2015 Unfortunate Truth JFK, 9/11, and Beyond - The World We Live in.

This is a great and very long documentary on certain aspects of world history.  Grab some popcorn on a cold rainy evening.  It is worth the watch.  This is a good time to look at this considering the new release of the JFK investigation papers and the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas.

This documentary points out the scenes behind the scenes and corporate historical events involved in WWI, WWI, the Vietnam War, The Iraq War and who gets the money.  It draws a clear and precise description of a proven trail to some of the most powerful people in the world.  People say, "Oh! Conspiracy" and shrove their shoulders, laugh and mock those who actually read all the documents, the hundred pages of them.

The truth is hard to swallow and imagine if it is difficult for me considering my reporting background, I can imagine how difficult it would be for those who simply live their lives without having the time to research information for themselves.

There are many lies out there called propaganda and propaganda has been a major player in our world  since the 1930's and beyond.
Please take your time to watch this, you can always stop it here and there and go back to your You Tube history and pick up where you left off.  It will change how you view your world.
Shalom

The real terrorist was me US Soldier -

This speech is well said, written and true.

iraq war: us soldier tells his story and hands back his awards.

A blurb in the middle of the homeless and Working Poor stream. As a recent war photojournalist, I felt that this video was important for me to insert onto my blog.  His description of the house raids, reminds me of the experiences with the Israeli's and their night time house raids in Palestine.  I wonder did we teach the Israeli's this tactic, or did they teach us?

Halliburton ad: Message from CEO David Lesar

Video released of 5 kidnapped contractors

The War You Don't See 2010

John Pilger tells it just like it is.  This video reflects the reasons that I refused to be "Embedded" at the risk of my professional journalism ability to be "hired on" with mainstream media.  My consciousness would not allow me to report falsely to the public, those things which I knew were not true.  Even though during the height of the Intifada and the invasion of Iraq, it was taboo for me to talk about the realities even to my family and friends.  The social pressure in America was astounding and disappointing to me and still is.  Even after the release of the truth of the lies for the invasion into Iraq, the American people did not stand up strong enough to put pressure on the American government to withdraw.  It is about time that the journalist that were a part of this "show" admit their crime in true journalism to the world and apologize that they also misled the global community the propaganda that destroyed an entire country and so many lives.

This is this reason, that I started the  "Crossing Borders Project" to distribute camera's to those who have no voice in the mainstream media in order to provide a tool of truth from the inside of a story told by those who are affected. 

What I do not understand, is why don't the American people want to know the truth?  Why do they sit and believe the propaganda and continues to this day?  Our banking system, our wars, our poverty, the reason for so many new homeless?   Is it not more intelligent to want to know what is really going on than to believe something that will not solve our problems?

This is why I chose to remain an independent journalist, starving for the truth that no one wants to hear and only the free press will publish without paying.
It is time that we change our systems and ways of doing things as journalists.  Those who reported falsely in the mainstream media should be ashamed of themselves.

Sick of the War?

Someone told me the other day is that everyone is sick of hearing about the Iraqi War.

This ignorance of reality made me really sad. Are we really too busy to be concerned
with our future welfare? Today the headlines read, “US Military Deaths Reach 2,000”.

Bush responded with a warning that many more sacrifices will happen as we fight against “as brutal of an enemy we have ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of common humanity and the rules of warfare.”

As brutal of an enemy we have ever faced? Unconstrained by any notion of common humanity and the rules of warfare? What planet is Bush on? Whose sacrifice? As of 11:56 European time we Americans

have spent a total of $203, 563,908.752 can you say that number? The rate is at $17,000 per minute, while our health system crashes, homelessness is on the rise in every city in American, not only men, but families without a roof over their heads. According to the latest report from the Bureau of Statistics, 12.4% of Americans live in poverty, a 0.3% increase in three years. 15.5% of the Americans are uninsured for medical purposes that are a 0.2% increase in the past three years.

This means that 36,335,418 Americans are in poverty over the age of 16 and 45,417,723 Americans are uninsured. The 2004 population estimate is 283,027,571.

In the meantime, our men are “sacrificing” their lives and we can't even put a definition as to why. For the cause of humanity and war crimes, and to trample down a man who murdered his own people in the name of democracy? Who is committing the war crimes here? The Iraqi Body Count website says that as of today a minimum of 26,690 and a maximum of 30,051 Iraqi civilians have been killed. Sanitation and health concerns run rampant in Iraq due to the war. Jobs are lost and poverty in Iraq in increasing. But this is not only occurring in Iraq , but also in America .

We all know that there were not any weapons of mass destruction and we all know about the oil scandals we all know about the torture crimes and the attempt to hide the truth. Who is going to benefit from this are certain corporations in America and the Shei who are most likely inherit a new country.

http://icasualties.org/oif/ Iraq collation casualty count

http://www.antiwar.com/ lists the vigils occurring around the county

Bush Says that he "Expects" Violence in Iraq

“I expect violence because there is a group of terrorist and killers who want to try to stop the advance of democracy in Iraq.” he said http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051011/us_nm/iraq_bush_dc

My comment must be said here:
Like there has not been any violence? The latest death toll for Iraqi civilians is: 25457 (www.iraqbodycount.net) (October 11, 2005); The latest Soldier count is: 2,154; (http://icasualties.org/oif/) 72 journalists and media assistants have been killed since March 2003. (http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20) And there has not been any violence?

Just read the article below for one small fine example of life in Iraq:

Insurgents kill more than 40 Iraqi’s.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents determined to wreck Iraq's constitutional referendum killed more than 40 people and wounded dozens in a series of attacks Tuesday, including a suicide car bomb that ripped apart a crowded market in a town near the Syrian border, police said. U.S. and Iraqi officials have repeatedly warned that the insurgents would step up their attacks to undermine Saturday's referendum, a crucial step in Iraq's democratic transition. http://news.yahoo.com/fc/World/Iraq

Another Note:

It is horrible what has happened in Pakistan, the latest is the toll is up to 35,000. I was reading that 60% of the Pakistanis age is under 15. The age dependency ratio is 88.34% meaning the population under 15 and over 64. In Islamabad 68.42%. Sindh 83.58%. (http://www.statpak.gov.pk/depts/pco/statistics/other_tables/pop_by_age_group.pdf) read the update below on the latest in Pakistan.


Earthquake toll jumps to an estimated 35,000

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - Heavy rain and hail forced the cancellation of some relief flights to earthquake-stricken regions Tuesday and survivors scuffled over the badly needed food — the first international aid to make it overland to this devastated city. Officials estimated that the death toll would surpass 35,000.http://news.yahoo.com/fc/World/South_Asia_Earthquake

My Comment:

I was wondering what the Christian evangelical reaction was of the latest earthquake news and I found this quote from the bible:

“not yet the end. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines, and pestilence's and earthquakes. "But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs." Matthew 24:3-8

OneWorldNet published an article titled, “Did God Send Katrina as judgment for Gaza?” (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46178) The Christian evangelicals feel that all the signs of the end times are upon us, with the famines, earthquakes, diseases, and other natural disasters. One site provides the reader with a ton of information and links to the latest end time news encouraging the reader to “Not Be Left Behind”. (http://www.prophecyupdate.com/)

We try to find reasons to justify horrible disasters such as Katrina and the earthquake in Pakistan. But I feel that we may not know the “real” reasons but that these natural disasters are a part of the cycle of natural events, a way to keep the population under control. Sounds hard, but there was an ice age. The sun is a variable star, we’ve had numerous weather cycles, the mini ice age was 700 years ago that killed off the Vikings.

Holiday Time in Baghdad

While the American deaths nearly doubled since last year, ( http://seattletimes.nwsource.com ) the drafting of the new constitution the debate continues with the Sunnis; you can book your hotel to visit Iraq and tour the region. The advertisement is marketed to tourist indicating that Iraq is the place to be and visit in spite of the continual bombardment of attacks. ( www.kayak.com ) You can search for flights, hotels and cars!

The Al Mansour Hotel in Baghdad had a high rating of 6 out of 10. One can play tennis, enjoy your leisure time at the health spa and club. You may also relax and enjoy the warm evenings by relaxing near the outdoor pool. They also provide a laundry service, room service, currency exchange and to top it off you can purchase gifts at the gift shop in the lobby and mail them to your friends back home. After a relaxing day near the pool, you can enjoy the evenings chatting with your war friends, journalists and US contract workers at the bar. However, when I attempted to get the hotel price online at Kayak, it failed to provide me with any information. I did find the exact location and the hotels telephone number, just in case I want to vacation in Iraq .

The Palestine Hotel is also listed as their places to consider for your holiday enjoyment. As I recall, the hotel was kindly guarded by the American Army surrounded with tanks and barriers. You only needed to look like a foreigner to enter into the complex. The army presence provided an immense amount of security for those who were concerned about bombings. I stayed in a different hotel, because of the Army presence. Their presence increased my visibility, with my blond hair and blue eyes, I wanted to blend in with the crowd as much as possible.

My hotel was the Al Mansour Hotel, and my cost was 100 American dollars a night. The American menu for dinners accommodated the journalists needs down home cooking and the bar was well stocked for hard to get alcoholic beverages. We had two guards posted at the parking entrance near the front door. One fine evening while chatting at the poolside, my partners and I heard some random gun shots. We were used to the sounds of bullets flying through the air, so we did not really pay any attention and continued with our pleasant conversation. Later that evening, we discovered that one of the guards was shot and killed by a fellow friend, because he would not allow him into the hotel.

This was one of many pleasant stories of my time in Baghdad .

A Letter from Iraq from an Iraqi

While I was reporting from the Middle East, I gathered a large local network. After I left, my friends continued to write to me to tell me their stories. Below is a small email from Sahal in Baghdad:

hithat word mean life is better you see aleasha mean life or our every day life ,ahsan mean better this kind of _expression we say in iraq to tell others that ok life good not great but good.

To understand what Sahal is saying is: the Arabic word “aleasha” is the everyday life, “ahsan” is an Iraqi expression that says, life is ok, not great but good. It is a form of expression.

He later sends me this email:

you can see the letter i send on lack of medicain in iraq ,i know my styell is need alot of work and i have speeling problems but iam working on itiam from baghdad and work out sid it in hosptial in the country thats why i see the real suffering of poor people and i hop to find any one how can help themwhats happen to iraqies donot differ to what katrina victums suffer and i feel pain to both sides suffering no one should face evacuation and hunger or disease or death just becouse he live in plce threaten by war or natural disaster and any person how suffer must geat help and compation and mercy in spit of his couler nationalty or relagion
thank you

Full Text Bin Ladens' Letter to America

Online document: the full text of Osama bin Laden's "letter to the American people", reported in today's Observer. The letter first appeared on the internet in Arabic and has since been translated and circulated by Islamists in Britain.Observer Worldview

Sunday November 24, 2002
The Observer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,
"Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory" [Quran 22:39]

"Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan."[Quran 4:76]

Some American writers have published articles under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?' These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth - as an explanation and warning - hoping for Allah's reward, seeking success and support from Him.
While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:
(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you? Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;

(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.

(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual.

(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price.

(iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.

(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.

(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.

(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.

(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

(g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it.

(2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!

(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:

(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.
(c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us.

(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.

(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.

(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question:
Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?
If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.
It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

(b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.
(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.

(vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

(viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention.

(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries.

(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.

(xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

(xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others.

(a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!!

(b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.

(c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.

(d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.

(e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws.
What happens in Guatanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?"

(3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you will do so - to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which you yourself must adhere to.

(4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.

(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

(6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.

(7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.
If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1]

The Nation of honour and respect:
"But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers." [Quran 63:8]
"So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in victory )if you are indeed (true) believers" [Quran 3:139]
The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life:
"Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers." [Quran 3:169-171]
The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised:
"It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9]
"Allah has decreed that 'Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious.' Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran 58:21]
The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.
If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.
This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Abu Gharaib Female Prisoner Reveals Her Ordeal

Huda Alazawi was one of the few women held in solitary in the notorious Iraqi prison, Abu Gharaib. Following her release, she revealed her ordeal and whatever she experienced there while talking to LUKE HARDING of The Guardian

In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant, who was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her. `It was clearly blackmail,' Alazawi says. `We knew that if we gave in, there would be other demands.' The informant was as good as his word. In November 2003, he wrote a report that prompted US soldiers to interrogate Alazawi's brother, Ali, and her older sister, Nahla, now 45. Wearing a balaclava, he also led several raids with US soldiers on the families' antique-filled Baghdad properties. On December 23, the Americans arrested another of Alazawi's brothers, Ayad, 44. It was at this point that she decided to confront the Americans directly. She marched into the US base in Adhamiya, one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. `A US captain told me to come back with my two other brothers. He said we could talk after that.' On Christmas Eve she returned with her brothers, Ali and Mu'taz. `I waited for four hours. An American captain finally interrogated me. After 10 minutes he announced that I was under arrest.' Like thousands of other Iraqis detained by the Americans since last year's invasion, Alazawi was about to experience the reality of the Bush administration's `war on terror'. `They handcuffed me and blindfolded me and put a piece of white cloth over my eyes. They bundled me into a Humvee and took me to a place inside the palace. I was dumped in a room with a single wooden chair. It was extremely cold. After five hours they brought my sister in. I couldn't see anything but I could recognise her from her crying.' Alazawi says that US guards left her sitting on the chair overnight, and that the next day they took her to a room known by detainees as `the torturing place'. `The US officer told us: `If you don't confess we will torture you. So you have to confess.' My hands were handcuffed. They took off my boots and stood me in the mud with my face against the wall. I could hear women and men shouting and weeping. I recognised one of the cries as my brother Mu'taz. I wanted to see what was going on so I tried to move the cloth from my eyes. When I did, I fainted.' In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant, who was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her. Like most Iraqi women, Alazawi is reluctant to talk about what she saw but says that her brother Mu'taz was brutally sexually assaulted. Then it was her turn to be interrogated. `The informant and an American officer were both in the room. The informant started talking. He said, `You are the lady who funds your brothers to attack the Americans.' I speak some English so I replied: `He is a liar.' The American officer then hit me on both cheeks. I fell to the ground. Alazawi says that American guards then made her stand with her face against the wall for 12 hours, from noon until midnight. Afterwards they returned her to her cell. `The cell had no ceiling. It was raining. At midnight they threw something at my sister's feet. It was my brother Ayad. He was bleeding from his legs, knees and forehead. I told my sister: `Find out if he's still breathing.' She said: `No. Nothing.' I started crying. The next day they took away his body.' The US military later issued a death certificate, citing the cause of death as `cardiac arrest of unknown etiology'. The American doctor who signed the certificate did not print his name, and his signature is illegible. The body was returned to the family four months later, on April 3, after the Abu Gharaib torture scandal broke. The family took photographs of the body, also seen by the Guardian, which revealed extensive bruising to the chest and arms, and a severe head wound above the left eye. Alazawi says that US guards left her sitting on the chair overnight, and that the next day they took her to a room known by detainees as `the torturing place'. After Ayad's body had been taken away, Alazawi says that she and 18 other Iraqi detainees were put in a minibus inside the military compound. `The Americans told us: `Nobody is going to sleep tonight.' They played scary music continuously with loud voices. As soon as someone fell asleep they started beating on the door. It was Christmas. They kept us there for three days. Many of the US soldiers were drunk.' Finally, after a US guard broke her shoulder as she left the lavatory, Alazawi and her surviving siblings were transferred – first to a police academy in Baghdad's interior ministry and then, on January 4 2004, to Abu Gharaib prison. Alazawi, who has a 20-year-old daughter, Farah, and a four-year-old granddaughter, Safat, spent the next 156 days in solitary confinement. Along with five other Iraqi women, she was held in Abu Gharaib's infamous "hard site" – the prison block inside the compound where photographs of American guards sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners had been taken two months previously. The women were kept in the upstairs cellblock; male detainees regarded as `difficult' were held downstairs. The vast majority of inmates lived in a series of open tents surrounded by razor wire and US guard posts. In her first weeks at Abu Gharaib, before the US military launched its internal investigation into prisoner abuse, torture was commonplace, she says. `The guards used wild dogs. I saw one of the guards allow his dog to bite a 14-year-old boy on the leg. The boy's name was Adil. Other guards frequently beat the men. I could see the blood running from their noses. They would also take them for compulsory cold showers even though it was January and February. From the very beginning, it was mental and psychological war.' Alazawi is reticent about the question of sexual abuse of Iraqi women but says that neither she nor any of the other women in Abu Gharaib at the time were sexually assaulted by US guards. In his subsequent report into the scandal, however, Major General Antonio Taquba found that at least one US military policemen had raped a female inmate inside Abu Gharaib; a letter smuggled out of the prison by a woman known only as `Noor', containing allegations of rape, was found to be entirely accurate. Other witnesses interviewed by the Guardian have said that US guards `repeatedly' raped a 14- year-old Iraqi girl who was held in the block last year. They also said that guards made several of the women inmates parade naked in front of male prisoners. Alazawi says that she was held in a two-metre-square cell, initially with no bed and a bucket for a toilet. For the first three weeks she was entirely `mute' after being told that talking was forbidden. The US guards gave her only one book, a Koran. She managed to steal a pen, and recorded incidents of abuse, with dates, in its margins. During her first few months in custody, the US soldiers were brutal, petty and tyrannous, she says. `Because I could speak a bit of English I was given the job of emptying the rubbish. There was never enough food and one day I came across an old woman who had collapsed from hunger. The Americans were always eating lots of hot food. I found some in a packet in a bin and gave it to her. They caught me and threw me in a one-metre- square punishment cell. They then poured cold water on me for four hours.' She wrote the date down in her Koran: February 24 2004. For the first four months, apart from frequent interrogations, she was not allowed out of the block. Alazawi says she was repeatedly asked whether she was in the Resistance and whether she had fired rockets at US soldiers (she is 5ft 3in tall). `It became a running joke. The other women began to nickname me the Queen of the RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. The American interrogators were entirely ignorant and knew nothing about Iraqi people. The vast majority of people there were innocent.' After the Abu Gharaib scandal broke in April, Alazawi was allowed to exercise in the scrubby yard outside for 10 minutes a day. She got a bed. She was also assigned a new female guard, `Mrs Palmer', who helped the women with their English and in turn tried to learn Arabic. In May, Major General Geoffrey Miller, assigned to Abu Gharaib by Washington in the aftermath of the torture scandal, escorted a large group of journalists around the prison for the first time. The previous night, Alazawi says, US guards evacuated all the juveniles and male detainees from her cellblock, leaving only her and a handful of other women upstairs. `Mrs Palmer told us that during the inspection we had to lie quietly on our beds. She said that if we behaved we would be allowed to spend more time out of our cells in the sun. The following day General Miller turned up with a huge number of journalists. I heard him telling them that some of the people kept in here were murderers. I shouted out: `We are not the killers. You are the killers. This is our country. You have invaded it.' After that they didn't let me out of my cell for an entire month. A US officer came to me and said: `Because of you we have all been punished'.' Alazawi says she was unimpressed by Miller. `It was obvious he liked having his photo taken,' she says. Over the next few weeks, the US military began releasing hundreds of Abu Gharaib detainees as part of a damage limitation exercise. Alazawi and her sister were moved from their cells to a tent. Three generals also came to interview her and asked her to describe what had happened to Ayad, her brother. They did not, however, offer an apology. The other women were gradually released, including her sister. Finally, on July 19, a helicopter took Alazawi to Al Taji, a military base just north of Baghdad. `After eight months in prison they suddenly treated me like a queen. It was weird,' she says. `They offered me some Pepsi. I could take a shower. There was air conditioning. There were four female soldiers to look after me. The doctor came to see me four times in 24 hours. They made me sign a piece of paper promising not to leave the country. And then I was free.' A US military spokesman said that Alazawi was known to him, but disputed her claim to have been held in solitary for 157 days:'She and her sister, which [sic] were the last two females we detained at Abu Gharaib, were separated from the male detainees in keeping with the cultural sensitivities.' He added, `The fact that abuses occurred isn't really news any more. We know they did and those who are accused are being prosecuted for it.' Now Alazawi is trying to piece her life back together. She is back at work in Baghdad, where she runs businesses importing foreign cars and electrical goods, surrounded by respectful staff who bring endless cups of sweet Iraqi coffee. Business appears to be flourishing. Friends of the family in Arab dish-dash – many of whom come from Iraq's Sunni elite – drop in and exchange gossip on her white leather sofas. But after her release, her millionaire husband announced that he was divorcing her. Several of the other former women detainees in Abu Gharaib are believed to have disappeared; others have husbands who have also disowned them. Alazawi's surviving brothers, Ali – prisoner number 156215 – and Mu'taz – 156216 – are still inside Abu Gharaib. The US military continues to detain them and 2,400 other prisoners without charge or legal access, in contravention of the Geneva Convention. Alazawi says that she has hired lawyers to pursue the Iraqi informant who she blames for her brother's death.¨

Wave of Kidnappings in Iraq Continues

27 minutes ago By PAUL GARWOOD, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD , Iraq - Gunmen kidnapped the head of an Iraqi government-owned construction company in Baghdad on Saturday, a brazen daylight attack in a new wave of hostage-taking across the country.
The kidnapping occurred a day after a senior Egyptian diplomat was snatched as he came out of a mosque, and suggested insurgents were growing bolder, particularly since kidnappers scored a stunning victory by forcing the Philippines to withdraw troops to save the life of a Filipino truck driver. Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged Egypt not to bow to the demands of the kidnappers. "It is time for us to close ranks to fight terrorism. There is no way to budge to terrorists and give them what they want," Allawi said during a visit to Syria . "The only way to deal with terrorism is to promote justice and to close ranks, and we hope Egypt and the Egyptian government will act accordingly." In other violence, a U.S. Marine died early Saturday of wounds sustained Friday during clashes in the Al-Anbar province, a volatile area that stretches west from Baghdad to the Syrian border, the military said. The military did not release the identity of the Marine, the 903rd U.S. military fatality in Iraq since the war began according to an Associated Press count. Gunmen in three cars attacked a convoy carrying the chief of police for west Baghdad on Saturday as he passed near the town of Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad . Two bodyguards were killed, but Brig. Sabah Fahad escaped unharmed, said Mahmoudiya hospital director, Dr. Dawoud al-Taie. A rocket exploded in the downtown Jubairya district in the northern city of Samarra , killing one man and injuring three other civilians early Saturday, police Maj. Sadoun al-Dulaimi said. It was unclear who fired the rocket. Saboteurs also set off two explosions on an oil pipeline 12 miles south of Samarra late Friday, police Capt. Khaled Abdul-Amir said. The 125-mile pipeline stretches from al-Doura oil refinery in Baghdad to Beiji, north of Samarra . The extent of the damage was unclear. Associated Press Television News footage showed bright orange flames and a thick black plume of smoke billowing from the ruptured pipeline. Insurgents across the country have waged a violent 15-month campaign of sabotage, bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against local officials and coalition forces. In the latest kidnapping, unidentified men riding in two cars blocked Raad Adnan's vehicle as he was driving through southeastern Baghdad on Saturday and snatched him, said Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdel-Rahman. Adnan is the general director of Al-Mansour Contracting Co., a government-owned company that carries out construction contracts for Iraqi government ministries. Adnan, a construction engineer, was a member of the Baath party and helped build some of Saddam Husseins presidential palaces. On Friday, militants kidnapped Egyptian diplomat Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb as he left a mosque and demanded his country abandon any plans to send security experts to support Iraq 's new government, according to a video broadcast on the Al-Jazeera television station. He was believed to be the first foreign diplomat kidnapped in Iraq . An Egyptian official told the AP on Saturday that his country's mission to Egypt has not yet been contacted by the militants, a previously unknown group called "The Lions of Allah Brigade." "Iraqi authorities have contacted the Egyptian mission and offered help, but as yet there have been no negotiations or mediations with the kidnappers," said Badr el-din de-Souki. The rash of kidnappings, which also included the abduction of seven foreign truck drivers Wednesday, has threatened Iraq 's efforts to rebuild the country and persuade more governments to commit troops to the coalition here. Iraqi interim Public Works Minister Nasreen Berwari denounced the kidnappings as "inhumane and savage" attacks on Iraq 's "stability and well-being." "This problem can only be solved when the international community as a whole supports Iraq to sustain its security for its people and the people who are coming to help Iraq , and they are very much needed at this stage," she told reporters. The militant group holding the seven truck drivers announced new demands in a video broadcast Friday, calling on the hostages' Kuwaiti employer to pay compensation for those killed by U.S. forces in the city of Fallujah and demanding the release of all Iraqi detainees in Kuwaiti and U.S. prisons. The group, calling itself "The Holders of the Black Banners," had originally demanded the company stop doing business in Iraq and that the hostages' countries withdraw their citizens. The group threatened to begin beheading the three Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian every 72 hours starting Saturday night. "I'm trying to get in contact government officials to find out it can do. I hope it's doing the best it can," Talal Mohamed, a brother of hostage Jalal Awadh, said in Kenya . The new demands in Friday's tape were almost certain to go unmet, but that tape did not appear to repeat the earlier beheading threat and bore no other specified ultimatum. The militants gave the company a 48-hour deadline, but it was unclear if that meant the initial deadline was extended until Sunday. Rana Abu-Zaineh, an official with the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport, Co., said the company was negotiating with the militants and was confident the hostages would be freed. She did not provide details. In India , External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said the insurgents appear to be motivated by money, not politics, and that the victims may be released soon. Militants in recent months have kidnapped roughly 70 foreigners in their campaign to force countries to withdraw troops and to scare away contractors working on reconstruction projects. At least three hostages have been beheaded. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20040724/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_040724082609&printer=1

Fallujah Actions

Fallujah Actions
Subject: Fallujah actions 1) Phone Blockade 3 November 2) Petition 3) Letter-writing 4) Contingency Plans
Dear all Fallujah and over a dozen other Iraqi towns are under threat of major assault by US forces. JNV supports those organising activities to try to prevent these assaults. No US attack is inevitable. Public protests inside and outside Iraq have the power to derail these attacks, or at the very least to minimise the damage done, and to help prevent further such atrocities. Britain is complicit in these attacks, directly, by redeploying British troops to the centre of Iraq to free up US forces to take part in the planned assaults. Here are some ideas for pro-active action, and some London contingency plans if the major attacks do take place. (More info on our website http://www.j-n-v.org ) Best wishes Maya Evans Milan Rai JNV
**************** 1) Phone Blockade of the MOD & Email Geoff Hoon Wednesday 3 November Phone the MOD between 9am - 5pm on the day after the US elections. Please ask to speak to Geoff Hoon, to tell him to oppose the planned assaults on Fallujah and other cities, and to demand that he withdraw the Black Watch from their supportive role in Central Iraq. MOD Public Enquiry Office: 0870 607 4455 MOD Press Office: 020 7218 2906 You may also wish to try this email address for Geoff Hoon's PA: sofs.pa2@modho.gsi.gov.uk **************** 2) Stop The Attacks - Petition At a meeting called by Voices UK, there was a call for a petition to be drawn up and circulated immediately for use this weekend. A pdf is attached of two versions of the petition, one concentrating on the immediate crisis, the other including the demand for troops to be withdrawn. Next is the text of the narrow focus petition: BASIC PETITION TEXT To Our Local MP Please tell Geoff Hoon: Don’t let British Troops support Bush’s massacres in Iraq’s cities. The senseless slaughter of civilians is making a desperate situation even worse. Don’t Attack Fallujahâ€"Recall The Black Watch TOP TIPS For Using This Petition This petition is designed to be used the weekend of 30/31 October. Using pretty much this text, Wrexham Peace & Justice Forum collected 450 signatures in 2 hours recently. 1) One reason for their success is that they had a huge poster version of the text behind them so that people knew what they were signing. People were queueing to sign. So JNV has included in the pdf full A4 size versions of the text, for you to enlarge to A3 or larger size (some photocopy shops can enlarge to A1). 2) Please do let the local radio and newspapers know about your petitioning, and take your own photos to send to the paper if they do not send a photographer themselves. Whatever the response of your local MP when you present the petition, that is worth press releasing also. 3) Please let us know the results of your petitioning. If you have any suggestions for improving the petition or how to present it on the street/at work, please let us know. This petition initiative came out of an emergency meeting called by Voices in the Wilderness UK. There may be further editions of this petition in future weeks. Please check out the JNV website and the Voices UK website for more campaigning information. **************** 3) Letter-writing Write to your MP This is something that anyone and everyone can do. If you ask your MP to ask Geoff Hoon to recall the Black Watch from central Iraq, and to withdraw all British support for the planned US assaults, then she/he will pass on your concerns to the Defence Secretary, and you get two (small) impacts from one letter. A veteran letter-writer informs us that when/if you receive a response, it is well worth writing back, as it is this reply of yours that has most impact. You can (a) find out who your MP is and (b) fax your MP from the following website: http://faxyourmp.org.uk/ Some possible points for a letter: 1) Human Cost Please remind the Defence Secretary of the horrors of the earlier (April 2004) siege of Fallujah - horrors which the British Government refused to condemn, ‘insist[ing] that there were “no disagreements” with the US about its tactics on the ground’ (Independent, 14 April). On 11 April the director of Fallujah’s general hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, estimated â€" on the basis of figures gathered from four clinics around the city as well as the hospital itself - that more than 600 people had been killed and that ‘the vast majority of the dead were women, children and the elderly’ (Guardian, 12 April). Ask whether the British government has sought assurances that US tactics and rules of engagement have been changed to prevent such carnage in any future engagement. 2) Redeployment Please ask the Defence Secretary why British troops are being redeployed with the ‘aim of … free[ing] US forces to attack Fallujah’ (Telegraph, 18 Oct) again â€" this time causing possibly even greater carnage. 3) Condemnation and Withdrawal I urge you to condemn the redeployment and to support calls for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. I would be grateful if you would ask the Defence Secretary to withdraw British troops from central Iraq, and ask also whether contingency plans have been prepared for the withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq in the event that the January elections produce a government in Baghdad which calls for the removal of foreign forces. Voices UK has drawn up more points for writing to your MP, available athttp://www.voices.netuxo.co.uk/actnow.htm#contactyourmp **************** 4) Contingency Plans There are now plans for a London demo, and for London nonviolent direct action, on the night of any major attack. Please see www.j-n- v.org for more details. If your local group draws up any similar contingency plans, please register them with Stop The War and with JNV. -- Justice Not Vengeance landline 0845 458 9571 (UK) +44 1424 428 792 (int) www.j-n-v.org

American security and Iraqi stability

American security and Iraqi stability depend on a prompt handover.

by William R. Polk

From childhood, we Americans are deluged with slogans. We often select our breakfast food, our soap, and our toothpaste by jingles and catchphrases rather than by reading the labels. So we fall easily into accepting evocative expressions in place of analysis even when it comes to national security. Our parents were sold on the slogan that the First World War was the “war to end all wars,” although the 20th century had more of them than any other in history. We went into Vietnam fearing the “domino effect,” although the struggle there had little relationship to events in any other Asian country. We were rushed into the war in Iraq by the assertion that little, poor, remote Iraq was at the point of attacking mighty America, and now we are bogged down there allegedly by a ragtag faction of Ba’athist diehards.

Seldom do we hear hard-headed analysis of what is happening, what is possible, what the alternatives are, how much each will cost in lives, treasure, prestige, and security. When I was the member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East, I had the duty to try to understand the reality in the problems we then faced, to comprehend the forces at work, and to identify what could be done. Now as a private citizen, I ask: what is the reality of Iraq, what do we face there, and what can we do?

Leaving aside Kurdistan, where roughly a quarter of all Iraqis live, Iraq is a shattered country. Its infrastructure has been pulverized by the “shock and awe” of the American invasion. Few Iraqis today even have clean drinking water or can dispose of their waste. About 7 in 10 adult Iraqis are without employment. Factories are idle, and small shopkeepers have been squeezed out of business. Movement even within cities is difficult and dangerous. And the trend in each of these categories is downward. Iraq’s society has been torn apart, and perhaps as many as 100,000 Iraqis have died. Virtually every Iraqi has a parent, child, spouse, cousin, friend, colleague, or neighbor—or perhaps all of these—among the dead. More than half of the dead were women and children. Putting Iraq’s casualties in comparative American terms would equate to about one million American deaths. Dreadful hatreds have been generated.

Not all hatreds are on the Iraqi side. American soldiers, often not knowing why they are in Iraq but only that they are getting shot at in 50 to 100 attacks each day, are fearful. Against an indistinguishable enemy, who fades into the general population, their fear turns into general hatred. To GIs, the natives are “ragheads,” just as in Vietnam they were “gooks.” And they may be suicide bombers. Hatred of the enemy appeared in a film made by NBC News inside a mosque in Fallujah showing a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi. It also appeared in the photographs of the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Those scenes, in turn, helped to cement the image of the uniformed, indistinguishable foreign troops as the common enemy, whom the Iraqis are beginning to call the “crusaders.”

Such graphic demonstrations of hatred and contempt also, of course, echo far beyond Iraq among the more than one billion Muslims throughout the world. They have tended to corrupt the greatest of America’s national treasures, the nearly universal respect of mankind. As one former senior Army officer Andrew Bacevich said, “My sense is that such an impression has already taken hold in the Arab world.” He is certainly right.

Thus, even when, as in the Fallujah battle, the insurgents were outnumbered at least 20:1, and it was obvious that they could not win against a phalanx of helicopters, gunships, fighter-bombers, tanks, and artillery, they fought to become martyrs for their cause and thus to inspire others to take up their mission. They lost the battle of Fallujah as they will lose every battle. But they have not lost the war. This is the reality with which America must deal.

* * *

Guerrilla warfare is not new. In fact, it is probably the oldest form of warfare. But in recent centuries, so much attention was given to formal warfare that most soldiers forgot about informal war. Although few guerrilla leaders have given us accounts of how they organized, got their supplies, fought, retreated, regrouped, and fought again, history provides a rich lode of information. We can study experiences dating from the 20th-century conflicts in Europe, Asia, and Africa, including the Irish struggle against the British, Tito’s and the Greek ELAS’s struggles against the Germans in the Balkans, Mao Zedong’s war against the Japanese and then against the forces of Chang Kai-shek in China, the Viet Minh’s defeat of the French in Indo-China, the Algerian war of national liberation against the French, the Chechens’ centuries-long war against the Russians and, of course, our Vietnam and Russia’s Afghanistan.

The story they tell was well summarized by Mao Zedong when he described the guerrilla as a fish that must swim in the sea of the people. Absent popular support, Mao’s sea, the guerrilla is at best an outlaw and, more likely and sooner, a corpse. But with the support of the people, he is elusive, nourished, and ultimately replaceable. Consequently, almost no matter what forces are brought against him, he—or at least his cause—has proven indefatigable. If we are ignorant of this history, we are doomed to repeat it.

Generation after generation of soldiers and strategists have done just that— repeated it. Often ignorant of history and of the reflections of their predecessors, they attempted to find techniques to defeat the guerrillas. The ultimate way was by killing them. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was essentially a war of extermination as was the British war against the Irish and the Tsarist and Communist Russians’ war on the Chechens. Even genocide rarely succeeded because new generations arose to replace the dead.

If not all could be killed, at least their lands and other resources could be taken away from them and given to alien settlers. This was the gist of colonialism as practiced by the French in Algeria and the Russians in Central Asia. Since we regard neither genocide nor colonialism as politically correct today, experiments have been made with various other tactics. In Vietnam, America tried a variety of them, as did the Soviet Union in Afghanistan without ultimate success. Today, in Iraq and in occupied Palestine, Americans and Israelis are repeating these campaigns, focusing primarily on the application of overwhelming military power designed to dishearten the insurgents. In 40 years, the Israelis have not achieved security; the chances that the Americans will in five years appear unlikely.

Why is this so? The answer is essentially simple: people of all religions and races share a common desire to control their own lives. Our Declaration of Independence puts it eloquently for us, and President Woodrow Wilson summed it up neatly for others when he spoke of the quest for “the self-determination of peoples.” Thwarted in this quest, some people—whom, if we approve of them, we call “freedom fighters” or, if not, “fanatics” or “terrorists”—take up arms, as Americans did in our revolution. They are usually few in number, perhaps 15,000 or so in Iraq today and roughly the same in Algeria in the 1950s, but many more people who do not themselves actually fight support them.

Knowing that they cannot defeat the foreign enemy, they seek not so much to win battles but to wear him down, to inflict upon him what he will regard as unacceptable casualties and other costs, and to erode his political support. Thus, almost inevitably, the techniques of guerrilla warfare fade into terrorism.

We have mistakenly acted as though terrorism was a thing or a group against which one can fight. But terrorism is merely a tactic that can be used by anyone. Ancient Britons used it against the Romans, the Zionists against the British, the Algerians against the French, the French against the Nazis, the Chechens against the Russians, the Basques against the Spaniards, and so on. It is the traditional “weapon of the weak,” who resort to it when all else fails.

At the beginning of the struggle against Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration charged that Iraq was a terrorist state acting in close collaboration with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. In the emotional reaction to the attacks in New York and Washington, sloganeering drowned out intelligence. Saddam Hussein’s regime was certainly evil, but Iraq was not a terrorist state. It had no significant relationship with any terrorist organization as the American, British, and Israeli intelligence agencies knew. In fact, Osama bin Laden, a religious fundamentalist, had offered to raise a military force to fight Saddam’s secular government and denounced Saddam with the strongest condemnation a Muslim can utter, that he was a kafir, a godless person. Despite the findings of official American investigations, however, the rallying cries stick in our minds. Seven in 10 Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was working with Osama bin Laden in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

While that is wrong, Iraq has changed under American blows so that it is now a prime recruiting ground and justification for terrorism. As the commander of the 1st Marine Division, Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, put it just before the attack on Fallujah, “After we take Fallujah, the terrorists will have no sanctuary, nowhere to hide.” I remember similar words about the Vietcong. And within a day after the general said this, fighting broke out in a dozen Iraqi cities. The Russians could have told General Natonski that a decade after they did to the Chechen city of Grozny what his troops did to Fallujah, fighting continued. That is what we are now seeing in Iraq. This is the reality with which we must begin. So what can America do?

* * *

Today, there are no good options—only better or worse alternatives. Three appear possible:

The first option has been called “staying the course.” In practice, that means continued fighting. France “stayed the course” in Algeria in the 1950s as America did in Vietnam in the 1960s and as the Israelis are now doing in occupied Palestine. It has never worked anywhere. In Algeria, the French employed over three times as many troops—nearly half a million—to fight roughly the same number of insurgents as America is now fighting in Iraq. They lost. America had half a million soldiers in Vietnam and gave up. After four decades of warfare against the Palestinians, the Israelis have achieved neither peace nor security.

Wars of national “self-determination” can last for generations or even centuries. Britain tried to beat down (or even exterminate) the Irish for nearly 900 years, from shortly after the 11th-century Norman invasion until 1921; the French fought the Algerians from 1831 until 1962; Imperial and Communist Russia fought the Chechens since about 1731. Putin’s Russia is still at it. There was no light at the end of those tunnels.

At best, staying the course in Iraq can be only a temporary measure as eventually America will have to leave. But during the period in which it stays, say the next five years, my guess is that another 30,000 to 40,000 Iraqis will die or be killed while the U.S. armed forces will lose at least another 1,000 dead and 20,000 seriously wounded. The monetary cost will be hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is not only the casualties or treasure that count. What wars of “national liberation” demonstrate is that they also brutalize the participants who survive. Inevitably such wars are vicious. Both sides commit atrocities. In their campaigns to drive away those they regard as their oppressors, terrorists/freedom fighters seek to make their opponents conclude that staying is unacceptably expensive and, since they do not have the means to fight conventional wars, they often pick targets that will produce dramatic and painful results. Irish, Jews, Vietnamese, Tamils, Chechens, Basques, and others blew up hotels, cinemas, bus stations, and apartment houses, killing many innocent bystanders. The more spectacular, the bloodier, the better for their campaigns. So the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, the IRA a Brighton hotel in 1984, an Iraqi group the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. Chechens blew up an apartment house in Moscow in 2003, while a Palestinian group blew up an Israeli-frequented hotel in Taba, Egypt in 2004.

Faced with such challenges, the occupying power often reacts with massive attacks aimed at terrorists but inevitably kills many civilians. To get information from those it manages to capture, it also frequently engages in torture. Torture did not begin at the Abu Ghraib prison; it is endemic in guerrilla warfare. Two phrases from the Franco-Algerian war of the 1950s-60s tell it all: “torture is to guerrilla war what the machine gun was to trench warfare in the First World War” and “torture is the cancer of democracy.” Guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency inexorably corrupt the very causes for which soldiers and insurgents fight. Almost worse, even in exhausted “defeat” for the one and heady “victory” for the other, they leave behind a chaos that spawns warlords, gangsters, and thugs as is today so evident in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

The longer the fighting goes on, the worse the chaos. Viewing the devastation of Fallujah, one correspondent wrote, “Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe … The city smelled like dust, ash—and death.” Viewing the same scene, the deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said, “This is what we do … This is what we do well.” This is not new or unique; it is classic. Recall the statement the Roman historian Tacitus attributed to the contemporary guerrilla leader of the Britons. The Romans, he said, “create a desolation and call it peace.”

The second option is “Vietnamization.” In Vietnam, America inherited from the French both a government and a large army. What was needed, the Nixon administration proclaimed, was to train the army, equip it, and then turn the war over to it. True, the army did not fight well nor did the government rule well, but they existed. In Iraq, America inherited neither a government nor an army. It is trying to create both. Not surprisingly, the results are disappointing. Most Iraqis regard the American-selected and American-created government as merely an American puppet. And the idea that America can fashion a local militia to accomplish what its powerful army cannot do is not policy but fantasy. An Iraqi army is unlikely to fight insurgents with whom soldiers sympathize and among whom they have relatives. Many have reportedly thrown off their new uniforms and joined the insurgents.

Much has been made also of the constitution we wrote for the Iraqis. It reads well, as did the one the British wrote for the Iraqis 80 years ago in 1924, but it is not anchored in the realities of Iraqi society. Absent the institutions that give life to a constitution, it will be simply a piece of paper as was the one the British provided. Representative government grows in the soil of the people or it does not grow at all. It cannot be mandated by foreign rulers.

Thus, the best America might gain from this option is a fig leaf to hide defeat; the worst, in a rapid collapse, would be humiliating evacuation, as in Vietnam.

The third option is to choose to get out rather than being forced. Time is a wasting asset; the longer the choice is put off, the harder it will be to make. The steps required to implement this policy need not be dramatic, but the process needs to be unambiguous. The initial steps could be merely verbal: America would have to declare unequivocally that it will give up its lock on the Iraqi economy, will cease to spend Iraqi revenues as it chooses, and will allow Iraqi oil production to be governed by market forces rather than by an American monopoly.

The second step, more difficult, is to make a truce and pull back its forces. If President Bush could be as courageous as Gen. Charles de Gaulle was in Algeria when he called for a “peace of the brave,” fighting would quickly die down. This is not wishful thinking; it is what happened time after time in guerrilla wars.

Then, and only then, could Iraqis themselves set about creating a national consensus. It would probably not come through elections, although they might legitimize the process. We would probably not like the government that emerged, but we are already beyond being able to control that choice. What we should help and encourage is the essentially indigenous process of building civil institutions. Only as they emerge will some form of reasonably peaceful, reasonably free, reasonably decent government have a chance. This is the most sensitive and difficult part of the whole affair. It cannot be rushed, and we cannot do it for the Iraqis.

The danger during this period is twofold: on the one hand, Iraq, like Afghanistan, could shatter with local warlords seizing the pieces, or Iraq could split into a sort of eastern Balkans with Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab successor states. The one would certainly create mafia-style terrorism, while the other would promote mayhem as thousands of suddenly created refugees flee from now alien states. Further regional instability would be created, and possibly either Turkey or Iran or both would intervene, Turkey to suppress the Kurds and Iran to protect the Shi’ites. The results are unforeseeable but certainly ruinous.

On the other hand, in an attempt to avoid this disaster, we and our Iraqi protégés could, as we are now attempting, create a new Iraqi army. We should heed the lesson of Iraqi history. In the past, the British-created army destroyed moves toward civil society and probably would do so again, paving the way for the ghost of Saddam Hussein. In the period during and following American evacuation, Iraq would need a police force but not an army. A UN multinational peacekeeping force would be easier, cheaper, and safer. The balance between “security” and cohesion would be difficult to achieve and maintain, and we could be of only minimal help, but either extreme would be worse.

Meanwhile, a variety of service functions would have to be organized. Given a chance, Iraq could do them mostly by itself. With its vast potential in oil production, probably the greatest in the world, it could soon again become a rich country with a talented, well-educated population. Step by step, health care, clean water, sewage, roads, bridges, pipelines, electric grids, and housing could be provided by the Iraqis themselves, as they were in the past. When I visited Baghdad in February 2003, on the eve of the invasion, the Iraqis with whom I talked were proud that they had rebuilt what had been destroyed in the 1991 war. They can surely do so again. More important, in carrying out the rebuilding and reordering process, particularly at the grassroots level, Iraqis would begin to take control of their lives and start building the neighborhood institutions and consensus on which, if it is to grow at all, representative government will depend.

Economically, Iraq will also have to mend itself. Here the American role is primarily negative. We have imposed policies during our occupation that worked against the recovery of Iraqi industry and commerce. Abrogating these would spur development since any reasonably intelligent and self-interested government would emphasize getting Iraqi enterprises back into operation and employing Iraqi workers. That process could be speeded up through international loans, commercial agreements, and protective measures so that unemployment, now at socially catastrophic levels, would be diminished. Neighborhood participation in running social affairs and providing security are old traditions in Iraqi society and allowing or favoring their reinvigoration would promote the excellent side effect of grassroots political representation.

As fighting dies down, reasonable security is achieved, and popular institutions revive, the one million Iraqis now living abroad will be encouraged to return home. In the aggregate they are intelligent, highly trained, and well motivated and can make major contributions in all phases of Iraqi life. Oil production will play a key role. The income it generates can make possible great public works projects that will help to lure back Iraqi émigrés, employ Iraqi workers, encourage local entrepreneurs, and salvage the class of merchants and shopkeepers who traditionally provided security in Oriental cities. In its own best interest, the Iraqi government would empower the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) to award concessions by bid to a variety of international companies to sell oil on the world market. This is obviously to the best interests not only of Iraq but also of the Western world.

Contracts for reconstruction paid for by Iraqi money would be awarded under bidding, as they traditionally were, but to prevent excessive corruption would perhaps initially be supervised by the World Bank. The World Bank would, of course, follow its regular procedures on its loans. Where other countries supplied aid, they would probably insist on (and could be given) preferential treatment in the award of contracts as is common practice everywhere.

In such a program, inevitably, there will be setbacks and shortfalls, but they can be partly filled by international organizations. The steps will not be easy; Iraqis will disagree over timing, personnel, and rewards, while giving the process a chance will require a rare degree of American political courage. But, and this is the crucial matter, any other course of action would be far worse for both America and Iraq. The safety and health of American society as well as Iraqi society requires that this policy be implemented intelligently, determinedly—and soon.

“
A former member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council, William R. Polk was responsible for the Middle East. He has been a professor of history at the University of Chicago and Founding Director of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is now senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation.

After Abu Ghraib

After Abu Ghraib: "I Hate Them"

Viewpoints FM: John With the kidnappers and beheaders of Americans in Iraq making their proclaimed demand the release of Iraqi women in American prisons, the testimony of an Iraqi woman who has been there is relevant. Huda Alazawi was one of the few women held in solitary in the notorious Iraqi prison. Following her release, she talks for the first time to Luke Harding about her ordeal Monday September 20, 2004 The Guardian  It began with a phone call. In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant. He was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad well known for its hostility towards the US occupation. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her. "It was clearly blackmail," Alazawi says, speaking in the Baghdad office of her trading company. "We knew that if we gave in, there would be other demands." The informant was as good as his word. In November 2003, he wrote a report that prompted US soldiers to interrogate Alazawi's brother, Ali, and her older sister, Nahla, now 45. Wearing a balaclava, he also led several raids with US soldiers on the families' antique-filled Baghdad properties. On December 23, the Americans arrested another of Alazawi's brothers, Ayad, 44. It was at this point that she decided to confront the Americans directly. She marched into the US base in Adhamiya, one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. "A US captain told me to come back with my two other brothers. He said we could talk after that." On Christmas Eve she returned with her brothers, Ali and Mu'taz. "I waited for four hours. An American captain finally interrogated me. After 10 minutes he announced that I was under arrest." Like thousands of other Iraqis detained by the Americans since last year's invasion, Alazawi was about to experience the reality of the Bush administration's "war on terror". "They handcuffed me and blindfolded me and put a piece of white cloth over my eyes. They bundled me into a Humvee and took me to a place inside the palace. I was dumped in a room with a single wooden chair. It was extremely cold. After five hours they brought my sister in. I couldn't see anything but I could recognise her from her crying." Alazawi says that US guards left her sitting on the chair overnight, and that the next day they took her to a room known by detainees as "the torturing place". "The US officer told us: 'If you don't confess we will torture you. So you have to confess.' My hands were handcuffed. They took off my boots and stood me in the mud with my face against the wall. I could hear women and men shouting and weeping. I recognised one of the cries as my brother Mu'taz. I wanted to see what was going on so I tried to move the cloth from my eyes. When I did, I fainted." Like most Iraqi women, Alazawi is reluctant to talk about what she saw but says that her brother Mu'taz was brutally sexually assaulted. Then it was her turn to be interrogated. "The informant and an American officer were both in the room. The informant started talking. He said, 'You are the lady who funds your brothers to attack the Americans.' I speak some English so I replied: 'He is a liar.' The American officer then hit me on both cheeks. I fell to the ground. Alazawi says that American guards then made her stand with her face against the wall for 12 hours, from noon until midnight . Afterwards they returned her to her cell. "The cell had no ceiling. It was raining. At midnight they threw something at my sister's feet. It was my brother Ayad. He was bleeding from his legs, knees and forehead. I told my sister: 'Find out if he's still breathing.' She said: 'No. Nothing.' I started crying. The next day they took away his body." The US military later issued a death certificate, seen by the Guardian, citing the cause of death as "cardiac arrest of unknown etiology". The American doctor who signed the certificate did not print his name, and his signature is illegible. The body was returned to the family four months later, on April 3, after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke. The family took photographs of the body, also seen by the Guardian, which revealed extensive bruising to the chest and arms, and a severe head wound above the left eye. After Ayad's body had been taken away, Alazawi says that she and 18 other Iraqi detainees were put in a minibus inside the military compound. "The Americans told us: 'Nobody is going to sleep tonight.' They played scary music continuously with loud voices. As soon as someone fell asleep they started beating on the door. It was Christmas. They kept us there for three days. Many of the US soldiers were drunk." Finally, after a US guard broke her shoulder as she left the lavatory, Alazawi and her surviving siblings were transferred - first to a police academy in Baghdad's interior ministry and then, on January 4, 2004, to Abu Ghraib prison. Alazawi, who has a 20-year-old daughter, Farah, and a four-year-old granddaughter, Safat, spent the next 156 days in solitary confinement. Along with five other Iraqi women, she was held in Abu Ghraib's infamous "hard site" - the prison block inside the compound where photographs of American guards sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners had been taken two months previously. The women were kept in the upstairs cellblock; male detainees regarded as "difficult" were held downstairs. The vast majority of inmates lived in a series of open tents surrounded by razor wire and US guard posts. In her first weeks at Abu Ghraib, before the US military launched its internal investigation into prisoner abuse, torture was commonplace, she says. "The guards used wild dogs. I saw one of the guards allow his dog to bite a 14-year-old boy on the leg. The boy's name was Adil. Other guards frequently beat the men. I could see the blood running from their noses. They would also take them for compulsory cold showers even though it was January and February. From the very beginning, it was mental and psychological war." Alazawi is reticent about the question of sexual abuse of Iraqi women but says that neither she nor any of the other women in Abu Ghraib at the time were sexually assaulted by US guards. In his subsequent report into the scandal, however, Major General Antonio Taquba found that at least one US military policemen had raped a female inmate inside Abu Ghraib; a letter smuggled out of the prison by a woman known only as "Noor", containing allegations of rape, was found to be entirely accurate. Other witnesses interviewed by the Guardian have said that US guards "repeatedly" raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was held in the block last year. They also said that guards made several of the women inmates parade naked in front of male prisoners. Alazawi says that she was held in a two-metre-square cell, initially with no bed and a bucket for a toilet. For the first three weeks she was entirely "mute" after being told that talking was forbidden. The US guards gave her only one book, a Koran. She managed to steal a pen, and recorded incidents of abuse, with dates, in its margins. During her first few months in custody, the US soldiers were brutal, petty and tyrannous, she says. "Because I could speak a bit of English I was given the job of emptying the rubbish. There was never enough food and one day I came across an old woman who had collapsed from hunger. The Americans were always eating lots of hot food. I found some in a packet in a bin and gave it to her. They caught me and threw me in a one-metre-square punishment cell. They then poured cold water on me for four hours." She wrote the date down in her Koran: February 24, 2004 . For the first four months, apart from frequent interrogations, she was not allowed out of the block. Alazawi says she was repeatedly asked whether she was in the Resistance and whether she had fired rockets at US soldiers (she is 5ft 3in tall). "It became a running joke. The other women began to nickname me the Queen of the RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. The American interrogators were entirely ignorant and knew nothing about Iraqi people. The vast majority of people there were innocent." After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April, Alazawi was allowed to exercise in the scrubby yard outside for 10 minutes a day. She got a bed. She was also assigned a new female guard, "Mrs Palmer", who helped the women with their English and in turn tried to learn Arabic. In May, Major General Geoffrey Miller, assigned to Abu Ghraib by Washington in the aftermath of the torture scandal, escorted a large group of journalists around the prison for the first time. The previous night, Alazawi says, US guards evacuated all the juveniles and male detainees from her cellblock, leaving only her and a handful of other women upstairs. "Mrs Palmer told us that during the inspection we had to lie quietly on our beds. She said that if we behaved we would be allowed to spend more time out of our cells in the sun. The following day General Miller turned up with a huge number of journalists. I heard him telling them that some of the people kept in here were murderers. I shouted out: 'We are not the killers. You are the killers. This is our country. You have invaded it.' After that they didn't let me out of my cell for an entire month. A US officer came to me and said: 'Because of you we have all been punished'." Alazawi says she was unimpressed by Miller. "It was obvious he liked having his photo taken," she says. Over the next few weeks, the US military began releasing hundreds of Abu Ghraib detainees as part of a damage limitation exercise. Alazawi and her sister were moved from their cells to a tent. Three generals also came to interview her and asked her to describe what had happened to Ayad, her brother. They did not, however, offer an apology. The other women were gradually released, including her sister. Finally, on July 19, a helicopter took Alazawi to Al Taji, a military base just north of Baghdad . "After eight months in prison they suddenly treated me like a queen. It was weird," she says. "They offered me some Pepsi. I could take a shower. There was air conditioning. There were four female soldiers to look after me. The doctor came to see me four times in 24 hours. They made me sign a piece of paper promising not to leave the country. And then I was free." A US military spokesman said that Alazawi was known to him, but disputed her claim to have been held in solitary for 157 days:"She and her sister, which [sic] were the last two females we detained at Abu Ghraib, were separated from the male detainees in keeping with the cultural sensitivities." He added, "The fact that abuses occurred isn't really news any more. We know they did and those who are accused are being prosecuted for it." Now Alazawi is trying to piece her life back together. She is back at work in Baghdad , where she runs businesses importing foreign cars and electrical goods, surrounded by respectful staff who bring endless cups of sweet Iraqi coffee. Business appears to be flourishing. Friends of the family in Arab dish-dash - many of whom come from Iraq 's Sunni elite - drop in and exchange gossip on her white leather sofas. But after her release, her millionaire husband announced that he was divorcing her. "For a woman in an eastern society to spend months in US custody is very difficult," she says. Several of the other former women detainees in Abu Ghraib are believed to have disappeared; others have husbands who have also disowned them. Alazawi's surviving brothers, Ali - prisoner number 156215 - and Mu'taz - 156216 - are still inside Abu Ghraib. The US military continues to detain them and 2,400 other prisoners without charge or legal access, in contravention of the Geneva Convention. Alazawi says that she has hired lawyers to pursue the Iraqi informant whom she blames for her brother's death. All the other women detainees, meanwhile, have refused to talk about their ordeal; she is the first to give testimony. As Iraq lurches from disaster to disaster, from kidnapping to suicide bombing, from insurgency towards civil war, from death to death, what does she think of the Americans now? "I hate them," she says.