Will US Gov. Accept Responsibility For The Slaughter Of Over 1,000,000 Iraqis.

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Will US Gov. Accept Responsibility For The Slaughter Of Over 1,000,000 Iraqis.

 

By Michael Schwartz

 

November 18, 2008 "Huffington Post" -- Will The US Government And Media Finally Report The Slaughter Of Iraqis By The US Military?

I recently received a set of questions from Le Monde Diplomatique reporter Kim Bredesen about the 2007 Project Censored story about 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths due to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The questions and answers are, I think, useful in framing both the untold story of the slaughter in Iraq and the failure of the U.S. media to report on its extent or on U.S. culpability for the deaths of 4% of the Iraqi population.

 

Bredeson : I observed recently that your story on Iraqi deaths caused by US occupation became story no. 1 in this year's listing by Project Censored. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions on e-mail regarding this issue?

 

Regards,

Kim Bredesen, Le Monde diplomatiqe (Norway)

 

These are my questions.

 

1.Do you expect that the new administration under Barrack Obama will acknowledge the validity of the statistics concerning Iraqi deaths caused by the US occupation force?

 

It is always difficult to predict the political future, but even if the Obama administration pursues a very different policy in Iraq and the Middle East, I doubt it will acknowledge the amount of violence caused by the war during its first six years. Historically, the U.S. government has a poor record of acknowledging its responsibility for death and/or destruction of other peoples, beginning with the genocide against Native Americans (never officially acknowledged), continuing through two hundred years of the slave trade and slavery (there has actually been a limp official apology), and culminating in the ongoing refusal to acknowledge one to three million deaths in Vietnam caused by the U.S. attempt to conquer that country.

 

2.You mention in your update to Censored 2009 that there is a media blackout about the dramatic statistics in US mass media. Do you think this will change?

 

I think that the U.S. mainstream media has a poor record of acknowledging the many instances in which it has (collectively) failed to maintain its constitutionally mandated independence from government policy, and instead has ignored or written false reports supporting government malfeasance and tyranny. It was refreshing that the New York Times and Washington Post acknowledged their failure to report the contrary evidence to the US government claims about WMDs in Iraq, but this is a rare moment that has not led to more independent reporting on other U.S. government action in the Middle East.

 

I think that we can expect the U.S. mainstream media to continue to compromise its journalistic integrity in reporting on Iraq, and this will mean failing to report its own suppression of the Lancet studies and continuing to misreport the U.S. role in the Iraq war. This expectation is, of course, speculation, but the best evidence for this speculation is the fact that the major media have been withdrawing their personnel from Iraq, instead of taking advantage of more favorable security conditions to send reporters to locations that were previously inaccessible and therefore more thoroughly report the impact of the war on Iraqi life.

 

3.How have you experienced the coverage about the issue in other Western or international media, have they taken the situation in Iraq more seriously?

 

I find the reporting in Al Jazeera, the British national press, other international media, and independent U.S. media far more comprehensive in their coverage of the Iraq war. I would not say that they take the situation more “seriously,” – there has never been a problem with the U.S. media taking the war seriously. The differences are in very specific parts of the coverage: reporting on U.S. involvement in deaths and destruction, reporting on Iraqi resistance to the U.S. presence; reporting on the economic and social chaos caused by U.S. military, political, and economic policies in Iraq; reporting on who is fighting against the U.S.; reporting on the actual reality of life under U.S. occupation; and reporting on the day-to-day antagonism of Iraqis to the U.S. presence.

 

I should add, however, that these failures are not so much failures of U.S. mainstream reporters, but of the editors and publishers who assign reporters to particular stories and not to others. There are many reporters who fit information about all these issues into assignments that are aimed at other subjects. One small example will illustrate what I mean. In reporting about the U.S. offensive in Haifa Street in January 2007, mainstream reporters (for McClatchy and the Washington Post, if memory serves me) whose assignment was to report on the successful capture by U.S. troops of an insurgent stronghold also described the destructiveness of the U.S. attack and mentioned that U.S. soldiers stood idly by while Shia death squads cleansed the neighborhood of Sunnis. This information appeared toward the end of published reports, but it was published nevertheless. In contrast, a CBS report on the overarching destructiveness of the offensive and of the anger of residents at U.S. military actions was not broadcast and was only made public because of the protests of the censored reporter.

 

4.The journalist Joshua Holland compare the mass killings in Iraq with Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia. Is this an accurate comparison in your opinion?

 

Holland’s purpose in this comparison is the same as my purpose in comparing the deaths in Iraq to those in Darfur: we are trying to give people a sense of the scale of the violence wrought in Iraq by the U.S. military. The mass murders in Cambodia under Pol Pot and the displacements and genocide in Darfur--as well as so many other recent and more distant instances of such violence--all have different sources, intentions, and outcomes from the Iraq violence and from each other. The point of making these comparisons is to point out the magnitude of the slaughter in Iraq, not to make analytic comments about the dynamics of the war.

 

5. Do you believe it is appropriate that the Bush-administration should face trial for their actions?

 

In “The Fog of War,” former U.S. Secretary of Defense McNamara said to the camera that if the U.S. had lost World War II, then he and other American leaders would have stood trial as war criminals for the terrorist fire bombings of Japanese and German cities by the U.S. air force. Certainly the actions of U.S. political leaders and military commanders in ordering their troops to attack civilian targets in Iraq (for example the destruction of the city of Falluja—well publicized everywhere in the world except in the United States) fall under the same definition of war crimes that McNamara was considering in making this statement, and so it would be perfectly appropriate for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and the various commanding generals to stand trial for these actions.

 

But take note that McNamara said that trials would have taken place if the U.S. had “lost.” This statement has actually turned out to be a kind of half truth. In World War II, the Japanese and Germans certainly lost, but only a relative handful of those responsible for their war crimes stood trial (the Japanese Emperor, for example, was actually restored to his throne). In the Vietnam War, most observers say that the U.S. “lost” the war, but no U.S. leaders stood trial for the many war crimes they committed during that long conflict. There is no predicting the future, but I expect that, no matter how the Iraq war ends--with either McCain’s “victory” or with the “defeat” that President Bush has repeatedly warned the U.S. citizens about—there will be no war crimes trials of U.S. political and military leadership.

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Western Progressive Opinion:

 

Bring on the Victims! Condemn the Fighters!

 

By James Petras

 

November 23, 2008 "ICH" -- We know in some detail of the willing and gratuitous support, which tens of millions of American citizens have bestowed on the White House and Congressional perpetrators of crimes against humanity. The Clinton Administration was freely re-elected in 1996 after deliberately imposing a starvation embargo on Iraq and mounting a relentless, unopposed bombing campaign on that devastated country for four straight years, leading to the documented deaths of over 500,000 children and countless more vulnerable adults. The majority of US citizens re-elected Bush after he launched wars which caused the deaths of over a million Iraqi civilians, scores of thousands of Afghanis, thousands of Pakistanis, and after he gave full support to Israel’s murderous attacks on Palestinian civilians and the blockade of vital food, water and fuel to the occupied territories, not to mention the frequent bombing of Lebanon and Syria, which culminated, during Bush’s second term, in the horrific Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanese cities and villages killing thousands of civilians. We know this brutality received the unconditional support of the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations and their thousands of affiliated community groups (totaling over one million members). We know that for each and every Israeli assassination of a Palestinian, each dispossession of Palestinians from their land and homes and the uprooting of their orchards, vineyards and the poisoning of their wells, there is a systematic campaign here to obliterate our democratic freedom of speech and assembly – especially our right to publicly condemn Israel and expose its agents operating among US power brokers.

 

Through hard experience the majority of the American public has come to recognize the pitfalls of militarism and is slowly coming to realize the profound threats posed by the entrenched Zionist Power Configuration to our ‘four freedoms’.

 

That is all to the good. However, these advances in public opinion have been far from sufficient. The American public has just elected a new president who promises to escalate the imperialist military presence in Afghanistan and fill key posts in his regime with known militarists and Zionists from the previous regime of President ‘Bill’ Clinton.

 

What has escaped public notice is the almost complete disappearance of the peace movement and its absorption into the pro-war Democratic Party electoral machine of President-Elect Barack Obama. Likewise, the vast majority of US ‘progressive’ opinion-makers embraced, with occasional mild reservations, the Obama candidacy and, in effect, became part of the ‘broad coalition’ joining hands with billionaire Zionist zealots and Wall Street financial swindlers, Clintonite ‘humanitarian’ militarists, impotent millionaire trade union bureaucrats and various and sundry upwardly mobile ‘minority’ politicians and vote hustlers. Whether progressives were intoxicated by the empty presidential campaign rhetoric of ‘change’, they willingly sacrificed their most elementary principles at the service of evil (presumably, they would say, to serve the ‘lesser evil’), but no doubt the evils of new imperial wars, complicity with Israel’s colonial savagery and the deepening immiseration of the American people.

 

The US progressive intellectuals show no such (im)moral scruples when it comes to the anti-imperial resistance movements in Asian (especially in the Middle East), Africa and Latin America.

 

US Progressives and Third World Resistance Movements

 

Among the most prominent progressive intellectuals (PPIs) in the US and Europe, writers, bloggers and academics, there is nary a single one who exhibits the same ‘pragmatism’, which they practice in choosing ‘lesser evil’ politicians in the US or Europe, with regard to political choices in highly conflicted countries. Can we find a single PPI who will argue that they support the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the popularly supported nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, the anti-occupation Taliban in Afghanistan or even the right, recognized under international law, of the Iranian people to the peaceful development of nuclear energy – because, whatever their defects – these are the ‘lesser evil’.

 

Let us consider the issue in greater detail. PPIs justified their support for Obama on the basis of his campaign rhetoric in favor of peace and justice, even as he voted for Bush’s war budgets and foreign aid programs funding the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, Palestinians, Colombians, Somalis and Pakistanis and the dispossessing and displacement of at least 10 million people from their towns, farms and homes. The very same PPI reject and refuse to apply the ‘lesser evil’ criteria in support of Hamas, the democratically elected Palestinian administration in the Gaza, which is in the forefront of the struggle against the brutal Israeli colonial occupation – because it is ‘violent’ (which means it ‘retaliates against almost daily Israeli armed assaults), seeks a ‘theocratic state’ (similar to the theologically defined ‘Jewish’ state of Israel), represses dissidents (in the form of occasional crackdowns on CIA-funded Fatah functionaries and militias). At best the PPIs take an interest only in the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocidal embargo of food, water, fuel and medicine; it protests against overt racist assaults by Israel’s colonial Judeo-fascist settlers when they assault school girls on their way to school or elderly farmers in their orchards; they protest the arbitrary and deliberate delays at Israeli military checkpoints, which cause the deaths of acutely ill Palestinians, cancer victims, women in labor, men with heart attacks and people in need of kidney dialysis by preventing them from reaching medical facilities. In other words the PPI support the Palestinians as victims but condemn them as fighters who challenge their executioners. The PPI’s support for victims is a cost-free posture, providing credibility to the ‘progressive’ label; opposition to the fighters assures the establishment that the PPI’s criticism will not adversely affect the US empire-building and its Israeli allies.

 

The most outspoken, self-proclaimed progressive ‘libertarians’ and ‘democrats’ in the Western world claim to support national self-determination and oppose imperial conquests, yet they unfailingly reject the real-existing mass popular movements demanding self-determination and leading the struggle against imperial conquest and foreign occupation. Almost without exception they denounce national resistance movements for not fitting their preconceived notions of perfect justice, peaceful tolerance and secular, democratic principles, which their idea of a resistance movement should embody. Yet the PPI do not impose such criteria in advocating support for candidates in their own countries. Hezbollah is flatly rejected as too ‘clerical’ by the PPIs, but British progressives supported Tony Blair, the leader of the Labor Party and his role as bloody accomplice to Clinton, Bush, Sharon and a whole host of servile puppet regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere.

 

In terms of military aggression – and deaths, loss of limbs and homes – the ‘lesser evil’ Democrats and European Social Democrats and Center-Left politicians have a far worse record that the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and Sadrist forces. More to the point, the living conditions and safety of the vast majority of the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Somalia – by any standard – were vastly better under the independent if authoritarian rule of Saddam Hussain, the clerical Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic Councils in Somalia than under the US-EU military occupations and client regimes. Some of the PPIs avoid the real and difficult choices by pretending that there are ‘third choices’ just on the horizon in countries currently under imperial and colonial conquest and occupation: They reject the imperial armies and the anti-imperial resistance in the name of abstract progressive libertarian principles. The shameless cant and hypocrisy of their position is clear when the same issue is posed in terms of political choices within the imperial mother country. Here the PPIs have a thousand and one arguments to back one (Obama) of the two major imperial war party presidential candidates; here ‘realism’ and ‘lesser evil’ arguments come to the fore. And what ‘choices’ are made! The same libertarians and democrats who condemn the Taliban for its destruction of ancient religious monuments support Democratic candidates, like Obama, who propose to escalate the US military occupation in Afghanistan and intensify the killing fields in South Asia.

There are profound moral and political dilemmas in making political choices in a world in which destructive imperial wars are led by liberal electoral politicians and vigorously resisted by clerical and secular authoritarian movements and leaders. But the historical record of the past three hundred years is clear: Western parliamentarian imperialism and its contemporary legacy has destroyed and undermined far more lives and livelihoods in far more countries over a greater time span than even the worst of the post colonial regimes. Moreover, the colonial wars, pursued by ‘lesser evil’ electoral regimes and politicians, have had a profoundly destructive impact on the very ‘democratic values’ in the Western countries, which the PPIs profess to defend.

Conclusion

 

The PPI, by choosing the ‘lesser evil’ – in the most recent instance, supporting Barack Obama – have condemned themselves to political impotence in the making of Washington’s policies and political irrelevance to the struggles for national liberation. Consequential supporters of the millions of victims of Western and Israeli butchery do not live off foundation handouts; they make the difficult (and costly) choice to throw in their lot via solidarity with the resistance fighters. The ‘cost’ to progressive intellectuals in the US, of course, is a drying up of invitations to speak at universities with offers of five-figure honorariums; the ‘benefit’ is self-respect and the dignity that comes from being part of an international anti-imperialist movement.

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Iraqi Academics Assassinated During the US-Led Occupation

 

Editor's note

 

Pakistan Daily has published the list of Iraqi academics assassinated by US and allied occupation forces. The objective of these targeted assassinations is to "kill a nation", the destroy Iraq's ability to educate its people, to undermine its research and scientific capabilities in literally all fields of endeavor, to transform a nation into a territory, and ultmately to destroy civilization.

 

Of particular significance is the assassination of prominent scientists and physicians, professors of medicine in the country's leading academic institutions, its social scientists and historians, its physical scientists, its biologists, its engineers.

 

we are dealing with a carefully devised covert operation. The plan to kill the nation's scientists and intellectuals emanates from US intelligence and the military. It is a deliberate process.

 

Is the new Obama administration going to turn a blind eye to this diabolical and criminal agenda?

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 27 November 2008

 

List of Iraqi academics assassinated in Iraq during the US-led occupation

 

Written by Pakistan Daily

Wednesday, 26 November 2008 17:57

 

The following relation has being created against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq with the information provided by direct Iraqi university sources and international and Arab media. It only includes names and data referred to university academics assassinated during the Occupation period.

 

BAGHDAD, Baghdad University

 

Abbas Al-Attar: PhD in humanities, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

 

Abdel Hussein Jabuk: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Abdel Salam Saba: PhD in sociology, lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Abdel Razak Al-Naas: Lecturer in information and international mass media at Baghdad University’s College of Information Sciences. He was a regular analyst for Arabic satellite TV channels. He was killed in his car at Baghdad University on 28 January 2005. His assassination led to confrontations between students and police, and journalists went on strike.

 

Ahmed Nassir Al-Nassiri: PhD in education sciences, Baghdad University, assassinated February 2005.

 

Ali Abdul-Hussein Kamil: PhD in physical sciences, lecturer in the Department of Physics, Baghdad University.

 

Amir Al-Jazragi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine, and consultant at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, assassinated 17 November 2005.

 

Basil Al-Karji: PhD in chemistry, lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Essam Sharif Mohammed: PhD in history, professor in Department of History and head of the College of Humanities, Baghdad University.

 

Faidhi Al-Faidhi: PhD in education sciences, lecturer at Baghdad University and Al-Munstansiriya University. He was also member of the Muslim Scientists Committee. Assassinated in 2005.

 

Fuad Abrahim Mohammed Al-Bayaty: PhD in german philology, professor and head of College of Philology, Baghdad University.

 

Haifa Alwan Al-Hil: PhD in physics, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Science for Women.

 

Heikel Mohammed Al-Musawi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at Al-Kindi College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Assassinated 17 November 2005.

 

Hassan Abd Ali Dawood Al-Rubai: PhD in stomatology, dean of the College of Stomatology, Baghdad University. Assassinated 20 December 2005.

 

Hazim Abdul Hadi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University.

 

Khalel Ismail Abd Al-Dahri: PhD in physical education, lecturer at the College of Physical Education, Baghdad University.

 

Kilan Mahmoud Ramez: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Maha Abdel Kadira: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

 

Majed Nasser Hussein Al-Maamoori: Professor of veterinary medicine at Baghdad University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Assassinated 17 February 2007.

 

Marwan Al-Raawi: PhD in engineering and lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Marwan Galeb Mudhir Al-Heti: PhD in chemical engineering and lecturer at the School of Engineering, Baghdad University.

 

Majed Hussein Ali: PhD in physical sciences and lecturer at the College of Sciences, Baghdad University.

 

Mehned Al-Dulaimi: PhD in mechanical engineering, lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Mohammed Falah Al-Dulaimi: PhD in physical sciences, lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Mohammed Tuki Hussein Al-Talakani: PhD in physical sciences, nuclear scientist since 1984, and lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Mohammed Al-Kissi: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Mohammed Abd Allah Al-Raawi: PhD in surgery, former president of Baghdad University, member of the Arab Council of Medicine and of the Iraqi Council of Medicine, president of the Iraqi Union of Doctors.

 

Mohammed Al-Jazairi: PhD in medicine and plastic surgeon, College of Medicine, Baghdad Univeristy. Assassinated 15 November 2005.

 

Mustafa Al-Hity: PhD in medicine, paediatrician, College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Assassinated 14 November 2005.

 

Mustafa Al-Mashadani: PhD in religious studies, lecturer in Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

 

Nafea Ahmmoud Jalaf: PhD in Arabic language, professor in Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

 

Nawfal Ahmad: PhD, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts. She was assassinated at the front door of her house on 25 December 2005.

 

Nazar Abdul Amir Al-Ubaidy: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

 

Raad Shlash: PhD in biological sciences, head of Department of Biology at Baghdad University’s College of Sciences. He was killed at the front door of his house on 17 November 2005.

 

Rafi Sarcisan Vancan: Bachelor of English language, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Women’s Studies.

 

Saadi Daguer Morab: PhD in fine arts, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts.

 

Sabri Mustafa Al-Bayaty: PhD in geography, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

 

Saad Yassin Al-Ansari: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. He was killed in Al-Saydiya neighborhood, Baghdad, 17 November 2005.

 

Wannas Abdulah Al-Naddawi: PhD in education sciences, Baghdad University. Assassinated 18 February 2005.

 

Yassim Al-Isawi: PhD in religious studies, Baghdad University’s College of Arts. Assassinated 21 June 2005.

 

Zaki Jabar Laftah Al-Saedi: Bachelor of veterinary medicine, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

 

Basem Al-Modarres: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Philosophy. [source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

 

Jasim Mohammed Achamri: Dean of College of Philosophy, Baghdad University. [source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

 

Hisham Charif: Head of Department of History and lecturer at Baghdad University. [source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

 

Qais Hussam Al-Den Jumaa: Professor and Dean of College of Agriculture, Baghdad University. Killed 27 March 2006 by US soldiers in downtown Baghdad. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university source.]

 

Mohammed Yaakoub Al-Abidi: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Abdelatif Attai: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Ali Al-Maliki: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Nafia Aboud: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Abbas Kadem Alhachimi: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Mouloud Hasan Albardar Aturki: Lecturer in Hanafi Teology at Al-Imam Al-Aadam College of Teology, Baghdad University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Riadh Abbas Saleh: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s Centre for International Studies. Killed 11 May 2006. [source: CEOSI university source, 17 May 2006.]

 

Abbas Al-Amery: Professor and head of Department of Administration and Business, College of Administration and Economy, Baghdad University. Killed together with his son and one of his relatives at the main entrance to the College 16 May 2006. [source: CEOSI university source, 17 May 2006.]

 

Muthana Harith Jasim: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Engineering. Killed near his home in Al-Mansur, 13 June 2006. [source: CEOSI university source, 13 June 2006.]

 

Hani Aref Al-Dulaimy: Lecturer in the Department of Computer Engineering, Baghdad University’s College of Engineering. He was killed, together with three of his students, 13 June 2006 on campus. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 13 June 2006.]

 

Hussain Al-Sharifi: Professor of urinary surgery at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine. Killed in May 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 12 June 2006.]

 

Hadi Muhammad Abub Al-Obaidi: Lecturer in the Department of Surgery, Baghdad University’s College of Medicine. Killed 19 June 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 20 June 2006.]

 

Hamza Shenian: Professor of veterinary surgery at Baghdad University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Killed by armed men in his garden in a Baghdad neighborhood 21 June 2006. This was the first known case of a professor executed in the victim’s home. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 21 June 2006.]

 

Jassim Mohama Al-Eesaui: Professor at College of Political Sciences, Baghdad University, and editor of Al-Syada newspaper. He was 61 years old when killed in Al-Shuala, 22 June 2006. [source: UNAMI report 1 May-30 June 2006.]

 

Shukir Mahmoud As-Salam: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine and dental surgeon at Al-Yamuk Hospital, Baghdad. Killed near his home by armed men 6 September 2006. [source: TV news, As-Sharquia channel, 7 September 2006, and CEOSI Iraqi sources.]

 

Mahdi Nuseif Jasim: Professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Baghdad University. Killed 13 September 2006 near the university. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university source.]

 

Adil Al-Mansuri: Maxillofacial surgeon and professor at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Kidnapped by uniformed men near Iban Al-Nafis Hospital in Baghdad. He was found dead with torture signs and mutilation in Sadr City. He was killed during a wave of assassinations in which seven medical specialists were assassinated. Date unknown: July or August 2006 [source: Iraqi health service sources, 24 September 2006.]

 

Shukur Arsalan: Maxillofacial surgeon and professor at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Killed by armed men when leaving his clinic in Harziya neighbourhood. He was killed during a wave of assassinations in which seven specialists were assassinated. Date unknown: July or August 2006. [source: Iraqi Health System sources, 24 September 2006.]

 

Issam Al-Rawi: Professor of geology at Baghdad University, president of the Association of University Professors of Iraq. Killed 30 October 2006 during an attack carried out by a group of armed men in which two more professors were seriously injured. [sources: CEOSI sources and Associated Press.]

 

Yaqdan Sadun Al-Dhalmi: Professor and lecturer in the College of Education, Baghdad University. Killed 16 October 2006. [source: CEOSI sources.]

 

Jlid Ibrahim Mousa: Professor and lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine. Killed by a group of armed men in September 2006. During August and September 2006, six professors of medicine were assassinated in Baghdad. [source: CEOSI Iraqi sources.]

 

Mohammed Jassim Al-Thahbi and wife: Professor and dean of the College of Administration and Economy, Baghdad University. Killed 2 November 2006 by a group of armed men when he was driving to university. His wife, a lecturer at the same university (name and academic position unknown) and son were also killed in the attack. [source: CEOSI Iraqi sources and Tme Magazine, 2 October 2006.]

 

Mohammed Mehdi Saleh: Lecturer at Baghdad University (unknown position) and member of the Association of Muslim Scholars. Imam of Ahl Al-Sufa Mosque in Al-Shurta Al-Jamisa neighbourhood. Killed 14 November 2006 while driving in the neighbourhood of Al-Amal in central Baghdad. [source: UMA, 14 November 2006.]

 

Hedaib Majhol: Lecturer at College of Physical Education, Baghdad University, president of the Football University Club and member of the Iraqi Football Asociation. Kidnapped in Baghdad. His body was found three later in Baghdad morgue 3 December 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 2 December 2006.]

 

Al-Hareth Abdul Hamid: Professor of psychiatric medicine and head of the Department of Psychology at Baghdad University. Former president of the Society of Parapsychological Investigations of Iraq. A renowned scientist, Abdul Hamid was shot dead in the neighbourhood of Al-Mansur, Baghdad, 6 December 2006 by unknown men. [sources: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 6 December 2006, and Reuters, 30 January 2007.]

 

Anwar Abdul Hussain: Lecturer at the College of Odontology, Baghdad University. Killed in Haifa Street in Baghdad in the third week of January 2007. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

 

Majed Nasser Hussain: PhD and lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Baghdad University. He was killed in front of his wife and daughter while leaving home in the third week of January 2007. Nasser Hussain had been kidnapped two years before and freed after paying a ransom. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

 

Khaled Al-Hassan: Professor and deputy dean of the College of Political Sciences, Baghdad University. Killed in March 2007. [source: Association of University Lecturers of Iraq, 7 April 2007.]

 

Ali Mohammed Hamza: Professor of Islamic Studies at Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. Killed 17 April 2007. [sources: TV channels As-Sharquia and Al-Jazeera.]

 

Abdulwahab Majed: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Education. Department and college unknown. Killed 2 May 2007. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 May 2007.]

 

Sabah Al-Taei: Deputy dean of the College of Education, Baghdad University. Killed 7 May 2007. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources. 8 May 2007.]

 

Nihad Mohammed Al-Rawi: Professor of Civil Engineering and deputy president of Baghdad University. Shot dead 26 June 2007 in Al-Jadria Bridge, a few meters away from the university campus, when exiting with his daughter Rana, whom he protected from the shots with his body. [sources: BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26-27 June 2007, ]www.wmin.ac.uk]

 

Muhammad Kasem Al-Jebouri: Lecturer at the College of Agriculture, Baghdad University. Killed, together with his son and his brother-in-law, by paramilitary forces 22 June 2007. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 27 June 2007.]

 

Samir (surname unknown): Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Administration and Economy. His body was found shot one day after being kidnapped in Kut where he was visiting family. Professor Samir lived in the Baghdad district of Al-Sidiya. [source: Voices of Iraq, www.iraqslogger.com, 29 June 2007.]

 

Amin Abdul Aziz Sarhan: Lecturer at Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. He was kidnapped from his home in Basra by unidentified armed men 13 October 2007 and found dead on the morning of 15 October. [source: Voices of Iraq, 15 October 2007.]

 

Mohammed Kadhem Al-Atabi: Head of Baghdad University’s Department of Planning and Evaluation. He was kidnapped 18 October 2007 from his home in Baghdad by a group of armed men and found dead a few hours later in the area of Ur, near to Sadr City, which is under the control of Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 October 2007.]

 

Munther Murhej Radhi: Dean of the College of Odontology, Baghdad University. He was found dead in his car 23 January 2008. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 January 2008.]

 

Mundir Marhach: Dean of Faculty of Stomatology, Baghdad University. He was killed in March (exact day unknown), according to information provided by the Centre for Human Rights of Baghdad. [source: Al-Basrah reported 12 March 2008.]

 

 

 

Al-Mamoon Faculty (private college, Baghdad)

 

Mohammed Al-Miyahi: Dean of Al-Maamoun Faculty in Baghdad. He was shot with a silencer-equipped gun in front of his house in Al-Qadisiah district, southern Baghdad, as he stepped out of his car 14 December 2007. [source CEOSI Iraqi source and Kuwait News Agency, reported 19 December 2007, IPS reported 19 December 2007, and Al-Basrah, reported 12 March 2008.]

 

 

 

Al-Mustansiriya University (Baghdad)

 

Aalim Abdul Hameed: PhD in preventive medicine, specialist in depleted uranium effects in Basra, dean of the College of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Abdul Latif Al-Mayah: PhD in economics, lecturer and head of Department of Research, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Aki Thakir Alaany: PhD and lecturer at the College of Literature, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Falah Al-Dulaimi: PhD, professor and deputy dean of Al-Mustansiriya University’s College of Sciences.

 

Falah Ali Hussein: PhD in physics, lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University, killed May 2005.

 

Musa Saloum Addas: PhD, lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Educational Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University, killed 27 May 2005.

 

Husam Al-Ddin Ahmad Mahmmoud: PhD in education sciences, lecturer and dean at College of Education Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Jasim Abdul Kareem: PhD and lecturer at the College of the Education, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Abdul As Satar Sabar Al Khazraji: PhD in history, Al Munstansiriya University, killed 19 June 2005. [A same name and surname lecturer in Engineering at the College of Computer Science Technology, Al-Nahrein University was assessinated in March 2006.]

 

Samir Yield Gerges: PhD and lecturer at the College of Administration and Economy at Al-Mustansiriya University, killed 28 August 2005.

 

Jasim Al-Fahaidawi: PhD and lecturer in Arabic literature at the College of Humanities, Al-Mustansiriya University. Assassinated at the university entrance. [source: BBC News, 15 November 2005.]

 

Kadim Talal Hussein: Deputy dean of the College of Education, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Mohammed Nayeb Al-Qissi: PhD in geography, lecturer at Department of Research, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Sabah Mahmoud Al-Rubaie: PhD in geography, lecturer and dean at College of Educational Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University.

 

Ali Hasan Muhawish: Dean and lecturer at the College of Engineering, Al-Mustansiriya University. Killed 12 March 2006. [source: Middle East Online, 13 March 2006.]

 

Imad Naser Alfuadi: Lecturer at the College of Political Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Mohammed Ali Jawad Achami: President of the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Husam Karyakus Tomas: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Basem Habib Salman: Lecturer at the College of Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Mohammed Abdul Rahman Al-Ani: PhD in engineering, lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. Kidnapped, together with his friend Akrem Mehdi, 26 April 2006, at his home in Palestine Street, Baghdad. Their bodys were found two days later. (CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 May 2006.]

 

Jasim Fiadh Al-Shammari: Lecturer in psychology at the College of Arts, Al-Mustansiriya Baghdad University. Killed near campus 23 May 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 30 May 2006.]

 

Saad Mehdi Shalash: PhD in history and lecturer in history at the College of Arts, Al-Mustansiriya University, and editor of the newspaper Raya Al-Arab. Shot dead at his home with his wife 26 October 2006. [source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 27 October 2006.]

 

Kemal Nassir: Professor of history and lecturer at Al-Mustansiriya and Bufa universities. Killed at his home in Baghdad in October 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 2 November 2006.]

 

Hasseb Aref Al-Obaidi: Professor in the College of Political Sciences at Al-Mustansiriya University. Since he was kidnapped 22 October 2006 his whereabouts is unknown. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

 

Najeb Al-Salihi: Lecturer in the College of Psychology at Al-Mustansiriya University and head of the Scientific Commitee of the Ministry of Higher Education of Iraq. Al-Salihi, 39 years old, was kidnapped close to campus and his body, shot dead, was found 20 days after his disappearance in Baghdad morgue. His family was able recover his body only after paying a significant amount of money. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

 

Dhia Al-Deen Mahdi Hussein: Professor of international criminal law at the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. Missing since kidnapped from his home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dhia in 4 November 2006 by a group of armed men driving police cars. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 November 2006.]

 

Muntather Al-Hamdani: Deputy dean of the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. He was assassinated, together with Ali Hassam, lecturer at the same college, 20 December 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006. The Iraqi police identified Ali Arnoosi as the deputy dean assassinated 21 December, and Mohammed Hamdani as another victim. It is unknown whether [Muntanther Al-Hamdani and Mohammed Hamdani] both are the same case or not.]

 

Ali Hassam: Lecturer at the College of Law at Al-Mustansiriya University. He was killed together with Muntather Al-Hamdani, deputy dean of the college, 20 December 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006. The Iraqi police identified Ali Arnoosi as the deputy dean assassinated 21 December, and Mohammed Al-Hamdani as another victim. It is unknown whether both [Muntanther Al-Hamdani and Mohammed Hamdani] are the same case or not.]

 

Dhia Al-Mguter: Professor of economy at the College of Administration and Economy of Al-Mustansiriya University. He was killed 23 January 2007 in Baghdad while driving. He was a prominent economist and president of the Consumer’s Defense Association and the Iraqi Association of Economists. A commentator at for As-Sharquia television, he participated in the Maram Committee, being responsible for investigating irregularities occuring during the elections held in January 2006. Al-Mguter was part of a family with a long anti-colonialist tradition since the British occupation. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Az-Zaman newspaper, 24 January 2007.]

 

Ridha Abdul Hussein Al-Kuraishi: Deputy Dean of the University of Al-Mustansiriya’s College of Administration and Economy. He was kidnapped 28 March 2007 and found dead the next day. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007. See the Arabic letter sent to CEOSI.].

 

 

 

University of Technology (Baghdad)

 

Muhannad Al-Dulaimi: PhD in mechanical engineering, lecturer at the Baghdad University of Technology.

Muhey Hussein: PhD in aerodynamics, lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Baghdad University of Technology.

Qahtan Kadhim Hatim: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer in the College of Engineering of the Baghdad University of Technology.

Sahira Mohammed Machhadani: Baghdad University of Technology. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, March 2006.]

Ahmed Ali Husein: Lecturer at the Baghdad University of Technology, specialist in applied mechanics. He was killed by a group of armed men in downtown Baghdad 22 May 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 May 2006.]

Name unknown: Lecturer at Baghdad University of Technology. Killed 27 June 2006 by a group of armed men. They were driving a vehicle in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Mansur and shot him without stopping. Next day, students and professors staged demonstrations in all universities across the country opposing the assassination and kidnapping of professors and lecturers. [source: Al-Jazeera and Jordan Times, 27 June 2006.]

Ali Kadhim Ali: Professor at Baghdad University of Technology. Shot dead in November 2006 in the district of Al-Yarmuk by a group of armed men. His wife, Dr Baida Obeid — gynecologist — was also killed in the attack. [source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 16 November 2006.]

Moa’ayed Jasim Al-Janabi: Lecturer in physics at Baghdad University of Technology. Killed 23 May 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, December 2006.]

Jalil Enjad Al-Jumaily: Lecturer at University of Technology. Department and college unknown. He was killed 22 December 2006 with his son, a physician, after being kidnapped. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006..]

Abdul Same’e Al-Janabi: Deputy president of the Baghdad University of Technology. Missing after being kidnapped during the third week of January 2007. In 2004, Abdul Sami Al-Janabi was dean of Al-Mustansiriya University’s College of Sciences in Baghdad. He resigned from this position after Shia paramilitary forces threatened to kill him. Such forces began then to occupy university centres in the capital. Transferred by the Ministry of Higher Education to a new position to preserve his security, Sami Al-Janabi has almost certainly been assassinated. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

Ameer Mekki Al-Zihairi: Lecturer at Baghdad University of Technology. He was killed in March 2007. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007.

 

 

 

Al-Nahrein University (Baghdad.]

 

Akil Abdel Jabar Al-Bahadili: Professor and deputy dean of Al-Nahrein University’s College of Medicine. Head of Adhamiya Hospital in Baghdad. He was a specialist in internal medicine, killed 2 December 2005.

Mohammed Al-Jazairy: Lecturer at University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital, Al-Nahrein University. He was a specialist in plastic surgery.

Layth Abdel Aziz: PhD and lecturer at the College of Sciences, Al-Nahrein University. [source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Abdul As Satar Sabar Al-Khazrayi: Lecturer in engineering at the College of Computer Science Technology, Al-Nahrein University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.] [A same name and surname PhD in History at Al Munstansiriya University was killed on 19 June 2005.]

 

Uday Al-Beiruti: Professor at Al-Nahrein University. Kidnapped in University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital’s parking lot by armed men dressed in Interior Ministry uniforms. His body was found with sigs of torture in Sadr City. Date unknown: July/August 2006. His murder took place during a wave of assassinations in which seven of his colleagues were killed. [source: Iraqi health service sources, 24 September 2006.]

Jalil Al-Jumaili: Professor at the College of Medicine, Al-Nahrein University. He was found shot dead in December 2006 (exact date unknown) after being kidnapped at University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital, together with his son, Dr Anas Al-Jumaili, lecturer at the same college. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006.]

Anas Al-Jumaili: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Al-Nahrein University. He was found shot dead in December (exact date unknown) with his father, Dr Jalil Al-Jumaili, professor of medicine, after being kidnapped at University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006.]

Adnan Mohammed Saleh Al-Aabid: Lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped from his home 28 January 2007 together with lecturers Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak Al-Hashimi and Aamer Kasem Al-Kaisy, and a student. All were found dead in Baghdad morgue. [sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 1 February 2007.]

Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak Al-Hashimi: Lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped 28 January 2007 on his way home, together with lecturers Adnan Mohammed Saleh Al-Aabid and Aamer Kasem Al-Kaisy, and a student. All were found dead in Baghdad morgue. [sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 1 February 2007.]

Aamer Kasem Al-Kaisy: Lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped on his way home 28 January 2007, together with a student and lecturers Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak Al-Hashimi and Adnan Mohammed Saleh Al-Aabid. All were found dead in Baghdad morgue. [sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 1 February 2007.]

Khaled Al-Naieb: Lecturer in microbiology and deputy dean of Al-Nahrein University’s College of Higher Studies in Medicine. Killed 30 March 2007 at the main entrance to the college. Having been threatened by the Mahdi Army, Moqtada Al-Sadr’s militia, Dr Al-Naieb had moved to work in Irbil. During a brief visit to his family in Baghdad, and after recently becoming a father, he was killed at the main entrance to the college on his way to collect some documents. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 4 April 2007. Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report dated 7 April 2007.]

Sami Sitrak: Professor of English and dean of Al-Nahrein University’s College of Law. Professor Sitrak was killed 29 March 2007. He had been appointed dean of the College after the former dean’s resignation following an attempt to kill him along with three other College lecturers. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007.].

Thair Ahmed Jebr: Lecturer in the Department of Physics, College of Sciences, Al-Nahrein University. Jebr was killed in the attack against satellite TV channel Al-Baghdadiya 5 April 2007. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007.].

 

Iyad Hamza: PhD in chemistry, Baghdad University. He was the academic assistant of the President of Al-Nahrein University. On 4 May 2008 he was killed near his home in Baghdad. [source: CEOSI Iraqi source. 6 May 2008.].

 

 

 

Islamic University (Baghdad)

 

Haizem Al-Azawi: Lecturer at Baghdad Islamic University. Department and college unknown. He was 35 years old and married and was killed 13 February 2006 by armed men when he ariving home in the neighborhood of Habibiya. [source: Asia Times, 3 March 2006.]

 

Saadi Ahmad Zidaan Al-Fahdawi: PhD in Islamic science, lecturer at the College of Islamic Science, Baghdad University. Killed 26 March 2006.

 

Abdel Aziz Al-Jazem: Lecturer in Islamic theology at the College of Islamic Science, Baghdad University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

Saad Jasim Mohammed: Lecturer at the Baghdad Islamic University. Department and college unknown. Killed, together with his brother Mohammed Jassim Mohammed, 11 May 2007 in the neighburghood of Al-Mansur. The armed men who commited the crime where identified by the Association of Muslims Scholars as members of a death squad. [sources: Press note of the Association of Muslims Scholars, 12 May 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 13 May 2007.]

 

Qais Sabah Al-Jabouri: Professor at the Baghdad Islamic University. Killed 7 June 2007 by a group of armed men who shot him from a car when he was leaving the university with the lecturers Alaa Jalel Essa and Saad Jalifa Al-Ani, who were killed and seriously injured respectively. press note of the Association of Muslims Scholars, 7 June 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 9 June 2007.]

 

Alaa Jalel Essa: Professor at the Baghdad Islamic University. Killed 7 June 2007 by a group of armed men who shot him from a car when he was leaving the university with the lecturers Qais Sabah Al-Jabouri and Saad Jalifa Al-Ani, who were killed and seriously injured respectively. press note of the Association of Muslims Scholars, 7 June 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 9 June 2007.]

 

 

 

Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education (Baghdad)

 

 

 

Lecturers killed after a mass kidnapping, 13 November 2006[4]:

 

 

Abdul Salam Suaidan Al-Mashhadani: Lecturer in political sciences and head of the scholarships section of the Ministry of Higher Education. He was kidnapped 13 November 2006 in an assault on the ministry. His body was found with signs of torture and mutilation 24 November 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 November 2006.]

Abdul Hamid Al-Hadizi: Professor (speciality unknown). He was kidnapped 13 November 2006 in an assault on the ministry. His body was found with signs of torture and mutilation 24 November 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 November 2006.]

 

 

 

 

 

Baghdad Institutes

 

Izi Al-Deen Al-Rawi: President of the Arabic University’s Institute of Petroleum, Industry and Minerals. Al-Rawi was kidnapped and found dead 20 November 2006. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 20 November 2006)

 

 

 

 

 

BABYLON Hilla University

 

Jaled M Al-Janabi: PhD in Islamic history, lecturer in Hilla University’s School of Humanities.

Mohsin Suleiman Al-Ajeely: PhD in agronomy, lecturer in the College of Agronomy, Hilla University. Killed 24 December 2005.

Fleih Al-Gharbawi: Lecturer in the College of Medicine. Killed in Hilla (capital of the province of Babylon, 100 kilometers south of Baghdad) 20 November 2006 by armed men. [source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 20 November 2006.]

Ali Al-Grari (or Garar): Professor at Hilla University. He was shot dead 20 November 2006 by armed men in a vehicle on the freeway between Hilla and Baghdad. [source: Iraqi police sources cited by Reuters, 20 November 2006,

 

 

 

AT-TAMIM Kirkuk University

 

Ahmed Izaldin Yahya: Lecturer in the College of Engineering, Kirkuk University. Killed by a car bomb in the vicinity of his home in Kirkuk, 16 February 2007. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 17 February 2007.]

Hussein Qader Omar: professor and Dean of Kirkuk University’s College of Education Sciences. Killed in November 20, 2006 by shots made from a vehicle in the city center. An accompanying colleague was injured. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, November 21, 2006, and Iraqi Police Sources cited by Reuters, 20 November 2006.].

Sabri Abdul Jabar Mohammed: Lecturer at the College of Education Sciences at Kirkuk University. Found dead 1 November 2007 in a street in Kirkuk one day after being kidnapped by a group of unidentified armed men [source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI, 2 November 2007.]

 

Abdel Sattar Tahir Sharif: Lecturer at Kirkuk University. Department and college unknown. 75-years-old, he was assassinated 5 March 2008 by armed men in the district of Shoraw, 10 kilometres northeast of Kirkuk. [source: Aswat Al-Iraq/ Voices of Iraq, 5 March 2008.]

 

 

 

 

 

NINEVEH Mosul University

 

Abdel Yabar Al-Naimi: Dean of Mosul University’s College of Humanities.

Abdul Yabar Mustafa: PhD in political sciences, dean of Mosul University’s College of Political Sciences.

Abdul Aziz El-Atrachi: PhD in plant protection in the College of Agronomy and Forestry, Mosul University.

Eman Abd-Almonaom Yunis: PhD in translation, lecturer in the College of Humanities, Mosul University.

Jaled Faisal Hamid Al-Shijo: PhD and lecturer in the College of Physical Education, Mosul University.

Leila Abdu Allah Al-Saad: PhD in law, dean of Mosul University’s College of Law.

Mahfud Al-Kazzaz: PhD and lecturer at University Mosul. Department and college unknown. Killed 20 November 2004.

Mohammed Yunis Thanun: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer in the College of Physical Education, Mosul University.

Munir Al-Jiero: PhD in law and lecturer in the College of Law, Mosul University. Married to Dr Leila Abdu Allah Al-Saad, also assassinated.

Noel Butrus S. Mathew: PhD, professor at the Health Institute of Mosul University.

Ahmad Hamid Al-Tai: Professor and head of Department of Medicine, Mosul University. Killed 20 November 2006 when armed men intercepted his vehicle as he was heading home. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 20 November 2006.]

Kamel Abdul Hussein: Lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Law, Mosul University. Killed 11 January 2007. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

Talal Younis: Professor and dean of the College of Political Sciences. Killed on the morning of 16 April 2007 at the main entrance to the college. Within less than half an hour Professor Jaafer Hassan Sadeq of the Department of History at Mosul University was assassinated at his home. [sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Mousl.]

Jaafer Hassan Sadeq: Professor in the Department of History of Mosul University’s College of Arts. Killed 16 April 2007 at home in the district of Al-Kafaaat, northwest of Mosul. Within less that half an hour, Professor Talal Younis, dean of Mosul University’s College of Political Sciences, was killed at the main entrance to the college. [sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Mousl.]

Ismail Taleb Ahmed: Lecturer in the College of Education, Mosul University. Killed 2 May 2007 while on his way to college. [source: Al-Mosul, 2 May 2007.]

Nidal Al-Asadi: Professor in the Computer Sciences Department of Mosul University’s College of Sciences. Shot dead by armed men in the district of Al-Muhandiseen, according to police sources in Mosul. [sources: INA, 2 May 2007, and Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 3 May 2007.]

Aziz Suleiman: Lecturer at Mosul University. Department of Mosul University’s College of Sociology. Killed in Mosul 22 January 2008. [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 January 2008.].

 

Jalil Ibrahim Ahmed al-Naimi: Director of the ‘Sharia’ Department (Islamic Law), Mosul University. He was shot dead by armed men when he came back home (in Mosul) from University, 30 January 2008. [sources: CEOSI and BRussells Tribunal University Iraqi sources, al-Quds al-Arabi, 31 de enero de 2008.].

 

 

 

 

 

QADISIYA Diwaniya University

 

Hakim Malik Al-Zayadi: PhD in Arabic philology, lecturer in Arabic literature at Al-Qadisyia University. Dr Al-Zayadi was born in Diwaniya, and was killed in Latifiya when he was traveling from Baghdad 24 July 2005.]

Mayed Husein: Physician and lecturer at the College of Medicine, Diwaniya University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

 

 

 

 

 

BASRA Basra University

 

Abdel Al-Munim Abdel Mayad: Bachelor and lecturer at Basra University.

Abdel Gani Assaadun: Bachelor and lecturer at Basra University.

Abdul Alah Al-Fadhil: PhD, professor and deputy dean of Basra University’s College of Medicine.

Abdul-Hussein Nasir Jalaf: PhD in agronomy, lecturer at the College of Agronomy’s Center of Research on Date Palm Trees, Basra University.

Alaa Daoud: PhD in sciences, professor and chairman of Basra University (also reported as a lecturer in history). Killed 20 July 2005.

Ali Galib Abd Ali: Bachelor of sciences, assistant professor at the School of Engineering, Basra University.

Asaad Salem Shrieda: PhD in engineering, professor and dean of Basra University’s School of Engineering.

Faysal Al-Assadi: PhD in agronomy, professor at the College of Agronomy, Basra University.

Gassab Jabber Attar: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer at the School of Engineering, Basra University.

Haidar Al-Baaj: PhD in surgery, head of the University College Basra Hospital.

Haidar Taher: PhD and professor at the College of Medicine, Basra University.

Hussein Yasin: PhD in physics, lecturer in sciences at Basra University Killed 18 February 2004 at his home and in front of his family.

Khaled Shrieda: PhD in engineering, dean of the School of Engineering, Basra University.

Khamhour Al-Zargani: PhD in history, head of the Department of History at the College of Education, Basra University Killed 19 August 2005.

Kadim Mashut Awad: visiting professor at the Department of Soils, College of Agriculture, Basra University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Karem Hassani: PhD and lecturer at the College of Medicine, Basra University.

Kefaia Husein Saleh: PhD in English philology, lecturer in the College of Education Sciences, Basra University.

Mohammed Al-Hakim: PhD in pharmacy, professor and dean of Basra University’s College of Pharmacy.

Mohammed Yassem Badr: PhD, professor and chairman of Basra University.

Omar Fakhri: PhD and lecturer in biology at the College of Sciences, Basra University.

Saad Alrubaiee: PhD and lecturer in biology at the College of Sciences, Basra University.

Yaddab Al-Hajjam: PhD in education sciences and lecturer at the College of Education Sciences, Basra University.

Zanubia Abdel Husein: PhD in veterinary medicine, lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Basra University.

Jalil Ibrahim Almachari: Lecturer at Basra University. Department and college unknown. Killed 20 March 2006 after criticizing in a public lecture the situation in Iraq. (Arabic Source: Al-Kader.]

Abdullah Hamed Al-Fadel: PhD in medicine, lecturer in surgery and deputy dean of the College of Medicine at Basra University. Killed in January 2006 (exact date unknown). [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Fuad Al-Dajan: PhD in medicine, lecturer in gynecology at the College of Medicine, Basra University. Killed at the beginning of March 2006 (exact date unknown). [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Saad Al-Shahin: PhD in medicine, lecturer in internal medicine at Basra University’s College of Medicine. Killed at the beginning of March 2006 (exact date unknow). [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Jamhoor Karem Khammas: Lecturer at the College of Arts, Basra University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Karem Mohsen: PhD and lecturer at Department of Agriculture, College of Agronomy, Basra University. Killed 10 April 2006. He worked in the field of honeybee production. Lecturers and students called for a demonstration to protest for his assassination. [source: Al-Basrah, 11 April 2006.]

Waled Kamel: Lecturer at the College of Arts at Basra University. Killed 8 May 2006. Other two lecturers were injured during the attack, one of them seriously. [source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 9 May 2006.]

Ahmad Abdul Kader Abdullah: Lecturer in the College of Sciences, Basra University. His body was found 9 June 2006. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 June 2006.]

Kasem Yusuf Yakub: Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Basra University. Killed 13 June 2006 at the university gate. [sources: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 14 June 2006 and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 16 June 2006.]

Ahmad Abdul Wadir Abdullah: Professor of the College of Chemistry, Basra University. Killed 10 June 2006. [source: UNAMI report, 1 May-30 June 2006.]

Kathum Mashhout: Lecturer in edaphology at the College of Agriculture, Basra University. Killed in Basra in December 2006 (exact date unknown). [source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 12 December 2006.]

Mohammed Aziz Alwan: Lecturer in artistic design at the College of Fine Arts, Basra University. Killed by armed men 26 May 2007 while walking in the city. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 1 June 2007.]

Firas Abdul Zahra: Lecturer at the College of Physical Education, Basra University. Killed at home by armed men 18 July 2007. His wife was injured in the attack. [source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 26 August 2007.]

Muayad Ahmad Jalaf: Lecturer at the College of Arts, Basra University. Kidnapped 10 September 2007 by a group of armed men that was driving three cars, one of them with a government license plate. He was found dead in a city suburb the next day. [source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 12 September 2007.]

 

Khaled Naser Al-Miyahi: PhD in medicine, Professor of neurosurgery at Basra University. He was assassinated in March 2008 (exact date unknown). His body was found after his being kidnapped by a group of armed men in the streets of Basra. There were no ransom demands, according to information provided by Baghdad’s Center for Human Rights. [source: Al-Basrah, 12 March 2008.]

 

 

 

Technical Institute of Basra

 

Mohammed Kasem: PhD in engineering, lecturer at the Technical Institute of Basra.

Sabah Hachim Yaber: Lecturer at the Technical Institute of Basra.

Salah Abdelaziz Hashim: PhD and lecturer in fine arts at the Technical Institute of Basra. Kidnapped in 4 April 2006. He was found shot dead the next day. According to other sources, Dr Hashim was machine-gunned from a vehicle, injuring also a number of students. [sources: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 6 April 2006, Az-Zaman, 6 April 2006, and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 7 April 2006.]

 

 

 

 

 

TIKRIT Tikrit University

 

Basem Al-Mudares: PhD in chemical sciences and lecturer in the College of Sciences, Tikrit University. His body was found mutilated in the city of Samarra 21 July 2004.

Fathal Mosa Hussine: PhD and professor at the College of Physical Education, Tikrit University.

Mahmud Ibrahim Hussein: PhD in biological sciences and lecturer at the College of Education Sciences, Tikrit University.

Madloul Albazi Tikrit University. Department and college unknown. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Mojbil Achaij Issa Al-Jabouri: Lecturer in international law at the College of Law, Tikrit University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Damin Husein Al-Abidi: Lecturer in international law at College of Law, Tikrit University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Harit Abdel Yabar As Samrai: PhD student at the College of Engineering, Tikrit University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Farhan Mahmud: Lecturer at the College of Theology, Tikrit University. Disappeared after being kidnapped 24 November 2006. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 26 November 2006.]

Mustafa Khudhr Qasim: Professor at Tikrit University. Department and college unknown. His body was found beheaded in Al-Mulawatha, eastern Mosul, 21 November 2007. [sources: Al-Mosul, 22 November 2007, and Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI, 22-25 November 2007.]

 

Taha AbdulRazak Al-Ani: PhD in Islamic Studies, he was professor at Tikrit University. His body was found shot dead in a car on a highway near Al-Adel, a Baghdad suburb. Also, the body of Sheikh Mahmoud Talb Latif Al-Jumaily, member of the Commision of Muslim Scientists, was found dead in the same car last Thursday afternoon, 15 May 2008. [source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 21 May 2008.]

 

 

 

 

 

DIYALA Baquba University

 

Taleb Ibrahim Al-Daher: PhD in physical sciences, professor and dean at the College of Sciences, Baquba University. Killed 21 December 2004.

Lez Mecchan: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed 19 April 2006 with his wife and another colleague. [sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006.]

Mis (surname unknown): Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Wife of Professor Lez Mecchan, also assassinated. Both were killed with another colleague 19 April 2006. [sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006.]

Salam Ali Husein: Taught at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed 19 April 2006 with two other colleagues. [sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006.]

Meshhin Hardan Madhlom Al-Dulaimi: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Abdul Salam Ali Al-Mehdawi: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Mais Ganem Mahmoud: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Satar Jabar Akool: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Mohammed Abdual Redah Al-Tamemmi: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic Language and head of the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed 19 August 2006 together with Professor Kreem Slman Al-Hamed Al-Sadey, 70 years old, of the same Department. A third lecturer from the same department escaped the attack carried out by a group of four armed men Students and lecturers demonstrated against his and other lecturers’ deaths. [source: World Socialist, 12 September 2006, citing the Iraqi newspaper Az-Zaman, CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006.]

Karem Al-Saadi: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed August 2006. Students and lecturers demonstrated against his and other lecturers’ deaths. [source: World Socialist, 12 September 2006, citing the Iraqi newspaper Az-Zaman.]

Kreem Slman Al-Hamed Al-Sadey: Professor in the Department of Arabic Language at the College of Education, Baquba University. He was 70 years old when killed 19 August 2006. In the attack Mohammed Abdual Redah Al-Tamemmi, head of Education Department was also killed. A third lecturer from the same department escaped the attack of a group of four armed men. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006.]

Hasan Ahmad: Lecturer in the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed 8 December 2006. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, December 2006.]

Ahmed Mehawish Hasan: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic at the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed in December (exact date unknown). [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006.]

Walhan Hamid Fares Al-Rubai: Dean of the College of Physical Education, Baquba University. Al-Rubai was shot by a group of armed men in his office 1 February 2007. According to some sources his son was also killed. [source: Reuters and Islamomeno, 1-3 February 2007 respectively, and CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 2 February 2007.]

Abdul Ghabur Al-Qasi: Lecturer in history at Baquba University. His body was found by the police 10 April 2007 in Diyala River, which crosses the city, with 31 other bodies of kidnapped people. [source: Az-zaman, 11 April 2007.]

Jamal Mustafa: Professor and head of the History Department, College of Education Sciences, Baquba University. Kidnapped at home in the city of Baquba 29 October 2007 by a group of armed men driving in three vehicles. [source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 30 October 2007.]

 

 

 

 

 

Al-ANBAR Ramadi University

 

Abdel Karem Mejlef Saleh: PhD in philology, lecturer at the College of Education Sciences, Al-Anbar University.

Abdel Majed Hamed Al-Karboli: Lecturer at Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Ahmad Abdel Hadi Al-Rawi: PhD in biology, professor in the School of Agronomy, Al-Anbar University.

Ahmad Abdul Alrahman Hameid Al-Jhbissy: PhD in Medicine, Professor of College of Medicine, Al-Anbar University.

Ahmed Saadi Zaidan: PhD in education sciences, Ramadi University. Killed February 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Hamed Faisal Antar: Lecturer in the College of Law, Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Naser Abdel Karem Mejlef Al-Dulaimi: Department of Physics, College of Education, Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Raad Ojssin Al-Binow: PhD in surgery, lecturer at the College of Medicine, Al-Anbar University.

Shakir Mahmmoud Jasim: PhD in agronomy, lecturer in the School of Agronomy, Al-Anbar University.

Nabil Hujazi: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Ramadi University. Killed in June 2006 (exact date unknown). [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 20 June 2006, confirmed by Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education.]

Nasar Al-Fahdawi: Lecturer at Ramadi University. Department and college unknown. Killed 16 January 2006. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, December 2006.]

Khalid Jubair Al-Dulaimi: Lecturer at the College of Engineering, Ramadi University. Killed 27 April 2007. [source: Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 3 May 2007.]

 

 

 

 

 

NAJAF Kufa University

 

Jawla Mohammed Taqi Zwain: PhD in medicine, lecturer at College of Medicine, Kufa University.

Shahlaa Al-Nasrawi: Lecturer in the College of Law, Kufa University. Assassinated 22 August 2007 by members of a sectarian militia. [source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 27 August 2007.]

Adel Abdul Hadi: Professor of philosophy, Kufa University’s College of Arts. Killed by a group of armed men 28 October 2007 when returning home from university. [source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 30 October 2007.]

 

 

 

KARBALA University of Karbala

 

 

 

Kasem Mohammed Ad Dayni: Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, College of Pedagogy, Karbala University. Killed 17 April 2006.

 

 

MOSUL Mosul University

 

Omar Miran: Baghdad University bachelor of law (1946), PhD in history from Paris University (1952), professor of history at Mosul University, specialist in history of the Middle East. Killed, along with his wife and three of his sons, by armed men in February 2006 (exact date unknown.].

Noel Petros Shammas Matti: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Mosul University. Married and father of two daughters. He was kidnapped and found dead 4 August 2006.

Muwafek Yahya Hamdun: Deputy dean and professor at the College of Agronomy, Mosul University. [source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Naif Sultan Saleh: Lecturer at the Technical Institute, Mosul University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Natek Sabri Hasan: Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Mechanization and head of the College of Agronomy, Mosul University. [source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Abdul Kader Ali Abdullah: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic, College of Education Sciences, Mosul University. Found dead 25/26 August 2007 after being kidnapped five days before by a group of armed men. [source: Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI 26-27 August 2007.]

Unknown: Lecturer at Mosul University, killed in the explosion of two car bombs near campus, 1 October 2007. In this atack six other people were injured, among them four students. [source: KUNA, 1 October 2007.]

 

 

 

OPEN UNIVERSITY

 

Kareem Ahmed Al-Timmi: Head of the Department of Arabic Language in the College of Education at the Open University. Killed in Baghdad, 22 February 2007.

 

 

 

COMMISSION OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION [5]

 

Aamir Ibrahim Hamza: Bachelor in electronic engineering, lecturer at the Technical Institute.

Mohammed Abd Al-Hussein Wahed: PhD in tourism, lecturer at the Institute of Administration.

Mohammed Saleh Mahdi: Bachelor in sciences, lecturer at the Cancer Research Centre. Killed November 2005.

 

 

 

INSTITUTIONAL POSITIONS

 

Emad Sarsam: PhD in surgery and member of the Arab Council of Medicine.

Faiz Ghani Aziz: PhD in agronomy, director general of the Iraqi Company of Vegetable Oil. Killed September 2003.

Isam Said Abd Al-Halim: Geologic consultant at the Ministry of Construction.

Kamal Al-Jarrah: Degree in English philology, researcher and writer and director general at the Ministry of Education.

Raad Abdul-Latif Al-Saadi: PhD in Arabic language, consultant in higher education and scientific research at the Ministry of Education.

Shakier Al-Jafayi: PhD in administration, head of the Department of Normalization and Quality at the Iraq Council.

Wajeeh Mahjub: PhD in physical education, director general of physical education at the Ministry of Education.

Wissam Al-Hashimi: PhD in petrogeology, president of the Arab Union of Geologists, expert in Iraqi reservoirs, he worked for the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum.

 

 

 

UNIVERSITY AFFILIATION UNKNOWN

 

Amir Mizhir Al-Dayni: Professor of telecommunication engineering.

Khaled Ibrahim Said: PhD in physics.

Mohammed Al-Adramli: PhD in chemical sciences.

Mohammed Munim Al-Izmerly: PhD in chemical sciences. He was tortured and killed by US troops. His body was sent to the Baghdad morgue. The cause of death was initially registered as “brainstem compression”.

Nafi Aboud: Professor of Arabic literature.

 

 

 

OTHER CASES

 

Khalel Al-Zahawi: Born in 1946, Al-Zahawi was considered the most important calligraphist in Iraq and among the most important in the Arab-Muslim world. He worked as a lecturer in calligraphy in several Arab countries during the 1990s. He was killed 19 May 2007 in Baghdad by a group of armed men. He was buried in Diyala, where he was born. [source: BBC News, 22 May 2007. His biography is available on wikipedia.].

[Nur]

Britain Leaves Iraq in Shame.

 

 

The US Won't Go So Quietly. Obama was elected on the back of revulsion at Bush's war, but greater pressure will be needed to force a full withdrawal

 

By Seumas Milne

 

December 11, 2008 "The Guardian" -- -If British troops are indeed withdrawn from Iraq by next June, it will signal the end of the most shameful and disastrous episode in modern British history. Branded only last month by Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's most senior law lord, as a "serious violation of international law", the aggression against Iraq has not only devastated an entire country and left hundreds of thousands dead - it has also been a political and military humiliation for the invading powers.

 

In the case of Britain, which marched into a sovereign state at the bidding of an extreme and reckless US administration, the war has been a national disgrace which has damaged the country's international standing. Britain's armed forces will withdraw from Iraq with dishonour. Not only were they driven from Basra city last summer under cover of darkness by determined resistance, just as British colonial troops were forced out of Aden 40 years ago - and Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, before that. But they leave behind them an accumulation of evidence of prisoner beatings, torture and killings, for which only one low-ranking soldier, Corporal Payne, has so far been singled out for punishment.

 

It's necessary to spell out this brutal reality as a corrective to the official tendency to minimise or normalise the horror of what has evidently been a criminal enterprise - enthusiastically supported by David Cameron and William Hague, it should be remembered, as well as Tony Blair and his government - and a reminder of the dangers of escalating the war that can't be won in Afghanistan. It was probably just as well that the timetable for British withdrawal from Iraq was given in a background military briefing, after Gordon Brown's earlier schedule for troop reductions was vetoed by George Bush.

 

But in any case, in the wake of Barack Obama's election on a partial withdrawal ticket, the latest plans look a good deal more credible. They are also welcome, of course, even if several hundred troops are to stay behind to train Iraqis. It would be far better both for Britain and Iraq if there were a clean break and a full withdrawal of all British forces in preparation for a comprehensive public inquiry into the Iraq catastrophe. Instead, and in a pointer to the shape of things to come, British troops at Basra airport are being replaced by US forces.

 

Meanwhile, the real meaning of last month's security agreement between the US and Iraqi governments is becoming clearer, as Obama's administration-in-waiting briefs the press and officials highlight the small print. This "status of forces agreement", which replaces the UN's shotgun mandate for the occupation forces at the end of this month, had been hailed by some as an unequivocal deal to end the occupation within three years.

 

There's no doubt that Iraq's Green Zone government, under heavy pressure from its own people and neighbours such as Iran, extracted significant concessions from US negotiators to the blanket occupation licence in the original text. The final agreement does indeed stipulate that US forces will withdraw by the end of 2011, that combat troops will leave urban areas by July next year, contractors and off-duty US soldiers will be subject to Iraqi law and that Iraqi territory cannot be used to attack other countries.

 

The fact that the US was forced to make such commitments reflects the intensity of both Iraqi and American public opposition to the occupation, the continuing Iraqi resistance war of attrition against US forces, and Obama's tumultuous election on a commitment to pull out all combat troops in 16 months. Even so, the deal was denounced as treason - for legitimising foreign occupation and bases - by the supporters of the popular Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, resistance groups and the influential Association of Muslim Scholars.

 

And since his November triumph, Obama has gone out of his way to emphasise his commitment to maintaining a "residual force" for fighting "terrorism", training and protection of US civilians - which his security adviser Richard Danzig estimated could amount to between 30,000 and 55,000 troops.

 

Briefings by Pentagon officials have also made clear this residual force could remain long after 2011. It turns out that the new security agreement can be ditched by either side, while the Iraqi government is fully entitled to invite US troops to remain, as explained in the accompanying "strategic framework agreement", so long as its bases or presence are not defined as "permanent". And given that the current Iraqi government would be unlikely to survive a week without US protection, such a request is a fair bet. Combat troops can also be "re-missioned" as "support units", it transpires, and even the last-minute concession of a referendum on the agreement next year will not, the Iraqi government now says, be binding.

 

None of this means there won't be a substantial withdrawal of troops from Iraq after Obama takes over the White House next month. But how far that withdrawal goes will depend on the kind of pressure he faces both at home and in Iraq. The US establishment clearly remains committed to a long-term stewardship of Iraq. The Iraqi government is at this moment negotiating secret 20-year contracts with US and British oil majors to manage 90% of the country's oil production. The struggle to end US occupation and control of the country is far from won.

 

The same goes for the wider shadow of the war on terror, of which Iraq has been the grisly centrepiece. Its legacy has been strategic overreach and failure for the US: from the rise of Iran as a regional power, the deepening imbroglio of the Afghan war, the advance of Hamas and Hizbullah and threat of implosion in Pakistan - quite apart from the advance of the nationalist left in Latin America and the growing challenge from Russia and China. But at its heart has been the demonstration of American weakness in Iraq, the three trillion-dollar war that helped drive the US economy into crisis.

 

No wonder the US elite has wanted a complete change of direction and Bush was last week reduced to mumbling his regrets about the "intelligence failure in Iraq". For Obama, the immediate foreign policy tests are clear: if he delivers on Iraq, negotiates in Afghanistan and engages with Iran, he will start to justify the global hopes that have been invested in him. If not, he will lay the ground for a new phase of conflict with the rest of the world.

 

Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor.

© 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited

[Nur]

Bush's Hit Teams

 

By Robert Parry

 

July 16, 2009 Consortiumnews" -- July 15, 2009 -- Despite the new controversy over whether a global CIA “hit team” ever went operational, there has been public evidence for years that the Bush administration approved “rules of engagement” that permitted executions and targeted killings of suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

In effect, President George W. Bush transformed elite units of the U.S. military – including Special Forces and highly trained sniper teams – into “death squads” with a license to kill unarmed targets on suspicion that they might be a threat to American occupying forces.

 

In the recent public debate over whether Bush also authorized the CIA to assemble teams of assassins to roam the world hunting al-Qaeda suspects, the U.S. news media has cited the distinction between such face-to-face executions and the CIA's use of remote-controlled Predator drones firing missiles to kill groups of suspected insurgents in or near the war zones.

 

However, the evidence is that the Bush administration also permitted U.S. military units to engage in close-quarter executions when encountering alleged insurgents, even if they were unarmed and presented no immediate threat to American or allied troops.

 

This reality surfaced in 2007 with the attempted prosecutions of several U.S. soldiers whose defense attorneys cited “rules of engagement” that permitted killing suspected insurgents.

 

One case involved Army sniper Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., who was acquitted by a U.S. military court in Baghdad on Sept. 28, 2007, in the murders of two unarmed Iraqi men – one on April 27, 2007, and the other on May 11, 2007 – because the jury accepted defense arguments that the killings were within the approved rules. (Sandoval was convicted of lesser charges relating to planting evidence on a victim to obscure the facts of the homicide.)

 

The Sandoval case also revealed a classified program in which the Pentagon’s Asymmetric Warfare Group encouraged U.S. military snipers in Iraq to drop “bait” – such as electrical cords and ammunition – and then shoot Iraqis who picked up the items, according to evidence in the Sandoval case. [Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2007]

 

Afghan Execution

 

Another case of authorized murder of an insurgent suspect surfaced at a military court hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in mid-September 2007. Two U.S. Special Forces soldiers took part in the execution of an Afghani who was suspected of leading an insurgent group.

 

Though the Afghani, identified as Nawab Buntangyar, responded to questions and offered no resistance when encountered on Oct. 13, 2006, he was shot dead by Master Sgt. Troy Anderson on orders from his superior officer, Capt. Dave Staffel.

 

According to evidence at the Fort Bragg proceedings, an earlier Army investigation had cleared the two soldiers because they had been operating under “rules of engagement” that empowered them to kill individuals who had been designated “enemy combatants,” even if the targets were unarmed and presented no visible threat.

 

The troubling picture was that the U.S. chain of command, presumably up to President Bush, authorized loose “rules of engagement” that allowed targeted killings – as well as other objectionable tactics including arbitrary arrests and indefinite detentions, “enhanced interrogations” otherwise known as torture, kidnappings in third countries with “extraordinary renditions” to countries that torture, secret CIA prisons, and “reeducation camps” for younger detainees.

 

Typical of Washington politics, however, the loudest arguments have been over whether the Bush administration adequately notified Congress of covert aspects of these operations, including the reported CIA-assassination plan which allegedly was ordered kept hidden from the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees by Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

Some Republicans have said Democrats proved that they don’t have the toughness to defend U.S. national security by raising questions about the hit team, while pro-Democratic pundits note that the Bush administration apparently demonstrated its incompetence by failing to get the assassination program off the ground. In other words, the debate is centered on peripheral issues, not on the substance of extrajudicial murders.

 

Similarly, Attorney General Eric Holder is said to be leaning toward appointing a special prosecutor to investigate some CIA personnel for torturing detainees, but only if they went beyond the parameters of torture that had been spelled out by Bush administration lawyers. In other words, senior government officials who sanctioned limited waterboarding and other torture techniques would not be held to account, only overzealous interrogators who went even further.

 

A Sordid History

 

Like torture, assassinations and the use of other lethal force against unarmed suspects and civilians violates a variety of laws and has a notorious history in irregular warfare, both regarding cross-border murders and violent repression of an indigenous resistance in which guerrillas and their political supporters blend in with the local population.

 

And, at least inside and near the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush’s “global war on terror” appears to have recreated what was known during the Vietnam War as Operation Phoenix, a program that assassinated Vietcong cadre, including suspected communist backers.

 

Through a classified Pentagon training program known as “Project X,” the lessons of Operation Phoenix from the 1960s were passed on to Third World armies, especially in Latin America, giving a green light to some of the “dirty wars” that swept the region, causing tens of thousands of political murders, widespread use of torture, and secret detentions.

 

Bush’s alleged plan for global hit teams also has similarities to “Operation Condor” in which South American right-wing military regimes in the 1970s sent assassins on cross-border operations to eliminate “subversives.”

 

Despite quiet support and encouragement for Latin American “death squads” through much of the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. government presented itself as the standard-bearer for human rights and criticized American adversaries that engaged in extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary detentions.

 

That gap between American rhetoric and reality widened after 9/11 as Bush announced his “global war on terror,” while continuing to impress the American news media with pretty words about his commitment to human rights – as occurred in his address to the United Nations on Sept. 25, 2007.

 

Under Bush’s double standards, he took the position that he could override both international law and the U.S. Constitution in deciding who would get basic human rights and who wouldn’t. He saw himself as the final judge of whether people he deemed “bad guys” should live or die, or possibly face indefinite imprisonment and torture.

 

Yet, whatever Bush and other higher-ups approved as “rules of engagement,” the practice of murdering unarmed suspects – especially after they’ve been detained – violated the law of war and could have opened up the offending country’s chain of command to war-crimes charges.

 

However, while such actions by leaders of, say, Serbia or Sudan would provoke demands for war-crimes tribunals, other rules apply when the offending nation is the United States. Given its “superpower” status, the United States and its senior leadership appear to be effectively beyond the reach of international law – and in the case of Bush, beyond domestic accountability.

 

Downplaying a Slaughter

 

By and large, the U.S. military also has failed to impose serious punishments on American troops implicated in extrajudicial killings and massacres, even high-profile ones like the killing of two dozen Iraqis in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, after one Marine died from an improvised explosive device.

 

According to published accounts of U.S. military investigations, the dead Marine’s comrades retaliated by pulling five men from a cab and shooting them, and clearing two homes where civilians, including women and children, were slaughtered.

 

The Marines then tried to cover up the killings by claiming that the civilian deaths were caused by the original explosion or a subsequent firefight, according to investigations by the U.S. military and human rights groups.

 

One of the accused Marines, Sgt. Frank Wuterich, gave his account of the Haditha killings in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” including an admission that his squad tossed a grenade into one of the residences without knowing who was inside.

 

“Frank, help me understand,” asked interviewer Scott Pelley. “You’re in a residence, how do you crack a door open and roll a grenade into a room?”

 

“At that point, you can’t hesitate to make a decision,” Wuterich answered. “Hesitation equals being killed, either yourself or your men.”

 

“But when you roll a grenade in a room through the crack in the door, that’s not positive identification, that’s taking a chance on anything that could be behind that door,” Pelley said.

 

“Well, that’s what we do. That’s how our training goes,” Wuterich said.

 

Eight Marines were initially charged in the Haditha case, but six cases were dropped, one Marine was acquitted, and Wuterich’s case has been delayed by legal skirmishing. As in earlier cases, such as the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, courts martial have mostly focused on rank-and-file soldiers.

 

The lack of high-level accountability appears to stem from the fact that the key instigators of both the illegal invasion of Iraq and the harsh tactics employed in the “global war on terror” were former President Bush, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior officials. President Barack Obama has made clear he doesn’t want Bush and his top aides punished.

 

Yet, not only did Bush order an aggressive war – what World War II’s Nuremberg Tribunal called “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” – but Bush pumped U.S. troops full of false propaganda by linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks.

 

Bush’s subliminal connections between the Iraq War and 9/11 continued years after U.S. intelligence dismissed any linkage. For instance, on June 18, 2005, more than two years into the Iraq War, Bush justified the invasion by telling the American people that “we went to war because we were attacked” on 9/11.

 

Little wonder that a poll of 944 U.S. military personnel in Iraq – taken in January and February 2006 – found that 85 percent believed the U.S. mission in Iraq was mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks.” Seventy-seven percent said a chief war goal was “to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

 

Bush’s rhetorical excesses had the predictable effect of turning loose a revenge-seeking and heavily armed U.S. military force on the Iraqi population.

 

‘Salvador Option’

 

By early 2005, with the Iraqi insurgency growing, an increasingly frustrated Bush administration also debated a “Salvador option” for Iraq, an apparent reference to the “death squad” operations that decimated the ranks of perceived leftists who were opposed to El Salvador’s right-wing military junta in the early 1980s.

 

According to Newsweek magazine, President Bush was contemplating the adoption of that brutal “still-secret strategy” of the Reagan administration as a way to get a handle on the spiraling violence in Iraq.

 

“Many U.S. conservatives consider the policy [in El Salvador] to have been a success – despite the deaths of innocent civilians,” Newsweek wrote.

 

The magazine also noted that many of Bush’s advisers were leading figures in the Central American operations of the 1980s, such as Elliott Abrams, who became an architect of Middle East policy on the National Security Council.

 

In the Iraqi-sniper case, Army sniper Sandoval admitted killing an Iraqi man near the town of Iskandariya on April 27, 2007, after a skirmish with insurgents. Sandoval testified that his team leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, ordered him to kill a man cutting grass with a rusty scythe because he was suspected of being an insurgent posing as a farmer.

 

The second killing occurred on May 11, 2007, when a man walked into a concealed location where Sandoval, Hensley and other snipers were hiding. After the Iraqi was detained, another sniper, Sgt. Evan Vela, was ordered to shoot the man in the head by Hensley and did so, according to Vela’s testimony at Sandoval’s court martial.

 

Sandoval and Hensley were acquitted of murder charges because a military jury concluded that their actions were within the rules of engagement. (Like Sandoval, Hensley was convicted of lesser charges relating to planting evidence.) But Vela was convicted of killing an unarmed Iraqi civilian and planting evidence on the body, leading to a 10-year prison sentence.

 

Regarding the Afghanistan case, Special Forces Capt. Staffel and Sgt. Anderson were leading a team of Afghan soldiers when an informant told them where a suspected insurgent leader was hiding. The U.S.-led contingent found a man believed to be Nawab Buntangyar walking outside his compound near the village of Hasan Kheyl.

 

While the Americans kept their distance out of fear the suspect might be wearing a suicide vest, the Afghanis questioned the man about his name and the Americans checked his description against a list from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan, known as “the kill-or-capture list.”

 

Concluding that the man was insurgent leader Nawab Buntangyar, Staffel gave the order to shoot, and Anderson – from a distance of about 100 yards away – fired a bullet through the man’s head, killing him instantly.

 

The soldiers viewed the killing as “a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement,” the International Herald Tribune reported. “The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.”

 

Staffel’s civilian lawyer Mark Waple said the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded that the shooting was “justifiable homicide,” but a two-star general in Afghanistan instigated a murder charge against the two men. That case, however, floundered over accusations that the charge was improperly filed. [iHT, Sept. 17, 2007]

 

The U.S. news media has given the Fort Bragg case only minor coverage concentrating mostly on the legal sparring. The New York Times’ inside-the-paper, below-the-fold headline on Sept. 19, 2007, was “Green Beret Hearing Focuses on How Charges Came About.”

 

The Washington Post did publish a front-page story on the “bait” aspect of the Sandoval case – when family members of U.S. soldiers implicated in the killings came forward with evidence of high-level encouragement of the snipers – but the U.S. news media treated the story mostly as a minor event and drew no larger implications.

 

The greater significance of the cases is that they confirm the long-whispered allegations that the U.S. chain of command had approved standing orders giving the U.S. military broad discretion to kill suspected militants on sight.

 

Whatever the full story about President Bush’s CIA hit team, the facts are already clear that his “global war on terror” had morphed into an international “dirty war” with Bush now having passed off command to President Obama.

 

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

[Nur]

Killing “Everything That Moves”

 

The Johnny Procedure

 

By Uri Avnery

 

July 20, 2009 "ICH" -- - LIKE THE ghost of Hamlet’s father, the evil spirit of the Gaza War refuses to leave us in peace. This week it came back to disturb the tranquility of the chiefs of the state and the army.

 

“Breaking the Silence”, a group of courageous former combat soldiers, published a report comprising the testimonies of 30 Gaza War fighters. A hard-hitting report about actions that may be considered war crimes.

 

The generals went automatically into denial mode. Why don’t the soldiers disclose their identity, they asked innocently. Why do they obscure their faces in the video testimonies? Why do they hide their names and units?

 

How can we be sure that they are not actors reading a text prepared for them by the enemies of Israel? How do we know that this organization is not manipulated by foreigners, who finance their actions? And anyhow, how do we know that they are not lying out of spite?

 

One can answer with a Hebrew adage: “It has the feel of Truth”. Anyone who has ever been a combat soldier in war, whatever war, recognizes at once the truth in these reports. Each of them has met a soldier who is not ready to return home without an X on his gun showing that he killed at least one enemy. (One such person appears in my book “The Other Side of the Coin”, which was written 60 years ago and published in English last year as the second part of “1948: A soldier’s Tale”.) We have been there.

 

The testimonies about the use of phosphorus, about massive bombardment of buildings, about “the neighbor procedure” (using civilians as human shields), about killing “everything that moves”, about the use of all methods to avoid casualties on our side – all these corroborate earlier testimonies about the Gaza War, there can be no reasonable doubt about their authenticity. I learned from the report that the “neighbor procedure” is now called “Johnny procedure”, God knows why Johnny and not Ahmad.

 

The height of hypocrisy is reached by the generals with their demand that the soldiers come forward and lodge their complaints with their commanders, so that the army can investigate them through the proper channels.

 

First of all, we have already seen the farce of the army investigating itself.

 

Second, and this is the main point: only a person intent on becoming a martyr would do so. A solder in a combat unit is a part of a tightly knit group whose highest principle is loyalty to comrades and whose commandment is “Thou shalt not squeal!” If he discloses questionable acts he has witnessed, he will be considered a traitor and ostracized. His life will become hell. He knows that all his superiors, from squad leader right up to division commander, will persecute him.

 

This call to go through “official channels” is a vile method of the generals – members of the General Staff, Army Spokesmen, Army Lawyers – to divert the discussion from the accusations themselves to the identity of the witnesses. No less despicable are the tin soldiers called “military correspondents”, who collaborate with them.

 

BUT BEFORE accusing the soldiers who committed the acts described in the testimonies, one has to ask whether the decision to start the war did not itself lead inevitably to the crimes.

 

Professor Assa Kasher, the father of the army “Code of Ethics” and one of the most ardent supporters of the Gaza War, asserted in an essay on this subject that a state has the right to go to war only in self defense, and only if the war constitutes “a last resort”. “All alternative courses” to attain the rightful aim “must have been exhausted”.

 

The official cause of the war was the launching from the Gaza Strip of rockets against Southern Israeli towns and villages. It goes without saying that it is the duty of the state to defend its citizens against missiles. But had all the means to achieve this aim without war really been exhausted? Kasher answers with a resounding “yes”. His key argument is that “there is no justification for demanding that Israel negotiate directly with a terrorist organization that does not recognize it and denies its very right to exist.”

 

This does not pass the test of logic. The aim of the negotiations was not supposed to be the recognition by Hamas of the State of Israel and its right to exist (who needs this anyway?) but getting them to stop launching missiles at Israeli citizens. In such negotiations, the other side would understandably have demanded the lifting of the blockade against the population of the Gaza Strip and the opening of the supply passages. It is reasonable to assume that it was possible to reach – with Egyptian help - an agreement that would also have included the exchange of prisoners.

 

No only was this course not exhausted – it was not even tried. The Israeli government has consistently refused to negotiate with a “terrorist organization” and even with the Palestinian Unity Government that was in existence for some time and in which Hamas was represented.

 

Therefore, the decision to start the War on Gaza, with a civilian population of a million and a half, was unjustified even according to the criteria of Kasher himself. “All the alternative courses” had not been exhausted, or even attempted.

 

But we all know that, apart from the official reason, there was also an unofficial one: to topple the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. In the course of the war, official spokesmen stated that there was a need to attach a “price tag” – in other words, to cause death and destruction not in order to hurt the “terrorists” themselves (which would have been almost impossible) but to turn the life of the civilian population into hell, so they would rise up and overthrow Hamas.

 

The immorality of this strategy is matched by its inefficacy: our own experience has taught us that such methods only serve to harden the resolve of the population and unite them around their courageous leadership.

 

WAS IT at all possible to conduct this war without committing war crimes? When a government decides to hurl its regular armed forces at a guerrilla organization, which by its very nature fights from within the civilian population, it is perfectly clear that terrible suffering will be caused to that population. The argument that the harm caused to the population, and the killing of over a thousand men, women and children was inevitable should, by itself, have led to the conclusion that the decision to start this was a terrible act right from the beginning.

 

The Defense Establishment takes the easy way out. The ministers and generals simply assert that they do not believe the Palestinian and international reports about the death and destruction, stating that they are, again in Kasher’s words, “mistaken and false”. Just to be sure, they decided to boycott the UN commission that is currently investigating the war, headed by a respected South African judge who is both a Jew and a Zionist.

 

Assa Kasher is adopting a similar attitude when he says: “Somebody who does not know all the details of an action cannot assess it in a serious, professional and responsible way, and therefore should not do so, in spite of all emotional or political temptations.” He demands that we wait until the Israeli army completes its investigations, before we even discuss the matter.

 

Really? Every organization that investigates itself lacks credibility, not to mention a hierarchical body like the army. Moreover, the army does not – and cannot – obtain testimony from the main eye-witnesses: the inhabitants of Gaza. An investigation based only on the testimony of the perpetrators, but not of the victims, is ridiculous. Now even the testimonies of the soldiers of Breaking the Silence are discounted, because they cannot disclose their identity.

 

IN A war between a mighty army, equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry in the world, and a guerrilla organization, some basic ethical questions arise. How should the soldiers behave when faced with a structure in which there are not only enemy fighters, which they are “allowed” to hit, but also unarmed civilians, which they are “forbidden” to hit?

 

Kasher cites several such situations. For example: a building in which there are both “terrorists” and non-fighters. Should it be hit by aircraft or artillery fire that will kill everybody, or should soldiers be sent in who will risk their lives and kill only the fighters? His answer: there is no justification for the risking of the lives of our soldiers in order to save the lives of enemy civilians. An aerial or artillery attack must be preferred.

 

That does not answer the question about the use of the Air Force to destroy hundreds of houses far enough from our soldiers that there was no danger emanating from them, nor about the killing of scores of recruits of the Palestinian civilian police on parade, nor about the killing of UN personnel in food supply convoys. Nor about the illegal use of white phosphorus against civilians, as described in the soldiers’ testimonies gathered by Breaking the Silence, and the use of depleted uranium and other carcinogenic substances.

 

The entire country experienced on live TV how a shell hit the apartment of a doctor and wiped out almost all of his family. According to the testimony of Palestinian civilians and international observers, many such incidents took place.

 

The Israeli army took great pride in its method of warning the inhabitants by means of leaflets, phone calls and such, so as to induce them to flee. But everyone – and first of all the warners themselves - knew that the civilians had nowhere secure to escape to and that there were no clear and safe escape routes. Indeed, many civilians were shot while trying to flee.

 

WE SHALL not evade the hardest moral question of all: is it permissible to risk the lives of our soldiers in order to save the old people, women and children of the “enemy”? The answer of Assa Kasher, the ideologue of the “Most Moral Army in the World”, is unequivocal: it is absolutely forbidden to risk the lives of the soldiers. The most telling sentence in his entire essay is: “Therefore…the state must give preference to the lives of its soldiers above the lives of the (unarmed) neighbors of a terrorist.”

 

These words should be read twice and three times, in order to grasp their full implications. What is actually being said here is: if necessary to avoid casualties among our soldiers, it is better to kill enemy civilians without any limit.

 

In retrospect, one can only be glad that the British soldiers, who fought against the Irgun and the Stern Group, did not have an ethical guide like Kasher.

 

This is the principle that guided the Israeli army in the Gaza War, and, as far as I know, this is a new doctrine: in order to avoid the loss of one single soldier of ours, it is permissible to kill 10, 100 and even 1000 enemy civilians. War without casualties on our side. The numerical result bears witness: more than 1000 people killed in Gaza, a third or two thirds of them (depending on who you ask) civilians, women and children, as against 6 (six) Israeli soldiers killed by enemy fire. (Four more were killed by “friendly” fire.)

 

Kasher states explicitly that it is justified to kill a Palestinian child who is in the company of a hundred “terrorists”, because the “terrorists” might kill children in Sderot. But in reality, it was a case of killing a hundred children who were in the company of one “terrorist”.

 

If we strip this doctrine of all ornaments, what remains is a simple principle: the state must protect the lives of its soldiers at any price, without any limit or law. A war of zero casualties. That leads necessarily to a tactic of killing every person and destroying every building that could represent a danger to the soldiers, creating an empty space in front of the advancing troops.

 

Only one conclusion can be drawn from this: from now on, any Israeli decision to start a war in a built-up area is a war crime, and the soldiers who rise up against this crime should be honored. May they be blessed.

 

Uri Avnery is a journalist, peace activist, former member of the Knesset, and leader of Gush Shalom

[Nur]

The Insatiable American Thirst for Blood

 

By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal

 

July 18, 2009 "Opinion Maker" --- The Anti-War Movement in America, Canada, and Britain has virtually become a non-entity. This was not unpredictable because the diverse groups which make up the so-called Anti-War Movement have neither the resources, nor the leadership, nor any solid ideological foundation beyond the apparent loathing for war. The invasion of Afghanistan by the United States took place at a time of high fever (September 11, 2001 attacks) and no one thought much of the long-term agenda of Americans at the time of Afghan invasion. Hence, Afghanistan never gained the kind of front end importance which Iraq immediately achieved with the Anti-War Movement. But now the Anti-War Movement is in total disarray over the continuous occupation of Afghanistan and the expanding military operations.

 

This has given a free hand to the three main governments which lead Afghan operations to do whatever they wish to do in Afghanistan without any fear of homegrown opposition. Thus President Obama had no one to oppose him when he decided to send more troops into Afghanistan. He did this to make his first term as “successful” as that of his predecessors, assuming that the time-tested American definition of success still holds good: America must be engaged in a war to be successful.

 

The insatiable American thirst for blood is now in full bloom in this killing season as its drones continue to take the lives of men, women, and children in various parts of Pakistani FATA and its soldiers continue to dig deeper and deeper into Afghanistan. Although it is moving its soldiers out Iraqi towns, it is simply redeploying them. This continuous lust for blood is something that now defines America. Its war machine has become so blood thirsty that there is no end in sight of American occupation of Afghanistan, even though there is absolutely no moral or legal justification for its continuous operations in that war-ravaged land.

 

Yet neither the increased troops, nor the huge monetary resources being pumped into Afghan war indicate anything but failure. Just two weeks into July, 46 foreign troops have already been killed, making July 2009 a record month. But for the NATO spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith, these deaths were “something we did anticipate occurring as we extend our influence in the south.” He also touted the “pretty intensive set of objectives being met in terms of routing the insurgents.” Blood and death is simply what is expected, there is absolutely no shame, no regret, no qualms about loss of human lives; it is all expected and that, somehow justifies it!

 

On July 10, 2009, the death of eight British soldiers in one 24 hour period set a record: British military’s death toll in Afghanistan (184) now surpasses the number of its soldiers killed in Iraq (179). Yet, speaking at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended the Afghan mission: “Our resolution to complete the work we have started is undiminished,” he said. “It is in tribute to the members of our forces who have given their lives that we should succeed in the efforts we have begun… it has been a very hard summer, and it is not over.”

 

It is this circular rhetoric of the American, Canadian, and British politicians that has become the bedrock of their raison d’etre to be in Afghanistan: we need to complete the mission we started. But if one asks them: what mission? what exactly is the reason for your presence in Afghanistan, they have no answer except vague plenitudes: defending the hard-won progress, eliminating terrorism, defending our ideals, safeguarding our nation.

 

The same rhetoric is regurgitated by the Canadian politicians whenever a Canadian soldier is killed, the most recent being the 124th solider, Cpl. Nick Bulger, killed on July 3, 2009 in Kandahar province. (The explosion was a near miss for Canadian Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance, whose vehicle passed the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) just metres ahead Bulger's vehicle.) Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed regrets and condolences to the Bulger family, saying: “Hard-won progress is being made in Afghanistan." Adding; "Remarkable Canadians like Corporal Bulger will be remembered for their dedication and ultimate sacrifice for peace and freedom."

 

Whose freedom, what peace? One may ask. These men and women are being sacrificed simply in pursuit of a phantom enemy in a far away land. No Canadian in his or her right mind believes that Taliban in Afghanistan are going to attack their country. There is simply no reason for Canadian soldiers to be in Afghanistan but this most simple, most apparent fact does not enter the calculations of Canadian politicians because they immediately start to think of the economic consequences of pulling out of Afghanistan: what would happen to the trade with the big trade partner to the south if we pulled out. How many jobs will be lost and what would be the consequence of these job losses in the next elections. Such is the “logic”, if one can call it logic.

 

If history can be any guide, one can say with certainty that sooner or later the foreign troops will have to leave Afghanistan and they will leave behind nothing but broken families, severed bodies, scared children, and a trail of corruption and destruction at a level and scale never witnessed in Afghan history. Yet, this will not happen until the Americans find another place to send their soldiers so that their insatiable thirst for blood has new killing fields.

 

Copyright © 2008 O M

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

and Iraqi victims have something to do with Islam?