Wednesday, June 21, 2006

US troops get murder charges in killing civilian

1 hour, 5 minutes ago

The U.S. military will charge seven Marines and a Navy corpsman with murder and other charges on Wednesday in the April 26 killing of an Iraqi civilian, a U.S. defense official said.

The charges include murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, making false official statements and larceny, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the charges have not yet been announced.

The incident took place in the town of Hamdania and is a separate case from the November 19 killing of 24 civilians in Haditha in which other Marines are suspected.

Military criminal investigators examined whether the servicemen fatally shot a 52-year-old disabled Iraqi man in the face, then planted a rifle and a shovel next to his body to make it appear he was an insurgent placing a roadside bomb.

The eight troops have been held in pretrial confinement at the Camp Pendleton prison in California since May 24. The Marines plan to hold a news conference at Camp Pendleton at 4 p.m. (1 p.m. PDT) to announce the charges.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, responsible for criminal cases involving Marine and Navy personnel, conducted the investigation of the incident.

The military said in a statement announcing the investigation last month that "local Iraqis" brought the incident to the attention of Marine leadership at a meeting on May 1.

Source: AP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060621/ts_nm/iraq_usa_marines_dc

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Iraq war seen as biggest threat to peace

Read the full survey

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Wednesday June 14, 2006


Marines check an Iraqi man's identity in Haditha
The greatest threat to peace? ... Marines check an Iraqi man's identity in Haditha. Photograph: James Razuri/Getty


The US occupation of Iraq presents a bigger danger to world peace than Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, according to a worldwide survey published on Wednesday.

The annual survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre suggests that support for the US-led "war on terrorism" continues to be on the wane around the world, undermined by the Iraq conflict.

The Pew, which is widely respected and has been running since 2001, polled 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May. In a press release, it says: "Despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace."

Only in the US and Germany is Iran seen as presenting a greater danger than the US in Iraq. Public opinion in 12 of the other countries - Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, India and China - cite the US presence in Iraq as being the greater danger. Opinion in Japan was evenly divided.

Throughout the period the poll was conducted the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, intensified by hardline comments from its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was repeatedly in the news. Iraq, too, has been almost daily in the news, with the formation of a new Iraqi government being accompanied by fears of a civil war.

As well as Iraq and Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also high on the list of issues that present a danger to world peace. Public opinion in about a third of the countries polled put it at the top of their list of threats.

The poll confirms the extent to which the well of international goodwill towards the US in the aftermath of 9/11 is being drained. Favourable opinions of the US have fallen in most of the countries.

One of the sharpest declines in support for the US has been in Spain. Only 23% of the Spaniards polled expressed positive views of the US, down from 41% last year. Even though Madrid suffered a large death toll from an al-Qaida attack two years ago, only about one in four supports the "war on terrorism".

Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56%, down from 71%); Russia (43%, from 52%); and Indonesia (30%, from 38%). In Turkey only 12% said they held a favourable opinion, compared with 23% last year.

In the UK, the US's closest ally in Iraq and the second biggest contributor of troops, 60% said the Iraq war had made the world more dangerous. Only 30% said it had made the world safer.

Forty-one per cent of British people said the US presence in Iraq represented a great danger to world peace, with 34% citing Iran as a big threat.

By contrast, concern about Iran has almost doubled in the US over the past two years, according to the poll. Almost half of Americans, 46%, view Mr Ahmadinejad's government as "a great danger" to stability in the Middle East and world peace, up from 26% in 2003. The growing concern in the US is shared in Germany, where 51% of those polled see Iran as a great danger to world peace compared with just 18% three years ago.

Public opinion is overwhelming opposed to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

While the public in most Muslim countries have a high regard for Iran, little confidence was expressed in Mr Ahmadinejad. About two-thirds in Egypt and Jordan said they had little confidence he would "do the right thing" in world affairs.

Source: Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1797411,00.html

Monday, June 19, 2006

Islam Channel sponsors anti-Zionist debate in London




LONDON - Informed, honest debate on the Middle East has been stifled because of a fear of being accused of anti-Semitism, according to the participants in a discussion hosted by the Islam Channel in central London on Thursday. The broadcaster is the largest Islamic television outlet in Europe.

The discussion, titled: "Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism," was filmed against a backdrop reading "Zionism: The cancer at the heart of international affairs."

The discussion was chaired by Alan Hart, a former ITN and BBC correspondent whose latest book, "Zionism: The real enemy of the Jews" was recently published. He said, "The anti-Semitism card is something the Zionists have exploited to suppress debate."

He said the mainstream media had concealed "the truth of history" out of fear of offending Jews and thanked CEO Mohammed Ali of the Islam Channel for "his courage in widening the debate."

Hart said the assumption is that "Zionism and Judaism are same thing, therefore criticism of Zionism is anti-Semitism, but Zionism is the nationalism of some Jews, a tiny minority."

"The propaganda they use, the Melanie Phillips version [a Jewish journalist for The Daily Mail], is that Israel faces annihilation and fears being pushed into the sea," Hart said. He said this was a myth.

"The truth about 1967 was that [then-prime minister Levi] Eshkol and [chief of General Staff Yitzhak] Rabin didn't want war, the hawks pushed them into it as wanted to portray Eshkol as weak and [there] was unfinished business from 1948, which was to form a greater Israel," Hart said.

Three Jewish anti-Zionists sat on the panel, including a representative of the haredi Natorei Karta, along with Palestinian scholar Ghada Karmi.

Ilan Pappe of the University of Haifa's political science department, a revisionist historian at the forefront of calls for a boycott of Israel, said that to divorce Zionism from Judaism it was necessary to refrain from using Zionist terminology. For example, you should not talk about a Jewish Diaspora. "The only diaspora is the Palestinians, therefore there is a need to adopt new language," he said.

The Natorei Karta sect was represented by Rabbi Ahron Cohen, who was a member of the delegation that went to Iran to offer support to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in March following his comments that Israel should be wiped off the map.

Cohen said, "Zionists imposed a secular faith state on the Palestinians, this is immoral and the underlying cause of the strife. Zionism and Judaism are incompatible concepts. Many Jews do not approve of Zionism but they cannot say this publicly."

"In Judaism, the land of Palestine was given, but under certain conditions. There must be high moral, religious and ethical standards. These have not been met, so the divine decree is that Jews must live in other countries. We believe in the peaceful dismantling of the Zionist state," he said.

Karmi, a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University and a former consultant to the Palestinian Authority, said the mistreatment of the Jews was a European affair that had nothing to do with Palestinians. "Why were we dumped with this problem?" she asked.

She offered her own interpretation of Zionism. "The Europeans did it to atone for their sins and guilt but the Jews who arrived in Palestine were not the Jews we knew, they were complicated and miserable and the problem is that they're still there."

"Israel has been a total disaster for the entire Arab world, nothing positive or beneficial has come from it," she said.

The last member of the panel was Hajo Meyer, a German-born scientist and Holocaust survivor. Now living in the Netherlands, Meyer is a member of the board of Another Jewish Voice, which is part of the European Jewish Alliance for a Just Peace. He has frequently said Israel was "treating the Palestinian people in the same way the Nazis treated Jews during the Second World War."

"Zionism is a child of nationalism and colonialism forced to be a cure for anti-Semitism, but [it] has become the main cause of anti-Semitism," he said.

Source: Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150355528055&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

U.S. soldiers charged with murder in Iraq

Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:17 PM BST
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three U.S. soldiers were charged with premeditated murder after being accused of shooting three detainees north of Baghdad on May 9 and then threatening to kill a fellow soldier if he told the truth about the incident, the U.S. military said on Monday.

The charges were brought against U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Raymond Girouard, Pfc. Corey Clagett and Spc. William Hunsaker, according to charge sheets provided by Army officials at the Pentagon. Premeditated murder charges can bring the death penalty under U.S. military law.

The three soldiers were members of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, and were charged in the deaths of three male detainees whose identities remain unknown during an operation at a former chemical factory, the military said.

The charge sheet released by the Army said the dead men were "of apparent Middle Eastern descent whose names are unknown."

The charges also include attempted murder, conspiracy, communicating a threat and obstructing justice, the military said.

The deaths took place during a raid on a suspected insurgent training camp near Thar Thar Lake, southwest of Tikrit, on May 9, when, the military said at the time, more than 200 people were detained at a former chemical factory.

The case comes as the military is investigating other cases of alleged abuses by U.S. troops, including the killings of 24 unarmed civilians in the town of Haditha last November.

A military statement on Monday said the commander of the unit involved in the Thar Thar incident had ordered an inquiry on the day the three detainees died. The soldiers are in custody pending a hearing to determine whether they should face a court-martial.

Last month, the military issued a statement hailing the success of Operation Iron Triangle, a three-day raid launched on May 9 against the Muthana Chemical Complex near Thar Thar Lake, a sprawling plant closed after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Some 230 Americans from the 101st Airborne's 3rd Brigade Combat Team and nearly 200 Iraqi soldiers stormed the complex from helicopters, said a statement posted on a U.S. military Web site on May 18.

Source: Reuters UK
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID...RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ-USA-PRISONERS.xml