‘Last Friday I was at the University of Texas, Austin,
giving a presentation on Iraq. After dumping an hour's worth of horrible
"real news" about Iraq, I was asked the question I have by now learnt
to expect: "Is there anything good happening there at all?" I
understand why people ask this. There must be some hope, somewhere, right? 

I suggested that there are always
the military press releases folks can go to, for an "upper" about
Iraq. Here I recounted one of these bogus "news" reports. Released
during my second stint in Iraq, a report of May 21, 2004, stated: "The
Coalition Provisional Authority has recently given out hundreds of soccer balls
to Iraqi children in Ramadi, Karbala, and Hilla. Iraqi women from Hilla sewed
the soccer balls, which are emblazoned with the phrase, All of Us Participate
in a New Iraq."’

All Of Us Participate In
A New Iraq

Cindy Sheehan has done more than
anyone to turn the tide of opinion against the war in Iraq. Cindy created
headlines when she camped outside President Bush's ranch last year to demand a
meeting with Mr Bush to ask him what noble cause her son had died for. She
didn't get her meeting, but she did galvanise opposition to the war among
Americans. 

Cindy is visiting Australia this
month to speak at the Unity for Peace national conference. She will make one -
and only one - public appearance in Sydney, alongside Salam Ismael, an Iraqi
doctor. 

Please note that will be
contacting Cindy to see if she can mention the plight of David Hicks while in
Australia. 

Don't miss your chance to hear
these inspiring speakers spread the message of peace.

- Cindy Sheehan and Dr Salam Ismael

- 7pm Tuesday May 23

- The Seymour Centre [corner of City Rd and Cleveland
St], Sydney University

-

Tickets $20/$12.

-

Phone 9351 7940 during business hours

For more information: Phone Jarvis on 0404 015 789 or
visit www.stopwarcoalition.org/news/news_items.php?shownews=1607 

Sponsored by Stop The War
Coalition; Medical Association for the Prevention of War; Centre for Peace
& Conflict Studies, University of Sydney.

‘What did the Berlusconi
government get in return for providing the Bush administration with a
convenient "smoking gun" to attack Iraq? At the end of the yellowcake
trail may be the prestigious contract an Italian firm won to manufacture Marine
One -- the fleet of presidential helicopters. In January 2005, the U.S. Navy
awarded the contract for the construction of 23 new Marine One helicopters to
AgustaWestland. Marketing itself as an Anglo-Italian firm, AgustaWestland is
wholly owned by Finmeccanica, Italy's largest defense conglomerate. 

The choice of AgustaWestland for
Marine One surprised most industry observers because U.S.-based Sikorsky
Aircraft Corp. was the heavy favorite. Sikorsky patented the first helicopter
design in 1939 and built virtually every president's helicopter since 1957.
President Eisenhower regularly flew in a Sikorsky to his Gettysburg farm, and
the Sikorsky that Nixon boarded when he resigned from the White House is now
being restored for permanent display at the Nixon Library.’ 

Italian
Pay-off From Niger Forgery? 

meanwhile, in another part
of gothic city …..
 

‘The debunking of the
"mobile biolabs" claim began in classified reports long before the
U.S. invasion, when German intelligence in 2001 and 2002 told U.S. officials
that the story's source, an Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball,"
was unreliable, official investigations later found. U.N. inspectors determined
in early 2003, before the war, that parts of Curveball's story were false…. 

Testing the equipment in early
May 2003, U.S. experts found no traces of biological agents, and later that
month the U.S. fact-finders filed their negative report from Baghdad. But on
May 29, Bush assured Polish television: "We found the weapons of mass
destruction. We found biological laboratories." Then national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell later made similar
statements. As late as January 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney called the
trailers "conclusive evidence" of Iraqi WMD, one of the reasons given
for invading Iraq. The experts' findings were classified, never to be released,
The Washington Post reported last month.’ 

Smoke
Alarm: Yet More Evidence Of War Crimes

‘A Pentagon report on an incident
in Haditha, Iraq, where U.S. Marines shot and killed more than a dozen Iraqi
civilians last November will show that those killings were deliberate and worse
than initially reported, a Pennsylvania congressman said Wednesday.

"There was no firefight. There was no IED (improvised explosive device)
that killed those innocent people," Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said during a
news conference on Iraq. "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure
on them. And they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. That is what the
report is going to tell."’ 

Pentagon Report
Said To Find Killing Of Iraqi Civilians Deliberate

‘US foreign policy in the Middle East manifests itself
most starkly in its impact on the children of Iraq. It is they who continue to
pay with their lives and futures for the brutal follies of our administration.
Starvation under sanctions, and death and suffering during war and occupation
are their lot. Since the beginning of the occupation, Iraqi children have been
affected worst by the violence generated by the occupying forces and the
freedom fighters.’

Easily Dispensable:
Iraq's Children

‘The Bush Regime has killed tens of thousands of people in
Iraq and Afghanistan, mainly women and children. The deaths are excused as
unintended "collateral damage" of the ongoing war, but the deaths are
nonetheless important to the tens of thousands of relatives and friends. An
equally important casualty of the Bush Regime is truth. 

The American public has been
trained to obediently accept their government’s lies fed to them by their
government’s handmaiden, the US Media. No statement or claim by a Bush Regime
Official is too outlandish to be received with acceptance. Consider the
claim by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary for War and Aggression, made to
the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on May 17, that Iran was to
blame for the instability in Iraq. 

Did the senators laugh Rumsfeld
out of the room? No. 

Did the media remind the
"informed public" that it was actually the US invasion and
unsuccessful occupation, together with mass detentions, torture, slaughter of
citizens and invasions of their homes, destruction of infrastructure and entire
cities, such as Fallujah, and removal of Saddam Hussein’s government, which
kept the three Iraqi factions from each other’s throats, that destabilized
Iraq? Needless to say, no. 

The only person in the Senate
committee room who spoke the truth called Rumsfeld a liar and was hauled off by
the police.’ 

The Administration
That Won’t Stop Lying

‘"We have
now reached a turning point." says George Bush, celebrating the formation
of a "unity" government (not united enough, however, to fill the key
posts of security and defence.) 

There have
been so many of Bush's "turning points" in Iraq that we don't have
space to list them all here. Examples are: the bringing down of Saddam
Hussein's statue in Baghdad in April 2003; the capture of Saddam in December
2003; the killing of his sons in July 2003; the "handover of
sovereignty" to a provisional Iraqi government in June 2004; the national
assembly elections in January 2005; the adoption of an Iraqi constitution in
October 2005; the start of Saddam's trial in December 2005; the parliamentary
election the same month; and now, in May 2006, the announcement of a
"unity" government, which, in the words of Tony Blair, is a "new
beginning" that will allow Iraqis "to take charge of
their own destiny".

Meanwhile, the
United Nations reports that in the last two months alone, 2500 Iraqis have
suffered violent deaths and over 85,000 have been have been forced to flee
their homes Iraq:
2,500 killed, 85,000 Displaced In Two Months 

If you listen
to Bush and Blair, the worse it gets, the better it is.

The reality is
that they have achieved the impossible in Iraq. In the words of Iraqi Anas Al-
Tikriti, "Not only have they managed to contribute to a climate in which
human rights can be violated in far worse ways than they were under Saddam's
Ba'athist regime, they have actually driven Iraqis, all Iraqis, into openly
stating that life was much better under Saddam, something that this writer,
like most Iraqis, never, ever imagined possible only a few years ago." A
House Divided

The "unity" government is the last throw of the dice for the US/UK
occupation. Their armies now spend almost all of their time protecting
themselves and the myth of "nation building" has been conclusively
exposed as the reverse of the truth.

The idea that a sovereign and independent government is now established in Iraq
is nonsense. According to the New York Times, the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay
Khalilzad, was the "tireless midwife in the birthing of the new
government".

Nuri al-Malik, the latest US placeman to become prime minister, has wasted no
time in announcing what his American patrons want from him: he will use
"maximum force" to pacify a country which has become one of the least
safe places on the planet. Clearly, the idea is for Iraqis to exert
"maximum force" in killing each other, instead of the US army doing
the mass slaughter in person. 

Bush and
Blair's talk of occupation troops being withdrawn is a sham. They are hoping
they can command Iraqis to do more of the killing and being killed, which may
enable a cosmetic withdrawal of a small number of troops to give the impression
that Iraqis are taking "charge of their own destiny".

An ex-US
soldier, 20 year-old Jessie Macbeth, having returned from Iraq sickened by his
experiences, spells out in a truly shocking video what the "maximum
force" activities of the US army have entailed over the past three years.
It is essential viewing. Macbeth says, "We are the terrorists. We're the
ones terrorising a whole nation. I didn't sign up to kill women and children.
Occupation Iraqi Freedom is Operation Iraqi Slaughter."

This is what we need to recall when Tony Blair flies to Washington to meet
George Bush this week to rejoice over a "new beginning" for Iraq.
There will be nothing new in Iraq while a single foreign soldier continues to
occupy the country. 

There will
only be ever increasing levels of killing and chaos, which is all the Bush and
Blair war has brought to the Iraqi people.

Stop The War Coalition

‘The US military is bracing for a major scandal over the
alleged slaying of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha - charges so serious
they could threaten President Bush's effort to rally support at home for an
increasingly unpopular war. 

And while the case has attracted
little attention so far in Iraq, it still could enflame hostility to the US
presence just as Iraq's new government is getting established, and complicate
efforts by moderate Sunni Arab leaders to reach out to their community - the
bedrock of the insurgency. 

US lawmakers have been told the
criminal investigation will be finished in about 30 days. But a Pentagon
official said investigators believe Marines committed unprovoked murder in the
deaths of about two dozen people at Haditha in November. 

With a political storm brewing,
the top US Marine, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, is headed to Iraq to personally
deliver the message that troops should use deadly force "only when
justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."' 

US Braces For Marine
Scandal