Print it out: color best. Pass it on.GI Special: thomasfbarton@earthlink.net 6.30.07

GI SPECIAL 5F28:

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

An Iraqi girl holds her hands up while U.S. soldiers search her family home in Baquba early June 30, 2007. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic [U.S. sponsored polls reported recently that 60% of Iraqis favor killing U.S. troops. Iraqis feel about U.S. troops trampling them in the dirt the same way Americans felt about British troops trampling them in the dirt in 1776. They are right to resist. T]

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

Children stand in their home after a raid by the U.S. military in Baghdad's Sadr City June 30, 2007. REUTERS/Kareem Raheem

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

An Iraqi citizen who asked not to be named shows injuries he sustained when his home was raided by U.S. troops in the Ur neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, June 29 2007. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

Iraqi girls try to clean up their home after a U.S. raid in Sadr City June 30, 2007. (AP

Photo/Karim Kadim)

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

Iraqi children stand in their house after it was raided by US forces in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City. AFP/Wissam Al-Okaili)

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

Detained Iraqi men sit on the floor during a night raid by foreign occupation soldiers from the USA in Baquba early June 30, 2007. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic (IRAQ)

60% Of Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Dead: Big Surprise

An Iraqi woman cleans up after her home was raided by U.S. troops in the Ur neighborhood in Baghdad June 29. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

You Better Be Gone By The Time She Grows Up:

She’s Never Going To Forget, And She’s Growing Up Real Fast;

[Looks Like It’s 61% Now. At Least]

An Iraqi girl inspects destruction in her house after a raid by US forces in Baghdad's Sadr City June 29. (AFP/Wissam al-Okaili) One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions. Mike Hastie U.S. Army Medic Vietnam 1970-71 December 13, 2004

Great Moments In U.S. Military History:

The Sadr City Massacre And The Stupid Lying Lt. Col.:

“Everyone Who Got Shot Was Shooting At U.S. Troops At The Time,” Said Lt. Col. Christopher

Garver, But --- “Several Women And Children, Along

With Two Policemen, Were Among The Wounded”

[Thanks to Pham Binh, Traveling Soldier, who sent this in.] June 30, 2007 By HAMID AHMED, Associated Press BAGHDAD — American soldiers rolled into Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City slum today in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as “an intense firefight.” But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past. The U.S. military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 “terrorists” who attacked U.S. troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians. An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants. “Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. “It was an intense firefight.”

Witnesses said U.S. forces rolled into their neighborhood before dawn and opened fire without warning. “At about 4 a.m., a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses — bombing them,” said Basheer Ahmed, who lives in Sadr City's Habibiya district. “What did we do? We didn't even retaliate — there was no resistance.” According to Iraqi officials, the dead included three members of one family — a father, mother and son. Several women and children, along with two policemen, were among the wounded, they said. The assault brought quick criticism from al-Maliki. “The Iraqi government totally rejects U.S. military operations ... conducted without a pre-approval from the Iraqi military command,” al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office. “Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation.” Houses, a bakery and some other shops were damaged by U.S. tank fire during the assault, Iraqi officials said. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Sheik Salah al-Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr condemned today's raids: “The bombing hurt only innocent civilians.” A policeman wounded in the raid, Montadhar Kareem, said he was on night duty when U.S. troops moved in and “began bombing houses in the area.” “The bombing became more intense, and I was injured by shrapnel in both my legs and in my left shoulder,” Kareem said from a gurney at Al Sadr General Hospital. Hours afterward, a funeral procession snaked through Sadr City. Three coffins were hoisted atop cars. One resident who goes by the nickname of Um Ahmed, or “mother of Ahmed,” stood outside her home as mourners passed by. “We are being hit while we are peacefully sleeping in our houses. Is that fair?” she cried. The woman gave only her nickname, fearing reprisal.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Baghdad IED Kills U.S. Soldier, Three Wounded

30 June 2007 Multi National Corps Iraq Public Affairs Office, Camp Victory RELEASE No. 20070630-13

BAGHDAD — One Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier was killed and three other Soldiers were wounded when an explosively-formed penetrator detonated near their patrol during combat operations in a southern section of the Iraqi capital June 29.

National Guardsman From Maine Killed In Iraq

6/15/2007 Maureen O'Brien, Managing Editor, AVON (NEWS CENTER) NEWS CENTER has learned that a man from the western Maine town of Phillips has been killed in Iraq. Sgt. Richard Parker was killed in action June 13. He was 26 years old. Sgt. Parker was a member of Battery A, 1st Battalion, 152nd Field Artillery Regiment from Waterville serving with the Security Force II element in Iraq. “Sgt. Parker was well-loved and greatly respected by his unit and the Maine Army National Guard,” Governor Baldacci said. “We're very lucky both as a state and as a country to have people of the quality of Sgt. Parker who are willing to serve and put themselves on the front lines.”

Parker was from Avon, and attended Mount Abram High School in Salem Township. He later lived in Madrid and Phillips. Parker's family still lives in Avon. Parker's family was still trying to come to grips with their loss and were not ready to talk to the media yet. Parker graduated from Mount Abram High School in 1999. Many of his former teachers remember him as a kind, sensitive young man and a leader who always looked out for others. “We were really devastated. We're so sad. This is a tragedy you hope never comes to the families of your area, to your children who you raise and educate and it's a very very sad day for Mount Abram High School,” said Principal Jeanne Tucker. Governor Baldacci has also ordered flags to be flown at half-staff on the day of Parker's funeral.

NEW GENERAL ORDER NO. 1: PACK UP GO HOME

U.S. soldiers run after they release a smoke grenade in Baquba, June 25, 2007. (Goran

Tomasevic/Reuters)

Notes From A Lost War:

No Oil For Blood: “We Fix It Here, They Break It There.

We Fix It There, They Blow It Up Somewhere Else”

“We come down the road and we see everybody getting on their walkie-talkies. They're saying, 'Here come the other guys.' “ June 28, 2007 By Scott Canon, McClatchy Newspapers SAFRA, Iraq — Anyone who wants to understand why Iraq's Northern Oil Co. still runs at just 20 percent of capacity need only visit the crews assigned to undo the work of thieves and saboteurs along the 50-mile stretch of pipes that dip below and above the sandy terrain between Kirkuk and Baiji. More than two weeks after terrorists first hit this remote section of pipeline, a ragged crew wrapped up another patch job in its ever-ending repair work. A backhoe scooped up spilled gasoline from below the repaired line while a bulldozer shoved Iraqi desert into the hole that had been dug around it. The gasoline fumes could make a pit crew wheeze. “We fix it here, they break it there. We fix it there, they blow it up somewhere else,” said Khabbuz Bai Hassan, the head engineer on the repair job, as he wiped his brow and squinted toward the horizon. “I don't know where it ends.” Similar scenes repeat across hundreds of miles of pipeline that crisscross Iraq, explaining why the country's oil production still sits below prewar levels four years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Before the war, Iraq produced about 2.5 million barrels a day. The United States has set a goal of 3 million barrels a day, needed for export sales to pay for government services and for domestic power plants, to return the idea of reliable electricity to Iraqis. However, the country is struggling to average 2 million barrels a day, with as much as 200,000 a day lost to theft, corruption or sloppy accounting. In May, Congress' Government Accountability Office issued a report noting that there was little to show for the $5.1 billion in U.S. money and $3.8 billion in Iraqi money devoted to fixing the country's oil and electricity capacity. It predicted that several billion more would be needed to repair and modernize oil production. Pipelines that carry oil and its various processed products back and forth between Kirkuk city, the province's capital, and Baiji simply are spread over too much ground for security forces to keep eyes on every inch around the clock.

What's more, the people in charge of standing guard are in the motley Strategic Infrastructure Brigade, an offshoot of the Iraqi army that U.S. military officials say isn't well trained and whose quality varies widely from one battalion to the next. One American Army officer described the brigades deployed along the Baiji-to-Kirkuk line as ranging from “predominantly good to predominantly bad.” Some are even suspected in the bombings and thefts that strike the pipelines with regularity. U.S. troops help patrol the area. But their numbers are too small to do much more than mop up the problems that happen under the watch of the Iraqi brigades and to provide security for crews such as the one that mended the break near Safra. And the American and Iraqi soldiers appear to be wary of each other. “We don't tell the Iraqis in advance when we're coming,” said Maj. David Flynn, the executive officer with the U.S. Army's 3rd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, or the 3-7. “We come down the road and we see everybody getting on their walkie-talkies. They're saying, 'Here come the other guys.' “ Evidence of the pipelines' vulnerabilities is common throughout the area. Acres of desert are filled with pools of crude, and the stink of tar wafts for miles. A salt marsh looks like a giant black-and-white ink blot. Huge broken sections of pipe lie scattered across the desert like so many rusted pickups on an Ozarks farmstead. At first glance, the landscape appears pancake flat. But it undulates just enough to provide blind spots. So 30-foot-tall towers have been erected along the route. Those lookouts, in turn, have fallen victim time and again to bombs. One recent roasting afternoon, members of the 3-7 went out in a convoy to find out what they could about the recent toppling of a tower near the village of Khifa. Looking for a village leader, they could find only his teenage son. What, wondered Sgt. 1st Class Robert Flynn of West New York, N.J., did he know about the explosion? Nothing, the boy said. I was asleep. “That tower is right by this village,” the sergeant said. “This needs to stop right now (or) we're going to come in here and it's not going to be pretty. . . . We're going to start sending people to jail.” [Fine. Piss off more even more people to join the resistance and blow up even more pipelines. Great idea.] Flynn's squad went to check on the nearby outposts of the Iraqi Strategic Infrastructure Brigade, or SIB. Three soldiers with rifles sitting under a tarp guarded the isolated outpost — a makeshift barrier wall surrounding a small mud hut with a single bed frame outside its front door.

Like the boy in the village, the soldiers were clueless about the bombed tower, but they wanted to know whether the U.S. troops could get them some supplies. At spots beyond the outpost, more SIB soldiers were supposed to be watching the pipeline and one of the towers. But no one was to be found.

TROOP NEWS

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME: BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE

The coffin of Army Sgt. 1st Class Greg Lamonte Sutton at Arlington National Cemetery June 20, 2007. Sutton, from Spring Lake, N.C., died June 6 after the vehicle in which he was riding struck an improvised explosive device in Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

“The Fallen Soldiers Gave The Ultimate Sacrifice And We As An

Army Decide That It Is Too Hard To

Conduct Individual Memorial Services”

“I Can Guarantee You That If A Field-Grade Officer Were To Get Killed In

Combat, He Would Receive An Individual Memorial Service To Him And His

Career” July 02, 2007 Letters To The Editor Army Times I was appalled to read in Army Times that the Army would actually consider canceling individual memorial services and conducting one mass memorial service every month. It is just mind-boggling. The fallen soldiers gave the ultimate sacrifice and we as an Army decide that it is too hard to conduct individual memorial services. Did the leadership forget what it means to be a leader? Too much strain on the rear detachment to conduct ceremonies? How about the strain on the troops that are working 18-hour days, seven days a week, in Iraq, placing their lives on the line? Are their sacrifices not worth it anymore? I think that this is a disgrace to the soldier, his family, friends and loved ones. In a time in which “family” is to be capitalized to show how important it is, the Army just slaps widows in the face. I can guarantee you that if a field-grade officer were to get killed in combat, he would receive an individual memorial service to him and his career. Hey, it’s only some enlisted soldiers and young officers that we are talking about here. We should be used to this double standard by now. Sgt. 1st Class Craig Szramka

Alexandria, Va.

American Majority Far More Intelligent And Valuable Than The Vicious Elitists Who Smear Them

As “Apathetic Automatons” Two-Thirds Are Opposed To The War;

Two-Thirds Want To Decrease Or Remove US Troops From Iraq;

Bush's Approval Rating Slips To Its Lowest Rating

[Thanks to Pham Binh, Traveling Soldier & Phil G who sent this in.] June 26, 2007 (CNN) & 06/29/07 AP & Nick Juliano, Rawstory.com A CBS poll to be reported tonight finds a record high number of Americans who say the war in Iraq is going poorly and a record low number who approve of President Bush, according to a draft of the poll obtained by RAW STORY. Thirty percent of Americans polled say they favor the war, the lowest level of support on record. Two-thirds are opposed. The poll found the highest-ever percentage of Americans -- 77 percent -- who say the war in Iraq is going badly. Two-thirds of Americans want to decrease or remove US troops from Iraq, according to the poll, and 51 percent of Americans think our occupation is creating more terrorists. President Bush's approval rating slips to its lowest rating in the new poll, to 27 percent. That make's him less popular that his Vice President Dick Cheney, who had a 28 percent approval rate in the new poll. Half said they think the American involvement in Iraq is creating more terrorists who are planning to attack the U.S., compared to one in five who think it is eliminating terrorists, said the poll released Friday. Fifty-four percent of Americans do not believe U.S. action in Iraq is morally justified.

The poll found that 53 percent of Americans -- especially political independents -- thought the US needed a third political party.

Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward GI Special along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, inside the armed services and at home. Send email requests to address up top or write to: The Military Project, Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Legislator Says He Is Quitting Collaborators And Joining Resistance

June 30, 2007 Associated Press A lawmaker in Iraq says the political process there has failed. Abdul-Nasser al-Janabi announced today that he's quitting the government and joining what he describes as the “resistance.” Al-Janabi is a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, which yesterday suspended its participation in Cabinet meetings to protest Prime Minister al-Maliki's handling of legal proceeding's against a Sunni lawmaker.

Assorted Resistance Action 29 Jun 2007 Reuters & AP & 06/30/07 (AP) One policeman was killed and another officer was wounded when guerrillas opened fire on them in separate attacks in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Iraqi police said at least six Iraqi soldiers were killed and five wounded when a suicide truck bomb exploded at their army post north of Baghdad. The blast went off at a railway station in Mishada, a town 20 miles north of the capital, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. It destroyed half the building and ignited a fire, he said. Most of the victims had been setting up a new checkpoint near the station, along the Baghdad-Mosul highway, police said. Northeast of the capital, a suicide bomber exploded himself in a crowd of police recruits in a market, killing at least 20 and wounding 16. The bomber detonated his explosives belt in a market area outside a police station in Muqdadiyah, 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of the Iraqi capital. All of the victims were new police recruits, the officer said.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Frederick Douglas, 1852 “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787.

“Atrocity Was Intrinsic To The Very Nature Of American Intervention In

Vietnam” “Given The Policy Of Fighting A

Counterrevolutionary War On Behalf Of A Client State Incapable Of Winning

Widespread Support Among Its People, American Atrocities Were Inevitable”

From: WORKING CLASS WAR, by Christian G. Appy, U. Of North Carolina Press, 1984 One might argue, as I have, that atrocity was intrinsic to the very nature of American intervention in Vietnam; that given the policy of fighting a counterrevolutionary war on behalf of a client state incapable of winning widespread support among its people, American atrocities were inevitable. In truth, American soldiers were not responsible for the war. Most were not even old enough to vote. (The voting age was not lowered from twenty-one to eighteen until. 1971.) Harper's own views about the war, as he readily conceded, were confused. In the same breath he could denounce limitations on American bombing and the initial U. S. intervention in Vietnam.

That is not necessarily a contradictory position. In effect he said, we should have won the war or stayed out. A simple enough argument to state, but one that evades the questions of whether the war could have been won or whether it was worth winning (that is, a just cause) and the further question of why it would be right to continue trying to win a war in which the original intervention was wrong or misguided. When those questions are broached, Harper's conflicted feelings and those of many veterans are drawn to the surface. A 1979 Harris survey found that a vast majority of veterans (89 percent) agreed with the statement, “The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.” Yet a clear majority of veterans (59 percent) also agreed with a completely contrary viewpoint: “The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war we could never win.” The general public shared this contradictory view (73 and 65 percent agreeing with each statement, respectively). Of course, both formulations have a common appeal: they put the onus of responsibility for the war and its outcome on American leaders, not on ordinary soldiers and civilians. They also pose the same attractive alternatives suggested by Harper: win or stay out. As for the moral legitimacy of the war, Steve Harper struggled to defend U.S. intervention. The United States, he said, was helping the people of Vietnam, people who “wanted us there” and who “wanted their freedom.” Hard as he tried to sustain that view, however, his memories of the war kept contradicting it. He could not forget how the Vietnamese almost always seemed to be helping the Viet Cong (“they take all the Americans have to offer and give us nothin' and give the VC all they have”). Nor did he try to disguise his disdain for the Vietnamese military and government, which he saw as riddled with corruption and unable and unwilling to fight successfully against the Viet Cong (“they'd turn and run, from their officers on down”).

Troops Invited: What do you think? Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or send email contact@militaryproject.org:. Name, I.D., withheld unless you

request publication. Replies confidential. Same address to unsubscribe.

OCCUPATION REPORT

Good News For The Iraqi Resistance!!

U.S. Occupation Commands’ Stupid Terror Tactics Recruit Even More Fighters To Kill U.S. Troops

An Iraqi citizen holds up his hands as foreign occupation soldiers from the USA grab him during a home invasion in the middle of the night in Baquba, June 27, 2007. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters) [Fair is fair. Let’s bring 150,000 Iraqi troops over here to the USA. They can kill people at checkpoints, bust into their houses with force and violence, butcher their families, overthrow the government, put a new one in office they like better and call it “sovereign,” and “detain” anybody who doesn’t like it in some prison without any charges being filed against them, or any trial.]

[Those Iraqis are sure a bunch of backward primitives. They actually resent this help, have the absurd notion that it’s bad their country is occupied by a foreign military dictatorship, and consider it their patriotic duty to fight and kill the soldiers sent to grab their country. What a bunch of silly people. How fortunate they are to live under a military dictatorship run by George Bush. Why, how could anybody not love that? You’d want that in your home town, right?]

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

OCCUPATION PALESTINE

How The Bush Regime, The Zionist Terrorists, And Their

Dog Abbas Conspired To Overthrow The Freely Elected

Government Of Palestine: “I Like This Violence,” The U.S.

Envoy Declared Twice, Because “It Means That Other Palestinians Are

Resisting Hamas” June 28, 2007 By Alastair Crooke, London Review of Books [Excerpts] ‘The situation in Gaza is dangerous, and the danger is that Hamas will take over and turn Gaza into “Hamastan” – into a kingdom of thugs, murderers, terrorists, poverty and despair.’ This was the reaction of Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy defence minister, to Hamas’s seizure of a number of key security institutions in Gaza in the days leading up to 14 June, when Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah, dismissed the unity government.

But, despite what much of the media says, this is not a ‘civil war’, and Hamas is not made up of ‘gangs beyond the control of their leaders’. Hamas’s action was conducted with the aim of removing the influence of just one of Fatah’s security forces in Gaza, the militia controlled by Muhammad Dahlan, Abbas’s national security adviser. Hamas has insisted that this has not been a conflict with Fatah in general, and it was notable that neither the Palestinian security forces – effectively the Palestinian ‘army’ – nor the police in Gaza were targets of the recent violence. The origins of the Hamas action in Gaza lie in the reaction of the international community, and of Fatah, to Hamas’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006. Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s movement, saw itself as the founder of the Palestinian Authority; it believed it was the natural party of government; and it had fought a long battle with Arab neighbours to establish itself as synonymous with the PLO, and therefore, implicitly, as the ‘sole representative of the Palestinian people’. Some within Fatah were unable to come to terms with their loss of power, or to reconcile themselves to the claim that, on the basis of the election result, an Islamist party best represented the views of the Palestinian people. At this crucial juncture, the International Quartet intervened: they pressed President Abbas not to yield to Hamas, to hang onto power; and they promised to support him if he did so. Not only was Abbas not to yield security control to the government and its Interior Ministry, as the constitution provided, but the International Quartet also demanded that he claw back powers from the new government and embody them in the presidency: financial responsibilities would be removed from the Ministry of Finance; the salaries of government officials would be paid by the president’s office; all key policy decisions would be enacted by presidential decree. The government was to be rendered powerless. As Azzam Tamimi notes in Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, the Hamas government had no police force at its disposal, and no authority over frontier crossings. At the same time, the West imposed financial sanctions on the government and isolated it politically, insisting on conducting business and channelling funding exclusively through Abbas. The US and some European countries, including Britain, also chose to finance, train and arm the security apparatus led by Muhammad Dahlan, whom many Palestinians suspected – rightly – was being groomed as the ‘strong man’ who would eventually assume the presidency and restore Fatah to power. The ultimate aim was to build a Fatah militia around Dahlan that could confront Hamas militarily – and win.

American officials hoped in the meantime to place Fatah in a position to depose Hamas from power – in other words, to promote a soft coup d’état against the government. A strategy document prepared by one of the US-led coalition of ‘moderate’ Arab states which was circulating among Palestinians in March 2007 said that the US objective was to have Abbas dismiss the Hamas government in August. The support the US and Europe give to Fatah is considerable and arrives by a variety of routes: through NGOs and development agencies; through Fatah reform initiatives; through youth development programmes; through information and media projects; and – most significantly – through a large programme aimed at recruiting, training, equipping and financing Fatah security cadres, Dahlan’s chief among them. In the scathing final report he wrote before resigning in May as UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Alvaro de Soto said: ‘The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca’ – where the two factions met in February and under the auspices of King Abdullah agreed a unity government – ‘the US envoy declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”’ It was this situation that pushed Hamas into pre-emptive action. With Fatah refusing to delegate constitutional authority over the security services, and with the build-up of the Dahlan militia, the military arm of Hamas moved to seize all the key assets associated with Dahlan and his colleagues in Gaza. Having achieved complete control, the elected government is now finally in a position to provide security in Gaza. The West could not have chosen a worse time to try to make Fatah a proxy dependent on Western financial subsidy and Israeli ‘concessions’ to make up for the popular support it patently lacks. It is one thing to be perceived by fellow Palestinians as a Western proxy: to be regarded as a failed Western proxy is far worse. The largest Hebrew newspaper, Yediot Aharnot, noted on 14 June that ‘in Nablus, Jenin, Hebron and Ramallah, the people of the Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades are in control, much thanks to the Israeli General Security Services who have jailed anyone vaguely smelling of Hamas.’ Palestinians have seen their putative state in the West Bank salami-sliced away by settlements, army posts, military zones, fences and Israeli-only roads that cut the territory into enclaves in which 2.5 million Palestinians are confined, their movements heavily curtailed. A map of the West Bank recently published by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs shows that the Israeli system of settlements and

protective infrastructure has rendered 40 per cent of the West Bank off-limits to Palestinians. Palestinians have seen the US and Europe do nothing about this. The US and the EU argued that Palestinian violence was the problem; but the Palestinians noted that in periods of quiet more rather than less of their land fell to the Israeli salami-slicer – yet still the international community remained silent. Any optimism from Oslo had long faded by 2006, when the Palestinians voted in Hamas. There is no longer a significant ‘peace camp’ that believes in gradual progress towards a Palestinian state. [To check out what life is like under a murderous military occupation by foreign terrorists, go to: www.rafahtoday.org The occupied nation is Palestine. The foreign terrorists call themselves “Israeli.”]

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

The Traitors Bush And Gates Caught Telling Stupid Lies About Al Qaida In

Iraq; Hysterical Bush Says Iraq Al Qaida Did

9/11 Attack June 29, 2007 By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that the U.S. has no “hard evidence” that the Sunni Muslim insurgent group al Qaida in Iraq was responsible for the recent bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, although Bush administration officials cite the attack as proof that al Qaida in Iraq is stoking sectarian violence. It “seems to me that that's probably an analytical conclusion. I'm not sure whether they have a lot of hard evidence about it,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon. In a speech Thursday, President Bush called al Qaida the biggest threat in Iraq and said that al Qaida in Iraq was the same group that was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

U.S. military spokesmen in Iraq also have begun citing al Qaida in Iraq more often after years of downplaying its importance. On Friday, Gates said the June 13 attack on the al Askariya mosque in Samarra was one reason why U.S. forces are targeting the group. “I believe that it is al Qaida that has done the most in terms of trying to stoke sectarian violence, from the bombing of the Samarra mosque a year ago February to the second bombing of the mosque just a couple of weeks ago, and to try and provoke exactly the kind of reaction that happened after February of last year,” Gates said. “So I think that at least in terms of the combat operations that we're conducting now, the principal enemy that they are facing is in fact al Qaida.” But when a McClatchy reporter asked him about the assertion, Gates said that he knew of no hard evidence linking al Qaida in Iraq to the explosion.

Bush: Maybe U.S. Military ‘Just Not Very

Good’

Bush lamented the fact that the U.S. is “losing a lot of vehicles and equipment” in the ongoing conflict. June 27, 2007 The Onion WASHINGTON, DC—Departing from his usual hopeful rhetoric during a question-and-answer session with reporters in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush suggested Tuesday that the war in Iraq has not been successful because the nation’s armed forces are “just not very good.” “When the decision was made to liberate Iraq, I was going on what my advisers were telling me and what everyone has said for nearly a century—that the U.S. military is the best in the world,” Bush said.

“But if that were the case, and we did have the most powerful army, navy, marines, and air force on the globe, we would be winning, right?” The president admitted that he’d been toying with the idea that a thorough lack of quality in personnel, from the top U.S. commander to the lowest-ranked private, is the only way to account for the colossal failure in Iraq, given that everything on the administrative side of the war has been carried out with the utmost care and precision. “I know the folks on our end didn’t drop the ball,” Bush said. “The civilian oversight of this war and the plan of attack has been brilliant. There’s no doubt about that in my mind. Hate to say it, but maybe our men and women in uniform just aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.” Bush conjectured that U.S. servicemen and women thrust into the horrifying chaos and violence of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle may simply lack the proper perspective and cool detachment needed to implement an effective strategy against the insurgency. The commander in chief also wondered aloud why, for all their vaunted competence, American forces become disillusioned while fighting “for such a just and noble cause.” “I know I should support the troops, especially in a time of war, but if they can’t handle the pressure, maybe they don’t deserve my support,” Bush said. “They’re making me look bad.” “On the occasions I’ve met our troops, most of them didn’t seem like they had much going for them,” Bush added. “I don’t think very many went to college or anything.” Bush said that in the past year he has had much occasion to think about the U.S. military’s role in history, which, he recently was forced to conclude, is “overrated.” He traced the roots of the misperception back to the nation’s victory in World War II. “We haven’t really flat-out won a war since then, and you have to admit even that one was pretty close,” the president said. Continued Bush: “We pretty much have a 3-4 record in terms of important wars, and that’s being generous, because I’m counting the Civil War as a victory. We got absolutely killed in Vietnam, which was another war where the leadership at home did a fine job, only to be let down by the troops. “Not quite sure what happened in Korea. And I thought we won the first Gulf War, but apparently we didn’t, because we’re still there.” Shortly after the press conference, the White House announced that an advisory panel comprised of former officials from both Bush administrations and of private military contractors would be formed to devise effective solutions to problem areas in the nation’s defense, namely the quality of the soldiers. Some of the likely recommendations include toughening recruitment standards so that not just anyone can enlist, and offering swift advancement opportunities for troops who

show less dependence on the support current forces seem to constantly require from the American people. The panel is also expected to recommend that the nation enter into additional costly overseas conflicts as a way for the military to hone its combat skills. Yet even the most optimistic administration estimates acknowledge that these transformations are years, if not decades away from being implemented. Meanwhile, Bush still appears determined to maintain the American military presence in Iraq, telling reporters that the only way to improve the armed forces isn’t to quit, but to “keep plugging away and hope they’ll get better at this war business before they all get killed.”

Received:

Military Legal Resources From: Michael Letwin To: GI Special Sent: June 30, 2007 Subject: Tom FYI: Military Legal Resources Military Legal Resources The U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School Library in Charlottesville, VA, holds extensive collections of primary source materials and publications in the field of military law. Selections from these collections are now being made accessible in full text PDF versions via the Library of Congress Federal Research Division (FRD) website. As more materials are converted to digital formats, they will be added to this page: http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/military-legal-resources-home.html

GI Special Looks Even Better Printed Out GI Special issues are archived at website http://www.militaryproject.org . The following have chosen to post issues; there may be others: http://www.williambowles.info/gispecial/2006/index.html; http://imagineaworldof.blogspot.com/; http://gi-special.iraq-news.de; http://www.traprockpeace.org/gi_special/; http://www.uruknet.info/?p=-6&l=e; http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/gi-special.htm

NEED SOME TRUTH? CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER Telling the truth - about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington - is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance - whether it's in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you've read, we hope that you'll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers. http://www.traveling-soldier.org/ And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! (www.ivaw.org/) GI Special distributes and posts to our website copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law since it is being distributed without charge or profit for educational purposes to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for educational purposes, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. GI Special has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor is GI Special endorsed or sponsored by the originators. This attributed work is provided a non-profit basis to facilitate understanding, research, education, and the advancement of human rights and social justice. Go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml for more information. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If printed out, this newsletter is your personal property and cannot legally be confiscated from you. “Possession of unauthorized material may not be prohibited.” DoD Directive 1325.6 Section 3.5.1.2.