The following is an archived copy of a message sent to the CASI Analysis List run by Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq (CASI).
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[ This message has been sent to you via the CASI-analysis mailing list ] This is an automated compilation of submissions to newsclippings@casi.org.uk Articles for inclusion in this daily news mailing should be sent to newsclippings@casi.org.uk. Please include a full reference to the source of the article. Today's Topics: 1. Deaths of foreign mercenaries-http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article60 (CharlieChimp1@aol.com) 2. Sistani warns coalition over Najaf (CharlieChimp1@aol.com) 3. Planting WMDs in Iraq (VnStroope@aol.com) 4. From Riverbend / Media and Falloojeh... (Hassan) 5. Thom Hartmann Radio Interview with Leuren Moret on DU - April 15 11AM-noon (Leuren Moret) 6. Stop the Massacre - Pass Around! (=?iso-8859-1?q?The=20Iraq=20Solidarity=20Campaign?=) 7. Re: Planting WMDs in Iraq (Eric Herring) 8. Iraq;News and views (Muhamed Ali) 9. John Pilger..Get Out Now (k hanly) 10. Newsmax: Fallujah Must Be Destroyed (Boros Attila) --__--__-- Message: 1 From: CharlieChimp1@DELETETHISaol.com Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:36:55 EDT Subject: Deaths of foreign mercenaries-http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article60 To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] Deaths of scores of mercenaries not reported By Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn April 13 2004: "The Star" Baghdad - At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq. Lieutenant-General Mark Kimmitt admitted on Tuesday that "about 70" American and other Western troops had died during the Iraqi insurgency since April 1 but he made no mention of the mercenaries, apparently fearful that the full total of Western dead would have serious political fallout. He did not give a figure for Iraqi dead, which, across the country may be as high as 900. At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge. The presence of such large numbers of mercenaries, first publicised in The Independent two weeks ago, was bound to lead to further casualties. But although many of the heavily armed Western security men are working for the US Department of Defence - and most of them are former Special Forces soldiers - they are not listed as serving military personnel. Their losses can t herefore be hidden from public view. The US authorities in Iraq, however, are aware that more Western mercenaries lost their lives in the past week than occupation soldiers over the past 14 days. The coalition has sought to rely on foreign contract workers to reduce the number of soldiers it uses as drivers, guards and in other jobs normally carried out by uniformed soldiers. Often the foreign contract workers are highly paid former soldiers who are armed with automatic weapons, leading to Iraqis viewing all foreign workers as possible mercenaries or spies. Copyright: The Star. NZ --__--__-- Message: 2 From: CharlieChimp1@DELETETHISaol.com Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:39:35 EDT Subject: Sistani warns coalition over Najaf To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] Sistani Threatens Shiite Resistance if US Invades Najaf: The Iranian newspaper Baztab is reporting that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has sent a strongly-worded message to the Coalition forces, in which he warned them against attacking the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala after the end of Arba'in. http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#108183083727085448 === --__--__-- Message: 3 From: VnStroope@DELETETHISaol.com Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 19:33:30 EDT Subject: Planting WMDs in Iraq To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] Iraq New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq By News Report Apr 13, 2004, 07:10 BASRA, April 12 (MNA) - Fifty days after the first reports that the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of these weapons have been disclosed. "Wondering if anyone has a sense of the validity of these reports?" Roger Stroope Flagstaff USA Northern Arizona University Graduate Student- Anthropology But make no mistake - as I said earlier - we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found. - White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, April 10, 2003 --__--__-- Message: 4 Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 02:03:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Hassan <hasseini@DELETETHISyahoo.com> Subject: From Riverbend / Media and Falloojeh... To: CASI newsclippings <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>, IAC discussion <iac-discussion@yahoogroups.com> Wednesday, April 14, 2004 Media and Falloojeh... There has been a lot of criticism about the way Al-Arabia and Al-Jazeera were covering the riots and fighting in Falloojeh and the south this last week. Some American spokesman for the military was ranting about the "spread of anti-Americanism" through networks like the abovementioned. Actually, both networks did a phenomenal job of covering the attacks on Falloojeh and the southern provinces. Al-Jazeera had their reporter literally embedded in the middle of the chaos- and I don't mean the lame embedded western journalists type of thing they had going at the beginning of the war (you know- embedded in the Green Zone and embedded in Kuwait, etc.). Ahmed Mansur, I believe his name was, was actually standing there, in the middle of the bombing, shouting to be heard over the F-16s and helicopters blasting away at houses and buildings. It brought back the days of 'shock and awe'... I know it bothers the CPA terribly to have the corpses of dead Iraqis shown on television. They would love for Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia to follow Al-Hurra's example and show endless interviews with pro-occupation Iraqis living abroad and speaking in stilted Arabic. These interviews, of course, are interspersed with translated documentaries on the many marvels of... Hollywood. And while I, personally, am very interested in the custom leather interiors of the latest Audi, I couldn't seem to draw myself away from Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia while 700+ Iraqis were being killed. To lessen the feelings of anti-Americanism, might I make a few suggestions? Stop the collective punishment. When Mark Kimmett stutters through a press conference babbling about "precision weapons" and "military targets" in Falloojeh, who is he kidding? Falloojeh is a small city made up of low, simple houses, little shops and mosques. Is he implying that the 600 civilians who died during the bombing and the thousands injured and maimed were all "insurgents"? Are houses, shops and mosques now military targets? What I'm trying to say is that we don't need news networks to make us angry or frustrated. All you need to do is talk to one of the Falloojeh refugees making their way tentatively into Baghdad; look at the tear-stained faces, the eyes glazed over with something like shock. In our neighborhood alone there are at least 4 families from Falloojeh who have come to stay with family and friends in Baghdad. The stories they tell are terrible and grim and it's hard to believe that they've gone through so much. I think western news networks are far too tame. They show the Hollywood version of war- strong troops in uniform, hostile Iraqis being captured and made to face "justice" and the White House turkey posing with the Thanksgiving turkey... which is just fine. But what about the destruction that comes with war and occupation? What about the death? I don't mean just the images of dead Iraqis scattered all over, but dead Americans too. People should *have* to see those images. Why is it not ok to show dead Iraqis and American troops in Iraq, but it's fine to show the catastrophe of September 11 over and over again? I wish every person who emails me supporting the war, safe behind their computer, secure in their narrow mind and fixed views, could actually come and experience the war live. I wish they could spend just 24 hours in Baghdad today and hear Mark Kimmett talk about the death of 700 "insurgents" like it was a proud day for Americans everywhere... Still, when I hear talk about "anti-Americanism" it angers me. Why does American identify itself with its military and government? Why does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation have to mean that a person is anti-American? We watch American movies, listen to everything from Britney Spears to Nirvana and refer to every single brown, fizzy drink as "Pepsi". I hate American foreign policy and its constant meddling in the region... I hate American tanks in Baghdad and American soldiers on our streets and in our homes on occasion... why does that mean that I hate America and Americans? Are tanks, troops and violence the only face of America? If the Pentagon, Department of Defense and Condi are "America", then yes- I hate America. - posted by river @ 8:10 PM __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html --__--__-- Message: 5 Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:48:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Leuren Moret <leurenmoret@DELETETHISyahoo.com> Subject: Thom Hartmann Radio Interview with Leuren Moret on DU - April 15 11AM-noon To: Leuren Moret <leurenmoret@yahoo.com> Interview with Leuren Moret on depleted uranium on the Thom Hartmann radio program by local station, internet radio or satellite radio. Go to this website to find out how to listen. http://www.thomhartmann.com/showlisten.shtml ====================================================== RECENT ARTICLE: http://www.awakenedwoman.com/moret_nuclear.htm Awakened Woman e-Magazine War on Iraq is a Nuclear War And the fallout is coming this way, says independent scientist Leuren Moret by Stephanie Hiller April 10, 2004 In May, 2003, the United States dumped 2,200 tons of depleted uranium on Iraq, according to reliable sources, and it's logical to assume that more depleted uranium is being employed in the current attacks on Faluja that began April 8 to put down Iraqi resistance to the American presence there. According to independent geoscientist Leuren Moret, the war on Iraq - like the war on Afghanistan - is a nuclear war. "Depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon and it is a weapon of mass destruction under the U. S. government's definition of weapons of mass destruction," Moret says. The Pentagon has repeatedly denied that DU is harmful, despite the symptoms of half the returning veterans from the first Persian Gulf Wars who are now disabled. But researchers have shown that the Pentagon has been fully aware of the consequences of what is called "low level radiation" since 1943, when depleted uranium was first suggested for development as a military weapon under the Manhattan Project. On Sunday, April 6, the New York Daily News reported that nine soldiers who returned from Iraq last summer had symptoms typical of DU poisoning. The News arranged for them to be tested by Asaf Duracovic, a former Colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and one of the world's foremost experts on the medical effects of radioactive weaponry. Depleted uranium was found in the urine of four of the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members of Uranium Medical Research Centre's (UMRC) field investigation team are contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one from Canada and the other, Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in October 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's aerial bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC's partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both team members' urine samples. (Please see http://www.umrc.net/UMRC_bulletin_07_Feb_2004.asp) If short-term visitors and soldiers have been so affected, what of the people, living near bomb sites, breathing the air every day, drinking the water? What of the children who play in these sites and collect pieces of exploded material to sell so their families can eat? Using figures developed by Japanese physicist, Professor Yagasaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, and explained in his presentation at the World Conference on Depleted Uranium Weapons held in Hamburg last October, the radioactivity of 2,200 tons (or 440,000 pounds) of depleted uranium together with some 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan, is the atomicity equivalent of 400,00 Nagasaki bombs. Depleted uranium is cheap and plentiful. When uranium is processed for fission bombs or fuel rods for use in power plants, only U-235, about half a percent of the total, is used. Most of what's left over is U-238, so-called "depleted" uranium. The US has over a million tons of the stuff, and storage is becoming a serious problem. Though less radioactive than U-235, DU is still highly radioactive internally, and chemically toxic as well. "There is no allowable level of risk," says Moret. Nearly twice as dense as lead, DU is used in tanks and airplanes, as well as bullets, handguns, cannons, all the way up to large bombs weighing more than 5,000 pounds. It's not dangerous until it blows up. Depleted uranium is pyrophoric. Relatively innocuous as a metal alloy used in planes, tanks, missiles, bullets and rounds, when depleted uranium burns, it releases a radioactive gas. Larger particles may settle to the ground, but winds blowing across the desert may carry the fine particles to locations in a 1000-mile radius from the explosion. As a result, areas as far west as Egypt and as far east as India are likely to be contaminated. "The U.S. has staged a nuclear war in the Middle East, from Iraq and Central Asia, to the northern half of India. Half of Egypt, Israel, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, Turkey, Iran, the Russian oil-rich states, the Caspian oil region, and northern are now, or will be, all contaminated." Depleted uranium - U-238 - has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It's effects will be with us forever. It is in the soil, in the groundwater, in food, but the worst of all, it is in the air. When inhaled, it enters directly into the bloodstream. One uranium particle behaves in the body like a tiny nuclear bomb, sending out alpha and beta particles and gamma rays to adjacent cells. These are permanently damaging to the cells and chromosomes and lead to a host of deadly diseases, including cancer and leukemia. They also cause mutations of the genetic material that will show up in subsequent generations as terrible birth deformities, weakened health, and infertility. Moret says the fallout from these foreign wars is headed our way. Spread by powerful desert winds, the fallout will be carried certainly as far as Britain (where dust storms from the Middle East commonly leave residual dust) and then across the Atlantic Ocean. It will also travel across Asia and the Pacific Ocean and be slowly and silently deposited across the North American continent. American citizens have already been exposed to radiation from a variety of sources including malfunctioning nuclear power plants, the disasters at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, above-ground bomb tests conducted from 1957 to 1963, and the enormous existing pile of depleted uranium, about 1 million tons, poorly stored in the United States. Radiation has caused the geometric rise of cancers in the US - 1 in 3 Americans compared to 1 in 20 before the second World War. It is also responsible for the rise in autism, learning disabilities, chronic immune deficiency disorders (chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr and so forth), higher rates of infant mortality and the general weakening of the public's health. Leuren Moret was formerly employed at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, and the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab. Since walking out on her job to become a whistleblower at Livermore in 1991, she has devoted her time to the study of the effects of nuclear radiation. She has worked with scientists like Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Marian Fulk, Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Uranium Medical Research Center, Dr. Doug Rokke of Traprock Peace Center and many others. Her testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan held December 13-14, 2003, in Tokyo was largely responsible for the unanimous verdict on depleted uranium, and that the President Bush and the United States is guilty of war crimes against that country. Leuren Moret will be interviewed by Janie Rezner on her show, Women's Voices, this Monday, April 12, at 7 pm Pacific Daylight Savings time. You can listen to the interview via the internet. Visit www.kzyx.org MORE INFORMATION http://www.mindfully.org http://www.traprockpeace.org http://www.umrc.net http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers.htm The European Committee on Radiation Risk, within the European Parliament, has just published an excellent report on low-level radiation at <http://www.euradcom.org> __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html --__--__-- Message: 6 Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 15:10:03 +0100 (BST) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?The=20Iraq=20Solidarity=20Campaign?= <mcr_coalition@DELETETHISyahoo.co.uk> Reply-To: MCR_Coalition@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Stop the Massacre - Pass Around! To: MCR_Coalition@yahoo.co.uk, mcr_coalition@yahoo.co.uk [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] End the Occupation! End the Slaughter in Fullujah! Assemble: Market Street (Manchester). 2pm Saturday 17th April. called by the Iraq Solidairty Campaign, CND and MAB. for more info contact 0161 882 0188 Mob; 07946 783 801 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Iraqisolidarity/ The Iraq Solidarity Campaign --------------------------------- How much mail storage do you get for free? Yahoo! Mail gives you 6MB! Get Yahoo! Mail --__--__-- Message: 7 From: Eric Herring <eric.herring@DELETETHISbristol.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:03:36 +0100 To: VnStroope@aol.com Subject: Re: Planting WMDs in Iraq Cc: newsclippings@casi.org.uk For what it's worth, my instinct is that they are not valid. The political risk of doing this would be immense. Eric On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 19:33:30 EDT VnStroope@aol.com wrote: > > [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] > > Iraq > New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq > By News Report > Apr 13, 2004, 07:10 > > BASRA, April 12 (MNA) - Fifty days after the first reports that > the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction > (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of > these weapons have been disclosed. > > "Wondering if anyone has a sense of the validity of these reports?" > > > > > > Roger Stroope > Flagstaff USA > Northern Arizona University > Graduate Student- Anthropology > > But make no mistake - as I said earlier - we have high confidence that they > have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is > about. And we have high confidence it will be found. > - White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, April 10, 2003 > ---------------------- Dr. Eric Herring Department of Politics University of Bristol 10 Priory Road Bristol BS8 1TU England, UK Office tel. +44-(0)117-928-8582 Mobile tel. +44-(0)7771-966608 Fax +44-(0)117-973-2133 eric.herring@bristol.ac.uk http://www.iraqpolicy.org.uk Convenor, Network of Activist Scholars of Politics and International Relations (NASPIR) http://www.naspir.org --__--__-- Message: 8 Subject: Iraq;News and views Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:09:47 +0100 From: "Muhamed Ali" <Muhamed.Ali@DELETETHISHackney.gov.uk> To: <newsclippings@casi.org.uk> [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] "There is no alternative to Tony Blair's policy on Iraq" "It is vital that the outcome should be freedom, not fundamentalism" Martin Kettle Tuesday April 13, 2004 "All the current alternatives are worse than the course on which he is committed. The only practical and principled course is to back him, though without illusions, as the Marxists used to say." http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1190644,00.html Regards, Muhamad London Borough of Hackney may exercise its right to intercept any communication on its networks - for more information see http://www.hackney.gov.uk/council/data/email_disclaimer.htm --__--__-- Message: 9 From: "k hanly" <khanly@DELETETHISmb.sympatico.ca> To: "newsclippings" <newsclippings@casi.org.uk> Subject: John Pilger..Get Out Now Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 23:42:29 -0500 http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSTemplate_NS&newTop=Section%3A+Front+Page&newDisplayURN=Section%3A+Front+Page New Statesman April 19, 2004 Get out now Iraq - Invaders have ripped up the fabric of a nation that survived Saddam Hussein. This is a war of liberation and we are the enemy. By John Pilger Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country. Once, in the Edwardian colonnade of Baghdad's book market, a young man shouted something at me about the hardship his family had been forced to endure under the embargo imposed by America and Britain. What happened next was typical of Iraqis; a passer-by calmed the man, putting his arm around his shoulder, while another was quickly at my side. "Forgive him," he said reassuringly. "We do not connect the people of the west with the actions of their governments. You are welcome." At one of the melancholy evening auctions where Iraqis come to sell their most intimate possessions out of urgent need, a woman with two infants watched as their pushchairs went for pennies, and a man who had collected doves since he was 15 came with his last bird and its cage; and yet people said to me: "You are welcome." Such grace and dignity were often expressed by those Iraqi exiles who loathed Saddam Hussein and opposed both the economic siege and the Anglo-American assault on their homeland; thousands of these anti-Saddamites marched against the war in London last year, to the chagrin of the warmongers, who never understood the dichotomy of their principled stand. Were I to undertake the same journey in Iraq today, I might not return alive. Foreign terrorists have ensured that. With the most lethal weapons that billions of dollars can buy, and the threats of their cowboy generals and the panic-stricken brutality of their foot soldiers, more than 120,000 of these invaders have ripped up the fabric of a nation that survived the years of Saddam Hussein, just as they oversaw the destruction of its artefacts. They have brought to Iraq a daily, murderous violence which surpasses that of a tyrant who never promised a fake democracy. Amnesty International reports that US-led forces have "shot Iraqis dead during demonstrations, tortured and ill-treated prisoners, arrested people arbitrarily and held them indefinitely, demolished houses in acts of revenge and collective punishment". In Fallujah, US marines, described as "tremendously precise" by their psychopathic spokesman, slaughtered up to 600 people, according to hospital directors. They did it with aircraft and heavy weapons deployed in urban areas, as revenge for the killing of four American mercenaries. Many of the dead of Fallujah were women and children and the elderly. Only the Arab television networks, notably al-Jazeera, have shown the true scale of this crime, while the Anglo-American media continue to channel and amplify the lies of the White House and Downing Street. "Writing exclusively for the Observer before a make-or-break summit with President George Bush this week," sang Britain's former premier liberal newspaper on 11 April, "[Tony Blair] gave full backing to American tactics in Iraq ... saying that the government would not flinch from its 'historic struggle' despite the efforts of 'insurgents and terrorists'." That this "exclusive" was not presented as parody shows that the propaganda engine that drove the lies of Blair and Bush on weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda links for almost two years is still in service. On BBC news bulletins and Newsnight, Blair's "terrorists" are still currency, a term that is never applied to the principal source and cause of the terrorism, the foreign invaders, who have now killed at least 11,000 civilians, according to Amnesty and others. The overall figure, including conscripts, may be as high as 55,000. That a nationalist uprising has been under way in Iraq for more than a year, uniting at least 15 major groups, most of them opposed to the old regime, has been suppressed in a mendacious lexicon invented in Washington and London and reported incessantly, CNN-style. "Remnants" and "tribalists" and "fundamentalists" dominate, while Iraq is denied the legacy of a history in which much of the modern world is rooted. The "first-anniversary story" about a laughable poll claiming that half of all Iraqis felt better off now under the occupation is a case in point. The BBC and the rest swallowed it whole. For the truth, I recommend the courageous daily reporting of Jo Wilding, a British human rights observer in Baghdad (www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com). Even now, as the uprising spreads, there is only cryptic gesturing at the obvious: that this is a war of national liberation and that the enemy is "us". The pro-invasion Sydney Morning Herald is typical. Having expressed "surprise" at the uniting of Shias and Sunnis, the paper's Baghdad correspondent recently described "how GI bullies are making enemies of their Iraqi friends" and how he and his driver had been threatened by Americans. "I'll take you out quick as a flash, motherfucker!" a soldier told the reporter. That this was merely a glimpse of the terror and humiliation that Iraqis have to suffer every day in their own country was not made clear; yet this newspaper has published image after unctuous image of mournful American soldiers, inviting sympathy for an invader who has "taken out" thousands of innocent men, women and children. What we do routinely in the imperial west, wrote Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, is propagate "through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen positive images of western values and innocence that are threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence". Thus, western state terrorism is erased, and a tenet of western journalism is to excuse or minimise "our" culpability, however atrocious. Our dead are counted; theirs are not. Our victims are worthy; theirs are not. This is an old story; there have been many Iraqs, or what Blair calls "historic struggles" waged against "insurgents and terrorists". Take Kenya in the 1950s. The approved version is still cherished in the west - first popularised in the press, then in fiction and movies; and like Iraq, it is a lie. "The task to which we have set our minds," declared the governor of Kenya in 1955, "is to civilise a great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state." The slaughter of thousands of nationalists, who were never called nationalists, was British government policy. The myth of the Kenyan uprising was that the Mau Mau brought "demonic terror" to the heroic white settlers. In fact, the Mau Mau killed just 32 Europeans, compared with the estimated 10,000 Kenyans killed by the British, who ran concentration camps where the conditions were so harsh that 402 inmates died in just one month. Torture, flogging and abuse of women and children were commonplace. "The special prisons," wrote the imperial historian V G Kiernan, "were probably as bad as any similar Nazi or Japanese establishments." None of this was reported. The "demonic terror" was all one way: black against white. The racist message was unmistakable. It was the same in Vietnam. In 1969, the discovery of the American massacre in the village of My Lai was described on the cover of Newsweek as "An American tragedy", not a Vietnamese one. In fact, there were many massacres like My Lai, and almost none of them was reported at the time. The real tragedy of soldiers policing a colonial occupation is also suppressed. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed in Vietnam. The same number, according to a veterans' study, killed themselves on their return home. Dr Doug Rokke, director of the US army depleted uranium project following the 1991 Gulf invasion, estimates that more than 10,000 American troops have since died as a result, many from contamination illness. When I asked him how many Iraqis had died, he raised his eyes and shook his head. "Solid uranium was used on shells," he said. "Tens of thousands of Iraqis - men, women and children - were contaminated. Right through the 1990s, at international symposiums, I watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence and ask, plead, for help with decontamination. The Iraqis didn't use uranium; it was not their weapon. I watched them put their case, describing the deaths and horrific deformities, and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic." During last year's invasion, both American and British forces again used uranium-tipped shells, leaving whole areas so "hot" with radiation that only military survey teams in full protective clothing can approach them. No warning or medical help is given to Iraqi civilians; thousands of children play in these zones. The "coalition" has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to send experts to assess what Rokke describes as "a catastrophe". When will this catastrophe be properly reported by those meant to keep the record straight? When will the BBC and others investigate the conditions of some 10,000 Iraqis held without charge, many of them tortured, in US concentration camps inside Iraq, and the corralling, with razor wire, of entire Iraqi villages? When will the BBC and others stop referring to "the handover of Iraqi sovereignty" on 30 June, although there will be no such handover? The new regime will be stooges, with each ministry controlled by American officials and with its stooge army and stooge police force run by Americans. A Saddamite law prohibiting trade unions for public sector workers will stay in force. Leading members of Saddam's infamous secret police, the Mukhabarat, will run "state security", directed by the CIA. The US military will have the same "status of forces" agreement that they impose on the host nations of their 750 bases around the world, which in effect leaves them in charge. Iraq will be a US colony, like Haiti. And when will journalists have the professional courage to report the pivotal role that Israel has played in this grand colonial design for the Middle East? A few weeks ago, Rick Mercier, a young columnist for the Free-lance Star, a small paper in Virginia, did what no other journalist has done this past year. He apologised to his readers for the travesty of the reporting of events leading to the attack on Iraq. "Sorry we let unsubstantiated claims drive our coverage," he wrote. "Sorry we let a band of self-serving Iraqi defectors make fools of us. Sorry we fell for Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations . . . Maybe we'll do a better job next war." Well done, Rick Mercier. But listen to the silence of your colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. No one expects Fox or Wapping or the Daily Telegraph to relent. But what about David Astor's beacon of liberalism, the Observer, which stood against the invasion of Egypt in 1956 and its attendant lies? The Observer not only backed last year's unprovoked, illegal assault on Iraq; it helped create the mendacious atmosphere in which Blair could get away with his crime. The reputation of the Observer, and the fact that it published occasional mitigating material, meant that lies and myths gained legitimacy. A front-page story gave credence to the bogus claim that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks in the US. And there were those unnamed western "intelligence sources", all those straw men, all those hints, in David Rose's two-page "investigation" headlined "The Iraqi connection", that left readers with the impression that Saddam Hussein might well have had a lot to do with the attacks of 11 September 2001. "There are occasions in history," wrote Rose, "when the use of force is both right and sensible. This is one of them." Tell that to 11,000 dead civilians, Mr Rose. It is said that British officers in Iraq now describe the "tactics" of their American comrades as "appalling". No, the very nature of a colonial occupation is appalling, as the families of 13 Iraqis killed by British soldiers, who are taking the British government to court, will agree. If the British military brass understand an inkling of their own colonial past, not least the bloody British retreat from Iraq 83 years ago, they will whisper in the ear of the little Wellington-cum-Palmerston in 10 Downing Street: "Get out now, before we are thrown out." --__--__-- Message: 10 Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 11:30:31 +0200 From: Boros Attila <boros.attila@DELETETHISdrotposta.hu> To: newsclippings@casi.org.uk Subject: Newsmax: Fallujah Must Be Destroyed Dear List Moderator, I leave it to you to decide whether this appalling piece of journalism deserves the attention of the List. Best Attila Reprinted from NewsMax.com Fallujah Delenda Est Jack Wheeler Friday, April 2, 2004 In the Senate of Ancient Rome, Marcus Porcius Cato - 234-149 B.C., subsequently known as Cato the Elder to distinguish him from his great-grandson Cato the Younger - became famous for concluding every single speech he gave, no matter what the subject, with the exhortation: Carthago delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed. Today, we need senators and congressmen to conclude every speech they give with the exhortation: Fallujah delenda est. Fallujah must be destroyed. I don't mean metaphorically. I mean for the entire population of the city, every man, woman and child, given 24 hours to leave and be dispersed in resettlement camps, moved in with relatives in another village, wherever, a= nd the town turned into a ghost town. Then the entire city carpet-bombed by B-52s into rubble, the rubble ground into powdered rubble by Abrams tanks, and the powdered rubble sown with sal= t as the Romans did with Carthage. Fallujah must be physically obliterated fr= om the face of this earth. It is very easy and justifiable for every American to take the barbaric hor= ror that occurred in Fallujah on March 30 personally. It is even easier for me = in particular because the private contractor who provided the convoy guards murdered and butchered by the Fallujahites is a personal friend. Yet this is a crime that requires far more punishment than simple revenge. = Let me state it clearly: The people who committed this crime are subhuman. They have relinquished their claim to be considered members of the human race. One year ago, Americans saw on their television screens another act of barbarity, the abused bodies of American soldiers taken prisoner in Nasiriy= ah filled with bullet holes and dumped into a pile. In response, I wrote an es= say entitled "The Oldest War" (NewsMax, March 25, 2003). The words of that essay are now ringing in my mind: "The War in Iraq is a continuation of the World's Oldest War. It is a war t= hat began 25 centuries ago, when a few thousand Athenians, representing the founding culture of Western Civilization, faced a Persian horde many times their size on the field of Marathon. "The Persians thought they had a holy right to conquer and rule anyone they wanted to. The Greeks looked upon them as Barbarikos, barbarians who valued neither individual freedom nor the individual as such, who lived instead in= an anthill society and were willing to subject themselves to the rule of an almighty dictator. "The Persian dictator, Darius, was sure he would crush these impudent Greek= s who dared to demand their freedom from him. At the end of that fateful day = in 490 B.C., 6,000 Persians lay dead, versus 200 Athenians. Barbarism's first attempt to subdue civilization was defeated. "There have been many, many attempts ever since. For centuries, the Roman Legions held off vast human wolfpacks, but finally succumbed, resulting in = the Dark Ages. Islam has conducted a Jihad against the West for 13 centuries. "The barbaric insanities of Marx and Hitler erupted from within Western Civilization in the 20th century. Today the Oldest War continues, now again= st Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. "There could not be a clearer demonstration that the War in Iraq is one between Civilization and Barbarism than the Iraqi behavior we saw on television yesterday. The Oldest War is one that must be continually fought and won anew." The people of Iraq as a whole are not barbarians. Yet there is a barbarism = in their culture capable of perpetrating subhuman atrocities. Thus the critica= l conclusion: If Fallujah is not destroyed now, the genie of barbarism is out of the Iraq= i bottle, with Iraq disintegrating into a civil war of annihilation. Turning Fallujah into rubble, smashing its atrocity with a hammer, is the o= nly way to get this genie back in the bottle. Iraq is not a real country, only = a collection of tribes that hate each other. If the Sunnis of Fallujah can burn and mutilate Americans, Shias will be on= ly too eager to do the same with Sunnis, Kurds to Turkmen, on and on, once American soldiers are no longer there to prevent them from doing so. Iraq has been liberated from a monstrous tyranny and handed its freedom on = a platinum platter. The question now is: Are the Iraqis capable of keeping th= e freedom that has been given to them? The atrocity of Fallujah is evidence t= hey are not. The destruction of Fallujah will contain the virus of barbarism an= d give all Iraq a chance to be inoculated against it. The power of the Internet enables all of us to be a modern Cato the Elder. From now on, every pro-American writer and blogger should conclude whatever= he writes no matter what the subject, every pro-American private citizen and everyone reading this essay should conclude any e-mail they send no matter what the topic with: Fallujah Delenda Est. =A9 2004, To The Point, Inc. To The Point=99 www.ToThePointNews.com 107-104 End of casi-news Digest _______________________________________ Sent via the CASI-analysis mailing list To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-analysis All postings are archived on CASI's website at http://www.casi.org.uk