Americans Tell It Like It Is to the Iraqis

This cartoon is by Ward Sutton that appears in the May 12, 2008 issue of THE NATION

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/sutton

In the first panel, that "average Joe's" viewpoint is held by many highly educated people. There are Senators and Congresspersons (Republicans and Democrats) who have the same point of view.

Here is information about what the US is doing in Iraq that you won;t find in the mainstream media

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/20/iraqi_american_reflects_on_five_years

Here is an article about "Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power"

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html

Here is an article about how the United States sold weapons and gave false strategic advice to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/11715

The Tragedy of Aid to the Third World

From The Tragedy of Afghan Aid at http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/the-tragedy-of-afghan-aid/
by Andy Rowell

... in September 2002, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004. However, Congressional figures showed that they managed to finish and hand back to the Afghan government only 40 schools by late 2005.

As Ben Jackson wrote in his book Poverty and the Planet published in 1990, “Aid is commonly thought of as handing over money to Third World governments for development. In fact, aid largely consists of funding from Western governments for services, machines, technical experts and consultants to be supplied by companies in rich countries, frequently their own.” The bottom line was that “most aid money is actually spent in the rich world.” Of the $20 billion the World Bank handed out in 1988, $15 billion went to its own contractors or consultants.

... there is a huge disparity between what America spends on war and what the international community spends on aid. The US military currently spends nearly $36 billion a year in the country, some $100 million a day; yet the average volume of aid spending by all donors since 2001 is just $7 million per day. Whilst the military budget is vast, 2.5 million Afghans face severe food insecurity, and one in five children still dies before five. Life expectancy is woefully low at 45 years. Thirdly, over half of all aid to Afghanistan is tied, by which donors often require procurement of services or resources from their own countries. Rather than go to help Afghanistan, the money just lines the pockets of Western contractors and companies. So of the aid actually spent, a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries.

The report notes: “Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50% on a single contract … A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors — each of whom costs $250,000-$500,000 a year.” In contrast, an Afghan civil servant is paid less than $1000 per year.

Bombs Away Over Iraq

Normalizing Air War from Guernica to Arab Jabour
by Tom Engelhardt

A January 21st Los Angeles Times Iraq piece by Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed led with an inter-tribal suicide bombing at a gathering in Fallujah in which members of the pro-American Anbar Awakening Council were killed. ("Asked why one member of his Albu Issa tribe would kill another, Aftan compared it to school shootings that happen in the United States.") Twenty-six paragraphs later, the story ended this way:

"The U.S. military also said in a statement that it had dropped 19,000 pounds of explosives on the farmland of Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. The strikes targeted buried bombs and weapons caches.
"In the last 10 days, the military has dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of explosives on the area, which has been a gateway for Sunni militants into Baghdad."

And here's paragraph 22 of a 34-paragraph January 22nd story by Stephen Farrell of the New York Times:

"The threat from buried bombs was well known before the [Arab Jabour] operation. To help clear the ground, the military had dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches and I.E.D.'s."

Farrell led his piece with news that an American soldier had died in Arab Jabour from an IED that blew up "an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq."
Note that both pieces started with bombing news -- in one case a suicide bombing that killed several Iraqis; in another a roadside bombing that killed an American soldier and wounded others. But the major bombing story of these last days -- those 100,000 pounds of explosives that U.S. planes dropped in a small area south of Baghdad -- simply dangled unexplained off the far end of the Los Angeles Times piece; while, in the New York Times, it was buried inside a single sentence.

Neither paper has (as far as I know) returned to the subject, though this is undoubtedly the most extensive use of air power in Iraq since the Bush administration's invasion of 2003 and probably represents a genuine shifting of American military strategy in that country. Despite, a few humdrum wire service pieces, no place else in the mainstream has bothered to cover the story adequately either.
Continued at http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m40642&hd=&size=1&l=e

Note: the article mentions what happened in 1937 Guernica; here is an article that points out that Western countries were already bombing Arab and Muslim countries before 1937. See http://www.brushtail.com.au/july_04_on/bombing_arabs_history.html

Pope in 'freedom' blast at Islam

A poll earlier this year of more than 1,000 young adult British Muslims found that 36 per cent believe those who convert to another faith should be punished by death.

Pope Benedict is particularly concerned about the persecution of Christians in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.

Before then, there were about 1.2million Christians in the country. But the number has dropped to below 600,000.

complete article at (Click here for the complete article)

Did it bother the Pope when the United States helped bring Saddam Hussein into power? The U.S. and other Western countries supported Saddam, strategically and financially when he was committing his worst atrocities?. Is he concerned about the millions of innocent women, men and children that were killed by bombings in two invasions, the use of chemical weapons by the United States and the sanctions that were placed against the people of Iraq? What about the millions of Iraqis that have fled their homes into the surrounding countries?

While tolerance of others must be addressed by Muslims, it would help if the Pope set the example by speaking up against how Western countries, while preaching human rights and democracy, go around engaging in regime change and supporting brutal kings and dictators who do their bidding? He won't be doing this anytime soon because these mass murders and violations of human rights are what gives him and those living in the West their comfortable lifestyles.

I don't expect he will be addressing the region in which the most killings and rapes are occurring, the predominantly Christian Congo. It is because the United States, Israel, and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons that deaths and suffering of the Congolese does not matter.

Crocodile tears for Darfur flood the civilized world

More celebrities are joining the crocodile tears for Darfur band wagon. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/celebrity-women-speak-with-one-voice-on-darfur/2007/09/16/1189881341251.html

Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition are silent on the role of the United States and other democracies in fueling the violence in Sudan.

See http://allthingspass.com/journalism.php?jid=165
And http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/oil_in_africa.html

For some strange reason these activists are not too concerned about the Congo were a larger number of killings and rapes have occurred. Can it be because the United States, Israel and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons, that the death of millions of black Africans in the Congo is not so tragic?
See http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Alan Greenspan: the Iraq war is largely about oil

The US and Britain have always maintained that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was about weapons of mass destruction - not oil.

US President George Bush said Saddam was a threat to world security because he could sell the weapons on to terrorists.

But Mr Greenspan, a Republican who was boss of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years, said that was not the whole truth, according to a copy of the book seen by Associated Press.

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he is reported to have written.

from http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1284299,00.html

American confesses to Dutch axe murder over Iraq war

This story hasn't got the same attention as the killing of the Dutch filmmaker by a Muslim.

The media outlets that reported it did not ask the obvious question: If the American man wanted to punish someone for the Iraq war, why didn't he punish himself, since it is the United States that led the invasion of Iraq and is responsible for most of the deaths and destruction?

Hartmann, a US citizen, first sought-out a Dutch soldier in the southern Dutch city of Roosendaal, but could not find one and turned his axe on a student waiting for a train on a platform at the city's station, said a Dutch news agency.

Local newspaper BN/De Stem said Hartmann was looking for a victim in order to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq. The paper identified the slain student as Thijs Geers.
complete story at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/13/2031665.htm?section=world

Judith Miller and the Bloodbath in Iraq (Repeat)

Here is a reminder of Judith Miller's contribution to journalism by Jospeh A. Palermo

On April 21, 2003, Judith Miller, now working as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military's MET Alpha, wrote the story, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." In this piece of propaganda, Miller claims without evidence or proof that the Iraqis destroyed or shipped to Syria their vast stockpiles of WMDs. Miller's anonymous source was a guy claiming to be an "Iraqi scientist," and she tells her readers that she "was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."

This "Iraqi scientist," who turned out to be bogus, allowed Miller to appear on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer and have the following exchange:...

complete article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/judith-miller-and-the-blo_b_57023.html

US aid to Africa does more harm than good

I first heard about this in a radio interview with Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity published in 1977. To see a review of the book click here.
Here is more current information about this, where one charity organization is begining to see the light.

“...Care, one of the world's biggest charities, has announced that it will boycott the controversial policy of selling tons of heavily subsidised US produced food in African countries. Care wants the US government to send money to buy food locally, rather than unwanted US produced food.
The US arm of the charity says America is causing rather than reducing hunger with a decree that US food aid must be sold rather than directly distributed to those facing starvation. In America, the subsidies for corn in particular, help underpin the junk food industry, which uses corn extracts as a sweetener, creating a home-grown a health crisis.
The farm lobby meanwhile has a stranglehold on Congress, which has balked at making any changes that would interfere with a system that promotes overproduction of commodities.
Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers' ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine. ”

from http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2871490.ece

Barack Obama is clueless

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama : Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_AP_INTERVIEW?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

He said, “the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

I don’t know if the military can solve the problems in Iraq, but the least Obama could do is acknowledge that the United States and its allies created the the chaos in Iraq. The U.S., Britain, and its allies
#1) bombed the country and destroyed its infrastructure
#2) rounds up thousands of Iraqis and jails them without justification
#3) makes decisions when elections are to take place and whether the results are valid
#4) benefit more from reconstruction projects than the Iraqis
#5)can break into jails to release prisoners against the Iraqi’s governments wishes. (Remember when two British men where caught disguised as Arabs carrying explosives and weapons in their car? Their fellow British soldiers broke into the jail they were in and helped them to escape) see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089

Lets look at the second ridiculous thing Obama said, “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven’t done.”
The guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. I suggest he read “Deadly Legacy:U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War” at http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
The findings of the report were

• Due to the continuing legacies of its Cold War policies toward Africa, the U.S. bears some responsibility for the cycles of violence and economic problems plaguing the continent.
• The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa.
• Although the Clinton administration has been quick to criticize the governments involved in the Congo War, decades of U.S. weapons transfers and continued military training to both sides of the conflict have helped fuel the fighting.
• Despite the failure of U.S. polices in the region, the current administration continues to respond to Africa’s woes by helping to strengthen African militaries.
• Even as it fuels military build-up, the U.S. continues cutting development assistance to Africa and remains unable (or unwilling) to promote alternative non-violent forms of engagement.

Here are articles that discuss how the United States and other countries exploit the natural resources of the Congo http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2006/snow0706.html

and http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

"Freedom Next Time" Speech by John Pilger

He gives a history of U.S. foreign policy and the role of the media.

John Pilger - Freedom Next Time Part 1
Most memorable line: “John Wayne their hero had lied so he wouldn’t have to fight in World War II. Yet the phony role model of Wayne [in the movie The Green Berets] sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in Vietnam with the notable exception of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.”



John Pilger – Freedom Next Time Part 2
Most memorable lines : “In the last half century, United States administrations have overthrown 50 governments; many of them democracies. In the process 30 countries have been attacked and bombed with a loss of countless lives.”

Here is Pilger's website http://www.johnpilger.com

Would you donate to a charity that is associated with the war criminal Henry Kissinger?

What about a charity associated with Madeline Albright? She is the former U.S Secretary of State who when asked by Lesley Stahl about U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright are listed in the International Rescue Committee’s website as “Overseers.” See http://www.theirc.org/about/ircboard.html
Look at what this article, concerning the Congo, says about the International Rescue Committee (IRC):

A UN Panel of Experts in a recent report challenged many airlines and companies for undertaking illicit flights (illegal, secret, unregistered, or falsely registered) into and out of the DRC. One of many notable companies apparently connected to Victor Bout’s arms trafficking networks is Simax, an Oregon-based company using an address in Sierra Leone. However, the UN Panel of Experts has once again ignored certain western agencies —with histories of illicit activities —whose flights remain equally surreptitious and unaccountable. At the
top of the list is the International Rescue Committee (IRC)—whose directors include Henry Kissinger and whose flights in and out of the Congo and internal flights to and from isolated airports in eastern DRC are completely unmonitored by MONUC arms embargo inspectors. In Bukavu, for example, all light aircraft are subject to MONUC arms embargo inspections, but IRC flights are not within the MONUC mandate.

Complete article at http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2006/snow0706.html

Founder of Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers) did not oppose Iraq War (in other words did not oppose genocide)

"One of the most prominent roles went to a member of the Socialist Party. Bernard Kouchner, who is best-known for starting the humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, is the new minister of foreign affairs. Like Mr. Sarkozy, he has taken a pro-American stance and was one of the few French politicians who did not oppose the war in Iraq."Source http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-05-18-voa12.cfm

Africa – Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

On Feb. 7 George Bush announced the formation of AFRICOM, a new Pentagon command which will, under the pretext of the so-called "Global War On Terror", plan and execute its oil and resource wars on the African continent. What does this mean to African Americans? And to Africans? BAR consults Prexy Nesbitt, an architect of the anti-apartheid struggles of the 70s and 80s.

The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military buildup on the African continent is well underway. From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials. They've conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets.
Rest of article at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=37

Somalia: Victim of the "War on Terror"

This is a Somali politician (Asha Hagi Elmi) giving her views on the U.S. and Ethiopian invasion of Somalia

What if everyone knew the early relationship between Iraq and the United States?

Would there have been this approval (or is it nonchalance) towards the invasion of Iraq?

Here is an informative article “What Every American Should Know About Iraq” by David Michael Green.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17891.htm

I’ll just quote a few of his facts

• Mesopotamia has long been a playground for great powers. The British invaded the area in 1917, causing a widespread revolt of the Iraqi people. Britain later ruled under a League of Nations mandate that produced the artificial creation of the country Iraq (and Kuwait), and continued to control oil production in the region. Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour said at the time, “I do not care under what system we keep this oil, but I am quite clear it is all-important for us that this oil should be available”.
• Saddam Hussein started his career as a political thug, on the payroll of the CIA during the 1950s and 1960s, torturing and murdering Iraqi leftists whose names were provided by American intelligence, and participating in an armed coup against the Iraqi government.
• In 1972, the United States conspired with Iran and Israel to support a revolt of the Kurdish people within Iraq against their government
• In 1980, the United States provided encouragement, weapons, intelligence, satellite data and funding for Saddam’s Iraq to invade Iran, launching an eight year war - the longest and probably the bloodiest of the post-WWII era.

I would just like to point out that the Untied States also provided weapons to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war
“In his book Veil - The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, Woodward sums up the results of this U.S. double-dealing: "Doling out tactical data to both sides put the agency in the position of engineering a stalemate. This was no mere abstraction. The war was a bloody one....almost a million had been killed, wounded or captured on both sides. This was not a game in an operations center. It was slaughter." (p. 507)

from http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292

• During this war, Ronald Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to improve relations with Saddam. The United States then restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq, despite the administration’s clear awareness that Saddam was using chemical weapons at the time
• During the presidential campaign of 2000, candidate Bush said very little about Iraq, and certainly never suggested the need for urgent action. Somehow, though, in just two years time - during which, if anything, Iraq actually got weaker, not stronger - Saddam and his country became a perilous and imminent threat that had to be addressed immediately.
• Former members of his own cabinet have revealed that Bush planned to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his administration, well before 9/11. All discussions were about the how of doing it, never about the why, the justification, the costs or the wisdom.

This is not going to help the Palestinians.

British teachers’ union weighs boycott of Israel
Britain’s largest union of university and college teachers voted to hold talks on an academic boycott of Israel, a spokesman said Thursday The University and College Union, which represents around 120,000 employees, voted Wednesday to
allow local branches to make a final decision on imposing a boycott on cooperation with Israeli academics. Union members voted on a motion asking them to note that “Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective
punishment and restriction of movement.”

See complete article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18963199/
Exactly what kind of conscience do these people have, if they only talk about what Israel is doing, but they don't talk about what Britain and the United States are doing in Iraq?

If the boycott is done and it spreads to other countries what will happen? Conveniently, a terrorist act wil take place (committed by agent provocateurs) and Israel will say "We told you so." These terrorist acts (whether it was the killing of the Isrealis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139, where hostages were held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, or the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro), benefit Israel more than it does the Palestinians

If these British teachers want things to improve for the Palestinians, why don't they set the example by having their government stop its participation in the occupation of Iraq?

This also goes to the Americans on the radical left who want to talk about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but do not want to discuss the United States' war crimes around the world.

When did they have a chance to put the explosives in the WTC Towers?

People may wonder when was there a chance to place explosives in the World Trade Center towers. Here is a brief video that helps to explain this. Starting in about a minute and a half into the video there is a discussion about peopple who worked in the World Trade Center Towers who said that prior to 9/11 there had been several unexplained evacuations and power downs in the towers.

9/11 Truth: Unusual Evacuations & Power-Downs in the WTC Prior To 9/11



Now that I think about it, there were many parts of the WTC that were vacant (not rented) before 9/11, this probably shortened the amount of time needed for the buildings to be evacuated. Here is an article (see second item called "Skyscaper Award") that talks about how before 9/11 the WTC 7 was mostly vacant and after 9/11, when it was rebuilt, it has become attractive as office space.
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_211/undercover.html

Can what's going on in Iraq just be called a "civil war?"

How can what is going on in Iraq be called a civil war, when it is foreign governments (mainly USA and Britain) that
#1) bombed the country and destroyed its infrastructure
#2) rounds up thousands of Iraqis and jails them without justification
#3) makes decisions when elections are to take place and whether the results are valid
#4) benefit more from reconstruction projects than the Iraqis
#5)can break into jails to release prisoners against the Iraqi's governments wishes. (Remember when two British men where caught disguised as Arabs carrying explosives and weapons in their car? Their fellow British soldiers broke into the jail they were in and helped them to escape) see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089

The U.S., Britain, Israel and Iran are contributing to the chaos with their agent provocateurs.

In honor of our veterans, we call for truth

from an Ashland, Oregon newspaper
complete editorial at http://www.dailytidings.com/2006/1111/stories/1111_editorial.php

Anniversaries cause us to instinctively pause and reflect, just as our leg jolts forward after a well-positioned tap on the knee. In honor of our veterans — to whom we owe a debt we can never repay — the least we can do on this Veteran's
Day is look back at the decisions made that sent our troops into battle, and the roles we played in those decisions. Perhaps upon reflection, our reaction may
change.

The fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 served as the reflex hammer touch to the knee of American conscience. As the country attended memorials and revisited painful memories of 9/11, the reflection also opened our collective mind once again to the many unanswered questions, legitimate concerns and
conflicting evidence in the official description of those events.

Forget the conspiracy theories for a minute and set aside the political gamesmanship. We are a country that spent five years and $100 million investigating President Clinton. We probed the depths of the Iran-Contra scandal — a debacle that would have never come fully into the public eye had a special investigator not been appointed.

This administration has spent far more energy and time seeking the leak of Valerie Plame's identity and Barry Bonds' use of steroids than it has in fully explaining how three skyscrapers crumbled in an instant and nearly 3,000 people were killed. While an independent investigation may never fully answer every question, it will help to heal the wounds of this nation and widespread distrust of our leaders this attack has caused.

If, however, the questions that remain serve to shed light on new information, that too serves the public. And it is the responsibility of this trusted media industry to dig, probe, investigate and uncover the truth behind government events and decisions that impact the public. On this Veterans Day, we can do no less on behalf of the brave men and women who have been sent to the Middle East based upon rationale that stems directly from the events of 9/11. While we pay homage to all veterans of the Armed Forces today, we are reminded of our duty to watch closely those leaders in the White House and Congress who make the decisions to send our troops to war.

We invite every single American daily newspaper to join us in our demand for an independent council to completely and thoroughly investigate the deaths of nearly 3,000 American citizens in the attacks of 9/11.

America will be better informed, and this is our job.