El primer borrador -secreto- del expediente de las "armas de destrucción masiva" iraquíes sale a la luz

Y demuestra que no sólo contenía únicamente mentiras, sino que éstas se exageraron en la última versión, que se usó como pretexto para invadir Irak y provocar la masacre que se tiene ahora. Y aún más, el primer borrador no contenía el brutal engaño de que Irak podría lanzar armas de destrucción masiva en 45 minutos si así lo quisiera, cosa que prueba que el expediente sólo era una fabricación de falsedades envueltas en mentiras.

Fresh evidence that the Iraq weapons dossier was "sexed up" emerged as the Government finally published the secret first draft of the document.

As expected, the earliest version of the document did not include the now notorious claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

The first draft made a series of lurid claims about the extent and danger of the Iraqi president's weapons arsenal. But those were expressed in even stronger terms by September 2002, when the official dossier on which Tony Blair based the case for war was published.

Bush y su cartel mintieron más de 900 veces para justificar la guerra de Irak

Y causó un genocidio de más de un millón de iraquíes, miseria, destrucción, desplazados... Fascismo en una palabra.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

Turcos bombardean localidades kurdas en el norte de Irak

Y la región se desestabiliza más todavía.

TUNCELI, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq on Saturday in a new cross-border offensive, the General Staff said.

The Turkish military said the offensive against outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas inside Turkey and across the border in northern Iraq would continue.

"Turkish Air Force warplanes struck important targets of the PKK/KONGRA-GEL terror group in northern Iraq ... between the hours of 14:25-15:00 (7:25 a.m. - 8 a.m. EST)," the General Staff statement, posted on its website, said.

"The PKK will understand through experience that northern Iraq is not a safe place and they will understand once again that they have no chance against the Turkish military," it said.

Turkey says it has the right to use force to combat separatist rebels who shelter in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq and mount attacks in which they have killed dozens of Turkish troops in recent months.

But the United States and the European Union fear a further escalation in tension could destabilize the region.

Seymour Hersh: Se violaron niños en Abu Ghraib, el Pentágono posee los videos

...Entre muchos otros videos que han sido -supuestamente- destruidos. Nada menos se podría esperar de un país que invadió y destruyó completamente a Irak. Fascismo puro.

From Daily Kos' partial transcript of a video (link to REAL stream) of Seymour Hersh speaking at an ACLU event. He says the US government has videotapes of children being raped at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Crisis de cólera golpea Baghdad

Irak es una catástrofe humanitaria de proporciones insospechadas. Producto de la mentira más grande de los últimos 100 o 200 años.

Iraqi capital fears an epidemic if stricken sewerage system collapses as the rainy season arrives

Baghdad is facing a 'catastrophe' with cases of cholera rising sharply in the past three weeks to more than 100, strengthening fears that poor sanitation and the imminent rainy season could create an epidemic.

The disease - spread by bacteria in contaminated water, which can result in rapid dehydration and death - threatens to blunt growing optimism in the Iraqi capital after a recent downturn in violence. Two boys in an orphanage have died and six other children were diagnosed with the disease, according to the Iraqi government. 'We have a catastrophe in Baghdad,' an official said.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) said 101 cases had been recorded in the city, making up 79 per cent of all new cases in Iraq. It added that no single source for the upsurge had been identified, but the main Shia enclave of Sadr City was among the areas hardest hit.

As Iraq's rainy season nears, its ageing water pipes and sewerage systems, many damaged or destroyed by more than four years of war, pose a new threat to a population weary of crisis. Claire Hajaj, a spokeswoman for Unicef, said: 'Iraq's water and sanitation networks are in a critical condition. Pollution of waterways by raw sewage is perhaps the greatest environmental and public health hazard facing Iraqis - particularly children. Waterborne diarrhoea diseases kill and sicken more Iraqi children than anything except pneumonia. We estimate that only one in three Iraqi children can rely on a safe water source - with Baghdad and southern cities most affected.'

20,000 veteranos de Irak con daño cerebral no están listados en los totales del Pentágono

Cuando menos 20,000 heridos con daño cerebral no se han incluido en los totales publicados por el Pentágono, que sólo reporta 30,327 heridos. Es decir, hay más de 50,000 veteranos de EU heridos en la guerra de Irak, cuando menos. Parece que no es la "victoria" que Bush declaró hace tres años como "misión cumplida".

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.
The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.

Bush sabía que Saddam no tenía armas de "destrucción masiva"

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

"Curve Ball", el informante que Bush usó para justificar la invasión a Irak, al descubierto

"Curve Ball" no sólo mintió acerca de las armas biológicas que supuestamente existían en Irak, sino que resultó tener un expediente criminal de robo, y era además un mediocre estudiante de ingeniería química sin graduarse. Algo que recordar ahora que EU lanza toda una retórica en contra de Irán para pretextar su invasión.

(CBS) 60 Minutes has identified the man whose fabricated story of Iraqi biological weapons drove the U.S. argument for invading Iraq. It has also obtained video of "Curve Ball," as he was known in intelligence circles, and discovered he was not only a liar, but also a thief and a poor student instead of the chemical engineering whiz he claimed to be.

Curve Ball is an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan, who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999. To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons.

60 Minutes has learned that Alwan’s university records indicate he did study chemical engineering but earned nearly all low marks, mostly 50s. Simon’s investigation also uncovered an arrest warrant for theft from the Babel television production company in Baghdad where he once worked.

Las tropas de EU estarán en Medio Oriente por 50 años: El general Abizaid

US troops could be in the Middle East for another 50 years, according to the longest serving commander of the Qatar-based US Central Command.

General John Abazaid, who retired in May, said the "strategic situation" in the region - the rise of extremism and the global dependence on oil - would necessitate a long-term presence.

"Over time, we will have to shift the burden of the military fight from our forces directly to regional forces, and we will have to play an indirect role.

"But we shouldn't assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home, relax and take it easy."

Gen Abazaid, who delivered the comments yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University, said the US would also need to reduced its dependence on imported energy.

"I'm not saying this is a war for oil, but I am saying that oil fuels an awful lot of geopolitical moves that political powers may have there.

Turquía envía más tropas a la frontera con Irak

Todos los elementos están ya presentes para una tormenta perfecta: El caos en Irak, Israel invadiendo el espacio aéreo de sus vecinos, Irán siendo amenazado con bombardeos de EU, el dólar en picada y ahora Turquía movilizando su ejército a la frontera con Irak. Cualquier circunstancia ahora puede detonar una conflagración regional que inclusive se puede convertir en una tercera guerra mundial:

SIRNAK, Turkey - Dozens of Turkish military vehicles streamed toward the Iraqi border with heavy artillery and ammunition Monday after Kurdish guerrillas killed a dozen soldiers and claimed to have captured eight in an intensifying crisis threatening to spill into Iraq.

Arab nations joined the U.S. and Europe in urging Turkey's government not to attack suspected guerrilla bases in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, while Turkish citizens rallied across the country demanding action against the rebels.

Iraq's president claimed the guerrillas would announce a cease-fire. But the rebels denied that, saying a cease-fire they declared in June was still in place.

With tensions worsening, the Turkish foreign minister said his government was pursuing a diplomatic solution to halt rebel operations out of havens in Iraq, but warned that it wanted to see results soon if an escalation in military action was to be avoided.

An AP Television News cameraman saw a convoy of 50 Turkish army vehicles, loaded with soldiers and weapons, including 155-mm howitzers, heading from the southeastern town of Sirnak toward Uludere, closer to the border.

Turquía bombardea el norte de Irak después de emboscada

Las puertas del infierno, abriéndose lentamente:

The Turkish army stepped up its bombardment of the Iraqi side of the border after the rebels ambushed a military unit inside Turkey, hitting 11 different areas close to towns and villages, Kurdish officials said. In a separate incident in south-eastern Turkey, one person died and 17 were injured when their minibus was hit by a roadside bomb allegedly placed by the PKK.

Este es el siguiente paso en la regionalización de la guerra de Irak, y su potencial conversión en una verdadera tercera guerra mundial. Sólo falta la locura de bombardear Irán por EU, para que Medio Oriente arda en llamas.

EU asesinando a 10,000 iraquíes al mes

While the atlantist media is reporting more than 3 000 GI’s killed in Iraq and many civilian victims of inter-confessional violences, it looks away from the daily slaughter of civilians by US patrols conducting their search operations for suspects. Professor Michael Schwartz estimates that their number reached 10 000 a month in the first 3 years of occupation. And much more since Bush ordered his surge of operations.

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) [1] concluded that — as of a year ago — 600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

Autoriza Turquía ofensiva militar en Irak

Más pronto que tarde, la guerra en Irak se extenderá a otros países, con consecuencias impredecibles. Ah, y habrá que añadir el próximo ataque de EU a Irán, para tener la "tormenta perfecta".

Turquía elevó hoy su presión sobre Irak al autorizar su Parlamento una ofensiva militar en el norte del país vecino para combatir a los guerrilleros del PKK kurdo, ignorando las advertencias en contra del presidente de EU, George W. Bush.

La autorización, avalada por 507 de los 526 diputados que participaron en la votación, es válida por un año y permite hacer uso de ella cuantas veces lo considere necesario el Ejército turco, que tiene más de 100.000 soldados estacionados en la frontera con Irak desde la primavera pasada.

El Gobierno del islamista Recep Tayyip Erdogan se ha visto obligado a dar este paso a raíz de las bajas militares sufridas en las últimas dos semanas, cuando una treintena de soldados perdieron la vida en diferentes ataques del ilegal Partido de los Trabajadores de Kurdistán (PKK).

"Estamos en un momento que nuestra paciencia se ha agotado. Pero éste es un gran país, exactamente en este momento deberíamos encontrar la vía correcta con paciencia" , dijo tras el voto el portavoz del Gobierno, Cemil Cicek.

Reportre de la ONU sobre Irak expone una crisis humanitaria cada vez más grave

BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 -- A U.N. report issued Thursday outlined an "ever-deepening humanitarian crisis" in Iraq, with thousands of people driven from their homes each month, ongoing indiscriminate killings and "routine torture" in Iraqi prisons.

Also Thursday, a U.S. airstrike in Iraq killed 15 civilians -- nine women and six children -- and 19 suspected insurgents, the military said. "We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while Coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism," Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. military spokesman, said in a statement.

U.S. troops targeting leaders of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq came under fire while approaching a building near Lake Tharthar in Anbar province northwest of Baghdad, and aircraft fired on the site in response, the military said. The bombing also wounded six people, including a woman and three children.

The assessment by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, which covered a three-month period ending June 30, found that civilians were suffering "devastating consequences" from violence across the country. It documented more than 100 civilians allegedly killed by U.S.-led forces during airstrikes or raids.

Irak, una inversión excelente

Iraq is 'unwinnable’, a 'quagmire’, a 'fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be 'stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no 'exit strategy’.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

Parecería que el caos, destrucción y genocidio de Irak es un fracaso rotundo para Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista de los neoconservadores ultraderechistas que gobiernan EU, es una excelente inversión. Como el artículo indica, EU ha gastado alrededor de UN BILLóN de dólares en la invasión, pero espera obtener cuando menos TREINTA BILLONES de dólares.

Blackwater responsable de la muerte de 811 Iraqis

Durante las primeras dos semanas de este mes, el ejército americano cometió crímenes de guerra en Faluya, en una escala sin precedentes en esta guerra. De acuerdo a reportes de medios de comunicación relativamente escasos de lo que allí sucedió, unos 600 iraquíes fueron asesinados durante esas dos semanas, entre ellos unas 450 personas mayores de edad, niños y mujeres.

Sólamente la cadena Al Jazeera transmitió al mundo la horrenda visión de niños decapitados, hileras de mujeres muertas y fotos impactantes del estadio de futbol que se había convertido en una tumba "temporal" para todos ellos.

Ahora se descubre que Blackwater, un ejército mercenario contratado por EU para pelear en Irak, asesinó a cientos sólo en Faluya, resultando en uno de los peores crímenes de guerra en la historia reciente.

Bush ¿El nuevo Saddam?

Bush quisiera tener algo de la inteligencia y personalidad de Saddam. Después del desastre que ha causado en Medio Oriente, todo sería diferente si Saddam estuviera gobernando todavía.

El Departamento de Asuntos de Veteranos de Guerra de EU: Hay 73,000 Soldados de EU Muertos en Irak

Muertes totales de EU en la "Guerra del Golfo" (Irak): 73,846

¿Cómo es que las cifras del gobierno de EU, 3,777 soldados muertos hasta el 07/09/07, son tan bajas? La respuesta es simple, el gobierno no quiere que los 73,000 soldados muertos hasta ahora sean comparados con los 55,000 soldados muertos en Vietnam. Lo que el gobierno está haciendo es sólo contar los soldados que mueren en acción, antes de que puedan ser transportados en helicóptero o ambulancia. Cualquier soldado que es herido pero puede ser transportado antes de que muera no se le cuenta.

El reporte se encuentra aquí.

Encuesta: Las muertes en Irak podrían superar el MILLON de personas

Una encuesta británica ofrece la estimación más alta hasta la fecha.

BAGDAD - Una nueva encuesta sugiere que las muertes civiles causadas por la guerra podrían superar el millón de personas.

La estimación de ORB, una agencia encuestadora que ha conducido varios sondeos en Irak, fue precedida por declaraciones esta semana del ejército de EU, que se defendía contra acusaciones de que éste estaba intentando minimizar muertes iraquíes para hacer parecer exitosa su estrategia.

De acuerdo a la encuesta de ORB, un sondeo de 1,461 adultos indica que el número total de muertes durante los más de cuatro años de guerra son más de 1.2 millones de personas.

Esta es la "destrucción constructiva" de los neoconservadores estadounidenses. Y Calderón dice que está seguro que Estados Unidos es una "fuerza del bien". Carajo.

Tropas británicas se han enviado a la frontera con Irán

Fuerzas británicas se han enviado de Basra a la "volátil" frontera con Irán entre adevertencias del comandante en jefe estadounidense en Irak de que Teherán está fomentando una "guerra por aproximación".

Con señales de una confrontación que se está desarrollando rápidamente, los iraníes han amenazado con una acción militar en respuesta a ataques lanzados de territorio iraquí mientras el Pentágono ha anunciado la construcción de una base militar y retenes fortificados en la frontera.

La operación británica, en la que hasta 350 soldados están involucrados, viene de una petición de los americanos, quienes dicen que elementos cercanos al régimen iraní han incrementado el aprovisionamiento de armamento a milicias chiítas en semanas recientes, en preparación para ataques dentro de Irak.

Esta es claramente una provocación americana, ya que todos los intentos anteriores no han funcionado (el acusar a Irán de tener un programa nuclear, armar a iraquíes, etc.). Ahora, sólo necesitan cualquier pretexto para tratar de arrasar otro país más.