World-News

"A peace activist should keep a photo in his or her wallet of a small Iraqi child torn to pieces - a constant reminder to live like others are dying," writes David Swanson. "The trouble is that we find it almost unbearable to look at such images. We believe the war would end if the corporate media showed such images, yet we turn our faces away if they're placed in front of us; even more so, if they happen to be images of torture or of soldiers enjoying humiliating Iraqis."

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061406O.shtml

Click here to watch: Windows Media
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13609.htm

"Come and see the blood in the streets." Pablo Neruda, ‘Selected Poems’

By Mike Whitney

We’ve seen this before. An Iraqi city is surrounded by troops and armored vehicles; the artillery is wheeled into place, the roads are blocked, a giant wall of sand is piled up around the perimeter, and everything goes silent before the final onslaught.

https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13605.htm



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ramadi

Gary Hart and CodePink talk about how leading Democrats are abdicating responsibility on ending the war in Iraq.

https://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/13/iraq_everyones_problem.php

"As has been repeatedly stated by the most informed observers of the Iraqi scene, the real source of insurgent strength was never the foreign fighters, mainly under Zarqawi's control, but rather the indigenous militias along with elements from the old regime - Baathists and allies of Saddam Hussein. It will benefit the region, as well as Iraq, if Zarqawi's death is not allowed to become another occasion of wishful thinking by those who remain committed to Washington's policies of invasion and occupation," writes Richard Falk.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061306C.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Zarqawi

Mother Jones
by Tom Engelhardt

06/12/06

Let me, on this, be neither conservative, nor cautious. Every now and then, you have to rely on history as your guide. And hasn't this happened to us enough? Don't we know that, in every turning-of-the-tide moment in Iraq, it soon turns out that, despite the hoopla, our tide was ebbing and someone else's invariably rising? A number of experts are already suggesting that Zarqawi's death will have 'minimal impact' on the Iraqi resistance and may, in fact, serve to strengthen it by removing the most divisive and detested oppositional figure in the country; or perhaps, as the superb independent journalist Nir Rosen suggests in a thoughtful obit at the Truthdig website, Zarqawi's death 'was the greatest advertisement for his cause' and the path he blazed into sectarian warfare is now unstaunchable...

https://tinyurl.com/s36h8


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Zarqawi

Independent Institute
by Ivan Eland

06/12/06

[T]he U.S. government's propaganda machine has made al Qaeda the most overrated organization in the world and its leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the controlling force behind worldwide violent Islamic jihad -- even though they act mainly as inspiration for the movement. Similarly, in Iraq, the U.S. government needed a villain to personify the rather faceless Iraqi insurgency. The vicious and brutal Zarqawi fit the bill perfectly. The Bush administration demonized Zarqawi's foreign jihadists as the instigators and dominant force of the much larger Sunni insurgency to demonstrate that foreigners were causing most of the problems in Iraq rather than Iraqis who wanted to oust the occupying superpower. After building up Zarqawi and the jihadists, the administration could now shore up sagging public support for the war at home by nailing the bad guy in classic Hollywood fashion. Yet the administration's public relations coup is likely to be temporary and do a favor for the Iraqi insurgency and maybe even bin Laden and Zawahiri...

https://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1748


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Zarqawi

National Review
by John Derbyshire

06/12/06

Since the Iraq war was obviously a gross blunder, is it time for those of us who cheered on the war to offer some kind of apology? Here we are -- we, the United States -- in our fourth year of occupying that sinkhole, and it looks pretty much like the third year, or the second. Will the eighth year of our occupation, or our twelfth, look any better? I know people who will say yes, but I no longer know any who will say it with real conviction. It's a tough thing, to admit you were wrong. It's way tough if you're a big-name pundit with a reputation to preserve. For those of us down at the bottom of the pundit pecking order, the stakes aren't so high. I, at any rate, am willing to eat some crow and say: I wish I had never given any support to this fool war...

https://tinyurl.com/gfx9m


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp