News Round-Up: American Imperialism in the Middle East
December 26, 2009, 9:41 am
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U.S. President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz.
They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American’s visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program.
“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US . . .” — Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook
On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.
They include full transcripts of extraordinarily frank classified interviews in which British Army commanders vent their frustration and anger with ministers and Whitehall officials.
Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair’s government’s attempts to mislead the public.
They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.
Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.
The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
“If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” Blair was asked. He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]“.
If Lt. Col. Jim Gentry and his doctors were right about the cause of his cancer, the Indiana National Guard officer didn’t die for his country — he died for defense contractor KBR.
Gentry’s death from lung cancer last week is being recorded as the US’s first fatality from exposure to a cancer-causing toxin in Iraq, according to the Evansville, Indiana, Courier & Press.
In 2003, Gentry commanded a 600-strong force providing security for KBR’s refittal of the Qarmat Ali water-pumping plant, which provided water needed for oil extraction. Gentry and others claim that during that time they were exposed to hexavalent chromium, a cancer-causing toxin that the Iraqis who had built the plant had used as anti-corrosive material.
In a lawsuit filed last year, Gentry and 15 other plaintiffs said KBR, at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton, was aware that soldiers and civilian contractors were being exposed to hexavalent chromium months before they told the people working at the site.
Researchers have linked hexavalent chromium to lung cancer and leukemia, as well as a variety of liver and kidney problems. It’s the same compound that poisoned residents of Hinkley, California, in a case that was made famous by the movie Erin Brockovich.
RELATED:
Middle East News Round-Up
November 17, 2009, 7:14 am
Filed under:
International news,
Iran,
Iraq,
Israel,
Middle East,
fascism,
news,
politics,
war,
war atrocities,
war crimes
Obama, eager to win some influence on health care reform with the Republican neocons, has begun to get approval from them for the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the non-withdrawal withdrawal in Iraq.
How much longer will we allow the continuation of this trauma and destruction to the American citizenry as well as citizens of the Middle East? How many more fresh hells until we earnestly and massively protest? Our government not only sadistically and lawlessly tortured Middle Eastern detainees, it continues to betray and exploit its own patriotic youth, putting them in harm’s way to be traumatized mentally and physically, wounded and/or killed. They are trapped in hell. They are crying out for help or giving up to suicide, addiction, emotional illness.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Steven J. Rosen will be allowed to move ahead with his civil defamation lawsuit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen and fellow AIPAC employee Keith Weissman were indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act in 2005 along with Department of Defense Employee Col. Lawrence Franklin for passing classified national defense informaiton. Franklin pled guilty, but Rosen and Weissman’s case never went to trial — US attorneys gave up (PDF) after the presiding judge made a successful prosecution unlikely.
The PSC and BIG call for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli Goods
A personal boycott of Israeli products helps remove consumers from complicity with Israeli apartheid. As ethical consumers we can conduct our boycott ‘where we are at’, in whatever town or country. International networks and co-ordinated activities are proliferating. PSC branches engage in regular boycott activities across the UK.
The decision by the world’s biggest oil exporter could encourage other producers to abandon the benchmark and threatens the dominance of the world’s most heavily traded oil futures contract. It is the main contract traded on Nymex.
