There is a new animation by Mark Fiore on the Internet.
Its subject is the US Bush administration’s false claims of a Iraq-9/11 connection, Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction“, etc.
Rumsfeld banned post war reconstruction of Iraq.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
*RAMADI, Sep 5 (IPS) – The U.S. military has lost control over the volatile al-Anbar province, Iraqi police and residents say.*
The area to the west of Baghdad includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns that have seen the worst of military occupation, and the strongest resistance.
Despite massive military operations which destroyed most of Fallujah and much of cities like Haditha and al-Qa’im in Ramadi, real control of the city now seems to be in the hands of local resistance.
In losing control of this province, the U.S. would have lost control over much of Iraq.
“We are talking about nearly a third of the area of Iraq,” Ahmed Salman, a historian from Fallujah told IPS. “Al-Anbar borders Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the resistance there will never stop as long as there are American soldiers on the ground.”
Salman said the U.S. military is working against itself. “Their actions ruin their goal because they use these huge, violent military operations which kill so many civilians, and make it impossible to calm down the people of al-Anbar.”
The resistance seems in control of the province now. “No government official can do anything without contacting the resistance first,” Abu Ghalib, a government official in Ramadi told IPS.
“Even the governor used to take their approval for everything. When he stopped doing so, they issued a death sentence against him, and now he cannot move without American protection.”
Recent weeks have brought countless attacks on U.S. troops in Haditha, Ramadi, Fallujah and on the Baghdad-Amman highway. Several armoured vehicles have been destroyed, and dozens of U.S. soldiers killed in the al-Anbar province, according to both Iraqi witnesses and the U.S. Department of Defence.
Long stretches of the 550km Baghdad-Amman highway which crosses al-Anbar are now controlled by resistance groups. Other parts are targeted by highway looters.
“If we import any supplies for the U.S. Army or Iraqi government, the fighters will take it from us and sell it in the local market,” trader Hayder al-Mussawi said. “And if we import for the local market, the robbers will take it.”
Eyewitnesses in Ramadi say many of the attacks are taking place within their city. They say that the U.S. military recently asked citizens in al-Anbar to stop targeting them, and promised to withdraw to their bases in Haditha and Habaniyah (near Fallujah) soon, leaving the cities for Iraqi security forces to patrol.
“I do not think that is possible,” retired Iraqi police Brigadier-General Kahtan al-Dulaimi from Ramadi told IPS. “I believe no local unit could stand the severe resistance of al-Anbar, and it will be the last province to be handed over to Iraqi security forces.”
According to the group Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 964 coalition soldiers have been killed in al-Anbar, more than in any other Iraqi province.. Baghdad is second, with 665 coalition deaths.
Residents of Ramadi told IPS that the U.S. military has knocked down several buildings near the government centre in the city, the capital of the province.
In an apparent move to secure their offices, U.S. Army and Marine engineers have started to level a half-kilometre stretch of low-rise buildings opposite the centre. Abandoned buildings in this area have been used repeatedly to launch attacks on the government complex.
“They are trying to create a separation area between the offices of the puppet government and the buildings the resistance are using to attack them,” a Ramadi resident said. “But now the Americans are making us all angry because they are destroying our city.”
U.S. troops have acknowledged their own difficulties in doing this. “We’re used to taking down walls, doors and windows, but eight city blocks is something new to us,” Marine 1st Lt. Ben Klay, 24, said in the U.S. Department of Defence newspaper Stars and Stripes.
In nearby Fallujah, residents are reporting daily clashes between Iraqi-U.S. security forces and the resistance.
“The local police force which used to be out of the conflict are now being attacked,” said a resident who gave his name as Abu Mohammed. “Hundreds of local policemen have quit the force after seeing that they are considered a legitimate target by fighters..”
The U.S. forces seem to have no clear policy in the face of the sustained resistance.
“The U.S. Army seems so confused in handling the security situation in Anbar,” said historian Salman. “Attacks are conducted from al-Qa’im on the Syrian border to Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, all the way through Haditha, Hit, Ramadi and Fallujah on a daily basis.”
He added: “A contributing factor to the instability of the province is the endless misery of the civilians who live with no services, no infrastructure, random shootings and so many wrongful detentions.”
According to the new Pentagon quarterly report on Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq, Iraqi casualties rose 51 percent in recent months. The report says Sunni-based insurgency is “potent and viable.”
The report says that in a period since the establishment of the new Iraqi government, between May 20 and Aug. 11 this year, the average number of weekly attacks rose to nearly 800, almost double the number of the attacks in early 2004.
Casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces averaged nearly 120 a day during the period, up from 80 a day reported in the previous quarterly report. Two years ago they were averaging roughly 30 a day.
On Aug. 31 the Pentagon announced that it is increasing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to 140,000, which is 13,000 more than the number five weeks ago.
At least 65 U.S. soldiers were killed in August, with 36 of the deaths reported in al-Anbar. That brought the total number killed to at least 2,642.
_______________________________________________
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
LikeLike
Iraq’s Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War*
Links Were Cited to Justify U.S. Invasion, Report Says
by Jonathan Weisman
The Washington Post
September 9, 2006; A01 {that’s page one]
A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were
strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda
while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those
links to justify invading Iraq.
Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda’s overtures and
tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained
former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein “only
expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden.”
The report also said that exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC)
tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false
information on Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been
penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including IRAN’s, a 2002
White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be
continued.
The newly declassified intelligence report provided administration
critics with fresh ammunition, less than two months before midterm
elections and in the middle of President Bush’s campaign to refocus the
public’s attention away from Iraq and toward the threat of terrorism.
Senior Senate Democrats immediately seized on the findings, using some
of their strongest language yet to say that the president continues to
willfully and falsely connect Hussein to al-Qaeda.
As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and
Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces
this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that
Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a
blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,” according to the report.
“The president is still distorting. He’s still making statements which
are false,” said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence committee
member.
The partial release of the report came after nearly three years of
partisan wrangling over what is to be a five-chapter analysis of the use
of prewar intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The
heart of the report — a detailed comparison of administration
statements with the intelligence then available — is still far from
release. But the committee voted Thursday to release two chapters, one
on the role that Iraqi exiles played in shaping prewar intelligence, the
other on the accuracy of the prewar analyses of Hussein’s nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons capabilities and his suspected links to
al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
White House spokesman Tony Snow dismissed the findings as old news. “If
we have people who want to re-litigate that, that’s fine,” he said.
But Republican attempts to paint the findings as a partisan rehash were
undercut by intelligence committee members from the GOP. The committee
report’s conclusions are based on the Democrats’ findings because two
Republicans — Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) —
supported those findings.
“After reviewing thousands of pages of evidence, I voted for the
conclusions that most closely reflect the facts in the report,” Snowe
said in a written statement. “Policy-makers seemingly discounted or
dismissed warnings about the veracity of critical intelligence reports
that may have served as a basis for going to war.”
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) was emphatic this week that
Iraqi exiles did not fundamentally shape the critical assessment of the
Iraqi threat in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
But, as Snowe emphasized in her statement, the report concluded that
information provided by an INC source was cited in that estimate and in
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United
Nations as corroborating evidence about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons
program. Those citations came despite two April 2002 CIA assessments, a
May 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency fabrication notice, and a July 2002
National Intelligence Council warning — all saying that the INC source
may have been coached by the exile group into fabricating the
information.
Democrats and Republicans agree that analysts and politicians of all
political stripes were wrong about the prewar assessments of Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction. But the committee report indicates that
intelligence analysts were substantially right about Hussein’s lack of
operational links to al-Qaeda. And Democrats compared the
administration’s public statements with newly declassified intelligence
assessments to build their case that efforts to link Iraq to al-Qaeda
were willfully misleading.
In a classified January 2003 report, for instance, the CIA concluded
that Hussein “viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a
threat.” But one day after that conclusion was published, Levin noted,
Vice President Cheney said the Iraqi government “aids and protects
terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.”
Intelligence reports in June, July and September 2002 all cast doubts on
a reported meeting in Prague between Iraqi intelligence agents and Sept.
11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Yet, in a Sept. 8, 2002, appearance on NBC’s
“Meet The Press,” Cheney said the CIA considered the reports on the
meeting credible, Levin said.
In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that “Iraq
is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical and
biological weapons] knowledge or assistance.” A year later, Bush said,
“Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons
training.”
Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), an intelligence committee member, said
it was unfair for Democrats to compare the intelligence assessments in
the report to the administration’s statements. He said such comparisons
go beyond the scope of the chapters released.
But Democrats were unequivocal in asserting that the chapters chronicle
an indisputable pattern of deception.
“It is such a blatant misleading of the United States, its people, to
prepare them, to position them, to, in fact, make them enthusiastic or
feel that it’s justified to go to war with Iraq,” said Sen. John D.
Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee’s vice chairman. “That kind of
public manipulation I don’t know has any precedent in American
history.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.
Read this at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090800777.html
See also: “Senate Intel Committee Bloodies Bush’s Nose” at:
http://tinyurl.com/jswgs
LikeLike
Pingback: Bush’s Iraq invasion caused present bloodshed, Chelsea Manning writes | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Iraq war re-start and BBC militarist propaganda | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Ahmed Chalabi, Iraq war liar, and media | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Terrorism, open letter to French President | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Ruling classes and conspiracy theories | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Britain’s disastrous wars and Jeremy Corbyn | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Saudi-9/11 links, 80,000 secret pages | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Ex-CIA interrogator debunks Bush’s Iraq lies | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: USA: book on Iraq war reviewed | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Hurricane Irma abused for austerity in Puerto Rico | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: ‘Russiagate conspiracy’ campaign based on double agent | Dear Kitty. Some blog