Canada’s secret war in Iraq
by Richard Sanders
http://commonground.ca/iss/199/cg199_iraq.shtml
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! – Mark Twain
On March 25, 2003, during the “shock and awe” bombardment of Iraq, then US Ambassador Paul Cellucci admitted that “… ironically, Canadian naval vessels, aircraft and personnel... will supply more support to this war in Iraq indirectly... than most of those 46 countries that are fully supporting our efforts there.”
Cellucci merely scratched the surface of Canada’s initial “support” for the Iraq War, but he had let the cat out of the bag. As then Secretary of State Colin Powell had explained a week earlier, “We now have a coalition of the willing… who have publicly said they could be included in such a listing.... And there are 15 other nations, who, for one reason or another, do not wish to be publicly named but will be supporting the coalition.”

Canadian General Takes Senior Command Role in Iraq
By Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40894
VANCOUVER, Jan 23 (IPS) - Despite the government's official position abstaining from combat in Iraq, Canada has dispatched yet another top general to the command group overseeing day-to-day operations for the U.S.-led occupation and counterinsurgency war.

Brigadier-General Nicolas Matern, a Special Forces officer and former commander of Canada's elite counter-terrorism unit, will serve as deputy to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin III, incoming commander of the 170,000-strong Multi National Corps-Iraq beginning in mid-February.

Matern is the third Canadian general to serve in the command group of Operation Iraqi Freedom as part of an exchange programme that places Canadian Forces officers in leadership positions in the U.S. military. His deployment is part of a three-year post with the U.S. Army's 18th Airborne Corps, based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2393399,00.html

Bob Woodward begins exclusive extracts from his new book, which is shaking the White House with its revelations of a dysfunctional presidency that ignored the truth about Iraq

In early January 2003, Jay Garner, a retired general, picked up an incoming call on his mobile phone from the Pentagon.

“We want to talk to you. Can you come over?”

What do you want to talk about? Garner asked.

“It’s a little sensitive on the phone.”

Garner found himself being hired by Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, to take over the post-war humanitarian mission after the imminent invasion of Iraq. He had been picked because in 1991 he had run Operation Provide Comfort, coming to the rescue of thousands of ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf war.

Garner thought he’d been recruited to play the role of a glorified chief of staff; but when he read the presidential directive setting up his new office, it took his breath away. It gave him responsibility for all the tasks normally run by national, state and local governments.

He found himself waking up at 2am, dictating to-do lists. He realised he had been given an impossible task, but the military man’s can-do attitude prevailed over doubt. “I thought this was going to be superhard,” he told me later. But, he added: “I never failed at anything.”

Good background on West Asian conflict, Iraq, and Kurdish self-determination struggles.
***
"Greater Kurdistan" Ambitions Could Spark Regional War

by Sarkis Pogossian
Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Nov. 1, 2005

It is now the Sunni insurgency in central and western Iraq that is drawing blood and media attention in Iraq, but the situation in the northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan, at present the most peaceful part of the country, is waiting to explode—and holds far greater potential to internationalize the conflict. The Kurdish people, numbering some 20 million, were left off the map when the victorious allies carved new states out of the ruins of the Turkish Ottoman Empire after World War I. They are now divided mostly between Iraq and Turkey, with smaller populations in Iran and Syria. The emergence of a highly autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq has re-ignited ambitions for a "Greater Kurdistan" which would unite Kurdish lands across the borders of these four nation-states.

The occupation and new US threats could spark neighbouring uprisings

Jawad al-Khalisi
Friday April 1, 2005

Guardian

The US-British occupation of Iraq is poisoning all political processes in my country and across the Middle East. The elections held under the control of the occupying forces in January were neither free nor fair. Instead of being a step towards solving Iraq's problems, they have been used to prolong foreign rule over the Iraqi people.

Canada to lead chorus of support for sham election in Iraq
By Keith Jones, wsws.org
17 January 2005

At the behest of the federal Liberal government, Canada’s election commission has created and now leads an International Mission for Iraqi Elections (IMIE). The IMIE’s ostensible purpose is to determine whether the January 30 vote for a 275-member provisional Iraqi National Assembly and subsequent votes to ratify a new constitution and elect a fresh National Assembly before the year’s end are free and fair. But the IMIE’s real mandate—as the mission’s origins, composition, and conduct demonstrate—is to drum up international support for the sham elections the US is staging in Iraq so as to lend legitimacy to the continuing military occupation of the oil-rich country.

Sydney Morning Herald
US official confirms Allawi shot six dead
January 19, 2005

A former Jordanian government minister has told The New Yorker that an American official confirmed to him that the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last year.

from Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation (www.idao.org)

Severe power outage and oil shortages, so needed as a source of heating in the cold winter of Iraq, has added to the discontent against an occupying regime unable to provide security or normality while spending its energy on the destruction of whole Iraqi cities like Fallujah in the name of preparing for elections.

by Chris Spannos; September 08, 2004 (ZNET)

With up to 13,802 Iraqi civilian deaths to date, Canadians will now be providing one of the most basic necessities for the US occupation forces in Iraq: bullets. The Canadian company SNC Technologies Inc. (SNC TEC) is now part of a multinational consortium of small-caliber ammunition producers whose purpose is to supply between 300 million -500 million more bullets to occupation forces per year, and potentially for at least five years.

When a state is determined to pursue war, and all forms of indirect symbolic protest actions have failed to sway politicians to halt their imperialist aggression, the only remaining option is direct action by the working class. One option is a general strike by workers that can effect the production and transpiration of military capital, that is the materials essential for the war machine. The other is to deprive the military of the labor it needs to fight the war. The slogan from the Vietnam War protests deliberately speaks to this, "What if they had a war, and no one came?" The U.S. military is overwhelmingly recruited from the working class, and convincing our class as a whole to refuse to work for this blood money may be our best chance for both ending the war in Iraq and limiting the imperialist ambitions of the U.S. for future decades.

PULL OUT FILIPINO TROOPS IN IRAQ NOW!

As overseas Filipinos across Canada, we condemn the Philippine government's
ambiguous and contradictory actions in the withdrawal of Philippine troops
from

check out www.newstandardnews.net, a new top-quality progressive and independent news source.

Jon Elmer works with FromOccupiedPalestine.org.

****

Mounting Evidence Suggests Israeli Operatives Working in Occupied Iraq

ZNet | Iraq

The Robbery of Reconstruction

by Naomi Klein; June 26, 2004

Good news out of Baghdad: the Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4bn in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it can meet. Sure, electricity is below pre-war levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired than hired. But now the PMO has contracted the British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and" - get this - "embarrassment". I don't know if Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees from violent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame.

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds.

Issue of 2004-06-28 New Yorker

In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.

Kurdish rebels reject calls to restore ceasefire with Turkey

dozame.org

Monday, June 14 2004 @ 04:11 PM CDT

ANKARA, Turkey, June 14 (AFP) - A top Kurdish rebel leader has rejected calls for the restoration of a truce with Turkish forces and has called instead for an end to the prison isolation for former rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, the pro-Kurdish Mesopotamia news agency reported Monday.

ZNet | Iraq

Control of Security Forces

by Dahr Jamail; The NewStandard; June 14, 2004

Baghdad , Jun 14 - Even as authorities for the US-run occupation cede a greater share of security responsibilities to Iraqi forces, spokespeople for the Iraqi police and paramilitaries in many areas of the war-torn country say they lack the legitimacy and tools necessary to carry out their duties. With the transfer of official sovereignty to a US-sanctioned governing body just over two weeks away, officials with both the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Iraqi Police complain they are understaffed, under-equipped and undermined by the US.

The “Iraqi Resistance” and Worker-communists

from www.wpiraq.org

May 18,2004

“The situation in Nasiriyiah today May 18th is
relatively calm. The Mahdi Army fled the fight against

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY

03 June 2004

Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia

By George Friedman

Summary

The United States has clearly entered a new phase of the Iraq campaign in

Sistani: Iraqi government lacks legitimacy
Thursday 03 June 2004 8:47 AM GMT
Al Jazeera

Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani - Iraq's most influential Shia Muslim cleric -has given his conditional approval to the new interim Iraqi government installed this week.

(Via Associated Press):

"The United States and Britain circulated the following revised draft U.N. resolution on Iraq to Security Council members Monday:"

The Security Council,

Marking a new phase in Iraq's transition to a democratically elected government, and looking forward to the end of the occupation and the assumption of authority by a fully sovereign Interim Government of Iraq by 30 June 2004,

Julian Borger in Washington, Tuesday May 25, 2004, The Guardian

An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.

Governing Body, U.S. Pick CIA Link Allawi as Iraqi PM
Fri May 28, 2004 11:56 AM ET Reuters
By Tom Perry

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iyad Allawi, a former supporter of Saddam Hussein who then worked with the CIA to topple him, was chosen as prime minister of Iraq Friday.

info from dozame.org and stratfor.com

1. Stratfor.com Assessment of Kurdish Struggle

2. Food Embargo on North Kurdistan, May 18

3. Turkish Soldier Killed, May 26

4. Guerrilla Defensive Ops, May 24

Failing to Disband Militias, U.S. Moves to Accept Them
By DEXTER FILKINS
May 25, 2004 NYT

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 24 — With only weeks to go until an Iraqi government takes over, American officials have failed to disarm the tens of thousands of fighters in private militias deployed almost exclusively along ethnic and religious lines.

Car bomb kills head of Iraq ruling council
Monday May 17, 2004
The Guardian

The head of the Iraqi Governing Council was today killed in a suicide car bombing as he waited in his vehicle at a US-controlled checkpoint.

American beheaded in revenge for torture

Brian Whitaker, Luke Harding in Baghdad and Associated Press in Cairo
Wednesday May 12, 2004

The Guardian
A US hostage in Iraq was pictured being beheaded by Islamic militants in a video released yesterday that said that the grisly act was revenge for the abuse of Iraqi detainees by US troops.

Five men wearing headscarves and black masks were pictured standing behind a bound man in a Guantánamo Bay-style orange jumpsuit, who identified himself briefly before one of his captors put a large knife to his neck. A scream was heard, followed by shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" - "God is greatest" - as the head was held out to the camera.

Israeli lessons for the US in Iraq

by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Thursday 06 May 2004 6:48 PM GMT

Thousands of Palestinians say they were tortured by Israel

The torturing of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghuraib prison by US occupying forces has shocked the world - but for most Palestinians they come as no surprise.

Shiite Gunmen Rampage Through Iraq Cities

Saturday May 8, 2004 1:16 PM

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI

Associated Press Writer

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - Gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rampaged through Basra and another southern Iraq city, attacking British patrols and government buildings a day after an al-Sadr aide offered worshippers money for capturing or killing coalition soldiers.

Naomi Klein, May 1st, 2004.

Can we please stop calling it a quagmire? The United States isn't mired in a bog in Iraq, or a marsh; it is free-falling off a cliff. The only question now is: who will follow the Bush clan off this precipice, and who will refuse to jump?

Remember Falluja

By Orit Shohat
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/421014.html

During the first two weeks of this month, the American army committed war
crimes in Falluja on a scale unprecedented for this war. According to the