GI SPECIAL 3C3:

AND NOW FOR A MESSAGE FROM LIBERATED AFGHANISTAN!

Angry Afghan protestors throw stones at a U.S. military vehicle outside the main U.S. base in Bagram, north of Kabul, July 26, 2005. About 2,000 Afghans protested outside the main American base in Afghanistan on July 26 after the arrest of 10 villagers. Photo by Stringer/Afghanistan/Reuters

Contractors In Iraq

From: Marcie H

To: GI Special

Sent: July 25, 2005

Subject: Contractors in Iraq

Just read a message on GI Special regarding contractors in Iraq.

My husband has worked as a contractor in post war countries for many years. He agreed to go to Iraq post war.

He was flown in a few hours after the Mission Accomplished Speech.

He was lied to, the war wasn't over. When he told his employer it was too dangerous to be working there he was told to stay anyway.  He was blown up.

He was used, to give the appearance that things were OK in Iraq.

After this happened to my husband there were still people working for his company agreeing to go over there and work. In fact they were begging for the positions though there was no longer any doubt that it was very dangerous.

I am still trying to find the answer to the question "When did it become OK to send civilians into war zones?"  Who changed the rules?  Why isn't there an outrage?

These contractors are aiding and abetting this administration in their lies about this war and how poorly our military is being treated and supplied and paid.

Anything I can do to help you all I will do.

Marcie H: www.acinetobacter.org

REPLY: Exposing wrongs, as you do here, is help. The more people know, the less able to government is to get away with wrongdoing and abuse, especially, as you point out, their lies about this war. Silence gives consent, but as millions of people see through the lies, they begin to rise up, and once that process is under way, no handful of politicians in Washington can stop it.

What are they going to do? Call out the troops? Tell the troops to fire on their brothers, sisters, wives, mothers and fathers for protesting the war and the evils the government does? If only theyre stupid enough to try it. We should be so lucky. T

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Local Soldier Killed

July 26th, 2005 The Bakersfield Californian

A Bakersfield soldier has been killed in an explosion in Iraq, according to family members who spoke with KBAK-TV 29.

Ramon Villatoro, 19, was a 2004 graduate of Foothill High School and died Sunday in or near Baghdad.

The Army private was married less than a year and his wife Amanda is due to give birth to the couples child in November.

Woman Says Son Is Among Fallen Soldiers;

I Did Not Like The Idea Of Him Going'

July 26 Associated Press

Cathy Brunson told The Albany Herald newspaper that Army officials notified her Monday of the death of her son, Jacques ``Gus'' Brunson. The woman said she did not know her son's rank.

``Unfortunately, I did not like to talk to him about this because I did not like the idea of him going,'' she told the newspaper.

Brunson had two children, Kayla, 9, and Jake, 8.

The brigade's 4,300 citizen-soldiers make up the largest combat unit of the Georgia National Guard to deploy since World War II. The brigade includes about 150 Gainesville-based soldiers.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

"Die America!"

"Holy War Against Them As We Did Against The Soviets And Taliban"

Afghan protesters demonstrate outside the U.S. base in Bagram 7.26.05 to demand the release of ten villagers detained in a raid. (AP Photo/Amir Shah)

[Thanks to Phil G, who sent this in.]

7/26/2005 By AMIR SHAH, The Associated Press, BAGRAM, Afghanistan

More than 1,000 stone-throwing Afghans tried to break down an outer gate at the main U.S. base here Tuesday while demanding the release of eight detained villagers, and Afghan troops fired warning shots and used clubs to beat the mob back. U.S. troops also fired into the air.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in the melee outside the base's main gate as protesters chanted "Die America!"

Black smoke billowed from burning tires. An Associated Press reporter was hit by a stone and an AP photographer was punched by a protester.

The violence in Bagram erupted when six U.S. military vehicles tried to enter the base. Demonstrators massed outside to protest the arrests threw stones at the convoy and soldiers in the vehicles fired into the air with handguns.

The convoy sped into the base and the mob chased after them, trying to push down a metal gate guarded by Afghan troops. Some soldiers beat the protesters with clubs and several fired assault rifles into the air as they shouted for the protesters to go home. Most dispersed.

The eight men arrested late Monday "had materials used to make improvised explosive devices in their possession and are thought to be planning future attacks against coalition forces," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Demonstrators said they were angry that American soldiers arrested the men without consulting local authorities.

"We have supported the Americans for years. We should be treated with dignity," said Shah Aghar, 35.

"They are arresting our people without the permission of the government. They are breaking into our houses and offending the people. We are very angry."

There has been little violence in the Bagram area since U.S. forces helped oust the Taliban regime at the end of 2001 and took control of the base. [Thats over.]

One protester, Abdul Rahman, said that if the U.S. forces continued to raid people's houses, Afghans would launch a "holy war against them as we did against the Soviets and Taliban."

Assorted Resistance Action:

7/26/2005 By AMIR SHAH, The Associated Press

In Kandahar province, guerrillas attacked an Afghan patrol late Monday, triggering a battle that left an Afghan soldier dead and a police officer badly wounded, said deputy district chief Haji Lala Khan.

A candidate in the Sept. 18 election was killed in eastern Paktika province Tuesday when a roadside bomb blew up next to his vehicle

In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, a provincial governor said Afghan soldiers died during an overnight battle.

TLS Premature

7.26.05 By Paul Wiseman USA Today

JABAK, Afghanistan The offer is tempting: The U.S. soldiers say they can repair a collapsed irrigation tunnel in this parched village in southern Afghanistans Zabul province.

Jabak needs the extra water. However, village elder Haji Safi Mohammed, 70, knows that accepting American assistance is dangerous. He fears that after the U.S. troops drive away in their Humvees, local Taliban fighters will come back down from their hide-outs in the hills, seeking retribution against anyone who cooperated with the Americans.

If the Talibs saw me standing here with you, they would kill me, Mohammed tells Army Capt. Benjamin White. Everyone comes here in force you, the Taliban. We are powerless. We cannot do anything.

I will help you, White says through an interpreter.

Mohammed looks skeptical. God will help me, he replies.

Capt. Dirk Ringgenberg, rotating out as Chosen Company commander, stopped on July 18 at Kandahar Air Field where Taliban forces were bombed into submission in 2001. He was at the U.S. base there to await the flight that would take him home to Vermont for two weeks leave.

Walking into an office called TLS, a reference to the Talibans Last Stand, Ringgenberg looked up: That was premature.

Killed In Fighting Near Qaleh-Ye Gaz

Sgt. Jason T. Palmerton, 25, of Auburn, Neb., who was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, was killed fighting near Qaleh-Ye Gaz in Afghanistan on July 23, 2005. (AP Photo/U.S. Army)

TROOP NEWS

Soldier Makes A Final Visit Home

Chuck Woods of Des Moines, Iowa, pauses by the casket of Spc. Hoby F. Bradfield Jr., left, after a memorial service in Virginia Beach on Monday. Woods' son Eric, a combat medic, was coming to the aid of Bradfield when the ambulance evacuating them was destroyed by a roadside bomb, killing both men. Pfc. Eric P. Woods was buried last week. HYUNSOO LEO KIM/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

[Thanks to Thomas Palumbo, who sent this in.]

July 26, 2005 By TONY GERMANOTTA, The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH - At the front of the chapel, beside the flag-draped coffin, stood a small table covered with medals and a patriotic portrait.

In the center of this memorial was Spc. Hoby F. Bradfield Jr.'s black Stetson, with its crossed saber insignia, the mark of a cavalry trooper.

Bradfield was back in the community he considered home, in a brief stop before his body is laid to rest at 3 p.m. today at Arlington National Cemetery.

The 2001 graduate of Green Run High School, who saw the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, and immediately called to enlist, was killed in Tal Afar, Iraq, on July 9.

Spc. Hoby F. Bradfield Jr. Bradfield became one of about 1,778 U.S. service members to be killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Bradfield was wounded during a "dismounted cordon search" of the northwestern Iraqi town, the Pentagon reported, but he was killed later when the ambulance evacuating him was destroyed by a roadside bomb.

Bradfield, 22, came from a military family. Both his father and stepfather served in the Navy. One brother is a Cavalry scout, and another is a Marine guarding the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, his mother, Diane J. Sterling, told LNC Cable Channel 5 before a memorial service at Altmeyer Funeral Home .

It was Bradfield's second tour in Iraq, his mother said. He had asked to go back even though his wife, Crystin , was pregnant with their first child.

Bradfield's brother Jared choked back tears as he spoke to the crowd of friends and relatives. "I've never really had a hero, except for Hoby," he said, describing him as a person full of joy and love.

"I hope some day I can be that man," he said. "I want to be the man that he was."

After most had left the chapel, a family walked up and quietly approached

the coffin. Chuck Woods touched the flag with reverence, then walked to the memorial table.

He touched the Bronze Star given to Bradfield for meritorious service and "the ultimate sacrifice," then touched the Purple Heart. Tearing up, he tapped the Purple Heart on the lapel of his jacket.

Last week, Woods and his wife, Jan, buried their son, Pfc. Eric P. Woods, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Eric Woods, 26, was the combat medic who had rushed to Bradfield's aid. He died when a bomb blew up under their ambulance.

"We wanted to express our condolences to Hoby's family," Jan Woods said.

And, she said, to make a connection between families whose sons shared their final moments together.

Iraq?

The Public Doesn't Really Believe In The Mission

July 23 By THOM SHANKER, New York Times

"Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us," said one officer just back from a yearlong tour in Iraq, voicing a frustration now drawing the attention of academic specialists in military sociology.

David C. Hendrickson, a scholar on foreign policy and the presidency at Colorado College, said, "Bush understands that the support of the public for war - especially the war in Iraq - is conditioned on demanding little of the public."

"The public wants very much to support the troops" in Iraq, he said.

"But it doesn't really believe in the mission. Most consider it a war of choice, and a majority - although a thin one - thinks it was the wrong choice."

British Ministry Of Defense Attempts To Silence Rose Gentle:

(Lots Of Luck)

In a message to GI Special June 24, Rose Gentle wrote:

THE MOD, HAVE

PUT A GAG ON

ME NOT TO SAY, ANYTHING ABOUT THE EQUIPMENT.

THE TROOPS DONT HAVE, ROSE GENTLE,

For those who may not know here name, her son was killed in Iraq. She leads a campaign to bring all the Scots and other troops home from Iraq, now.

In response to an inquiry about why they were trying to shut her up, she writes:

From: Rose Gentle

To: GI Special

Sent: July 24, 2005

hi its rose

yes the mod did it in november

but as you can see i dont, some of the press will not

print it, but now this is out, people will think.

when gordon was killied, one of the troop sent me a letter,

to tell me, gordon did not have it [proper defensive equipment],

he has now left the army.

so i will put the letter out, all over as far as i can,

thay must be pisst of with, me, nex munth on the 7th scindy, from

the us will be over, so I am going to do a meeting in london

with hur, and in scotland, the american congresman will be here too.

he will be meeting up with me, ,and my lawyer, ,

so i will let you know how is went. and i now have boys from

the T.A. [Territorial Army] thait will not go to iraq, mr blair tolld m.p. give

mrs gentle a few weeks and she will give up,

yes after we get him in court,

rose

National Guard Top General Admits Guard Is A Business --

Says Recruiting Goals Artificial And Meaningless

July 25, 2005 By Joseph R. Chenelly, Army Times staff writer

The National Guard Bureaus top general said it will likely miss its recruiting goal for fiscal 2005, and that its end strength is short nearly 20,000 soldiers.

The Army National Guards overall end strength is about 6 percent, or 19,700 soldiers, below what it is supposed to be, Lt. Gen Steven Blum said.

By the end of July, the Guard is slated to have eight combat brigades on the ground in Iraq.

But in the meantime, he isnt worried about the monthly recruiting goals.

He called them artificial, misleading, and meaningless.

The two numbers he said he does care about are the authorized end strength and the actual end strength.

The Army Guard is authorized to have 350,000 soldiers but, as of the July 11, it had about 333,300.

If I cannot close that gap, then I have to ask for additional incentives, he said.

I have to ask for more bonuses. I have got to start changing some of the business model.

1^st Marine Expeditionary Force Back to The Imperial Slaughterhouse For The Third Time

[Thanks to PB, who sent this in.]

Jul 26 AFP

The First Marine Expeditionary Force, which took part in the invasion of Baghdad in April 2003, is revving up for a return to Iraq, and for some of its forces, a third tour of duty, their commander General John Sattler said.

For these California-based marines, the routine is now a seven month deployment followed my seven months of training, he said.

Veterans Converge On Dallas To Celebrate 20 Years Of Waging Peace And To Say "No To War."

July 26, 2005 Veterans For Peace: www.veteransforpeace.org

Who: Veterans For Peace, a national organization of military veterans including men and women from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, other conflicts and peacetime, chartered in 1985.

What: 2005 Veterans For Peace National Convention, at the University of Dallas in Texas, August 4th -7th

Why: To celebrate 20 Years of Waging Peace and to give Real Support for The Troops, by demanding Bring Them Home Now and Take Care of Them When They Get Here.

Each year Veterans For Peace holds a national convention to examine current world conflicts, the U.S. government's role in these conflicts and ways to address ending war as a means to solve conflicts.

This year Veterans For Peace, founded in 1985, has an ambitious program to celebrate 20 Years of Waging Peace, to Remember the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the men and women who fought and died in World War II and to discuss strategies and techniques to counter militarism and war.

There will be a focus on the war in Iraq: what's really happening to our troops and the people of Iraq, holding the Bush administration accountable for lying to the nation to take us to war and examining the structural causes of war.

Featured speakers include: Jim Hightower, Texas native national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the New York Times best seller, Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time to Take It Back. Journalist Dahr Jamail spent several months "un-embedded" reporting on the war in Iraq. His dispatches are widely recognized as an important resource for learning the truth about events in Iraq. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other out-lets.

Professor Satoru Konishi is a nuclear bomb survivor or hibakusha, from Japan. Born in 1929, he was 16 years old when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Coleen Rowley is the well-known FBI agent and lawyer who in May 2002 criticized the agency for ignoring evidence before 9-11 that hinted of an impending attack.

Cindy Sheehan a member of Military Families Speak Out, and a founding member of Gold Star Families for Peace. Her son Casey, a U.S. soldier, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since April, Cindy has traveled all over the country telling Casey's story.

Mike Hoffman, former Marine Corporal and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. As a Marine Corporal, Mike deployed with his unit to Iraq in February 2003. He fought in both Tikrit and Baghdad. Though he had his doubts about the war from the start, he saw going to Iraq as a matter of professionalism and loyalty. But it soon became clear to him that the US occupation was doing more harm than good-to both Iraqis and Americans.

Camilo Mejia was sentenced to a year in military prison in May 2004 for refusing to return to the war in Iraq after being home on leave. He is the first Iraq war veteran to file for discharge from the army as a conscientious objector. "By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being." Released in February 2005, he has been speaking out ever since.

Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It is structured around a national office in Saint Louis, MO and comprised of members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members.

The organization includes men and women veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, other conflicts and "peacetime" veterans.

Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.

About Half Of Troops Turn Down Voluntary Anthrax Vaccinations

July 25, 2005 By Deborah Funk, Army Times staff writer

About half of the U.S. service members and civilian workers offered anthrax vaccinations under the Pentagons temporary, voluntary program are accepting the shots and the other half are saying, No thanks.

We wish it was higher because thats about 50 percent (who are) vulnerable. But that is what you get when you give people the choice, said Army Col. John Grabenstein, director of the Military Vaccine Agency, which oversees implementation of the anthrax vaccinations. [If he means the 50% who took the shots are vulnerable, hes right. Too many troops have gotten totally fucked up from them.]

Roughly 20,000 military members have been offered the vaccine since the government launched its voluntary program May 19. Of those, about half have accepted vaccination.

Grabenstein said troops who received shots under the old mandatory program are more likely to volunteer under this program so they can continue the vaccination series. Conversely, people who were never vaccinated against anthrax are more likely to decline the shots.

The participation level may reflect the rare opportunity service members have to make choices while in the military, and some may decline the shot just for the taste of liberty, Grabenstein said. [What a condescending, sneering asshole. Evidently hes too stupid to understand that the word about the horrifying side effects has gotten around. So he comes on like the troops are silly little children defying daddy. Fuck him. He can go shit in his hat, if he can find his hat, if he can shit.]

Some may decline it because they dislike the idea of getting the shots, or have no experience with the anthrax vaccine, he said. [He just wont quit. Everything that comes out of his mouth insults and degrades the troops. He just cant deal with the fact that soldiers are not stupid, and are trained to avoid unnecessary risk. This guy is head of a military vaccine program? And this is his attitude? What is he, a retread from an animal experiments lab?]

Grabenstein said there have been zero punishments for service members who have not volunteered for the new program. [Amazing news! Especially since ANY punishment for ANYONE refusing the shot would be a criminal violation of the UCMJ. My my, he brags about not breaking the law. He better not lift one finger to harass one soldier, or hes shit in the wind.]

When it was mandatory, it was a loyalty program by the senior leadership for no one to challenge the implementation, Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who represents the six plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said.

As a voluntary program, it still remains a loyalty program for those who may be recipients. I have little doubt that many people are taking it on faith that if the leadership said it is good, thats what Im going with.

Zaid said he also suspects defense officials have downplayed information contradictory to their position that the vaccine is safe and effective.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

'No No To Japan'

Get Out, Go Home!

Local residents hold a protest to demand that the Japanese occupation troops leave the southern Iraqi town of Samawa July 26, 2005. The protestors said they were still without basic necessities such as electricity and safe drinking water. About 550 Japanese soldiers are currently based in Samawa. The bottom sign reads in Arabic, 'No No to Japan' while the top sign reads ' We want electricity and water and other necessities immediately.' REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen

One Pipeline Incinerated By Resistance;

Another Blown Up

July 24, 2005 Energy Security

July 20 - 6:00 a.m. a roadside bomb exploded under the pipeline that goes from Kirkuk to the Daura refinery.

July 21 - insurgents incinerated an oil pipeline west of Samarra.

Assorted Resistance Action

7.26.05 By Qassim Abdul-Zahra, The Associated Press & Aljazeera & AFP & (KUNA) & By Peter Graff and Waleed Khalid, Reuters

In separate attacks in Baghdad, guerrillas fatally shot a police officer as he was driving from his home in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City.

Two Iraqi security personnel were killed and three wounded by mortar fire near Baiji while guarding an oil pipeline, police said.

Six Iraqi soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in Samarra, Kirkuk and Baquba, according to police and army officials.

Two police officer brothers were found dead inside their parked car in Baghdad.

In Irbil, seven people including a police man were also killed in clashes between the Iraqi police and guerrillas.

Also an explosive devise blew up in an Iraqi police squad but no casualties were reported.

An Intelligence officer was assassinated by unknown militants who opened fire in the heart of Basra Tuesday. Police sources said the militants managed to escape after the shooting.

Two police were killed by a mortar on Baghdad's southern outskirts, and three more were killed by a rocket attack in Hilla, a town further south, police said.

Militants attacked the Major Crimes Unit in the Karkh area, west of the Tigris river. An Iraqi military statement said one policeman was injured and two suspects were detained.

A paramedic and an Iraqi woman were killed during clashes between the Iraqi army and insurgents in Mosul, in the predominantly Arab district of Risala

Three Ministry of Health workers were shot dead in their car in the eastern suburb of Maamil.

Militants killed a Pakistani truck-driver in Tikrit. A police source said they found his body in his truck.

Guerrillas opened fire on a bus carrying employees home from a factory in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, on Tuesday, killing up to 17 people, police and hospital sources said.

The police sources said the al-Faris factory worked on reconstruction projects. Insurgents often target Iraqis seen as working for the U.S.-backed authorities.

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

The Retaliation Of Those Who Have Been Bombed Will Come Back To The Centre

July 19, 2005 Anti-Allawi-group

Che-Leila member Takawira Interviews Ethiopian Marxist Mohamed Hassan

Mohamed Hassan:

In Saudi Arabia now there is a very big movement, military and non-military.

There is a civil movement which was hidden and organised secretly, and there is also military combat. The day before yesterday they have discovered according to Saudi reports, a lot of weapons captured at the border with Yemen. This shows that a big part of the Saudi armed forces are connected to and supporting the movement.

The al-Qaeda branch in Saudi Arabia is a nationalist movement. They want to overthrow the regime and establish democratic country, democratic within their own culture and values, and also to control their own national resources which are totally controlled by US Imperialism.

If they succeed in Saudi Arabia the result will be that the other small feudal states will collapse. US Imperialism of course will be weakened if these people succeed in Saudi Arabia.

Taka: Do you think that this analysis has to be popularised in the West?

MH: It has to be popularised.

Taka: To make sense of whats going on?

MH: To make sense of whats going on.

First of all there is very little to no reports in the Western media.

In the whole Gulf States there are seven million workers. Sixty percent of them are from the Third World.

The remaining forty percent are from imperialist countries who earn on average seventy times what they were earning in their own country. They are living in ghettoes. These ghettoes are the opposite of the ghettoes in the imperialist countries where there is poverty, but the ghettoes of these white so-called expatriates working in these countries are the most luxurious ghettoes with swimming pools, everything is inside and they are walled in.

The excuse for this is that these countries are Islamic. Inside these ghettoes there is no Islamic law, women are walking around like any beaches in Greece or Spain, whiskey is sold openly there and they are living exactly, in fact they are living in better conditions than there own countries.

500,000 Saudis have studied in the best universities of the West and have returned home, and none of them have any function in the running of their country! They are forced to do other types of businesses. They cannot get employment in the government, they cannot reform their own country, and they cannot demand accountability.

There is not even a minister for finance who does book-keeping for the economy for what is coming in and out of the country!

All these people are demanding reform. This has forced the Saudi regime to establish what they call Shura, which means a sort of parliament. Saudi women who cannot vote are also demanding their rights.

People talk about the Taliban who are very brutal and anti-women, but they never speak about the condition of women in Saudi Arabia, they never speak about the condition of women in Kuwait, in Bahrain and so on.

Taka: More than that, not only do they not speak about this reform movement, they depict it as a movement that does not want to give women rights, that it is a movement in which women play no role. It is presented often as a militant Wahabbi movement. Thats often as sophisticated as it gets in the newspapers. Would you agree that this is a big problem that there is a lack of analysis, let alone profound analysis to whats going on there?

MH: The jihadist movement in Saudi or in Egypt, despite the fact that they are taking their inspiration and ideology from Islamic thinking; it is basically a nationalist movement, a nationalist movement with an Islamic colour.

Wahabbism is in fact a creation of British Imperialism itself; secondly the Wahabbis are in power. Wahabbism is the ideological wing of the regime in Saudi Arabia. They are exporting Wahabbism to destabilise progressive governments and movements in the Muslim countries. Wahabbism is the perfect ideological weapon against progressive, democratic and revolutionary movements.

The nationalist movements in the Gulf States have nothing to do with Wahabbism, no; it is rather a democratic revolutionary movement, a nationalist movement which has a religious cover due to the situation in their countries.

Of course Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country where Wahabbism has ruled for a very long time. Saudi is the place where the holiest shrine of Islam is, it is the most important place for the Islamic world. So their movements mobilisation uses religion and nationalism combined to fight against imperialism and neo-colonialism.

It is a nationalist movement and you can see that they are attacking Western interests. When they attack expatriates they want them to leave, to make them panic and frighten them and away and to disturb the economy of the regime in so doing.

They are not attacking them because they are whites or non-Muslims. Most of the expatriates are military people who train the Saudi state, armed forces and security companies. So the targets are military targets despite the fact that they are wearing civilian clothes, but they are military people who train the Saudi regime to maintain itself. It has nothing to do with Christianity, no, its a nationalist movement.

Wahabbism is the ideological wing of the Saudi regime. Wahabbism is the most reactionary and backward Islamic sect. It started in the 18th century of a person called Abdul ibn Wahab. He himself was killed by Mohammed Ali, he was hanged in Istanbul. Mohammed Ali at that time was the one who was ruling Egypt.

Wahabbism is also an ideology which wants to split the Islamic community deeper and deeper. So the British and later the USA supported the rise of Wahabbism, and then vast amounts of oil were discovered there. Then Wahabbism became in the Cold War the best means to fight nationalist movements.

For example, the Republican movement of Yemen which overthrew the feudal regime of Imam Yahyah in northern Yemen. Nasser was supporting this movement by sending military officers to help the new republic. The Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia with the means of the large amounts of money they have, used propaganda and sabotage in Yemen utilising the backwardness there.

It is the Wahabbi ideology and the oil money which brought the collapse of the Republic of North Yemen and also in the south of Yemen which was a very progressive and socialist country. It was destroyed by the Wahabbis. The Saudi family made an embargo against south Yemen trying to destroy its economy. They have played the same role in Somalia, Sudan and other countries.

In one of the speeches by Ho Chi Minh he stated that between 1886 and 1911 over 8 million Congolese were killed by the colonialists. There was no reaction and no one was punished for that, but now I think it is not like before, you cannot go and bomb outside.

The retaliation of those who have been bombed will come back to the centre. The situation has changed. 11^th September proves this, so does Madrid and now London and even other ones will prove this.

The British people have a greater responsibility to who to vote for and what kind of world they need.

They cannot live peacefully while their leaders are waging war everywhere and killing innocent people while they can live and travel peacefully. Its not possible.

I think the left has to understand that and explain to their population.

We are not in the time of the Berlin Conference of 1884 of colonising the world, we are not in the 1920s, we are in 2005.

The last fifty years has changed dramatically the consciousness of the Third World peoples, and I think one of the results is that if you touch me, well terrorism is always the weapon of the weak.

[Thanks to Thomas Palumbo, who sent this in.]

The Idea That The Occupation Is Holding Back Civil War Is A Fiction

July 20, 2005 Rohan Pearce, Green Left Weekly

All movements that have engaged in asymmetric (guerrilla) warfare against the US empire have been labelled terrorists. Thus the National Liberation Front in southern Vietnam was labelled Viet Cong terrorists by US officials up to 1968, when Washington was forced to enter into peace negotiations with it.

Today Washington is trying to smear the Iraqi national liberation fighters with the terrorist tag.

The idea that the occupation is holding back civil war is a fiction.

Sami Ramadani, a political refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime and a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University, explained in a July 5 article for the British Guardian that some pro-war commentators warned early on that the country would be blighted by sectarian violence: oppressed Shias would take revenge on Sunnis; Kurds would avenge Saddam's rule by killing Arabs; and the Christian community would be liquidated...

(But what) actually happened confounded such expectations.

Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, millions converged on Karbala chanting La Amreeka, la Saddam' (No to America, no to Saddam).

For months, Baghdad, Basra and Najaf were awash with united anti-occupation marches whose main slogan was La Sunna, la Shia; hatha al-watan menbi'a' (no Sunni, no Shia, this homeland we shall not sell).

Such responses were predictable given Iraq's history of anti-sectarianism. But the war leaders reacted by destroying the foundations of the state and following the old colonial policy of divide and rule, imposing a sectarian model on every institution they set up, including arrangements for the January election.

When it became clear that the poorest areas of Baghdad and the south were even more hostile to the occupation than the so-called Sunni towns answering the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's call to arms Bush and Blair tried to defeat the resistance piecemeal, under the guise of fighting foreign terrorists.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was promoted to replace Saddam as the bogeyman in chief, to encourage sectarian tension and isolate the resistance.

At a media briefing on June 27, the commander of US forces in Iraq, General George Casey, admitted that over the previous seven weeks there had been between 450 and 500 insurgent attacks in Iraq.

He claimed that most of these were car-bomb attacks and the suicide car-bomb attacks against innocent civilians carried out by foreign fighters (in the Orwellian worldview of the US empire-builders, this is term that does not apply to the 160,000 US and allied non-Iraqi troops in Iraq, or the 20,000 foreign mercenaries private security contractors working the Pentagon and US corporations in Iraq.)

A June 23 working draft of Iraq's Evolving Insurgency, a report produced by the CSIS, includes estimates of insurgent attacks between September 2003 and October 2004 categorised by