The Battle of Gaza

Mike Whitney

In less than 24 hours of fierce street-fighting, Bush’s proxy-army in Gaza was routed by armed units of Hamas. It was a stunning defeat for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and for US-Israeli policymakers who have done everything in their power to overturn the “free and fair” election of the Hamas government. For now, Hamas has reestablished its authority in Gaza although Abbas is still working frantically with Bush and Olmert to consolidate his power in the West Bank. So far, Abbas has carried out the demands of his paymasters by replacing Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh with ex-World Bank official, Salam Fayyad—a Palestinian Karzai who will take his orders from Tel Aviv or Washington. Abbas does not have the constitutional authority to replace Prime Minister Haniyeh or to disband the Hamas-dominated government, but this point is typically overlooked in the western media.The Bush administration has abandoned any pretense of neutrality and is openly supporting the ongoing violation of UN resolution 242. Bush helped to engineer the savage boycott which has withheld food, water, medical aid and financial resources from Palestinian civilians. He has also funneled millions of dollars and weapons to the Palestinian “Preventive Security Force” headed by US-ally Mohammad Dahlan. According to the UK Guardian, “Washington has launched a controversial $60 million program to bolster Mr Abbas’s presidential guard and Israel has quietly allowed Arab states to send in arms and ammunition”. Dahlan’s militia was organized to challenge Hamas, but the plan failed spectacularly. As soon as the fighting broke out in Gaza, Dahlan’s men panicked and fled across the border to Egypt. Those who remained were disarmed, stripped and taken into custody by Hamas. One prominent Fatah gunman, Samih Madhoun, who had boasted of “executing several Hamas fighters and torching the homes of others”, was shot execution style.The defeat in Gaza is just the latest of Washington’s debacles in the Middle East. US-Israeli failures in the territories are the result of a misguided policy which is backfiring everywhere. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh summed up the present policy like this: “We’re in the business of creating … sectarian violence.”Hersh is right. Bush and Olmert are using the familiar “divide and conquer” strategy to provoke “Arab on Arab” violence. The policy is an extension of Henry Kissinger’s dictum during the Iran-Iraq war: “I hope they all kill each other”. The goal is the same today as it was then.Hersh says that the Bush administration supported the group of Sunni extremists, Fatah al-Islam, who are still battling the Lebanese Army in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. He said that it is “a covert program we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger, broader program of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shiite world”.In Lebanon, as in Gaza Strip, the “divide and conquer” strategy has produced appalling results—forcing 30,000 poor Palestinians to flee their homes and search for shelter.This week’s bombing of the minarets at the Golden Dome Mosque is another example of the Bush Doctrine at work. Bush and his generals assure us that Al Qaeda was responsible, but reports from the New York Times tell a different story.Here’s an excerpt from an article by Graham Bowley “Minarets on Shiite Shrine in Iraq Destroyed in Attack” (NY Times) which gives us a good idea of what really happened in

Samarra. Bowley says:“Since the attack in 2006, the shrine had been under the protection of local — predominantly Sunni — guards. But American military and Iraqi security officials had recently become concerned that the local unit had been infiltrated by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq. A move by the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad over the last few days to bring in a new guard unit — predominantly Shiite — may have been linked to the attack today.”
No reference is made to the sudden and unexplained changing of the guards at the mosque in future accounts in the mainstream press. And, yet, that is the most important point. The minarets were blown up just days after the new guards took charge. They cordoned off the area, placed snipers on the surrounding rooftops, and then blew up the minarets in broad daylight.The first explosion took place at 9:30 AM. Ten minutes later the second bomb was detonated.Al Qaeda?Not likely.The Golden Dome mosque has been heavily guarded ever since it was blown up in 2006. The four main doors have been bolted shut and not a tile has been moved in over a year. The reason for this is that the Shiites consider it a “crime scene” which they intend to investigate more thoroughly when the violence subsides.The Shiites never accepted the official US-version of events that “al Qaeda did it”. Many believe that US Special Forces were directly involved and that it was a planned demolition carried out by experts. There is considerable proof to support this theory including eye witness accounts from the scene of the crime as well as holes that were drilled in the floor of the mosque to maximize destruction. This was not a simple al Qaeda-type car-bombing but a technically-demanding demolition operation.

The damning information in the New York Times article has been corroborated in many other publications including an official statement from the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI). According to the AMSI, Prime Minister Nouri al Mailiki replaced the Sunnis who had been guarding the site for over a year with Shiite government forces from the Interior Ministry. Their statement reads:“Security forces arrived yesterday afternoon from Baghdad Tuesday for the receipt of the task of protecting two tombs instead of the existing force there. Somehow they obtained a scuffle followed by gunfire lasted two hours over control of security forces coming from Baghdad.”
So, the Sunni guards were replaced (after a scuffle) with goons from the Interior Ministry. The next day the minarets blow up.Coincidence?Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki immediately issued statement where he claimed that the al Qaeda was responsible for the attack. At the same time, however, he arrested all 12 of the guards he sent from the Interior Ministry.Why? Was he afraid they would talk to the media?The Association of Muslim Scholars said that“last year’s explosion happened after a severe political crisis between blocs involved in the political process to the occupation. After the elections, the establishment of the government was blocked at that time. It is quite similar to the political crisis faced by the government and parliament today”.
The AMSI is right. The destruction of the Golden Dome Mosque took place soon after the Iraqi parliament rejected the US-plan for dividing Iraq. (“Federalism”) This time, the parliament has voted-down the US-plan to transfer control of Iraq’s vast petroleum reserves to the American oil giants via the “oil laws”.The AMSI sees the bombing as a desperate attempt by the US occupation to break the logjam in Parliament over the oil laws and to conceal the failures of the “surge” by inciting sectarian violence. The only difference this time is that the Shiite militias have been less responsive to US manipulation. In fact, Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr has tried to stop his Mahdi Army from attacking Sunni areas and he has decried the bombing as another plot by US-Israeli intelligence agents operating in Iraq. He said that the incident reveals “the hidden hand of the occupier.”He added, “This is what the occupiers brought to Iraq: a disintegration plot and fanning the flames of sectarian violence. Destroying the Askariya shrine goes exactly with the insurgents’ beliefs.”Among Shiites, there’s nearly unanimous agreement that the USwas behind the bombing. Middle East expert Juan Cole reports on his blog-site “Informed Comment”, that protests have broken out in India, Pakistan, the Caucasus, Bahrain, Iran and other locations where there are high concentrations of Shiites. The consensus view is that the minarets were blown up as part of a larger US-Israeli strategy for controlling the Middle East. But why would the Bush administration want to unleash a fresh wave of sectarian violence when they can’t even establish security in Baghdad?Here’s what the AMSI says:“Sectarian violence is an effective means to enable the militias to fully impose their control on (Sunni) neighborhoods and cities as it did after the bombings of Samarra….The government is also trying to control the capital of Baghdad; seeking to extend its power over other cities that reject the occupation, especially the cities of Baquba and Samarra”.

This is what is gained by the bombings—further ethnic cleansing of the Sunni neighborhoods and greater control over the public through a campaign of terror. It’s all part of a broader neocon strategy that centers on “creative destruction” rather than the traditional US policy of “regional stability”.Al Sadr’s comments (as well as those of the AMSI) show that fewer and fewer Iraqis are taken in by US counterinsurgency activities. In fact, US-Israeli aggression is now seen as the main source of violence in the region. This has turned Muslims around the world against the West. For these people, the victories by Hamas and Hezbollah must come as a welcome relief. They are small indication that the imperial grip is beginning to loosen and that, perhaps change will be achievable sometime in the “not so distant” future.The perception of US invincibility has been shattered. America’s moral authority is in ruins. We are neither feared nor respected; that is the unfortunate legacy of Abu Ghraib and Falluja. But what is bad news for us may be good news for the people in the Middle East. It’s now possible to imagine a New Middle East where fundamental change is possible. As resistance continues to swell from a trickle to a stream—we can envision “regime change” sweeping through the region from Riyadh, to Amman to Cairo—an entirely new world shaking off its colonial past.The forces that Bush has put in motion will inexorably lead to the decline of “superpower rule” and the dismantling of the US imperium. The transition is already visible. The battle of Gaza is just a macrocosm of a much larger phenomenon which now extends from Mogadishu to Kabul.Change is coming, but it might not be to Bush’s liking. That’s the real lesson of what happened in Gaza.

A Message From A Palestinian Child (Video)

 

Terrorist is the label all too frequently attached to Palestinian children. Today, many Palestinian youngsters feel misjudged by a world choosing to condemn them rather than know them.

These children are confronted with a hard struggle: to find ways to clear their name and reputation in the media. They want others to realize their only fault was to be born under an occupation that stripped away their childhood.

The life of Palestinian children is far from normal. Their daily trips to school take hours instead of minutes. According to The Washington Post, there are 659 checkpoints, roadblocks, trenches and earthen walls in the West Bank.

Palestinian children quickly realize their parents cannot protect them. They think it’s normal to witness the death of friends, Israeli gunmen firing into certain schools and the razing of homes. This is disastrous for us and not without consequence for Israel.

Recently, One is unable to give a guarantee to a child that Israeli soldiers would not harm him. In such an uncertain environment, children become helpless, aggressive, afraid, extremely disobedient or compliant, depressed and fatigued. The Gaza Community Mental Health Program has noted children are plagued by serious psychological ills caused by the stresses of military occupation.

While Palestinian children have chosen different paths in resisting the occupation, they are all trying their best to revive the nation’s dying hope of a dignified life. Yet, as the occupation strikes over and over again, children lose confidence that justice is possible.

Contrary to the belief of many, young Palestinians are able to do much more than fling stones in desperation at tanks. If we help, children realize the importance of never giving up, no matter how trying their circumstances. It is not easy. And the world lets them down by voicing principles that are not enforced in the occupied territories.

Revolution of truth : A Cry of a Palestinian child (Video)

 

Message of truth to those who believe in humanity . See what`s happening in our dear Palestine and what the jews are doing to its people. This is the truth and the unseen in the western world. When a dog or an animal is hurt people rush to help it , But when a palestinian child is getting killed and shot almost everyday there is no one there to make a move and help it.

Ethiopia tortures Muslim Somalis, US Ignoring!!!

Ethiopia, a strategic US partner in the so-called war on terror, is brutalizing its own people and opposition but its notorious human rights record is largely overlooked by the Bush administration.”What the Ethiopian security forces are doing may amount to crimes against humanity,” Georgette Gagnon, deputy director for the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times reported on Monday, June 18.

The activist branded Ethiopia as one of the most repressive countries in Africa, a characterization that many rights organizations and Western officials agree with.

A clear example of army brutality is evident in Ogaden, a desert region on the borders with neighboring Somalia where the mostly pastoral nomad people have been chafing against Ethiopian rule since 1897.

Many rights groups have documented thousands of cases of torture, gang-raping, burning down huts and killing civilians of the ethnic Somali population in Ogaden.

“They hit us in the face with the hardest part of their guns,” Moualin, whose face still carries the scars of the last Ethiopian raid on his Sasabene village in January, told the Times.

Anab, a 40-year-old Ogadeni camel herder, described how the Ethiopian troops routinely abuse young women in her village.

“Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped me, too.”

Even in other parts of the country ravaged by poverty and famine, the government’s grip does not get any looser, with a massive clampdown on democracy and opposition groups.

“There are no real steps toward democracy,” said Merera Gudina, vice president of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a leading opposition party.

“No real steps toward opening up space, no real steps toward ending repression.”

During the 2005 elections, the opposition faced a crackdown after winning a record number of seats in parliament.

Government troops opened fire on demonstrators, rounded up opposition supporters and even attempted to kill top opposition leaders.

Overlooked

Civil liberty organizations and Western officials have repeatedly criticized Washington for overlooking the obvious in Ethiopia.

This has also raised the irk of many inside the Congress.

“This is a country that is abusing its own people and has no respect for democracy,” Donald M. Payne, chairman of the House of Representative Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa and global health, told the Times.

“We’ve not only looked the other way but we’ve pushed them to intrude in other sovereign nations,” he added, referring to the Ethiopian invasion of neighboring Somalia last December.

The Ethiopian military, along with the Somali interim government forces, routed the ruling Supreme Islamic Courts of Somalia (SICS) in a two-week war, pushing the war-torn country into abyss.

The Bush administration has defended and supported the offensive as part of global war on “international terrorism.”

It has offered Ethiopia significant sharing of intelligence on the SICS fighters positions and information from American spy satellites.

Ethiopia has long been a strong ally of Washington in the strategic Horn of Africa.

For years the US has been pouring weapons and military advisers into Ethiopia, and the American military has trained Ethiopian troops at bases in the eastern region.

The regime of Meles Zenawi has also received millions of dollars in US military aid since 2002.

Payne and other key Democrats in Congress are currently moving against the American policy toward Ethiopia.

They are questioning the Bush administration’s bid to double aid to Ethiopia from the current $284 million to $481 million next year.

Truth Cost Abu Ghraib Investigator Job

Unmasking the “sadistic and systematic” torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib has cost the US army general who investigated the scandal his job and made him realize the was working for a “Mafia” not the army of the world’s superpower.”It was a lateral assignment,” retired Major General Antonio Taguba told award-wining investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in an interview for The New Yorker magazine’s June 25 edition. 

After completing his inquiry, Taguba, whose report was not meant for public release but was rather leaked to The New Yorker in March 2004, had been scheduled to rotate to the Third Army’s headquarters at Fort McPherson, Georgia, in June of the same year.

He was instead ordered back to the Pentagon to work in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs.

“I didn’t quibble. If you’re going to do that to me, well, O.K. We all serve at the pleasure of the President,” he said with a smile and a shrug.

A retired four-star army general later told Taguba he had been sent to the Pentagon so that he could “be watched.”

Later in 2004, Taguba ran into then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and one of his senior press aides, Lawrence Di Rita, at a gym after a workout.

“Hello, General,” Rumsfeld said. “See what you started, General? See what you started?” added Di Rita sarcastically.

Abu Ghraib will always be remembered for the sexual abuse scandal that broke out in 2004 with photos showing detainees piled up naked on the floor, chained to beds in stress positions and forced to stand naked in front of US female guards.

Mafia

Taguba said he started being disillusioned with the military establishment after a brief encounter with then head of the Central Command John Abizaid.

“You and your report will be investigated,” Abizaid told him.

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba recalled.

“I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

In his 53-page damning report, Taguba said he found numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib.

He listed few of the abuses: “Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

Seven low-ranking US Military Police officers were convicted of charges that included dereliction of duty, maltreatment, and assault.

Only one defendant, Specialist Charles Graner, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Cover-up

Taguba came to the firm belief that senior Pentagon officials, chiefly Rumsfeld if not President George W. Bush himself, did now about the grisly abuses despite repeated insistence from the US administration that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved in the macabre practices.

“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” he told the New Yorker.

“These MP (Military Police) troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance.”

Taguba said the MPs were being “literally exploited” by the military interrogators.

“My view is that those kids were poorly led, not trained, and had not been given any standard operating procedures on how they should guard the detainees.”

Taguba said his inquiry shows that Lieutenant General Sanchez, then army commander in Iraq, routinely visited the prison and witnessed at least one interrogation.

“Sanchez knew exactly what was going on,” he insisted.

His report cited testimony that interrogators and other intelligence personnel were encouraging the abuse of detainees.

“Loosen this guy up for us,” one MP said he was told by a member of military intelligence. “Make sure he has a bad night.”

The lawyer of US Army Private Lynndie England, who made her presence in most of the abuse photos, had said his client was acting under orders from her superiors and the Pentagon had made her and other soldiers involved in the abuse a scapegoat.

Taguba said he did not have orders to question those above the rank-and-file.

“I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”

Taguba, who was praised by then Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker for his honest report, accused Rumsfeld of perjury before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees at a hearing on May 7, 2004.

“I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them (the photos)…The president did not know, you did not know and I did not know,” Rumsfeld told them.

“Rumsfeld was in denial,” Taguba insisted.

“He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.”

Taguba said he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on his report, affirming that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office knew before its release about the shocking abuses, which were available on a military CD.

Tip of Iceberg

Taguba said the leaked photos were the tip of the iceberg.

He added that photos and videos held by the Pentagon because of their “extremely sensitive nature” show sexual humiliation of a father with his son and an Iraqi woman being sodomized by a US soldier.

“It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.

He vividly remembers his first thought upon seeing the photographs in late January of 2004.

“Unbelievable! What were these people doing?” This is big.”

Taguba’s team spent much of February 2004 in Iraq investigating the scandal and were overwhelmed by its scale.

“I kept on asking these questions of the officers I interviewed: ‘You knew what was going on. Why didn’t you do something to stop it?’”

He had seen classified documents revealing that there were only “one or two” suspected Al Qaeda prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Most of the detainees had nothing to do with attacks on US troops. A few of them were common criminals.

“These were people who were taken off the streets and put in jail—teen-agers and old men and women.”

Taguba, who retired in January 2007, recalled that a senior general told him he should not bother himself with the investigation because the abused were “only Iraqis.”

Iraq Abuse Haunts US Abuser

 

Tony Lagouranis, US Army Interrogator

After coming back from Iraq, army interrogator Tony Lagouranis initially thought that he would easily close down that chapter of his life. The task has since proved unachievable.“I had a personal crisis because I felt I had done immoral things and I didn’t see a way to cope with that,” Lagouranis told The Sunday Telegraph in an interview published on Sunday, June 10.

The 37-year-old suffered nightmares and prolonged anxiety bouts on his return to his native Chicago.“I saw a psychologist. I had a lot to work through,” he said, adding that therapy helped prevent him becoming “a totally broken human being.”Lagouranis, who was an army interrogator from 2001 to 2005 with the rank of specialist, is haunted by images of Iraqis, largely innocents, he had abused.

Serving in Iraq from January 2004 to January 2005, he admits to having forced men and boys into agonizing stress positions, kept suspects awake for months on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia.

He was first stationed at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and later joined a special intelligence gathering task force that moved among detention facilities around the war-torn country.

Abu Ghraib will forever be remembered for the sexual abuse scandal that broke out in 2004 with photos showing detainees piled up naked on the floor, chained to beds in stress positions and forced to stand naked in front of US female guards.

British Inspirers

Lagouranis said American interrogators were inspired by previous British expertise.

“We heard about interrogators in Northern Ireland who were successful. Some of our interrogators went on the British interrogation course, which was tough,” he said.

Lagouranis admitted the American interrogators went too far, encouraged by Pentagon permission allowing coercive techniques like isolation, dogs, sleep deprivation, stress positions and hypothermia.

“Some commanders tacitly allowed harsher things like beating detainees and breaking their bones,” he said.

In 2003, lawyers for the US Justice Department and a Pentagon working group on detainee interrogations made the case for a narrow definition of torture that excludes procedures such as blindfolding and hooding, forced nudity, isolation and other psychological manipulations.

Several US dailies said former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former top US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, gave free reign to officers in charge of Abu Ghraib to adopt various torture and abuse tactics.

“These – crossed a legal line because they violated the Geneva Convention,” said Lagouranis.

“They also crossed a moral line. If you keep a man awake for a month, that’s torture. If you subject a man to hypothermia, that’s torture. If you keep him on his knees off and on for a month, that’s torture.”

Useless

Lagouranis, who read in Iraq a Holocaust memoir to pick up torture tips from the Nazis, insists that the harsh interrogation techniques have proved useless.

“These techniques were developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War because they are successful in breaking a person’s will and spirit. That doesn’t mean they work in terms of extracting intelligence,” he said.

“I didn’t get actionable intelligence using the harsher methods, I got it using manipulation and lying and by promising them things I didn’t deliver on,” added the former interrogator.

Lagouranis insists that the interrogation system in Iraq is led by a bunch of inexperienced officers, who copy what they saw in Hollywood and on television program such as 24, whose lead character Jack Bauer regularly uses torture.

“Interrogators are trained by people who have no experience of interrogation. It’s the stupidest thing in the world.”

Lagouranis has written a book, Fear Up Harsh [a term for intimidating a detainee by shouting at him], about his experience in Iraq as a former interrogator.

“My actions, combined with the actions of the arresting infantry who left bruises on their prisoners, and the actions of the officers who wanted to get promotions, repeated in microcosm all over this country, had a cumulative effect,” he writes.

“I could blame (US President George W.) Bush and Rumsfeld, but I would always have to also blame myself.”