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IRAQ - Alternative News
Dick Cheney Has Long Planned To Loot Iraqi Oil
by Scott Thompson
As this week's Feature highlights, Vice President Dick Cheney has been plotting the conquest of Iraq since he was Secretary of Defense in President George H.W. Bush's Administration—a plan then considered insane aggression. Moreover, on July 17, 2003, Judicial Watch announced that Cheney's Energy Task Force had developed a map of Iraq dated March 2001, as well as maps of the neighboring United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) and Saudi Arabia, which show that Cheney knew precisely how much the conquest of Iraq would be worth.
October 26th 2011
By Gary Vey for viewzone
 More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans. This probably is news to you. But the truth has been hidden by a technicality. So here is the truth.
The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand. If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty. There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.
Some of these brave men died in the jungles of Vietnam while others died in Medivac units or hospitals in Japan and America. A dead soldier can surrender his life anywhere in his service to his country. It really doesn't matter where this happens. The location of a soldier's death in now way colors his sacrifice to his country.
But something odd has happened with the Iraq War. The government, under the Bush administration, did something dishonest that resulted in a lie that's persisted since the war began -- and continues to this very day. They decided to report the war deaths in Iraq only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation
July 4th 2011
 In the early years of the Iraq war, the U.S. military developed a technology so secret that soldiers would refuse to acknowledge its existence, and reporters mentioning the gear werepromptly escorted out of the country. That equipment – a radio-frequency jammer – was upgraded several times, and eventually robbed the Iraq insurgency of its most potent weapon, the remote-controlled bomb. But the dark veil surrounding the jammers remained largely intact, even after the Pentagon bought more than 50,000 units at a cost of over $17 billion.Recently, however, I received an unusual offer from ITT, the defense contractor which made the vast majority of those 50,000 jammers. Company executives were ready to discuss the jammer – its evolution, and its capabilities. They were finally able to retell the largely-hidden battles for the electromagnetic spectrum that raged, invisibly, as the insurgencies carried on. They were prepared to bring me into the R&D facility where company technicians were developing what could amount to the ultimate weapon of this electromagnetic war: a tool that offers the promise of not only jamming bombs, but finding them, interrupting GPS signals, eavesdropping on enemy communications, and disrupting drones, too. The first of the these machines begins field-testing next month.
On a fist-clenchingly cold winter morning, I took a train across the Hudson River to the secret jammer lab.
June 15th 2011
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
 Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
Graphic: Iraq's burgeoning oil industry
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
April 20th 2011
4.5 Million Orphans in Iraq: Protests Over Food and Shelter
BAGHDAD — Fadel Mohammad Ra'ad, 10, is one of thousands of children who have lost their parents to the endless violence that has been gripping Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
"My parents were killed in an explosion at the center of Baghdad last year, leaving me and my sister to no one," the kid told IslamOnline.net in a Baghdad orphanage.
"I have relatives but all of them have refused to take us in," he added choking at the memory.
"We were forced to work to survive."
Children, like many other civilians, are the silent victims of violence in war-torn Iraq.
"Violence in Iraq has vast characteristics. Sectarian violence, resistance against US troops, traditional behaviors and the fight against the hungry," explains Haydar Hassan Kareem, a sociologist.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs estimate that around 4,5 million children are orphans. Nearly 70 percent of them lost their parents since the invasion and the ensuing violence.
From the total number, around 600,000 children are living in the streets without a house or food to survive.
Only 700 children are living in the 18 orphanages existing in the country, lacking their most essential needs.
"Unfortunately the budget allocated to projects that help street children and orphans is decreasing day in and day out," notes an Iraqi Red Crescent employee refusing to give his name.
"Worse still, almost no NGO is dedicating itself to this group of kids who are subject to trafficking and sexual abuses in the streets."
Abused
Hamed Abdel-Sattar, 9, has to spend hours at the streets moving from one traffic light to another trying to make a living for him and his 7-year-old sister.
"My father was killed during the invasion and my mother seven months later in a suicide attack," he said.
"We don't know where our relatives are and had to steel to get enough money to buy candies and sell them today," he added.
"I know what I did is wrong but we had to eat. I think that God will forgive me," reasons the nine-year-old.
"Sometimes I cry alone and don't eat to leave it for my sister but one day I will be rich and will help all orphans in Iraq."
February 26h 2011|
Mubarak’s Role in the Destruction of Iraq
 Hosni Mubarak is being surrounded by opposition from many sides of Egyptian society. The message is clear: he has to go. Various explanation for his imminent ouster have been well-chronicled: brutal repression, abject poverty in Egypt and corruption in the government are but a few of the reasons. The international press has delved into these and made the world aware of Mubarak’s actions over the years. However, one aspect yet to be brought out is his activities in 1990 that played a major role in making an attack against Iraq acceptable in the eyes of the world.
Let’s look at the chronology. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the border into Kuwait. This was no mere on-the-spot decision made by Saddam Hussein. For months prior, Saddam brought up the subject of Kuwait’s attempts to undermine Iraq’s economy, that was fragile at the time because Iraq had just ended an eight-year war against Iran in which it defended all Arab countries, especially Kuwait, against a possible Iranian intrusion and the desired spreading of the Iranian Islamic revolution to the entire Arab world.
February 9th 2011
Trashed in Iraq: 'Look what they've done to us!'
January 10th 2011
’Child cancer skyrocketing in Basra’
 Baku-APA. The rapidly soaring child cancer rate in the southern Iraqi province of Basra has prompted the officials in the country to open the country’s first specialist cancer hospital for children in the province’s capital, APA reports quoting Press TV.
Since 1993, Basra province has witnessed a sharp rise in the incidence of childhood cancer.
"Leukemia (a type of blood cancer) among children under 15 has increased by about four times," said Dr. Janan Hasan of the hospital inaugurated on Thursday in the southern port city of Basra.
Hasan went on to say that "Most [of the affected children] are high-risk cases, which means that they do not have a high survival rate."
"Basra’s childhood leukemia rates compare unfavorably to those of neighboring Kuwait and nearby Oman, as well as the US and the European Union and other countries," said a study conducted by the University of Washington in Seattle, which documented the increase in the cancer rate in Basra.
A suspected source of the afflictions is the depleted uranium (DU) used by the invading forces.
October 25h 2010
OPERATION NEW DAWN: Same War Different Name
According to Voters for Peace, the first confusion over Operation New Dawn came from the Department of Defense. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said shortly after the “end” of the war, “I don’t think anybody has declared the end of the war as far as I know. Counter-terrorism will still be part of their mission.” He said the more than 50,000 remaining troops will be well armed and that among their responsibilities will be counter-terrorism which will mean taking on Islamist militants in combat situations. The former head of the Central Command who had been in charge of military operations in Iraq echoed the Pentagon sentiments when Petraeus told CBS News, “We’re not leaving” Iraq and that the troops remaining behind will have “an enormous capability.”
To make matters worse, General Ray Odierno said it was possible that U.S. combat troops would return to Iraq if the security situation worsened. Odierno also said that he was certain the U.S. would consider staying in Iraq after 2011 if invited. There is more talk of the U.S. staying beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all troops. Iraq’s top military officer said last week that American forces may be needed for another decade, something to which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the U.S. is open.
And sadly, the war’s “end” does not mean an end to deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. An American soldier was killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. military said, marking the first American fatality since the last “combat” unit in Iraq pulled out of the country. The military did not provide a lot of information on what the soldier was doing but said he was conducting operations in Iraq’s southern province of Basra.
It also does not mean an end to deployments of new troops to Iraq. Five peace activists blockaded six buses carrying Fort Hood Soldiers deploying to Iraq. The buses were slowed to a halt; while police made no arrests, they forced the activists out of the street using automatic weapons and police dogs so the deploying soldiers could proceed.
September 5th 2010
Last of the Combat Troops Leaving Iraq? – Only in your Dreams
Watching MSNBC’s coverage of ‘the last combat troops leaving Iraq’ for 3 hours reminded of a few brutal realities that still plague this country and this planet. The first being just how far this country remains from any semblance of reality. It’s the kind of delusional denial that truly can only be believed when witnessed from within. As Keith Olbermann was describing the cinematic quality of the “Strykers driving into your living room,” I could really think of only one thing – The aftermath of a 7.5 year all out United States operation to decimate a people and their society.
August 20th 2010
Iraqi city has higher cancer rates than Hiroshima
A report has been published indicating cancers and other diseases in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are significantly higher than those of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs of 1945
July 24th, 2010
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