Iraq

The assassination of Qasem Soleimani, ordered by United States' President Donald Trump was a criminal act. Any country, including the United States, which claims to uphold the rule of law, should spare no effort to bring to justice President Donald Trump, and all the other perpetrators of that crime including Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence.

Qasem Soleimani, unlike the United States' Army had, with the Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah paramilitaries, effectively fought against ISIS in Iraq. Those paramilitaries are connected to the country's Popular Mobilization Forces that are part of Iraqi government's armed forces. Qasem Soleimani was adored by most Iraqis.

On Sunday 29 December, Donald Trump ordered attacks on the Kata'ib Hezbollah paramilitaries. As a pretext for his order to attack Iraq's armed forces, Donald Trump claimed that the Kata'ib Hezbollah paramilitaries had launched a rocket attack which had killed a U.S. contractor. Although the Iraqi government began to investigate the attack, Trump was not prepared to await the outcome of the investigation. 27 Paramilitaries were killed in that rocket attack as a result.

Subsequently, enraged Iraqis tried to storm the U.S. embassy and demanded that the U.S. army occupiers leave Iraq.

Previously published (13/12/16) on Russia Insider.

[Candobetter.net Ed: This article foreshadows the imminent release of the new war-faction novel, Beyond all recognition by Kenneth Eade, some of whose other strong political and legal novels we have already featured.]

One of our most distinguished and highest ranking military men, Major General Smedley Butler said, “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Tanya Plibersek's article is Australia deserves a seat at the table in Syria negotiations, (15/12/15) | the Guardian

We must ask whether the Turnbull government acknowledges Turkey’s support for the Islamic State, and what action it intends to take against the Erdogan regime’s aggressive and destabilising behaviour. We must also ask whether the Australian airforce will continue to conduct bombing runs in coordination with the US coalition. Not only have Turkish actions put us in conflict with that coalition, operating out of Incirlik, but there is another danger. Russia has stated that there no further threats to Russian servicemen and assets will be tolerated, from unauthorised foreign parties.

video inside:In a huge stunning announcement yesterday by the Russian Foreign Minister, Russia presented direct evidence of Turkey buying illegal oil from the black market supporting terrorists. In this video change.org goes over the important revelations by the Russians, their consequences and the shift of the geopolitical field. The western mainstream media is simply not reporting this because it runs totally counter to their spin. If the western media were to properly bring this news to their readers, they would have to explain the torrent of lies they have issued forth so far in order to justify war. The western media is historically pro-war and Australians, Americans, British and Europeans who rely on the mainstream media alone never hear both sides.

A damning White House memo has revealed details of the so-called “deal in blood” forged by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush over the Iraq war.

The document, titled “Secret... Memorandum for the President”, was sent by then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell to President Bush on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas, Britain’s Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

The sensational memo revealed that Blair had agreed to support the war a year before the invasion even started, while publicly the British prime minister was working to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Article first published on Iranian Press TV, Sunday 18 October, 2015.CDB Editor update 4 April 2021: Apologies for broken picture links here; the images are from another site, which is beyond our control

Previously published (3/5/15) on PressTV

Sister Diana Momeka

The US State Department has been criticized for its move to deny a visa to an Iraqi Christian nun planning to reveal ISIL atrocities to Congress.

Sister Diana Momeka was part of an Iraqi delegation that was scheduled to testify before the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committee later this month.

Momeka has been a frank supporter for the Christians who have been killed and deported by the ISIL ₁  terrorist group.

This article about fellow Australian Julian Assange has been adapted from the original Sputnik International article of 7 April 2015.

April 5 marked the five-year anniversary of the release of the Collateral Murder video by WikiLeaks (embedded within). The shocking footage showed the entire world the 2007 US Apache attack helicopter airstrike on Baghdad that killed 12 people - including two Reuters staff members - and injured two small children.

Ironically, the only ones imprisoned for the crime were those with the courage and compassion to attempt to bring the perpetrators to justice.

See also: l'Espresso interview | Julian Assange: 'I still enjoy crushing bastards' (2/4/15).

Originally published under the title of "Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels," this is the transcript, with links to the video, of Sophie Shevardnadze's interview with Iran Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The beginning of the video is particularly instructive, as Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives a run-down on what is happening from Iran's very close perspective. Among other things, it becomes clear that Iran does not believe that the United States is trying to stop IS. Saudi Arabia has said that it is going to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it will not let this happen. It also says that it will not let Syria fall. The Minister says that the reason the United States wants to wreck Syria is that then it will have destroyed the main Russian foothold in the Middle East and that will allow the United States to dominate the region and maintain world hegemony. See also this Crosstalk episode where US realpolitik intentions and consequences and rhetoric are discussed in a very informed manner, particularly in relation to Yemen.

First published 5 Nov 2014 on Voltaire Net. See also Kobane: the object of all lies (4/11/14).

The Syrian conflict, from the perspective of Australian history: In 1942, Australia, with the help of its American allies led by President Franklin Roosevelt, prevented invasion by the Empire of Japan. Much of this was due to the preparedness of Australia's own defence forces, as described in "Armed and Ready" (1995) by A. T. Ross.

From PressTV News Videos YouTube Channel

"The last people who should be returning to the scene of their former crimes are Britain, France and the United States of America." Those words were said by George Galloway, a British MP during a debate in the lead up to a vote on the UK participating in airstrikes in Iraq against ISIL. It came as no surprise that the vote went through, though concerns remain about how the very countries involved in the 2003 Iraq War and subsequent chaos which helped in forming ISIL, can beat their own Frankenstein. In this edition of the debate we ask: was the mission a never-ending creation of pretexts, however false, in order to justify an unending war in Iraq?

Provoking war abroad raises spectre of staged attacks at home.

This article, by Tony Cartalucci, was published on the Land Destroyer Report (landdestroyer.blogspot) on 18 September 2014. Appendix added: End the Sanctions on Syria video by SyrianGirlPartisan.

#8DEEEE;font-size:80%;line-height:120%;">The Australian mainstream media anticipates staged terrorist attacks by supposed Islamist extremists: Terror raids: Attack feared within days, Tony Abbott says, Australia's PM confirms threat to Parliament House, Editorial: Timely police raids on accused terrorists prevent horror on our streets – The Courier-Mail, Live blog: Senior Australian in Islamic State 'ordered kidnappings and beheadings in Sydney and Brisbane'- ABC News, Beheading plot: Where the terrorism raids occurred - ABC News, Authorities thwart beheading plot in Australia's biggest ever counter-terrorism raids - ABC News, Security to conduct train toilet searches as terror threat raised - Brisbane Times, Lone wolves: Small cells of radicals are Australia's greatest terror threat, experts say, Homegrown terrorism Australia's main national security concern says Julie Bishop - ABC 7.30 Report (5/8/14).

September 18, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci, aka Land Destroyer) - The FBI has foiled yet another entirely fabricated terror threat of its own creation, with missing mechanisms in two firearms provided to a potential terrorist being the only thing that prevented this latest case of entrapment from going "live." A Rochester man, Mufid A. Elfgeeh, is accused by the FBI of attempting to provide material support to ISIS (undercover FBI agents), attempting to kill US soldiers, and possession of firearms and silencers (provided to him by the FBI). The FBI's own official press release stated (emphasis added):

The article below has been adapted from the PressTV article US to regret military action in Syria: IRGC chief (16/9/14). The Appendix, also from PressTV, is Obama threatens to oust Assad if US planes downed in Syrian airspace (16/9/14). To view the embedded videos, please visit those pages.

US to regret military action in Syria: IRGC chief

Tue Sep 16, 2014 10:7AM GMT

The chief of Iran's Islamic Revol­ution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the US and its allies will regret any military operation in Syria. 'The Islamic Republic of Iran's policy is to support Syria and this US action is from a bullying position and is condemned and if it does so it will regret it," Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said on Tuesday. The general was reacting to the US government's (claimed)1 decision to form an international coalition to fight the Takfiri ISIL terrorists fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Chief of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General Moham­mad Ali Jafari

by Jamison Maeda. First published on Clare Daly's web site (http://claredaly.ie) on 7 Sep 2013. (Emphasis not in Original.)

Bradley Manning was a 25 year old intelligence analyst in the US Army, who was arrested in 2010 for leaking hundreds of thousands of confidential, government and military documents to the public via Wikileaks. Manning claimed his objective was to remove "the fog of war and reveal the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare." Manning accomplished much more. Manning was believed to be responsible for the Wikileaks release of 38 minutes of cockpit gun sight footage of an American airstrike in Baghdad in 2007. The video shows a United States Army AH 64 Apache helicopter killing a group of men including a Reuters journalist and photographer, and a civilian man who stopped to assist the wounded. That man's two children were also wounded in the attack. (Preventing those who attempt to assist wounded in battle is a violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and considered a war crime.)

In an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, on 4 October 2012, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."

Carr's support for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is consistent with allegations that for 40 years he was an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party. His relationship with the CIA is the subject of Bob Carr: Washington's man in Australia in the Melbourne Age of 8 April 2013 and the article, by Murray Hunter, Is Bob Carr a spy? of 11 April 2013 in the Independent Australian, which cites evidence from the Age article and which we republish below. The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins, and worse, against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. A number of its own Presidents including JFK and a number of popular American political leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.

See also: Assange slams Carr as a 'well-known liar' in the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 May 2013.

Given that the supporters of the armed insurgency against the Syrian Government of President Bashar al-Assad, namely the governments of United States, Australia, their NATO allies and the Arab dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, are the same who waged the illegal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, from which 3.3 million Iraqis died, according to one estimate shouldn't we expect Australia's newsmedia, this time to subject the claims made by these same governments to more scrutiny? Shouldn't the Syrian government, which is being accused by the Western newsmedia of making foreign intervention necessary, at least, be allowed to put its case? Evidently not, judging by the Australian newsmedia's failure to report on the included interview of Bashar Al-Assad conducted by The Sunday Times on 3 March.

This page has been copied from the English language section of VoltaireNet. Includes embedded YouTube broadcast of some of the interview

As a result of the wars and sanctions against Iraq since 1990, found by the UK Government's own Chilcot Inquiry in 2012 to have been illegal, 3.3 million Iraqis have died and many more have fled, including 1.2 million to Syria, according to Wikipedia. Knowing that the same people who invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are now arming, supplying and paying the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA), Syrian patriots are fighting hard against the FSA killers -- and winning.

Please attend a public meeting at 7.30PM on Wednesday 6 March for peace in Syria at the Unitarian Church, 110 Grey Street, East Melbourne. (The previously advertised time of 6.30PM was wrong. Our apologies.)

Syria has given refuge to a vast number of refugees from wars extending back to the creation of Israel by the expulsion of Palestinans in 1947. According to Wikipedia, "Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. Of these, "the vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), ...", that is, from wars in which the United States and its allies, including Australia, illegally participated in commencing from 1990.

Adapted from article, previously published on Global Research, UK Progressive on 5 Dec 2012 as US Sponsored Genocide Against Iraq 1990-2012 ...

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must. End the empire!

See also: thepatriots.us.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must.