Salon
by Gary Kamiya

08/23/05

This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see. From the beginning, the U.S. government has attempted to censor information about the Iraq war, prohibiting photographs of the coffins of U.S. troops returning home and refusing as a matter of policy to keep track of the number of Iraqis who have been killed. President Bush has yet to attend a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. To be sure, this see-no-evil approach is neither surprising nor new. With the qualified exception of the Vietnam War, when images of body bags appeared frequently on the nightly news, American governments have always tightly controlled images of war. There is good reason for this. In war, a picture really is worth a thousand words. No story about a battle, no matter how eloquent, possesses the raw power of a photograph... [photo gallery; subscription or ad view required]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/23/iraq_gallery/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--- iraq_dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com wrote:

Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 17:52:22 -0800 To:


** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

*This is an appeal written by Iraqi Doctors concerning what is happening in western Iraq. It is both extremely informative as well as an important appeal. Operations in many of these areas are ongoing today, despite the fact that this press release is a week old:

DOCTORS FOR IRAQ WARNS OF URGENT HUMANITARIAN CRISIS AS US/IRAQI MILITARY ATTACKS CONTINUE IN THE WEST OF IRAQ

*As US/ Iraqi military attacks continue in Haditha, Rawa, Parwana and Heet in the West of Iraq, Doctors for Iraq is warning of an urgent health and humanitarian crisis unfolding on the ground.

Haditha, Rawa and Parwana have been under attack for the past three weeks with US/ Iraqi military activities intensifying over the past few days. The main hospitals in the area are reporting shortages of medicine oxygen, sugerical kits, anti-biotics and other basic medicines.

Civilians have fled to neighbouring towns and villages such as Ana and are in need of basic foods, water and shelter. Shop keepers are unable to open their premises because of the US/ Iraqi operation, and trucks with urgent food supplies are facing serious difficulties entering the seiged areas.

Eyewitnesses and medical personal have told Doctors For Iraq that snipers are operating inside some of the seiged cities. Haditha hospital estimates that at least eleven civilians were killed during the attack and 15 injured. The US military prevented ambulances from entering the areas and medics from working freely. The area remains under siege.

Local people say that US marines invaded the town of Rawa and carried out air strikes bombing many buildings and homes. It unclear how many civilians have been killed or injured in the areas where the military is carrying out operations A school building in Parwana was bombed with people inside the school. It is unclear how many people were inside the school and who they were.

Doctors for Iraq has organised for medical aid to reach some of the hospitals and a medical team has been sent to the affected areas.

The military operations in the West of Iraq have left the healthcare system paralysed. Hospitals in the area are unable to provide sufficient medical services for the population. The new military attacks are further compounding the suffering of people in the area.

Doctors for Iraq is calling for the *_immediate_*
*_end_* of US/ Iraqi military attacks in the area.

Doctors for Iraqi is calling for an independent investigation into the serious breaches of the Geneva Convention, the alleged killing of civilians and obstructing medical personal from carrying out there work.

We need urgent medical supplies to be delivered to the hospitals in the area.

For more information or to find out how you can send medical aid to the areas contact:

Dr. Salam Ismael _Salam.obaidi@doctorsforiraq.org
or
Aisha Ismael _Press.officer@doctorsforiraq.org

More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com


Informant: les evenchick

From ufpj-news

Concentrating on the Iraq war is a fundamental prerequisite to the understanding of the new wars of colonialist conquests ushered in by the United States under Bush.

http://snipurl.com/h42h

--------

Part 5: Creating Our Own Reality

by Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri

On the specific subject of violence and atrocities, from the Korean and Vietnam Wars until present, no one can deny there has been a remarkable sliding of the American state into adopting torture comparable to Nazi and Israeli standards of practice. Namely, torture, rape, racial anger, religious anger, mass murder, destruction of property, collective punishment, and disdain for established civilizations have become institutionalized, codified, taught, and are the preferred method for putting down liberation movements, which the US and other imperialists propagandistically call “insurgencies”. However, laying the blame solely at the feet of the troops and the political-economic elites is an attempt at abrogating the responsibility of the citizenry to oppose war, aggression, or occupation. Opposing wars of aggression is an individual and a societal responsibility, especially the overtly illegal mayhem and chaos that the US has been fomenting in Iraq. One antiwar writer argued, “Because the civilian leadership unlike the military is always indebted to public opinion for its existence, it’s ultimately public approval rather than military need that drives air war against civilians, which is why the corporate media obligingly does its bit to keep that approval going.”.....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Petersen-Sabri0919.htm

Whatever The West Decides:

It makes you want to scream. I have been driving the dingy, dangerous, oven-like streets of Baghdad all week, ever more infested with insurgents and their informers, the American troops driving terrified over the traffic islands, turning their guns on all of us if we approach within 50 meters.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9888.htm

People torn to pieces, relatives scream - another week in the theme park of death

Robert Fisk reports from beyond the Coalition's concrete walls

There are now two Baghdads. One is the Green Zone, where US and Iraqi officials live in a protected realm; the other is the danger zone, where everyone else lives.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9896.htm

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/3300/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0821-24.htm


Informant: Friends

Tony Blair could be forced to give evidence under oath after families of 17 soldiers killed in Iraq began a legal bid yesterday to secure an independent inquiry into the lawfulness of the 2003 conflict.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9857.htm

A government minister has openly lambasted U.S. occupation of the country, blaming it for the upsurge in violence and rampant corruption.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9855.htm