Showtimes:

May 22 - 7pm
May 25 - 7pm

Brunswick Theatre
296 Brunswick Avenue (2nd Floor), Toronto Ontario

Toronto Premiere
With filmmaker David Martinez in person

A one hour documentary, not about soldiers, not about governments, but about Iraqi civilians and a handful of independent journalists in a country turned into hell. A cinema cerite narrative of daily life, disintegration, and the humor that ordinary people adapt when living in a war zone. Includes rare footage from inside besieged Fallujah, April 2004, and a Choubi music soundtrack provided by Sublime Frequencies. Unlike any Iraq movie you have seen.

Thursday's raid on the Iranian consulate is more evidence that President Bush is ready to escalate the conflict.

By Juan Cole

Jan. 12, 2007 | For months, rumors of war between the United States and Iran have been building. Many fear that President Bush is spoiling for a fight, and they've begun to interpret various developments in the region as the run-up to an attack on Tehran. A report in the British press about a possible Israeli raid on Iran's nuclear facilities quickly became linked with predictions about coordinated action with the United States. Observers on all sides, left, right and other, convinced themselves that the appointment of Adm. William Fallon to oversee military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan meant there would soon be Tomahawk missiles, if not U.S. soldiers, crossing the border into Iran.

by Paul Craig Roberts

Is the surge an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan?

A good case can be made that it is. The US Congress and media are
focused on President Bush's proposal for an increase of 20,000 US
troops in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies
prepare an assault on Iran.

Commentators have expressed puzzlement over President Bush's
appointment of a US Navy admiral as commander in charge of the ground

by Jon Flanders

Was it only two days ago that we read the exultant news stories and saw the frenzied TV news coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein? I know that I had to turn off CNN in revulsion as the evening progressed.

President Bush took time off from his chainsaw assaults on the underbrush of his Crawford Ranch to commend the Maliki government for its handling of the affair.

Counterpunch

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Iraq is rending itself apart. The signs of collapse are everywhere. In Baghdad the police often pick up over 100 tortured and mutilated bodies in a single day. Government ministries make war on each other. A new and ominous stage in the disintegration of the Iraqi state came earlier this month when police commandos from the Shia-controlled Interior Ministry kidnapped 150 people from the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry in the heart of Baghdad.

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.”

By Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver; Institute for Policy Studies; February 28, 2006

· It remains unclear who was responsible for the attack on the golden-domed Askariya Shi'a mosque in Samarra. In the two days following the bombing over 200 Iraqis were killed, and the country was put under a day-and-night curfew.

· The spike in sectarian violence does not reflect a sudden danger of civil war. Rather, if it continues to escalate it may lead to a shift from the existing low-intensity political civil war between supporters (reluctant or not) of the U.S. occupation and opponents of that occupation, to a civil war identified largely along sectarian lines.

Unity of the Iraqi people against US occupation is the only guarantee for solving the current political crisis
from Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation (www.idao.org)
26.2.06

The destruction of the Askariya Shrine, loved by Muslims of the Shiite and Sunni faiths alike was no sectarian action.

For 1200 years the Shrine was protected by the people of the historic city of Samurra, of the Sunni faith, and visited by millions of the Muslims of the Shia faith every year.

By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 30 January 2006

In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

Listen to an interview with Oula Farawati, correspondent for Free Speech Radio News in Amman Jordan. This interview addresses the Wednesday, November 9th bombings in the Jordanian capital in the context of the ongoing U.S. lead occupation of Iraq.

Upwards of 60 people, mainly Jordanians were killed in the attacks, while over 120 people have already been arrested in connection with the bombings. Jordanian authorities have paraded internationally a captured female bomber, Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, who comes from the Iraqi city of Ramadi, the sister of a slain lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of al-Qaida in Iraq.