Iraq

Citizens Leading the Way to Peace and Development in Iraq
 
 
A Conversation with Iraqi Civil Society Leaders
 
February 6th, 2012
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Busboys & Poets - 5th & K
1025 5th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
 
 
Come to Busboys & Poets (5th & K, NW) on February 6th from 6pm – 8pm to hear four prominent leaders of Iraq’s growing citizen sector speak about the current challenges and opportunities for long-term transformation following the U.S. troop withdrawal. The speakers are deeply-rooted in the complex struggles and fears still weighing heavily on Iraqi communities, and are working through Iraqi nonprofit service organizations to prevent bloodshed and help their country forge a brighter future. This is an opportunity for people who support Iraqis in their search for peace to engage Iraqi citizen leaders in informal conversation.  

An opportunity to meet four extraordinary activists with extensive knowledge of the current Iraqi situation.
Ms. Hanaa Edwar is the secretary general of one of Iraq’s largest and oldest NGO’s, the Iraqi Al-Amal Association, founded in 1992. She has been a Human Rights,

Ms Hanaa Edwar

woman’s rights, and democracy activist for more than 40 years. In 2011 she was awarded the Sean MacBride Peace Prize by the International Peace Bureau for her contribution "to the advancement of democracy and human rights,” and her "firm stand against violence and war.” Hanaa has led campaigns in Iraq for women’s equality, enhancing women’s role in decision-making positions and in the constitutional process. She was a founder of the "Civil Initiative to Preserve the Constitution,” which won an Iraqi Supreme Court lawsuit that forced the Iraqi Parliament to convene in late 2010. Hanaa holds a law degree from Baghdad University.
 
Mr. Hashim al-Assaf heads the Iraq office of the NGOs Coordination Committee for Iraq (NCCI), the main umbrella organization for Iraqi NGOs working in the country. As Iraq Coordinator of NCCI, Hashim works to enhance cooperation among NGOs and to strengthen civil society participation in public policy-making in Iraq. He and his staff at NCCI work to facilitate NGO relations with the Government of Iraq and are advocates for humanitarian work and the protection of human rights. Hashim has designed and implemented training sessions for Iraqi NGO staff on human rights, non-profit management, monitoring and evaluation, conflict resolution, and other topics.
 
Mr. Abdulsatar Younis is the coordinator of the Iraqi Kurdistan NGOs Network (IKNN), the voluntary association established as an umbrella network to support Kurdish and Arab NGOs registered with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). IKNN has helped shape the new KRG law regulating NGOs in the region. Abdulsatar is also the Erbil coordinator of the Iraq-wide "La Onf” (Non-Violence) network. He was the principle organizer of the October 2011 "First Iraqi International Marathon in Erbil for Peace and Nonviolence” sponsored by La Onf, which attracted hundreds of runners and received extensive coverage in the local media. During his five-year tenure at the head of IKNN Abdulsatar has also played a key role in election monitoring in Erbil.
 

Ms. Noof Assi

Ms. Noof Assi is a Baghdad activist who last year monitored and reported on the Arab Uprisings demonstrations in Baghdad. She has conducted human rights, citizenship, and conflict management training for Iraqi youth and women and taken part in advocacy activities on the problems facing Iraqi youth. Over the past four years Noof has participated in numerous training sessions offered by the National Democratic Institute in Iraq and other groups. She is also a former blogger and radio program presenter and has participated in the youth programs of the Beirut-based Arab Thought Foundation. Noof is currently working with Iraqi Al-Amal Association, one of Iraq’s largest and oldest NGOs.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the court-martial of Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, accused in the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis in 2005, announced an agreement Monday to settle the case.

Wuterich will plead guilty to a single count of negligent dereliction of duty. Other charges were dropped. No announcement was made on what kind of discharge Wuterich would receive.

The maximum sentence is three months in the brig. That decision will be made by the judge.

By Dave Lindorff

The Iraq war may be over, at least for US troops, but the cover-up of the atrocities committed there by American forces goes on, even in retrospectives about the war. A prime example is reporting on the destroyed city of Fallujah, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war took place.

On March 31, 2004, four armed mercenaries working for the firm then known as Blackwater (now Xe), were captured in Fallujah, Iraq’s third largest city and a hotbed of insurgent strength located in Anbar Province about 40 miles west of Baghdad. Reportedly killed in their vehicle, which was then torched, their charred bodies were strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River. 

19 January 2012 - A North Carolina human rights group is calling on state officials to investigate and stop alleged CIA missions originating in Johnston County that involve illegal torture.

North Carolina Stop Torture Now delivered a University of North Carolina School of Law report Wednesday to the governor, attorney general and others that claims the Central Intelligence Agency relies on Smithfield-based Aero Contractors Ltd. to provide planes and pilots to transport prisoners overseas from the Johnston County Airport for secret interrogation using torture techniques.

By Robert C. Koehler

“But no matter how futile, repulsive or dysfunctional war may be,” Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her book Blood Rites, “it persists.”

A fascinating story in the New York Times just after Christmas showed this persistence unfolding before our very eyes.

By Dave Lindorff

I wouldn’t want to be Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, the 28-year-old former US Marine just recently sentenced to death by a court in Iran after being convicted of being an American spy.

Hekmati, who was born in Arizona to Iranian exile parents, and who grew up in Michigan, is being defended by President Obama, whose White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, declared, “Allegations that Mr. Hekmati either worked for, or was sent to Iran by the CIA are false.” The White House, not content with that denial, went on to trash the Iranian government and legal system, with Vietor adding, “The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions, and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons.”

Talk Nation Radio: LISTEN
Journalist Dahr Jamail Reports from Baghdad on Political Chaos

-’The Americans are gone and now we are in total political turmoil, and that’s the reality in Iraq today’.
-’Clearly killings and bombings that are targeting the Shiite population. Just like what we’ve seen in the past these are attacks carried out to incite sectarian warfare’.

‘Iraqis are very afraid today of a return to 2006, 2007, that horrific sectarian bloodshed period where we saw tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, literally just open sectarian war’. Dahr Jamail, in Baghdad, 1-6-12

By Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin

In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer – and poor foreigners abroad – will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.

Speaking January 5 alongside his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president announced a shift in strategy for the American military, one that emphasizes aerial campaigns and proxy wars as opposed to “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.” This, to some pundits and politicians, is considered a tectonic shift.

  Targeting Journalists in Iraq - by Stephen Lendman

March 19 marks Operation Iraqi Freedom's 9th anniversary. Brutal occupation continues. Thousands of US forces remain. 

Obama's alleged pullout repositioned troops nearby and left many there. Moreover, an army of paramilitary killers infest the country.

By Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera

Congenital abnormalities have mushroomed in the wake of devastating US sieges in Fallujah in 2004 [EPA]

Fallujah, Iraq - While the US military has formally withdrawn from Iraq, doctors and residents of Fallujah are blaming weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorous used during two devastating US attacks on Fallujah in 2004 for what are being described as "catastrophic" levels of birth defects and abnormalities.

By Dave Lindorff

According to news reports, 15-year-old  eighth-grader Jaime Gonzalez, who was shot and killed yesterday by police in his middle school in Brownsville, TX, was hit three times: twice in the chest and once “from the back of the head.” 

Police say they were called by school authorities because Gonzalez was carrying a gun, which turned out to be a realistic-looking pellet gun, a weapon that uses compressed air to fire a metal pellet which, while perhaps a threat to the eye, does not pose a serious threat to life.

Be a part of this fabulous plan that's NEVER EVER been tried before.  Here's how:

Sixth Iraq Aviation and Defense Summit

                              February 16-17, 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada                             

Dear Colleague,

By William Blum

"Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

"It is pretty exciting," said another young American soldier in Iraq. "We are going down in the history books, you might say." (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again.

"It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even think of ever apologizing or paying any reparations. Iraq is forced by Washington to continue paying reparations to Kuwait for Iraq's invasion in 1990 (an invasion instigated in no small measure by the United States). And — deep breath here! — Vietnam has been compensating the United States. Since 1997 Hanoi has been paying off about $145 million in debts left by the defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States for part of the cost of the war waged against it. (William Blum, Rogue State, p.304) How much will the United States pay the people of Iraq?

On December 14, at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina military base, Barack Obama stood before an audience of soldiers to speak about the Iraq war. It was a moment in which the president of the United States found it within his heart and soul — as well as within his oft-praised (supposed) intellect — to proclaim:

This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making. And today, we remember everything that you did to make it possible. ... Years from now, your legacy will endure. In the names of your fallen comrades etched on headstones at Arlington, and the quiet memorials across our country. In the whispered words of admiration as you march in parades, and in the freedom of our children and grandchildren. ... So God bless you all, God bless your families, and God bless the United States of America. ... You have earned your place in history because you sacrificed so much for people you have never met.

Does Mr. Obama, the Peace Laureate, believe the words that come out of his mouth?

Barack H. Obama believes only in being the President of the United States. It is the only strong belief the man holds.

By John Grant

Ever since George W. Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 souls and was selected President by a right-leaning Supreme Court, the United States has seemed to me devoted to a twisted fate of slow-motion Armageddon.

What seems to guarantee this is one of our most characteristic American traits: We don’t learn from the past; instead, we choose to officially forget embarrassing history so we can move on from our debacles without losing an ounce of glory. We all know how it goes: Sure, mistakes were made, but we need to keep our eye on the ball and move forward. The costs are paid in slow motion and out of sight.

By Dave Lindorff

The officer rested his arm holding the stock of the assault rifle on the top of a log pile, and aimed directly between the target’s eyes. She was looking directly at him, unblinking, from 30 feet away, and exhibited no fear. “I hate doing this,” he muttered, before finally pulling the trigger.

A sharp “bang!” rang out, her head jerked up and then her whole body sagged to the ground, followed by some muscle jerks, and it was over.

The officer went over and checked the body, decided no second shot was needed to finish the job, and then walked back to his squad car, took out his phone, and called in the serial number of his rifle, reporting his firing of one round, as required by regulations.

Michael Froomkin:

The population of Iraq is about 32,000,000. So that means the war cost us about $25,000 per Iraqi.

I think my suggestion back in 2003 that instead of staying in Iraq we just give every Iraqi $3000 per year for the next year or two is looking awfully good in retrospect.

By Dave Lindorff

It’s fascinating to watch the long knives coming out for Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, now that according to some mainstream polls he has become the front-running candidate in the Jan. 3 GOP caucus race in Iowa, and perhaps also in the first primary campaign in New Hampshire.

This time of year is ideal for reflecting on the miracle of Christmas 1914, that famous temporary truce and friendship between opposing sides in the midst of a war. Here was a new type of slaughter confronted with a new type of humanism, the leading edges of two opposing trends.

An op-ed in the New York Times last week by Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein argues that peace, rather than war, was the dominant development, and that over the millennia, centuries, decades, and right up to this moment, "War Really Is Going Out of Style."

Pvt. Manning and Imperative of Truth

by Ray McGovern

When I was asked to speak at Saturday’s rally at Fort Meade in support of Pvt. Bradley Manning, I wondered how I might provide some context around what Manning is alleged to have done.

(In my talk [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4174QK1emtQ ], so as not to think I had to insert the word “alleged” into every sentence, I asked for unanimous consent to using the indicative rather than the subjunctive mood.)

What jumped into my mind was the letter Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham City jail in April 1963, from which I remembered this: