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News titles, 9-16/7/03 News, 9-16/7/03 (1) RESTORATION OF LAW AND ORDER * US troops take over Iraqi swimmers' pool * Equipment vital to Iraq flows out of country Looted machinery smuggled into Iran * Kurds force 7000 Shiite to evacuate * U.S. Troops Step Back In a Tense Iraqi City ['Withdrawal' from Fallujah (with some encouragement from the local police) and attacks on Thursday 10th and Friday 11th in Samarra and Ramadi] * Killing of American soldier mars first governing council meeting [Monday 14th July] * US troops appear safe in Shiite southern Iraq [Upbeat account of life in Nassiriya] * Iraq to form war crimes court [Extracts giving an account of Operations Soda Mountain and Ivy Serpent (this is NOT a joke)] * Leader linked to Ansar in custody [Komaly Islami party, based in Khurmal and massacred by the US at the behest of the PUK] RESTORING THE ECONOMY * UAE-Iraq trade rises to Dh2b * US administration in Iraq seeks extra 800 mln usd to aid oil sector - official * 'Entrepreneurs' benefiting from lifting of import duties * U.S. May Tap Oil for Iraqi Loans * US invites bids for $1bn worth of Baghdad's oil ['two new contracts worth up to $1 billion to rebuild Iraq's oil industry'] * Imports inundate Iraq under new U.S. policy Consumers revel, but manufacturers cut jobs, close down * Industries dependent on Iraqi market stop operations in Irbid [The opening of Iraq's borders to free trade doesn't seem to have done very much for Jordan] AND, IN NEWS, 9-16/7/03 (2) RESTORING DEMOCRACY * 'No real planning for postwar Iraq' [The article goes in some detail into State Dept/Pentagon rivalry and its role in the post war chaos. In particular we learn about the sabotage of the State Dept's 'Future of Iraq' project. Extracts] * Iraqi tribes prepare for political role [Meeting of 'The Iraqi Tribes Democratic Grouping'] * Chaldean Groups Protest Lack of Chaldean Representation in Iraqi Ruling Council * What Iraq Needs Now [The main thrust of this article by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani is that they are owed $4bn in Oil for Food money and they want it. Now. But in passing they refer to their support of the Iranian invasion of Iraq in the 1980s as 'the faintest hint of dissent'] * A Look at Iraq's Governing Council [Thumbnail sketches of members of Iraq's newly named 25-member Governing Council:] * Chaldean Groups Protest Lack of Chaldean Representation in Iraqi Ruling Council * Iraqi interim administration divided at birth [though the article gives the impression it was SCIRI's Abdel Aziz al Hakim against everyone else] * Long-oppressed Turkmen demand a say in future of Iraq [by well-known Turkmen writer and journalist Nermeen al-Mufti] * Iraq to form war crimes court [and it 'would also create a commission to look into ways to "uproot" Saddam's once all-powerful Baath Party from Iraqi society.' Looks like we're shaping up for a civil war. It would of course be outrageous if the UN granted these people a seat on the General Assembly] RESTORATION OF CULTURE * City High graduate launches English publication in Baghdad [The Baghdad Bulletin. We are told that 'The U.S. Army wants to share printing presses with the Bulletin for its own newspaper' but the two articles from it given below in the Means of Life section, chosen by Andreas, should make uncomfortable reading for anglophones in Baghdad] * Ashur added to World Heritage List * U.S. arrests Iraqi newspaper editor in Chicago [Khalid Abd al-Latif Dumaysi, 'on charges that he worked as an unregistered agent of the Iraqi government under deposed President Hussein'] * Editorials from the New Iraqi Press [Extract just giving the endnotes, which might serve as a useful guide to journals being published in Baghdad at the present time. There has been an interesting exchange on the discussion list over the general value of material posted by MEMRI] AND, IN NEWS, 9-16/7/03 (3) RESTORATION OF THE MEANS OF LIFE * Groups question quality of water ['Even the toilets in the offices of Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer were unable to flush.' So its not all bad news] * Electricity cuts at hospitals continue to kill THE RADIANT FUTURE * Break up Iraq now! [Tough talkin' from the NY Post. Everyone's wrong except the US and Israel: 'The European legacy of phony borders must be demolished, starting in Iraq. Don't betray our troops again by leaving the job unfinished to please our enemies.'] * On America's side in Iraq [Michael Young argues in the Lebanon Daily Star that even opponents of the war have to support the US in Iraq now since a defeat for the US would plunge the whole area into chaos. He presents the amusing notion that the 'states surrounding Iraq ... fear the establishment of a pro-American democracy that might destabilize them and give their inhibited peoples something to dream about.'] * Blair seeks new powers to attack rogue states [A Downing Street document, circulated among foreign heads of state who are in London for a summit of "progressive" governments, convened by Mr Blair, argues for a right to 'humanitarian intervention'] * Washington's Afghan plan unravels [Failure in Afghanistan as a foretaste of what might happen in Iraq?] HELPING HANDS ACROSS THE WORLD * Vikings in Iraq [Norwegians following Danes to Iraq. The Danes were suffering from malnourishment] * France Rules Out Sending Troops to Iraq [and India. And Germany. But don't worry: 'Croatia said it plans to send in up to 60 peacekeepers ..."to prove ourselves a serious partner and a future member of NATO"] * India says 'no' to U.S. on troops for Iraq MOPPING UP THE PAST * Iraq civilian body count passes 6,000 * [Figures for US injured in war] * Kwaiti says it identified four missing Kuwaitis dead in Iraq * Two high officials of ousted Saddam's regime arrested [Mizban Khadr Hadi, a high ranking member of the Baath Party regional command and revolutionary command council and Mahmud Diab al-Ahmed, the former interior minister] * Former iraqi spy boss announces personal hunt for Hussein [Major General Wafiq al Samarra'i, after his home was trashed by 'Saddam loyalists'] * Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid: Leader of Iraq's Chaldean Catholics [Obituary] * More mass graves in northern Iraq [In Al-Hadar, dating back to 1988] AND, IN NEWS, 9-16/7/03 (4) DEGRADATION OF THE PRETEXT * Bush Defends War, Sidestepping Issue of Faulty Intelligence [This includes the famous quote from Ari Fleischer (it seems too good to be true and the NY Times doesn't remark on it): "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."] * White House 'lied about Saddam threat' [Gregory Thielmann, who served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September tells it like it (obviously) was: 'as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbours or to the United States".'] * A question of guilt [Difficult to quarrel with Nick Cohen's view that there is something hypocritical about Cook's current ridiculing of government policy given the murderous nature of his own policy of containment and bombing.] * Hans Blix: Blair made a fundamental mistake over '45 minutes to deploy' claim [and theories as to what might have happened: 1) destroyed immediately before the war. 2) destroyed in the late 1990s. 3) destroyed in early 1990s. The author favours 2), but its difficult to see why, having kept the programmes going under inspections, they should give them up when the inspectors withdrew. By far the most likely scenario is surely 3). But then we would have to admit that not only were wmds a poor pretext for war, they were also a poor pretext for all the starvation and disease we inflicted on Iraq throughout the 1990s. ...] * 20 Lies About the War [by Glen Rangwala. For 36 lies about the war see http://middleeastreference.org.uk/writings.html] * Political death of a usurper [George Galloway on the rapid ageing process currently being suffered by T.Blair. He makes the interesting (if he is right) point that 'Fallujah is the heartland of the Jubbur tribe, arch-enemies of Saddam whose leaders were purged by the Takriti Ba'ath party bosses more than a decade ago. No fighting in this area could take place without the Jubbur, so it must be more than nostalgia for the old regime that is fuelling it.'] * Dug-Up Iraqi Parts' Potential Faces Doubt [Jacques Baute of the IAEA, the man who exposed the Niger forgeries, now shows that the material buried by 'centrifuge program chief, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi' in his garden would not go very far towards re-establishing a nuclear weapons programme.] * Ex-Inspector's Book Attacks Bush [Scott Ritter's "Frontier Justice, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwacking of America"] _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk