Businessmen win £1m in belated arms-to-Iraq payouts

The Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor

Saturday 20 November 2010

The money was paid to Paul Henderson, former managing director of the Coventry-based machine tool company Matrix Churchill, who provided information to MI6 about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons programme, and John Paul Grecian, former managing director of Ordtec, justice ministry figures show.


Henderson was acquitted of breaching trade embargos in 1992 after evidence revealed the government knew about the exports but turned a blind eye to them. It emerged during his trial that he spied for MI6 during his visits to Baghdad.

The trial collapsed after Alan Clark, the former Conservative trade and defence minister, told the court he connived in the exports.
 
Full article

More evidence of smoke and mirrors...

US scheming to extend Iraq adventure

Asia Times reports (November 17^th): A special envoy from President Barack Obama raised the possibility in a secret meeting with senior Iraqi military and civilian officials in Baghdad on September 23 that his administration would leave more than 15,000 combat troops in Iraq after the 2011 deadline for US withdrawal, according to a senior Iraqi intelligence official familiar with the details of the meeting.

But the White House official, Puneet Talwar, special assistant to the president and senior director for the Gulf States, Iran and Iraq on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, said the deployment would have to be handled in a way that was consistent with the president’s pledge to withdraw US troops completely from Iraq under the 2008 agreement, the official said.

Talwar suggested that the combat troops could be placed under the cover of the State Department’s security force, the Iraqi intelligence official told Inter Press Service (IPS).

http://info-wars.org/2010/11/17/us-scheming-to-extend-iraq-adventure/

From The Guardian

Iraq's disappearing Christians are Bush and Blair's legacy

 

William Dalrymple writes for The Guardian (November 12^th): This week saw new levels of violence directed at Iraq's Christians. Eight days after the attack on Baghdad's main Catholic church that left more than 50 worshippers dead, militants detonated more than 14 bombs in Christian suburbs, killing at least four and wounding about 30. 

Of the 800,000 Christians still in Iraq when Dubya unleashed the US army on Saddam for the second time, two thirds have fled the country. In 2006, a priest was kidnapped, then found beheaded and dismembered; 15 churches have been bombed and many other priests killed. Iraqi refugees tell me that Christian women have suffered kidnap and rape, little of which has been reported.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/12/backfiring-of-bush-crusade

Christians in Iraq living in fear of 'pogrom' after bomb attacks

 

The Guardian reports (November 12^th): "It's hard to be accurate about how many of us are left," said Abdullah al-Noufali, the head of Iraq's Christian Endowment Fund. "But we numbered around 1 million before 2003 and are around 500,000 now.

"Things have changed this week," he added. "These days it is hard to find a Christian who will tell you he wants to stay in Iraq. The church attack was the worst [crisis] in our history. For thousands of years we have stood alongside other sects here, fought in wars and endured all types of disasters. And now this."

There is barely an Iraqi Christian family in which some members do not live abroad. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/12/christians-iraq-living-fear-pogrom

Statement: Enough is enough hands of our Christians, hands off our people

We Women of WSIUI are outraged and appalled to see our Christians being singled out and targeted by terrorists, claiming Islam and serving the Zionist agenda in the region.

Our people are foiling the occupiers' plans and despite sixty years of atrocities and aggression, the Palestinians have never given up the fight for their right for independence and self determination.

This is another stage in the plan to fragment Iraq that started with the invasion of 2003. Keeping Iraq unstable and divided prevents it from taking up its role in the region and leaves it an easy target for malevolent forces in the region and beyond.

This is all part of the plan to plunge the whole region into sectarian and religious futile conflicts, in order to guarantee the safety and security of Israel.

We would like to remind people that the first attack on a place of worship in the history of modern Iraq, took place in 1951 on the Baghdad Synagogue. Mossad has already acknowledged responsibility for this act of terrorism.

We hold the occupiers and the ‘very expensive’ and useless occupation government of the ‘Green Zone’ legally and morally responsible for the attacks on our defenceless people.

The only way we can save our people is to resist the occupiers and their plans.

We mourn our martyrs and vow to continue our campaigning in support of the struggle of our people against the imperialist aggression on our country.
 
Women Soldiarity for an Independent and Unified Iraq
http://solidarityiraq.blogspot.com/
Witness testimony re the massacre in the Church of our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad with English translation

Robert Fisk: Only justice can bring peace to this benighted region

Saturday, 6 November 2010

The Indepenmdent

No one in their right mind would think that al-Qa'ida would burn its energies on such a petty – though revolting – act in Lebanon. But al-Qa'ida does exist in Lebanon. We have President Bashar al-Assad's word on that. Indeed, it's interesting to hear what Assad actually said on the subject last week – since his relationship with Shia Hezbollah and Shia Iran makes him no friend of bin Laden's outfit. In an interview with Al-Hayat newspaper, he said "We talk about al-Qa'ida as if it exists as a well-structured, unified organisation. This isn't true. It acts more as a current of thought that calls itself al-Qa'ida. This organisation is the result (of a situation) and not the cause. It is a result of chaos, of weak development. It is a result of political errors and a kind of political direction." To say that this organisation "exists everywhere, in Syria as in all Arab and Islamic countries, does not mean that it is widespread or popular".

The full article

Iraq : Destroying a Country: War Crimes and Atrocities - Part II

by Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research, November 8, 2010

"The abused are only Iraqis", a US General to General Antonio Taguba.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the latest, vast cache of documents from Wikileaks, is that anyone was surprised at the revelations. For Iraqis, Afghans and the region, and Iraq and Afghanistan watchers across the globe, countless millions of words have been written and eye witness reports sent since day one of the highly questionable legality of the Afghan invasion the absolute illegality of that of Iraq.

Soldiers have put "trophy" photographs of the dead, mutilated, tortured on the internet. In August the BBC's documentary: "The Wounded Platoon", aired interviews with soldiers who admitted shooting Iraqi civilians and "keeping scores." (1) Abu Ghraib's particular testimony to freedom, democracy and liberation's bounties, will likely remain the mental monument to the U.S., military in Iraq, which will ring down the generations.

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz and his colleagues await an Inquistitional, mediaeval end on a hangman's noose, under America's watch (with the U.K., since still in coalition.) Charges include crimes against humanity. Yet the perpetrators of nearly seven years of near indescribable crimes against humanity in Iraq - and near a decade in Afghanistan, return home to heroes' welcomes.

Full article
* Part I of this article at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21545

How our taxes are spent by the Ministry of Defence

Iraqi prisoners were abused at 'UK's Abu Ghraib', court hears

The Guardian reports (November 6^th): Evidence of the alleged systematic and brutal mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at a secret British military interrogation centre that is being described as "the UK's Abu Ghraib" emerged during high court proceedings brought by more than 200 former inmates.

The court was told there was evidence that detainees were starved, deprived of sleep, subjected to sensory deprivation and threatened with execution at the shadowy facilities near Basra operated by the Joint Forces Interrogation Team, or JFIT.

It also received allegations that JFIT's prisoners were beaten, forced to kneel in stressful positions for up to 30 hours at a time, and that some were subjected to electric shocks. Some of the prisoners say that they were subject to sexual humiliation by women soldiers, while others allege that they were held for days in cells as small as one metre square.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/06/iraq-prisoner-abuse-court