Cyprus-Forum.com

[Get Real!]

US Berated for Shielding Israel on Gaza Killings

“A U.S. decision to stall Security Council action against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for war crimes during the 22-day conflict in Gaza last December has come under heavy fire both from inside and outside the United Nations.

Addressing the Security Council Wednesday, the chair of the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz of Egypt urged the powerful 15-member political body to "seriously consider and act upon the recommendations" of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.”

http://original.antiwar.com/deen/2009/1 ... -killings/

[Get Real!]

Has Italy Been Paying Off the Taliban?

Bribes May Have Played Role in Deadly August Ambush of French Troops

The Italian government reacted with outrage today following reports in the Times of London that the Italian government had been secretly paying off Taliban factions in the Sarobi region to keep them from attack Italian troops.

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/15/has- ... e-taliban/


Secret Italian Bribes to Taliban — Tip of the Iceberg?

When I was researching my recent piece on Taliban extortion rackets in Afghanistan, it was easy to find examples of the Taliban extorting private contractors hired by western governments and companies engaged in humanitarian and reconstruction projects. What was tricky was connecting payoffs to the Taliban by contractors who were moving supplies and food to U.S/NATO troops in the field. But the evidence is out there if you look hard enough — it’s just no one wants to talk about the possibility that we are paying off the enemy in order to maintain the occupation. It’s madness.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/10/15/ ... e-iceberg/

[Get Real!]

Obama in the footsteps of George W. Bush

“If we are an arrogant nation, they’ll view us that way but if we are a humble nation, they’ll respect us.”

President Barack Obama, the newly-minted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, speaking about U.S. engagement with the rest of the world, including anti-American leaders? No, the exhortation for superpower humbleness came from George W. Bush when he was running for president in 2000.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2 ... ge-w-bush/

[Get Real!]

Media Distortion: Killing Innocent Afghan Civilians to "Save Our Troops"

Eight Years of Horror Perpetrated agaisnt the people of Afghanistan

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=15665


Scroll to the end of this article to see pictures of horrendous American War Crimes.

[Get Real!]

A historian's account of Democrats and Bush-era war crimes

What made those detainee photographs so important from the start is that they depict brutal abuse well outside of the Abu Ghraib facility and thus reveal to Americans -- and the world -- that America's torture was not, as they've been constantly told, limited to rogue sadists at Abu Ghraib and the waterboarding of three bad guys. Instead, our torture regime was systematic, pervasive, brutal, fatal, and -- because it was the by-product of conscious policies set at the highest levels of government -- common across America's "War on Terror" detention regime.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

[Get Real!]

Who was it that doubted US sponsored trouble in Iran? Well, it looks like your criminal mates have switched sides again...


US cuts funding to Iran opposition

“In an apparent shift from the Bush administration's efforts to foster regime change in Iran by financing opposition groups, the Obama White House has all but dismantled the Iran Democracy Fund.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8315120.stm

[Get Real!]

Judge Refuses to Dismiss War Crimes Case Against Blackwater

“On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a series of arguments by lawyers for the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater seeking to dismiss five high-stakes war crimes cases brought by Iraqi victims against both the company and its owner, Erik Prince. At the same time, Judge T.S. Ellis III sent the Iraqis' lawyers back to the legal drawing board to amend and refile their cases, saying that the Iraqi plaintiffs need to provide more specific details on the alleged crimes before a final decision can be made on whether or not the lawsuits will proceed.”

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/scahill

[Get Real!]

Obama Every Bit as Bad as Bush/Cheney on Patriot Act

“As I have reported, the FBI is already writing our laws -- without going to any judge. How much have you seen about the FBI's locking up of the Fourth Amendment on cable and broadcast television (from the right- or the left-leaning stations) in newspapers, on the Internet or, of course, from the Democratic Congressional leadership, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, characteristically indifferent to the Bush-Cheney-Obama assaults on the Bill of Rights?”

http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/o ... atriot-act

[Free Spirit]

The Italian government reacted with outrage today following reports in the Times of London that the Italian government had been secretly paying off Taliban factions in the Sarobi region to keep them from attack Italian troops.

You can't attack what you can't keep up with when they're running away just like Get Real did in 74.

[RichardB]

Aiding and Abetting War Crimes
The Israeli military tested new weapons in Gaza with U.S. support.
By Frida Berrigan
On January 24, a piece of white phosphorus burns at the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) primary school in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. (Photo Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images.)
One woman described what happened after her arm was hit by burning white phosphorus: ‘It burnt a hole and melted everything.’ Share Facebook Digg del.icio.us Newsvine StumbleUpon Reddit TwitThis Furl Propeller “You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants.” That is how one Israeli soldier described Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) invasion of the Gaza Strip, which began in December 2008.

His is one of 54 testimonies collected by the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence in a 110-page report that paints a disturbing picture of urban warfare in one of the world’s most densely populated areas, where more than 1.5 million people occupy a narrow strip of land between Israel and the sea.

Another soldier, after recounting an incident in which his unit used civilians as human shields, described Gaza as a “moral twilight zone.”

It is an apt term for Gaza’s wholesale destruction: homes demolished by Caterpillar D9 bulldozers (manufactured in the United States and armored by Israeli Military Industries) and set afire by white phosphorus canisters (made by Pine Bluff Arsenal, a U.S. Army installation in Pine Bluff, Ark.). Save the Children, a U.K.-based NGO, estimated that more than 500,000 people were displaced during the war, and, a month after the ceasefire, 100,000 remained homeless. The Palestinian Economic Development Council puts a $1.9-billion price tag on rebuilding from the 22-day war. It noted that even under ideal circumstances the work could take five years.

The term also applies to the civilians killed: children cut down while playing, women and men killed as they tried to carry on their normal lives. Civilians were targeted by Cobra helicopters armed with high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) missiles (both made by Lockheed Martin), blasted by Strike missiles shot from Hermes drones (designed and manufactured in Israel) and caught in the crossfire as groups of soldiers advanced on firing militants. Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, says that of the 1,434 Palestinians killed in Gaza, 960 were civilians, including 121 women and 288 children.

Arms and dollars for the ‘moral twilight zone’
Israel—the largest recipient of U.S. military aid—has one of the most sophisticated and extensive military arsenals in the region. U.S.-origin weapons predominate and are an emblem of Washington’s close relationship with Tel Aviv. During George W. Bush’s presidency, Israel received more than $22 billion in military assistance from the United States. The bulk of this was in Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which are U.S. grants for weapons purchases. Now, FMF is on the rise. President Obama is following through on his predecessor’s promise to increase security assistance to $30 billion over the next 10 years.

In a review of the Gaza war published in February 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service listed U.S. weapons platforms used in Operation Cast Lead, including “F-15 and F-16 aircraft [and] Apache helicopters.” Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) list of the U.S. systems deployed by Israel is far more extensive, including Cobra helicopters and American-made High-Explosive, Dual-Purpose rockets and HEAT missiles.

In addition to these systems, human rights groups found evidence of Israel’s use of a wide array of controversial, experimental weapons systems.

White phosphorus
“Why fire phosphorus?” “Because it’s fun. Cool.“—Israeli soldier, to Breaking the Silence.

White phosphorus is designed to obscure the battlefield, increasing freedom of movement for the user. It can also be used as a weapon. The U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine notes that white phosphorous is “spontaneously flammable” and an “extremely toxic inorganic substance.” In Gaza, it was used to devastating effect used to burn down buildings. As one Israeli soldier told Breaking the Silence, “phosphorus was used as an igniter, simply to make it all go up in flames.”

One woman interviewed by HRW described what happened after she was hit by burning white phosphorus: “It burnt a hole and melted everything,” she said, pointing to her bandaged arm. The phosphorus ignites and burns on contact with oxygen, and continues burning until nothing is left or the oxygen supply is cut. According to medical personnel, the wounds sometimes began to burn again as they cleaned them.

In late January 2009, an Amnesty International investigation “found white phosphorus still smoldering in residential areas throughout Gaza days after the ceasefire came into effect on 18 January.” In the bombed courtyard of the Gaza headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, researchers found fragments of white phosphorus artillery shells and note that the “attack had caused a large fire, which destroyed tens of tons of humanitarian aid, including medicines, food and other non-food items.”

Deadly drones
Unlike much of Israeli military hardware, the Hermes and Heron drones are manufactured domestically, and both were used in Operation Cast Lead. In a joint assessment of Israeli drone attacks, B’Tselem, the Palestine Centre for Human Rights and Al Meza Centre for Human Rights found that Israel carried out 42 drone attacks in which 87 civilians were killed during the war.

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst with HRW, describes how precise and discriminate the drones can be: “Drone operators can clearly see their targets on the ground and also divert their missiles after launch.” In a study of six specific IDF drone attacks during Operation Cast Lead, HRW found that 29 civilians were killed, including 8 children. According to their study, 5 of the 6 attacks were carried out in broad daylight, all of them in civilian areas far from the fighting and in “unlikely sites for launching rockets into Israel.” Given the drones’ high degree of precision, HRW asserts that “these attacks violated international humanitarian law.”

New weapons testing
Human rights investigators, journalists and humanitarian workers were all barred from Gaza during the fighting, fueling confusion and speculation about what kinds of weapons systems were being used.

Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who worked in a Gaza hospital during the war, told “Democracy Now!” that “we have seen a substantial number of amputations where the amputees do not have shrapnel injuries. On the contrary, they have torn apart their legs, often one or two or even three limbs.” These injuries—new, terrible and seemingly shrapnel-free—have led to the hypothesis that Israel has been using what are known as Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), a type of weapon that is still in testing phase in the United States.

“It is highly likely that Israel has developed its own version of DIME,” writes journalist David Hambling on the national security blog Danger Room. The “Iron Fist” interceptor, unveiled by the Israeli military in 2006, works in a way that is consistent with DIME technology. As Hambling writes in the online magazine Defense Update, the Iron Fist “uses only the blast effect to defeat the threat, crushing the soft components of a shaped charge or deflecting and destabilizing the missile or kinetic rod in their flight.”

Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera surveyed the damage wrought by these weapons and concluded, “The kinds of weapons used and the manner in which they were used indicates prima facie evidence of war crimes.”

War crimes?
Months after Operation Cast Lead, countless questions about the conduct of the IDF and the weapons used in Gaza remain unanswered. Gathering incontrovertible evidence and making solid conclusions is a critical part of post-conflict reconstruction. But given the kind of investigations that have been carried out thus far, that sort of closure seems out of reach for the people of Gaza.

The IDF carried out five of its own investigations, concluding that it “operated in accordance with international law” and that the small number of questionable incidents that did occur were “unavoidable and occur in all combat situations.”

HRW deems these investigations “not credible” and has called on the Israeli government to cooperate with a comprehensive UN investigation led by the former chief prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Richard Goldstone. Thus far, Israel has opted not to participate.

And the United States—Israel’s closest ally and largest supporter—has refused to push Israel to cooperate. It seems the “moral twilight zone” extends beyond Gaza, all the way to Washington.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/474 ... war_crimes