Amerikaanse Oorlogsmisdaden 22

Via Information Clearing House kunt u luisteren naar dit interview: 'Dahr Jamail and Mark Manning were the only two American unembedded journalist inside Fallujah during the two sieges of April and November 2004. Mark Manning spent one week inside Fallujah with a video camera interviewing survivors of the November siege. Hours of video tape documenting the atrocities that occured in Fallujah were stolen the day Mark returned to the US in a well-timed double break-in that was followed by weeks of intimidation and threats. In this rare interview, Dahr talks with Mark about Fallujah and recounts the circumstances that journalists face today when reporting on events the US government does not want its citizens to know about.' Zie:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8730.htm


En hier naar een fragment van de video documentaire: 'Caught in the CrossfireThe Untold Story of Fallujah A Film by Mark Manning

Independent filmmaker Mark Manning was the only Westerner to travel to Fallujah un-embedded, and he lived with the refugees of Fallujah and experienced life from their point of view, returning with them to their destroyed city after the siege by the United States. Unknown to any authorities, he recorded what he saw. He went through the checkpoints, witnessed the devastation of thousands of homes, shops and mosques, and documented the horrors of the siege as recounted by those who survived inside the city during the battles. The people of Fallujah asked him to tell their story to the world, and he is now fulfilling that request with the release of Caught in the Crossfire.
Shot from November 2004 to April 2005 inside the city of Fallujah, Caught in the Crossfire details the conditions experienced by civilians as they endured the violent clashes and consequences of Operation Phantom Fury and became refugees outside the eyes and care of the international community. Zie: http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Ook hier kunt het resultaat zien van de Amerikaanse oorlogsmisdaden in Fallujah: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/slideshow.php?set_albumName=siege_of_falluja

Martelen 49

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for Truthout.

Spinning Suicide
They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us. -- Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., Commander, Joint Task Force, Guantánamo
Three men being held in the United States military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, killed themselves by hanging in their cells on Saturday. The Team Bush spin machine immediately swept into high gear.
Military officials characterized their deaths as a coordinated protest. The commander of the prison, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., called it "asymmetrical warfare."
Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, said taking their lives "certainly is a good PR move."
Meanwhile, George W. Bush expressed "serious concern" about the deaths. "He stressed the importance of treating the bodies in a humane and culturally sensitive manner," said Christie Parell, a White House spokeswoman.
How nice that Bush wants their bodies treated humanely, after treating them like animals for four years while they were alive. Bush has defied the Geneva Conventions' command that all prisoners be treated humanely. He decided that "unlawful combatants" are not entitled to humane treatment because they are not prisoners of war.
Article 3 Common to the Geneva Conventions requires that no prisoners, even "unlawful combatants," may be subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment. Incidentally, the Pentagon has decided to omit the mandates of Article 3 Common from its new detainee policies.
Bush resisted the McCain anti-torture amendment to a spending bill at the end of last year, sending Dick Cheney to prevail upon John McCain to exempt the CIA from its prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. When McCain refused to alter his amendment, Bush signed the bill, quietly adding one of his "signing statements," saying that he feels free to ignore the prohibition if he wants to.
Bush & Co. are fighting in the Supreme Court to deny the Guantánamo prisoners access to US courts to challenge their confinement. The Court will announce its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld by the end of this month.
This hardly sounds like a man who believes in humane treatment for live human beings.' Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061206J.shtml

Irak 89

En nu de serieuze journalistiek: 'The corporate media is abuzz with news of the apparent success of US forces in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq last night. Zarqawi has been portrayed by the Bush Administration and mainstream media as Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Iraq since a few months before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. President Bush and his British poodle Tony Blair are trying to spin the killing of Zarqawi as a momentous defeat for the (Islamic) forces of terror, a big setback for the Iraqi resistance, or “insurgents” to use imperialist parlance. The death of Zarqawi also happily, though perhaps temporarily, takes some heat off the US in the wake of the recent Haditha massacre revelations. That Zarqawi's death represents a big blow -- or any kind of blow for that matter -- to the Iraqi “insurgency”, al Qaeda, international jihadists, etc. etc. is simply laughable.
As knowledgeable observers -- including some in US intelligence -- have pointed out, Zarqawi was a “failed fringe fanatic” who barely registered a blip on al Qaeda's radar before 2003, and who hardly knew one end of an AK-47 from the other. A Jordanian whose long-time goal was the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy, and an anti-Soviet fighter in Afghanistan during the 1980s (perhaps he too was a welfare ward of the CIA?), the utterly ruthless Zarqawi was injured in Afghanistan in a US bombing raid in 2002, and sought refuge in Northern Iraq with the fundamentalist group Ansar al Islam. Zarqawi's presence in Iraq made him a very thin straw for the Bush Administration to clutch onto in claiming a link between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. Zarqawi's sudden transformation from a nobody to a leading international terror figure was primarily the result of Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 theater audition before the UN, where the “moderate face” of the Bush Administration presented bullshit evidence of Iraqi WMDs, and Zarqawi as the link between al Qaeda and Saddam. Following the US invasion of Iraq, the still insignificant Zarqawi, through Bush Administration/media propaganda, become public enemy #1 and the face of the Iraqi “insurgency”.
Never mind the fact that Zarqawi may have, at best, commanded a handful of supporters, and that the diverse Iraqi resistance regarded him with contempt if they even regarded him at all. Zarqawi was a convenient villain with which to propagandize the Iraqi population to acquiesce to the US occupation and to drive a wedge into the Iraqi resistance. But even more important, Zarqawi was a necessary villain for US domestic consumption.
The Bush Administration has desperately tried to portray the Iraqi resistance as being to a significant extent a tool of “foreign” jihadists like Zarqawi, rather than the inevitable and legitimate, overwhelmingly homegrown resistance to US occupation and brutality that it in fact is. As one US intelligence agent commented: “We were basically paying up to $US10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq.” “Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.”
Indeed, as the Washington Post reported on April 11, 2006, based on military documents it obtained, the US military had conducted a “propaganda campaign to magnify the role” of Zarqawi in Iraq. “The documents explicitly list the ‘U.S. Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.” The Post went on to report that, “The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” One military briefing from 2004 cited by the Post states: “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response.” The document listed three methods to be employed in this campaign: “Media operations,” “Special Ops (626)” (referring to Task Force 626, an elite US military unit assigned primarily to hunt down senior officials in Saddam Hussein's government) and “PSYOP”, the military term for propaganda work. Another briefing states that the “The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date,” in the view of Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, now a senior planner on the Central Command staff directing operations in Iraq and the Middle East.' Lees verder: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June06/Sharma08.htm

Irak 88

Volgens de voormalige pro-Israel correspondent van de Volkskrant in Israel, Ferry Biedermann, was er sprake van 'Vreugde in Irak over dood Zarqawi.' Hoe Ferry dat weet is moeilijk te zeggen. Bekend is dat journalisten in Irak niet vrij kunnen reizen, laat staan overal op straat kunnen polsen wat de stemming is. Desondanks beweren ook andere commerciele media dit. Ze praten en schrijven het elkaar na. Zie:
http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/
article318070.ece/Vreugde_in_Irak_over_dood_Zarqawi
De onafhankelijke Amerikaanse news dissector Danny Schechter maakte me via email attent op een Irakese bron die wel op straat komt en heel wat sceptischer klinkt: 'Zarqawi.
So "Zarqawi" is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I've lost track of time…). I didn't bother with the pictures and film they showed of him because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken, bleeding bodies.The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003… The timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.)
…
How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt, military strikes and sieges will die down… That's what we were promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign troops?' Lees verder:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
2006_06_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#114988627694074375

De midden-oosten correspondent Robert Fisk noemt het werk van mensen als Biedermann hotel journalistiek. Vanuit je hotel doe je net of je overal ter plaatse aanwezig bent, terwijl je intussen net zoveel weet als iemand die het internet bezoekt.

Nederland en Afghanistan 87

Ik kreeg vanmiddag dit email: 'Pakistan koopt met omweg Nederlandse marineschepen en militaire elektronica. Nederland betrokken bij grote bewapeningsronde Zuid-Azië.

Groningen, 12 juni 2006 - Griekenland is van plan vier van oorsprong Nederlandse fregatten aan Pakistan door te verkopen. De oorlogsschepen behoren tot de Kortenaer-klasse, waarvan Griekenland er de afgelopen jaren tien van Nederland heeft overgenomen. De schepen waren eerder in dienst van de Nederlandse marine en zijn gebouwd door de scheepswerven KMS de Schelde en Wilton Fijenoord. Volgens militair vakblad Jane’s Defence Weekly wacht Griekenland op de vereiste toestemming van Den Haag. Later dit jaar hoopt Pakistan de eerste fregatten te ontvangen. De order is vorige maand tot stand gekomen tijdens een bezoek van de Pakistaanse premier aan Griekenland. Oorspronkelijk zouden de schepen pas na 2015 door Griekenland worden afgestoten. Onbekend is hoeveel geld met de verkoop is gemoeid.Als onderdeel van een andere wapenorder levert de Hengelose wapenproducent Thales Nederland militaire elektronica die geïnstalleerd wordt op nog eens vier fregatten, die momenteel voor Pakistan in China worden gebouwd. De levering van deze zogeheten Link-Y Data Link systemen plus bijbehorende training en logistieke diensten is in oktober 2005 bij exportkredietverzekeraar Atradius herverzekerd voor een bedrag van 2,6 miljoen euro. Mocht Pakistan in gebreke blijven staat de Nederlandse schatkist voor dit bedrag garant. Voor deze order is zover bekend nog geen exportvergunning afgegeven.De Campagne tegen Wapenhandel roept de Nederlandse regering op geen toestemming te geven voor beide wapenleveranties op grond van de volgende argumenten:Hoewel het tussen aartsrivalen India en Pakistan de afgelopen jaren tamelijk rustig is geweest, baart de huidige bewapeningsronde grote zorgen. Incidenten in het recente verleden hebben bewezen dat de situatie licht ontvlambaar is en gemakkelijk tot gewapende confrontaties kan leiden. India is al enige jaren ‘s werelds tweede wapenimporteur. Pakistan volgt het buurland momenteel met een serie nieuwe wapenaankopen. Ondanks een enorme schuldenlast en de aardbeving in Kasjmir vorig jaar, heeft het regime van Pervez Musharraf de laatste maanden voor een paar miljard euro orders geplaatst bij de VS (F-16s en Harpoon-raketten), Zweden (Erieye spionagevliegtuigen) en China (gevechtsvliegtuigen en fregatten). Veel westerse regeringen beschouwen couppleger Musharraf als belangrijke bondgenoot in het kader van de strijd tegen het terrorisme. Onder dat mom wordt het uitblijven van democratische hervormingen stilzwijgend getolereerd. Hoewel een groot deel van de bevolking onder de armoedegrens leeft, geeft Pakistan ruim 4 procent van het BNP uit aan het militaire apparaat het hoogste percentage in de regio. Een omvangrijke order als die van de fregatten valt niet te rijmen met de EU-gedragscode rond wapenexporten, dat onder criterium 8 de hoogte van de militaire uitgaven beoordeelt. In 2003 werd op basis hiervan ook al eens een exportvergunningsaanvraag voor Pakistan afgewezen.Strikte toetsing aan de Europese gedragscode staat wapenhandel met Pakistan in de weg. Het sluimerende conflict tussen India en Pakistan rond Kasjmir, de slechte mensenrechtensituatie, de hoge militaire uitgaven, alsook de grote armoede waarin het land verkeert, botsen met de geest van de gedragscode die bewapeningsspiralen moet voorkomen.Vanwege hun kernproeven gold tussen 1998 en 2003 een wapenembargo tegen zowel India als Pakistan. Voor die tijd waren beide landen belangrijke afnemers van Nederlandse wapens. Van het terughoudende beleid dat met het opheffen van de wapenexportstop werd aangekondigd blijft met de aangekondigde orders weinig over.

Voor meer informatie zie:“Pakistan plans to bolster navy”, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 24 mei 2006;“US plans missile sales to Pakistan”, ISN Security Watch, 2 juni 2006;“Pakistan Raises Defense Spending by 3.78 Percent”, Reuters, 5 juni 2006;“France Oks Sub Talks With Pakistan”, Defense News, 5 juni 2006.Uitgebreide informatie over Nederlandse exportkredietverzekeringen en wapenhandel vindt u op de pagina ‘exportkredieten’ op http://www.stopwapenhandel.org.

Mocht Nederland een exportvergunning afgeven dan steunt het kabinet Balkenende het Pakistaanse regime en zijn geheime dienst, de ISI, die weer de Taliban steunen. Michael Scheuer, de voormalige Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center van de CIA, schrijft in zijn boek 'Imperial Hubris. Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror' het volgende: 'Whether under President Musharraf or his successor, Islamabad will support the Taleban effort to retake Afghanistan... As it has been since the 1979 Soviet invasion, support for the Taleban will be a government-wide, if covert, effort to ensure a Pakistan-friendly Kabul regime... Pakistani border units, for example, offered no opposition to al Qaeda escapees after the Tora Bora and al Qaeda forces cross the border to attack U.S. ... targets and then return to Pakistan.' Als premier Balkenende werkelijk zou weten wat er zich in die regio afspeelt zou hij nooit zo onnozel zijn om publiekelijk te verklaren dat 'de situatie onder controle [blijft]. Van heroverweging van de missie kan geen sprake zijn.' De man weet absoluut niet waarover hij het heeft. Of hij draait het parlement en de bevolking een rad voor ogen.

Palestina 3

De onafhankelijke Amerikaanse publicist Charley Reese schrijft: 'Terrorism Is a Tactic.

Terrorism is a tactic, not an entity, and it is a tactic used by people who have a political grievance. Therefore, if you want to eliminate terrorism, you have to address the political problems that gave it birth.
President Bush has made no effort to do this. He has aggravated the situation and made it worse. He's created a virtual factory for terrorists.
I am a firm believer that what you sow you reap, and it is a bad business to sow hatred, but unfortunately it seems that our president has been seduced by the great power he commands. He thinks the military and the intelligence community can solve the problem of terrorism.
He should note carefully the situation with Israel. Since 1947, the Israelis have been trying to use force instead of diplomacy to solve the Palestinian problem. And what is that problem? The Zionists, encouraged by the British, planted a colonialist country in Palestine with no regard for the rights or wishes of the Palestinian people.
Just as the Jews used terrorism to drive the British out of Palestine, the Palestinians have been forced to resort to it, and for 59 years the Israelis have been trying to kill their way out of it. It hasn't worked. The Palestinians are still there. They kill, too. And, 100 years from now, the Palestinians will still be there, but it's not at all certain Israel will be. I tend to agree with a former head of Israeli military intelligence who said that if the Palestinians are not given their own state, Israel will be committing national suicide.
I think he's right. The Israelis have become so paranoid, they are walling themselves in and, of course, stealing more Palestinian land in the process. But the wall won't help. There are Palestinians inside the wall who hold Israeli citizenship. There are Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, in East Jerusalem. There are also Palestinians in refugee camps inside the West Bank and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. So long as there is no justice for the Palestinians, there will be no peace in that region.
Thanks to a powerful Israeli lobby, our government, instead of pursuing our interests, has made itself an accessory to the crimes the Israelis commit against the Palestinians. Hence, we have become a target for terrorists, too. The president's statement that the terrorists "hate freedom" was just a cart full of cow pies. What they hate is our Middle East policy, and it is hardly a policy that has anything to do with freedom.
When the Palestinians held a free election and didn't elect the corrupt group of men we wanted, what did we do? We took our marbles and went home and pouted. We added to the misery of the Palestinians. We proved ourselves hypocrites, because a key element of democracy is to recognize the results of a free election. The president refuses to do that. For decades, we have denied the Palestinians the protection of international law by vetoing every United Nations resolution that sought to correct the wrongs committed by Israel. We have poured billions of dollars into Israel and made it a regional superpower complete with nuclear weapons.' Lees verder: http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=9116

De Dollar Hegemonie 11

De onafhankelijke Amerikaanse journalist Mike Whitney schrijft: 'The great dollar sell-off has begun in earnest, although to a large extent, it is being concealed from the public.

Wary currency traders have been expecting a dollar-slide for months but were nervous about the possibility of widespread panic. Everyone from Bill Gates to Paul Volcker has predicted that the current trade deficit of $800 billion (7% of GDP) would inevitably produce a weaker dollar, so it is only natural that China, Japan and other foreign lenders would begin to cut back on their purchases. The danger to the United States, however, remains extreme. If the transition doesn’t go smoothly, it could precipitate a run on the dollar and trigger economic pandemonium. No one wants to see the world’s economic powerhouse pirouetting through the ether in flames. By the same token, no one wants to be the last man holding onto stockpiles of scrip that are diminishing in value.

The delicacy of the situation explains the sudden appointment of Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary. Paulson is a brainy insider who has the bone fides to manage a very tricky “retreat” from the dollar. America’s economic future will depend heavily on his ability to steer the ship of state through troubled waters.
As we said, there was no doubt that China, Japan and others would eventually reduce their dollar-holdings as America’s debt continued to mount. What is surprising though is that a sell-off did not occur earlier when Bush enshrined his reckless tax cuts and profligate spending as “permanent”. The administration’s fondness for living beyond its means has never been in doubt, now greenback will pay the price for Bush’s excessiveness.

Of course, Bush is not the main scoundrel in this morality play. The Federal Reserve has weakened the dollar enormously by engineering one monetary-coup after another. Greenspan’s “cheap money” policy has created massive equity bubbles that appear whenever interest rates are absurdly low. When the stock market crashed in the late 90s, millions of working class people lost their retirement and life savings overnight, while wealthy insiders walked away unscathed. Undaunted by the economic carnage he produced, Greenspan again lowered interest rates to a ridiculous 1% in 2001 which created a $9 trillion housing bubble, “the largest equity bubble of all time” (says “The Economist”). Now, as interest rates inch higher, the housing industry is lumbering towards the power-lines and certain death. The effects on the world economy will be catastrophic.' Lees verder:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13493.htm