A short wrap of top stories on Iraq on the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) for Tuesday morning, Sept. 14. Filtered by
nihilix for the news Fox won't tell us.
US Gunships shoot the shit out of a bunch of unarmed Iraqis. Picture.
No Way! More torture? Systematic and widespread?
Rummy gave torture teams green light: Sy Hersh at it again.
Blair defends war to British trade union conference: they tell him to blow it out his arse.
(PS - First diary entry - let me know what you think)
- Rule number one: the US corporate media will lie to you.
- Rule number two: Everyone has bias.
- Rule number three: Read the British left-wing press.
Savvy media-using citizens know that they need to triangulate to get a clear picture of what's going on. Reading the opposition press is a good way to get clarity. The Guardian and the Independent are two good lefty papers, wrote in English no less, that should be a part of your daily dose.
These are four articles that I thought were worth a read, commented and cited:
'He's just sleeping, I kept telling myself'
On Sunday, 13 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured in Baghdad when US helicopters fired on a crowd of unarmed civilians. G2 columnist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was injured in the attack, describes the scene of carnage - and reveals just how lucky he was to walk away
G2 is the features section of the Guardian.
Just read this one. What else can be said. A Bradley gets torched; US choppers come by a lot later and drop some bombs on innocents. The Pentagon no doubt trumpeted the number of insurgents that were killed; like Vietnam, a bunch of self serving lies.
OK - one quote. But read the article.
One of the three men piled together [injured earlier] raised his head and looked around the empty streets with a look of astonishment on his face. He then looked at the boy in front of him, turned to the back and looked at the horizon again. Then he slowly started moving his head to the ground, rested his head on his arms and stretched his hands towards something that he could see. It was the guy who had been beating his chest earlier, trying to help his brother. He wanted help but no one helped. He was just there dying in front of me. Time didn't exist. The streets were empty and silent and the men lay there dying together. He slid down to the ground, and after five minutes was flat on the street.
And now for something lighter - wacky US guards in Mosul make Iraqis listen to Brittany for hours! Oh - and threaten to rape them, too!
US troops face new torture claims
Allegations that American soldiers routinely tortured and maltreated detainees have emerged from a third Iraqi city, renewing fears that abuse similar to that inflicted in Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad has been systematic and widespread.
American soldiers in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul beat and stripped detainees, threatened sexual abuse and forced them to listen to loud western music, according to statements seen by the Guardian.
What's great about this one is that one of the people they got was a member of the Islamic Organization for Human Rights. And the obligatory 'huh, who, us??' from the governments...
A US army spokesman in Baghdad said yesterday that he was surprised by the allegations, which would be investigated.
The MoD [Ministry of Defense] in London said it had not yet been made aware of the allegations.
Rumsfeld's dirty war on terror
In an explosive extract from his new book, Seymour Hersh reveals how, in a fateful decision that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the US defence secretary gave the green light to a secret unit authorised to torture terrorist suspects
"I determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world" - George W. Bush
So Rummy sets up the Special Access Program, which I guess means that the prisoners involved must have given special access to their body cavities to the soldiers guarding them.
The programme was hidden inside the defence department as an "unacknowledged" special-access programme (SAP), whose operational details were known only to a few in the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House.
The SAP owed its existence to Rumsfeld's desire to get the US special forces community into the business of what he called, in public and internal communications, "manhunts", and to his disdain for the Pentagon's senior generals. In the privacy of his office, Rumsfeld chafed over what he saw as the reluctance of the generals and admirals to act aggressively. Soon after September 11, he repeatedly made public his disdain for the Geneva convention. Complaints about the United States' treatment of prisoners, Rumsfeld said, in early 2002, amounted to "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation".
One of Rumsfeld's goals was bureaucratic: to give the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, and not the CIA, the lead in fighting terrorism.
This Hersh fellah - what does he know? Like he ever found out about warcrimes before!
And finally, the lapdog gets drenched when talking to the base.
Blair refuses to apologise for Iraq war
PM given cool TUC reception despite praise for movement
The British labor movement, like a good chunk of the British left, was pretty much against the war from the get-go. They're also pissed at Blair for being a New Democrat - errr, New Labour. Which meant, first off, that he got the political party Labour to turn it's back on the labor unions, reducing their strength in the party. And second, has meant privatization of hospitals, trains, cutting education funding, etc. All the things a modern neo-liberal party of the former left does. Anyway, Blair came to the national convention and defended his blinkered view of the war:
[H]e... refused to offer any apology for his commitment to the war in Iraq.
"I can't apologise for what I think about the world since September 11, or what I have done in the war against this vicious terrorism we face," he said.
Right, Tony, remember the IRA? You didn't firebomb Dublin for that, did you? Oh - darkies who your buddy Bush declared open war on? Right... that's different... somehow...
He also got the cold shoulder from the shat-upon unionists.
Kevin Curran, GMB general secretary, said Mr Blair's speech contained no "dynamism or energy" while an other leader of one of the big unions said privately that the "terrible" response in the hall exposed seven years of resentment at attempts to marginalise trade unions within the party.
Tony's days may be numbered. Look for something outside his support of the War to be the causus removus.
Thus ends the Tuesday Early AM review of the Guardian: Iraq News. Let me know what you think!