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Wars and conflicts

  • Selective Prosecution of War Crimes
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Ivan Eland
    In Saddam Hussein’s war crimes trial for the 1988 Iraqi “Anfal” campaign that gassed Kurdish villages, his defense lawyers have argued that Iraqi forces were really attempting to strike Iranian forces and the Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga militias that were in and supported by the hamlets. In other words, the lawyers are asserting that the innocent Kurds who were killed were collateral damage in an effort by the Iraqi government to rid its territory of Iranian fighters and their (…)

  • For Israel’s Security?: Zainab Fawqi-Sleem and the Question of Lebanon
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By RAMZY KYSIA
    Houla, Lebanon.
    Yesterday, I shed my first tears for Lebanon.
    Yesterday, I visited Houla, a stone’s throw from the Israeli border.
    Yesterday, I was discovered by Zainab Fawqi-Sleem - a young, Lebanese woman who was killed in Houla, alongside her sister-in-law, Selma, on July 15th. Zainab is but one of over 1,300 innocents killed in this war, but she is the one who found me.
    On October 31st, 1948, in one of the few massacres of the Nakba to occur inside Lebanon, (…)

  • Slowly Sidling To Iraq’s Exit
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Many GOP Candidates Part Company With Bush
    By E. J. Dionne Jr.
    By Election Day, how many Republican candidates will have come out against the Iraq war or distanced themselves from the administration’s policies?
    August 2006 will be remembered as a watershed in the politics of Iraq. It is the month in which a majority of Americans told pollsters that the struggle for Iraq was not connected to the larger war on terrorism. They thus renounced a proposition the administration has pushed (…)

  • Doing the Wrong Thing in Afghanistan. Depleted Uranium: The Definitive Moral Paradox
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    By Michael Clarke
    It is Canada Day evening, and I can barely hear the whistles, booms and bangs of the fireworks. It sounds a bit like distant bombs exploding, reminding me of the incredible moral paradox our federal government’s aggressive military role in Afghanistan has created for all Canadians. Our government, military, newspapers, television and radio media are efficiently dispersing the official sound bytes: "our troops in Afghanistan have the moral authority"; "Canada is doing the (…)

  • In Lebanon, France Converging to Pre-mandate Policy
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Nicola Nasser* In a pattern that reminds of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement (1), France seems converging to a role that belongs to its previous colonial era in Lebanon and Syria, in harmony with, but under the regional hegemony of the United States’ involvement in other countries of the Arab Levant, in a stark departure from Charles de Gaulle’s post-Algeria legacy. Gone are the days when Paris was briefly perceived early in 2003 as if it was in the shoes of the former Soviet Union as a (…)

  • Snap Judgments. About That Nasrallah Interview
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
    On August 17 we published a very interesting interview with Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. A CounterPunch reader had found it on the Marxmail list, moderated by Louis Proyect, and passed it along to us. The interview was translated from Turkish, in which language it had appeared in the Turkish socialist daily, Evrensel, on August 12 and 13. We didn’t publish the full interview, which had some sections on the war that had been somewhat overtaken by (…)

  • Bush says Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11: Tell that to the Troops
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Bush says Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11: Tell that to the Troops
    Feb 2006:
    85% of troops say the U.S. mission
    is mainly to retaliate for Saddam’s role in 9-11
    Aug 2006:
    Bush says Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
    Get this video to all men and women in the military!
    More on what the troops think:
    An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should (…)

  • Can you really not see?
    30 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    Can you really not see?
    By Amira Hass
    Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted (…)

  • Annan asks Israel to end Lebanon blockade
    29 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    Annan asks Israel to end Lebanon blockade
    BEIRUT (BBC) - United Nations chief Kofi Annan has called on Israel to lift its blockade of Lebanon and urged Hezbollah to free two captured Israeli soldiers.
    Speaking after talks in Beirut, he said he was working for an immediate end to the sea and air blockade and the troops should be handed over to the Red Cross.
    Mr. Annan is on a regional tour to try to prop up the two-week-old ceasefire.
    The secretary general said the truce had (…)

  • An Environmental Disaster Emerges on Lebanon Coast
    28 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    An Environmental Disaster Emerges on Lebanon Coast Published on Monday, August 28, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle by Christopher Allbritton Tons of heavy fuel oil, spilled into the sea during the battle with Israel, foul Lebanon — may reach Syria, Turkey
    The sand along the public beach in south Beirut is blackened and stained. The sea, normally a rich azure, is a noxious yellowish green. The water reeks of petroleum. All the fish are dead; there is not a single bird in the sky. (…)