Category: The war that will not end in our lifetimes

US Secretary of State told a group of journalists when the United States invaded Iraq, “this will be a war that will not end in your lifetimes.” The vision of the project for the New American Century which backed George W Bush’s bid for presidency, is that the United States will control the world economy, by controlling the world’s oil supplies. The backing of independence movements in Georgia and Chechnya has deprived Russia of the gateway to Middle Eastern oil, and prevented it building a planned pipeline to China. Combined with manouvers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel, it is clear that this plan is being put into effect. The news stories in this category track the progress of this project and the impact it is having on the world economy and hence, your daily life.

Out of Iraq, Out with Bush

admin /5 October, 2006

Sean Penn issued this statement on October 2, 2006 at the Great Hall of Cooper Union, New York City. It was read at an emergency meeting of World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime held in response to passage of the Torture Bill and in preparation for protests happening on Thursday, October 5 Continue Reading →

Boo Hoo: $6m AWB man cries about Iraqi atrocities

admin /3 October, 2006

AWB sent millions of dollars in foreign currency to Saddam Hussein so he could build concrete bunkers, which AWB executives speculated might be used by the regime to bury Kurds. The shocking email detailing the reinforced bunkers came on an extraordinary final day of the Cole inquiry in which a former AWB managing director broke Continue Reading →

Iraq since 1880

admin /30 September, 2006

http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm

The Ring Nebula timeline of Iraq details the political events since 1908 that have led to its current situation. With links to supporting documentation this is a useful starting point for anyone attempting to understand how one of the cradles of civilisation became a basket case. 

Iraq is Bush’s Reflection Pond

admin /30 September, 2006

Mike Whitney

iraq-morgue-aa.jpg Martial law is not liberation. Baghdad has been in a state of virtual lockdown since thousands of American Occupation Forces (AOF) were deployed to the city in a futile attempt to establish security. In the last two months, the number of dead appearing at the Baghdad morgue has skyrocketed; nearly 6,600 Iraqis brutally tortured and killed in July and August alone. In terms of population, this is the equivalent of 79,200 American casualties. Simply put, it is a massacre. Still, the AOF continues to execute its bloody mission with impunity regardless of the horrific cost.

Occupation is not freedom; it is servitude enforced at gunpoint. By every objective standard, life was better under Saddam Hussein. The people had reliable sources of electricity, clean water, food and medical supplies. Employment was high, crime was low, schools were open, markets were bustling and the socialist regime provided education and health services to the destitute.

Iraq was a dictatorship, but it was far superior in every way to the holocaust unleashed by the American invasion. In view of the ongoing devastation of infrastructure, the callous disregard for human life, and the absolute absence of personal security; Saddam’s Iraq must now seem like Nirvana.

US occupation of Iraq fuels the spread of jihadists

admin /27 September, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Portions of a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism that the White House released under pressure on Tuesday said that Muslim jihadists were “increasing in both number and geographic dispersion” and that current trends could lead to increasing attacks around the globe. The report, a comprehensive assessment of terrorism produced in April Continue Reading →

Deadly harvest: The Lebanese fields sown with cluster bombs

admin /19 September, 2006

Lebanese villagers must risk death in fields ‘flooded’ with more than a million Israeli cluster bombs – or leave crops to rot

By Patrick Cockburn in Nabatiyeh

Published: 18 September 2006

The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more.

The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon’s farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields.

In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father’s bed in the hospital.

At least 83 people have been killed by cluster munitions since the ceasefire, according to independent monitors.

Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon. A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) unit told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the army had fired 1,800 cluster rockets, spraying 1.2 million bomblets over houses and fields. "In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs," he said. "What we did there was crazy and monstrous." What makes the cluster bombs so dangerous is that 30 per cent of the bomblets do not detonate on impact. They can lie for years – often difficult to see because of their small size, on roofs, in gardens, in trees, beside roads or in rubbish – waiting to explode when disturbed.

In Nabatiyeh, the modern 100-bed government hospital has received 19 victims of cluster bombs since the end of the war. As we arrived, a new patient, Ahmad Sabah, a laboratory technician at the hospital, was being rushed into the emergency room. A burly man of 45, he was unconscious on a stretcher. Earlier in the morning, he had gone up to the flat roof of his house to check the water tank. While there, he must have touched a pile of logs he was keeping for winter fires. Unknown to him, a bomblet had fallen into the woodpile a month earlier. The logs shielded him from the full force of the blast, but when we saw him, doctors were still trying to find out the extent of his injuries.

"For us, the war is still going on, though there was a cease-fire on 14 August," said Dr Hassan Wazni, the director of the hospital. "If the cluster bombs had all exploded at the time they landed, it would not be so bad, but they are still killing and maiming people."

The bomblets may be small, but they explode with devastating force. On the morning of the ceasefire, Hadi Hatab, an 11-year old boy, was brought dying to the hospital. "He must have been holding the bomb close to him," Dr Wazni said. "It took off his hands and legs and the lower part of his body."