By Robert Fisk in Baghdad - 30 July 2004
Their Kalashnikov automatic rifles regularly jam after firing two bullets, their flak jackets don’t protect them, their promised £45 pay increase never arrived, their boss wants to take the air-conditioners from their vehicles and the hospitals can’t cope with their wounded.
Apart from that, the men of the new Iraqi police mobile patrols in Baghdad - the front-line victims of the Iraq war - are fighting fit. More than that. They’ve found that (...)
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Protection, not oppression: How the new mobile police patrols have discovered job satisfaction
1 August 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
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Unreported war: US document reveals scale of conflict
31 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
By Robert Fisk
Iraq, we are told by Mr Blair, is safer. It is not. US military reports clearly show much of the violence in Iraq is not revealed to journalists, and thus goes largely unreported. This account of the insurgency across Iraq over three days last week provides astonishing proof that Iraq under its new, American-appointed Prime Minister, has grown more dangerous and violent.
But even this is only a partial record of events. US casualties and dozens of Iraqi civilian deaths (...) -
Iraqi Women and Torture, Rapes and Rumors of Rape
31 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
2 commentsby Lila Rajiva
Part One & II
By now, everyone has heard of the ghost detainees of Abu Ghraib — the prisoners who were never processed into the system and were kept out of sight of the Red Cross so that they could be whisked from prison to prison unaccounted for. But what about the other ghosts detainees — the women? Where are the women of Abu Ghraib and why have they been kept out of sight?
When the Abu Ghraib story first broke at the end of April, no one appears to have found it (...) -
Baghdad is a city that reeks with the stench of the dead
29 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are on the floor. Dozens of them. Outside, in the 46C (114F) heat, Qadum Ganawi tells me how his brother Hassan was murdered.
"He was bringing supper home for our family in Palestine Street but he never reached our home. Then we got a phone call saying we could (...) -
Iraq: What Went Wrong?
27 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
by Stephen Soldz
[Talk delivered July 22, 2004 to Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice]
After invading Iraq, the leader of the conquering army proclaimed:
"Our armies do not come in your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators ... I am commanded to invite you to participate in the management of your own civil affairs."
Was this George Bush, Tony Blair, Paul Bremer, or Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez? No, it was conquering British General Stanley Maude, in (...) -
Terror by video: How Iraq’s kidnappers drew their inspiration from horrors of Chechnya
27 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
by Robert Fisk
The pictures are grainy, the voices sometimes unclear. But when Kim Sun-il shrieks "Don’t kill me" over and over again, his fear is palpable. As the heads of Iraq’s kidnap victims are sawn off, Koranic recitations - usually by a well-known Saudi imam are played on the soundtrack. At the beheading of an American, the murderer ritually wipes his bloody knife twice on the shirt of his victim, just as Saudi officials clean their blades after public executions in the kingdom. (...) -
Christians fear persecution in the new Iraq
27 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
by Jamie Tarabay
On a Sunday afternoon, attendance at mass at St. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral in Baghdad was decidedly thin.
A handful of Syrian Orthodox loitered on the steps of the church afterward, women removing their dainty white lace veils as they chatted with friends. For many, church on Sunday is the only time they can really socialize because of safety fears.
Most Christians blame concern over a tumultuous security situation for keeping them away from church, but it’s only a (...) -
Family Values
25 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
by Robert Thompson When the "State of Israel" was declared, those Palestinians who found themselves on the "Israeli" side of the famous Green Line were given a strange kind of second class Israeli citizenship, whereas those who were then in the West Bank were granted Jordanian citizenship and those in the Gaza Strip were taken in charge by Egypt. This had the odd result of splitting families, depending purely on where they were at the time. A well-known example is that of the present (...)
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Uri Avnery: the Skin of the Bear
25 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
1 commentby Uri Avnery
The strategy of Sharon and his generals is simple and brutal: to destroy the Palestinian Authority, turn life in the occupied territories into hell, disintegrate Palestinian society and drive the survivors from the country, not in one dramatic sweep (as in 1948) but in a slow, continuous, creeping process."
I am writing this with an aching heart. I have postponed writing it as long as I could.
In Jewish tradition, there is a searing phrase: "The Temple was not destroyed (...) -
Sharon’s double triumph
24 July 2004 par (Open-Publishing)
by Robert Thompson Mr Sharon has now got just what he wanted. His double triumph is horrendous. He is reported to have expressed sadness - what are commonly called "crocodile tears" no doubt!!! First of all, he got apparently unconditional support from Mr George W. Bush for his plan to annex still more Palestinian land, while giving up the least important of the illegally occupied lands in the Gaza Strip. He also offered to give up a few outposts in the West Bank, while annexing (...)