Lies, Damn Lies and the PR Industry : The Nariyah Lie Case

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Lies, Damn Lies and the PR Industry : The Nariyah Lie Case

by Nicholas Wilson

About 40 percent of all “news” flows virtually unedited from the public relations offices

“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

–Alex Carey, quoted in “The Public Relations Industry’s Secret War on Activists”

Virtually every large corporation contracts with a public relations firm to help it control not only how it is perceived by the public, but to manipulate public opinion to serve the corporation’s goals. “Perception management” is the chilling, but accurate, term preferred by Burson Marstellar, the world’s largest corporate PR firm. This was the company that Exxon hired to deal with the public relations crisis caused by the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster. The slogan on the BM web page is ” Burson Marstellar – Managing perceptions that drive performance.” Here’s a bit of copy from an animated graphic on the BM website: “Perceptions are real. They color what we see … what we believe … how we behave. They can be managed … to motivate behavior … for positive business results.”

Public relations is a sneaky business, which often does its work through manipulated news stories. “The best PR is never noticed,” says the proud unwritten slogan of the trade. Media experts estimate that about 40 percent of all “news” flows virtually unedited from the public relations offices. The PR company may not write the story, but quietly manages the events that result in the story.

A few months after the Bari bombing, Hill & Knowlton was hired by the Kuwaiti government to generate support for U.S. entry into the Gulf War against Iraq. One of their most successful deceptions was the incubator story. “I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators … and left the children to die on the cold floor.” This was the story told by “Nayirah, ” a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl who shocked a public hearing of Congress’ Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990. It was widely reported in the media, and helped demonize Iraqis in American public opinion. The young woman was later unmasked as the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and Kuwaiti hospital officials interviewed after the Gulf War had ended said no infants had been dumped from incubators, but only a small fraction of those who were exposed to the original propaganda ever learned that.

Hill & Knowlton had helped “Nayirah” prepare her written testimony to Congress which mentioned 15 babies being dumped. H&K had sent its own film crew to the hearing, then sent the tearful testimony on video to a service that provided it to 700 TV stations nationwide. Portions were used on NBC Nightly News. The fraudulent story reached an estimated 35 million people.

By a January 8, 1991, House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on these and other phony atrocity stories engineered by H&K the story had mushroomed to 312 alleged incubator murders, a figure vouched for by Amnesty International. Four days after that hearing, Congress approved military action, and the bombing began.

Many large advertising agencies also have a PR branch, because the two fields have much in common, particularly their goal of persuasion. The main difference is that while advertising may use hidden persuaders, at least the viewer is aware he or she is looking at propaganda and knows whose propaganda it is. On the other hand PR is covert, and the viewer is not usually aware that propaganda is being delivered, usually as straight news, nor on whose behalf.

PR Watch is the quarterly newsletter of the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit organization founded by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. In the following passage they discuss the relationship between journalism and PR:

There is a precise and predictable inverse relationship between the work of journalists and the work of the public relations industry. Good investigative journalists work to inform the public about the activities of the rich and powerful. They uncover secrets known only to a few, and share those secrets with the rest of us. Public relations, on the other hand, works to control and limit the publicÕs access to information about the rich and powerful. PR has its own techniques of investigation Ð techniques which range from opinion polling to covert surveillance of citizen activists. Rather than studying the few for the benefit of the many, these techniques study the many for the benefit of the few. … PR Watch editors have recently been honored by Project Censored, a university-based organization which each year selects what it considers the most under-reported stories in the United States. (From PRWatch, 1st quarter 1997)

Public relations is big business, approximately $10 billion per year in 1995 according to Stauber and Rampton. Hill & Knowlton collected 1997 fees of $189 million, and Burson Marstellar’s were $265.5 million, according to Inside PR (3/2/98). The H&K website says the company has 57 offices in 32 countries as well as “an extensive associates network.” PR companies’ clients include not only corporations but governments, such as H&K working on behalf of Kuwait.

Public Relationships: Hill & Knowlton, Robert Gray by Johan Carlisle from the Spring 1993 issue of Covert Action Quarterly

Center for Media & Democracy, a nonprofit, public interest organization dedicated to investigative reporting on the public relations industry; publishes the quarterly newsletter PR Watch

Listen to an informative 20-minute radio interview with Center for Media & Democracy founder John Stauber on CounterSpin, the weekly program of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. (This requires the free RealAudio player)

Introduction by Mark Dowie to the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You — Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

Engineering of Consent: Uncovering Corporate PR Strategies by Judith Richter, draws on her MA thesis on the history of corporate PR, a good introduction to methods and strategies used by PR companies

The Public Relations Industry’s Secret War On Activists by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. Using spies, infiltrators, phony grassroots campaigns, smear techniques, and high-tech media assaults, the PR industry is targeting its biggest enemy: local activists. Covert Action Quarterly Winter, 1996

Hill & Knowlton Home Page

Burson Marstellar Home Page

source:

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9905a/jbpr.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Nayirah : The Lier

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Tue Jul 22 2003 at 2:08:15

“While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying. I could not help but think of my nephew who was born premature and might have died that day as well.”

It was this tear-filled testimony before Congress in 1990 that arguably tipped the balance in both public and political opinion for Gulf War One. It was given by a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl who was only identified as Nayirah (ostensibly for reasons of security her real identify was kept secret). Nayirah claimed to be a volunteer nurse in a preemie ward at the al-Adan Hospital and witnessed this horror. Reports claimed up to 300 preemies died. Amnesty International backed up Nayirah’s story.

The problem was, none of it was true. It was a story concocted by the American PR firm Hill and Knowlton (one of the world’s largest PR firms and presumably one of the least discriminating¹). Hill and Knowlton coached Nayirah’s “testimony” right down to which parts she should cry. Hill and Knowlton themselves were hired by a state-side group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which was bank rolled by the Kuwaiti government. Hill and Knowlton were paid over $11 million for an America-should-kick-the-shit-out-of-Iraq campaign.

They would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for, initially, an ABC news story in March 1991 that cast some doubt on Nayirah’s testimony. Kuwaiti hospital officials denied Iraqi soldiers dumped any babies out of incubators. Incredibly no major media organization followed up, although a red-faced Amnesty International removed the incident from their database.

The story probably would have died another death if Harper’s magazine publisher John R. MacArthur didn’t then pick up the fumbled ball and run with it. A January 1992 op-ed piece in the New York Times penned by MacArthur revealed “Nayirah” was in fact the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter. What’s more, she was no where near Kuwait when the invasion began. She was living it up in her dad’s DC-area mansion. Oddly enough her neighbor was none other than Ted Kennedy. Rather odd Senator Kennedy didn’t recognize her.

As it turns out, Hill and Knowlton hatched the incubator baby story after they conducted a $1 million R&D effort to determine what would swing American opinion. Americans, still not over Vietnam, were not entirely keen to see America commit upwards of half a million troops to “free” a nation ruled by a monarchy that only let a minority of its citizens vote.

Sure America managed to invade a couple golf courses in the ’80s without massive loss of life but Americans generally understood the Iraqi army to be large and well trained. This time American troops wouldn’t face soccer players armed with AK47s that they encountered in Grenada and Panama but, ostensibly, battle-hardened warriors lead by a military genius.

So, how to get America to over come its fear of laying down thousand of American lives to put a king back in power. Wasn’t America founded when people deposed their king? It all seemed ass backwards. Free a people by giving them back their king. Okay, whatever you say Chester.

Hill and Knowlton’s research concluded stories of atrocities, particularly against defenseless babies, would do the trick. It was money well spent, although they could have done it on the cheap if they checked out posters and PR the Brits used during World War I to get America on side in the Great War. The Hun, the American public was told, were subhuman killers. For fun and sport, the Hun would take Belgium babies, throw them into the air, and try to spear them on the end of bayonets. They would nail babies to the wall and use them as target practice!

The two House Representatives who got the congressional hearing going actually received $50,000 the Citizens for a Free Kuwait organization to set up their own foundation, the Congressional Human Rights Foundation. They also got swank offices in Hill and Knowlton’s swank Washington HQ.

______________
¹ There’s a famous story, passed around in the PR world, that a Hill and Knowlton executive once quipped “We’d represent Satan, if he paid.”

source:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1478534

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The Kuwaiti Incubator Baby Hoax : Nayirah the 15-year-old Kuwaiti

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

A key event in generating momentum for the first U.S. War on Iraq, “Operation Desert Storm” was a fraudulent report of the murder of Kuwaiti babies by Iraqi soldiers. On October 10, 1990, the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on the subject of Iraqi human rights violations. The centerpiece of the event was the emotional testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name, Nayirah. Her full name was supposedly being kept secrect to protect her from Iraqi reprisals. The girl relayed a shocking story while sobbing.

I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.

The massacre never occurred. The girl was actually the daughter of a Kuwaiti emir, and had been coached by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton to give persuasive false testimony.

e x c e r p t

title: How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf
authors: John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

…

In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah’s full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait.

…

Three months passed between Nayirah’s testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. “Of all the accusations made against the dictator,” MacArthur observed, “none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City.”

…

site: www.prwatch.org page: www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

source:

http://www.911review.com/precedent/decade/incubators.html

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

THE INCUBATOR LIE : Nayirah the 15-year-old Kuwaiti

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

THE INCUBATOR LIE : Nayirah the 15-year-old Kuwaiti

The day after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Kuwaitis living in the US hired the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton – a job worth $1 million a month. This was the biggest ever contract in the history of public relations to improve the image of their corrupt, oil-rich regime.

The story of how Iraqi troops, in the first days of the invasion, went into Al-Adan hospital, tore the sick babies from incubators and left them on the cold floor to die was graphically told to Congress on November 1990 before the crucial vote to send US troops (passed by about 5 votes).

What the audience didn’t know however was that the 15-year old girl who made the moving, tearful testimony was none other than Niyirah al-Sabah – daughter of the US Ambassador to Kuwait. She had allegedly worked as a volunteer in the maternity ward of the hospital. But nurses who live in the two story white building opposite the hospital in Kuwait City claimed that they had never seen the girl before in their life.

The entire move towards the Gulf War had thus been motivated by a blatant lie. The girl had been “trained” by Hill and Knowlton. The renowned international human rights group Amnesty International took out full-page newspaper spreads to publicise the babies incident. It had unwittingly (and not for the first time) transformed itself from a charity to a propaganda tool. Andrew Whitley of Middle East Watch described the story as a fabrication but it took months for the truth to come out. President Bush mentioned the incubator incident in five of his speeches and seven senators referred to them in speeches backing a pro-war resolution.

Highly exaggerated reports of thousands of deaths were accepted uncritically, as the PR firm using Kuwaiti contacts inside the country smuggled 24 videotapes to a hungry, unquestioning and gullible mass media.

From
http://hydraulix.bangor.ac.uk/nus/islam/pages/reports/gulf.html

The mother of all lies

Senator Faircloth.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUCH FAIRCLOTH

Senator Faircloth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank you for holding this hearing. It’s necessary and it’s going to serve an excellent purpose.

In the wake of the Gulf War, it is time we looked back to see what was done wrong and what was done right. We can’t change what was done, but we will be accountable for what we do now.

My statement also gets to another cover-up of that conflict, not as touching as the sick veterans, but well worth a review.

The Commerce Department has a lot of questions to answer about its role leading up to the Gulf War. It is also time that we in the Banking Committee revisit a current Commerce Department nominee — Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who played a crucial role in shaping public opinion toward U.S. involvement, and she did it by personally orchestrating perjured testimony before Congress.

Mr. Chairman, in 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of their country, the Kuwaiti government in exile formed Citizens for a Free Kuwait. They hired the lobbying firm of Hill and Knowlton to influence public opinion in this country toward entering the conflict. Lauri Fitz-Pegado was in charge of the effort.

Her strategy was to use alleged witnesses to atrocities, to tell stories of human rights violations in occupied Kuwait. Using their testimony, she orchestrated what has come to be known as the Baby Incubator Fraud.

She first coached a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only at the time as Naira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators. Naira claimed to be a refugee who had been working as a volunteer in a Kuwaiti hospital throughout the first few weeks of the Iraqi occupation. She said that she had seen them take babies out of the incubators, take the incubators, and leave the babies “on the cold floor to die.”

Naira’s emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the news mediums, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of the U.S. Senate as reasons to go to war with Iraq.

However, it was later discovered that the girl was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. It turns out that Lauri Fitz-Pegado had concealed Naira’s real identity. Since then, reputable human rights organizations and journalists have concluded that the baby incubator story was an outright fabrication. Every study commissioned by the Kuwaiti government could not produce a shred of evidence that the ambassador’s daughter had been back in occupied Kuwait to do volunteer work in a hospital. It was a total fabrication.

Lauri Fitz-Pegado then put on a repeat performance in front of the U.S. Security Council on November 27, 1990. In the testimony before Congress, they claimed they couldn’t fully identify who the witness was because they wanted to protect her family that supposedly was still trapped in Kuwait. But, in fact, they were here on Embassy Row.

In front of the United Nations, Lauri Fitz-Pegado abandoned that pretense and instead employed witnesses who testified using false names and occupations. The most important of these phony witnesses was a man who called himself Dr. Ebrahim. With Lauri Fitz-Pegado there in New York, he claimed to have personally buried 40 babies pulled from incubators by the Iraqis. Dr. Ebrahim told the Security Council that he was a surgeon. But after the war, when the scam was exposed as a total fraud, he admitted to being a dentist and had never buried any babies or seen any. More lies.

The Fitz-Pegado scam continues. Mr. Chairman, as a supporter of our country’s involvement in the Gulf War, I am offended that Lauri Fitz-Pegado believes that those kinds of illegal and unethical activities were necessary to get this country to face the threat of Saddam Hussein. None of these facts and allegations were disclosed to either you, Mr. Chairman, or other Members of the Banking Committee when her nomination was voted on here.

If confirmed, Lauri Fitz-Pegado would have control over a global network of 200 trade offices in 70 countries. My opposition is based not on party or ideology. It is based on the fact that there are few people in America who have less business being in charge of our Nation’s trade secrets than Lauri Fitz-Pegado.

Lauri Fitz-Pegado’s nomination should be returned to the Banking Committee for further review. If it is not, then facts that are far more embarrassing to Ms. Fitz-Pegado and to others in Government will be revealed in other speeches and in long, protracted debate on the Senate floor.

Mr. Chairman, the Banking Committee was hoodwinked by a professional scam artist. Lauri Fitz-Pegado should be asked to disclose her entire past and then be prepared to defend what I believe is a totally indefensible past.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am not sure whether this is a hoax-page or what… the names of the speakers sound like hoax to me:

Senator NightHorse Campbell (I hope s/he is North American Indian!)
Lauri Fitz-Pegado ( a new racing car model!)
LAUCH FAIRCLOTH (in german “Lauch” means: “leek” )
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND (Son of James Bond)
Dr. Theodore Prociv ( Prociv Prozac ? )
Dr. John Kriese (german Krise: “crisis” )
John M. Shalikashvili ( sounds like a balkan meat-dish)
Mr. Dorn (german “spike” “prick”)
Ltc. Vicki Merriman ( yippiiee )

anyway, its a good conspiracy theory and stems from http://www.chronicillnet.org/PGWS/tuite/hearings.html (315k)

source:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3589/us-iraq-lie.html

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The Great Iraq War Lie : Nayirah the 15-year-old Kuwaiti

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The great Iraq War lie. The pictured girl told the world under tears that she saw how Saddam Hussein’s soldiers took babies out of their incubators and let them die on the cold floor.

In Novembre 1990 Bush told this lie to the poor soldiers.

In truth she hadn’t been in Kuwait at the time. The girl was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington, USA.

click here to search altavista for more references

Here are some texts I compiled from the internet, which will give you some clues:

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How the public relations industry sold the Gulf War to the US, the mother of all clients

Hill and Knowlton produced dozens of video news releases (VNRs) at a cost of well over half a million dollars, but it was money well spent, resulting in tens of millions of dollars worth of “free” air time. The VNRs were shown by eager TV news directors around the world who rarely (if ever) identified Kuwait’s public relations (PR) firm as the source of the footage and stories. TV stations and networks simply fed the carefully-crafted propaganda to unwitting viewers, who assumed they were watching “real” journalism. After the war Arthur Rowse asked Hill & Knowlton to show him some of the VNRs, but the PR company refused. Obviously the phony TV news reports had served their purpose and it would do H&K no good to help a reporter reveal the extent of deception. In Unreliable Sources, authors Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted that “when a research team from the communications department of the University of Massachusetts surveyed public opinion and correlated it with knowledge of basic facts about U.S. policy in the region, they drew some sobering conclusions. The more television people watched, the fewer facts they knew; and the less people knew in terms of basic facts, the more likely they were to back the Bush administration.1

Throughout the campaign, the Wirthlin Group conducted daily opinion polls to help Hill & Knowlton take the emotional pulse of key constituencies so it could identify the themes and slogans that would be most effective in promoting support for U.S. military action. After the war ended. the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced an Emmy award-winning TV documentary on the PR campaign titled “To Sell a War.” The show featured an interview with Wirthlin executive Dee Alsop in which Alsop bragged of his work and demonstrated how audience surveys were even used to physically adapt the clothing and hairstyle of the Kuwait ambassador so he would seem more likeable to TV audiences. Wirthlin’s job, Alsop explained, was “to identify the messages that really resonate emotionally with the American people.” The theme that struck the deepest emotional chord, they discovered, was “the fact that Saddam Hussein was a madman who had committed atrocities even against his own people, and had tremendous power to do further damage, and he needed to be stopped.”2

Every big media event needs what journalist and flacks alike refer to as “the hook.” An ideal hook becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the case of the Gulf War, the “hook” was invented by Hill & Knowlton. In style, substance and mode of delivery, it bore an uncanny resemblance to England’s World War I hearings that accused German soldiers of killing babies.

On October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill which provided the first opportunity for formal presentations of Iraqi human rights violations. Outwardly, the hearing resembled an official congressional proceeding, but appearances were deceiving. In reality, the Human Rights Caucus, chaired by California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, was simply an association of politicians. Lantos and Porter were co-chairs of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, a legally separate entity that occupied free office space valued at $3,000 a year in Hill & Knowlton’s Washington, DC office. Notwithstanding its congressional trappings, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus served as another Hill & Knowlton front group, which — like all front groups — used a noble-sounding name to disguise its true purpose.3

Only a few astute observers noticed the hypocrisy in Hill & Knowlton’s use of the term “human rights.” One of those observers was John MacArthur, author of The Second Front, which remains the best book written about the manipulation of the news media during the Gulf War. In the fall of 1990, MacArthur reported, Hill & Knowlton’s Washington switchboard was simultaneously fielding calls for the Human Rights Foundation and for “government representatives of Indonesia, another H&K client. Like H&K client Turkey, Indonesia is a practitioner of naked aggression, having seized . . . the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975. Since the annexation of East Timor, the Indonesian government was killed, by conservative estimate, about 100,000 inhabitants of the region.4

MacArthur also noticed another telling detail about the October 1990 hearings. “The Human Rights Caucus is not a committee of congress, and therefore it is unencumbered by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate before he or she lied . . . Lying under oath in front of a congressional committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity to a caucus is merely public relations.5

In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah’s full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. “I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital,” Nayirah said. “While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”6

from
http://www.io.com/~patrik/gulfwar2.htm

source
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3589/us-iraq-lie.html

see also
http://www.io.com/~patrik/gulfwar1.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait? The Lier

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?

By John R. MacArthur

The New York Times Op-Ed, Monday, January 6, 1992

In his urgent arguments during the fall and winter of 1990 for military action against Saddam Hussein, President Bush made much of the Iraqi leader’s cruelty toward the Kuwaiti people. Mr. Bush’s allegations of atrocities by Iraqi forces generally went unchallenged. Mr. Hussein’s violent disposal of dissident Iraqis was a matter of record, so few politicians, journalists or human rights investigators were prepared to question the President’s campaign to paint his opponent as Adolf Hitler reborn.

Some claims were no doubt true, but the most sensational one–that Iraqi soldiers removed hundreds of Kuwaiti babies from incubators and left them to die on hospital floors–was shown to be almost certainly false by an ABC reporter, John Martin, in March 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait. He interviewed hospital doctors who stayed in Kuwait throughout the occupation.

But before the war, the incubator story seriously distorted the American debate about whether to support military action. Amnesty International believed the tale, and its ill-considered validation of the charges likely influenced the seven Senators who cited the story in speeches backing the Jan. 12 resolution authorizing war. Since the resolution passed the Senate by only five votes, the question of how the incubator story escaped scrutiny–when it really mattered–is all the more important. (Amnesty International later retracted its support of the story.)

A little reportorial investigation would have done a great service to the democratic process. Americans would have been interested to know the identity of “Nayirah,” the 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl who shocked the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Oct. 10, 1990, when she tearfully asserted that she had watched 15 infants being taken from incubators in Al-Adan Hospital in Kuwait City by Iraqi soldiers who “left the babies on the cold floor to die.” The chairmen of the Congressional group, Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, and John Edward Porter, an Illinois Republican, explained that Nayirah’s identity would be kept secret to protect her family from reprisals in occupied Kuwait.

There was a better reason to protect her from exposure: Nayirah, her real name, is the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S., Saud Nasir al-Sabah. Such a pertinent fact might have led to impertinent demands for proof of Nayirah’s whereabouts in August and September of 1990, when she said she witnessed the atrocities, as well as corroboration of her charges. The Kuwaiti Embassy has rebuffed my efforts to interview Nayirah.

Today, we are left to ask why Mr. Lantos and Mr. Porter allowed such glaring omissions. What made Nayirah so believable that no one on the caucus staff bothered to check out her story?

One explanation might lie in how Nayirah came to the Congressmen’s attention. Both Congressmen have a close relationship with Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the Kuwaiti-financed group that lobbied Congress for military intervention. A Hill and Knowlton vice president, Gary Hymel, helped organize the Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing in meetings with Mr. Lantos and Mr. Porter and the chairman of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, Hassan al-Ebraheem. Mr. Hymel presented the witnesses, including Nayirah. (He later told me he knew who she was at the time.)

Until he started working on the Kuwait account, Mr. Hymel was best known to the caucus for defending the human rights record of Turkey, a Hill and Knowlton client criticized for jailing people without due process and torturing and killing them. He is also one of the firm’s lobbyists for the Indonesian Government, which has killed at least 100,000 inhabitants of East Timor since 1975.

Mr. Lantos’s spokesman says that Hill and Knowlton’s client list doesn’t concern the Congressman, who accepted a $500 contribution from the firm’s political action committee in 1988. In fact, Mr. Lantos and Mr. Porter allowed the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, a group they founded in 1985, to be housed in Hill and Knowlton’s Washington headquarters. The firm provides a contribution to the foundation in the form of a $3,000 annual rent reduction, and the Hill and Knowlton switchboard delivers messages to the foundation’s executive director, David Phillips.

Hill and Knowlton’s client, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, donated $50,000 to the foundation, sometime after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. (The foundation’s main supporter is the U.S. Government-financed National Endowment for Democracy.)

Since the gulf war, Hill and Knowlton’s collaboration with the Lantos-Porter human rights enterprise has been strengthened by the naming of the firm’s vice chairman, Frank Mankiewicz, to the foundation’s board in October 1991. Perhaps the Congressmen and directors were impressed by the recent addition of China to Hill and Knowlton’s prestigious portfolio of clients. (The firm’s clients, Indonesia and Turkey, were notably absent from the foundation’s 1990-91 list of human rights “activities.”)

Congress and the news media deserve censure for their lack of skepticism about the incubator story. As for Representatives Lantos and Porter, they deserve a medal from the Emir for their work on behalf of the Kuwaiti cause. But their special relationship with Hill and Knowlton should prompt a Congressional investigation to find out if their actions merely constituted an obvious conflict of interest or, worse, if they knew who the tearful Nayirah really was in October 1990.

source:

http://www.hbo.com/films/livefrombaghdad/related.shtml

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

How Bush Sr. Sold the Bombing of Iraq With Nayirah the 15-year-old Kuwaiti LIES

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

“What We Say, Goes!”

How Bush Sr. Sold the Bombing of Iraq With Nayirah the 15-year-old Kuwaiti LIES

by MITCHEL COHEN

“The U.S. has a new credibility. What we say goes.”

President George Bush, NBC Nightly News, Feb. 2, 1991

In October, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only as Nayirah, appeared in Washington before the House of Representatives’ Human Rights Caucus. She testified that Iraqi soldiers who had invaded Kuwait on August 2nd tore hundreds of babies from hospital incubators and killed them.

Television flashed her testimony around the world. It electrified opposition to Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, who was now portrayed by U.S. president George Bush not only as “the Butcher of Baghdad” but — so much for old friends — “a tyrant worse than Hitler.”

Bush quoted Nayirah at every opportunity. Six times in one month he referred to “312 premature babies at Kuwait City’s maternity hospital who died after Iraqi soldiers stole their incubators and left the infants on the floor,”(1) and of “babies pulled from incubators and scattered like firewood across the floor.” Bush used Nayirah’s testimony to lambaste Senate Democrats still supporting “only” sanctions against Iraq — the blockade of trade which alone would cause hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to die of hunger and disease — but who waffled on endorsing the policy Bush wanted to implement: outright bombardment. Republicans and pro-war Democrats used Nayirah’s tale to hammer their fellow politicians into line behind Bush’s war in the Persian Gulf.(2)

Nayirah, though, was no impartial eyewitness, a fact carefully concealed by her handlers. She was the daughter of one Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States. A few key Congressional leaders and reporters knew who Nayirah was, but none of them thought of sharing that minor detail with Congress, let alone the American people.

Everything Nayirah said, as it turned out, was a lie. There were, in actuality, only a handful of incubators in all of Kuwait, certainly not the “hundreds” she claimed. According to Dr. Mohammed Matar, director of Kuwait’s primary care system, and his wife, Dr. Fayeza Youssef, who ran the obstetrics unit at the maternity hospital, there were few if any babies in the incubators at the time of the Iraqi invasion. Nayirah’s charges, they said, were totally false. “I think it was just something for propaganda,” Dr. Matar said. In an ABC-TV News account after the war, John Martin reported that although “patients, including premature babies, did die,” this occurred “when many of Kuwait’s nurses and doctors stopped working or fled the country” — a far cry from Bush’s original assertion that hundreds of babies were murdered by Iraqi troops.(3) Subsequent investigations, including one by Amnesty International, found no evidence for the incubator claims.

It is likely that Nayirah was not even in Kuwait, let alone at the hospital, at that time; the Kuwaiti aristocracy and their families had fled the country weeks before the anticipated invasion. Some defended their country at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo, where at least one member of the ruling family was reported to have gambled away more than $10 million as his fellow rulers called for economic and military assistance from abroad.

As invasions go, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was relatively — I stress the word “relatively” — bloodless. Despite the heart-rending testimonies TV viewers in the U.S. were subjected to night after night, fewer than 200 Kuwaitis were killed. Compare that to such “peaceful” ventures as the U.S. invasion of Panama the year before, which killed an estimated 7,500 Panamanians; or, a year after the Gulf war, the 10,000 Somalis killed by <U.S./U.N>. troops in what was portrayed as a “peace mission” to bring food aid to the allegedly starving region.(4)

How did Nayirah first come to the attention of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which put her before the world’s cameras? It was arranged by Hill & Knowlton, a public relations firm hired to rally the U.S. populace behind Bush’s policy of going to war. And it worked!

Hill & Knowlton’s yellow ribbon campaign to whip up support for “our” troops, which followed their orchestration of Nayirah’s phony “incubator” testimony, was a public relations masterpiece. The claim that satellite photos revealed that Iraq had troops poised to strike Saudi Arabia was also fabricated by the PR firm. Hill & Knowlton was paid between $12 million (as reported two years later on “60 Minutes”) and $20 million (as reported on “20/20″) for “services rendered.” The group fronting the money? Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a phony “human rights agency” set up and funded entirely by Kuwait’s emirocracy to promote its interests in the U.S.

“When Hill & Knowlton masterminded the Kuwaiti campaign to sell the Gulf War to the American public, the owners of this highly effective propaganda machine were residing in another country” — the United Kingdom — writes Sharon Beder and Richard Gosden in PR Watch. “Should this give pause for thought? Does it demonstrate a certain potential for the future exercise of global political power — the power to manipulate democratic political processes through managing public opinion,” which Hill and Knowlton demonstrated 10 years ago?(5)

All of this is concealed in a new HBO “behind-the-scenes true story” of the Gulf War, which is being released at this crucial political moment. As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting writes, “HBO’s version of history never makes clear that the incubator story was fraudulent, and in fact had been managed by an American PR firm, not Iraq. Curiously, however, the truth seems to have been clear to Robert Wiener, the former CNN producer who co-wrote ‘Live from Baghdad.’As he explained to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (11/21/02), ‘that story turned out to be false because those accusations were made by the daughter of the Kuwaiti minister of information and were never proven.’ Unfortunately, HBO viewers won’t know that when they see the film.”(6)

In 1998, Hill and Knowlton found a new client — President Clinton — who hired them to advise him and to polish his image. The last time they were involved, by the time their lies were exposed TV newscasters were waxing ecstatic over the rockets’ red glare, computerized “smart-bombs” bursting in air, and 250,000 people were dead.

Mitchel Cohen is the co-editor of Green Politix, the national newspaper of the Greens/Green Party USA. He can be reached at: mitchelcohen@mindspring.com

NOTES

1. Doug Ireland, Village Voice, March 26, 1991.

2. The use of the Big Lie to manipulate public opinion and neutralize opposition to a particular war was not invented by Bush. See, for instance, James Laxer, “Iraq: US has match, seeks kindle: American leaders have often falsified reasons to attack other countries,” (ActionGreens, Mar. 31, 2001). Laxer is a Political Science Professor at York University, Toronto.

3. ABC World News Tonight, 3/15/91.

4. In actuality, people in only certain areas of Somalia were starving — those that had been subjected to IMF structural adjustment programs. See, Mitchel Cohen, “Somalia & the Cynical Manipulation of Hunger,” Red Balloon Collective, 1994.

5. Sharon Beder and Richard Gosden, “PR Watch,” Volume 8, No. 2, 2nd Quarter 2001. The PR firm has since been working at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry to ban over-the-counter vitamin and nutritional supplement sales in Europe.

6. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, “HBO Recycling Gulf War Hoax?” December 4, 2002.

source:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen1228.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

How MEMRI fooled the U.S Media with its Mickey Mouse Translation

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

How MEMRI fooled the U.S Media with its Mickey Mouse Translation

How easy was it for MEMRI to fool so many of the US media outlets with its translation of a children program on Hamas TV, where a child was supposedly have said the words “ we will annihilate the Jews”

It was very easy!

The controversy was fueled further when CNN decided to yank the video off the air because of major translation errors on part of MEMRI.

First let me just say that I reviewed the Arabic version of the MEMERI clip which looked discontinuous and disjointed because the context of the conversation in the show did not seem to be coherent. However, at the bottom of this page you will find my corrections of MEMERI translation errors.

The inflammatory words MEMRI blasted the US media with were when the young caller “Sanable” was supposed to have said “we will annihilate the Jews” were not even mentioned by the caller or by anyone else in that clip.

“Sanable actually said “The Jews are shooting us” which is entirely different word and different meaning and which makes me wonder as to where in the world the words “we will annihilate the Jews come from”

Was MEMRI actually playing verbal gymnastics? Yes indeed.
The issue here is not simply some error in the translation of this word or that, but actually making new words up and putting them in the mouth of that child to show defamatory evidence against the Palestinians.

MEMERI which stands for Middle East Media Research Institute was established by former Israeli intelligence agents, the Mossad, to police Arabic media for any evidence of anti-Israeli rhetoric.

Yegal… head of MEMRI was interviewed on CNN’S Glen Beck on his radio show and assured Beck that he stands by his translation and blasted CNN’s Arabic desk and Octavia Nasr head of the desk for uncovering the forgery by claiming that CNN’s Arabic desk do not know Arabic and they are “ hiding” while he is on the other hand out there ready and willing to debate and challenge anyone for his version of the translation.

In my professional opinion, MEMRI’s “translation” is not credible and flat out forgery.

Translation is not simply transferring words from language A to language B, it involves however much more than that. It involves advanced knowledge of the culture, religious references, historical past and political history and knowledge of the subtleties of the language and its usage in different situations by different people.

Here is MEMRI’s transcripts and my corrections are in black letters.

Host Saraa, a young girl: Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque? How will you sacrifice your soul for the sake of Al-Aqsa? What will you do?

Sanabel, young girl on phone: I will shoot.

( It is rather Mickey’s character speaking the words and hand gestures “ I will shoot” Not Sanable the young girl on the phone)

Farfour, a Mickey Mouse character in a tuxedo: Sanabel, what should we do if we want to liberate…

Sanable: We want to fight. (The word used was we want to resist, not to fight the reference here is to resist the Israeli occupation.

Farfour: We got that. What else?

Saraa: We want to…

Sanabel: We will annihilate the Jews. Actually she is saying: (the Jews are shooting us)

Saraa:We are defending Al-Aqsa with our souls and our blood, aren’t we, Sanabel?

Sanabel: I will commit martyrdom.

Sanabel actually said “ I’ll be a martyr” ( as in to die for my country, and the reason for that because from a cultural and Islamic religious point of view and law, to be a martyr, one has to have died defending his family, property, religion and country,although the child does not all of this, however the usage of the Arabic version of the word Martyr, carries in it those references. and not to “ commit” the word used in MEMRI translation to indicate action and/or planning. This point was elaborated further by YegaL head of MEMRI on Beck’s show by saying that the child meant “ committing suicide bombing”

Farfour: We’ve said more than once that becoming masters of the world requires the following: First, to be happy with our Arabic language, which once upon a time ruled this world. (Excellency in the world, not Mastery of the world two totally different meanings)

Saraa: Of course.

Farfour: Second… or maybe that’s it?

Adult host: Farfour, I heard you talking in English.

Farfour: Yes. How are you, Saraa? I hope to be good time.

Saraa: What’s with you, Farfour? Why are talking this way? Didn’t we agree to talk in literary Arabic? (Standard Arabic not literary Arabic)

Farfour: But Saraa, this is the language of the advanced world, the language of the world that understands and invents things, isn’t it?

Saraa: No, Farfour, you are wrong, because you don’t know that the Muslims are the basis of civilization. If not for the Muslims, the world wouldn’t have got to where it is today.
[...]

Farfour: My dear youngsters, we’re back. We always miss seeing you on your weekly program “The Pioneers of Tomorrow,” in which we are placing together the cornerstone for the ruling of the world by an Islamic leadership.

In the distant past the Islamic empire was a world power so the allusion was to a world where Muslims were a powerful and advanced nation, hence the references to Arabic language, the advanced western world,excellency in standard Arabic language, Islamic civilization. So clearly the context here was more educational to the children to instill a sense of pride of one’s culture and glorious history. And despite references for “resisting” the occupation, and “ I’ll die for my country, which in my opinion do not find highly unusual for an occupied and traumatized society such as the Palestinian society.Although it sounds here that Farfour is vowing for Islamic leadership of the world, but he actually was referring to a glorious Islamic past when Arabic was a universal language of medicine,philosophy and sciences.
One cannot be objective and say that this show is a representative of the Palestinian society any more than any right wing televangelist American who calls for “dropping a nuclear bomb on the state department or calling for the assassination of a president of another country and say that such outrageous statements are representative of the American people or culture

source:

http://alialarabicolumn.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-memeri-fooled-us-media.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Dictatorsip : Bush Administration Says Warrantless Eavesdropping Cannot Be Questioned

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

US Dictatorsip : Bush Administration Says Warrantless Eavesdropping Cannot Be Questioned

By David Kravets August 13, 2007 | 2:04:48 PMCategories: NSA

The Bush administration said Monday the constitutionality of its warrantless electronic eavesdropping program cannot be challenged.

The government is taking that position in seeking the dismissal of federal court lawsuits against the government and AT&T over its alleged involvement in the once-secret surveillance program adopted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The strategy was first recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a McCarthy-era lawsuit. It has been increasingly invoked in a bid to shield the government from legal scrutiny.

Two senior Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in a teleconference with reporters, reiterated the administration’s position that it was invoking the so-called “state secrets privilege” in arguing that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must dismiss the cases because they threaten to expose information authorities say is essential to the nation’s security.

“The case cannot be litigated in light of the national security interest involved,” one official said.

The officials spoke on the condition that their names would not be published because, they said, it was the government’s protocol not to comment on pending litigation.

The Bush administration has invoked the state secrets defense often, from spy cases and patent disputes to employment discrimination litigation.

Still, two judges have ruled recently that the defense does not apply in two lawsuits challenging Bush’s surveillance program. President Bush acknowledged in 2005 that the government was eavesdropping without warrants on communications in the United States as long as one of the parties to the communication was suspected of terrorism and outside the United States.

On Wednesday, the government will urge the San Francisco-based appeals court to dismiss the case on grounds that the case could expose state secrets, the justice department officials said.

“In our view, those claims should always be dismissed,” a senior administration official said. “A year from now, a director of national intelligence, looking at all of the same information, may not make the same determination.”

The official added: “These are legal principals not simply being made up by the executive.”

The officials also said that the lawsuits should also be tossed because the plaintiffs have no direct proof they were spied on.

“We cannot confirm or deny whether or not that’s true,” one of the officials said.

Earlier this month, Congress sanctioned warrantless eavesdropping with new legislation, which is also under attack on allegations such electronic surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirements. The new law requires that at least one of the parties to the communication be outside of the United States and associated with terrorism.

source:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/bush-administ-1.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Can we really separate Judaism from Zionism?

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Can we really separate Judaism from Zionism?

Ibrahim Alloush

Any which way you look at it, Judaism and Zionism cannot be really separated from one another. Zionism is not a misinterpretation of Judaism, it is rather the distilled essence of mainstream Judaism. When Marx shredded Judaism to pieces in his On the Jewish Question, the term ‘Zionism’ wasn’t even in circulation. Marx considered Judaism, as representative of what he called the ‘practical Jew’, a parasitic predatory ideology that befits capitalism in its decaying phase.

Indeed, Judaism is the culture of parasitic predation that was incubated in the isolation of Ghettos. It’s also marked by its supra-national character, sniffing down upon any national allegiance. Hence, it’s no wonder that globalism brought with it the globalization of the Hollowcause as a post-modern secular fetish. Globalization is essentially about the hegemony of non-productive financial capital, and usury, so globalization meant that the world was also turning Jewish. It’s also no wonder that anti-Judaism, as secular anti-Zionism or as anti-Jewish religious fundamentalism (be it Christian or Muslim) has become a staple of national liberation movements worldwide.

As Arabs, we cannot be unaware of the fact that the two basic tenets of Zionism are to be found in Judaism. The concept of ‘divine promise’ where Yahweh allegedly doles out our Arab Palestine to the Jew is the first of these tenets justifying the usurpation of Palestine . The second of these tenets is of course the concept of ‘chosen people’ where the Jew is granted privilege over the goyim, that is, non-Jews.

Israel Shahak in his Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the Weight of Three Thousand Years provided ample evidence showing how the brutality practiced by occupation forces and Jewish colonists against Palestinian Arabs was sanctioned by religious law from Rabbis on the basis of scriptures calling for the abuse and mistreatment of the goyim.

For more on this, please go to:

Zionism and Judaism: Jewish law and relations with non-Jews
http://www.freearab voice.org/ articles/ JewishLawAndRela tionsWithNonJews .htm

Therefore, one truly cannot possibly separate Judaism and Zionism, especially if one is Palestinian Arab. And more and more, the two cannot be separated if you’re a world citizen being engulfed by globalism, that is, the hegemony of non-productive capitalistic exploitation, therefore, Jewish mores.

Consequently, ‘anti-Zionism’ should be left to the politically- correct, because being truly anti-Zionist necessarily entails being anti-Judaic.

Moreover, it’s true that anyone, Jewish or not, who supports the right of ” Israel ” to exist, and who justifies the power of Jewish elites in his country or worldwide is essentially pro-Zionist. It’s also true that there would have been imperialism even if there were no Zionism, and that Zionism would not have thrived so well without imperialism. Yet all that does not affect the main point here which is that Zionism and Judaism cannot possibly be separated from one another.

source:

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2007/0807/alloush_140807.htm

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 13 August 2007

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 13 August 2007

Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.

• Resistance mortars batter “Green Zone” early Monday.
• Shi‘i sectarian torture, murder spree continues: 17 bodies found dumped in various parts of Baghdad Sunday.
• Resistance bomb destroys US Humvee near al-Miqdadiyah Sunday night, Americans respond by destroying villagers’ houses.
• Puppet policeman gunned down in as-Suwayrah Monday morning.
• Provincial puppet police general dies of heart attack following multiple bombing that killed puppet governor and police chief of ad-Diwaniyah.
• US aircraft raid area near al-Musayyib Sunday night.
• US artillery pounds villages near al-Miqdadiyah Sunday night.
• Resistance bomb destroys US Humvee near al-Miqdadiyah Sunday night, Americans respond by destroying villagers’ houses.
• Resistance bomb kills five puppet “Iraqi Border Guards” Sunday evening.
• Mysterious mortar attack kills three civilians in northern Baghdad Sunday evening.
• US carries out raids, strikes in Baghdad’s Madinat ath-Thawrah district.
• Resistance mortars batter “Green Zone” early Monday.

Baghdad.
Resistance mortars batter “Green Zone” early Monday.

In a dispatch posted at 10:56am Baghdad time Monday morning, the Aswat al-‘Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that three mortar shells blasted into the top-security area that the Americans have set up around the Republican Palace in downtown Baghdad – the area they have dubbed the “Green Zone.”

Aswat al-‘Iraq reported a source in the puppet police, who asked not to be identified, as saying that the attack took place Monday morning near the al-Qadisiyah residential area in the “Green Zone.” The source said that the attack was early in the morning and therefore inflicted no casualties among civilians, but sirens wailed and the entrances to the “Green Zone” from al-Karradah were closed for a time.

The source offered no further information and the US military issued no report on the attack.

US carries out raids, strikes in Baghdad’s Madinat ath-Thawrah district.

In a dispatch posted at 12:08pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported the US as claiming that its aircraft had killed between three and five “terrorists” and that American forces had captured 13 “suspects” in the Madinat ath-Thawrah section of Baghdad at dawn Monday. The Madinat ath-Thawrah district has been nicknamed “Madinat as-Sadr” since the US invasion of Iraq in spring 2003.

The AMSI reported an American announcement as saying that a US aircraft first attacked a car and then ground troops carried out raids and rounded up people on the ground in the area. The operation was reportedly targeted on an arms trader linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard the “Jerusalem Force.”

The Americans claimed that the “suspects” they had captured were believed to transport weapons and people from Iran to Iraq. The US reported capturing a computer, photographs, and documents during their raid.

Shi‘i sectarian torture, murder spree continues: 17 bodies found dumped in various parts of Baghdad Sunday.

In a dispatch posted at 11:17am Baghdad time Monday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the puppet police recovered the bodies of 17 more victims of sectarian murder that had been dumped in various parts of Baghdad on Sunday.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet police as saying that the bodies were bound and blindfolded and bore signs of torture – a trademark of the Shi‘i sectarian militias and the US-backed security forces whose members are drawn from those sectarian militias.

Mysterious mortar attack kills three civilians in northern Baghdad Sunday evening.

In a dispatch posted at 11:17am Baghdad time Monday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that several mortar rounds of unknown origin landed in a residential area near the passport office in the al-Qahirah neighborhood of northern Baghdad on Sunday evening.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet police as saying that the mysterious attack killed three civilians and wounded 15 more. Several houses were also damaged. Ambulances and rescue teams arrived and the victims were taken to nearby hospitals.

Salah ad-Din Province.
Yathrib.

Puppet police official’s home blown up.

In a dispatch posted at 1:42pm Baghdad time Monday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that Iraqi Resistance fighters blew up the home of the puppet police academy for Salah ad-Din Province in the Yathrib area, 70km north of Baghdad, on Monday morning.

The AMSI reported that Resistance men demolished the house belonging to Colonel ‘Isam al-‘Azzawi, the director of the puppet police academy. The blast heavily damaged the building but caused no human casualties.

Resistance attacks target puppet police Monday morning.

In a dispatch posted at 1:42pm Baghdad time Monday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that Iraqi Resistance fighters abducted Sha ‘lan ‘Ali Karim, the Director of the Tigris River area to the south of Tikrit, on Monday morning.

The AMSI reported that Resistance men also killed a puppet policeman in the Tigris River area south of Tikrit on Monday morning.

Diyala Province.
Naft Khanah.

Resistance bomb kills five puppet “Iraqi Border Guards” Sunday evening.

In a dispatch posted at 6:44pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a patrol of the puppet “Iraqi Border Guards” in the Naft Khanah area, 150km northeast of Baghdad on the Iranian border, Sunday evening.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported Brigadier General Talzan Sharif of the puppet forces as saying that five border guards were killed, including a major. Three more of the guards were wounded in the attack, which took place on the main road in the area.
Qara Tabbah.

Puppet police attacked Sunday night.

In a dispatch posted at 12:14pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that armed men attacked a puppet police patrol on the road from Qarah Tabbah to Jalawla’, about 120km northeast of Baghdad on Sunday night.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet security forces as saying that fighting raged between the armed men and the puppet police near the village of Abu Darraj. Several of the armed men were wounded, the source claimed, and others arrested. The source asserted that there were no casualties among the puppet police.

As-Sa‘diyah.

Bombings target puppet police, official.

In a dispatch posted at 12:14pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that armed men planted a bomb near the home of a puppet policeman in the town of as-Sa‘diyah, 155km northeast of Baghdad, near the Iranian border, damaging the house.

The AMSI reported that armed men planted a bomb under the vehicle of a member of the puppet municipal council near as-Sa‘diyah. The car was parked outside the puppet councliman’s house in the village of al-‘Asakirah when it was destroyed by the explosion

Al-Miqdadiyah.

Resistance bomb destroys US Humvee near al-Miqdadiyah Sunday night, Americans respond by destroying villagers’ houses.

In a dispatch posted at 1:31pm Baghdad time Monday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol near the al-Jazirah area in the vicinity of al-Miqdadiyah, 85km northeast of Baghdad late Sunday night.

The AMSI reported that the attack occurred when the Americans were entering the ‘Arab Jabbur villages area. One Humvee was destroyed and its crew were wounded. Witnesses reported that a US Medevac helicopter landed on the scene and evacuated the wounded to the US base in the city.

The American troops then destroyed a number of villagers’ houses that happened to be near the scene of the attack.

US artillery pounds villages near al-Miqdadiyah Sunday night.

In a dispatch posted at 12:08pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that US forces in their base north of al-Miqdadiyah, which is 85km north of Baghdad, bombarded several locations in the area of the ‘Arab Jabbur villages on Sunday night.

The AMSI reported local residents as saying that US forces occupying what was the headquarters of the Iraqi Army’s 2^nd Corps before the American invasion fired more than 15 artillery rounds at their villages, damaging fields and homes. Fortunately there were no casualties.

Babil Province.
Al-Musayyib.

Resistance bomb wounds puppet policeman Sunday night.

In a dispatch posted at 12:14pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a puppet police patrol in the al-Musayyib district, 70km south of Baghdad, on Sunday night.

AMSI reported a source in the puppet “Scorpion Brigade” as saying that the blast occurred in the al-Hamiyah area and wounded one puppet policemen and damaged a patrol vehicle.

US aircraft raid area near al-Musayyib Sunday night.

In a dispatch posted at 12:08pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that US aircraft attacked the oil pipeline area near al-Musayyib, 70km south of Baghdad, on Sunday night.

The AMSI reported a source in the Babil Province puppet police as saying that the attack ignited a fire in the area, but said that as of the time of reporting the nature and extent of casualties, if any, were still unknown.

Al-Qadisiyah Province.
Ad-Diwaniyah.

Provincial puppet police general dies of heart attack following multiple bombing that killed puppet governor and police chief of ad-Diwaniyah.

In a dispatch posted at 12:14pm Baghdad time midday Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that an official with the puppet Provincial Police and former puppet police chief of ad-Diwaniyah, 180km south of Baghdad, had died of a heart attack just days after the governor and current puppet police chief in ad-Diwaniyah were killed in a multiple bomb attack in the city.

The AMSI reported that Staff Major General Sadiq Ja‘far died on Sunday night. Major General Ja‘far Sadiq was appointed chief of the puppet police in ad-Diwaniyah four months ago and commanded the “security operations” two months ago. He was then appointed to the provincial puppet police administration and replaced as police chief in ad-Diwaniyah by Major General Khalid Hasan who was killed along with the governor on Saturday, 11 August.

Wasit Province.
As-Suwayrah.

Puppet policeman gunned down in as-Suwayrah Monday morning.

In a dispatch posted at 1:42pm Baghdad time Monday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that Iraqi Resistance fighters killed a puppet policeman in the as-Suwayrah area, 50km south of Baghdad, on Monday morning.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet security forces as saying that Rahman az-Zubaydi was killed instantly in the attack.

At-Ta’mim Province.
Kirkuk.

Unexplained attacks in Kirkuk.

In a dispatch posted at 1:42pm Baghdad time Monday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that a bomb exploded on al-Kurnish Stret near the Gharnatah Bridge in Kirkuk, 255km north of Baghdad, on Sunday night.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet police as saying that the blast wounded two civilians who were hospitalized for treatment.

Meanwhile a mortar shell exploded opposite the puppet police station in the ‘Arafah area of Kirkuk Sundy evening, wounding a civilian.

A source in the puppet police also reported Monday that unknown armed men shot and killed Shaykh Muhain ‘Abdallah Hasan as-Sabil, the Shaykh of the al-Bu al-Baqazat tribe, one of the al-Jabbur tribes, in the village of Shablah in the az-Zab area. The Shaykh’s daughter and brother were also wounded in the attack.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2007/0807/iraqiresistancereport_130807.htm

Sources:

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=52593&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=52541&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1&ALStart=20

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18894&c050ccc93c2b88b97328359ed6ebe376

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18893&09511c2b3861388d366ccdf096d2bb8d

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18885&9952c6f6988b8889395e2b5567af170e

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18884&d264693f561b74f0ae142aadaf070049

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18882&59b5b40537039bb74998d373abf13ef0

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18874&32a9f850a74b8cbf1870ce4c06df57d3

http://www.qudspress.com/look/sarticle.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22778&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3

http://www.qudspress.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22752&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3

http://www.qudspress.com/look/sarticle.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22768&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.qudspress.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22751&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49107

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49102

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49101

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49093

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49085

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49061


http://www.freearabvoice.org

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?header=res1&mod=gis&rep=rep

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