With the killing of the leader of Al Queda in Iraq, what will the implications be for the war against the US/UK presence?

LFCM speculates on the likely effects.

From The Independent

Robert Fisk: On the shocking truth about the American occupation of Iraq

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave? The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of America’s army of the slums go further?

I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city’s senior medical officials – an old friend – told me of his fears. “Everyone brings bodies here,” he said. “But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we’d get a piece of paper like this one with a body.” And here the man handed me an American military document showing the hand-drawn outline of a man’s body and the words “trauma wounds”.

What kind of trauma? Indeed, what kind of trauma is now being experienced in Iraq? Who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our suspicions.

See also Iraqi Condemns Probe Clearing U.S. Troops

Update 07.06.06: Sunni party makes new allegations against US forces in Iraq

The dam appears to now have burst as, following on the heels of the Haditha massacre, stories of more US atrocities start to flood out from Iraq and the mainstream media becomes willing to give them air time. This one is from the town of Ishaqi in March of this year.

US probes new Iraq massacre claim

From BBC Online

New footage is included by the BBC in their video report

The US military has told the BBC it is investigating an incident in which 11 Iraqi civilians may have been deliberately killed by US troops. Video footage obtained by the BBC appears to challenge the US account of events in the town of Ishaqi in March.

The US said at the time that four people died during a raid, but Iraqi police said 11 were shot by US troops.

The video evidence comes in the wake of the alleged massacre by US marines of up to 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha. The troops are also suspected of covering up the deaths in November 2005. The Haditha incident and several others are being investigated by the Pentagon, according to US military sources.

The US army has also announced that coalition troops in Iraq are to have ethical training following the alleged incident in Haditha.

However, the BBC’s Ian Pannell in Baghdad says the move is likely to be greeted with cynicism by many Iraqis, as the troops have long been accused of deliberately targeting civilians.

‘Massacre’ video

The video pictures obtained by the BBC appear to contradict the US account of the events in Ishaqi, about 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on 15 March 2006.

The US authorities said they were involved in a firefight after a tip-off that an al-Qaeda supporter was visiting the house.

According to the Americans, the building collapsed under heavy fire killing four people – a suspect, two women and a child. But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds. The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine.

With the US marines apparently about to undergo ethics training on core warrior values, a useful chronolgy of events surrounding the massacre in Haditha has been pulled together on Reuters Alertnet.

An investigation into the Haditha Massacre is about to report its findings.

Further comment from Dahr Jamail

‘Worst war crime’ committed by US in Iraq

From The Telegraph

A US military investigation is expected to conclude that a unit of marines killed 24 civilians, among them women and children, in retaliation for the death of a comrade, reports published in America yesterday said.

If confirmed when the official findings are published next week the incident would be the worst war crime committed by US forces in Iraq.

Though on a smaller scale, it will inevitably spark comparisons with the massacre of up to 500 Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968. Citing Congressional, military and Pentagon officials, the reports in US newspapers said investigators had unearthed a catalogue of abuses so serious it is likely an as yet unspecified number of marines will be charged with murder.

John Kline, the Republican Congressmen for Minnesota who is a retired marine colonel, was briefed on the findings. “This was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians,” he told the New York Times. “This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity.”

A new investigation is also to be launched to determine if any of the men’s superior officers tried to cover up the killings after it was first reported that the deaths were the result of a roadside bomb or a crossfire.

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In the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary broadcast this evening, Andrew Gilligan reported on disturbing evidence of how wounded Iraq veterans are being abandoned, how army recruitment has collapsed and the lengths to which the Ministry of Defence has gone to obscure statistics and prevent the full story emerging.

LFCM has more

Flight Lieutenant Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith – an officer in the Royal Air Force who refused to follow orders to serve in Basra (and thus kill innocent Iraqi nationals) in the UK’s attack & invasion of Iraq on the grounds of their patent illegality, was recently found guilty and sentenced to several months imprisonment.

You may already be aware, but an organisation called Military Families Against the War have started a petition, which you can sign online, condemning his sentence, its grounds and demanding his immediate release. It can be found here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/MKSApril/petition.html

From The Guardian

A Royal Air Force doctor who refused to be sent to Iraq after arguing that the conflict was illegal today pleaded not guilty to five charges of failing to comply with orders at a court martial.

Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, 37, said he had studied the judicial advice given to the prime minister, Tony Blair, ahead of the war and other reports about its legality before making his decision.

“As a commissioned officer I am required to consider each and every order that is given to me and I am required to consider the legality of each order in domestic and international law,” Flt Lt Kendall-Smith said in a statement to police last year.

“I have satisfied myself that the actions of the armed forces in Iraq were in fact unlawful, as was the conflict,” he said. “I believe that the current occupation of Iraq is an illegal act and for me to comply with an act which is illegal would put me in conflict with both domestic and international law.

“I have two great loves; medicine and the RAF. To take the decision I have taken saddens me greatly but I feel I have no choice.”

Prosecutors insist that Flt Lt Kendall-Smith’s defence is irrelevant. Opening the prosecution case, David Perry told the court martial in Aldershot, Hampshire, that Flt Lt Kendall-Smith, who has joint British-New Zealand nationality, had applied for early release from the RAF a month before his alleged refusal to carry out orders.

“The background to this case appears to be a sense of grievance felt by the defendant, firstly that he could not immediately resign from the RAF, and secondly that he remained eligible for deployment overseas,” Mr Perry said.

After handing in a letter of resignation in May last year, Flt Lt Kendall-Smith was told by his commanding officer that medical officers applying for early release normally had to wait about a year to leave the RAF. Later that month he was told he would be going to Iraq, the court heard.

Mr Perry said the prosecution’s case was also that the orders given to Flt Lt Kendall-Smith dated from June last year, by which point British forces were in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, meaning their deployment could not be illegal.

Additionally, it was not Flt Lt Kendall-Smith’s responsibility to judge the legality of orders given to him, Mr Perry said.

At a pre-trial hearing last month, Judge John Bayliss ruled that at the time of the doctor’s refusal to go to Iraq, British forces had full justification to be there under UN resolutions.

The charges faced by the doctor allege he failed to comply with five lawful orders in June and July last year related to his departure for Iraq and preparations for it, such as weapons training and a helmet fitting.

The principles of the Nuremberg Charter provide the underpinning to parts of the defence case and can be read here

After a very sucessful run in London, Stuff Happens, David Hare’s timely drama about the Iraq War receives its New York premiere at The Public Theater. Directed by Daniel Sullivan.

From the Sunday Times

SPY chiefs have warned Tony Blair that the war in Iraq has made Britain the target of a terror campaign by Al-Qaeda that will last ‘for many years to come.’

A leaked top-secret memo from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) says the war in Iraq has ‘exacerbated’ the threat by radicalising British Muslims and attracting new recruits to anti-western terror attacks. The four-page memo, entitled International Terrorism: Impact of Iraq, contradicts Blair’s public assurances by concluding that the invasion of Iraq has fomented a jihad or holy war against Britain.

It states: ‘It has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not.’

It adds: ‘Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.’

The memo was approved by Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, John Scarlett, the chief of MI6, and Sir David Pepper, head of GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre. The leak of the JIC’s official assessment ‘ marked ‘top secret’ ‘ will alarm Blair as it appears to be directed at undermining the public statements in which he has denied that the war in Iraq has increased the terror threat from Al-Qaeda.

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Belated congratulations are due to Riverbend.

Following the sucessful hosting of the Iraqi Oscars she has now been nominated for BBC Four’s Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

From BBC Online

The Pentagon has requested hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency funds for military construction in Iraq, fanning the debate about US long-term intentions there.

“In other words,Rumsfeld has never given up the possibility of moving bases further east, which was part of the [reasoning behind] invading Iraq.”

“I think the administration is at the very least keeping its options open.”

Iraqis are also suspicious. According to a recent poll, 80% believe the US intends to retain a permanent presence in Iraq, regardless of whether the Iraqi government asked the US to leave.

For the full article go here

From Time Magazine

The incident seemed like so many others from this war, the kind of tragedy that has become numbingly routine amid the daily reports of violence in Iraq. On the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck a humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a restive town in western Iraq. The bomb killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas. The next day a Marine communiqu’ from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that “gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire,” prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one other…..

But the details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more disturbing, disputed and horrific than the military initially reported. According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.

Click to visit Time to read the whole article

For another reminder of what happens during an ‘insurgency’ see this entry in Wikipedia

For the view from the back of a ‘private contractors‘ vehicle watch this video

The MOD has now published a summary of information on British casualties in the Iraq war online.

However, whether the figures provide a full and complete picture of casualties suffered by the armed services is far from clear. LFCM argues that release of this data is a continuation of the policy of obfuscation and that the political benefits of such an approach are all too obvious.

By Andrew Murray in The Guardian

Tony Blair’s announcement that he will henceforward account only to God for the Iraq war makes perfect sense. Every secular reason he has concocted for the catastrophe has turned out to be the reverse of the truth: there were no weapons of mass destruction, we are less safe from terrorism, the Iraqi people themselves do not want us in their country. No more of his excuses for this epic man-made disaster stand an earthly chance of being believed.

As the third anniversary of the calamity draws close, the final argument used by what little remains of the brave army of pro-war punditry that set out with the prime minister in 2003 has gone belly up. Far from preventing a civil war, the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is provoking one. It is doing so through its divide-and-rule strategy, which has entrenched and inflamed the Sunni-Shia divide beyond anything in Iraq’s history, and through its refusal to afford Iraqis the unfettered exercise of national sovereignty, which is the only framework for overcoming such differences.

There is scarcely even a pretence that Iraq is permitted such sovereignty at present. Both Jack Straw and the US ambassador to Baghdad have recently been instructing the Iraqis as to what sort of government they must form – three months after the supposedly decisive national elections took place.

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On Saturday 18th March, three years after the start of the war in Iraq, a large anti-war demonstration is taking place in central London. The demonstration is assembling in Parliament Square at 12 noon where there will be street theatre and music.

An art installation by David Gentleman, representing the 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, will cover much of the Square. The march will then set off along Victoria Street, passing the Attorney General’s office on its way to Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square.

As well as Craig Murray, other speakers include Brian Eno, Jenny Tonge, Ken Livingstone and representatives from Iraq and Palestine.

For further details go here

“If the judge rules in Flt-Lt Kendall-Smith’s favour, the case will have wide implications for all members of British armed forces serving or preparing to serve in Iraq.”

By Robert Verkaik in The Independent

An RAF officer who refused to serve in Iraq because he believed the war was unlawful was told that his concerns were “irrelevant” and that he should now face a court-martial.

Flight-Lieutenant Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a doctor in the RAF, disobeyed an order to return to Iraq even though he had served two tours of duty there. Yesterday, his barrister told a pre-trial hearing in Aldershot that he “honestly” believed the war breached international law and therefore the orders he was asked to obey were unlawful.

Philip Sapsford QC, for the defence, said the officer believed that, because Iraq had not attacked the UK or one of its allies, there was no lawful reason to enter Iraq. Mr Sapsford said he now proposed to call a former SAS soldier to give evidence to support the doctor’s position. Ben Griffin, who left the SAS this year, has said he expected to face a court martial for his refusal to serve in Iraq but instead was discharged with a glowing testimonial.

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By Ben Russell in The Independent

Tony Blair has been challenged over the “scandal” of vast profits being made by British firms with reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

The Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Prime Minister after The Independent revealed that British businesses have profited by at least ‘1.1bn since Saddam Hussein was ousted three years ago. Top earners include the construction firm Amec and the security company Aegis. Heasked: “Does he not think it is time to set a date for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, to end the occupation and end the growing scandal of the huge profits being made by British and American companies from reconstruction and that the continued presence represents more of a problem than a solution?”

Mr Blair said Britain should continue to support Iraq’s efforts to achieve a stable democracy.

See also: The Name Game