Not in Our Name sponsored Anti-War March and Rally
End the Occupation-Out of Iraq Now!
TONIGHT, Wednesday night, November 3
5 PM: Powell and Market, San Francisco (event details below)
2) Bush Plans to Address Nation
After Kerry Speaks in Boston
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
November 3, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/politics/campaign/04electcnd.html?hp&ex=10
99544400&en=ba992171a995deaf&ei=5094&partner=homepage?hp
3) Insurgents Blow Up an Iraqi Oil Pipeline
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq
November 3, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/international/middleeast/03iraq.html
4) Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech
Saturday 30 October 2004 11:28 AM GMT
Forwarded: I just received this email today.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.
htm
Bin Ladin directed his message at the American people
5) Using Vietnam-era tactics,
Army maxing helicopters in
counterinsurgency war
By Jim Krane, Associated Press
TAJI, Iraq (AP)
11/1/2004 02:10
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/306/world/Using_Vietnam_era_tactics_Army:.sh
tml
6) No end in sight to Ramadi's urban war ordeal
RAMADI (AFP)
http://jordantimes.com/tue/news/news6.htm
7) Thurs. Nov. 4, 7:30pm
ATA 992 Valencia St. at 21st
San Francisco
ANSWER Film Series:
"Incident at Oglala: the Leonard Peltier Story"
8) * * * Secret Afghan Envoy Tells All * * *
Give Him an "F" in the War on Terror
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
www.counterpunch.com
November 2, 2004
CounterPunch Exclusive
9) Bush or Kerry? None!
World People's Resistance Movement (Britain)
wprm_britain@yahoo.co.uk
BM Box 7970 London WC1N 3XX
10)***SPREAD THE WORD***PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY***
PLEASE FORWARD TO FRIENDS, LISTSERVS AND ORGANIZATIONS
FREE
"Onward! A Post-Election Town Hall Meeting"
Join Amy Goodman host of Democracy Now!,
and a panel of Stanford scholars for an open discussion
of the November 2 presidential election.
For more info aurorforum.org
11) BADIL Resource Center for
Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Press Release, 2 November 2004 (E/38/04)
Six weeks of anniversaries
12) 3 Palestinians Extra-Judicially Killed by Israeli
Occupation Forces in Nablus
bayareapalestine Main Page
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Press Release
Ref: 160/2004
Date: 02 November 2004
Time: 08:30 GMT
13) Bamboozling Morality, by Kim Petersen
at 2:35 AM -0800 11/2/04,
Sunil/Dissident Voice distributed:
From: "Barbara Deutsch"
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've
been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence
of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out
the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply
too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -
that we've been so credulous.
Carl Sagan
14) Message from the people of Fallujah
Yahoo News Groups
Bristol Stop The War News - U.K
31st October 2004
This letter was sent by representatives of the people
of Fallujah to UN secretary general Kofi Annan
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Ten reasons to join us in the streets:
Not in Our Name sponsored Anti-War March and Rally
End the Occupation-Out of Iraq Now!
TONIGHT, Wednesday night, November 3
5 PM: Powell and Market, San Francisco (event details below)
Ten reasons to join us in the streets:
"The people are the decision-makers in society, not just on Election
Day, but everyday. In this election between two pro-war candidates
there has been massive voter disenfranchisement and voter intimidation
targeting working class people, communities of color, young people
and immigrants who vote Democrat. With outright, public efforts to
undermine one of the most basic rights in a democratic society, we
take to the streets to exercise our power and announce to the world
that we will fight back. Siafu, Global Intifada and the Heads Up
Collective have called for an Anti-Imperialist Contingent at the
November 3 march sponsored by Not in Our Name to make visible
struggles for justice in the US and around the world."
Anti-Imperialist Contingent: Siafu, Global Intifada & Heads
Up Collective
"Our current administration has divided us by creating a culture
of fear, confusion, anger, frustration, anxiety, humiliation, suspicion
among its citizens and total despair. They have destroyed faith
in humanity. We need to replace it with a culture of understanding,
mutual respect, friendship, faith, peace and harmony in our world
and hope for a better future. On behalf of the targeted community
I would like to thank Not in Our Name for their leadership in our
support and resisting the UN Patriot acts of our government.
My urgent appeal to all of my fellow Americans is to please join
us to strengthen our voices on November 3rd when we say no
to injustice."
Samina Faheem Sundas, American Muslim Voice
"American Friends Service Committee encourages all to rally and
march on November 3rd. Do this with force and dignity as a witness
to the suffering of the people of Iraq who face their "elections 2005"
in the midst of carnage and mounting insecurity. Do not forget the
price paid for over ten years of sanctions. Vote for Proposition N
in San Francisco ("Withdraw US Troops") and march for true
democracy here and in Iraq/Middle East."
Stephen McNeil, American Friends Service Committee
"Bay Area United Against War feels it is urgent that we continue
to build a massive anti-war movement that is independent of both
parties of war and repression. This war is eating up all of our tax
dollars. The corporations aren't paying they are profiting from U.S.
military ventures throughout the world. A united, international
antiwar movement is the power needed to bring about the immediate
withdrawal of all U.S. forces and corporations from Iraq, Afghanistan
and the whole world over. We join with you to demand, "Not In Our
Name! Stop the war now! Bring all the troops home now! All out
for November 3!"
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War
"Whoever wins the election, it's safe to say that the unjust occupation
of Iraq will continue within the context of a ever expanding war on
the world. So it's no wonder many anticipate the return of a military
draft. If Kerry and Bush actually ruled out forced military conscription,
they would move to end the selective service program. But with over
1,100 U.S. troops killed and 10,000 already wounded in Iraq, they
want to keep their options open. We need a preemptive strike on
November 3rd that declares hell no, we won't go-get out of Iraq now!"
Jeff Paterson, former Marine and first Gulf War military objector
"On November 3rd we stand in solidarity with the people of Iraq,
who yearn for peace, sovereignty, and true democracy just as many
of us do in the U.S. Millions of Koreans in the north and south, and
throughout the Korean diaspora, are intently awaiting the results of
the U.S. election. We hope that the next U.S. administration will help,
rather than hinder, our efforts to forge a future of peace and
reunification on our own terms. Regardless of who is elected
President of the U.S., we call on all allies to support us in building
true democracy."
Sujin Lee, Korean Americans United for Peace
"Radical Women stands firmly behind the call put out by Not in Our
Name for a united anti-war march and rally on November 3, demanding
an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq. As socialist feminists and
internationalists, we say that now is the time for women everywhere
to stay in the streets protesting the killing machine unleashed in Iraq.
Military conquest is never in the interests of women and children-they
are the vast majority of fatalities in Iraq due to bombs, bullets, hunger
and disease, while this immoral U.S. war crusade also drains the lifeblood
out of badly needed social services here at home."
Toni Mendicino, Bay Area Radical Women
"From Baghdad to the US/Mexico border, women, children and elders
suffer and die every day because of the so-called 'War on Terrorism.'
Bush has created and aided this plan for empire and Kerry has not
pledged to stop it. We, as an immigrant community, must be out in
the streets on November 3, in defense of democracy and in solidarity
with other third world immigrants, and with the people of the world-
from Port-au-Prince to West Oakland."
Lupe Arreola, St. Peter's Housing Committee and a member of Siafu
"The lives of children around the world-especially in Palestine and
Iraq-are in danger every day because of the militarism and misguided
foreign policies of both political parties. Meanwhile, those who speak
up for children and provide humanitarian aid are coming under
increasing scrutiny and pressure. The Middle East Children's Alliance
is proud to join Not in Our Name in its call to stand up to war and
injustice-for the sake of all our children"
Barbara Lubin, Middle East Children's Alliance
"There are millions and millions of us in this country who know this
whole direction is DEAD WRONG! The war is unjust! The deaths are
immoral! Any electoral "mandate" they claim for this direction is
illegitimate! . . . We refuse to accept the terms of an election where
the continued occupation of Iraq is not to be questioned and the
Patriot Act should be enhanced or repaired. Our will to stop this
course will not be stifled . . . We must repudiate their plan and
their logic, and stand with the people of the world-no matter
who is elected and no matter what the empire-builders have
in store." (complete text)
From "NOvember 2004" statement, Not in Our Name
Anti-war March and Rally
Also in SF on Nov. 3:
"Health Care NOT Warfare!"
9 AM: Justin Herman Plaza
Noon: Federal Building rally
More info: Beyond Voting, Direct Action to Stop the War,
and Code Blue
End the Occupation -
Out of Iraq Now!
No matter who is elected, we say no to war and repression!
Wednesday, November 3
5 PM at Powell & Market, San Francisco (map)
March to 24th & Mission.
Bring flashlights, drums, and noisemakers. Permitted
event featuring the Loco Bloco Drum and Dance Ensemble.
On November 3rd, we will still be against the illegitimate
occupation left in the aftermath of an unjust war, the
police state restrictions of the Patriot Acts, and the
ongoing attacks on our immigrant communities.
Event initiated by Not in Our Name, endorsed by:
* Anti-Imperialist Contingent: Siafu, Global Intifada
and the Heads Up Collective
* Middle East Children's Alliance
* Veterans for Peace-SF Chapter 69
* International ANSWER-SF
* American Muslim Voice
* Northern California RAWA Supporters
* American Friends Service Committee-SF
* Bay Area United Against War
* Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors
* Queers for Peace and Justice
* Jewish Voice for Peace
* Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace
* International Socialist Organization
* Refuse & Resist!
* Korea Solidarity Committee
* Blue Triangle Network
* War Resisters League-West
* South Bay Mobilization to Stop the War
* Haiti Action Committee
* Socialist Action
* East Bay Food Not Bombs
* Alameda Peace Network
* Bay Area Radical Women
* Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
* United for Peace and Justice-Bay Area
Rock the boat-not just the vote!
The Not in Our Name Project
needs your support!
Donate online
donate.notinourname.net
Or send your tax-deductible contribution today to:
Not in Our Name
3945 Opal Street, Oakland CA 94609
phone: 510-601-8000
email: bayarea@notinourname.net
local: bayarea.notinourname.net
nat'l: www.notinourname.net
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Bush Plans to Address Nation
After Kerry Speaks in Boston
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
November 3, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/politics/campaign/04electcnd.html?hp&ex=10
99544400&en=ba992171a995deaf&ei=5094&partner=homepage?hp
Senator John Kerry conceded the race for president this
morning, calling President Bush at the White House to
congratulate him after his aides conceded he would be
unable to win a victory in Ohio.
Mr. Kerry called Mr. Bush at 11 a.m. this morning at the
White House, aides said.
"He said, 'Congratulations, Mr. President,' '' Mr. Kerry's press
secretary, Stephanie Cutter said. She said Mr. Kerry, in what
she described as a "courteous conversation," told the
president that he thought it was time to "unify this country.'
Mr. Kerry scheduled a speech for 1 p.m. in Boston to offer
a formal concession. Mr. Bush was planning to deliver his
own speech later today.
The call came after Mr. Bush's aides said that the president
had won Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which, combined with his
victory in Florida, would put him over the 270-vote threshold
and guarantee him a second term.
Early this morning, Senator John Edwards, Mr. Kerry's running-
mate, had said that the Democrats wanted to wait until
provisional ballots were counting, holding out the possibility
that the Democrats could still pull out the state. Mr. Kerry's
aides said that after reviewing the situation in Ohio, they
decided it was now impossible that he would win.
With 98 percent of the national vote reported as of 8 a.m.
Eastern time, Mr. Bush was leading Mr. Kerry by a margin of
51 percent to 48 percent, giving the president an overall edge
of about 3.5 million votes.
In Ohio, with 99 percent of the vote reported, Mr. Bush was
leading by a margin of 51 percent to 48.5 percent for Mr. Kerry,
or an edge of about 130,000 votes.
Senator Kerry had been pinning his hopes on as-yet-uncounted
provisional ballots, which voters can cast if there is some
question about their eligibility to vote when they appear at
a polling station. Ohio officials said they knew of 135, 149 such
ballots. In addition, a dozen counties had not yet totaled their
provisional ballots, but in the past these counties accounted
for about 10 percent of the provisional ballot total.
President Bush currently holds a margin over Mr. Kerry of about
130,000 votes in Ohio. Mathematically, the 135,149 known
provisional ballots, plus the 10 percent or so say, 13,000 to
15,000 estimated to have been cast in the dozen counties still
to report them, would give Mr. Kerry an opportunity to overtake
President Bush. But that would mean that nearly all the provisional
ballots would need to be accepted which has not been the case in
the past and then Mr. Kerry would need to win nearly all of them.
Republicans said Mr. Bush was holding off a bit on declaring victory
this morning in order to give Mr. Kerry time to concede. "I hope
over the course of the day the obvious reality will become apparent"
to Mr. Kerry, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, said on CNN
today. But earlier this morning, Senator John Edwards of North
Carolina, Mr. Kerry's running mate, made a brief appearance in
front of a crowd of supporters at Copley Square in Boston to
announce that he and Mr. Kerry would not concede.
"It's been a long time but we've waited four years for this
victory,''
he said to thousands of people who earlier had been expecting
Mr. Kerry to be delivering a victory speech on that very spot.
"We can wait one more night."
In what sounded like a hint of concerted legal action ahead,
Mr. Edwards added tersely: "John Kerry and I made a promise
to the American people that in this election, every vote would
count and every vote would be counted.
Tonight, we are keeping our word."
Mr. Kerry's aides said they believed the Ohio vote could still
be turned around once provisional ballots those submitted by
people who were unable to vote because their names not on
registration rolls had been tallied.
"The vote count in Ohio has not been completed,'' said Mary
Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager. "There are more
than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when
they are, John Kerry will win Ohio."
But Mr. Card disputed that assertion and he said Ohio's top
election official, Kenneth Blackwell, told him that the president's
vote margin was a "statistically insurmountable lead, even after
provisional ballots are considered."
The dispute provided a chaotic conclusion to a long gyrating
night of counting that vividly recalled the turmoil of four years
ago. In addition to the problem in Ohio, Iowa officials said they
would do a recount in that state, where Mr. Bush had a lead of
14,000 with 99 percent of the vote counted.
An evening of confusion and deflation for Mr. Kerry's aides and
Democrats across the country was caused in no small part by
surveys of voters leaving the polls, which showed Mr. Kerry
leading Mr. Bush by as much as 3 percentage points nationally.
Taken together, it marked a glum night for the Democrats.
Unlike 2000, Mr.
Bush won with with the support of more than 50 percent of
the country. In addition, Republicans gained seats in the House
and in the Senate, and Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota,
the minority leader, was defeated in his bid for re-election.
Americans turned out in big numbers to vote, according to
officials from both parties, lining up at polling places across the
country from Ohio to Florida, from New York to Minnesota in an
evocative conclusion to one of the most emotionally charged
campaigns in a century.
Polls taken up to the eve of the election showed Mr. Bush tied
with Mr.
Kerry, and party officials suggested that the turnout in this hard-
fought election could match the modern-day record of 63 percent
set in 1960. In Ohio, lines were so long that some polling places
stayed open past the 7:30 p.m. closing time.
One in seven people who voted yesterday did not participate in
the 2000 election, and 60 percent of those voters said they
supported Mr. Kerry, according to surveys of voters leaving
the polls. A survey of voters leaving the polls suggested that
the turnout was at least partly inspired by anger among
Democrats lingering from Mr. Bush's disputed victory in 2000.
But White House officials said they remained confident that
the Republicans' own turnout effort aimed at evangelical
Christians who Mr.
Bush's advisers believed had failed to vote in 2000 was countering
the opposition to Mr. Bush, and would rescue him from facing
the fate of his father, who lost re-election to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Mr. Bush won Florida, seizing one of the big three states that
have become the focus of both parties for much of the year and
the state that was at the emotional fulcrum of the battle of 2000.
Mr. Kerry won the second of those three states, Pennsylvania. For
all the concern before the voting about irregularities at the polls,
there were few reports of problems as night fell across the country,
even in states where Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush had dispatched squads
of lawyers, all briefed up but with no courts to go to. Late last night
even before the polls had closed in Nevada and Iowa, two particularly
competitive states, Mr. Bush summoned reporters and photographers
to White House residence where he was watching election results
with his family, including his father, the former president.
"We're very upbeat, thank you," Mr. Bush said. "I believe I will win."
A little while later, a senior Kerry adviser, Joe Lockhart, appeared
before reporters to say much the same thing. "The first state that
we believe will flip is New Hampshire," Mr. Lockhart said, referring
to a state that Mr.
Bush won in 2000 and that Democrats are confident of winning
this time.
But as the night churned on, facing excruciatingly close tallies in
Ohio, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Iowa, aides to Mr. Bush and Mr.
Kerry were contemplating another inconclusive election night,
though none suggested they were facing a repeat of the 36-day
count of 2000.
"We're counting all the votes,'' said Mike McCurry, Mr. Kerry's
chief spokesman. "At the end of the day, we win. I'm not sure
what day, but we win."
Ralph Nader, the independent candidate who many Democrats
believe effectively handed the White House to Mr. Bush in 2000
by drawing votes from Al Gore, was winning a minimal number
of votes and did not appear to be a factor in the outcome of the race.
It was an appropriately chaotic end or near-end of the 2004
campaign in many ways began the night in December 2000 when
the United States Supreme Court effectively declared Mr. Bush the
nation's 43rd president. It took place during one of the most difficult
periods of the nation's history, framed by the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon that took place less than one year
into Mr. Bush's term. The attacks shaped not only Mr. Bush's first
term as president, but also his re-election campaign against
Mr. Kerry.
In a sign of the intensity of the contest, both Mr. Bush and
Mr. Kerry took the unusual step of campaigning right through
Election Day. Mr. Kerry began his day visiting a campaign office
in LaCrosse, Wis., while Mr. Bush brought Air Force One into
Columbus, Ohio, for one last visit to a state he won in 2000,
but where he was struggling for victory again. No Republican
has won the presidency without winning Ohio.
Mr. Bush flew to Ohio from Texas, and he dropped in on the
state's Bush-Cheney headquarters in Columbus to thank
campaign workers.
At one point Mr. Bush took the phone from a volunteer, Mick
Turner, who was making calls urging voters to get to the polls,
and said: "Julie. This is President Bush calling. How are you? No,
I promise you it's me."
Mr. Bush then put one finger in his other ear to hear her better
and said:
"I'm proud to have your support. I appreciate you taking my
phone call.
Thank you so very much." Mr. Bush then hung up and said to
reporters, "1 to 0."
Mr. Bush voted in Crawford, Tex., at 8 a.m. with his wife and
twin daughters. The president's eyes were puffy from a 19-hour,
seven-stop, six-state campaign swing the day before, and he
appeared calm if wistful as he talked to reporters.
"This election is in the hands of the people, and I feel very
comfortable about that," he said. "The people know where I
stand. I've enjoyed this campaign. It's been a fantastic
experience traveling our country, talking about what I believe
and where I'm going to lead this country for four more years."
Asked if he had any words for Mr. Kerry, the president responded:
"I wish him all the best. You know, he and I are in the exact same
position. We've given it our all and I'm I'm sure he is happy, like
I am, that the campaign has come to a conclusion."
In Wisconsin, which Al Gore won in 2000, Mr. Kerry went to an
office to pump up supporters before heading home to Boston,
where he cast his ballot with his daughters before lunching,
as he has every Election Day he has run for office since his first
victory in 1982, at the Union Oyster House.
"This campaign has been an amazing journey, a wonderful
journey," he told reporters after emerging from the polling
place at the historic Statehouse downtown. "The American
people have put their homes, their hearts to us."
Mr. Kerry, at once nostalgic and exuberant, said that he was
"very confident that we made the case for change," but that
"what's really important is that the president and I both love
this country."
"Whatever the outcome tonight," he added, "I know one
thing that is already an outcome our country will be stronger,
our country will be united, and we will move forward, no
matter what, because that's who we are as Americans. And
that's what we need to do."
This campaign came to a conclusion even an uncertain one
shaped by the three forces that had formed it from the
beginning: the attacks of Sept.
11, the disputed election of 2000 and the war in Iraq.
From the start of this contest, Mr. Kerry presented himself
as the Democrat best able to take on Mr. Bush because of his
record as a Vietnam veteran which, he said, would allow him
to hold his own with the president on security issues, and
turn the campaign to what he argued would be strong ground
for Democrats: domestic issues.
With the economy struggling and the war in Iraq going off
course, Mr. Bush increasingly built his campaign around the
threat of terrorism, invoking the symbols of the attack on the
World Trade Center and portraying Mr.
Kerry as not having the strength to stand up to terrorist
attacks.
The survey of voters leaving the polls found that Mr. Bush
did indeed enjoy a big advantage over Mr. Kerry on the issue
of terrorism. But it also showed that a majority now believed
that the war had gone badly off course, and had jeopardized
the long-term security of the United States.
And while Mr. Bush was seen as much better able to protect
the nation from terrorist attacks than Mr. Kerry was, the survey
suggested that in the end, domestic issues like health care and
job creation were critical factors in the choices of many
Americans, and many of those voters were going to Mr. Kerry.
Both parties had identified get-out-the-vote efforts as critical
to victory in an election where poll after poll showed Mr. Kerry
and Mr. Bush evenly matched. For Democrats, it was a matter
of building on the anger still burning from 2000.
For Mr. Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove, it was a matter of
motivating what he said was four million evangelicals who
had not been there for Mr.
Bush in 2000, and who would respond to a campaign appeal
that was built to a large extent by trying to paint cultural
differences with Mr. Kerry on such issues as gay marriage
and abortion rights.
Mr. Rove appears to have had at least some success on
that count. The surveys found that voters cited three issues
as central in making their
decision: the economy, terrorism and moral issues, and
Mr. Bush won among voters who cited moral issues.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Insurgents Blow Up an Iraqi Oil Pipeline
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq
November 3, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/international/middleeast/03iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 3 - Insurgents blew up a northern
oil export pipeline on Tuesday, dealing a severe blow to the national
economy, even as car bombs and gun battles across the country
left at least 12 Iraqis dead, Iraqi officials said.
The sabotage of the northern oil pipeline forced a shutdown of
crude oil exports to a port in Turkey, Iraqi officials said. The
pipeline pumps out 400,000 barrels a day of crude oil and is
the frequent target of sabotage.
Hours after the explosion, firefighters were still battling the pipeline
blaze near the city of Kirkuk, where pipelines run from oil fields
west to the country's largest refinery in Bayji and north to Turkey.
An Iraqi oil official in Baghdad told The Associated Press that the
amount of crude oil in storage at the port of Ceyhan in Turkey
was down to four million barrels, half of the port's storage
capacity.
The attacks on oil pipelines near Kirkuk and around Basra in the
south, where the oil fields are much more extensive, have sharply
cut into Iraq's main economic hope. American and Iraqi officials
are relying on steady oil exports to help revive the stagnant
economy in a country where the unemployment rate hovers at
60 percent.
The Arab news network Al Jazeera reported Tuesday night
that it had received a new videotape in which the kidnappers
of a British-Iraqi aid official, Margaret Hassan, threaten to turn
her over to the group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi within 48 hours if Britain does not withdraw its
troops from Iraq.
In the first of the bombings on Tuesday, insurgents drove
a car bomb up to the Ministry of Education offices in
northwestern Baghdad in the morning, killing at least six
people and wounding dozens more, said Col. Adnan Abdul-
Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
The blast took place in the Adhamiya neighborhood a Sunni-
dominated area generally hostile to the Americans. People at
the scene said two ministry guards in the parking lot, a father
and his son, died immediately in the blast.
In the volatile northern city of Mosul, a car bomb aimed at
a military convoy near the police academy killed one person
and wounded at least seven security officers, hospital officials
said. The target appeared to be Maj. Gen. Rashid Flayeh, the
commander of a special security force who had arrived in the
city just days ago to assist the local police. He was unhurt
in the blast, police officials said.
At 1 p.m., another car bomb exploded by a convoy of Iraqi
National Guardsmen in Mosul, killing two civilians and
wounding seven others, hospital officials said. Clashes
between insurgents and Iraqi guardsmen in the city's
Widha neighborhood left three civilians dead, the officials said.
The latest attacks came about halfway through the Islamic
fasting month of Ramadan. During the holiday, the number
of attacks in Iraq per day has spiked by 30 percent, and
suicide car bombs appear to be an increasingly common
weapon, American military officials say.
Since April, when a two-front uprising convulsed the country,
American-led forces have been unable to dampen what appears
to be a growing insurgency, much of it led by disenfranchised
Sunni Muslims ousted from power with the toppling of Saddam
Hussein.
In recent weeks, American military officials have been gathering
their troops for a planned invasion of the insurgent stronghold
of Falluja, 35 miles west of the capital, in the hopes that crushing
that sanctuary will break the backbone of the insurgency.
Thousands of rebels are believed to have dug into positions
in the city, awaiting the assault.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has said he is ready to call for
a sweeping offensive in order to bring Falluja into his fold before
elections scheduled for January. But Iraq's president, Sheik Ghazi
al-Yawar, a leader of one of the largest Sunni tribes in the country,
said in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper on Monday that he
absolutely opposed any military action.
The break between the two strong-willed men suggests that there
could be enormous political fallout in Iraq if an invasion led by the
American marines goes forward.
Marines are now engaged in some of the most intense urban combat
in the country in the provincial capital of Ramadi, 30 miles west of
Falluja. There, insurgents have been ambushing Marine convoys
that race daily through the downtown area.
On Monday, a freelance cameraman working for Reuters, Dhia
Najim, was shot and killed while covering the fighting in the area.
The American military said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr.
Najim had been killed during a battle between American marines
and insurgents.
Military officials said in interviews that the cameraman had been
killed by the marines as they took fire from the insurgents. One
official said marines had inspected Mr. Najim's camera after the
battle and found footage that showed insurgents attacking convoys.
By Tuesday night, the marines had opened an investigation, the
official said.
"We did kill him," he said. "He was out with the bad guys. He was
there with them, they attacked, and we fired back and hit him."
Reuters reported that its global managing editor, David Schlesinger,
was strongly urging the American military to conduct a proper
investigation and was dissatisfied with the military's statement.
"We reject the clear implication in the Marines' statement that
Dhia was part of an insurgent group," he said.
Mr. Najim's death brought to 36 the number of journalists who
have been killed in Iraq, at least eight by American fire, according
to the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York. Nineteen
have died from insurgent actions.
Early Wednesday, Al Jazeera showed a short segment of a videotape
of Ms. Hassan, the kidnapped aid worker, who was born in Dublin.
The network said it was not broadcasting the complete tape because
parts of it were too emotionally intense. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern
of Ireland said in the Irish Parliament that he had read a text of the
video and that it appeared "distressing."
In the part shown, an insurgent wearing a dark track suit and a white
cloth around his head was speaking while he held a Kalashnikov rifle.
The network reported that he had said the group would turn Ms.
Hassan over to Mr. Zarqawi's group within 48 hours if Britain did
not withdraw its troops.
The Press Association, a British news agency, quoted Mr. Ahern
as saying that as in two previous videos, the new tape showed
Ms. Hassan pleading for her life. She faints, and then a bucketful
of water is thrown over her head, and she gets up and begins crying.
News agencies reported Tuesday that two Iraqi guards kidnapped
from an office on Monday in the affluent Baghdad neighborhood
of Mansour had been released. Still missing are an unidentified
American, a Nepalese and two other Iraqi guards, said Col. Abdul-
Rahman, the Interior Ministry spokesman. The two released Iraqi
guards were from the Falluja area, The A.P. reported. All work for
a Saudi Arabian food supply company.
More than 160 foreigners have been kidnapped this year in Iraq,
most by bandits seeking ransom. More than 30 have been killed,
some in grisly videotaped beheadings posted on the Internet.
Mr. Zarqawi's militant group posted such a video on Tuesday
showing the decapitation of Shosei Koda, a 24-year-old Japanese
backpacker whose body was discovered in Baghdad on Saturday.
Mr. Koda's body was wrapped in an American flag, and the video
showed insurgents shoving him down on that flag and slicing
off his head.
In a separate Internet statement, the group, Al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia, said the Japanese government had offered
a ransom of "millions of dollars" but had refused to withdraw
its 550 troops in Iraq, prompting the group to kill Mr. Koda.
Also on Tuesday, a supervisor in the Iraqi electoral commission,
Adel al-Lami, said voter registration lists had been distributed
on Monday in parts of several cities, including Baghdad, Amara
and Basra. Though Monday was the first day that Iraqis collecting
their food rations could receive registration lists for verification,
the distribution of such lists apparently did not take place at all
540 or so food centers around the country, Mr. Lami said. The
commission still has until the end of November to complete
its voter rolls.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Ramadi for
this article, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from
Baghdad and Mosul.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech
Saturday 30 October 2004 11:28 AM GMT
Forwarded: I just received this email today.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.
htm
Bin Ladin directed his message at the American people
Following is the full English transcript of Usama bin Ladin's speech
in a videotape sent to Aljazeera. In the interests of authenticity,
the content of the transcript, which appeared as subtitles at the
foot of the screen, has been left unedited.
Praise be to Allah who created the creation for his worship and
commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to
retaliate against the oppressor in kind. To proceed:
Peace be upon he who follows the guidance: People of America
this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent
another Manhattan, and deals with the war and its causes and results.
Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar
of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security,
contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom.
If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example
- Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess
defiant spirits like those of the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them.
No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under
oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as
you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.
No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others
and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas
thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority
to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.
But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth
year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged
in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes.
And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.
So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and
shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the
decision was taken, for you to consider.
I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us
to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we
witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli
coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon,
it came to my mind.
The events that affected my soul in a direct way started
in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade
Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that.
This bombardment began and many were killed and injured
and others were terrorised and displaced.
I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed
limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses
destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished
over their residents, rockets raining down on our home
without mercy.
The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child,
powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand
a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole
world saw and heard but it didn't respond.
In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas
bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense
feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong
resolve to punish the oppressors.
And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon,
it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor
in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in
order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that
they be deterred from killing our women and children.
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and
the intentional killing of innocent women and children is
a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and
democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of
millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter
of children mankind has ever known, and it means the
throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives
at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order
to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet
to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.
So with these images and their like as their background,
the events of September 11th came as a reply to those
great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending
his sanctuary?
Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in
kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is
unavoidable for us.
This is the message which I sought to communicate
to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before
September 11th.
And you can read this, if you wish, in my interview with
Scott in Time Magazine in 1996, or with Peter Arnett
on CNN in 1997, or my meeting with John Weiner in 1998.
You can observe it practically, if you wish, in Kenya and
Tanzania and in Aden. And you can read it in my
interview with Abdul Bari Atwan, as well as my
interviews with Robert Fisk.
The latter is one of your compatriots and co-religionists
and I consider him to be neutral. So are the pretenders
of freedom at the White House and the channels controlled
by them able to run an interview with him? So that he may
relay to the American people what he has understood from
us to be the reasons for our fight against you?
If you were to avoid these reasons, you will have taken the
correct path that will lead America to the security that it
was in before September 11th. This concerned the causes
of the war.
As for it's results, they have been, by the grace of Allah,
positive and enormous, and have, by all standards,
exceeded all expectations. This is due to many factors,
chief among them, that we have found it difficult to deal
with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance
it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are
ruled by the military and the other half which are ruled by
the sons of kings and presidents.
Our experience with them is lengthy, and both types are
replete with those who are characterised by pride, arrogance,
greed and misappropriation of wealth. This resemblance
began after the visits of Bush Sr to the region.
At a time when some of our compatriots were dazzled by
America and hoping that these visits would have an effect
on our countries, all of a sudden he was affected by those
monarchies and military regimes, and became envious of
their remaining decades in their positions, to embezzle the
public wealth of the nation without supervision or accounting.
So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his
son and they named it the Patriot Act, under the pretence of
fighting terrorism. In addition, Bush sanctioned the installing
of sons as state governors, and didn't forget to import expertise
in election fraud from the region's presidents to Florida to be
made use of in moments of difficulty.
All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke
and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send
two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth
on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race
there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political
losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than
some benefits for their private companies.
This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla
warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers,
as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until
it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.
All Praise is due to Allah.
So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the
point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great
for Allah.
That being said, those who say that al-Qaida has won against
the administration in the White House or that the administration
has lost in this war have not been precise, because when one
scrutinises the results, one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole
factor in achieving those spectacular gains.
Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening
of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations - whether
they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction - has
helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results.
And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the
White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic
goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.
And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British
diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal
Institute of International Affairs. [When they pointed out that] for
example, al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America,
in the incident and its aftermath, lost - according to the lowest
estimate - more than $500 billion.
Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars
by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.
As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record
astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.
And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the
mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds
to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence
of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah's
permission.
It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other
hand, it shows that the Bush administration has also gained,
something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts
acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-
corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced.
And it all shows that the real loser is ... you.
It is the American people and their economy. And for the record,
we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Ataa,
Allah have mercy on him, that all the operations should be carried
out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration notice.
It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the
American armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens
in the twin towers to face those great horrors alone, the time
when they most needed him.
But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking
to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important
than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the
skyscrapers, we were given three times the period required to
execute the operations - all praise is due to Allah.
And it's no secret to you that the thinkers and perceptive ones
from among the Americans warned Bush before the war and told
him: "All that you want for securing America and removing the
weapons of mass destruction - assuming they exist - is available
to you, and the nations of the world are with you in the inspections,
and it is in the interest of America that it not be thrust into an
unjustified war with an unknown outcome."
But the darkness of the black gold blurred his vision and insight,
and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests
of America.
So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy
bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that
threaten his future. He fits the saying "like the naughty she-goat
who used her hoof to dig up a knife from under the earth".
So I say to you, over 15,000 of our people have been killed and
tens of thousands injured, while more than a thousand of you have
been killed and more than 10,000 injured. And Bush's hands are
stained with the blood of all those killed from both sides, all for
the sake of oil and keeping their private companies in business.
Be aware that it is the nation who punishes the weak man when
he causes the killing of one of its citizens for money, while letting
the powerful one get off, when he causes the killing of more than
1000 of its sons, also for money.
And the same goes for your allies in Palestine. They terrorise the
women and children, and kill and capture the men as they lie sleeping
with their families on the mattresses, that you may recall that for
every action, there is a reaction.
Finally, it behoves you to reflect on the last wills and testaments
of the thousands who left you on the 11th as they gestured in
despair. They are important testaments, which should be studied
and researched.
Among the most important of what I read in them was some prose
in their gestures before the collapse, where they say: "How mistaken
we were to have allowed the White House to implement its aggressive
foreign policies against the weak without supervision."
It is as if they were telling you, the people of America: "Hold to
account those who have caused us to be killed, and happy is he
who learns from others' mistakes."
And among that which I read in their gestures is a verse of poetry.
"Injustice chases its people, and how unhealthy the bed of tyranny."
As has been said: "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound
of cure."
And know that: "It is better to return to the truth than persist in
error." And that the wise man doesn't squander his security, wealth
and children for the sake of the liar in the White House.
In conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands
of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No.
Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't
play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.
And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian
or Helper. All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.
Aljazeera
This message was sent with an unlicensed evaluation version of
Novell NetMail. Please see http://www.netmail.com/ for details.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Using Vietnam-era tactics,
Army maxing helicopters in
counterinsurgency war
By Jim Krane, Associated Press
TAJI, Iraq (AP)
11/1/2004 02:10
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/306/world/Using_Vietnam_era_tactics_Army:.sh
tml
TAJI, Iraq (AP) The U.S. military is increasingly turning to attack
helicopters to battle guerrillas in Iraq, using tactics closer to those
from Vietnam or Israel than the Gulf war formations that blasted
Iraqi tanks.
The Army is also pushing its fleets of transport helicopters as hard
as it can, ferrying U.S. troops and Iraqi leaders by air, rather than
letting them drive the country's ambush-prone roads.
''When we fly, soldiers don't die,'' said Col. Jim McConville, who
commands the 1st Cavalry Division's aviation brigade. ''We're
basically flying as much as we can. And we can't fly them enough.''
Since February, McConville's 4th Brigade, headquartered on this
dust-blown air base just north of Baghdad, has flown 50,000
combined hours in its nearly 100 helicopters, the highest airborne
rate in division history.
Helicopters have emerged as the most important weapon in the
U.S. air war in Iraq. Pairs of Apache, Kiowa and Marine Cobra attack
helicopters often act as the eyes and arms for small bands of
ground troops.
And they are expected to be critical to the forthcoming attempt to
retake guerrilla-held Fallujah.
Helicopters have proven themselves in dozens of counterinsurgency
battles, with pilots radioing directions or firing rockets, allowing
ground troops to overcome ambushes or blocked streets.
''It's an adrenaline rush, guys flying 140 miles per hour just above
the trees and firing rockets,'' said McConville, whose own helicopters
have been rocked by rocket-propelled grenades or punched with
bullets.
The Black Hawk, which entered service in 1979, has become a taxi
for soldiers and contractors hopping from the safety of one U.S.
base to another.
''If everyone had a choice no one would drive,'' said McConville, 45,
of Quincy, Mass. ''But there's not enough aircraft to fly every soldier
who wants to fly.''
The ominous thumping sound of American helicopters roaring over
Baghdad's rooftops is becoming as emblematic of this war as it was
of Vietnam.
In February, an Iraqi reporter asked Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt,
spokesman for the occupation forces, what he would recommend
Iraqi mothers tell their children frightened by low-flying helicopters.
''What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear
is the sound of freedom,'' Kimmitt said.
American helicopters provoke dread among insurgents as well,
McConville said. The shooting often stops when one shows up.
''The Iraqis are afraid of helicopters,'' McConville said. ''We think
they're pretty deadly. But they think they're a lot more deadly
than they are.''
The 1st Cavalry, whose pioneering of Vietnam ''Air Cav'' operations
was featured in the 1979 movie ''Apocalypse Now,'' has seen two
of its helicopters shot down. Two other 1st Cavalry Kiowas collided
and crashed, for unknown reasons, in October.
Heavy armor, like the Black Hawk's Kevlar flooring, helps bring the
machines back after they've been hit.
''They'll come in with holes and we'll repair them,'' said Maj. John
Agor, 42, striding through a Taji hangar filled with disassembled
Black Hawks and Apaches. ''More likely than not we'll put them
back into battle that night.''
Helicopter tactics here resemble those that emerged at the end
of the Vietnam war, when the Viet Cong acquired Soviet-made
SA-7 missiles that were able to pick off high-flying choppers. U.S.
pilots began flying low and fast, skimming the trees and fields in
a technique known as ''mapping the earth.''
When the Apache gunship entered service, tactics evolved again.
The Army trained pilots to hover behind front lines and blast tanks
with long-range missiles. Apache pilots did just that in the Gulf war.
But Iraqi insurgents have no front lines or tanks. After rebels with
shoulder-fired missiles took down a pair of helicopters, including
a Chinook transport in November that killed 16 U.S. troops, the
Army stopped flying at high altitudes.
''We used to hover around. We can't do that now because you
get shot down,'' McConville said. ''People thought it was safer
to come down low and risk small arms fire and wires.''
So the Army went back to mapping the earth, with improvements.
Helicopters have better armor and are loaded with precision
weapons and night targeting systems, including those that can
detect a person's body heat.
Apaches and Kiowas operate in street battles much the same
way as in the Israeli military: rocketing single cars or buildings
sheltering insurgents.
''You try to shoot them in an alleyway or shoot one car that's
moving along a street,'' said Capt. Ryan Welch, 29, an Apache
pilot with the 4th Brigade. ''It's not something we used to train for.''
The urban fighting puts big decisions into the hand of a 20-
something flier.
When a 1st Cavalry Apache team fired on a disabled Bradley
armored vehicle in August, among those killed was an Al-Arabiya
television reporter who was broadcasting live. The widely viewed
carnage brought criticism on the U.S. military. McConville said
his pilots are well aware of their potential for instant infamy.
The Army relies so heavily on its helicopters that some are
being flown at rates beyond military recommendations.
Lt. Col. Mike Lundy, commander of the 1st Cavalry's Kiowa
regiment, said each of his armed Kiowas flies around 105 hours
per month, well over the recommended 65 hours.
Major overhauls normally done every two years are now needed
every six months, said Agor, the maintenance chief.
In the case of the Apache, the interval between complete overhauls
been pushed back from once every 250 hours to once every
500 hours, said Agor.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) No end in sight to Ramadi's urban war ordeal
RAMADI (AFP)
http://jordantimes.com/tue/news/news6.htm
RAMADI (AFP) - The bomb blast lifted
the armoured vehicle into the air and sent flames licking
around it. The US Marine yelled "push, push"
and accelerated the Humvee, named Whiskey Six, down
war-torn Ramadi's main boulevard.
One minute, men in
grey dishdashes had been standing on the trash-heaped
sidewalks, vendors sold nuts and soap, and the next,
Whiskey Six, one of a half-dozen armoured Humvees
punching a supply convoy through Al Anbar province's
capital city, came under attack.
A mix of chuckles and curses filled Whiskey Six's
four-seat interior, crammed with green ammo cases, a
giant radio box and a rocket tube as it sped ahead, past
slabs of flattened buildings dynamited by insurgents.
The vehicle raced past a mural of a US flag,
emblazoned with a swastika instead of stars, and a
caption "This is the true America."
The armoured Humvees, belching gas fumes, reached one
combat outpost and then quickly turned to clear a return
route for the supply convoy when two fireballs hit
Whiskey Six's right flank.
Bullets snapped and crackled, violet-coloured tracers
lit up the gray sky. Two mortars fell within 50 metres of
Whiskey Six, one of them shooting off a cloud of white
smoke as two men used the distraction to dart from an
alley.
The Marines found themselves bogged down yet again in
a two-hour street battle in the city, considered the axis
of Iraq's Sunni Muslim insurgency, along with Fallujah to
the east.
"A big fight like that takes a toll on the
insurgents. Because it takes time for them to
regroup," said Captain Patrick Rapicault, the
commander of Whiskey Six and the rest of the 2-5 Marine
battalion's weapons company.
Ramadi has been torn by almost daily street battles
since April. Ferocious and brutal in nature -
reducing parts of the city to rubble - neither side
appears closer to a decisive victory today than they did
seven months ago.
The Marines have avoided a repeat of Fallujah, a
virtual no-go zone for US forces, but the city has still
become an urban battlefield, reminiscent of Mogadishu or
Beirut at the height of Lebanon's civil war.
"I don't know anyone is winning," the 2-5
battalion's commander Lieutenant Colonel Randy Newman
told AFP.
"The people of Ramadi I talk to they don't want
them [the insurgents] here, but they don't feel they can
do anything about it."
A high-ranking American official in Baghdad told AFP a
key indicator for the US military that they are beating
the insurgency will come when Sunnis finally start to
provide significant intelligence on the resistance.
And this clearly is not happening in Ramadi.
"There's definitely a feeling it would be
dangerous to be associated with the United States,"
said Major Mike Targos, the battalion's executive
officer.
Recent cases of intimidation include the murder of an
Iraqi who cleaned the latrines on a US base, and the
month-long kidnapping of the dean of Al Anbar University,
located in Ramadi.
The dean now attends the campus sporadically and is
spending a large amount of time in therapy. The current
Anbar Governor Mohammad Awad replaced a predecessor who
resigned and fled to Jordan after his three sons were
kidnapped in August.
The Marines praise Awad, but the regional government
has been hobbled by constant reshuffles. "It's hard
to track who is doing what job. It makes effective
government that much more difficult," one Marine
officer said.
The military has also received reports that some
government members' relatives are linked to the
insurgency, the officer added.
A lack of trust in the local police and Iraqi national
guard has also burdened the Marines.
"The police are so corrupt, if they [insurgents]
started to assassinate them, they'd probably be killing
some of their own," said Captain Sean Kuehl, an
intelligence officer.
So far, no action has been taken to import police and
national guard from outside the western Iraqi city as
part of a major overhaul to help restore law and order.
Despite the shaky security situation, Newman said he
believes it is possible to hold January elections in the
400,000-strong city, considered a breeding ground of
Iraq's insurgency.
The effort will be buoyed by a US army battalion being
deployed in Ramadi, set to take control of the city's
eastern half within days, and raising the US military
presence in the capital to around 2,000.
Election hopes could also be boosted by a US offensive
in nearby Fallujah.
Even so, some Marine officers are sceptical that they
could deliver a knockout blow to insurgents before the
January elections.
One called the poll date "stretching it."
"It may take a little longer," said another.
The two officers seemed certain the insurgency will
rage on well into 2005 and thought its outright defeat
was not yet in reach.
"Ramadi will always have an insurgency but we can
bring it to a level where people feel it is safe enough
and local Iraqi forces and police can deal with it,"
another officer said.
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Thurs. Nov. 4, 7:30pm
ATA 992 Valencia St. at 21st
San Francisco
ANSWER Film Series:
"Incident at Oglala: the Leonard Peltier Story"
with a update on the struggle to free Leonard Peltier
In 1974, two FBI agents were killed in a gun battle on the Pine Ridge
reservation. Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement
(AIM) was falsely convicted of the murders, although critical evidence
proved his innocence. Peltier's arrest and trial were politically
motivated shams. This exciting documentary reconstructs events
surrounding the incident, highlighting the overwhelming FBI repression
and atmosphere of government terror on the reservation. It also shows
the viewer the brave efforts of American Indians like Peltier to
organize and fight back. Free Leonard Peltier!
1992, 90 min., $5 donation
For more information, call 415-821-6545.
----------
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8) * * * Secret Afghan Envoy Tells All * * *
Give Him an "F" in the War on Terror
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
www.counterpunch.com
November 2, 2004
CounterPunch Exclusive
George Bush, the man whose prime campaign plank has been his
ability to wage war on terror, could have had Osama bin Laden's head
handed to him on a platter on his very first day in office, and the offer
held good until February 2 of 2002. This is the charge leveled by an
Afghan American who had been retained by the US government as
an intermediary between the Taliban and both the Clinton and Bush
administrations.
Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. Born in
Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he's from the Jaji clan (from
which also came Afghanistan's last king). Educated at St Louis
University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations
for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contacts
with the US foreign policy establishment, also with senior members
of the Taliban.
After the eviction of the Soviets, Mohabbat returned to the United
States to develop an export business with Afghanistan and became
a US citizen. Figuring in his extensive dealings with the Taliban in
the late 1990s was much investment of time and effort for a contract
to develop the proposed oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan.
In a lengthy interview and in a memorandum Kabir Mohabbat has
given us a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge
that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his
senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or
killed at their Afghan base. As a search of the data base shows,
portions of Mohabbat's role have been the subject of a number of
news reports, including a CBS news story by Alan Pizzey aired
September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the
full story.
By the end of 1999 US sanctions and near-world-wide political
ostracism were costing the Taliban dearly and they had come to
see Osama bin Laden and his training camps as, in Mohabbat's
words, "just a damn liability". Mohabbat says the Taliban leadership
had also been informed in the clearest possible terms by a US
diplomat that if any US citizen was harmed as a consequence of an
Al Qaeda action, the US would hold the Taliban responsible and
target Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders.
In the summer of 2000, on one of his regular trips to Afghanistan,
Mohabbat had a summit session with the Taliban high command
in Kandahar. They asked him to arrange a meeting with appropriate
officials in the European Union, to broker a way in which they could
hand over Osama bin Laden . Mohabbat recommended they send
bin Laden to the World Criminal Court in the Hague.
Shortly thereafter, in August of 2000, Mohabbat set up a meeting
at the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt between a delegation from the
Taliban and Reiner Weiland of the EU. The Taliban envoys repeated
the offer to deport bin Laden. Weiland told them he would take the
proposal to Elmar Brok, foreign relations director for the European
Union. According to Mohabbat, Brok then informed the US Ambassador
to Germany of the offer.
At this point the US State Department called Mohabbat and said the
government wanted to retain his services, even before his official
period on the payroll, which lasted from November of 2000 to late
September, 2001, by which time he tells us he had been paid
$115,000.
On the morning of October 12, 2000, Mohabbat was in Washington
DC, preparing for an 11am meeting at the State Department , when
he got a call from State, telling him to turn on the tv and then come
right over. The USS Cole had just been bombed. Mohabbat had
a session with the head of State's South East Asia desk and with
officials from the NSC. They told him the US was going to "bomb the
hell out of Afghanistan". "Give me three weeks," Mohabbat answered,
"and I will deliver Osama to your doorstep." They gave him a month.
Mohabbat went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent
bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with
US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama.
On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election,
Mohabbat arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton
hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team.
After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session,
Mohabbat says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and
outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be
turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as
a target for Cruise missiles. In the end, Mohabbat says, the Taliban
promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden" . "We all agreed,"
Mohabbat tells CounterPunch, "the best way was to gather Osama
and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one
or two Cruise missiles."
Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar.
At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved
Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at
Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul.
In the wake of the 2000 election Mohabbat traveled to Islamabad
and met with William Milam, US ambassador to Pakistan and the
person designated by the Clinton administration to deal with the
Taliban on the fate of bin Laden. Milam told Mohabbat that it was
a done deal but that the actual handover of bin Laden would have
to be handled by the incoming Bush administration.
On November 23, 2000, Mohabbat got a call from the NSC saying
they wanted to put him officially on the payroll as the US government's
contact man for the Taliban. He agreed. A few weeks later an official
from the newly installed Bush NSC asked him to continue in the same
role and shortly thereafter he was given a letter from the administration
(Mohabbat tells us he has a copy), apologizing to the Taliban for not
having dealt with bin Laden, explaining that the new government was
still setting in, and asking for a meeting in February 2001.
The Bush administration sent Mohabbat back, carrying kindred tidings
of delay and regret to the Taliban three more times in 2001, the last
in September after the 9/11 attack. Each time he was asked to
communicate similar regrets about the failure to act on the plan
agreed to in Frankfurt. This procrastination became a standing joke
with the Taliban, Mohabbat tells CounterPunch "They made an offer
to me that if the US didn't have fuel for the Cruise missiles to attack
Osama in Daronta, where he was under house arrest, they would
pay for it."
Kabir Mohabbat's final trip to Afghanistan on the US government
payroll took place on September 3, 2001. On September 11 Mohabbat
acted as translator for some of the Taliban leadership in Kabul as they
watched tv coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. Four days later the US State Department asked Mohabbat to
set up a meeting with the Taliban. Mohabbat says the Taliban were
flown to Quetta in two C-130s. There they agreed to the three
demands sought by the US team: 1. Immediate handover of bin Laden;
2. Extradition of foreigners in Al Qaeda who were wanted in their home
countries; 3. shut-down of bin Laden's bases and training camps.
Mohabbat says the Taliban agreed to all three demands.
This meeting in Quetta was reported in carefully vague terms by Pizzey
on September 25, where Mohabbat was mentioned by name. He tells
us that the Bush administration was far more exercised by this story
than by any other event in the whole delayed and ultimately abandoned
schedule of killing Osama.
On October 18, Mohabbat tells us, he was invited to the US embassy
in Islamabad and told that "there was light at the end of the tunnel
for him", which translated into an invitation to occupy the role later
assigned to Karzai. Mohabbat declined, saying he had no desire for
the role of puppet and probable fall guy.
A few days later the Pizzey story was aired and Mohabbat drew the
ire of the Bush administration where he already had an enemy in the
form of Zalmay Khalilzad, appointed on September 22 as the US
special envoy to Afghanistan. After giving him a dressing down,
US officials told Mohabbat the game had changed, and he should
tell the Taliban the new terms: surrender or be killed. Mohabbat
declined to be the bearer of this news and went off the US
government payroll.
Towards the end of that same month of October, 2001 Mohabbat
was successfully negotiating with the Taliban for the release of
Heather Mercer (acting in a private capacity at the request of her
father) when the Taliban once again said they would hand over
Osama Bin Laden unconditionally. Mohabbat tells us he relayed
the offer to David Donahue, the US consulate general in Islamabad.
He was told, in his words,that "the train had moved". Shortly
thereafter the US bombing of Afghanistan began.
In December Mohabbat was in Pakistan following with wry amusement
the assault on Osama bin Laden's supposed mountain redoubt in
Tora Bora, in the mountains bordering Pakistan. At the time he said,
he informed US embassy officials the attack was a waste of time.
Taliban leaders had told him that Bin Laden was nowhere near Tora
Bora but in Waziristan. Knowing that the US was monitoring his cell
phone traffic, Osama had sent a decoy to Tora Bora.
From the documents he's supplied us and from his detailed account
we regard Kabir Mohabbat's story as credible and are glad to make
public his story of the truly incredible failure of the Bush administration
to accept the Taliban's offer to eliminate Bin Laden. As a consequence
of this failure more than 3,000 Americans and thousands of Afghans
died. Mohabbat himself narrowly escaped death on two occasions
when Al Qaeda, apprised of his role, tried to kill him. In Kabul in
February, 2001, a bomb was detonated in his hotel in Kabul. Later
that year, in July, a hand grenade thrown in his room in a hotel
in Kandahar failed to explode.
He told his story to the 9/11 Commission (whose main concern,
he tells us, was that he not divulge his testimony to anyone else),
also to the 9/11 Families who were pursuing a lawsuit based on
the assumption of US intelligence blunders by the FBI and CIA.
He says his statements were not much use to the families since
his judgment was, and still remains, that it was not intelligence
failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks, but criminal negligence
by the Bush administration.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Bush or Kerry? None!
World People's Resistance Movement (Britain)
wprm_britain@yahoo.co.uk
BM Box 7970 London WC1N 3XX
We are living through a time when huge historic issues are being
decided, where powerful forces are in play, and many possible
outcomes could emerge. This is a time that demands clear thinking
and urgent, massive, and creative resistance based on a strategic
understanding of the stakes for the power structure in the US and
the people of the world. This is a time when the people of the
world need to unite and resist so whoever, wins the US election
it is very clear that there is no mandate for the whole agenda of
war and repression and we are serious about defeating this a
genda.
Election 2000 saw the Republican Party unleash bullies to intimidate
people who were trying to recount the Florida ballots. Not only have
their right wing forces been building up within the circles of power
in the US, not only have they been cultivating a whole officer corps
within the US military and putting allies in the Supreme Court, but
they have also built up a whole religious, fundamentalists Christian
fascists movement inspired in their non-thinking fundamentalism
by George W Bush himself. We donÂ’t yet know if and how the final
hours of this election will be strong-armed. But we do already know
how this whole process has already been rigged and manipulated,
all along. When you look at this with open eyes, it is starkly and
increasingly clear that the will of the people will not be expressed i
n this election.
Bush defends his brutal occupation of Iraq and his larger war on
the world. John Kerry insists he will lead the conquest of Iraq to
crush the resistance and free up US military power for further
attacks elsewhere. The people of the world don't want to live
in a New Roman Empire that rules and threatens the world,
and setup a tightening repressive state in the US. We need to
unite very broadly in the kind of resistance that can't only oppose
but defeat this juggernaut of war and repression.
The rulers of the US, the vicious emperors intend to stifle and
suppress any challenge in the world. They intend to treat resistance
as illegitimate, treasonous and "pro-terrorist". They are not
interested in "listening" to the people and donÂ’t care what the
people want or need. They are making a historic grab for the
world, taking great risks, unleashing great resources, sending
out many thousands of people to kill and die. But their lies
have come out. Their Abu Ghraib crimes are exposed. Also
the insurgency in Iraq and the revolution in Nepal have become
more powerful much faster than they expected.
We must not let the rulers to divert our discontent into their
"regular channels" and deflate it by assumption that nothing
else is possible. We need to understand the great danger of
the US ruler's programme in particular the whole war programme,
the whole juggernaut of war and repression. This great danger
and its immediacy should make people feel compelled to act
and to call on, encourage and help mobilise many others to
act. The people of the world need to build now and in an
ongoing way, the most powerful mass opposition and resistance
against this rolling monster that's unfolding.
World People's Resistance Movement (Britain)
wprm_britain@yahoo.co.uk
BM Box 7970 London WC1N 3XX
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10)***SPREAD THE WORD***PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY***
PLEASE FORWARD TO FRIENDS, LISTSERVS AND ORGANIZATIONS
FREE
"Onward! A Post-Election Town Hall Meeting"
Join Amy Goodman host of Democracy Now!,
and a panel of Stanford scholars for an open discussion
of the November 2 presidential election.
For more info aurorforum.org
Stanford, CA:
Thursday, November 4, 7:30 PM
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Aurora Forum Town Meeting
Kresge Auditorium
San Diego, CA:
Friday, November 5, 7:00 PM
BENEFIT FOR ACTIVIST SAN DIEGO
First Unitarian Church
4190 Front Street, Hillcrest
(opposite UCSD Medical Center Hospital)
$10 donation in advance. $20 at the door.
Open to the public.
Contact number 619-528-8383 for tickets
5PM - Donor's Recption
$50 - $100 suggested donation for a pre-event
reception: includes Amy's $24 autographed book.
For more info Activist San Diego
or call 619-528-8383
For the latest information, check http://www.democracynow.org/book
Amy Goodman, host of the national, daily radio/TV program
Democracy Now!, is on a national tour to mark the launch of
her first book "The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily
Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them"
(co-written with her brother, journalist David Goodman).
Spread the word! For event details and a complete schedule
of tour dates, and how to order a book as a gift, for yourself,
or for a library or a prison book program, go to
http://www.democracynow.org/book. The book tour
website has downloadable posters, flyers, and an easy
event-by-event Email A Friend option.
About "The Exception to the Rulers!"
"Hard-hitting, no-holds barred brand of reporting...
fierce and tireless." -Publishers Weekly
"What journalism should be: beholden to the interests
of people, not power and profit." -Arundhati Roy, author,
The God of Small Things
"Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new
heights." -Noam Chomsky, author, 9/11 and Hegemony
or Survival
"Amy Goodman [carries] the great muckraking tradition
of Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, and I.F. Stone into the
electronic age."
-Howard Zinn, historian and author, A People's History
of the United States
"Pick up this book, shake your head in disbelief and disgust
as you read it, and then...go raise some hell!" -Michael Moore,
Academy-award winning director, Bowling for Columbine
And the rulers take exception!
"Hostile, combative, and even disrespectful." -President Bill Clinton
"A threat to national security." -The Indonesian military
"Not easy-listening." -The New York Times
"I have advised my mother to talk to no reporters because of ...
people like you." -Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) BADIL Resource Center for
Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Press Release, 2 November 2004 (E/38/04)
Six weeks of anniversaries
On 2 November, Palestine began a series of
anniversaries: the event that brought the
Palestine issue to the forefront of world
concern/disruption, the Balfour Declaration, 2
November 1917; the UN Partition resolution; the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR);
and, the UN resolution establishing the UN
Conciliation Commission for Palestine and
calling for the return of Palestinian refugees.
The period ends 11 December with demonstrations
and calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions
against Israel resulting from the recent meeting
of the European Coordinating Committee of NGO's
Working on Palestine (ECCP) and the European
Social Forum. A main element of the campaign
will be to demand the suspension of the European
Association Agreement with Israel. The date was
chosen to mark the signing of the UDHR and also
put Palestine on the international agenda.
Day of Solidarity, Partition of Palestine
The Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People is 29 November, the day Resolution 181
was adopted by the United Nations. The
Resolution, 57 years ago, called for the
partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab
state in opposition to the desires of its
majority, the Palestinian-Arab residents. In
1977, the UN declared 29 November the UN Day of
Solidarity with the Palestinian people and their
right to self-determination.
Human Rights Day
December 10 is the annual commemoration of
International Human Rights Day and the 56th
anniversary of the signing of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Among the basic
rights in the declaration is the right "to leave
any country, including his own, and to return to
his country" and the "right to own property" and
not be "arbitrarily deprived of his property".
Palestinian Right of Return, establishment of
the UNCCP
Eleven December is the 56th anniversary of
Resolution 194 (III) affirming the right of
Palestinian refugees and displaced persons to
return and repossess their homes and property
and receive compensation for damages and losses.
The Resolution created no new rights or laws,
it simply reflected existing international law
and practice.
Resolution 194 also established the Conciliation
Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), the primary
international body mandated to provide
protection to Palestinian refugees and search
for lasting solutions to the Arab-Israeli
conflict. It identified the private property
owned by Palestinian Arabs in Palestine before
the establishment of Israel in 1948 resulting in
453,000 records totaling 1.5 million individual
holdings.
But the UNCCP has not been provided with the
machinery or resources to carry out its mandate
since 1952. Since then, there has been no
international body providing protection for
Palestinian refugees or searching for durable
solutions to their plight and an end to the
conflict.
Palestinian refugees still left out
Efforts by the international community to
include the Palestinian people in the community
of nations continue to exclude the Palestinian
refugees, a majority of Palestinians, from the
universal rights accorded to persons around the
world. For more than 55 years, the international
community has supported refugees around the
world who simply want to go home, recognizing
that a durable peace is not possible against the
unfulfilled desire and right of refugees to
return home. Palestinian refugees deserve the
same.
Badil-english is a dissemination list of BADIL Resource
Center. All communication with BADIL should be addressed
to: info@badil.org
In order to subscribe to this list, please send an empty
message to: badil-english-subscribe@p-ol.com
If you wish to un-subscribe, please send an empty message
to: badil-english-unsubscribe@p-ol.com
BADIL Resource Center aims to provide a resource pool
of alternative, critical and progressive information on the
question of Palestinian refugees in our quest to achieve
a just and lasting soluton for exiled Palestinians based
on their right of return.
PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine;
Email: info@badil.org;
Website: www.badil.org;
Telephone/Fax: 02-2747346
>From outside of Palestine: 972-2-2747346
Badil-english mailing list
Badil-english@p-ol.com
http://mail.p-ol.com/mailman/listinfo/badil-english
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) 3 Palestinians Extra-Judicially Killed by Israeli
Occupation Forces in Nablus
bayareapalestine Main Page
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Press Release
Ref: 160/2004
Date: 02 November 2004
Time: 08:30 GMT
On Monday, 1 November 2004, Israeli occupation forces (IOF)
committed an extra-judicial killing in Nablus, which left 3 members
of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (the military wing of Fatah movement)
dead, and injured a fourth one. The killing was carried out by an
undercover unit of IOF, whose members often disguise as Palestinian
civilians. This latest attacks came in the context of an official policy
adopted by the Israeli political and military establishments.
According to preliminary investigations conducted by PCHR, at
approximately 21:00 on Monday, 1 November 2004, an undercover
unit of IOF, disguised in Palestinian civilian clothes and traveling in
a civilian car that had a Palestinian registration plate, moved into
Nablus. The car stopped near 'Abdul Mugheeth al-Ansari school,
and 6-8 persons who were wearing women's clothes got out of it.
Those persons mounted the stairs of al-Yasamina, which leads to
al-Samra area in the west of the old town. They moved towards
4 Palestinians who were sitting in the area and fired at them at
very close range. Three of these Palestinians were instantly killed:
1. Majdi Mar'ei, 25;
2. Fadi Sami Nour al-Sarwan, 22; and
3. Jihad 'Omar Abu Salha, 25.
The three were members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the military
wing of Fatah movement. The fourth Palestinian was seriously wounded.
Soon, more Israeli troops arrived on the scene to transport the
undercover unit, while an F-16 fighter jet, a helicopter and a drone
were flying over the city.
Majid Mar'ei had survived an assassination attempt carried out by
IOF on 15 September 2004, which left 6 Palestinians dead, including
an 11-year-old child. Israeli military sources claimed that Mar'ei had
been wanted for a long time and that he was responsible for a number
of attacks against Israeli targets.
PCHR remains gravely concerned about such escalation by the Israeli
government and its occupation. Israeli violations of human rights,
including extra-judicial and indiscriminate killings, further indicate
Israel's disregard for international law and humanitarian law, which
prohibit such acts that constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva
Convention (1949), in particular article 147. PCHR asserts that the
policy of extra-judicial executions officially adopted by the Israeli
government serves to increase tension in the region and threatens
the lives of Palestinian civilians. PCHR reiterates its calls for the
High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill
their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
"End"
Public Document
For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza,
Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 - 2825893
PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal,
PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip.
E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org
If you got this forwarded and you want to subscribe, send mail to
request@pchrgaza.org
and write "subscribe" in the subject line.
To unsubscribe, send mail to request@pchrgaza.org
and write "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
For assistance: info@pchrgaza.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Bamboozling Morality, by Kim Petersen
at 2:35 AM -0800 11/2/04,
Sunil/Dissident Voice distributed:
From: "Barbara Deutsch"
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've
been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence
of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out
the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply
too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -
that we've been so credulous.
Carl Sagan
Kim Petersen on the one-sidedness of corporate (and often
progressive) media depictions of the situation on the ground
in Iraq, the marginalization of Iraqi perspectives, and the
purposely ignored death toll of Iraqi civilians and US forces....
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov2004/Petersen1102.htm
Why Are We In Iraq? Bush Family $$$ Signs
By Evelyn J. Pringle
After Dick Cheney's tenure at the Pentagon ended in 1993, he
spent much of the next two years deciding whether to run for
President. He formed a political-action committee, and crossed
the country making speeches and raising money (Contact Sport,
The New Yorker, 2/16/04). Records from the FEC show that
Cheney's PAC contributors included executives of the companies
that have since won the largest contracts in Iraq. Among them
were Thomas Cruikshank, Halliburton's CEO at the time; Stephen
Bechtel whose family's firm now has a contract in Iraq worth as
much as $2.8 billion; and Duane Andrews, then senior VP of
Science Applications International Corporation, which has won
seven contracts in Iraq. However, while Cheney and his pals may
well be the most blatant profiteers in Iraq, they are by no means
the only ones involved in this grand war-profiteering scheme
commonly referred to as the "War on Terror." The #1 spot on
the list belongs to the First Family....
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov2004/Pringle1102.htm
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Message from the people of Fallujah
Yahoo News Groups
Bristol Stop The War News - U.K
31st October 2004
This letter was sent by representatives of the people
of Fallujah to UN secretary general Kofi Annan
From: "Barbara Deutsch"
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=29014
"IT IS more than evident that US forces are committing daily acts of
genocide in Iraq. As we write, these crimes are being perpetrated
against the city of Fallujah.
US war planes are launching their most powerful bombs against the
civilian population, killing and wounding hundreds of innocent
people. Their tanks are pounding the city with heavy artillery.
As you know, there is no military presence in the city. There have
been no actions by the resistance in Fallujah in the last few weeks
because negotiations are in progress between representatives of the
city and the Allawi government.
The new bombardment by the US has begun while the people are fasting
during the celebration of Ramadan. Now many of them are trapped in
the ruins of their homes and cut off from any outside assistance.
On the night of 13 October a single US bombardment destroyed 50
houses and their inhabitants. Is this a crime of genocide or a
lesson about US democracy? The US is committing acts of terror
against the people of Fallujah for only one reason: to force them
to accept the occupation.
Your excellency and the whole world know that the US and their
allies have destroyed our country on the pretext of the threat of
weapons of mass destruction.
Now, after their own mass destruction and the killing of thousands
of civilians, they have admitted that they have not found any.
But they have said nothing about the crimes they have committed.
The whole world is silent, and even the killing of Iraqi civilians
is not condemned. Will the US be paying compensation, as it made
Iraq do after the 1991 Gulf War?
We know that we live in a world of double standards. In Fallujah
the US has created a new and shadowy target -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al-Zarqawi is a new excuse to justify the USAs criminal actions. A
year has passed since this new excuse was dreamed up, and every time
they attack homes, mosques and restaurants, killing women and
children, they say. We have launched a successful operation against
al-Zarqawi.
They will never say they have killed him, because he does not exist.
The people of Fallujah assure you that this person is not in the
city, nor probably anywhere else in Iraq.
Many times the people of Fallujah have asked that if anyone sees
al-Zarqawi they should kill him. We know now that he is nothing but
a phantom created by the US.
Our representatives have repeatedly denounced kidnapping and killing
of civilians. We have nothing to do with any group that acts in an
inhuman manner.
We call on you and the leaders of the world to exert the greatest
pressure on the Bush administration to end its crimes against
Fallujah and pull its army back from the city.
When they left a while ago, the city had peace and tranquillity.
There was no disorder in the city. The civil administration here
functioned well, despite the lack of resources.
Our offence is simply that we did not welcome the forces of
occupation. This is our right according to UN Charter, according to
international law, and according to the norms of humanity.
It is very urgent that you, along with other world leaders,
intervene immediately to prevent another massacre. We have tried to
contact UN representatives in Iraq to ask them to do this but, as
you know, they are sealed off in the maximum security Green Zone in
Baghdad and we are not allowed access to them.
We want the UN to take a stand on the situation in Fallujah.
Best wishes, in the name of the people of Fallujah, the shura
council of Fallujah, the trade union association, the teachers
union, and the council of tribal leaders ."
Kassim Abdullsattar al-Jumaily: President
The Study Center of Human Rights & Democracy
On behalf of the people of Fallujah and for:
Al-Fallujah Shura Council
The Bar Association
The Teacher Union
Council of Tribes Leaders
The House of Fatwa and Religious Education
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