Academics assassinated in Iraq

A list of academics assassinated in Iraq since the US invasion has been published:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m49096&hd=&size=1&l=e

This is exactly how it was in Chile when Allende's government was overthrowin with US assistance. A list of pro-democracy people - between 2 and 3K - was given to Pinochet and he disappeared them all. Chile was described at the time as 'the perfect Laboratory experiment' for futre US foreign 'relations', and so it has turned out to be.

There are pro-democracy people in Iran who are being ruthlessly exploited by the US at the moment. They should take a look at this list, because it includes many people who equally believed that the US were serious about toppling the brutal Saddam and replacing his regime with western-style democracy. These are the very people the neo cons loathe and fear the most - they dont want objectors to their real plans in situ - especially native ones who might start informed, popular protest movements.

Will Bush and his gang of murderers ever be brought to account for this?

This list provides very scant details on the circumstances of the 'assassinations'. I am not for a moment suggesting that these people are not dead or that their deaths are not both tragic and outrageous. However, there appears little evidence that a) many of their assassinations were directly connected to the USA (save for the general lawlessness and factional fighting that their stupid invasion has caused) and b) the manner in which many died, some give details regarding specific circumstances but many that do not could just as easily be as a result of a bomb at a Mosque. In the latter example it would seem far fetched that they were specifically targetted.

For example:

Quote :

Saadi Ahmad Zidaan Al-Fahdawi: PhD
in Islamic science, lecturer at the College of Islamic Science, Baghdad
University. Killed 26 March 2006.

There are of course several ways in which you can look at such a situation, in the absence of clear evidence and I don't consider the above clear evidence. You can take America to task on every single problem in Iraq which has arisen since the invasion. It is of course a valid position. However, it is most likely not the case that every single bad thing happening in Iraq is a direct consequence of the invasion or a concerted effort on the part of the US Administration to bring about a particular outcome. In that instance the American policy is a background factor, albeit a heavily contributing one, along with many others all of which are worthy of exploration. Why limit the debate purely to American foreign policy?

That is a ghastly list. Iraq was a much more advanced country that Ireland 20 years ago. It has been driven back into medieval conditions. What a victory.

Saddam himself had hit lists. There were mass hangings of communists and opposition members. There is no comparison though between the conditions then and now, for the mass of ordinary people in Iraq.

I thought that it was the insurgents and religious fundamentalists who were assassinating the secular academics?

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

I thought that it was the insurgents and religious fundamentalists who were assassinating the secular academics?

The US does this in every invasion that it organises or supports - they annihilate the intellectual capital of the victim country.

The US government is running Iraq, not the insurgents and fundamentalists. The fundamentalist groups are being exploited by the US just as they were in Afghanistan (remember Al Qaeda is a creature of the US's own making). Moreover, the US is doing most of the killing - they are the ones who have dropped trillions of dollars of ordnance on the country and who have a vast arsenal of weaponry.

US soliders are telling horrific stories of US?Iraqi government-sponsored death squads. The Texan journalist Dahr Jamail was in Iraq in early 07:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18316.htm

Full text here

Quote :

By Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily

09/05/07 "IPS News" -- - Death squads from the Ministry of Interior posing as Iraqi police are killing more people than ever in the capital, emerging evidence shows.

The death toll is high - in all 1,536 bodies were brought to the Baghdad morgue in September. The health ministry announced last month that it will build two new morgues in Baghdad to take their capacity to 250 bodies a day.

Many fear a government hand in more killings to come. The U.S. military has revealed that the 8th Iraqi Police Unit was responsible for the Oct. 1 kidnapping of 26 Sunni food factory workers in the Amil quarter in southwest Baghdad. The bodies of ten of them were later found in Abu Chir neighbourhood in the capital.

Minister for the Interior Jawad al-Bolani announced he is suspending the police unit from official duties, and confining it to base until an investigation is completed.

But sections of the ministry appear responsible for the abductions and killing. Ministry of Interior vehicles were used for the kidnapping in this case, and most men conducting the raid wore Iraqi police uniforms, except for a few who wore black death squad 'uniforms', witnesses told IPS.

The leader of the police unit is under house arrest and faces interrogation for this and other crimes, according to an official announcement.

"It is for sure that they did it," one of the victim's neighbours told IPS on condition of anonymity. "The tortured bodies were found the second day. They came in their official police cars; it is not the first time that they did something like this. They do it all over Baghdad, and we hope they will get proper punishment this time."

Men of the police unit meanwhile do not face imminent punishment. "They are going to be rehabilitated and brought back to service," director-general of the Iraqi police Adnan Thabit told IPS.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni party, blamed militias with ties to the government and the U.S. military.

"The Iraqi Islamic Party asks how could 26 people, women among them, have been transported from Amil to Abu Chir through all those Iraqi and U.S. army checkpoints and patrols," it said in a statement.

The U.S. military has denied any involvement in the killings.

General Yassin al-Dulaimi, deputy minister for the interior, has said on Iraqi television several times that death squads are composed mainly of Iraqi police and army units. His comments reflect differing allegiance and agendas even within the Shia bloc.

General Dulaimi has been trying for long to expose the organised criminal gangs that have been controlling the ministry since its formation - a formation that was overseen by U.S. authorities.

Dulaimi says he does not believe that the Shia Badr organisation, a large, well-armed and funded militia, has complete control over his ministry. But most residents of Baghdad believe that Badr has complete control over the Baghdad Order Maintenance police force, and use this force to carry out sectarian murders. This force is one of several official security teams in Baghdad.

The force is led by Mehdi al-Gharrawi, who also led similar security units during the U.S.- led attack on Fallujah in November 2004.

"All criminals who survived the Fallujah crisis after committing genocide and other war crimes were granted higher ranks," Major Amir Jassim from the ministry of defence told IPS. "I and many of my colleagues were not rewarded because we disobeyed orders to set fire to people's houses (in Fallujah) after others looted them."

Jassim said the looting and burning of homes in Fallujah during the November siege was ordered from the ministries of interior and defence.

"Now they want to do the same things they did in Fallujah in all Sunni areas so that they ignite a civil war in Iraq," said Jassim, referring to the Shia-dominated ministries. "A civil war is the only guarantee for them to stay in power, looting such incredible amounts of money."

Another official with the ministry of defence, Muntather al-Samarraii, told IPS that both Iran and "collaborators" within the Ministry of Interior are to blame for the widespread sectarian killings..

"I have lists of thousands of corruption cases from within my ministry, and other files to expose to the world," he said, "But the world is not listening. When it does, I am afraid it is going to be too late."

A police officer in Samarraii's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS that he believed that murderers would not be punished for their crimes.

"They will reward them, believe me, and give them higher ranks," he said. "This is a country that will never stand back on its feet as long as these killers are in power. And the Americans are supporting them by allowing their convoys to move during curfew hours."

While there is little evidence of direct U.S. involvement, questions have arisen over what the U.S. forces have done - or not done - to encourage such killings.

A UN human rights report released September last year held interior ministry forces responsible for an organised campaign of detentions, torture and killings. It reported that special police commando units accused of carrying out the killings were recruited from Shia Badr and Mehdi militias, and trained by U.S. forces.

Retired Col. James Steele, who served as advisor on Iraqi security forces to then U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte supervised the training of these forces.

Steele was commander of the U.S. military advisor group in El Salvador 1984-86, while Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to nearby Honduras 1981-85. Negroponte was accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights in 1994. The Commission reported the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political workers.

The violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA, according to a CIA working group set up in 1996 to look into the U.S. role in Honduras.

The CIA records document that his "special intelligence units," better known as "death squads," comprised CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of people suspected of supporting leftist guerrillas.

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who reports from Iraq.

Ever read "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene?

Aragon - I just read quickly through that big long article. I saw nothing in it about academics being assassinated. Did I miss something? Also, you talk about Chile, Afghanistan and ordnance dropped form planes as if these were evidence that the US is targetting Iraqi academics. This makes no sense to me.

Can you post anything which shows a link between the USA and a targetted campaign against academics? That is what you are saying is going on right?

Are you talking about the Dahr Jamail article? If so, then no it's not about academics being assassinated. It's about the links between assassiantion sqauds and the US military in Iraq but not academics specifically - . What I'm saying is that this is standard policy for the US when it orchestrates invasions and topples foreign governments.

If you read the original article there are many references to academics being shot as they go to and from work by sqauds lying in wait for them.

'Journalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads'

https://www.indymedia.ie/article/70607?comment_order=asc&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true

A full report (figures/stats etc) by an Iraqi academic living in the UK

"Plight of Iraqi Academics

• A new phenomena in Iraq,
  
• Never existed prior to April 2003.
  
• The pattern indicates a sinister campaign and motives.
  
• Similar pattern to El-Salvador see: Death-squad style massacres for Iraq, "The Salvador Option" Becomes Reality - Mike Fuller.
  
• The assassinations, kidnaps and threats to life forcing academics and doctors to leave Iraq do not follow any religious or sectarian pattern.
  
• The only dominant pattern is that the absolute majority of victims are ethnically Arabs."
  
• 
  http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2006/05/iraq-assassination-of-academics-jalili.html
  

Finger of blame points to Mossad/US Army

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/acad-m06.shtml

More damning information:

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/PressRelease221106.htm

(Ps I added a link to the previous post re Mossad/US Army)