contributions

by Gwynne Dyer Let us conduct a little thought experiment. The year 2014 will arrive in only ten years’ time, and the US occupation of Iraq will be long over by then. Let’s imagine that Iraq does not break up in the civil war that the US government keeps telling us is the only alternative to a continued American military presence. What is the best-case outcome for Iraq a decade from now?
Iraq was the most developed of the bigger Arab countries before Saddam Hussein dragged it into the (…)

Norma Khouri exploited prejudice about Arabs for an audience ready to believe her
by Ihab Shalbak.
Marlie-Leonie Leblanc, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman, claimed she and her baby were attacked on a Paris train by several young Arab men who believed she was Jewish. They had, she said, drawn swastikas on her belly after cutting her shirt and overturning her stroller, causing her baby to fall out.
The story flashed across the world. The French President, Jacques Chirac, hurried to express his (…)

by Shinya Ajima and Shinsuke Takahashi
HIROSHIMA - An Iraqi doctor left his war-battered country in April. His destination was Hiroshima, and the purpose of his trip was to obtain knowledge and data on radiation effects in the city once devastated by the first atomic bombing in the world.
Hussam Mahmood Salih, 34, a pediatrician from Basra, said the number of child cancer cases jumped eightfold in the southern Iraqi city between 1988 and 2002, suspecting it was caused by the 1991 Gulf (…)

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Amid all the violence and crime that have stricken much of central and southern Iraq in recent months, the northern region of Kurdistan has remained relatively quiet.
But beneath that calm, according to a new report released on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW), lie simmering tensions over conflicting land claims by Kurds, Turkomans and Arabs living in the region that could burst into armed conflict at any time due to the failure thus far for the authorities - (…)

Strange times are those in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and a fool" Plato
And those who perform jihad for US, We shall certainly guide them in our ways, and God is surely with the doers of good. (Quran XXXIX; 69) You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad. (Hadith)
To all who read and understand:
It is time to take the next step in understanding. After careful (…)

by Linda S. Heard, Arab News
CAIRO - It seems that Bush and Blair inhabit the same cloud cuckoo land...or pretend to. On July 20, Blair told Parliament to rejoice in the liberation of the Iraqi people while Bush is on the campaign trail saying there are no more "torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq". They both insist the situation in Iraq is getting better.
Syndicated columnist Oliver North of Iran-Contra infamy, now camping out with the Marines in Iraq apparently (…)

"Why do’ they’ hate us?" George W. Bush, September 2001.
By Ghali Hassan
A humanitarian crisis has been looming in Iraq since the 1991 U.S. war due to shortage of drinking water and increase in waterborne diseases that kill children. Despite abundant supplies of water from the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway formed by the confluence of the two rivers, because of the destruction to Iraq’s infrastructure and the genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq by the U.S-UN. (…)

Baghdad: Iraq’s top criminal court is investigating allegations that Salem Chalabi, the organiser of the war crimes tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein, threatened an official days before the man was assassinated.
Mr Chalabi, whose uncle is the former Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, is accused of attempting to intimidate Haitham Fadhil, a Finance Ministry official who was investigating the Chalabi family’s property holdings when he was killed in May.
Salem Chalabi, 41, denied (…)

Worst Coverage Ever? Reporting on the UN Oil-For-Food Program is Rife With Conservative Talking Points and Glaring Omissions
by Joshua Holland
If you don’t read the conservative press, you may not have heard of the UN oil-for-food scandal. ’Oil-for-food’ was a United Nations-administered program that allowed Saddam Hussein to sell oil despite the sanctions against him. The proceeds of the sales were for humanitarian relief, but Hussein and his cronies also manipulated (…)

By Jason Leopold
It’s official. I’m a conspiracy theorist.
I’m probably one of thousands-maybe tens of thousands-who believe President George W. Bush will do anything to retain control of the White House. It’s not safe to have a healthy dose of skepticism like this these days. But this has to be said. I don’t believe the country is going to be attacked by al-Qaeda anytime soon. I don’t care how specific the so-called threat is. I don’t care how many targets have been identified. I don’t (…)