Iraq (1 Viewer)

2,000th U.S. soldier died from his wound in a texas hospital yesterday as their government has been comming up with ideas to make them ore like machines....

Super-soldiers may get brain-chip
24-10-2005
From: The Daily Telegraph
http://www.news.com.au/story/print/0,10119,17013218,00.html

US military experts are attempting to create an army of super-human soldiers who will be more intelligent and deadly thanks to a microchip implanted in their brains.

Scientists believe the implant will vastly improve the memory of troops so that they can recall every detail of their training and become more effective fighters.
Researchers at the University of Southern California's bio-engineering department have created the chip, which acts in exactly the same way as the hippocampus - the part of the brain that deals with memory.

In experiments, the team removed that section of the brain of dead rats and inserted the chip in its place. The implant sent exactly the same electronic signals as the real thing.

The next stage of the project is to test the implant on live animals. If this work proves to be as successful, experiments could one day be carried out on soldiers.
 
Saddam team wants to 'try' Bush
25/10/2005 17:14 - (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1823225,00.html
Amman - Saddam Hussein's defence committee wants to put US President George W Bush in the dock to mirror the Baghdad trial of the former Iraqi leader over a Shi'ite massacre, a Jordanian lawyer said on Tuesday.

"We shall contact international and Arab lawyer associations and will put forward the proof allowing for a trial of the criminal Bush at the same time as the fake trial takes place in Iraq," Saleh Armuti told a meeting of the Amman-based Saddam defence committee.

If lawyers abroad fail to take the case to court, "we shall organise it in Jordan and will invite international supporters", Armuti said, without specifying on what grounds he wanted to try Bush.

Saddam is currently being tried on charges of murder and torture related to the killing of 148 Shi'ites from the village of Dujail following a failed attempt on the Iraqi leader's life in July 1982.

Saddam's Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, who arrived in Amman on Tuesday to take part in talks on co-ordinating strategy for his next court hearing on November 28, did not attend the defence committee meeting.

"Khalil will meet members of the defence team later today," said Jordanian lawyer Ziyad Najdawi.
 
IRAQ: Government hails poll as fair as Sunnis call for recount
26 Oct 2005 14:51:20 GMT

Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/dfc78b319d96f943d6189299e277fa81.htm

BAGHDAD, 26 October (IRIN) - In the wake of the 15 October referendum on the proposed Iraqi national constitution, government officials say that voting procedures were fair and that a recount is unwarranted.

Nevertheless, Sunni communities are demanding a revision of ballots, pointing to allegations of voting irregularities in certain Sunni districts.

According to official results, 78 percent of Iraqi voters - out of a total turnout of 70 percent - voted yes to the new charter.

Farid Ayar, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq, said the results were legitimate and that there had been no suggestion of electoral tampering during voting process.

He added that the UN, which is advising the Iraqi government on the political process, was closely monitoring developments.

He went on to refute Sunni claims that the voting process had been flawed.

"The Sunnis complained that there was wrongdoing," said Ayar. "But in reality, they couldn't get what they wanted, so they had to come up with accusations to explain why they couldn't get three Sunni provinces to vote against the constitution," Ayar said.

According to the rules of the referendum, the draft constitution would have been voided if two thirds of the voters in at least three of Iraq's 18 governorates had voted against it.

The rejectionists got the required numbers in the western Sunni provinces of Anbar and Sallahuddin, but in Ninevah and Diyala - also considered Sunni heartland - the "yes" vote took the day.

Throughout the tangled constitution-drafting process, Sunnis have consistently objected to the document, fearing they would lose political power to traditional rivals, the Kurds and the Shi'ites, in the country's north and south.

Other sticking points were related to women's rights and the implementation of Shari'at, or Islamic, law.

Despite the government's confirmation of fair play, however, many Sunnis are insistent that voting in some areas was rigged.

"Voting was impossible in many parts of the Nineveh governorate - such as Talafar and Haweejah - for security reasons," said Saleh Al-Mutalek, a spokesperson for the government's Sunni representation, who was petitioning for a recount in the Nineveh and southern Basra governorates.

"But the government didn't care, because they got what they wanted by faking results and forcing an unfair constitution on us," Al-Mutalek maintained.

Despite Sunni apprehensions, however, the UN was quick to note its acceptance and approval of the document.

"The Iraqi people have made their decision and have approved the draft constitution," said a Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an 26 October statement.

"With the adoption of the constitution, Iraq can now move forward to the next step in its political transition process - the holding of national elections on 15 December."

On the streets of Baghdad, though, reactions were mixed.

"I didn't vote because the results were going to be a faked in any case," said Baghdad resident Sua'ad Rawi. "The US wants the referendum to be approved, and for this reason, the Nineveh result was exactly what they wanted."

By contrast, 34-year-old Shiite Salah Hussein, also a resident of the capital, believed the election results were fair. "This is the first time Shiites have had rights in this country, and now people want to say it was fake. What's true is that we wanted the constitution - and now it will become law."
 
Hi dropped in to say Hi as you appeared to be talking to yourself :)
236 posts in this thread alone.....anyway to cut a long story short I am anti war camp bla bla
 
Shay HT said:
Dunno if this has already being posted, docu on Fallujah
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm
Click to expand...

also

US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah
By Peter Popham
Published: 08 November 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988."

The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons."

In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.

"They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.

In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."

The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets.

Meanwhile, five US soldiers from the elite 75th Ranger Regiment have been charged with kicking and punching detainees in Iraq.

The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday.
 
brilliant article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5334135-103550,00.html

Iraq is miring all who touch it. What does Tony Blair say when he reads that American forces at the siege of Falluja used "shake-'n'bake" shells on residential areas? White phosphorus, as reported by George Monbiot on these pages yesterday and confirmed by the Pentagon, is worse than napalm. Since it is "chemical" in its effect on humans, it falls under a ban by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention for use against "areas of high civilian population".
One of the most-cited reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein was his deployment of chemical weapons against his own people. That does not justify us in using them. If Sir Christopher Meyer is right, Britain never complains to Washington over what happens in Iraq. But when the full story of these decisions is told, serious charges should be laid against British ministers. Will they use Donald Rumsfeld's line, that "stuff happens"?

Hence the rising tempo of Whitehall's search for an exit strategy. Yesterday Downing Street picked on the suggestion of the old Kurdish warlord Jalal Talabani that he might let Britain go home by the end of next year. On Monday John Reid had in effect rejected Talabani's offer. "A process of British withdrawal", he told the Commons, may start by the end of next year or it may not. When asked by MPs what would decide the date, he said it would depend on the strategy. What was that? Not to fail but to succeed, was the reply. It is astonishing that MPs buy such rubbish. But by yesterday the government was clearly distancing itself from granting the Iraqis any right of veto on British departure. Everything now depends on "security".

If Blair wants an exit strategy, one is staring him in the face. It is being adopted by his comrade in arms, Donald Rumsfeld no less. The Rumsfeld doctrine was that if you want to beat hell out of a place, do so and get out. If you want to punish the Taliban for hosting Osama bin Laden, smash them to pieces. Bomb their cities, kill their families, but do not stay. Staying is for pinkos and social workers.

Rumsfeld's Iraq strategy may have been full of holes, but it originally stuck to the same principle. Eliminate Saddam Hussein, obliterate his regime, but do it "lite". Never get bogged down in nation-building, whatever the neocons or neoimperialists may say. Find some stooge such as Ahmed Chalabi and leave him to sort the place out. Avoid large armies of occupation and, above all, avoid allies with moral scruples. As Condoleezza Rice told George Bush during his first election campaign: "We don't need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten."

In Afghanistan Rumsfeld's plan is now almost complete. From the start Washington insisted that once it had fixed the election of its puppet, Hamid Karzai, to office, it would get out fast. Democracy was in place. Afghanistan should be left to Karzai, the warlords, the Pashtun mullahs and the drug runners. If the Taliban returned, too bad. Find some stooge ally to throw up a smokescreen and get out.

Who is that smokescreen? The answer is John Reid. He is sending 4,800 British troops allegedly to wipe out the world's most lucrative opium trade and bring democracy, stability and protection to southern Afghanistan. How re-impoverishing Afghan peasants will encourage them to defy a resurgent Taliban is unclear. The identical strategy failed after the 2001 invasion. Already Nato's byzantine diplomats are fighting like rats in a sack over who will do what and where in the mountains of Khyber and the wastes of Helmand. Nato and Britain have been suckered to the miserable task of covering America's retreat. The Pentagon must be laughing fit to bust.

How the same strategy will play in Iraq is harder to see. Talabani seems to accept what has long been the view of the British army, that foreign troops will no longer be needed in the south of Iraq by next summer. Since army training is in coalition hands, the coalition can notionally decide when that army is ready. Iraqi troops have no problem being trained, only in being motivated, a quite different matter.

Most intelligence regards any exit strategy based on a revived Iraqi army as fantasy. Its brigades will not be deployable outside their areas of primary recruitment, if only because the defence ministry is not that stupid. The ministry, like the police, is increasingly in thrall to one or other party militia. Army units deployed in possibly hostile provinces, at least without coalition cover, will almost certainly refuse to fight. Indeed the federal constitution appears to give regional governors the right of veto over such deployment. The reality is internal security in each of Iraq's three regions will be in the hands of police and unofficial militias. This has already been recognised in Kurdistan.

Talabani is accordingly inviting Britain to declare the Iraqi army (in which, as a Kurd, he has little interest) to be a "superb fighting force" and leave next year with its head high. This offer is worth taking. But it will require the coalition forces to hack deals over bases and equipment with whatever local power structures emerge as dominant in next month's elections.

These deals will be tough further south because the occupation has injected the poison of insurgency into both Sunni and Shia areas. They will get tougher the longer the occupation continues. By late next year, one intelligence analyst told me, "We may as well negotiate an exit strategy direct with Tehran".

Reid claims that if Britain leaves soon there will be "civil war". I find no intelligence to support this classic imperialist excuse. There will be bloodshed in places, but there is that now. As Talabani knows, the occupation is protecting his ministers, but it is fostering militancy everywhere and hopelessly undermining his authority. The one hope for Iraqis is to own their country and be free of the humiliation of foreign rule. That cannot come too soon.

The default mode of American foreign policy is isolation and of British policy continued intervention. America is shrewdly retreating from Afghanistan, knowing that the place is heading for trouble. Britain is the fall guy. Will the same happen in Iraq?

Reid should explain why he is really committing 4,800 troops to act as Taliban targets in Helmand and why he is so sceptical of Talabani's offer. He might also ask himself why Rumsfeld is laughing.

[email protected]
 
US forces shoot five family members
US forces have shot dead five family members, including three children, at a roadblock near the city of Baquba, fearing a car bomb attack.

A US military spokesman said warning shots were fired when the minibus they were travelling in failed to stop as it approached the barrier.
Soldiers then opened fire on the vehicle with a machine-gun.


Police said two men and three children were killed and two women and a child were wounded in the incident.
Click to expand...


http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/1121/iraq.html
 
no point in putting the gag on now eh? It's a well known fact that tanks/planes were targeting any journos not "embedded" with the yanks, look at the al jazeera hq in baghdad (6 journos killed) and john simpsons from the bbc convoy (4 killed). I was reading someplace that after contractors and military that Journalists have the highest casualty rate in any war so far? coincedence? hardly. Anyway teflon tony and bush now know that the whole world knows that they are lying cunts and they can get away with anything. Both are sitting pretty in their respective second terms and don't give a toss. This is what it is all about in lest we forget..

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/new...YUE220804_RTRUKOC_0_UK-ENERGY-IRAQ-REPORT.xml


LONDON (Reuters) - Big oil firms may rob Iraq of billions and grab control of its oilfields unless ordinary Iraqis can have a greater say in how their country's riches are tapped, U.S. and British campaigners said on Tuesday.
Big oil is being lured by the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), promoted by Washington and London, which gives them huge returns on investment, but deprives Iraq of up to $194 billion (113 billion pounds), according to "Crude Designs: The rip-off of Iraq's oil wealth".

"Under the influence of the U.S. and UK, powerful politicians and technocrats in the Iraqi oil ministry are pushing to hand all Iraq's undeveloped fields to multinational oil companies, to be developed under production sharing agreements," said Greg Muttitt, the report's author.

Muttitt is an analyst with PLATFORM, a London-based charity focussed on the social and environmental impact of oil.
 
Latex lizzie said:
I was reading someplace that after contractors and military that Journalists have the highest casualty rate in any war so far
Click to expand...
Do civilians not count then? Cos, I dunno, looking at that A and E article it is pretty clear that shitloads of them are getting blown up every day. When it isn't by the americans people don't seem to give a fuck though.

Latex lizzie said:
Anyway teflon tony and bush now know that the whole world knows that they are lying cunts and they can get away with anything. Both are sitting pretty in their respective second terms and don't give e a toss. This is what it is all about in lest we forget..
Click to expand...
Blair is in his third term. And in fairness to him, he did tell Bush where to go over the bomb Al-Jazeera in Qatar thing.
 
Should have said professionals innit. Goes without saying that civilians are the highest count smartarse.

yeah I bliped tony is in his third term, as for fairness for him the only thing I like to see to him is a grenade in a very small room.
 
Latex lizzie said:
Should have said professionals innit. Goes without saying that civilians are the highest count smartarse.

yeah I bliped tony is in his third term, as for fairness for him the only thing I like to see to him is a grenade in a very small room.
Click to expand...
Well I think Blair didn't have a choice in the matter really, no matter who was PM they would have supported the war in Iraq given Britain has such a historical debt to America and the Brits have been involved with Iraq since it was created. Had Britain not got involved the situation in Iraq and the middle east would be a lot worse. Could you imagine what would have happened if Al-Jazeera was bombed in Qatar? There would have been total mayhem.

And at least Blair was democratically elected, in comparison to Saddam who rather enjoyed gassing Kurds for the laugh.
 
Latex lizzie said:
I was reading someplace that after contractors and military that Journalists have the highest casualty rate in any war so far?
Click to expand...

Yeah but .... it could be because they have a habit of running frantically in the direction of the shooting/bombing when it breaks out, as opposed to normal human beings who do the opposite ....
 
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