20.6.06

Residents Struggle to Survive, In and Out of Ramadi

*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Ali Fadhil
http://DahrJamailIraq.com

*RAMADI, Jun 19 (IPS) - As the threat of a giant U.S. military operation in Ramadi lingers and sporadic clashes plague the city daily, residents struggle to cope, both inside and outside the sealed city.*

A week spent in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad,reveals that residents are suffering from lack of water, electricity,cooking gas and medical supplies for the hospitals. The streets are eerily empty, and it appears that many people have now left the city, although possibly as many as 150,000 still remain in their homes, either because they are too afraid to leave or they have nowhere to go.

"We will survive anyway," Um Qassim, a middle-aged housewife with six children, told IPS. "It is Allah who gives life and he is the only one able to take it away."

Despite the horrible conditions here, with armed resistance groups
controlling vast swathes of the city, and other areas subject to
frequent shooting from U.S. snipers on the rooftops of houses, she said that people should be grateful to their god whatever happens to them, adding, "Those Americans will leave."

The operation is part of a renewed crackdown on what the Pentagon says is a stronghold of the Sunni Arab resistance. As the threat of an all-out U.S. attack on the city looms, Imad Al-Muhammadi with the Iraqi Red Crescent in Ramadi told IPS, "Ramadi is a lot more difficult than the Fallujah crisis because people cannot flee to Baghdad and many other cities due to the threat of sectarian death squads, so it is very difficult to provide them with safe shelter at a reasonable distance from the military operations."

Muhammadi said that many of the families who had left are facing
"horrible living conditions in tents, abandoned schools and are staying under any roof that protects them from the burning summer sun."

"There is no positive sign on the American side that shows a different solution from those of Fallujah and other cities which have been 'deleted' in order to be 'liberated'," he added. "Civilians, as usual, are the ones living the hardships of occupation and definitely the ones dying in vain."

According to Maurizio Mascia, programme manager for the Italian
Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), a non-governmental group based in Amman,Jordan that provides relief to refugees in Iraq, minor clashes were reported on Monday, mainly in Al-Qadisiya, Al-Mala'ab, Al-Andalus, Al-Aramel, Al-Aziziya, Al-Qattana, Al-Soufiya, the city centre (close to Abd Al-Jaleel mosque) and 30th of July.

Additionally, U.S. and Iraqi forces are reported to be attacking the eastern side of the city in an effort to push into Ramadi.

ICS reports that the number of checkpoints and the frequency of
Multi-National Forces (MNF) patrols have increased since the beginning of the crisis, making it likely that both the MNF/Iraqi forces and insurgents are preparing themselves for a heightened battle.

"The population is still leaving the city and the number of families in displacement traced in Anbar by ICS monitors is close to 3,200 now," Mascia told IPS by telephone. "The new IDPs [internally displaced persons] are mainly approaching Rutba and Al-Baghdadi, while Heet remains the main destination of Ramadi IDPs." He said about 1,000 IDP families are present now in Fallujah and surrounding areas.

However, he added that "Most of the families are avoiding approaching Fallujah due to the complicated procedure enforced by MNF to enter the city." Mascia said that the number of families recorded by ICS is almost certainly low, since his group only logs families who get direct relief aid from their workers.

"The Americans, instead of attacking the city all at once like they've done in their previous operations in cities like Fallujah and Al-Qa'im, are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time in Ramadi," Mascia told IPS from his office in Amman.

"Access to Ramadi is extremely difficult," he continued. "The
checkpoints are set up at the two bridges and make it extremely
difficult to access the city by vehicle. The only available option to avoid the checkpoints is the desert way heading to Al-Ta'meem district."

"The main dangers for the population are the MNF at the checkpoints and the snipers: both usually shoot at any movement that they consider dangerous -- causing many victims among civilians."

According to Mascia, services at the main hospital, as well as health clinics, is down to a "low standard due to the security situation and lack of medical supplies".

And similar to the tactics used during the U.S. assault on Fallujah in November 2004, the U.S. military continues to use loudspeakers to ask people to either hand over "insurgents" who are present in their neighbourhoods, or to evacuate their homes and flee the city. ICS reports that some of the messages have specifically made reference to what happened in Fallujah.

Correspondents with the London-based Institute for War and Peace
Reporting (IWPR) in Baghdad recently reported on the use of snipers by the U.S. military in Ramadi: "People in Ramadi... estimate that about 70 percent of the city's population have fled in the last week, many of them holding white flags for fear of being shot at by Marine snipers."

The IPS correspondent in Ramadi also witnessed snipers shooting at
civilians in the city.

"The ongoing violence between U.S. Marines and the insurgents, air
strikes, and outages in the water, electricity and phone networks have already made life untenable," adds the IWPR report. "Ramadi residents say U.S. troops regularly take over houses to fight the insurgents, and combatants on both sides have been seen using rooftops as sniper positions."

The Association of Muslim Scholars, based in Baghdad, has encouraged the residents of Heet, which is near Ramadi, to host those fleeing the city. Some more vulnerable families are also staying in mosques that are offering shelter to refugees.

An IWPR reporter in Baghdad wrote that a 17-year-old student who fled Ramadi with his parents, Ghayath Salim al-Dulaimi, said his relatives had been prevented from leaving by U.S. air strikes two days earlier.

"Our neighbourhood has emptied completely -- there's no one left," he told IWPR. "People are leaving in droves and there aren't any services at all. You can't get to hospital because movement is restricted."

Responding to a question about the situation in Ramadi at a Jun. 15 news briefing, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham from the Pentagon said, "I think those who are looking for perhaps a large-scale offensive may be somewhat off the mark. And I think what we will see increasingly is the Iraqis finding ways to increasingly establish the presence of Iraqi security forces, and we'll help them do that in any way that we can."
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail

19.6.06

Iraq's Pentagon Papers

Iraq's Pentagon Papers
This unjustified war is waiting for its whistle-blower, says the leaker of Vietnam's secret history.
by Daniel Ellsberg
A joint resolution referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) calls for the withdrawal of all American military forces from Iraq by Dec. 31. Boxer's "redeployment" bill cites in its preamble a January poll finding that 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease if the U.S. leaves Iraq within six months, 67% believe that their day-to-day security will increase if the U.S. withdraws and 73% believe that factions in parliament will cooperate more if the U.S. withdraws.

If that's true, then what are we doing there? If Iraqis don't believe that we're making things better or safer, what does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq (foreseen by 80% of Iraqis polled)? What does it mean for continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians?

It was questions very much like these that were nagging at my conscience many years ago at the height of the Vietnam War, and that led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, 35 years ago this week. That process had begun nearly two years earlier, in the fall of 1969, when my friend and former colleague at the Rand Corp., Tony Russo, and I first started copying the 7,000 pages of top-secret documents from my office safe at Rand to give to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

That period had several similarities to this one. For one thing, Republican Sen. Charles Goodell of New York had just introduced a resolution calling for the unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces from Indochina by the end of 1970. Unlike the current Boxer resolution, his had budgetary "teeth," calling for all congressional funding of U.S. combat operations to cease by his deadline.

Two other similarities between then and now: First, though it was known to only a handful of Americans, President Nixon was making secret plans that September to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia — including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration's threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with officials reiterating regularly that the nuclear "option" is "on the table."

Second, also in September, charges had been brought quietly against Lt. William Calley for the murder 18 months earlier of "109 Oriental human beings" in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai 4. This went almost unnoticed until mid-November of that year, when Seymour Hersh's investigative story burst on the public, followed shortly by the first sight for Americans of color photographs of the massacre. The pictures were not that different from those in the cover stories of Time and Newsweek from Haditha: women, children, old men and babies, all shot at short range.

What was it that prompted me in the fall of 1969 to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents — an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? (My later charges, indeed, totaled a potential 115 years in prison.) The precipitating event was not Calley's murder trial but a different one. On Sept. 30, I read in the Los Angeles Times that charges brought by Creighton Abrams, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Vietnam, against several Special Forces officers accused of murdering a suspected double agent in their custody had been dismissed by the secretary of the Army.

The article, by Washington reporters Ted Sell and Robert Donovan, made clear that the reasons alleged by Secretary Stanley Resor for this dismissal were false (and that the order to dismiss the charges had most likely come directly from the White House). As I read on, it became increasingly clear that the whole chain of command, civilian and military, was participating in a coverup.

As I finished the article, it hit me: This is the system I have been part of, giving my unquestioning loyalty to for 15 years, as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam. It's a system that lies reflexively, at every level from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had, sitting in my safe at Rand, 7,000 pages of documentary evidence to prove it.

The papers in my safe, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, constituted a complete set of a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled, "U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68."

I had exclusive access to the papers for research purposes and had been reading them all summer; they made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in — just as are the 85% of the troops in Iraq today who still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with Al Qaeda.

The papers documented in stunning detail a pattern of lies and deceptions by four presidents and their administrations over 23 years to conceal their war plans — along with internal estimates of the high costs and risks of these plans (and their low probabilities of success), never meant to reach the public and provoke debate. They showed very clearly how we had become engaged in a reckless war of choice in someone else's country — a country that had not attacked us — for our own domestic and external purposes.

It seemed to me that to be doing that against the intense wishes of most of the inhabitants of that country was not just bad policy but morally wrong. Moreover, it became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. Vietnam was not a just war, and never had been. And if the war itself was unjust, then all the victims of our firepower were being killed without justification. That's murder.

As I read the story in The Times that morning about the coverup of the Special Forces murder and compared it with what I'd been reading in the secret history, I came to see it as a microcosm of what had been happening since the war began. And I thought to myself: I don't want to be part of this lying machine anymore. I am not going to conceal the truth any longer.

I called Russo, who had been fired from Rand a year earlier, in part for inconvenient field reporting about torture of prisoners by our Vietnamese allies. I asked him if he had access to a copying machine.

He did.

We began on Oct. 1. Night after night, I brought out batches of papers from my safe, and we copied them. I gave them first to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hoping that they would make the documents public. But they did not. Eventually, I gave them to the New York Times, which began publishing them Sunday, June 13, 1971.

Two days later, the New York Times was ordered by a federal judge, at the request of the White House, to stop publishing — the first injunctive prior restraint of the press in U.S. history. I then gave copies to the Washington Post and, when it also was enjoined, to 17 other newspapers, while I was being sought by the FBI. On June 28, I turned myself in and was arrested and charged with violations of the Espionage Act and theft.

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates — so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public — about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth — earlier than I did — before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

It is past time for Americans to summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. We must force Congress and this president, or their successors if necessary, to act upon the moral proposition that the U.S. must stop killing men, women and children in Iraq, and must not begin to do so in Iran.

Neither the lives we have lost, nor the lives we have taken, give the U.S. any right to determine by fire and airpower who shall govern or who shall die in countries we have wrongly attacked.

Daniel Ellsberg was put on trial in 1973 for leaking the Pentagon Papers, but the case was dismissed after four months because of government misconduct.

Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Serving in Iraq, Joshua Key Explains What Made Him Desert for a Fugitive’s Life

Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Serving in Iraq, Joshua Key Explains What Made Him Desert for a Fugitive’s Life
by Neil Mackay

IT was March 2003, just days after the US invasion of Iraq. Joshua Key was driving along the banks of the Euphrates near the town of Ramadi in his tank when he came upon a scene that has since engraved itself into his memory: US troops kicking the decapitated heads of Iraqis around in the sand in an impromptu game of football.

“We turned a sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over here and US troops in between them. I was thinking, ‘oh, my God, what in the hell happened here? What’s caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?’ We get out and somebody was screaming, ‘we f***ing lost it here!’. I’m thinking, ‘oh yes, somebody definitely lost it here’.

“I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, ‘I can’t be no part of this, this is crazy’. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did this happen?

“That’s what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, ‘oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that’. You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody’s going to ask, ‘are you sure?’ They’re going to high-five you and tell you that you did a good job.”

This and other claims of violence exacted against innocent Iraqis by American GIs are among the allegations that Key has laid before the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. Key, a 27-year-old, working-class welder from Oklahoma, is the first US army deserter with combat experience to seek refugee status in Canada. He is also among a squad of US deserters who have levelled a series of horrific allegations against the US military machine, reported in a new book Mission Rejected by the award-winning US journalist Peter Laufer, which charts the escalating levels of desertion since the war began.

Key’s experience left him suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – the modern-day term for what was once called shell-shock. He dreams about severed heads in the desert, and rarely sleeps. “I’m not your perfect killing machine,” he says. “That’s where I broke the rules. I broke the rules by having a conscience.”

He recounts travelling in an armoured personnel carrier in Ramadi when an Iraqi man in a truck tried to overtake the convoy. “My squad leader fired a few shots and blew his truck up,” he says. “You don’t have to have reason to do anything. You can do whatever you want really.” When Key asked why the man had been killed for nothing, he was told: “You didn’t see anything.”

Key doesn’t buy the line from the US government that those resisting the occupation are terrorists. Homes are destroyed, sons killed, husbands taken prisoner, he says, so the Iraqis “have a reason to be pissed off”.

“I would never wish this upon myself or my family, so why would I do it to them? I was trained to be a total killer. I was trained in booby-traps, explosives and landmines. I was made to be an American terrorist. I was trained in everything a terrorist is trained to do.”

At vehicle checkpoints, Key says, Iraqi lives were treated with casual disregard. There were no stop signs on the roads in Arabic to tell Iraqis to halt in order for their cars to be searched. Iraqis, not understanding what the US army wanted them to do, would sometimes drive through the check-point. Key recalls one car being shot at, in which a father died and his young son was seriously wounded. There were no weapons in the car; the Iraqis had misunderstood. “They don’t know what the hell we are saying,” Key explains. “You can’t kill everybody.”

House raids were one of the most disturbing duties Key had to carry out. Not only was he not trained in such operations, but the brutality with which the US military treated Iraqis shamed and horrified him as well. Women and children would be screaming, and only rarely was an interpreter on hand to explain what they were saying.

“You completely destroy the home. If there’s cabinets or something that’s locked, you kick them in. The soldiers take what they want at will. You completely ransack it. After you do it, usually a whole other team comes in and does the whole same thing again.”

Entire neighbourhoods were cordoned off sometimes, with up to 100 houses being subjected to US raids. Key carried out more than 100 raids and only found a single weapon, an AK-47. His unit never once located a member of al-Qaeda or the Ba’ath Party.

Key admits that before the war he knew little about Iraq and thought the US should take out Saddam Hussein before Iraq turned its sights on the US. “They made it sound like one day he’s going to be stepping on our door steps back home. I figured just do it now rather than my kids having to deal with it later on in life.”

Now, however, after serving on the front line, he is convinced that his government lied to him. It wasn’t just atrocities, violence and government lies that sickened Key. The army’s disregard for its own soldiers also disturbed him. He got a call home once a fortnight if he was lucky. In the desert, where soldiers are meant to get six bottles of water and three “meals ready to eat” (MREs) a day, his squad was getting two bottles of water and one MRE. “How in the hell can the most powerful military in the world be in the middle of a damn desert and they don’t even have food to feed us?”he asks.

On his way back to the US for two weeks’ leave after his first eight-month tour of duty, Key decided to desert. “At that point I knew this is morally wrong. I can’t keep doing this. I’m not going to kill innocent people just because I have to follow my damn orders.” For the last three months of his tour, Key’s weapon wasn’t working. He never said a word , as he couldn’t stomach the thought of another Iraqi needlessly dying.

Key, his wife Brandi and his three children went on the run. They lived as fugitives for more than a year in the US, staying in seedy motels along the east coast for no more than a few nights at a time in case their identities were uncovered and then moving on, always living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day.

Terrified of going to jail, he looked north to Canada as a possible refuge, and crossed the border in the autumn of 2005 to claim political asylum. He was welcomed and supported by the anti-war network in Canada, some of whom were Americans who took Canadian citizenship in the 1960s and 1970s after fleeing the Vietnam draft.

“I hated leaving my country,” says Key. “I love my people. I love the American land. But I do not like the American government. They made me do things that a man should never have to do, for the purpose of their financial gain.”

Joshua Key’s full story can be read in Mission Rejected by Peter Laufer, published by Chelsea Green.

How US Hid the Suicide Secrets of Guantanamo

How US Hid the Suicide Secrets of Guantanamo
After three inmates killed themselves, the Pentagon declared the suicides an act of 'asymmetric warfare', banned the media and went on a PR offensive. But as despair grows within the camp, so too does outrage mount at its brutal and secretive regime
by David Rose

In Guantanamo Bay's Alpha Block, the night was like any other: sweltering and seemingly endless. Although the temperature was down to the high 70s outside, the block's steel roof and walls were radiating heat, and in the two facing rows of 24 cells it felt little cooler than it had at midday. 'The nights are worse than the days,' the British former prisoner Shafiq Rasul recalled yesterday. 'You hear the rats running and scratching. The bugs go mad and there's no air. Especially where that block is: there's no breeze whatsoever.'

According to Guantanamo's rules, a six-person team of military police should have been patrolling constantly, and as usual the bright neon lights stayed on. A guard should have passed each detainee's cell every 30 seconds. 'From the landing, you can see right into every cell,' said Rasul. 'They don't have doors, just gates made from wide-spaced mesh. There's no privacy. If you hang up a towel because you want to go to the toilet, they make you take it down.'

The high degree of surveillance has foiled dozens of previous attempts by prisoners to take their own lives. 'It happened in front of me several times. The soldiers would see what was happening and they were in the cell in seconds,' Rasul said. But somehow, in circumstances that the Pentagon has succeeded in keeping totally obscure, late on Friday, 9 June, three detainees, all weak and emaciated after months on hunger strike and being force-fed, managed to tease bedsheets through their cells' mesh walls, tie them into nooses and hang themselves. With the cells little taller than the height of a man, they stood no chance of breaking their necks: the only way they could die was slowly, by hypoxia.

'That would take at least four or five minutes, probably longer,' said Dr David Nicholl, consultant neurologist at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who has been co-ordinating international opposition to Guantanamo by physicians. 'It's very difficult to see how, if the landing was being properly patrolled, they could have managed to accomplish it.'

Accomplish it, however, they did. And virtually simultaneously. A little before midnight the bodies of Manei Shaman Turki al-Habadi, 30, and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, 21, both from Saudi Arabia, and of a Yemeni, Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 29, were found on Alpha Block. How long they had been like that, the Pentagon will not disclose. Their mouths were stuffed with cloth, apparently to muffle any cries.

As often before in its four-and-a-half-year propaganda war over Guantanamo, the US military and its masters in Washington decided that the best means of defence to what looked - at best - like a case of criminal negligence was to go on the offensive. The dead men, said Guantanamo's commander, Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris, when the news broke last Saturday, had 'no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.'

Colleen Graffy, a senior State Department official who recently visited London to make the case for Guantanamo with the UK media, called the suicides a 'good PR move' and 'a tactic to further the jihadi cause'. The US government tried to distance itself from Graffy's remarks. But early on Sunday The Observer talked to the camp's top Washington spin doctor, Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, an official in Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office and the Pentagon's chief press officer. According to Gordon, whatever the outcome of the investigation now being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, there was no need to regret the deaths. All three men, Gordon said, had been dedicated terrorists: 'These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg.'

He went on to make specific allegations against each: Ahmed had been a 'mid-to-high-level al-Qaeda operative' with key links to Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda leader captured in 2002; Habadi had been a 'militant recruiter' who worked with a second tier group called Jama'at Tabligh, and knew of operations in Qatar and Pakistan. As for Zahrani, he was a 'frontline Taliban fighter' who had played a prominent part in the November 2001 prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, in which a CIA man died.

All this may be true. On the other hand, they had not been charged with anything. Questionable as it often is and consisting of statements made after torture or coercion, the Pentagon has disseminated some evidence against more than 300 Guantanamo detainees, in federal court filings and at internal camp boards that reviewed their detention. Against the three suicides, it has presented nothing.

Meanwhile, the information available suggests that the explanation of the deaths rejected by Harris - that the men tried to kill themselves through despair and succeeded through the incompetence of his staff - remains more plausible.

Rasul said: 'I was shocked by what happened, though not surprised, because I saw it almost happen so often. It was always scary: I would see people deteriorating mentally in front of my eyes until they tried to take their own lives, and you always thought: "That could be me". There were even times when I thought about it myself, but I wanted to be strong for my family. When I did, believe me, it wasn't because I was trying to hurt the United States, but on days when I'd just been told I'd never see England again, and that I was a terrorist, and when I denied it they wouldn't listen.'

The suicides triggered new calls to close Guantanamo, from the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, the European Union and others. But the Pentagon will go to considerable lengths to block any independent scrutiny of what happened.

News of the suicides broke while I was flying to Washington from London, in order to travel to Guantanamo on a military flight next day and cover a military commission tribunal. A message on my mobile phone - from a fellow reporter, not the Pentagon - said that both had been cancelled. Thus I made the first of many calls to Jeffrey Gordon. At first, he could not have been more helpful. To enter Guantanamo, he said, one needed an 'area clearance', and because mine had been issued for the tribunal it was no longer valid. However, the press office at Guantanamo or Southern Command in Miami might be able to issue a new one, Gordon said. Clearance was not, he pointed out, the only problem. Now that the military plane had been cancelled, the only way to reach Guantanamo was on scheduled 18-seat flights from Florida and Kingston, Jamaica. They tended to be fully booked well in advance.

I teamed up with another British journalist, David Jones of the Daily Mail, to organise clearance and investigate flights. By the end of Sunday, we thought we were on our way. Jones found a private charter firm willing to fly us to the camp from Kingston. Guantanamo's head of public affairs, Commander Robert Durand, explained in an email he was seeking authorisation from Harris. 'He's a pretty open sort of guy,' Durand said, 'and I can't see any reason for not granting you clearance since you were coming already.' At 7.30pm one of Durand's staff phoned to say there were new clearances. He faxed them a few minutes later.

Next day Jones and I got up at 4am to fly to Miami, where we checked with Guantanamo one last time that everything was in order and got on a plane to Kingston. There, at check-in for our private flight, the manager was apologetic. 'Guys, I'm so sorry. Jeffrey Gordon called me from the Pentagon five minutes ago. Your clearances have been revoked.' Over the next 48 hours, I had several heated conversations and email exchanges with Gordon. At first he was apologetic: the new clearances had been 'a mistake' and he would try to get us a refund on the plane costs. Later he became more aggressive: forgetting that he had advised me to approach Durand at Guantanamo, he claimed that we tried to 'get round' the Pentagon by obtaining clearance from a clerk. His last email stated that our conduct had been 'ethically questionable, at best'. It was left to Durand to shed a little light. For the time being, he said, his ability to issue clearances had been removed and assumed by Rumsfeld's office alone.

Meanwhile, three US reporters at the base were ordered to leave. According to a Pentagon spokesman quoted by the US media, the reason was that two barred British reporters - us - had threatened to sue if the Americans were allowed to stay. This was, of course, untrue.

Closing Guantanamo to the media meant there were no reporters there as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service team went about its work; none when pathologists conducted post mortem examinations; and none last Friday when, after a Muslim ceremony conducted by a military chaplain, the first body - Ahmed's - was prepared to be flown home. It was also impossible to gauge the impact of the deaths on the 460 inmates.

Yet our bizarre experience raises a fundamental question: when it comes to Guantanamo, can the world believe a single word that Gordon and his numerous cohorts say? There is, to say the least, an alternative explanation for the three Guantanamo deaths. Since early 2003, when the Red Cross issued the first of many reports stating that inmates were experiencing high levels of depression, there has been mounting evidence that detention there has wrought havoc on some prisoners' mental health. It is not so surprising: most prisoners get just two 30-minute periods out of their cells - the size of a double bed - each week, except when being interrogated. Some have endured this since 2002, and have no idea when, if ever, they may leave.

By the time of my own visit in October 2003, a fifth of them were on Prozac and there had been so many suicide attempts - 40 by August 2003 - that the Pentagon had reclassified hangings as 'manipulative self-injurious behaviours'. Cannily, perhaps, it has refused to give exact statistics on how many SIBs have occurred, claiming that since the reclassification there have been (until last week) only two genuine attempted suicides.

Tarek Dergoul, another freed British former detainee, knew two of the dead men well. 'I was next to or opposite Manei [Habadi] for weeks, maybe months,' he said, 'and like me his morale was high. He was always up for a protest: a hunger strike or a non-co-operation strike. He used to recite poetry, not just Arabic, but English - he knew chunks of Macbeth and he taught me how to read the Koran correctly. When you go through that sort of experience with someone, you really get to know them. I just can't believe he would take his own life. He would have had to be really desperate.' Likewise, Dergoul said, Zahrani was 'a person everyone loved. It's offensive to me to say he could have killed himself.' Apart from anything else, all three men would have been deeply aware of Islam's prohibition of suicide.

However, the men may well have been so desperate that they ignored the prohibition - even if, as seems likely, they co-ordinated their deaths in the hope of increasing their political impact. Many lawyers who have visited clients at Guantanamo have spoken eloquently of their despair: this year a prisoner tried to kill himself in front of his US attorney, somehow managing to open his veins, covering himself in blood, as the lawyer watched in horror, unable - because of the screen that separated them - to intervene.

Dergoul also suggested how the three may have been able to kill themselves undetected. Sometimes, he said, instead of patrolling the guards 'used to sit in their room at the end. It's a long walk from end to end of the block and some nights they didn't feel like it: they'd sit in their room, smoking and playing cards. You'd need toilet paper or something and you'd yell "MP, MP!" But they wouldn't come - it could be as long as an hour.'

One might, just about, imagine such a scene in a British prison. One can also envisage what might happen if three men committed suicide on the same landing at the same time: public inquiries, sackings, outrage. All three had been on hunger strike, with few breaks, since the middle of last summer. This meant that, four times a day, they were strapped down in restraining chairs so that they could not move their limbs and force-fed through nasal tubes, inserted and removed each time - a process the Pentagon's own court documents state causes bleeding and nausea. It is not hard to see why that may have made them depressed.

According to newly declassified testimony by another prisoner shortly before the suicides, a guard recently told him: 'They have lost hope in life. They have no hope in their eyes. They are ghosts and they want to die. No food will keep them alive right now.' This prisoner, the former British resident Shaker Aamer, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that the three dead men and other hunger strikers were so ill whenever their feeds contained protein that it went 'right through them' causing severe diarrhoea.

Last week Rumsfeld got what he wanted: the removal of media scrutiny from Guantanamo's deepest crisis. Potentially embarrassing, perhaps very damaging, headlines have been averted, and tomorrow, with the most sensitive tasks in the wake of the deaths complete, Guantanamo's public affairs office will resume its chaperoned tours. But the bigger costs of shutting out the daylight are making themselves felt.

On BBC1's Question Time last week, Falconer called the camp 'intolerable and wrong', adding that it acted as a recruiting agent for those who would attack all our values. Proving his point next day, some former Guantanamo detainees suggested the three dead men had been murdered, a claim echoed by their families and the government of Yemen next day.

The Pentagon response to the suicides was characterised by panic, smears and blatant obstruction. One might be forgiven for thinking that its vehement denials lacked a little weight.

"Operation Forward Together": Deeper Into the Quagmire

By Dahr Jamail
http://DahrJamailIraq.com t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 19 June 2006

On Tuesday, June 13th, while Mr. Bush spent a brave five hours in the "green zone" of Baghdad with puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at least 36 people were killed across Iraq amidst a wave of bombings. 18 of those died in a spasm of bombings in the oil city of Kirkuk in the Kurdish north.

The minute word hit the streets in Baghdad of Bush's visit, over 2,000 supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets in protest. The protestors chanted "Iraq is for the Iraqis," and Sadr aide Hazem al-Araji publicly condemned the peek-a-boo visit of who he referred to as "the leader of the occupation."

*Day One*

The very next day, not coincidentally, Maliki instituted the biggest security crackdown in the capital city since the US invaded Iraq, dubbed "Operation Forward Together." An estimated 75,000 US and Iraqi soldiers clogged the already seriously congested streets of Baghdad, using tanks and armored vehicles to man checkpoints, impose a more strict curfew in liberated Baghdad (9 p.m. - 6 a.m. as opposed to the more generous 11 p.m. - 6 a.m.) and attempt to impose a weapons ban.

Just after "The Operation" began, a car bomb detonated, killing one
person while wounding five others. Major General Mahdi al-Gharrawi who commands "public order forces" under the deadly umbrella of the
controversial Interior Ministry, made a statement for which George
Orwell would have been proud: "Baghdad is divided according to
geographical area, and we know the al-Qaeda leaders in each area," he told reporters. "We are expecting clashes will erupt in the
predominantly Sunni areas." So Sunnis in Iraq, according to Gharrawi, are tied to al-Qaeda.

Lest we forget, the Iraqi "army" ran a similar draconian security
crackdown in Baghdad in May 2005 called "Operation Lightning." That one, too, was tens of thousands of Iraqi "police" and "soldiers" backed by American troops and air support. That operation, rather than quell violence in the capital, effectively alienated the Sunni populations in the city due to rampant death squad activities, mass detentions and heavy-handed tactics.

Civilians across Baghdad complained about the mass detentions, random violence and torture meted out by the death squads
during that "operation." And we see how well that operation managed to improve security in Baghdad over the last year.

So here we go again - only this time with even more troops, raiding even more homes, manning more checkpoints, and of course more death squads operating - with backup support from American soldiers, and of course their air strikes.

Iraq's puppet prime minister, in an effort to sooth the fear in the
hearts of Baghdad's residents who are concerned about more detentions, random violence and "torture by electric drill" which the US-backed Shia death squads prefer with their victims, told reporters of the operation, "The raids during this plan will be very tough ... because there will be no mercy towards those who show no mercy to our people."

The same day "Operation Forward Together" began and the day after Bush bid farewell to Baghdad, he dismissed calls for a US withdrawal as "election-year" politics. Refusing to give a timetable for withdrawal or some kind of benchmark with which to measure success that may allow troops to be brought home, Bush said simply, "It's bad policy," at a news conference in the Rose Garden. He thought it would "endanger our country" to pull out of Iraq before we "accomplish the mission." What mission? Oil?

Of his visit to Baghdad, Bush said, "I sense something different happening in Iraq." Good one DUH-bya.

While pounding his fist on the podium set up for him at the press
conference, Bush proudly repeated his mantra of propaganda:
"If the United States of America leaves before this Iraqi government can defend itself and sustain itself and govern itself, it will be a major blow in the war on terror." BU*SH*IT

That morning the Pentagon announced the death of the 2,500th US soldier in Iraq.

Meanwhile, back in liberated Baghdad, also on that same day, I received an email from a very close friend of mine. It is a sobering glimpse into "Operation Forward Together" and what Bush alluded to when he said, "I sense something different happening in Iraq."

/ Habibi, we are divided in three houses today. I am at our home in
Adhamiya. My wife and two youngest boys are at her sister's house in Bab Al-Moudam because it's safer for them. It's a mixed Sunni and Shia area, so there are no detentions. Our daughter is with her husband in their home, and my oldest son is at his house with his wife and baby, although he is not in a safe area. There is often fighting there, but not too many detentions./

/ Today Adhamiya is totally under occupation since early morning. None of the shops are open, the soldiers are holding up all cars and searching them, and home raids are happening. The city is a city of ghosts.
This situation is the same in all the Sunni areas. Checkpoints
are all over Baghdad, the highways between Baghdad and the other cities are all closed and nobody can go on them. The airports are closed, and no flights are coming in or out of Baghdad./

/ We cannot leave the country until the beginning of next month. By the way, three of my son's friends were killed by explosions two days ago while they were having fruits in the market. He came home crying because of that. The situation is very bad. The son of Abdul Sattar Al Kubaisy, who is in the Ministry of Interior, has been kidnapped from inside the Ministry. He was found in one of the trash cans outside the Ministry of Interior building ... so even the offices of the government are no longer safe!!!/

/ God is with us insh'allah [God willing]./
*Day Two*

On Friday, the second day of "Operation Forward Together," a hospital source in Fallujah reported that 8 Iraqis, some of whom were women and children from the same family, were killed and six wounded when US warplanes bombed a home in the northeastern Ibrahim Bin Ali district of the city.

That same day, a story titled "Shiite Militias Control Prisons,
Officials Say," was released by the Washington Post Foreign Service.

The story reads, "Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview." We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that, said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. "Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad."

The story continued, "In an interview this week, Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, the top Sunni Arab in Iraq's new government, showed photographs taken from one recent inspection of an Interior Ministry detention center.

An inmate in one of the photos held out his misshapen, limp hands for the camera. The man's hands had been broken in a beating,
Zobaie said. Other inmates showed massive, dark bruises on their skin; one bore a large, open infected sore. Inmates in another photo clustered around chains hung from the middle of one of the crowded cells. The chains were used to hoist prisoners by their bound hands, Zobaie said.

The practice, noted frequently in inspection reports of Interior
Ministry detention centers, often results in the dislocation of
prisoners' shoulders.

Ninety percent of the men crowded into Interior Ministry detention
centers are Sunni Arabs, Zobaie said.

*Day Three*

On Saturday, according to the same Washington Post story, "A group of parliament members paid a surprise visit to a detention facility run by the Interior Ministry in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. "We have found terrible violations of the law," said Muhammed al-Dayni, a Sunni parliament member, who said as many as 120 detainees were packed into a 35-by-20-foot cell. "They told us that they've been raped," Dayni said. "Their families were called in and tortured to force the detainees to testify against other people."

"The detention facilities of the ministries of Defense and Interior are places for the most brutal human rights abuse," he added.

Despite broad US efforts to encourage the Iraqi government to improve conditions in prisons, the problem of militia control could prove particularly intractable. Shiite militias such as the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army, loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are backed by dozens of members of parliament whose political parties run the armed groups.

"You can't even talk to the militias, because they are the government,"
Yei said. "They have ministers on their side."

The evening of Day Three, two US soldiers were detained by resistance fighters just south of Baghdad. With a Bush administration that openly advocates the use of torture and props up a Shia Prime Minister in Iraq who says things like "there will be no mercy" when referencing his new "security operation," their fate is indeed a dark one.

*Day Four*

On Saturday, the third day of "Operation Forward Together," at least 40 people were killed, and over 80 wounded amidst a rash of bomb and mortar attacks, most of which took place in Baghdad. The deadliest attack occurred at an Iraqi police checkpoint, while another car bomb targeting the Iraqi army and police killed another 11 people. Meanwhile, 15 others were wounded at a joint Iraqi army and police checkpoint, also in Baghdad.

*Day Five*

Gunmen kidnap 10 bakery workers from a predominantly Shia neighborhood in Baghdad. 10 bullet-riddled bodies of men who had apparently been tortured were also found in Baghdad. A mortar round hit al-Sadiq University on Palestine Street in the capital city - five students and one teacher are wounded. The US military continues to search in vain for its two missing soldiers. Residents continue to stream out of the capital city of al-Anbar province, Ramadi, due to the threat of an all-out US assault on the city. Thousands of the refugees are wandering around the province with nowhere to go.

*Coming Days, Weeks, Months, Years?*

With Operation Forward Together off to a dazzling beginning, how long will the occupation be allowed to continue? Each passing day only brings the people of Iraq and soldiers serving in the US military deeper into
the quagmire that the brutal, despicable, tortured occupation has become.

_______________________________________________
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website. Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com . Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.

More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

Another Cover-Up/New Videos

U.S. Troops Kill Two Iraqi Women, One of Them
Pregnant, in Samarra. Amy Goodman speaks with Dahr Jamail.

*June 14, 2006 - Dahr Jamail speaks with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now
regarding the killings *

On May 30th, US troops shot and killed two Iraqi women -- one of whom
was pregnant. Nabiha Nisaif Jassim and her cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan
were in a car going to Samarra General hospital where Nabiha was about
to give birth. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman speaks with independent
journalist Dahr Jamail about the incident and how the US military may
have tried to cover it up.

In the interview, Dahr uses this incident as another example of the
countless "incidents" where Iraqi civilians have died at US hands. He
speaks specifically of other incidents and massacres such as Haditha,
the November 2004 siege of Fallujah and the current operation in Ramadi.

Dahr Jamail on Democracy Now discusses May 30, 2006 US killing of two
Iraqi women

See the Interview - Streaming Flash Video


See the interview - Quicktime .MOV



See the interview - Windows Media .WMV



------------------------------------------------------------------------


Independent Intervention - an award-winning documentary about the US
Media coverage of the war in Iraq

*INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION *
shows how a Norwegian filmmaker in the United States questions the US
media coverage of the war in Iraq. The film investigates important
issues that govern today’s information flow, and looks at how this
system reveals itself during times of war and political turmoil. As the
major US networks remove human suffering from their presentation of war,
Operation Iraqi Freedom is portrayed as a success for the spread of
democracy and freedom. This film brings awareness to the disparity
between the war the American people see through the corporate controlled
media and the realities on the ground in Iraq. INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION
explores how the growing media democracy movement in the US works to
challenge the mass media.

*INDEPENDENT INTERVENTION *
features Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, *Dahr Jamail*, Danny Schechter,
Norman Solomon, David Barsamian, Kalle Lasn, James Zogby and Jim
Hightower. It also includes the voices of Howard Zinn, Michael Moore,
Bill Moyers, Arundhati Roy, Jeremy Scahill, US Senators and Iraqi people.

Independent Intervention Press Kit



Independent Intervention movie
View the trailer at
http://www.independentintervention.com/trailer.html

*Server busy? try it on ours:* Independent Intervention trailer hosted
at dahrjamailiraq.com quicktime .MOV file


*Buy Independent Intervention on DVD ($24.99)*

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Iraq Eyewitness - a series of half-hour videos featuring Dahr Jamail's
November 2, 2005 Bowdoin College lecture

*http://www.iraqeyewitness.org features
presentations by or interviews with people who have recently returned
from Iraq—GIs, journalists, and relief workers.*

These are views that rarely reach the mainstream media, yet are
essential to an informed understanding of the current realities in Iraq.
They're presented in an engaging and non-confrontational tone. One of
the on-line streaming videos of the DVD's available includes
"Unembedded" in Iraq; American independent journalist Dahr Jamail tells
in words and photos teh present situation of Iraqis caught in the
increasing violence of the occupation.

See the available Iraq EyeWitness videos


View Dahr's 11/2/05 Bowdoin Lecture 256kbs mpeg4 at archive.org


View Dahr's 11/2/05 Bowdoin Lecture 64kbs mpeg4 at archive.org


View Dahr's 11/2/05 Bowdoin Lecture mpeg2 hi-res (94 megs) at
archive.org


*Server busy? try it on ours:* View Dahr's 11/2/05 Bowdoin Lecture
256kbs mpeg4 hosted at dahrjamailiraq.com

15.6.06

Addicted To War; The War Against the Third World

More about this video
click here

"What I've Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy:
The War Against the Third World"


Transcripts are available for download free of charge



Don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader?
Download it for free from Adobe website


This 2 hour video compilation features the following 10 segments:


1. Martin Luther King Jr.: segments of his position against the U.S. war in Vietnam. (2:45)


2. John Stockwell: Stockwell was the CIA Station Chief of Operations in Angola in 1975 under then CIA Director, George Bush Sr. A 13 year veteran of the agency, Stockwell provides a short history of the CIA; estimating over 6 million people have died as a direct consequence of the agency's covert operations since its inception in 1947. This is a segment of a talk he gave in the late 1980's. (6:18)


3. “Coverup; Behind the Iran-Contra Affair”: Directed by Barbara Trent of the Empowerment Project. The Iran-Contra scandal was not just an aberration of U.S. foreign policy; it has become standard operating procedure. An estimated 20 to 30,000 Nicaraguan men, women and children were killed in US sponsored terror conducted by the CIA backed right-wing contra forces. Elizabeth Montgomery narrates. Includes a history of CIA covert operations by Peter Dale Scott (20:46)

4. “School of Assassins”: An examination of our own terrorist training school right here in the United States. “School of Assassins” looks at the US Army training school known as the School of the Americas where soldiers from Central and South America are trained in the art of torture, terrorism, and assassination. The School of the Americas is located at Fort Benning, Georgia. Narrated by Susan Sarandon and features Father Roy Bourgeois. (13:31)

5. “Genocide by Sanctions”: Examines the impact of the decade long sanctions imposed upon the people of Iraq by the United States with UN Approval. Genocide by Sanctions was produced by Gloria La Riva and features the former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clark. (12:40)

6. “Phil Agee”: Philip Agee spent 13 years as a case officer in the CIA, resigning in 1969. His book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" was first published in 1975 and has been translated into 27 languages. It was a best seller worldwide. His autobiography "On The Run" was published in 1987. In this speech given in 1991 after the first Gulf War, Agee analyzes why the U.S. invaded Iraq. He also describes "the war against the third world" as being fought for the natural resources, the labor and the markets of these third world countries the United States has invaded either overtly or covertly since the end of World War II.

7. Amy Goodman: journalist and host of Democracy Now! on Pacifica Radio, which was founded by World War II anti-war pacifists. On this section of the tape, Amy is talking about two genocides Indonesia committed. First against its own people in 1965, then against the people of East Timor in 1975. Both of these mass slaughters were sanctioned by the United States State department and aided by the CIA. (5:13)

8. “The Panama Deception: This film documents the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama while exploring the role the mainstream media in the United States has in suppressing or downplaying the serious impact US foreign policy. This documentary includes never before seen footage of this invasion. Directed by Barbara Trent of the Empowerment Project. (22:05)

9. Ramsey Clark: former Attorney General of the United States: I was there the night Ramsey Clark gave this speech back in 1998 at a church in Los Angeles. Called "Save the Iraqi Children," Ramsey’s talk is very powerful as he conveys the aspects of US foreign policy in Iraq that are not often heard. (7:46)

10. S. Brian Willson: Speaking about the necessity of a “revolution in consciousness,” Brian offers an inspiring and hopeful perspective on the role of a massive peace movement. Brian is the Vietnam veteran who, in 1987, lost both his legs when run over by a munitions train at the Concord Naval Weapons Station, located in California. The bombs and munitions aboard this train were bound for Central America. (8:37)


Click the links below for either the MS Word Document version or Acrobat Reader format of the transcript.



ImpeachBush / VoteToImpeach: Articles of Impeachment

ImpeachBush / VoteToImpeach: Articles of Impeachment

Articles of Impeachment

of

President George W. Bush

and

Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.

2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.

4) Instituting a secret and illegal wiretapping and spying operation against the people of the United States through the National Security Agency.

5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.

6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

7) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.

8) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

9) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."

10) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.

11) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.

12) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.

13) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.

14) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.

15) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.

16) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."

17) Engaging in criminal neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, depriving thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and other Gulf States of urgently needed support, causing mass suffering and unnecessary loss of life.

18) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.

19) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

20) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.

14.6.06

Former Guantanamo Detainees Recall Despair

Former Guantanamo Detainees Recall Despair

Former Guantanamo Detainees Recall Despair
by Paisley Dodds

Dispirited and desperate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay look to suicide as a way out of a hopeless situation, and not because they seek martyrdom, say three British Muslims once held there.

"There is no hope in Guantanamo. The only thing that goes through your mind day after day is how to get justice or how to kill yourself," said Shafiq Rasul, 29, who waged a hunger strike while at the camp to protest alleged beatings. "It is the despair — not the thought of martyrdom — that consumes you there."

In an interview late Saturday with The Associated Press, Rasul and two boyhood friends, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, disputed the charge by U.S. officials that the three suicides by Guantanamo detainees this weekend were political acts.

"Killing yourself is not something that is looked at lightly in Islam, but if you're told day after day by the Americans that you're never going to go home or you're put into isolation, these acts are committed simply out of desperation and loss of hope," Rasul said. "This was not done as an act of martyrdom, warfare or anything else."

The three Britons are the subject of a movie, "The Road to Guantanamo," that traces their steps from a trip to Pakistan for a wedding to the desolate U.S. outpost in Cuba, where they were held for more than two years without charge. The film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February, opens in New York on June 23.

Many of the some 460 Guantanamo detainees accused of links to Afghanistan's Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network have been held for more than four years without charge, including the two Saudis and one Yemeni who hanged themselves early Saturday.

There are no scenes of attempted suicides in "The Road to Guantanamo," but the British friends said they saw several at the camp.

"A Saudi detainee in the cell in front of us had had enough," said Ahmed. "We could hear him rip up his sheets and tie it to the wire mesh roof of the cell. He jumped off his sink and tried to hang himself. We shouted to the military police and they came and saved him."

The men said they suffered beatings, saw guards throw Qurans in the toilet, were forced to watch videotapes of prisoners who had allegedly been ordered to sodomize each other and were chained to a hook in the floor while strobe lights flashed and heavy metal music blared.

The allegations, some of which are dramatized in the film, are part of a lawsuit against the United States seeking $10 million each in damages.

The three men, who were released without charge in March 2004, said their lives are still far from easy.

Since they started promoting their film across Europe, they say they are questioned or searched when they land in Britain. After they returned from Spain recently, armed police in Birmingham boarded the plane and searched their seats. Even two actors who play the men in the film were stopped in February and held for questioning under the anti-terror laws.

"It's embarrassing. We feel like outsiders in our own country," Ahmed said.

13.6.06

Another U.S. Cover-Up Surfaces

Another U.S. Cover-Up Surfaces

Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed

*BAGHDAD, Jun 12 (IPS) - In the wake of the Haditha massacre, reports of
another atrocity have surfaced in which U.S. troops killed two women in
Samarra, and then attempted to hide evidence of their responsibility.*

Among the innumerable such cases people speak of, this one too has now
come to light.

According to an earlier account, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old
mother of two, was killed in firing along with her 57-year-old cousin
Saliha Mohammed Hassan on May 30 when they were being transported to
Samarra General Hospital for Nabiha to give birth.

What was not reported, according to an Iraqi human rights investigator
who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, was that both women were
shot in the back of the head by U.S. snipers.

"I investigated this incident myself, and both of these women were shot
from behind," said the investigator. "Nabiha's brains were splattered on
her brother who was driving the car, since she was in the back seat."

The U.S. military said soldiers fired on the car after it entered a
"clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post" after failing
to stop despite "repeated visual and auditory warnings." The U.S.
military said in a statement that "shots were fired to disable the vehicle."

The brother of the pregnant woman, Redam Nisaif Jassim, who was driving
the car, told IPS that he neither saw nor heard any warnings by the U.S.
military. Two men who witnessed the incident from a nearby home also
said they saw no signs of any warning.

"These kinds of killings by the Americans happen daily in Iraq," said
Jassim, "They gave no warning to us before killing my cousin and sister.
Of course we know they have no respect for the lives of Iraqis."

The U.S. military claims the incident is being investigated.

The Haditha slaughter in which 24 Iraqis were killed is under
investigation for the incident itself, and further for the cover-up,
since the initial report given by the Marine Corps stated only that 15
civilian deaths were caused by a roadside bomb and fighting with insurgents.

In this case too, all signs point to a cover-up. "The area where they
were killed by the Americans was completely unmarked," the human rights
investigator told IPS. A warning sign at the place was put up after the
two women were killed, he said.

Like the Haditha massacre, this incident too should be investigated both for the killing and the cover-up, he said.

According to the investigator, the U.S. troops who killed the two women made no attempt to assist them after the shooting.

The next day Redam Jassim was summoned to a local police station. "The Americans offered me 5,000 dollars, and told me it wasn't compensation but because of tradition," Jassim told IPS. The U.S. military pays usually 2,500 dollars compensation for killing an Iraqi. Jassim says he refused the payment.

The U.S. military recently announced in a Defence Department report
provided to Congress that it paid out 19 million dollars in compensation
to Iraqis last year -- half of which paid out by Marines in al-Anbar
province west of Baghdad.

The military claimed the amount was paid in 600 separate incidents, but
it is common knowledge in Iraq that the usual payout for a non-combat
civilian death is 2,500 dollars.

A payment of 19 million dollars compensation at 2,500 dollars a person
would suggest such killings in thousands.

Jassim told IPS and the human rights investigator that he was asked by
the Americans' translator to sign a paper written in English. The family
and their relatives live in a village called al-Muta'assim, a 40-minute
drive from the main hospital in Samarra.. Most people there, like the
Jassims, neither speak nor read English.

After he signed the paper, Jassim was offered 2,500 dollars by U.S.
soldiers, which he again refused.

"It is clear the Americans tried to cheat him as well as cover up their
tracks at the same time," the investigator told IPS. "Like in Haditha,
this incident, along with so many others we cannot keep track of,
requires a truly independent investigation, rather than one by the U.S.
military."

Phone calls and emails to the U.S.. military spokesperson in Baghdad
have not been returned.




Ramadi: Fallujah Redux

By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 12 June 2006

Fearful residents are now pouring out of Ramadi after the US military
has been assaulting the city for months with tactics like cutting water,
electricity and medical aid, imposing curfews, and attacking by means of
snipers and random air strikes. This time, Iraqis there are right to
fear the worst - an all out attack on the city, similar to what was done
to nearby Fallujah.

It has always been just a matter of time before the US military would
finally get around to destroying Ramadi, the capital city of al-Anbar
province. After all, Ramadi is not far from Fallujah, and so similar to
Fallujah both tribally and in their disdain towards the idea of being
occupied, that many people in Ramadi even refer to Fallujah as "Ramadi."
I know many people from Ramadi who lost relatives and friends during
both US assaults on Fallujah, and the level of anti-American sentiment
has always been high there.

By now, we all know the scene when the US military in Iraq decides to
attack an entire city ... we've seen this standard operating procedure
repeated, to one degree or another, in Haditha, Al-Qa'im, Samarra, parts
of Baghdad, Balad, Najaf and Fallujah twice ... so far. The city is
sealed for weeks if not months, water and electricity are cut, medical
aid is cut, curfews imposed, mobility impaired, air strikes utilized,
then the real attack begins. Now in Ramadi, the real attack has begun.

Warplanes are streaking the sky as bombings increase, loudspeakers aimed
into the city warn civilians of a "fierce impending attack," (even
though it has already begun), and thousands of families remain trapped
in their homes, just like in Fallujah during both attacks on that city.
Again, many who remain in the city cannot afford to leave because they
are so poor, or they lack transportation, or they want to guard their
home because it is all they have left.

Sheikh Fassal Guood, a former governor of al-Anbar said of the
situation, "The situation is catastrophic. No services, no electricity,
no water." He also said, "We know for sure now that Americans and Iraqi
commanders have decided to launch a broad offensive any time now, but
they should have consulted with us."

Today, a man who lives in Fallujah and who recently visited Ramadi told
me, "Any new government starts with a massacre. That seems like the
price that we Iraqis must pay, especially in the Sunni areas. Ramadi has
been deprived of water, electricity, telephones and all services for
about two months now. US and government forces frankly told people of
Ramadi that they will not get any services unless they hand over 'the
terrorists!!' Operations started last week, but it seems that the
Marines are facing some problems in a city that is a lot bigger in area
than Fallujah. (Ramadi also has at least 50,000 more residents than
Fallujah.) Killing civilians is almost a daily process done by snipers
and soldiers in US armored vehicles. The problem that makes it even more
difficult for the Ramadi people than for those of Fallujah back in 2004
is that they cannot flee to Baghdad, because there they'll face the
government militia assassinations. Nevertheless, the US Army is telling
them to evacuate the city. On the other hand, the government and the US
Army made it clear that they will bring militias to participate in the
wide attack against the city. The UN and the whole world are silent as
usual, and nobody seems to care what is going to happen in Ramadi."

Thus, the stage was set and now Iraqis brace themselves for yet another
staggeringly high civilian body count in Ramadi. This, amidst recent
news from the Department of Defense that over $19 million has been paid
out in compensation by the US military in Iraq to families who have had
loved ones killed by US troops. The average payout is $2,500 per body,
and nearly half of the $19 million was paid out in the province of
al-Anbar. Reflective of the drastically increased levels of violence in
Iraq, the total amount of compensation payouts for 2005 is nearly four
times what it was the previous year.

The fact that the 1,500 US troops who were recently brought into Iraq,
specifically to Ramadi, went unreported by most, if not all, corporate
media outlets didn't come as a surprise to the residents of Ramadi,
however, as street battles between troops and resistance fighters have
been raging for months now.

The media blackout on Ramadi is already rivaling the blackout on the
draconian measures employed by the military during the November 2004
siege of Fallujah, if not surpassing it. Thus far, the military have
remained reluctant to allow even embedded reporters to travel with them
in Ramadi. With each passing US assault on an Iraqi city, the media
blackout grows darker - and with Ramadi, it is the darkest yet.

Most of what we have, aside from sporadic reports from sources inside
the besieged city, is propaganda from the US military spokesman in
Baghdad, Major Todd Breasseale, who only spoke of moving the newly
arrived 1,500 troops in from Kuwait into positions around Ramadi.
"Moving this force will allow tribal leaders and government officials to
go about the very difficult task of taking back their towns from the
criminal elements."

Similar to Fallujah, thousands of frightened residents of Ramadi are
fleeing the city, then being turned away from entering Baghdad. With no
tents, food, or aid of any kind being provided to them by the military,
which is a war crime, they are left with nothing but what they carry and
no place to go. These refugees are now adding to the horrific statistic
of over 100,000 displaced families within Iraq, the majority of whom are
so as the result of massive US military operations which have a tendency
to make entire cities unlivable.

Reports from sources within Ramadi for weeks now have been that US
soldiers have been inhabiting people's homes in order to use their
rooftops as sniper platforms, innocent people are being shot daily, and
people are confused - do they risk leaving and having nowhere to go, or
risk staying in their homes and possibly being killed?

Hassan Zaidan Lahaibi, a member of the Council of Representatives in the
Iraqi parliament, told reporters recently, "If things continue, we will
have a humanitarian crisis. People are getting killed or wounded, and
the rest are just migrating aimlessly."

He could just as easily be describing much of the rest of Iraq, where
the majority of people struggle to survive under the weight of an
increasingly brutal occupation, US-backed death squads, sectarian
militias, staggering unemployment and a devastated infrastructure.


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More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at http://dahrjamailiraq.com