Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq MHRI

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

Fellow Shiites are not the only ones disturbed by the fighting; a delegation from Anbar Province, which is almost entirely Sunni, made the long and dangerous journey to Sadr City on Monday to show solidarity with the poor Shiite community. As American helicopter gunships barraged nearby neighborhoods and people ran inside to take shelter, representatives of influential Sunni tribes, including the Janabi and Hebi, stood shoulder to shoulder with distinguished Shiite tribal leaders in Sadr City.

Ali al-Hebi, 40, said, “The people in Sadr city are like our families, and we are worried about them.”

“We must find a solution for them, and we advise them to not repeat our story in Falluja,” he added. “The loss of any blood is forbidden, according to our religion as Muslims, and if we do not help them, we will be responsible before history for what will happen here.”

The sheiks’ visit was reminiscent of a similar journey by Shiites in 2004, organized by followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Al -Sadar. They gathered food and supplies and brought them to Sunnis in Falluja who were besieged by American forces at the time.

Dr. Omar Al-Kubaisy, Baghdad:

Monday, May 5th, the Shu'la hospital in Karkh district was attacked. This hospital has been supporting a large popualtion in Shu'la city. There, the military operations and confrontations errupted between civilians in this neighborhood and the U.S. occupation and Iraqi forces under the banner of "eliminating the gangs of death and murder." Historically, I am unaware of military operations targeting civilian hospitals!! The doctors as well as the director were being humuliated and beaten by, what unjustly called, the Iraqi army. In fact, the director of the hospital, my colleague Yassin al-Rikabi, is essentially a doctor and a military officer in the marginalized (and not dissolved) Iraqi army.

Al-Jaafari read documents on assassinations carried out by the Tha'r-ullah Movement's Head in 2005 and used them as means to win secret alliance with him

Source : Basra- Baghdad-FATEHOON- Exclusive:

Nouri Al-Maliki Governmental Security authorities started preliminary proceedings to alleviate the embarrassment they felt after April, 17th, concerning the execution of the most powerful man of the Iranian intelligence in Basra Yosuf Sinnawy Mussawi, head of Tha'r-ullah Party which changed its name known in 2004 as  Tha'r-ullah Movement,  one of three movements infiltrated by Iran to control over Basra following the fall of the former Iraqi regime.

The other two movements, the Head of Martyrs Movement, headed by MP of the Iraqi Shiite coalition list, Dagher Jasim Kazem Mussawi, and the "God's Remaining believers" or the "Iraq Lions" movement. The latter is a false formation whose leaders not determined yet, though  it is linked to other two movements.

According to reliable sources, Al-Maliki first confrontation and rebellion was the execution of Sinawi  Mussawi, Iran's influential man in Basra, in its port and in its Board of Governors as well. That event took place day after Al-Maliki was surrounded by elements of Tha'r- ullah at operational headquarters in Basra, which is situated within  the presidential palace of former executed President Saddam Hussein, shortly before the arrival of the U.S. helicopters, which freed him out of the besiege and took him to Baghdad, according to the American ambassador Ryan Crocker then.

The sources also said that Al-Maliki found himself embarrassed following the execution of Sinawi  Mussawi before a number of his allies inside Iraq and some of his allies in Iran as well, as he neither declared clear justifications why he had executed one of the main allies of yesterday and part of the Shiite coalition forces in Basra nor talked about the real reasons that led him mandating his adviser Abu Mujahid Gati' Algra'awi to oversee the rapid investigation and execution. 

In light of that event, the security authorities declared they had on Sunday morning, May,4th 2008, detonated Tha'r- ullah Party Husseiniyah, after finding weapons therein, whereas the Husseiniyah' d been with U.S. Special Forces support raided and controlled over three weeks ago. The Husseiniyah  mentioned centre known as centre of  arresting and torturing those Basra original Arab citizens who reject the presence of Iranian therein lies opposite to the General Hospital of Basra, guarded by elements of the party who usually wore uniforms of police and special army forces and used  modern official cars without number plates.

The headquarters of Mussawi, near Andalusia post office contained, with the knowledge of all forces, heavy weapons over the past five years; as it wss equipped with 57 anti aircraft guns which had been already seized at the former Iraqi army's third Corps headquarters following the occupation of Basra. The headquarters contained rocket launchers and medium-range Katyusha rockets as well. The Tha'r- ullah Party had used their heavy weapons two years ago in clashes against the so-called 'backing troops' constituted by  the ruling Shiite parties which had backed  Al-Jaafari government, wherein one of Mussawi's brothers was killed.

A source in the Dawa Party so close to the Prime Minister's Office didclosed the fact that Al-Maliki decided to end the influence of Sinawi  Mussawi directly following the discovery- in the time of his  and his three brothers arrest- of documentations supporting a fact that he had held a key political alliance with his opponent Ibrahim al-Jaafari during the the latter visit to Basra in September 2005, where Al-Jaafari received and ignored security reports that on assassinations carried out by Sinawi  Mussawi against competencies, doctors, engineers and both Sunni & Shiite clerics in Basra. In stead, Jafari regarded those reports as important bargaining card as against him to ensure himself a strong political alliance in Basra through the mystic intelligence organization headed by Mussawi.

The source added Sinawy Mussawi attacked Al-Jaafari for letting him down and hysterically shouted, "Is this the reward for my  liquidation of the enemies of the Prophet's Household!". Mussawi, to whom offered a video recording found in his headquarters admitted that he had carried out 142 assassinations and special security tasks. During the investigation it appeared that three of Ali Al-Sistani's agents in Basra Mussawi had ordered to assassinate and videotaped the operations as well. He also admitted that a copy of photocopied documents were sent immediately to the Iranian intelligence (Itlaa't ), but he did not trust them, and thereby  retained copies of the documents without expecting that they might be used as evidence against him and bring him to a quick execution.

Mussawi, by  evident Iranian support and pressures in Basra, could  impose his secret organization composed of 32 elements previously trained inside Iran, in a separate formation away from the camps of Badr Corps. That organization thus was subject to Itlaa't  rather than  the Revolutionary Guards,  and then converted into a political party and entered the so-called 'the Five Shiite council' including the Supreme Council, Badr Corps, the Head of Martyrs Movement, the martyr of the Mihrab foundation run by Ammar, son of Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim.

In doing so he became a reserve member of Basra Governorate Council in 2005, representing the Islamist Shiite list, and was then accepted as original & influential member, where he obtained key positions in Khor Al-Zubair port. There he imposed one of his elements, named Salim Jabbar, who was directly linked to Itlaa't, as navigation director at Basra port, as well as other important positions, allowing him to oil smuggling Across Khor Al-Zubair .

It is worth noting that Yosuf Sinawi  Mussawi was a former fugitive of military service living at Abella region, north of Basra, where he was chased by the security forces of the former regime after following the liberation of Basra from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in March 1991, when he was proved of involvement in and the looting and liquidation operations during the fall of the city.

Azzaman newspaper, May 1, 2008

By Alaa al-Tameemi.  

In 1988, former leader Saddam Hussein gassed his own people in the city of Halabja. For the U.S. he was then seen as a ‘good boy’. Today, the power that helped Saddam build the same chemical weapons he dropped on Halabja is reported to be carrying out a repeat of his crimes.

That is the impression several Iraqi members of parliament had following a fact finding mission of the Sadr City in Baghdad which the U.S. occupation troops have been bombarding and encircling for weeks.

“The aerial bombardment and military operations the U.S. is carrying out in Sadr city are similar to what happened in Halabja,” Iraqi member of parliament Falah Hassan said.

U.S. helicopter gun ships and warplanes have been pounding the city, home to more than 2 million people – their declared aim is to have it flushed of gunmen. While gunmen are nowhere to be found, those bearing the brunt of U.S.’s disproportionate use of force are none but the city’s impoverished inhabitants.

Sadr City is a warren of mainly one-story houses, most of them shabby and dilapidated.Iraqi demographers say the city is even more densely populated in terms of the number of people per square kilometer than the city of Gaza in Palestine.

Last week’s count by the Sadr Movement whose military wing the Mahdi Army is resisting U.S. occupation put the number of civilians killed at more than 800.The U.S. only speaks of killing armed men. 

Iraqi legislators who visited the city said they found no gunmen on the streets and narrow lanes of Saddam City.Kurdish legislators who were on the visit also made parallels between what Saddam did in Halabja and what the U.S. is currently doing in Saddam City. The Kurdish deputies spoke on the strict condition of anonymity.

“The current situation in Saddam City is no less tragic than when Halabja was gassed as those that are being targeted and killed (by U.S. fire) are innocent people,” said Hassan who had arranged for the deputies to visit the city. 

Iranian Quds Force Commander met Talabani at the Iranian border, and fulfilled his request to stop the battles in Basra

TheNewsTribune.com, HANNAH ALLAM, JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND WARREN P. STROBEL; McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD – One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East.

As Tehran’s point man on Iraq, he funnels military and financial support to Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to build a pro-Western democracy.According to Iraqi and American officials, Suleimani has ensured the elections of pro-Iranian politicians, met frequently with senior Iraqi leaders and backed Shiite elements in the Iraqi security forces that are accused of torturing and killing minority Sunni Muslims.

“Whether we like him or not, whether Americans like him or not, whether Iraqis like him or not, he is the focal point of Iranian policy in Iraq,” said a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be identified so he could speak freely. “The Quds Force have played it all, political, military, intelligence, economic. They are Iranian foreign policy in Iraq.”

McClatchy Newspapers reported on March 30 that Suleimani intervened to halt the fighting between mostly Shiite Iraqi security forces and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern city of Basra. Iraqi officials now confirm that in addition to that meeting, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani met Suleimani at a border crossing to make a direct appeal for help.

Iraqi and U.S. officials told McClatchy that Suleimani also has:

 • Slipped into Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified seat of the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi government, in April 2006 to try to orchestrate the selection of a new Iraqi prime minister. Iraqi officials said that audacious visit was Suleimani’s only foray into the Green Zone; American officials said he might have been there more than once.

 • Built powerful networks that gather intelligence on American and Iraqi military operations. Suleimani’s network includes every senior staffer in Iran’s embassy in Baghdad, beginning with the ambassador, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

 • Trained and directed Shiite Muslim militias and given them cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the U.S. Embassy and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, part of the sophisticated roadside bombs that have caused hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.

“I’m extremely concerned about what I believe to be an increasingly lethal and malign influence by (Iran’s) government and the Quds Force, in particular in Iraq and throughout the Middle East,” Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.

The Iranians’ longstanding goals include pushing the United States forces out of Iraq, perhaps encouraging a broader American retreat from the Middle East and securing a Shiite-dominated Iraqi regime that’s friendly to Tehran.

U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because intelligence information is classified, said that Suleimani’s Quds Force has provided arms to Taliban insurgents fighting U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan as well.

Developments Monday

 • Bombardments by suspected militants killed four U.S. soldiers as troops tried to push Shiite fighters farther from the U.S.-protected Green Zone and out of range of their rockets and mortars. At least 44 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in April.

 • In Sadr City – the stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia – U.S. soldiers battled deeper into the district a day after fierce clashes that killed at least 38 suspected militants, the military said.

 • The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Iran and Syria of trying to destabilize Iraq.

The Associated Press :http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/347169.html

Damascus. April 17, 2008

In president al-Asad speech yesterday at the Pan-Arab Thought Revival and Arab Destiny in Damascus, he revealed untold secret about the invasion of Iraq.

A few weeks after the fall of Baghdad, however the American secretary of state Colin Powell came to Damascus, and talked with pride on the work accomplished by his army in Iraq, and he mentioned that Syria must not hosts the Iraqi scientists, and prevent the Iraq thinkers from entering its territory, later we knew that they are targeted and assassinated to be seen later that American forces targeted them and killed them, it was clear that the Americans want Iraq a devastated country in terms of heritage and its ability to produce intellectuals.

US Congressman Keith Ellison's Electronic Newsletter
April 15, 2008

One way to gauge our nation's priorities is to look at how our federal income tax dollars are spent.
For every one dollar we as Americans pay in federal income tax:
– More than 42 cents will go toward military spending, much of it directly or indirectly paying for the Iraq war.
– Less than five cents will go to education programs.
– Less than nine cents will go to vital programs like child care, family nutrition, and low-income tax credits.
– Less than 4 cents will go to housing and community development programs.
The average Fifth District family paid about $2,046 in federal income tax in 2007. Of that amount, $864 of that family's federal income tax will be spent on the war and military, whereas only $452 of it will go toward funding health care programs.
"If President Bush continues to have his way, the total cost of the Iraq occupation will surpass $3 trillion. On tax day, we should stop and consider what $3 trillion of American tax dollars could do for us here at home." Ellison said.

The Iraq War in Numbers...
Minnesotans killed in Iraq: 61
Americans killed in Iraq: 4,036
Estimated number of Iraqi refugees since March, 2003: more than 4,700,000
Estimated percentage of Iraqi refugees that are children: 60 percent
Estimated cost of the Iraq war so far: $511,460,000,000
Estimated amount of interest the U.S. will owe due to war funds borrowed: $615,000,000,000
Estimated amount that residents of the City of Minneapolis have paid for the war so far : $770,000,000
Numbers as of 4/15/2008. Source: www.costofwar.com & U.S. Dept. of Defense.

• MHR question to US congressman Keith Ellison, what about Iraqi tax of US occupation espically from victims or what is stay in Iraq ??? 

Azzaman Iraqi newspaper, April 9, 2008

Five years after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq has turned into a country of outlaws.

And the government, which itself is a bunch of outlaws, has recently embarked on massive military campaigns to strike “the outlaws” and their groups which it blames for the upsurge in insecurity.

But one basic condition for these military operations sponsored and aided by U.S. occupation troops must be justice and equity in dealing with the groups that have turned into umbrellas for the protection of the outlaws.

To single out one particular group and blame it for the lawlessness and violence is unfair.

The outlaws in Iraq are not all members of the Sadr movement and his Mahdi Army despite the fact that Sadr’s outlaws have hitherto been almost free to act under the nose and eyes of the government and the U.S. occupiers.

The outlaw could be a cabinet minister who must be dismissed and brought to justice for corruption. The outlaw could be anyone using religion as a means to implement their plans of hell that have terrorized the whole nation.

The outlaw could be a member of parliament in Baghdad, using his authority for personal, tribal or factional gains.The outlaws are not only the militiamen of Mahdi Army.

They could be senior officials in the government, or leaders with sectarian inclinations and policies.The outlaws may include police chiefs who act in complicity with the murderous militias.

The outlaws are those consultants in ministries whose advice is given and sought to achieve personal, tribal and factional gains.

The outlaws are those who take the constitution into their own hands, emphasizing only the paragraphs they see as useful to advance their sectarian and ethnic schemes while overlooking the paragraphs restraining their wild behavior and holding them accountable for their actions.

It is so difficult to determine who the outlaw in Iraq is because in only five years the U.S. occupiers have turned the whole country into a land where only outlaws can survive.

Is this only the role of Ahmed Chalabi at Iraqi suffering !!

Jihad el-Khazen, Al-Hayat - 07/04/2008

I did not finish reading the book by Jacob Heilbrunn, "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons," because I wanted to finish a long article written by Scott Ritter, the former weapons of mass destruction inspector in Iraq, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the war.

Ritter wrote a book on the falsified intelligence evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a book on the attempts to target Iran. I found that his article picks up where Heilbrunn left off, with regard to the discussion of the neoconservatives and Ahmad Chalabi.

In brief, Heilbrunn spoke about the influence of Albert Wohlstetter at the University of Chicago on his students and supporters, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Ahmad Chalabi and Zalmay Khalilzad. The professor was a strong supporter of Israel and would upbraid the liberal Jews who criticized it. In fact, the book only mentions Chalabi in the context of the names of leading neocons. It reveals that Vice President Dick Cheney did not trust him, and that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was concerned only with a hi-tech "shock and awe" war. However, the neocons were sponsors of Chalabi and considered him the future president of Iraq. In the end, they convinced everyone about Chalabi, which was followed by the alternative and false intelligence presented to justify the war.

Heilbrunn's book deals with a topic greater than just one individual. It is about the neocons and their rise, until they took full control of the US foreign policy. I nearly forgot the references to Ahmad Chalabi, if it had not been for Scott Ritter's article entitled "Dinner with Ahmad." This 14-page article talks about Ritter's meeting with Chalabi in Washington, which he was visiting in June 1998, and how Chalabi invited him to his home, to have dinner with him and some others.

Ritter says that Chalabi told him he would one day become the president of Iraq and control the country's oil. Chalabi pledged that he would not forget his friends who helped him in his hour of need - he would give them petroleum concessions that would make them very rich.

However, Chalabi's calculations did not turn out as he planned. He took over the Oil Ministry but left it in January 2006 to Hussein Shahristani, and failed that month to win a single seat for his list in the elections. This was despite the fact that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had brought him back as an official, responsible for improving the government's provision of water and electricity services to the public.

Also on hand for the dinner, according to Ritter, was Stephen Rademaker, a legal adviser to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and later an Assistant Secretary of State for Nuclear Arms Proliferation. Rademaker later joined a lobbying firm working on oil autonomy for the Kurds.

Danielle Pletka, the wife of Rademaker, also joined the dinner gathering; she had left her job at the Senate to become the director of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, which advocated a war with Iraq and continues to support it. It issued a study on increasing the number of troops, a study George Bush decided to follow instead of heeding the advice of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group.

The article talks at length about Randy Scheunemann, the national security adviser to Senator Trent Lott, who was the majority leader of the Senate at the time. I read that Scheunemann worked for Rumsfeld briefly in 2001. However, he left his post the following year and helped set up the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which included Senator John McCain as an honorary member. Scheunemann convinced McCain to announce that Chalabi was "a patriot with the interest of Iraq at heart" and worked to increase the number of US troops in Iraq. He convinced McCain on this latter point, and Scheunemann is now a key advisor to him on foreign affairs.

I did not see Scheunemann's name in the book by Heilbrunn, "They Knew They Were Right." However, the book contains many details on the activities of Rademaker and Pletka, and how Perle supported her move to the American Enterprise Institute, and on James Woolsey, the head of the CIA for a short time, who is considered one of its worst directors. However, Woolsey found a place among the neocons, bringing together both extremism and ignorance.

Sometimes I feel that Chalabi was a kind of Faust, who sold his soul to the devil to obtain knowledge and power, as in the original play by Christopher Marlowe, which was inspired by ancient myth, or as in Goethe's book, which had Faust sell himself to the devil, Mephistoles, in exchange for magical powers and secret knowledge.