World Terror War Newswire Archive

George W. Bush has 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 the suspicion that they are a threat to American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to evidence from recent court cases.

The mainstream media are continuing to use figures provided by the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) to sell the public a number for total post-invasion deaths of Iraqis that is perhaps 5-10% of the true death toll.

As we recently reported, only a handful of media outlets covered a new ORB poll revealing that 1.2 million Iraqis had been murdered since the 2003 invasion. BBC Online provided a rare example:

“A UK-based polling agency, Opinion Research Business (ORB), said it had extrapolated the figure by asking a random sample of 1,461 Iraqi adults how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

“The results lend weight to a 2006 survey of Iraqi households published by the Lancet, which suggested that about 655,000 Iraqi deaths were 'a consequence of the war'.

“However, these estimates are both far higher than the running total of reported civilian deaths maintained by the campaign group Iraq Body Count which puts the figure at between 71,000 and 78,000.” (BBC Online, ’US contractors in Iraq shootout,’ September 17, 2007;  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6998458.stm)

BBC’s Newsnight programme used IBC’s figures in the same way:

“More than a million Iraqis have been killed since the invasion in 2003, according to the British polling company ORB. The study’s likely to fuel controversy over the true, human cost of the war. It’s significantly up on the previous highest estimate of 650,000 deaths published by the Lancet last October... The independent Iraqi [sic] Body Count group puts the current total at closer to 75,000.” (Newsnight, BBC2, September 14, 2007)

These reports again raise serious issues about what IBC’s figures actually mean, how they are being used and misused to cast doubt on higher numbers, and about what IBC is doing to promote or reduce the confusion. (See our 2006 Media Alerts archive for previous analysis, beginning with:  http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php)

How American politicians can call Iran a dangerous country and claim that it poses a threat to the U.S. is a mystery. On second thought, it is not a mystery. It just tells you that the politicians think you and I are so stupid that we will fall for the exact same parade of lies and exaggerations that was used to justify the war against Iraq.

We bring to the attention of our readers this carefully researched analysis.

"Given the warnings of incipient terrorist attacks that had been repeatedly received by the Administration and the FBI, why would anyone coordinate two major annual air training exercises at this time, and divert key resources to the North Pole on an outdated mission? Who was in a position to do this?"

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesman of Neturei Karta International, issued the following statement on the eve of the group's meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Awan has filed court documents that assert he falsely confessed to crimes because FBI agents threatened him with lethal injection and said that they would have RCMP officers arrest his sisters in Montreal. "I tried to give answers so they would be pleased and not give me the death penalty," Mr. Awan wrote in court documents.

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is clearly revealed by looking at the pattern of actions that preceded and followed its launch.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ISSUES OFFICIAL REPORT CONFIRMING 73,000 U.S. TROOPS KILLED IN IRAQ
SAME GOVERNMENT AGENCY REPORT CONFIRMS 1.6 MILLION "DISABLED" BY THE WAR

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

Finally the Imperial Senate calls for Iraq's partition.

Either way—if Ahmadinejad is sincerely clueless or an agent working for British-U.S.-Israeli intelligence—it is truly astounding the president of Iran glossed over what should be considered, with a heaping dose of trepidation, the brutal and criminal shock and awe reduction of his country to a “failed” Neolithic condition.

Well, here I'm your guest. I've been invited by Columbia, an official invitation given for me to come here, but I do want to say something here. In Iran, when you invite a guest you respect them. This is our tradition required by our culture, and I know that American people have that culture as well.

As the Neocons and their allies continue to push for a devastating war against Iran, they are joined by some Iranian exiles who profess that they cannot wait a minute longer for the war to start. They are claiming, as their Iraqi counterparts did, that they are supporting the Neocons because they want to free the long suppressed Iranian People.

Being at the IAEA these days has once again reminded one that US diatribes are not limited to regimes and states that act contrary to US goals or even wishes. In the usual alliance of the government and the media -- clearly the US media has its own interpretations of a "free" media -- the Americans have launched a blitzkrieg against the IAEA and especially its head, El Baradei.

AS MEGA DEATH TOLL FROM OCCUPATION PASSES A MILLION

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” - Josef Stalin

And how proud Old Joe would have been of our Soviet-style self censorship! Here’s one that slipped past the headlines - the death toll in Iraq has now passed the one million mark.

When children fainted in school, the reason was usually: 'It's not my turn to eat today' - courtesy USA and Britain.

PKK, which increasingly consists (made to consist) of Kurds from Iran (and Syria), has been transformed into a subsidiary "organisation for attacking on Iran". This was done by the "host Iraqi Kurdish leaders", on "the master of the masters' " USA (and Israel) account.

Now they will also get the French [Prime Minister] Sarkozy, who "doesn't want Turkey in the EU", but clings to the USA and Israel and "wants an attack on Iran", to adopt a "carrots and sticks policy" towards Turkey. In other words, Sarkozy will use the EU as bait for our territory, airspace and bases.

Growing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pollution fogged the air and fouled the beaches in some of the city’s poorest communities, setting him on a lifelong path of environmental and social justice. But how he ended up drenched in gasoline and setting fire to Oregon’s Jefferson Poplar Farms in 2001 and was later targeted as a “domestic terrorist” is the story of someone who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do.

Now we are expected to believe the Iranians want to sabotage this relationship by providing IEDs to the Taliban, not only staunch enemies of Karzai but Iran as well.

Does not compute. But then so much about the flaccid and utterly absurd neocon propaganda campaign against Iran does not compute, that is unless you buy into the up-is-down, black-is-white worldview of the Bushzarrians.

On close inspection, a series of unfolding international events have been anticipated and systematically engineered since the end of the Cold War. The "long war" that is absorbing the globe did not start in 2001, but at the end of the Cold War through a continuum of wars and international events. A global war may have been initiated years before the declaration of the "Global War on Terror" and much of the globe may not have been aware of it.

Future historians may end up categorizing several wars going back to the Kosovo War of 1999 as different stages in one singular and "long war." Several fixtures of geo-strategic chess have been unfolding globally, in which the Middle East is one of the most important stages. As simple as it may sound, the endgame of this match of deadly chess is economic control and supremacy