The Justice for Fallujah Project

The Justice for Fallujah Project

For the families of Haditha, this is a matter of honour

"If there was any doubt that the killings that day could be classed as anything other than war crimes, a number of incriminating documents have come to light in the past few weeks that place guilt beyond doubt. Some 400 pages from the military interrogation of the offending troops, which should have been destroyed as the Americans left Iraq last year, were uncovered by a New York Times reporter at a junkyard in Baghdad."

"Not a single marine I interviewed was able to survive after their tour without a tranquilliser prescription.... It's worth remembering that most were just teenagers when they joined the force."

"The Iraqi families who turned down the insulting offer of $2,500 in compensation for each family member killed are still waiting to see justice done."

For the families of Haditha, this is a matter of honour | Nick Broomfield | Comment is free | The Guardian

License to lie | Salon Books

License to lie | Salon Books:

"Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and Rove pulled off a much more sophisticated job: a bureaucratic coup d'etat. Without firing a shot, they silenced critics, squelched unwanted facts, and created their own false but salable reality. As a result, they were able to launch a war justified by lies and driven by nothing more than Bush's ignorant whim. It is, truly, the heist of the century."

"At this point, one could forgive readers for asking, 'How many more damning portraits of the Bush administration do we need?' From yellowcake to Joe Wilson to Abu Ghraib, the list of Bush scandals and outrages is endless, but nothing ever seems to happen. As the journalist Mark Danner has pointed out, the problem is not lack of information: The problem is that Americans can't, or won't, acknowledge what that information means."

When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Hill & Knowlton immediately faxed details of her speech to newsrooms across the country, according to CBC's Fifth Estate's documentary. The effect was electric. The babies in incubator stories became a lead item in newspapers, and on radio and TV all over the US.

It is interesting that no one – not the congressmen in the hearing, or any journalist present – bothered to find out the identity of the young woman. She was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and actually hadn't seen the "atrocities" she described take place. (When later confronted with the lack of evidence for her claims, the young woman said that she hadn't been in the hospital herself, but that a friend who had been there had told her about it. )

Similar unsubstantiated stories appeared at the UN a few weeks later, where a team of "witnesses," coached by Hill & Knowlton, gave "testimony" (although no oath was ever taken) about atrocities in Iraq. It was later learned that the seven witnesses used false names and even identities in one case. In an unprecedented move, the US was allowed to present a video created by Hill & Knowlton to the entire security council.

When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in cash to Iraq

The Federal Reserve sent nearly $12 billion in cash, mainly in $100 bills, to Iraq from 2003 to 2004. According to Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York had to pack 181 million individual bills including more than 107 $100 bills on to wooden pallets to be shipped to Iraq. The cash weighed more than 363 tons and was loaded onto C-130 cargo planes to be flown into Baghdad.

A few months earlier, Ron Paul had questioned Ben Bernanke on this and other items; Bernanke called all the allegations "bizarre."