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Car Bombs kill at least 40 in Iraq; Brits Prepare to Exit Basra

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

Triple Car Bombing kills at least 40 in Iraq

Baghdad, Dec 12 (Prensa Latina) At least 40 persons died and 100 others
were wounded on Wednesday in three car bomb explosions in the Iraqi
city of Amara, capital of the southern province of Maysan, said police.

The vehicles were about 50 yards from one another and detonated
consecutively.

Local police said an explosive-laden car parked in a garage blew up.

Shortly afterwards, a second car exploded about 50 yards away as people
gathered to examine the damage from the first.

According to eyewitnesses, the third car bomb detonated near a cinema.

So far, reports on the victims are contradictory since the death toll
is expected to increase due to the serious conditions of the wounded,
said the sources.

hr ajs jcd mf PL-11

                             ***

AFP - Dec 12, 2007
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/071212194712.yght8idg.html

Iraq car bombs kill 33 as Britain poised to return Basra

AMARA, Iraq (AFP) - Four car bombs killed at least 33 people in Iraq on
Wednesday, including 28 in the southern city of Amara, as Baghdad said
it would retake control of Basra province from British forces on Sunday.

Triple car bombs in Amara killed at least 28 people and wounded another
151, 10 of them children, said Zamil Shia'a al-Oreibi, director general
of Amara health department.

Amara police Lieutenant Ali Kadhim Hassan said the bombs exploded
within minutes of each other, the first going off at 10:30 am (0730
GMT).

Hundreds of relatives rushed to hospitals to seek loved ones as Amara
police announced a 24-hour curfew, an AFP correspondent reported.

"The security personnel must carefully check all the cars in the city,
especially those entering the city," said Ali Hussein, 35, whose
11-year-old brother was wounded in the attack.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the bombings a "desperate act
aimed at shaking the security and stability in Maysan which had
suffered under the former regime." Amara is the capital of Maysan
province.

US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the attacks
were by a "determined enemy" that "does not want the Iraqi people to
live in security and freedom."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "Clearly violence in Iraq is
something that has gone down significantly but is still a major
problem."

She said Commander of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus and US
Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that the security gains made were
"quite significant."

"We in no way are out of the woods yet and we have got, still got a lot
of work to do," Perino added.

British troops transferred security control of Maysan province to Iraqi
forces in April but the region has seen intense Shiite infighting and
battles between militias and Iraqi police.

British soldiers pulled out of Amara in August 2006 and the city of
350,000 residents immediately saw gangs of looters move in and strip
the barracks bare.

Shiite gunmen linked to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army
celebrated the British withdrawal as a victory, boasting they had
liberated Amara from an occupying force.

Hours after the Amara bombings, a suicide bomber blew up his
explosives-rigged car on a bridge connecting villages with the town of
Hit in the western province of Anbar, killing five people, said police
Major Majid Omar.

Wednesday's blasts were the latest in a series of attacks over the past
week after a group linked to Al-Qaeda warned it would unleash a bombing
campaign.

The Amara attacks dealt a blow to claims by London and Baghdad that
security in southern regions of Iraq was under control.

However, Baghdad on Wednesday announced it would take over security of
Basra -- the key southern province which sits on vast oil reserves --
from British troops on Sunday.

"The handover of Basra will take place on December 16," Iraqi
government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters in Basra. A military
spokeswoman in Basra confirmed the date to AFP.

Dabbagh said Iraqi forces were ready to take control of Basra. "Our
security forces are at a good level" and can manage "security in the
province," he said.

Basra police chief Major General Jalil Khalif, who escaped two
assassination attempts last month, also expressed confidence.

"We have already been maintaining security since a long time in Basra.
You can't see any coalition forces deployed here," Khalif said, adding
that tribal and political groups had agreed to support the forces.

"They have agreed to give up heavy arms and also not to carry small
arms on the streets," he added.

A British parliamentary committee has said that Britain failed in its
original aim of bringing security to southern Iraq, however.

"The initial goal of UK forces in southeastern Iraq was to establish
the security necessary for the development of representative political
institutions and for economic reconstruction," the House of Commons
defence committee said.

"Although progress has been made, this goal remains unfulfilled."

Britain has about 5,500 troops in southern Iraq. They are expected to
be cut by more than half to 2,500 by early next year after Iraqis
assume control of Basra province.

London says 173 British troops have been killed since the US-led
invasion of Iraq to oust dictator Saddam Hussein in March 2003.


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How Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 

[Monbiot seems to think a written Constitution would have prevented
Blair's war crimes. But unless the UK population or Parliament insisted
he follow a Constitution, the outcome would have been the same as in
the US, where Constitutional requirements to declare war legally have
not been observed for 60+ years. - NYTransfer]


The Guardian - Jan 1, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2233793,00.html

How Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million
people

Not having a written constitution allowed Blair and his advisers to go
to war without reference to parliament or the public 

By George Monbiot

If you doubt Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the
strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC last Friday. The
Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence
staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at
the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not the
country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the
privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I
have heard how Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a
million people.

Guthrie argued that parliamentary approval would mean intelligence had
to be shared with MPs; that the other side could not be taken by
surprise ("do you want to warn the enemy you are going to do it?"), and
that commanders should have "a choice about when to attack and when not
to attack". Tebbit maintained that "no prime minister would be able to
deploy forces without being able to command a parliamentary majority.
In that sense, the executive is already accountable to parliament".
Once the prime minister has his majority, in other words, MPs become
redundant.

Let me dwell for a moment on what Guthrie said, for he appears to
advocate that we retain the right to commit war crimes. States in
dispute with each other, the UN charter says, must first seek to solve
their differences by "peaceful means" (article 33). If these fail, they
should refer the matter to the security council (article 37), which
decides what measures should be taken (article 39). Taking the enemy by
surprise is a useful tactic in battle, and encounters can be won only
if commanders are able to make decisions quickly. But either Guthrie
does not understand the difference between a battle and a war - which
is unlikely in view of his 44 years of service - or he does not
understand the most basic point in international law. Launching a
surprise war is forbidden by the charter.

It has become fashionable to scoff at these rules and to dismiss those
who support them as pedants and prigs, but they are all that stand
between us and the greatest crimes in history. The International
Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that "to initiate a war of
aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime". The tribunal's charter placed "planning,
preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" at the top of
the list of war crimes.

If Britain's most prominent retired general does not understand this,
it can only be because he has never been forced to understand it. In
September 2002, he argued in the Lords that "the time is approaching
when we may have to join the US in operations against Iraq ... Strike
soon, and the threat will be less and easier to handle. If the UN route
fails, I support the second option." No one in the chamber warned him
that he was proposing the supreme international crime. In another Lords
debate, Guthrie argued that it was "unthinkable for British servicemen
and women to be sent to the International Criminal Court", regardless
of what they might have done. He demanded a guarantee from the
government that this would not be allowed to happen, and proposed that
the British forces should be allowed to opt out of the European
convention on human rights. The grey heads murmured their agreement.

Perhaps it is unfair to single out the noble and gallant lord. The
British establishment's exceptionalism is almost universal. According
to the government, both the Commons public administration committee and
the Lords constitution committee recognise that decision-making should
"provide sufficient flexibility for deployments which need to be made
without prior parliamentary approval for reasons of urgency or
necessary operational secrecy". You cannot keep an operation secret
from parliament unless you are also keeping it secret from the UN.

Tebbit appears to have a general aversion to disclosure. In 2003, the
Guardian obtained letters showing he had prevented the fraud squad at
the MoD from investigating allegations of corruption against the arms
manufacturer BAE, that he tipped off the BAE chairman about the
contents of a confidential letter the Serious Fraud Office had sent
him, and that he failed to tell his minister about the SFO's warnings.
In October 2003, under cross-examination during the Hutton inquiry into
the death of the government scientist David Kelly, he revealed the
decision to name Kelly was made in a "meeting chaired by the prime
minister". That could have been the end of Tony Blair, but a week later
Tebbit sent Lord Hutton a written retraction of his evidence. No one
bothered to tell parliament or the press; the retraction was made
public only when the Hutton report was published, three months later.
Blair knew all along, and the secret gave him a crushing advantage.

The discussion also reveals that Guthrie and Tebbit appear to have
learned nothing from the disaster in Iraq. They are not alone. Just
before he stepped down last year, Blair wrote an article for the
Economist headlined "What I've Learned". He had discovered, he claimed,
that his critics were both wrong and dangerous and that his decisions,
based on "freedom, democracy, responsibility to others, but also
justice and fairness", were difficult but invariably right. He called
his article "a very short synopsis of what I have learned". I could
think of an even shorter one.

We have yet to hear one word of regret or remorse from any of the main
architects - Blair, Brown, Straw, Hoon, Campbell and their principal
advisers - of Britain's participation in the supreme international
crime. The press and parliament appear to have heeded Blair's plea that
we all "move on" from Iraq. The British establishment has a unique
capacity to move on, and then to repeat its mistakes. What other former
empire knows so little of its own atrocities?

When people call our unwritten constitution a "gentleman's agreement",
they reveal more than they intend. It allows the unelected gentlemen
who advise the prime minister to act without reference to the proles.
Britain went to war in Iraq because the public and parliament were not
allowed to know when the decision was made, what the intelligence
reports said, and what the attorney general wrote about the its
legality. Had the truth not been suppressed, Britain could never have
attacked Iraq.

Real constitutional reform requires much more than the timid proposals
in the green paper on the governance of Britain, which are likely to
appear in a bill in a few weeks' time. Yes, parliament should be
allowed to vote on whether to go to war, yes the royal prerogative
should be rolled back. But the prime minister, his diplomats, civil
servants and generals would still decide which wars parliament needs to
know about, which crimes could be secretly committed in our name. Real
constitutional reform means not only handing power to parliament but
also confronting the power of the hard, unaccountable people who act as
if it is their birthright.

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The Homophobic Hate campaign by English Churches Housing Group (ECHG),
Hammersmith & Fulham Council and The Metropolitan Police is still
continuing – at the moment my tormentors think it is acceptable to run
a Hate campaign and they do not think they have done anything wrong.

The authorities know who I am, but they think it is acceptable for a
group of people to run a homophobic hate campaign.

The merger has taken place between ECHG and The Riverside Group – but
I am still dealing with a group of people who enjoy making my life a
living nightmare.

My Tormentors take an enormous pleasure in making my life a living
hell - my Tormentors see me as a soft target. I am not scared of them
nor am I afraid of them - I will get a full criminal investigation
into this hate campaign - on my terms and I will not shut-up until I
get to the bottom of everything these criminals have done - I mean
everything and in the process I will clear my name which my Tormentors
have elegantly blackened.

When the whole truth comes out of what has happened - you will find
that I am a Law-abiding citizen and a veteran of the Falklands
Campaign.

My Tormentors have no intention in sorting out this mess, as at the
moment they are enjoying running their hate campaign too much - this
is all about 100% hate, nothing else.

As part of the Hate campaign my tormentors have bugged my computer - I
do know what I am talking about - you can check my computer
qualifications with Microsoft.
See:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/transcripts
Transcript ID: 697024
Access Code: filmnight

My computer is not connected to the Internet and I don not have a
phone – but when I use the System Monitor Tool, I find Terminal
Services is running and it is showing network traffic – what my
tormentors have done, it to use a wireless connection to bug my
computer.
See:
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/5310/qff7.png

This all started when I found out this development should be to be a
Hostel for people with special need, I made a official complaint to
the Independent Housing Ombudsman and the Local Government Ombudsman -
which lead to a legal agreement that ECHG should move me and carry
several repairs on my flat - which ECHG had no intention of honouring
this agreement. ECHG and the Council decided to lie to both the
Independent Housing Ombudsman and the Local Government Ombudsman for
this to succeed they needed to have to the police to confirm their
lies. Instead of sorting out this mess, when I found out about what
they have been doing - my tormentors decided to run a hate campaign
against me.
See:
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/6275/019ql.png
http://img418.imageshack.us/img418/5599/024xc.jpg
http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/5210/035rr.png
And
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/7707/ab9rb.png
Also See:
http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/2307/01qr6.jpg
http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/722/02ky4.jpg
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7858/03zj1.jpg
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/6968/04mr5.jpg

This is what happens to the underclass in this country – because these
people know I do not have a voice - they know how the system works and
have got lying to a fine art.