by Haroon Siddiqui

Toronto Star

02/10/05

The imminent historic rise of religious Shiite power in Iraq, with its inevitable linkages to Iran, is decidedly not what President George W. Bush had bargained for. In fact, he spent the last 22 months trying to prevent just such an outcome. Yet, here is his administration sounding sanguine about the sweeping electoral win of the slate blessed by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. It is saying he won't establish mullahcracy in Iraq. It doesn't know that. It is only hoping so. Only a handful of people know what Sistani really wants. He won't allow any American near his home in Najaf, let alone take a phone call from Bush...

http://tinyurl.com/3wgbf


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by Harold Meyerson

The American Prospect

02/10/05

Suppose, as a result of George W. Bush's decision to go to war there, that Iraq turns into Iran? Just what do we do then? As the vote-counting continues in last month's Iraqi elections, it's clear that the predictable has in fact occurred: The electoral alliance put together and dominated by Iraq's Shiite clerics has swept to power. It will command a clear majority in the National Assembly, with the Kurds, Sunnis and various secular groups bringing up the rear. It will write the national constitution, although, according to the soon-to-be-replaced transitional authority of Ayad Allawi, the new document needs a Kurdish and Sunni buy-in to go into effect. That, at least, is the theory. In practice, the clerics are getting restless. For the first time in Iraq's unhappy history, the Shiite majority will control a national government...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=9163


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by Justin Raimondo

AntiWar.Com

02/11/05

Over ten days after the election was declared an unmitigated success -- and some wimped-out liberals immediately began changing their wooly little minds about the war -- we still haven't had any official results announced. And all sorts of shenanigans seem to be going on, of the sort that, if they had happened in Ukraine, say, there would have been an immediate outcry in the West, with all the usual suspects palavering about 'election fraud' and sneering at the legitimacy of the entire process.

... With the U.S. handing out Cabinet posts, and still only vague promises as to when the actual election results are going to be announced, we have the right -- nay, the duty -- to ask: what's up with that? Except nobody's asking it: not our mainstream journalists, and certainly nobody in Washington, which is still preoccupied with an orgy of self-congratulation...

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4807


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Nato und Bush: Proteste gegen Kriegspolitik angekündigt (10.02.05)

Um gegen Krieg und die zunehmende Militarisierung der Außenpolitik zu protestieren, hat das globalisierungskritische Netzwerk Attac seine Mitglieder zu Demonstrationen gegen die so genannte Nato-Sicherheitskonferenz in München und beim Besuch von US-Präsident George Bush in Mainz aufgerufen. In München tagten am kommenden Wochenende Regierungsvertreter, Militärstrategen, Generäle und Verteter von Rüstungskonzernen "hinter verschlossenen Türen", erklärte Attac. Das Motto "Frieden durch Dialog" führe dabei in die Irre, sagte Hagen Pfaff von Attac München. In München gehe es nicht um Frieden und Sicherheit, sondern ums Gegenteil. "Hier werden Militärstrategien koordiniert und Kriegskoalitionen für gemeinsame Angriffskriege geschmiedet."

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.jpberlin.de/www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php4?Nr=10417



Demonstration zum Bush-Besuch - Termine zum Bush-Besuch
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/496994/

by Jorge & Vickie E. Castro

Common Dreams

02/09/05

What makes the war real is when your doorbell rings at 8:00 pm and you open it to see an Army soldier standing there in his dress uniform, with all his medals on display. And then you know, you know that it is all too real. You know that REAL people die; you know that they have come to rip your heart out. They regretfully inform you that your only child, the center of your universe, is gone. Dead! The word screams in your head over and over. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!! That is exactly what happened, Dec. 21, here in our own community. Another soldier died, another family was destroyed, I know because he was my soldier, my son and it was my family that was destroyed..

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0209-20.htm



Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

http://207.44.245.159/article8011.htm


From Information Clearing House

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/09/1458256


Informant: Friends

by W. James Antle III

Intellectual Conservative

02/08/05

When the January 30 elections proceeded with high turnout and relatively low levels of violence, defying most predictions, many conservatives in the United States, especially those belonging to the chattering class, were almost as jubilant as the Iraqis dancing in the streets of Baghdad. But now it's time to lose the purple ties and put on our thinking caps. ... the religious Shiite political party linked to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani appears to be headed for a big win. The ticket associated with U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is trailing badly. Key Shiite leaders are now speaking openly of imposing some version of Islamic law on the country. Let's be frank: This is almost exactly the opposite of what most war supporters intended to achieve in Iraq. Put aside for a moment your affection for President Bush and your enthusiasm for the Republican Party. Would you have wanted to go to war to replace a secular state with one ruled by clerics?

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4136.html



Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by David Smith-Ferri

CounterPunch

02/08/05

By any measure of meteorological activity, the last two years have been a season of foul weather for US soldiers and their families. One storm after another, and long-term forecasts for more of the same. Sent into Afghanistan and Iraq in the emotional wake of 9/11, commissioned to liberate people from tyranny and to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, they find themselves instead fighting a never-ending guerilla war, the moral handholds of which are as difficult to locate and as unreliable as a trail in a sandstorm...

http://www.counterpunch.org/ferri02082005.html



Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by Pat Buchanan

LewRockwell.Com

02/09/05

When the British left Palestine, Irgun terror ended. When the French left Algeria, FLN terror ended. When Israel left Lebanon, Hezbollah terror largely ended. These countries chose to resolve their terror problem by giving up their occupations and letting go. Their perceived imperial presence had been the cause of the terror war, and when they departed and went home, the wars faded away. The president says we must fight them over there, so we do not have to fight them over here. But, before we invaded Iraq, not one American had been killed by an Iraqi in a dozen years. Since we invaded, 1,500 Americans have died and the number of insurgents has multiplied from 5,000 to 20,000. By Don Rumsfeld's own metric, our intervention is creating more terrorists than we are killing. We are fighting a guerrilla army that our own invasion called into being...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan25.html



Informant: Thomas L. Knapp