Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
Alicia Wood; 18/4/10
Ahmed Shab Aldoury has no one left. His parents were killed in a bomb blast that levelled his Baghdad house when he was 15 and he has been on the run ever since. Two weeks ago, Ahmed, 19, was detained in Villawood Detention Centre after travelling through Syria, Malaysia, Indonesia and Christmas Island. He became one of 40 Iraqis who held a week-long hunger strike after their applications for asylum were rejected by the Immigration Department. In 2008, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, ruled that Ahmed was a genuine refugee, and he was granted legal refugee status in Jakarta. Now he is urging the Australian government to allow him to stay. ”If they send me back to Iraq, they send me dead,” he told The Sun-Herald last week… He said he would have preferred to arrive in Australia legally but, after waiting two years in Indonesia, he met many legal refugees who had been waiting more than nine years to be resettled in Australia.
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Tags: Australia, Indonesia, Iraq, Migrants & Refugees
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Monday, February 22nd, 2010
22/2/10
The buried antiquities of Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham and one of the cradles of civilisation, could outshine those of ancient Egypt, archeologists believe. With Iraq ravaged by war and strife since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Baghdad’s struggling government has had greater priorities than funding large-scale digs at Ur, where only small teams have been working since 2005. “When the (large-scale) excavations restart, tonnes of antiquities will see the light of day, filling entire museum wings,” enthused Dhaif Moussin, who is in charge of protecting a site that has been prone to looting. “This site will become perhaps more important than Giza,” he added, referring to the plateau outside the Egyptian capital of Cairo where some of mankind’s most treasured antiquities have been unearthed, including the Sphinx and several notable pyramids.
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Tags: History, Iraq
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
17/2/10; http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/letters/aussie-winners-not-compelled-to-be-grinners/2010/02/16/1266082267953.html?page=3
The settlement of the class action against AWB is not the end of the story (”Settlement bolsters AWB”, February 16). We still need to know the detail of why the federal police failed to prosecute any of those responsible for paying bribes to a country with which we were at war. Colin Simpson, Little Hartley
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Tags: Australia, Iraq, Trade, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Human Rights, Iraq, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Rebecca Urban; 16/2/10
Grains exporter AWB has settled a potential $100 million-plus class action brought by investors who claimed to be kept in the dark over secret payments to Iraqi companies, marking an end to the company’s legal battles in Australia. Less than a week into a four-week hearing in the Federal Court in Sydney, AWB has announced it has settled the long-running case for $39.5m, including the applicants’ legal costs. The settlement, which is still subject to the court’s approval, is not expected to involve an admission of liability. Describing the deal as “commercially acceptable”, AWB chairman Peter Polson said it was in the best interests of the company’s shareholders. “The company is pleased to put this matter behind it as this is the final legal matter directed against the company in Australia arising out of activities under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program,” Mr Polson said in a statement.
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Tags: Australia, Iraq, Terrorism, Trade, USA
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Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Carol Leonnig, Nick Schwellenbach; 13/2/10
Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security contractor of defrauding the US government for years through phoney billing, including charging taxpayers for parties, spa trips and a prostitute. In court records unsealed this week, a husband and wife who worked for Blackwater said they had firsthand knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and improperly charging the US government for personal expenses. They said they witnessed ”systematic” fraud in the company’s security contracts with the US State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana after hurricane Katrina. Blackwater is the US State Department’s largest security contractor, and a State Department spokesman said on Thursday that his agency and the Justice Department reviewed the allegations in 2008, when the lawsuit was filed under seal in federal court in Virginia.
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Tags: Iraq, Mercenaries, USA
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
11/2/10
A fromer Guantanamo Bay inmate was shackled and told he would “disappear” if he failed to cooperate with US interrogators, Britain revealed, in a move Washington warned may affect intelligence-sharing. The details of the “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of Binyam Mohamed by US authorities were disclosed today after Britain lost a months-long court battle to halt publication of the once-secret information. The White House expressed its dismay at the court’s decision to release information that the CIA had passed to Britain, saying it could hamper future intelligence cooperation between London and Washington. “We’re deeply disappointed with the court’s judgment… because we shared this information in confidence and with certain expectations,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for President Barack Obama.
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Tags: Guantanamo Bay, Terrorism, UK, USA
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Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Christopher Hope; 10/2/10
Tens of thousands of secret documents could contradict evidence given by members of the Blair government to the inquiry into the Iraq war, its chairman, Sir John Chilcot, has suggested as the former prime minister lashed out at the hunt for a ”scandal” and a ”conspiracy” over his controversial decision to back the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sir John disclosed that the panel was examining far more documents than previously thought. He said the papers would form the core of the inquiry and show ”what really went on” in the build-up to the start of the conflict. He said that the inquiry team would examine the documents ”over the next few months”, adding: ”That will enable us to see where the evidence joins together and where there are gaps.”
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Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Paola Totaro; 3/2/10
Tony Blair not only misled the public about his decision to take Britain to war in Iraq but deliberately ordered that Cabinet critics be cut out of intelligence and military briefings in the lead-up, the Chilcot inquiry has been told. Clare Short, a former International Development minister and vehement critic of the Iraq war, has delivered a scathing description of the “presidential” style of Tony Blair’s leadership and described a Cabinet of yes men that were regarded as “his mates” while critics who were sidelined and “leaned on”. She said she believes the “machinery of government in Britain is now unsafe” and that from September 2002, she was deliberately cut out of briefings as Mr Blair had put a “block on communications” .
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Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
2/2/10
The US Justice Department is investigating whether officials of security firm Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining the firm’s work in Iraq. Citing unnamed current and former government officials, the New York Times said that the department’s fraud section opened the inquiry late last year to determine whether Blackwater employees violated a federal law banning US corporations from paying bribes to foreign officials.The inquiry is the latest fallout from the 2007 shooting in Nisour Square in Baghdad, which involved Backwater security guards and left 17 Iraqis dead, the report said. A federal judge in December dismissed criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards implicated in the episode, but Vice President Joseph Biden recently announced that the administration of President Barack Obama would appeal that decision.
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Tags: Iraq, Mercenaries, Terrorism, USA
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Peter Wilson, 30/1/10
An unrepentant Tony Blair last night stood by his decision to invade Iraq in 2003, saying that even though no weapons of mass destruction were found he still believed he had done the right thing and he would do it again today in the same circumstance. The former British prime minister said that although the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US had not involved Iraq they had left him determined to not to take any risks with rogue states and WMDs. “The decision I took – and frankly would take again – was if there was any possibility that he (Saddam Hussein) could develop weapons of mass destruction we should stop him,” he said. “That was my view then and that is my view now.” Mr Blair used his long-awaited appearance before the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the war to meticulously defend his 2003 decisions and insist that the eventual discovery that Iraq did not have WMDs did not mean that the world would have been safe if Saddam had been left in power.
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Tags: Human Rights, Terrorism, UK, USA
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Friday, January 29th, 2010
Henry Porter & Afua Hirsch; 29/1/10
It’s no coincidence that the four politicians who took us to war – Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Lord Falconer and Lord Goldsmith were all lawyers. Of course there were others involved, but let us be quite clear that each of these was in a position to stop the headlong rush to war by using the rule of law as an argument against the Bush regime. Only Lord Goldsmith attempted such a course, but he was flattened by Lord Falconer and Baroness (formerly Sally) Morgan and sidelined by No 10 until it was too late for Britain to withdraw.
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Tags: Iraq, UK, USA
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Paola Totaro; 28/1/10
The British Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has been humiliated by his former legal adviser who said his boss had twice overruled his entreaties against military action in Iraq while he was foreign secretary. In a tense day at the Chilcot inquiry, Sir Michael Wood, Mr Straw’s chief legal adviser at the time of the invasion, contradicted Mr Straw’s evidence that he had only ”very reluctantly” supported the military decision. Mr Straw had told the inquiry of his moral and political anguish before the invasion in 2003. But Sir Michael said that not only had Mr Straw told his US counterpart, Colin Powell, he was ”entirely comfortable” arguing for war, he had also told his legal adviser that he had often ignored legal advice from the Home Office without consequence. Sir Michael said that when he had voiced his view about the illegality of action, Mr Straw ”took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn’t used to people taking such a firm position”. ”When he had been at the Home Office, he had often been advised things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts.”
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Tags: Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
26/1/10; (2 Items)
At least 24 people were killed last night and 40 wounded in three car bombings that shook the Iraqi capital. The first explosion occurred about 3.30pm (11.30pm AEDT), sending plumes of smoke rising hundreds of metres over the Abu Nawaz district, near the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, just across the Tigris River from the Green Zone. The second blast came just minutes later in the centre of Baghdad near the Green Zone, with the third close by soon after. The blasts struck near the Babylon and al-Hamra hotels, popular with Western journalists.
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Tags: Capital Punishment; Mercenaries, Iraq, Terrorism, USA
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Monday, January 25th, 2010
Riyadh Mohammed; 25/1/10
Fraud charges have been laid against a British supplier. IRAQI officials have reacted with anger to news that the director of a British company that supplies bomb detectors to Iraq has been arrested on fraud charges, and the export of the devices has been banned. ”This company not only caused grave and massive losses of funds, but it has caused grave and massive losses of the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians, by the hundreds and thousands, from attacks that we thought we were immune to because we have this device,” said Ammar Tuma, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defence committee. But the Ministry of the Interior has not withdrawn the devices from service, and police continue to use them at checkpoints throughout Baghdad.
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Tags: Arms, Iraq, Trade, UK
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Iraq | No Comments »
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
Sean Parnell; 23/1/10
Defence chiefs are considering a secret plan to send more reservists to the front line, as battle fatigue takes its toll on Australian troops, particularly those on repeat, extended deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. In what may be the first large-scale use of part-time soldiers since the Vietnam War, Australia’s army, navy and airforce strategists have highlighted areas in which reserves can relieve existing personnel or deliver their own targeted support. While last year’s defence white paper foreshadowed a greater use of reserves, it is understood recruiting shortfalls and the continued challenge of maintaining such a high level of activity overseas has put the issue firmly on the agenda. The Weekend Australian has discovered that a detailed plan was delivered to Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston and department secretary Ian Watt last month and is under careful consideration, given the potential political and community fallout from any poorly delivered reforms.
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Tags: Australia, Terrorism, USA
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Richard Norton-Taylor, 19/1/10
Tony Blair’s former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, privately warned the then prime minister in 2002 that an invasion of Iraq was legally dubious, questioned what such action would achieve, and challenged US claims about the threat from Saddam Hussein, it has been revealed. Mr Straw gave what now seems prophetic advice in a letter marked ”secret and personal”, 10 days before Mr Blair met George Bush at the US president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. That was nearly a year before the invasion. In his letter, about which he is expected to be questioned when he testifies at the Chilcot inquiry this week, Mr Straw warned Mr Blair: ”The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few … there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour Party] for any military action against Iraq.”
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Tags: Human Rights, Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
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