Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President

Lets Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President

By Neil Mackay15 September 2002: A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.
This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.
The PNAC report also:
l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1221.htm

Ten Explosive U.S. Government Secrets about Israel

Ten Explosive U.S. Government Secrets about Israel

Absent greater transparency, Americans should assume the worst

By Grant F. Smith
October 24, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "IRmep" - - In 1968 Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms wrote urgently to Attorney General Ramsey Clark and President Lyndon B. Johnson that some highly enriched uranium fueling Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor was stolen from America.  LBJ reportedly uttered, "Don't tell anyone else, even [Secretary of State] Dean Rusk and [Defense Secretary] Robert McNamara."  The FBI immediately launched a deep investigation into the inexplicably heavy losses at the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation NUMEC in Pennsylvania and the highly suspicious activities and Israeli connections of the Americans running it.  The CIA was tasked to find out what was going on in Israel, and compiled thousands of documents about the incident. (PDF) Although CIA officials in a position to know unofficially went on record claiming a diversion had occurred, for decades the CIA has thwarted declassification and release of the LBJ memos.  On October 18, 2013 the only appeals panel with the power to overrule the CIA—the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel ISCAP—sent notification that Americans are not yet ready to know the contents of the memos (ISCAP decision PDF). This denial of public release of decades-old secrets concerning U.S.-Israel relations is far from unique.  Although the Obama administration promised unprecedented transparency, it has emasculated the public's ability to give informed consent on a wide range of key foreign policy issues. A review of ten particularly toxic U.S. secrets about Israel suggests stakeholders should start assuming the worst but most logical explanation.

---------

In 2006 former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously told reporters at an Iraq war briefing "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."  Bush administration secrecy andRumsfeld's pithy quotes failed to quell gradual public awareness that the ill-fated invasion was launched on purposely fabricated pretexts.  And yet the Iraq debacle could have been avoided if Americans had been better informed over time how government truly functions through greateraccess to the fourth category left unmentioned by Rumsfeld:  "unknown knowns." 

"Unknown knowns" are the paradigm-shifting bits of information known only by a select few ingovernment but kept from their fellow American citizens because they would reveal indefensible,secret policies and institution-level corruption that favor a special interest.  By locking "unknown knowns" under heavy guard in document archives, covering them in secrecy classification stamps and making an example out of whistleblowers who release them without authorization, busy bureaucrats with the highest security clearances maintain a vast  and growing trove of "unknown knowns."  Historians and watchdog organizations are continually thwarted in their mandate to contextualize and educate the public aboutrelevant past events that could deeply inform the governed—and ultimately improve governance.  Senator Carl Schurz said, "My country right or wrong, if right, to be kept right, and if wrong, to be set right." "Unknown knowns" obliterate the public's ability to execute the latter two-thirds of that sage advice. 

Even the passage of time does not guarantee "unknown knowns" ever become "known knowns."   Under current government records preservation guidelines—particularly for information that researchers are not actively seeking to declassify—some "unknown knowns" quietly become "unknown unknowns" as they decay, are physically destroyed, erased or "lost." Many knowledgeable former officials take their secrets to the grave. As a product of the ill-gotten power and influence of the Israel lobby, the pile of "unknown knowns" about U.S.-Israel policy is particularly large. Curious Americans who rightfully question official narratives about the U.S.-Israel "special relationship" have often requested "unknown knowns" under the Freedom of Information Act.  Former government insiders who know firsthand aboutexplosive secrets often seek their public release to alert others using the Mandatory Declassification Review, even requesting documents by name, subject, location, author and date.  After such "unknown knowns" (like the LBJ memos) are unsuccessfully sought for decades by multiple researchers, well-warranted suspicions arise about the reasons behind the impermeable government wall of refusal.  The followingten US-Israel policy "unknown knowns" suggest the Israel lobby's ongoing corrupt power is the only possible explanation for why they are still secret.

---------

1. Henry Morgenthau Jr's Israel policy is the stuff of legend in accounts about the birth of Israel. Some researchers claim that FDR's former Treasury Secretary was present at the original 1945 meeting of American Zionists with Jewish Agency executive director David Ben-Gurion to set up the massive Haganah smuggling network to steal, illegally buy and smuggle surplus WWII arms from the U.S. to Jewish fighters in Palestine.  (report PDF)  This was the first major broadly organized Israel lobby challenge to U.S. sovereignty.  It successfully overrode American policy enshrined in neutrality and arms export laws.  Others claim Morgenthau was alsoinstrumental in the illicit financing Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program in direct opposition to policy set by American presidents. 

The FBI's dusty 10,000 page file on Morgenthau, numbered 105-HQ-188123 (the 105 code signifies "foreign counterintelligence") including intercepts to Morgenthau from Israel, could finally clear up many of these allegations, especially when compared to current research.  Although the FBI—after a process that began in 2010—in September 2013 claims it has fully declassified the Morgenthau file, censors have blanked out nearly every page with a paint-roller of black ink (sample PDF).  How do high officials with strong ties to Israel and its lobby who are politically appointed to the U.S. Treasury Department flout U.S. laws with their own foreign-coordinated foreign policy movements?  The FBI and Justice Department do not believe Americans are quite yet ready to know.

---------

2. Eisenhower and the Lavon Affair.  In 1954, the Israeli government launched its "Operation Susannah" false flag terrorist attack on U.S. facilities in Egypt.  Israel's operatives were quickly arrested when bombs exploded prematurely.  The operation's utter failure resulted in a political crisis known as the Lavon Affair.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower, periodically swarmed by American Zionist Council lobbyists urging him to send money and arms to Israel, must have learned some very hard lessons about U.S.-Israel relations from the incident.  Yet the Eisenhower presidential archive—which is not subject to FOIA—has never released anything revelatory about the administration's reaction to the attempted false flag attack.  A narrow request for such files yielded only a single non-specific declassified opinion that the commander-in-chief believed the Israelis were "fanatics." (National Security Council PDF) Yet the false flag operation's objective, attacking to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Suez Canal Zone to respond to "Egyptian militants," seemed entirely rational to Israel, and possibly to some of its U.S. supporters who struggled for years afterwards to minimize the importance of the affair.  Today Eisenhower library archivists claim that huge quantities of Eisenhower's papers are still "unprocessed," but may hold some private reflections or lessons learned. 

---------

3. Israeli theft of nuclear material from NUMEC.  In 2013, the CIA continues to resist release of thousands of files about the NUMEC diversion by referring to CIA Deputy Director for Operations John H. Stein's secret decision in 1979 (2013 FOIA denial PDF).  Stein claimed that release of even a few of CIA's closely-held files—especially if they were compared with Science Advisor of the Interior Commission Henry Meyer's blunt allegations (PDF) to Congressman Morris Udall in 1979 that NUMEC was an Israeli smuggling front—was impossible "because of the need to have a coordinated Executive Branch position and our desire to protect a sensitive and valuable liaison equity."  In plain English, that appears to mean Americans still cannot have official CIA confirmation of the uranium theft because the U.S. president would have to drop the ongoing nonsense of "strategic ambiguity" and forego intelligence Israel is funneling to America.

---------

4. FBI files of Israeli (but not Russian) spies Russia's dashing red-headed spy, Anna Chapman, was arrested in 2010 and sent packing back Russia.  Any interested American can now watch Chapman's moves in surveillance videos and read the FBI counterintelligence files.  Not so with most of Israel's top spies who targeted American economic, nuclear and national defense infrastructure.  America is still crawling with Israeli spies (our "constant companion" according to intelligence expert Jeff Stein).  The 2010 revelations of nuclear equipment smuggling from Telogy (prohibited export smuggling PDF) in California and Stewart Nozette's 1998-2008 Israel Aerospace Industries-funded penetrations of classified U.S. information storehouses around Washington reveal that while Israeli spying has never stopped, secret prosecution strategies now emphasize quietly rolling up Israeli operations via industry regulators, fines and penalties or isolating and entrapping American spies on lesser charges but steering around their Israeli handlers. 

Unlike its treatment of information requests about Russian spies, the FBI and Justice Department have denied every individual FOIA request for the files of major Israeli spies.  Access to Rafael Eitan's many harmful exploits against U.S. targets are banned from release unless Eitan personally waives his privacy rights (FOIA denial).  The FBI claimed it can no longer find files about deceased nuclear espionage mastermind Avraham Hermoni, even though his name appears across many previously released NUMEC files  (FOIA denial PDF).  Flooding from Hurricane Sandy is the excuse the FBI gives for not being able to find files on spy-for-Israel Ben Ami-Kadish (Flood FOIA denial PDF).  One might argue it is merely a series of unfortunate events that keeps Israeli spy files out of public hands, except that the Justice Department has now issued a blanket ban on declassifying any files about the FBI's decades-long counterintelligence tango with Israel's Mossad. (Justice Department blanket denial PDF).

The results of the Justice Department's kid-glove approach to Israel propagates into mandatory counterintelligence reports to Congress.  Although Israel unambiguously ranked as a top economic and national defense intelligence threat in past assessments of agencies like the Office of National Counterintelligence Executive, because criminal prosecution strategies toward Israel (through not Iran, Russia or China) have been undermined from within, Israel has disappeared from the most current reports.

---------

 5. Jonathan J. Pollard's most heinous crime. Israel's only American spy ever to do serious time in jail—despite the best efforts of his many American and Israeli supporters to spring him—once confidently claimed before he was convicted that "...it was the established policy of the Department of Justice not to prosecute U.S. citizens for espionage activities on behalf of Israel."  Many believe it was only Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger's classified briefing to sentencing Judge Aubry Robinson that made Pollard the near sole exception to that curiousrule.

Some Pentagon insiders and national security reporters believe Pollard's sentence was so harsh because Israel used stolen U.S. intelligence as "trade goods" with the Soviet Union to increase Russian émigrés to Israel.   As Pollard's sentence draws to a close, few know exactly what Weinberger told Robinson that caused him to deliver a life sentence.  The recent partial releases of a CIA damage assessment and a DIA video about Pollard shed little light. 

In 2010, the Department of Defense disclaimed all ownership of the still-classified "Weinberger declaration" passing the FOIA ball to the Justice Department's Criminal Division (FOIA transfer PDF).   In a novel approach, the Executive Office of US Attorneys now claims that it cannot find its own copy but that FOIA does not require EOUSA FOIA officers to travel two blocks to the DC District Court to retrieve a sealed copy of the memorandum for review (FOIA denial PDF) or even ask DOD for a copy.  The National Archives and Records Administration Office of Government Information Services OGIS agrees that there is no "duty for agencies to retrieve records that are not physically present in their own files." Although the 2008 case of Ben-Ami Kadish proves the Pollard espionage ring was much larger thanwas publicly disclosed in the late 1980s, the FBI has also not allowed release of its Jonathan Pollard investigation files (FOIA denial PDF) for overdue public review of how the investigation might have—like many others—been short-circuited by the Department of Justice because it involved Israel.

---------

6. Wiretap of AIPAC pushing for a US war on Iran. When AIPAC executivesKeith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen dialed up Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler in 2004, they were determined to leverage purloined classified U.S. national defense information into a story that Iran was engaged in "total war" against the US in Iraq. FBI special agents played audio intercepts of their pitch to AIPAC's legal counsel and AIPAC promptly fired the pair to distance itself from activities it had longsupported.  Rosen and Weisman were later indicted under the Espionage Act, although the case was later quashed under an intense Israel lobby pressure campaign shortly after President Obama entered office.

What exactly did AIPAC's two officials tell the Washington Post in its unrelenting drive to gin up a U.S. war with Iran?  A decade later, the U.S. Department of Justice doesn't believe the American public is entitled to hear a tape long ago played toAIPAC's lawyer Nathan Lewin, even as AIPAC continues to agitate for more wars. (MDR denial PDF)

---------

 7. Niger uranium forgery underwriters. Although Ike may or may not have worried much about the implications of Operation Susannah, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee certainly did.  A secret memotouched off years of Senate and Justice Department investigations into Israel lobbying over fears that American operatives might engage in other overseas clandestine provocations aimed at duping the U.S. into ill-advised conflicts that would benefit Israel (the short memo references the Lavon affair twice). The Iraq war proves those fears were well-founded.

Many have long suspected that the Niger uranium forgeries, fake documents the Bush administration trumpeted to falsely accuse Iraq of buying uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons, were chartered by American neoconservatives in order to provide a pretext  they desperately needed for war.  Perhaps the FBI's investigation into the matter definitively proves it.  However, despite years of requests for the 1,000 pages of that investigation, the FBI after initially duly proceeding with a FOIA, has now suddenly clammed up. (Niger uranium denial PDF)

---------

8. Israel lobbyists embedded in the Treasury and Justice Departments. Israel lobbying organizations have been very effective at embedding their operatives in key positions across the Federal government, such as Stuart Levey in the Treasury Department's economic warfare unit, or former AIPAC director Tom Dine as a contractorat the floundering US government-funded Arabic-language broadcaster Alhurra. It used to be possible to get a phone directory or conduct a comprehensive audit of which key political appointees (and the people they brought in) were running critical divisions of federal agencies by obtaining detailed Office of Personnel Management and other public records.  Not anymore.  (FOIA response PDF) Leveraging heightened post-911 sensitivities, the US Treasury Department now claims the same protections against disclosure formerly enjoyed only by intelligence agency employees.

Since the 1940s, the U.S. Department of Justice has earned a reputation as a place where Israel lobby criminal investigations go to die.  Justice is also where an AIPAC official like Neil Sher can while away a few years on pet projects at taxpayer expense before moving on to more lucrative outside work.  DOJ also routinely denies files about its past official decisions not to pursue criminal cases on the basis that doing so could jeopardize privacy, ongoing investigations, or factors underlying its coveted "prosecutorial discretion" (e.g. charging the disenfranchised but not powerful insiders for wrongdoing). Like Treasury, it is now almost impossible to survey and produce an organization chart of the Israel lobby's political appointees embedded at high and mid-level Justice Department posts or the biographies of the staff  and contractors they bring in with them. 

---------

9. Unclassified IDA report about US charities funding the Israeli nuclear weapons program. Sensitive reports need not be classified for the government to hang on to them indefinitely.  In 1987 the Institute for Defense Analyses delivered an unclassified report to the Department of Defense titled "Critical Technology Issues in Israel."  The study implicates the Israeli Weizmann Institute for Science and Technology in nuclear weapons research, raising deep questions about the group's U.S. tax-exempt charitable fundraising and U.S. commitment to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Department of Defense withheld the IDA report from release on the basis of FOIA exemptions covering trade secrets and "intra-agency communications protected by the deliberative process privilege," among others. (FOIA denial PDF)

---------

10. Justification for NSA funneling raw intelligence on Americans to Israel. If former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has taught Americans anything, it is that "unknown knowns" are usually even worse than many might have first imagined.  Some careful observersknew about massive NSA surveillance, while others alerted the public about the danger of "backdoor" U.S. intelligence flows to Israel.  But who ever suspected the NSA was shipping wholesale raw intercepts gathered on Americans to Israel under a secret deal struck in 2009?  No government that wholly denies such relevant information can claim legitimacy via consent of the governed.   There can be little doubt why these ten files are kept closed: it serves the Israel lobby.  The means by which this closure is sustained is also no secret.  The millions of dollars that line politician's pockets, promote media pundits and quietly spirit political appointees into key gatekeeper positions maintain closed files and prevent informed public debate.  

Because of this, Americans should proceed assuming the worst conceivable, most logical explanation for any given U.S.-Israel "unknown known" is correct—until proven otherwise.  Under this guideline, it is prudent to believe that LBJ—properly warned by his intelligence services and advisors that Israel was stealing the most precious military material on earth from America—was simply too marinated in Israel lobby campaign cash to faithfully uphold his oath of office. It is similarly reasonable to believe the Justice Department and FBI won't release Israeli spy files because Americans would finally understand that, despite massive ongoing harm to America, political appointees in the Justice Departmentthwart warranted prosecutions.  DOJ finds it much easier to stay "on message" through a long line of lobby-approved but mostly bogus"Islamic terrorism cases" (many made via sketchy undercover informants goading members of targeted minority communities into "terror" plots).According to its own records, every time it tried to uphold the law in the1940s the DOJ suddenly found itself internally and externally swarmed by Israel lobbyists with inexhaustible financial war chests and legal expertsworking to quash warranted prosecutions in secret coordination with Israel.  The DOJ now likely believes it can never win against Israel lobby generated media and political agitation when it moves to prosecute, and has now simply given up.

It is logical to assume that Israel was found selling out America to the Soviets in Pollard's case, since little else explains the unusually harsh impact of Weinberger's secret memo.  It is similarly likely that the FBI's AIPAC wiretaps would, if released today, accurately reveal Rosen and Weissman to be what they actually were—unregistered foreign agents operating on behalf of and in ongoing contact with the Israeli government rather than legitimate domestic lobbyists.  It is similarly more productive to assume that at least one neoconservative operative with strong ties to the involved entities in Italy—such as Michael Ledeen—served as barker to the Italian sideshow that disseminated forged documents.  

According to documents released by Edward Snowden, the transfer of raw NSA intercepts on American citizens to Israel was authorized under a secret doctrine that "the survival of the state of Israel is a paramount goal of US Middle East policy."  This "prime directive" was probably a secret because it is a blank check obligating American blood and treasure to a cause American citizens never approved via advise and consent.  But why did the Obama administration—even as it dismissed espionage charges against AIPAC staff in 2009—so deeply betray American privacy?  Under "unknown known" doctrine, most would assume that like LBJ before him, Obama sold out America because his Israel lobby handlers secretly demanded and paid for it on behalf of a foreign country.  What other goodies Obama doled out to Israel in exchange for help gaining the highest office remain to emerge.

The official process for obtaining official public disclosure of "uknown knowns"—the Freedom of Information Act—does not function when the stakes in disclosure are high and Israeli interests are involved.  Agencies (and ISCAP) correctly perceive government credibility is at stake when there is real openness, and that bona fide transparency would positively impact how government behaves.  Visibly corruptfederal government officials and institutions are counting on continued secrecy to accumulate illegitimate power by undermining publicaccountability.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36636.htm#.UmtyId9688M.email

Fallujah WAR CRIME

Fallujah

“The Americans invaded, chillingly: “house to house, room to room”, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient “City of Mosques.”

One correspondent wrote: “There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent – the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940.”

Further: “ …the ‘battle for Fallujah’ was entirely one-sided. US military and technical superiority over the Iraqi resistance (was) as great, if not greater, than the American army’s advantage over their Indian opponents in the 1870s and 1880s.”(1)

Seventy percent of houses and shops were reported destroyed, with those still standing damaged. Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, described a city: “ … completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn’t see a single building that was functioning.”(City of Ghosts, The Guardian, January 11, 2005.).

Nicholas J. Davies, author of  “Blood on our Hands – the American Invasion and Destruction of  Iraq”, has written: “The Fallujah Compensation Committee reported in March 2005 that the assault destroyed 36,000 homes, 9,000 shops, 65 mosques, 60 schools, both train stations, one of the two bridges, two power stations, three water treatment plants and the city’s entire sanitation and telephone systems.”

Fallujah: US Marines – Further Allegations of War Crimes Surface

Felicity Arbuthnot

January 16, 2014

.

"This was the battle of Fallujah. This is the noble cause that our Marlboro Men (and our "paper of record," which gave their laments such prominent play) now feel has been besmirched by the fact that some militant Sunni factions (many from the same groups the United States is now supporting, directly or indirectly, through its assistance to the Syrian rebels) seized control of the city for a time. It is this incident that has made the Marlboros and the Timesters suddenly feel that the "great sacrifices" of America's war of aggression in Iraq were made in vain. This -- not the multitude of Iraqis who have died this year alone in the violent sectarian strife that was created by the American invasion, and exacerbated by deliberate American policy.
....

The story of Fallujah, and the war that engendered that atrocity -- and the attitude toward that atrocity shown in the New York Time's recent story -- all speak plainly, despairingly of "the total moral collapse of respectable society" in this imperial age of ours.

……
[Al-Qaeda and Zarqawi]
........”

Shooting and Crying: The Unlearned Lessons of American Atrocity, Chris Floyd
January 14, 2014

Depleted uranium (DU) contaminated Iraq

Monday, September 16, 2013

When would an indiscriminate-civilian-killer weapon be deemed "morally obscene"?

.

"The World Health Organisation (WHO)  has categorically refused, in defiance of its own mandate, to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO.

........

Almost nine years later, a joint WHO - Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”."

WHO Refuses to Publish Report onCancers and Birth Defects in Iraq Caused by Depleted Uranium Ammunition, 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-refuses-to-publish-report-on-cancers-and-birth-defects-in-iraq-caused-by-depleted-uranium-ammunition/5349556

Dennis Halliday, September 13, 2013

The World Health Organisation (WHO)  has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

This issue was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was “held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO:

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO. (See Rob Edwards, WHO ‘Suppressed’ Scientific Study Into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq,  The Sunday Herald, February 24, 2004)

Almost nine years later,  a joint WHO- Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date whatsoever.”

To this date the WHO study remains “classified”.

According to Hans von Sponeck, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,

“The US government sought to prevent the WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.” (quoted in Mozhgan Savabieasfahani Rise of Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq: World Health Organization Refuses to Release Data, Global Research, July 31, 2013

This tragedy in Iraq reminds one of US Chemical Weapons used in Vietnam. And that the US has failed to acknowledge or pay compensation or provide medical assistance to thousands of deformed children born and still being born due to American military use of Agent Orange throughout the country.

The millions of gallons of this chemical dumped on rural Vietnam were eagerly manufactured and sold to the Pentagon by companies Dupont, Monsanto and others greedy for huge profits.

Given the US record of failing to acknowledge its atrocities in warfare, I fear those mothers in Najaf and other Iraqi cities and towns advised not to attempt the birth of more children will never receive solace or help.

A United Nations that is no longer corrupted by the five Permanent Members of the Security Council is what is needed.

Friday, March 14, 2014

DU contaminated Iraq - "no Iraqi strategy and/or national program" - UPDATE: Not so! Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi

.
UPDATE
Reference the below paper, we received a letter (in Arabic, kindly open and translate with Google or Bing) from Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi, Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering pointing out that she and her colleagues had completed two of a three stages program, by the end of the 1990's, to locate the nuclear contaminated areas in Iraq and had specified burial sites for their disposal, findings that have been plagiarized by Dr. Al-Ansari in the below paper.
.

تحديث:ـ

ـ" تحياتي وتقديري 

بعد اطلاعي على المقالة المنشورة على موقعكم للدكتور الانصاري حول التلوث باليورانيوم المنضّب، اود ان اوضح لحضرتكم والآخرين ما يلي:

1. موضوع تحديد افضل مواقع لردم النفايات الصناعية الخطرة والمشعة مُـنجز منه مرحلتين من ثلاث مراحل منذ عام 1998، حيث تم تكليفي لإعداده من خلال قسم الهندسة البيئية في جامعة بغداد بكتاب من مجلس الوزراء، بعد ان انجزنا مع منظمة الطاقة الذرية العراقية تحديد مواقع التلوث الاشعاعي في المناطق الجنوبية بالإحداثيات الدقيقة واقترحنا جمع الاليات الملوّثة وردمها في مناطق عزل خاصة."ـ

رسالة د. سعاد العزاوي

ـ14 آذار 2014

 ............

"Abstract

Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the enrichment of natural uranium for nuclear reactor-grade or nuclear weapons-grade uranium. DU is chemically identical to natural uranium. Depleted uranium is chemically identical to natural uranium. DU is depleted with isotope of U 235 and its radioactivity is 60% of the natural uranium and increases to 80% after few months and is usually considered as low level radioactive waste (LLW).Iraq experienced two devastating wars in 1991 and 2003, during which massive amounts of new weapons and sophisticated manufactured nuclear weapons were used –called Depleted Uranium (DU).During the second Gulf war in 2003 U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was estimated that more than 1100 to 2200 tons of DU was used. As a consequence the ruminants of wars are affecting the people (30 million) and environment. There are hundreds of sites contaminated with nuclear radiation. There is no Iraqi strategy and/or national program, not even well thought out plans and scientific personnel and technical equipment required to clean Iraq of these wastes. The aim of this work is to high light the environmental implications of the two Gulf wars on Iraq and suggest possible solutions to the problem."

Engineering solution for Radioactive Waste in IRAQ

15 February 2014

.

DU contaminated sites in southern Iraq

And

A10 firing DU at the Ministry of Planning inside Baghdad,

April 4, 2003 (Zwijnenburg, 2013)

INCREDIBLE: War on Iraqi crops

Iraqi Farmers Aren't Celebrating World Food DayNov 11, 2004
As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations -- which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve. 

When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrated biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers were mourning its loss.

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.

================================

Monday, January 24, 2005

For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve.
"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'.
The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"
Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.
The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."
Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time. "
Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005

The original article on this topic: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating October 15, 2004

As per an Iraqi proverb, the day will come, sooner rather than later, when the Iraqis will shred Bremer’s Laws, soak them in water and offer the glass to Bremer to drink.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

One of the occupation's consequences ... War on Iraqi crops

.
Reference a previous posting:

For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”, January 24, 2005

Kindly note the following sections (unfortunatly, not all previous links are still active and I have updated some of them):

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve.
"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'.
The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"
Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.
The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."
Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time. "
Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005

The original article on this topic: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating October 15, 2004".
.........

This important recent (Oct 8, 2012 ) 1 hour 24 minutes documentary  is very relevant.

Genetic Roulette - The Gamble of our Lives

http://abutamam.blogspot.gr/search?q=Monsanto

The mirage of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

''The mirage of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction''
Wednesday, April 30, 2003

By Imad Khadduri
Former Iraqi nuclear scientist
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (Canada)

(YellowTimes.org) -- In late August 2002, I listened with trepidation to President Bush's burgeoning false allegations about Iraq's nuclear military capability. Even then, one could discern that the sustained use of misinformation to support the invasion of Iraq showed that the President's claims were not based on any facts. I, having worked withIraq's nuclear program for thirty years, reacted with a series of articles expounding on the fact that Iraq had ceased its nuclear weapons program at the start of the 1991 war. I refuted the claims and evidence most famously, or infamously, branded by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Security Council in February 2003 in which Powell argued that Iraq had rejuvenated its nuclear weapons program after the Gulf War.

With heightened apprehension, I listened to Vice President Dick Cheney's claim on MSNBC that the U.S. does not accept the results of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) extensive inspections nor its failure to find any evidence of a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The IAEA explicitly exposed the fact that a uranium procurement document provided by British and American intelligence as a piece of evidence proving Iraq's nuclear weapon capability was, in fact, a planted forgery. Cheney provocatively claimed, on the day before Bush's 48 hours ultimatum to invade Iraq, that U.S. intelligence had proof otherwise. My last retort to that incredible plain lie was that some bogus evidence might be planted once U.S. forces were on the ground in Iraq.

Bombing to waste, yet again, the main Nuclear Research Center at Tuwaitha, and foolishly allowing American soldiers to break IAEA protective seals and openingTuwaitha's radioactive burial mound for looters who then contaminated themselves and their families, the Americans have yet to produce their "evidence" of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. Why is Cheney now silent about Iraq's nuclear weapons program? With U.S. troops in control of Iraq, this information cannot be a "national security" issue anymore.

In addition to the non-existent nuclear weapons program, two developments in the past two months have convinced me that, since 1991-1992, Iraq did not rejuvenate its chemical or biological weapons programs, either.

The first development was a Newsweek story on March 03, 2003 unveiling, after eight years of suppression, the transcript of Hussain Kamel's debriefing by officials from the IAEA and the U.N. inspection team known as UNSCOM; this debriefing took place after Kamel defected to Jordan in 1995. In it, he affirmed that Iraq had indeed destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles after the Gulf War. All that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches." The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. According to John Barry, who broke the story, the CIA and MI6 were told the same account and "a military aide who defected with Kamel ... backed Kamel'sassertions about the destruction of WMD stocks." But these statements were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more."

On February 26, 2003, a complete copy of Hussain Kamel's transcript -- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive" -- was obtained by Glen Rangwala, theCambridge University analyst who in early February revealed that Tony Blair's "intelligence dossier" was plagiarized from a student thesis. This transcript can be seen athttp://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf.

On page 7 of the transcript, an UNSCOM Russian expert, with the name of Smidovich, asked the direct question: "Were weapons and agents destroyed?"

"Nothing remained," was Kamel's reply.

Smidovich insisted: "Was it before or after inspections started?"

Hussain Kamel replied: "After visits of inspection teams…"

Smidovich insisted: "We could not find any traces of destruction."

Hussain Kamel reiterated: "Yes, it was done before you came in. The place they buried them was found by you."

Smidovich recollected: "Is this the place north of Baghdad where they were buried?"

Hussain Kamel replied: "It was in the month you came in. Destruction of warheads started but I could not remember the details."

Tellingly, Iraq, in January 2003, collected and provided access to UNMOVIC to more than twenty personnel who actually participated in the events of the above revelation. UNSCOM then carried out further extensive excavations at that site.

Hussain Kamel also had a few remarks on the bottom of page 5 on the habitual liar, Khidhir Hamza, who kept claiming throughout the nineties, on CNN and FOX as well as to Congressional Committees, that Iraq was on the verge of producing nuclear bombs. His accusations continued up until March 2003 when he suddenly quieted down and headed for Kuwait to receive his new post in the new "Iraqi" government.

The revelation of Hussain Kamel's detailed confession, by itself, did not induce me to endorse his assertion bluntly or publicly, though it was illuminating and historically authentic. Previously we had heard of his confession, but not of its contents.

It was the second event, which took place two weeks ago, which convinced me of the futility of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Amer Al Saadi, the chemical engineer and a senior scientific consultant to the Iraqi government, was the first prominent personality to surrender to the American forces after his German wife interceded with a German TV station to arrange for his surrender. For the past decade, he had been a polished, dignified and assured spokesman. He participated in the biological weapons program since its start in the early eighties. I knew him personally and had great admiration for his scientific integrity. In a ten-minute interview with German TV, Al Saadi asserted that: "I was always telling the truth. Iraq does not have chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. I have nothing to hide. Time will bear me out."

Indeed, time is bearing him out to the chagrin of Bush and Blair. The American and British hopes of finding any WMDs in Iraq, not planted by them, are vanishing mirages.

Bush, Blair and their senior officials lied to their people, knowingly, and waged a criminal invasion in lieu of this reason. Is this the democracy model for a "liberated" Iraq?

[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham(United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada.]

The URL for this article was:
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=889