[A-List] Poll: US Support For Bush's Handling Of Iraq War Plunges To All-Time Low Of 36%

[Rick Rozoff <r_rozoff@xxxxxxxxx>]

1) US Tanks Enter World's Second Largest Cemetery,
Attack World Shiite Holy Ground
2) Iraqi Shiite Leader Declares Holy War On US
Occupiers
3) Insurgents Attack, Encircle Occupation Post In
Nasiriyah
4) Shiite Forces Capture Nasiriyah Bridge, Reports Of
General Uprising After US Assault On Cemetery
5) German Television: American Troops Tortured Iraqis
To Death, Photographed Their Handiwork
6) British Troops Torture Iraqi To Death, Throw Money
At Victim's Father
7) Former Iraqi Governing Council Human Rights
Minister: US Knew Of Prisoner Abuse, Did Nothing
8) Final Statement Of Speakers Of Parliaments Of Iraqi
Neighboring Countries Condemns US Violation Of
International Laws
9) Zogby Poll: Americans' Support For Bush's Handling
Of Iraq War Plunges To All-Time Low Of 36%
10) Fearing For Their Safety, 600 Filipino Workers
Quit US Base In Iraq





1)
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=34675

Novinite (Bulgaria)
May 14, 2004

US Forces Attack Iraqi Holy Ground


Several US tanks have entered the holy Iraqi city of
Najaf blasting guerrilla positions on local cemetery,
ground sacred by Iraqis, for the first time. Najaf is
a city within a city covering several square miles
where Shi'ites from all over the world wish to be
buried within sight of its sacred shrines. Civilians
were mostly caught in the crossfire with 4 dead and 26
wounded, though many others are believed to have been
killed in the cemetery where their bodies still lie.
Al-Sadr left the town and preached his anti-American
weekly sermon at Kufa, next door to Najaf.
------------------------------------------------------
2)
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=34662

Novinite
May 14, 2004

Al-Sadr Declares Jihad on US in Nasiriya


Iraqi militants loyal to radical cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr declared a holy war on all Americans in the
Southern Iraqi town of Nasiriya. The rebel cleric has
reiterated threats to stage suicide attacks against
occupation forces targets in Iraq should they enter
the holy cities. Meanwhile fierce clashes erupted
between US forces and Iraqi militants loyal to Shia
cleric Moqtada Sadr in the holy city of Najaf. Shia
militants shelter in the cemetery, about three
kilometres from the Imam Ali Shrine, close to where Mr
Sadr has taken sanctuary.
------------------------------------------------------
3)
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/dn/Airaq-nasiriyah.Rg4G_EyE.html


Associated Press
May 14, 2004

Gunmen Attack Coalition HQ in Nasiriyah


BAGHDAD - Gunmen believed loyal to radical cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr attacked the headquarters of the
U.S.-led coalition in Nasiriyah on Friday, trapping
some international staffers inside, coalition
officials said.

The gunbattle erupted about 7 p.m. between militiamen
and Italian troops supported by Filipino security
guards, officials said. At least five rocket-propelled
grenades were fired at the building over a half hour
period.

About 10 coalition staffers, including Italians,
Americans and Britons along with 10 drivers and
security guards remain trapped in the building, the
officials said. Four Italian journalists were also
holed up in the building.

Earlier, militiamen pushed their way into the
governor's office and were moving near a hotel, a main
bridge and police stations.

The tense situation in Nasiriyah developed after
daylong fighting in the holy city of Najaf between
American force and members of a militia loyal to
radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Coalition officials said there were reports of a
scuffle at the governor's office, and that a security
guard there was slightly injured.

Al-Sadr's representative in Nasiriyah, Sheik Aws
al-Khafaji, threatened attacks on coalition forces,
most of whom are Italians.
------------------------------------------------------
4)
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200405141909-1189-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia


Agenzia Giornalistica Italia
May 14, 2004


100 ARMED MILITIA ON NASSIRIYA BRIDGE


Rome - About 100 armed Shiites have taken control of
the second bridge on the Euphrates in front of the ex
base of Libeccio now the local police and Iraqi
governor HQ. For the moment no hostile intentions have
been registered. The local TV has spoken of a general
uprising by Al Sadr followers tied to involvement in
the clashes between militia and US troops in Najaf in
a Shiite cemetery.
------------------------------------------------------
5)
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_15-5-2004_pg7_38

Daily Times (Pakistan)
May 15, 2004

US troops tortured prisoner to death


-?A fellow prisoner gave Spiegel TV a detailed
description how the man was sadistically tortured in
the five days after his arrest.
?US soldiers also took photos of this abuse.?
-?The photographs of the corpse, which Spiegel TV has
also seen, indicate the man was tortured,? it said,
adding that the body also appeared to have undergone
an autopsy using ?Western methods?. It said the man
was a married father of seven, including
seven-month-old twins.



BERLIN: German television reported on Friday that US
troops tortured to death an Iraqi prisoner in their
custody in January this year and captured the abuse on
film.

Spiegel TV said in a statement that it had witness
accounts and documents to prove that 47-year-old Asad
Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel had been killed at the US
military base Al Asad west of the town Khan Al
Baghdadi.

The investigative news program said that he had been
picked up on the open road and taken to the base on
suspicion of belonging to an insurgent group.

?A fellow prisoner gave Spiegel TV a detailed
description how the man was sadistically tortured in
the five days after his arrest,? the statement said.

?US soldiers also took photos of this abuse.?

Spiegel TV said that US forces had tried to cover up
the death of the prisoner at Al Asad by declaring in a
report that he had ?died in his sleep? in a document
signed by pathologist Luis A. Santiago. The death
certificate stated that no autopsy had been conducted.
But an Iraqi coroner who received the body of the
prisoner from US forces told Spiegel TV that man?s
body showed ?clear signs of torture?.

?The photographs of the corpse, which Spiegel TV has
also seen, indicate the man was tortured,? it said,
adding that the body also appeared to have undergone
an autopsy using ?Western methods?. It said the man
was a married father of seven, including
seven-month-old twins. Employees of the Iraqi medical
examination institute in Baghdad told Spiegel TV that
they had seen other torture victims among the corpses
handed over to them by the International Committee of
the Red Cross on behalf of the US military.

Spiegel TV said that Iraqi coroners were told not to
conduct an autopsy if an American death certificate
was provided, even if the cause of death appeared not
to correspond to the injuries.

Corporal Charles Graner will be the fourth US soldier
to be court-martialed over the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners when he faces seven charges including
maltreatment, adultery and cruelty, the US military
said.

Graner will be arraigned on May 20, the same day as
two sergeants who each face five charges, Brigadier
General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference on Friday.

....
------------------------------------------------------
6)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1527215,00.html

News 24 (South Africa)
May 14, 2004

Brits offered $3,000 for death


-"After two days of torture, he was killed," the
father said. "I saw my son's body. His nose was
broken, three of his ribs were broken."
-"Then they offered us $3 000 as compensation for my
son."



Baghdad - An Iraqi man told an Arab television station
on Friday that British troops tortured and killed his
son in detention, and then apologised and offered him
$3,000 in compensation for the death.

The accusation by Dawood Salim came amid an
international scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners by
US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, as well
as allegations of British mistreatment of Iraqi
prisoners.

In an interview with Al-Arabiya satellite TV network,
Salim said his son, Bahaa Dawood Salim Mousa, and six
other Iraqis were arrested on September 14 "without
any justified reason" while working at Ibn al-Haitham
hotel in Basra, the biggest city in southern Iraq.

"After two days of torture, he was killed," the father
said. "I saw my son's body. His nose was broken, three
of his ribs were broken."

He said there also bruises on his son's arms and other
parts of his body. The interview was broadcast on
Friday.

"The British commander sent us an apology, of which I
have a copy, saying that they are sorry for killing
him with no reason in their detention centres," he
said. "Then they offered us $3 000 as compensation for
my son."

In London, the British ministry of defence said there
was "an interim payment" paid to the family of about
$3 000 and it was accepted.

It said the compensation payment in the Mousa case was
one of three made following fatalities. It didn't name
the two other people killed but said the total
payments added up to £8 125.

The ministry said Britain made a total of 57
compensation payments relating to fatalities, personal
injury, property damage and road traffic accidents,
and that they added up to £72 224. It said the figures
dated from January and were the latest available.

On Tuesday, a High Court judge in London allowed
Mousa's family and 12 other families to proceed with a
civil case against the government.

Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted on Wednesday that
there was no evidence of "systematic abuse" carried
out by British troops. He has come under pressure to
explain why he and senior ministers only became aware
of a damning international Red Cross report only a few
days ago. The report, issued in February, detailed
allegations of abuse.

The leaked Red Cross report says abuse of Iraqi
prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib was
widespread and routine and included brutality,
humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."

It also alleged British mistreatment of Iraqi
prisoners in southern Iraq, including the use of
hoods, but nothing as severe as the accusations
against the US forces.

Edited by Anthea Jonathan
------------------------------------------------------
7)
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/690/re3.htm

Al-Ahram (Egypt)
May 14, 2004

Bremer knew
The former Iraqi minister of human rights, who
resigned over the indifference of Coalition
authorities to complaints he brought before them,
confirms that top US officials knew the full extent of
the torture of Iraqi prisoners, reports Nermeen
Al-Mufti from Baghdad


-"By the end of last December I submitted a report
about the violations during house raids, at
checkpoints, putting sandbags on the heads of the
detainees in addition to the violations and inhuman
treatment in jails and detention centres, especially
in Baghdad airport."
Last December, Turki informed Bremer about the
suffering of female detainees.
-"The occupation forces attacked a house. An American
soldier threw a grenade in a room then he closed the
door. A mother and her four children were killed.
Another American soldier killed the woman's
brother-in-law. Then they discovered they were at the
wrong address."
-In February, and after many visits to jails and
detention centres, the ICRC [International Committee
of the ed Cross] submitted a report to Bremer and
General Sanchez. That report explained in detail the
violations of human rights.


The heinous scandal of Abu Ghraib is not the only
violation of human rights and international law in
Iraq. According to Baghdad's Red Cross (ICRC)
Spokesperson Nada Doumani, Abu Ghraib is but the tip
of the iceberg, and of these and other violations
Chief Civil Administrator L Paul Bremer was well
aware.

Dr Abdul-Baset Turki, the first minister for human
rights appointed by the Interim Governing Council
(IGC), also confirmed that Bremer knew about the
atrocities.

"From the beginning I knew that in an occupied country
there would be gross human rights abuses. Still, I
accepted the position thinking that the democracy
project was a worthy cause," Turki told Al- Ahram
Weekly.

Turki resigned on 8 April when the occupation forces
bombed Falluja and the suburbs of Sadr City and Shu'la
in Baghdad, deciding either to capture or to kill the
militant Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr. He tendered his
resignation again on 29 April during a Cabinet meeting
he himself called for just before the release of the
Abu Ghraib photos.

"I knew about the violations of human rights in the
jails yet I could not imagine it to be so ugly," Turki
said. "By the end of last December I submitted a
report about the violations during house raids, at
checkpoints, putting sandbags on the heads of the
detainees in addition to the violations and inhuman
treatment in jails and detention centres, especially
in Baghdad airport."

Last December, Turki informed Bremer about the
suffering of female detainees. In the same month he
informed the Arab League on the same issue. On a
weekly basis, often with few responses forthcoming,
his ministry sent claims and complaints of violations
to occupation authorities.

Turki first heard serious allegations of torture in
Abu Ghraib at a Cabinet meeting last March in which
the minister of justice informed Bremer that female
detainees were raped. He subsequently upset the
Americans at a United Nations-sponsored human rights
meeting in Geneva. "There was monitoring of human
rights in Iraq until 9 April 2003. I demanded that
this monitoring continue while the Americans refused,"
he said.

The most painful case of human rights violations Turki
informed Bremer of was that of a house raid in Mosul,
northern Iraq. "The occupation forces attacked a
house. An American soldier threw a grenade in a room
then he closed the door. A mother and her four
children were killed. Another American soldier killed
the woman's brother-in-law. Then they discovered they
were at the wrong address."

What did Bremer do? "He listened," Turki recounts. Why
didn't such incidents appear in the press, local or
international? "I did not want to use my people's
suffering. I knew the press could wield pressure.
Still, I thought that I could work. Then I discovered
my post was merely part of the decoration for the sham
democracy in Iraq," says Turki.

Doumani told the Weekly that the ICRC began visiting
Abu Ghraib jail in March 2003, before the fall of the
Hussein regime. An ICRC team organised its first
post-Saddam visit to Abu Ghraib last October. The team
met with the director of the jail. They submitted a
report to General Janis Karpinski - formally
admonished and quietly "suspended" in January - and
met the American attorney-general in Iraq.

"During those meetings we mentioned a lot of
violations in Abu Ghraib and other jails," recalls
Doumani. In February, and after many visits to jails
and detention centres, the ICRC submitted a report to
Bremer and General Sanchez. That report explained in
detail the violations of human rights. Doumani added,
"The atrocities shown in the photos published by the
media are not the only violations. There are many
other undocumented atrocities that the ICRC is aware
of. Hundreds of Iraqis were arrested without
authorities informing their families, force has been
used frequently during interrogations, long periods in
solitude followed, with detainees crowded together in
unsanitary tents."

According to many Iraqis who submitted complaints to
local NGOs newly established to defend human rights in
Iraq, these organisations do nothing on violations
committed by occupation forces. Their work is rather
to gather testimony to the violations committed by
Hussein and his regime. Fawzi Al- Zaidi, whose
16-year-old son Ahmed was killed by the Americans,
tried to sue the occupation authorities for
compensation, or at least get an apology. He has been
trying since last October, but until now got nothing.
He went to many local and international NGOs filling
out hundreds of complaint forms, photocopying
documents and wasting money for nothing. Al-Zaidi is
one example in thousands.

"Bremer disregards the violations of human rights in
occupied Iraq," Turki states. His ministry established
a special unit to deal with conditions in jails,
especially Abu Ghraib. The office collected evidence
of abuse but was swiftly informed that it had limited
authority that extended only to dealing with minor
crimes. "Nobody is ready to defend the Iraqis," Turki
adds.
------------------------------------------------------
8)
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040514/2004051407.html

Arabic News
May 14, 2004

Final statement of Iraqi neighboring states
parliaments


Speakers of Parliaments in the Iraqi Neighboring
Countries Thursday condemned violations of the
international human laws represented by the inhuman
practices of abusing Iraqi prisoners by US occupying
troops.

In a final statement following their 2-day meetings,
heads of delegations expressed disgust over the abuse
of Iraqi prisoners calling for bringing those
responsible to justice.

They expressed deep concern over the situation of
insecurity and instability in Iraq, calling for
respecting the international law and human rights.

They urged the UN to play a more central role in Iraq
in order to restore the legitimacy and enhance the
law, calling for ending the occupation of Iraq.

They expressed the will of the International
Parliamentary Federation to support the free elections
under the UN umbrella.
------------------------------------------------------
9)
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180528014


Financial Times
May 14, 2004

Support for Bush plummets over Iraq
By James Harding in Washington


-[A]s public backing for the Vietnam war never
returned to 50 per cent-plus levels after 1968, so "it
is hard to imagine much of a recovery now. As American
casualties continue to come in, the support will
continue to erode."


Public support for President George W. Bush's handling
of the war in Iraq has plunged to only 36 per cent and
his approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of
his presidency, according to a Zogby poll due out on
Sunday.

Confronted with a rising US body count and images of
torture in Abu Ghraib prison, Americans have begun to
countenance failure in Iraq. The majority of people
polled now do not think it was worth going to war.

The shift in the national mood bodes ill for Mr Bush's
hopes of a second term and has bolstered the campaign
of John Kerry, his Democrat challenger.

The poll will show 42 per cent of people approve of Mr
Bush's overall performance. Almost two-thirds are
critical of his handling of Iraq, according to John
Zogby, the pollster.

In an American Research Group poll, Mr Kerry moved
ahead of Mr Bush in the swing state of Ohio, standing
at 50 per cent compared with 43 per cent for the
president.

Most alarming to the strategists running Mr Bush's
campaign is that 54 per cent of the 1,000-plus likely
voters surveyed by Zogby this week said they thought
the country was heading in the wrong direction.

Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster and political
strategist, said public opinion was moving against the
war: "The photographs projected everything the public
thinks is wrong about the war and drowned out
everything the public thinks is right . . .[The
president] has to be concerned."

John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State
University, says the situation in the US is now
"fairly comparable . . . to late '67, early '68 when
there was a really substantial decline of support".

Mr Mueller said that much as public backing for the
Vietnam war never returned to 50 per cent-plus levels
after 1968, so "it is hard to imagine much of a
recovery now. As American casualties continue to come
in, the support will continue to erode."

In response to the change of mood, the
administration's rhetoric advocating the building of a
"beacon of liberty" in Iraq has been shored up by
language warning of the catastrophe of withdrawal.

As Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security
adviser, left for Europe to seek support for further
troop commitments to the US-led coalition in Iraq, she
said: "I would ask people to remember what it was like
in World War II. We lost many, many people. Nobody
abandoned the countries of Europe because it got
tough, because it got hard."

Yet some senior US military officials have begun to
express fears that the US will run out of political
will before the mission in Iraq is complete.
------------------------------------------------------
10)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=7&id=298552

Japan Today
May 15, 2004

600 Filipino workers in Iraq quit


MANILA ? Fearing for their safety, about 600 Filipinos
working inside a U.S. military base in Iraq have
decided to quit after Wednesday's mortar attack on the
base that killed a Filipino warehouseman and wounded
four others, a Philippine official said Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
said the workers at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, will
be flown to the United Arab Emirates in batches by a
cargo aircraft chartered by their Dubai-based employer
Prime Projects Inc. (Kyodo News)








	
		
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