 19.

Janabi was seized from his office late in the evening on October 20 by as many as 10 men. Witnesses claim they were wearing police uniforms. Several hours later, JanabiÂs body was found on the street near BaghdadÂs Fardous Mosque. He had been killed execution-style with two gunshots to the head." "Link

Is that is enough for you? It proved to be enough for many here.

No more comments

2005-10-22T21:15:00.000+03:00

Dear commenters

I would like to apologize for my decision to close the comments' section. I took this decision when I noticed that the comments took another way that is far from what I hoped.

When I started this blog , my intention was to put the facts as I saw them on the ground, in front of the world's eyes. My father used to tell me not to believe what I hear unless I see it. Now I believe in this statement more than before because I saw intellegent and educated people who believe what is really a pure political propaganda.

I hope you come to reality and take a fair look at the situation in Iraq, not only from the American viewpoint but from a human viewpoint, forget the interests and benefits, just put yourselves in our position. An invader occupied our land, killed our countrymen, divided our nation into different sects, destroyed the infra structure of our country and more and more.
When we complained, you said we came to free you, the freedom is expensive, you have to pay.

And so, dear readers, no more comments for you..

We and the Constitution

2005-10-13T16:53:00.000+03:00

Two days left before the vote for the constitution, but till now no body in Mosul have seen a copy of it which supposed to be distributed to the population before the referendum.
In addition till now we and our neighbors don't know yet the place where to vote which is necessory to be known in advance since there is a curfew for all vehicles started from wednesday Oct 12 at 10 pm till monday Oct 17 at 5 am. That mean no body can use a car for trnsportation from place to place inside the city, the schools, the University and all the governmental offices are closed for 4 days.

"Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of the National Dialogue Council, stated that the decision of the Sunni Arabs is based on pure scientific grounds. This is the outcome of several meetings between prominent Sunni figures and other political blocs opposed to the constitution. As the constitution translates into the division of the country and the elimination of Iraq’s Arab identity, Al-Mutlaq says, the Sunni Arabs should combat this constitution by all possible peaceful means. In his eyes, only if the issue of federalism, for example, is postponed for future negotiations can this position be altered. This is a clear shift in the Sunnis’ stand: from boycotting the referendum to participating with a clear “No” vote."

Yesterday night there was a news from the Iraqi Islamic party, who declared that he will share in the vote on condition to reconsider the unsettled items after the election of the new government.

"The Shiites and Kurds have agreed that the newly elected parliament after December 15 will reopen negotiations with the Sunni Arabs on the constitution. This step was enough to convince the Iraqi Islamic Party to drop its call for a Sunni Arab rejection fo the constitution in the October 15 referendum."

Take a walk

2005-10-07T21:43:00.000+03:00

My little daughter Najma wrote a post today, I found it very interesting and deserve reading, As I have no new post, I just published a copy of it here.

"It was meant to be a joke, but it makes sense:

"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes."
"Try and put yourself in their shoes".. I've been told to do so with American soldiers, over and over, and I did. It didn't give me a justification for what they did, do or have done.

You might have noticed that many incidents are caused by American soldiers, on this blog, for that, many people have turned against them in Iraq.. Latest: Mom is crossing the street in front of the university, the police start shooting too close, mom gets scared and screams.. After calming down, she looks around to see if one of her students is there and saw her.. None was there, she is relieved, she goes on..

Now, try to put yourself in her shoes! Hard? Try this:

A cousin, her children and her husband are in the car, they hear some shots and so the American soldiers go crazy and start shooting randomly.. A bullet then got really close and tore her hijab but didn't injure her..

Easy? No..

I'm sure it isn't easy.. It isn't easy for dad to come up and check if I'm alive, it's not easy for mom to call my sister every while to check if she's Okay.. Everytime a name is mentioned, the first things that comes to mind is : Is he/she shot?

For that I tell you, no one at all has the right to tell me how my country is now, unless that someone is IN Iraq, and knows how it is.. Otherwise, the most idea you have of the situation, is way less than what really is going on.

Just walk a mile in my shoes, if you finish that alive, then and only then, come and tell me what you think..

"Could you devote a post to civilian Iraqis who have been killed by insurgents, if any. And do these insurgents offer help in the same manner of the Americans who send wounded Iraqis to base hospitals and to hospitals in other countries. Do these insurgents offer help in the way of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure like schools, hospitals, oil refineries, etc. We don't hear of this because of the Bush controlled media."

For God's sake, I have a brain.. Insurgents are not helping. But who are the insurgents? Killing Iraqis, destroying homes, kidnapping people.. Their only aim is to terrorize.
But, for that person, who goes out to kill the occupier, I say it now clearly: I'm with the Mujahid.. And if you have a problem with it, well, imagine your country being torn the way mine is, and see if you allow that.
And I invite you to come and see how hospitals in Iraq are now.. An open invitation, not recommended for weak-hearted people though! See the reconstruction in Iraq, I doubt you'll find what will interest you!

"I have read your blogs for over a year and you have changed quite drastically and I am sorry for that. Our American Soldiers are getting themselves killed trying to bring you and your country a freedom similar to what we know. If you do not want or appreciate it I hope our military decides to hand it over to your military and walk away. It seems you and your fellow countryman would instead turn on your own people that are trying to deny you {especially females} these basic freedoms."

Another American trying to show me the "right" way.. Does anyone have statistics of how many Americans and Iraqis got killed in this war..? When you do, tell me who lost their lives because of this war!! Your soldiers lost their lives because war is death, and war is a hobby of your president.
Dare you say anything more about female rights, we're strong enough to claim them.. For me, I'm totally satisfied with what I had before, as a female. The freedom I want is the one I lost thanks to your country..

"President Bush or any other leader of a country must do what is best for his or her country. That's why they are elected, if it is democracy or how they stay in power if they have assumed power in any other manner."

Even if what is good for your country is having two other countries occupied and many many people killed..? In every country in the world, there is good and bad.. Look at your own faults, maybe then, you'll be too busy to look at other country's faults..!!

Just so you wouldn't get me wrong, I listen when you tell me what you think.. But you do not have the right to tell me how I should feel, who I should love and who I should hate.. You have no right to tell me that the situation is this and that, cuz I'm here, in the war-zone, and I'm pretty sure that regarding the situation, I know better.

I am surrounded by Iraqis 24/7, all kinds.. I know how they feel, and no person can tell me that I don't. Some Iraqis are good, some are bad, all have different opinions, and mine represents most of the ones' I speak for, Moslawis'..

Anyone has the urge to kill me right now? The door is wide enough for a camel as we say, you do not have to come across this blog again..

Open-minds are welcomed.. Being American doesn't mean having an opened-mind by the way.. Closed-minds?? There are blogs that are devoted to cursing Iraqi bloggers, go join.."

Who will answer these questions..?

2005-09-26T20:28:00.000+04:00

What happened in Basra in the last week is well known to all of you. But the thing which is not known to all of us is why this is happened..?

This is an article throw some light on this subject, with questions to be answered.

Now it transpires that two British soldiers were dressed as Arabs and attacking the Iraqi security forces in Basra? And the British authorities have admitted they were members of the SAS? They were caught after shooting at and murdering an Iraqi police official and their car was found to be packed with explosives and a C4 detonator?

Or is it that the two troops were in fact undercover agents dressed as Sadrists, Al-Sadr's Mahdi army, trying to stir up a war in Iraq between rival anti-occupation forces to help the beleaguered Iraqi security forces to stay in control as events spiral ever downwards? Is it that they were planning a massive bomb attack against Shia targets, to blame on the Sunni?

Is it true that many of the killings in Iraq are not in fact perpetrated by Sunni extremists or foreign insurgents, but indeed by British and American security forces, trying to take the strain off their troops in their realization that the war in Iraq was a monumental mistake from day one, witness to freedom and democracy George Bush style and that followed by his sickening bunch of sycophants eager to make an easy buck on the international stage by breaking an international law or six?

At the end of the day, who are the terrorists in Iraq? Were not the international terrorists blocked from entering Iraq by Saddam Hussein and the floodgates heaved open by the USA and its allies? Was Saddam Hussein not the one telling the truth, along with Dr. David Kelly, on WMD? Was George Bush not the one "stiffing" the world? No? Where then is the WMD?

These are all questions which need to be addressed, and urgently, by the British and American governments.

We can assume the position of demanding an answer in the name of the international community. And now!!

This article is copied from KAVKAS CENTER.COM

Now Tal-Afar. . . . Who is next ??

2005-09-16T20:51:00.000+04:00

There is some thing strange, that is the media's silence about what is going on in Tal-Afar.
Tal-Afar is a city about 80 km north-west of Mosul. For the last week, about 10,000 soldiers from the US troops, Kurdish peshmerga and Badir army (a shiee militia) were laying siege to the city.

Most of the residents have left their homes and settled in the neighboring villages and in Mosul.
Reports in the Iragia TV channel said, they killed about 200 terrorists in the operation, but what we heard from the people fled from their, that the fighters inside Tal-Afar have left the city already.
Some of the refugee said that most of the people killed were civilians who had no place to go so they chose to stay in their homes, stayed because they feared persecution at the hands of the Peshmerga and Badr Army.

Families fled from the city are staying in refugee camps out side the city, the government has not provided any shelter, food or drink for them.

Most people in Tal-Afar would choose rather to be detained by the Americans now, because they know if Iraqi soldiers or Iraqi police detain them they will be tortured severely, and possibly killed. This gives you an idea of how bad it is with these Iraqi soldiers.

I have difficulty in explaining my feeling. But just imagine how an Iraqi person prefer to be detained by an American but not by the Iraqis, his own countrymen...!!!

I am back

2005-09-01T09:43:00.000+04:00

Hi very body.
I am back. Sorry for being too late.
I was in vacation, I spend it with the family in Syria and Jordan. You can read the details in Najma (The star of Mosul) blog.
Thank you to all who shared positively on my previous post, some, or at least one of them, is probably a psychopath (dan), I apologize for deleting his nonsense. I realize there should be a thought differences due to different culture, education and believes. But let discuss it in a civilized manner like civilized people.
If you agree I will continue, if you don't, I will close the comment section.
It is up to you my friends.

Did Paul Bremer steal billions of US budget for Iraq?

2005-08-04T23:12:00.000+04:00

At the end of the Iraq war, huge sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. Ed Harriman on the extraordinary scandal of Iraq’s missing billions!

*Thursday July 7, 2005*

*Guardian*

When Paul Bremer, the American pro consul in Baghdad until June last year, arrived in Iraq soon after the official end of hostilities, there was $6bn left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and at least $10bn from resumed Iraqi oil exports. Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on May 22 2003, all these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), and intended to be spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) "in a transparent manner … for the benefit of the Iraqi people".

The US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. By June 28 last year, however, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds. The "reconstruction" of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan - but the US government funded the Marshall Plan. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the "liberated" country, by the Iraqis themselves.

The CPA maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces. The US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
The "financial irregularities" described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated. Truckloads of dollars were handed out for which neither they nor the recipients felt they had to be accountable.

The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8bn that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4bn appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance "security".

Although Bremer was expected to manage Iraqi funds in a transparent manner, it was only in October 2003, six months after the fall of Saddam, that an International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) was established to provide independent, international financial oversight of CPA spending. (This board includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.)
The IAMB first spent months trying to find auditors acceptable to the US. The Bahrain office of KPMG was finally appointed in April 2004. It was stonewalled.

"KPMG has encountered resistance from CPA staff regarding the submission of information required to complete our procedures," they wrote in an interim report. "Staff have indicated … that cooperation with KPMG’s undertakings is given a low priority." KPMG had one meeting at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance; meetings at all the other ministries were repeatedly postponed. The auditors even had trouble getting passes to enter the Green Zone.

There appears to have been good reason for the Americans to stall. At the end of June 2004, the CPA would be disbanded and Bremer would leave Iraq. There was no way the Bush administration would want independent auditors to publish a report into the financial propriety of its Iraqi administration while the CPA was still in existence and Bremer at its head still answerable to the press. So the report was published in July.

The auditors found that the CPA didn’t keep accounts of the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government ministries.

This lack of transparency has led to allegations of corruption. An Iraqi hospital administrator told me that when he came to sign a contract, the American army officer representing the CPA had crossed out the original price and doubled it. The Iraqi protested that the original price was enough. The American officer explained that the increase (more than $1m) was his retirement package.

When the Iraqi Governing Council asked Bremer why a contract to repair the Samarah cement factory was costing $60m rather than the agreed $20m, the American representative reportedly told them that they should be grateful the coalition had saved them from Saddam. Iraqis who were close to the Americans, had access to the Green Zone or held prominent posts in the new government ministries were also in a position personally to benefit enormously. Iraqi businessmen complain endlessly that they had to offer substantial bribes to Iraqi middlemen just to be able to bid for CPA contracts. Iraqi ministers’ relatives got top jobs and fat contracts.

Further evidence of lack of transparency comes from a series of audits and reports carried out by the CPA’s own inspector general’s office (CPAIG). Set up in January 2004, it reports to Congress. Its auditors, accountants and criminal investigators often found themselves sitting alone at cafe tables in the Green Zone, shunned by their CPA compatriots. Their audit, published in July 2004, found that the American contracts officers in the CPA and Iraqi ministries "did not ensure that … contract files contained all the required documents, a fair and reasonable price was paid for the services received, contractors were capable of meeting delivery schedules, or that contractors were paid in accordance with contract requirements".

Pilfering was rife. Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11m and $26m worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the CPA was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work. Some $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for "personnel not in the field performing work" and "other improper charges" on just one oil pipeline repair contract.

Most of the 69 criminal investigations the CPAIG instigated related to alleged theft, fraud, waste, assault and extortion. It also investigated "a number of other cases that, because of their sensitivity, cannot be included in this report". One such case may have arisen when 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the American-appointed Iraqi interior minister.

At the same time, the IAMB discovered that Iraqi oil exports were unmetered. Neither the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation nor the American authorities could give a satisfactory explanation for this. "The only reason you wouldn’t monitor them is if you don’t want anyone else to know how much is going through," one petroleum executive told me.

Officially, Iraq exported $10bn worth of oil in the first year of the American occupation. Christian Aid has estimated that up to $4bn more may have been exported and is unaccounted for. If so, this would have created an off-the-books fund that both the Americans and their Iraqi allies could use with impunity to cover expenditures they would rather keep secret - among them the occupation costs, which were rising far beyond what the Bush administration could comfortably admit to Congress and the international community.

In the few weeks before Bremer left Iraq, the CPA handed out more than $3bn in new contracts to be paid for with Iraqi funds and managed by the US embassy in Baghdad. The CPA inspector general, now called the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), has just released an audit report on the way the embassy has dealt with that responsibility. The auditors reviewed the files of 225 contracts totalling $327m to see if the embassy "could identify the current value of paid and unpaid contract obligations".

It couldn’t. "Our review showed that financial records … understated payments made by $108,255,875" and "overstated unpaid obligations by $119,361,286". The auditors also reviewed the paperwork of a further 300 contracts worth $332.9m: "Of 198 contract files reviewed, 154 did not contain evidence that goods and services were received, 169 did not contain invoices, and 14 did not contain evidence of payment."

Clearly, the Americans see no need to account for spending Iraqis’ national income now any more than they did when Bremer was in charge. Neither the embassy chief of mission nor the US military commander replied to the auditors’ invitation to comment. Instead, the US army contracting commander lamely pointed out that "the peaceful conditions envisioned in the early planning continue to elude the reconstruction efforts". This is a remarkable understatement. It’s also an admission that Americans can’t be expected to do their sums when they are spending other people’s money to finance a war.

Lack of accountability does not stop with the Americans. In January this year, the Sigir issued a report detailing evidence of fraud, corruption and waste by the Iraqi Interim Government when Bremer was in charge. They found that $8.8bn - the entire Iraqi Interim Government spending from October 2003 through June 2004 - was not properly accounted for. The Iraqi Office of Budget and Management at one point had only six staff, all of them inexperienced, and most of the ministries had no budget departments. Iraq’s newly appointed ministers and their senior officials were free to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as they pleased, while American "advisers" looked on.

"CPA personnel did not review and compare financial, budgetary and operational performance to planned or expected results," the auditors explained. One ministry gave out $430m in contracts without its CPA advisers seeing any of the paperwork. Another claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found. There is simply no way of knowing how much of the $8.8bn has gone to pay for private militias and into private pockets.

"It’s remarkable that the inspector general’s office could have produced even a draft report with so many misconceptions and inaccuracies," Bremer said in his reply to the Sigir report. "At liberation, the Iraqi economy was dead in the water. So CPA’s top priority was to get the economy going."

The Sigir has responded by releasing another audit this April, an investigation into the way Bremer’s CPA managed cash payments from Iraqi funds in just one part of Iraq, the region around Hillah: "During the course of the audit, we identified deficiencies in the control of cash … of such magnitude as to require prompt attention. Those deficiencies were so significant that we were precluded from accomplishing our stated objectives." They found that CPA headquarters in Baghdad "did not maintain full control and accountability for approximately $119.9m", and that agents in the field "cannot properly account for or support over $96.6m in cash and receipts". The agents were mostly Americans in Iraq on short-term contracts. One agent’s account balance was "overstated by $2,825,755, and the error went undetected". Another agent was given $25m cash for which Bremer’s office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation". Of more than $23m given to another agent, there are only records for $6,306,836 paid to contractors.

Many of the American agents submitted their paperwork only hours before they headed to the airport. Two left Iraq without accounting for $750,000 each, which has never been found. CPA head office cleared several agents’ balances of between $250,000 and $12m without any receipts. One agent who did submit receipts, on being told that he still owed $1,878,870, turned up three days later with exactly that amount. The auditors thought that "this suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash", pointing out that if his original figures had been correct, he would have accounted to the CPA for approximately $3.8m more than he had been given in the first place, which "suggests that the receipt documents provided to the DFI account manager were unreliable".

So where did the money go? You can’t see it in Hillah. The schools, hospitals, water supply and electricity, all of which were supposed to benefit from these funds, are in ruins. The inescapable conclusion is that many of the American paying agents grabbed large bundles of cash for themselves and made sweet deals with their Iraqi contacts.

And so it continues. The IAMB’s most recent audit of Iraqi government spending talks of "incomplete accounting", "lack of documented justification for limited competition for contracts at the Iraqi ministries", "possible misappropriation of oil revenues", "significant difficulties in ensuring completeness and accuracy of Iraqi budgets and controls over expenditures" and "non-deposit of proceeds of export sales of petroleum products into the appropriate accounts in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1483".

In the absence of any meaningful accountability, Iraqis have no way of knowing how much of the nation’s wealth is being used for reconstruction and how much is being handed out to ministers’ and civil servants’ friends and families or funnelled into secret overseas bank accounts. Given that many Ba’athists are now back in government, some of that money may even be financing the insurgents.

Both Saddam and the US profited handsomely during his reign. He controlled Iraq’s wealth while most of Iraq’s oil went to Californian refineries to provide cheap petrol for American voters. US corporations, like those who enjoyed Saddam’s favour, grew rich. Today, the system is much the same: the oil goes to California, and the new Iraqi government spends the national wealth with impunity.

*·* Bremer maintained one slush fund of nearly $600m in cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces

*·* 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the new Iraqi interior minister

*·* One ministry claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found

*·* One American agent was given $23m to spend on restructuring; only $6m is accounted for

This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current issue of the London Review of Books (lrb ).

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Ostomy Appliances reach the patients.

2005-08-03T22:06:00.000+04:00

Today is Wednesday, 3 August. Every Wednesday we have the Ostomy and cancer pain relieve Clinic.
It is a special day because we received Waldschrat's shipment of Ostomy products few days ago, and we hand them to the patients today. It was a good help to those who receive them, thanks to Waldschrat.
Four patients with Ostomy received complete set of Rings and Pouches supply for one month. In addition to some accessories as sterile cleaning swaps and soothing ointments.
Another two patients received Rings only plus the accessories.

We took some pictures to the patients while receiving the supplies. The pictures still in the Camera, I will post them as soon as it will be available to me (the Camera is not mine).

Pain killing drugs

2005-07-30T22:37:00.000+04:00

This is a statistic of the availability of the pain killing drugs (Narcotic analgesic) used to treat cancer pain in Mosul Cancer Pain Relief and Palliative Care Clinic.
I found a difficulty to make a table, but this may be clear enough to be understood by you.
the first column showed the present quantity of the drugs (availability). the second column showed the quantity received from January 1,2005 till the mid of July 2005, the third column showed the Annual need for 2005. The last column the Generic name and form of the drug.

Only two items are available now. and that because we received them lately and both are available in the private pharmacies.

Mosul Oncology& Nuclear Medicine Hospital
Mosul Cancer Pain Relief and Palliative Care Clinic
Cancer Pain Relief Drugs Needs 2005

Present...Received mid..Need 2005..........Form
account..July 2005........------------.......(Generic name)

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 tab........ Buprenorphine as HCL SL 0.2 mg

...Nil.......... Nil..............250 amp........ Buprenorphine as HCL 0.3 mg Inj

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 100 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 25 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 50 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............1500 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 75 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............10000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 10 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............20000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 30 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............20000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 60 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............15000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 100 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............15000 tab... Oxycodone HLC

..150........400............. 1500 amp.....Tramadol 100 mg

...Nil.......1000.............5000 supp....Tramadol 100 mg

..690......3000............. 20000 cap.... Tramadol 50 mg

...Nil.......... Nil..............100 drop.....Tramadol 100 mg

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 100 mg effervescent tab.

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 100 mg soluble tab

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 50 mg effervescent tab.

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 50 mg soluble tab

N.B.:
In 2004 Mosul Oncology& Nuclear Medicine Hospital treated :
2115 new cancer cases (1175 cases from Mosul Province & 940 from nearby Provinces ; Erbil, Dohuk & Kirkuk)

Abu Ghraib again ...!!!

2005-07-26T20:52:00.000+04:00

This is an email I received today. It seemed to me as if Abu Ghraib scandal repeated it self. I publish it to let the world see and understand what is going on at dark.

Citizens for Fair Legislation
For Immediate Release
July 25, 2005
********************************
CFL ALERT: BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO LOBBY AGAINST LEGISLATION THAT WOULD BAR TORTURE AND INHUMANE TREATMENT OF PRISONERS.

This weekend the Pentagon blocked images from Abu Ghraib, in violation of a federal court order, that have been described by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane." Republican Senators who have seen the images said they contained scenes of "rape and murder." The Pentagon refuses to release these images on the basis that it is bad PR for the United States. This
comes at the heels of intensive lobbying efforts by the Bush administration to block legislation that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual. Take a moment to send our prewritten letter to the President and to your Representatives telling them that you are appalled that the American public is being kept in the dark about the abuse of Iraqi detainees and that you are outraged that the President is refusing to take measures to ensure these abuses don't occur again.

TALKING POINTS:
* A military report on the abuse at Abu Ghraib states that the images the Pentagon is blocking show detainees being threatened, sodomized with chemical lights and forced into sexually humiliating poses. After viewing these images, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters, "'The American public needs to understand
we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience." A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse says videotapes and photos also show naked detainees forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped, of guards having sex with female detainees, young boys
being sodomized and Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts for American soldiers. New York Times reporter, Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention:
"...There are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications to their men....The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.
...Boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."

*Last week Vice President Cheney met with Republican Senators that publicly expressed frustration about the administration's failure to hold senior military officials responsible for the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. At that meeting Cheney stated his opposition to congressional intervention regarding the treatment of
detainees at either Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Later the White House issued a statement stating that President Bush would veto a $442 billion defense bill if representatives continued to attempt to impose restrictions on what the military can and cannot do to detainees.
That statement appeared to be directed at Republican Sen. John McCain who began circulating a letter to look into legislation that would outline the treatment of detainees held by the U.S. military. Sen. McCain's provisions would require that all foreign nationals in U.S. custody be registered with the Red Cross and would also prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody.

*Please take a moment to write to your representatives to express outrage at the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and tell them that you resent that the Pentagon is keeping the American public in the dark about what is happening in Iraq. Tell the President that you expect him to stop taking measures in support of the crimes that happened at Abu Ghraib. By blocking legislation meant to prevent
torture, rape and cruel and unusual punishment the White House is clearly indicating approval for the barbaric treatment of men, women and children held in U.S. run detention centers.

EMAIL AND OR CALL THE WHITE HOUSE
WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS LINE: 202-456-1111
WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: 202-456-1414
WHITE HOUSE FAX: 202-456-2461
===============================
Citizens for Fair Legislation is a grassroots organization committed to encouraging a fair domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the US/Arab world.
http://www.cflweb.org

Please take it seriously and do what your moralistic principle ask you to do.