“The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.”

The Guardian reported today that, “The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website (Wikileaks) as a threat to national security. The US defence department was embarrassed when that confidential report appeared on the Wikileaks site last month alongside a slew of military documents.

“The release of the video from Baghdad also comes shortly after the US military admitted that its special forces attempted to cover up the killings of three Afghan women in a raid in February by digging the bullets out of their bodies.”

WARNING: This video shows graphic violence.

According to the Institute for Public Accuracy, Beau Grosscup, the author of the book “Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment” and a professor of international relations at California State University in Chico, said today: “The video demonstrates that, with helicopter gunships flying overhead, the people below (allegedly armed fighters) show no fear nor any attempt to run or hide. This should be strong evidence that they were engaged in normal peaceful activities yet the gunners choose to assume otherwise. If the rules of engagement allow the shooting of wounded recovery efforts as clearly demonstrated here, then those rules need changing. There was a clear intent to attack – ‘engage’ – the recovery vehicle and personnel. The chatter of U.S. military demonstrates … excessive attitude of lethal intent; anxiousness to shoot while being under no threat whatsoever; blaming Iraqis for wounded children …”

The email included a post from another blogger, Layla Anwar.

“Following my previous post here (on the tribunal site), I just received fresh information regarding Hiba Al-Shamaree, the fellow Iraqi woman writer/blogger who has been kidnapped/arrested by the Iraqi forces on the 20th of January 2010 in the Sayyediya neighborhood in Baghdad.

“Her sister has just updated her blog with the following.”

“Hiba Al-Shamaree is arrested and detained by Baghdad’s security forces on the charges of supporting the Iraqi Resistance (through her writings), she will be presented to the Criminal/Penal Court…

“I am now authorized by Hiba to reveal her true identity to you.

“Her name : Hanan Ali Ahmad Al Mashadani
Age : 33 years old
Profession: Doctor in Ophthalmology

“The charges pressed against her : Inciting to violence and supporting the Resistance and according to informed sources this is a charge that falls under the clause of Terrorism as per the Iraqi law.

“Hiba lived in Amman with us, but she insisted on going to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission/assignment, for a project financed by an Indian NGO called HMOK and which dealt with deaf and mute Iraqi children. Hiba was working as a consultant for this Indian NGO.

“They discovered her pen name Hiba Al Shamaree because when they arrested her she had her laptop with her which they confiscated and they saw the articles she has been posting on her blog.”

The tribunal ended their email with this plea:
PLEASE, THIS IS AN URGENT PLEA –THEY WILL DESTROY HER. THEY WILL PUT HER THROUGH THE MOST HORRENDOUS OF TORTURES, including RAPE. I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I KNOW.

The BRussells Tribunal is a group of “intellectuals, artists and activists who denounce the logic of permanent war promoted by the American government and its allies, affecting for the time being particularly one region in the world: the Middle East. It started with a people’s court against the PNAC (the right-wing Project for a New American Century) and its role in the illegal invasion of Iraq, but continued ever since. It tries to be a bridge between the intellectual resistance in the Arab World and the Western peace movements.”

Reportedly there are over 3,000 veterans currently incarcerated and under threat of deportation nation wide.

Veterans’ rights activist Jan Ruhman wrote last year on the blog Vetspeak.org:

“American Military veterans who have served our nation in times of war and peace have quietly been deported since 1996 when the Immigration Reform Act (IRA) was passed by the Republican Controlled Congress and “broadly” redefined Aggravated Felony (AG) and took away certain applications for relief. This simple change in the definition of AG in the law has directly affected tens of thousands of veterans who served their nation. Quite simply, they are facing forced deportation or have in fact already been “quietly” and unceremoniously deported over the past 13 years.

“A trail of lies has been uncovered at point of recruitment and in boot camps. Statements concerning U. S. Citizenship being “automatic” were related by many veterans we interviewed. Other veterans, who were more educated, knew different and applied while in the military but then deployed to a combat zone and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) didn’t have their application follow them. Many, who knew they had to apply, simply found that (as is the case with many veterans upon discharge, especially those suffering from PTSD), navigating the “system” is not psychologically or emotionally possible, for them.

“At present, it is estimated that over 3,000 of our fellow veterans are incarcerated and face deportation in Department of Homeland Security/INS Prisons nation wide. They are being processed through court rooms in rented industrials parks that more closely resemble fast food franchises turning out lunch than justice. Many are being held under “mandatory detention” with no option to pay bail to be released while fighting their case.

“Each month the human misery and degradation suffered by these veterans, their families and loved ones continues to grow.”

Nicolas Taborek, a staff writer for the Imperial Valley Press reports on two of those veterans in California:

“After serving six years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Rohan Coombs assumed he had earned American citizenship.

“But today the Jamaican immigrant is one of several military veterans in custody at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in El Centro fighting to avoid deportation.

“Coombs, 42, moved to the United States with his mother when he was 14 and ended up at the facility after serving eight months in prison for a 2008 marijuana distribution conviction. About the time he was expecting to be released from prison, he received some surprising news: despite his military service during the first Gulf War, he was never granted U.S. citizenship. As a non-citizen, he was subject to removal from the country for his offense.

“All this time I was thinking I was a (U.S.) citizen,” Coombs said. “The only time I left this country is when I was in the military…”

“Another veteran detained in El Centro, Fernando Cervantes, 55, moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 7 years old and is facing deportation because he was convicted of possessing less than a gram of methamphetamine with intent to sell.”

Coombs and Cervantes, like many of the veterans being deported, say that the military told them they would automatically become citizens by serving in the armed forces.

Vets’ activist Ruhman, a veteran himself, urges people to contact their local congressional representatives to “demand justice for these patriots.” Ruhman calls the deportations a “failure of U.S. immigration policy” and believes that only a federal law can stop them.

On Tuesday, a string of bombings killed nine people in two of Iraq’s largest cities, Baghdad and Mosul.

Examiner.com posted a slide show from these attacks here.

Last week, suicide bombings in Baghdad killed 127 people and wounded more than 500. Bombings in August and October, also in Baghdad, killed another 250 people.

According to The Associated Press, in Baghdad on Tuesday, “Three parked cars packed with mines and other bombs exploded within minutes of each other around 7:30 a.m. just outside different entrances to the Green Zone, just as Iraqis were coming to the area for work.”

The blasts killed five people and wounded at least 16.

The AP report said, “Four hours later and 225 miles away, in the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul, two more car bombs and a roadside mine killed four people. The attacks appeared to target a busy neighborhood and a church, wounding up to 40 people.”

Of course, U.S. officials are quick to point out that violence, nationwide, is at its lowest level since 2003, a statistic that Iraqis may not find very comforting. It’s probably hard for many everyday Iraqis to see how the surge has changed their lives, with at least 386 people killed in bombings since August, let alone, the countless people killed in day-to-day violence.

The good news, for the United States, I suppose, is that Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, doesn’t see the bombings and other daily violence preventing the exit of U.S. troops, who are scheduled to leave by the end of 2011. Of course, that’s good news, too, for most Iraqis.

Amnesty reports that at least 1,000 men and women are now on death row in Iraq, a country that has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. Amnesty released the following appeal in late August:

“At least nine women under sentence of death in Iraq are now in imminent danger of execution, as Iraq’s Presidential Council has ratified their death sentences. Three other women have been executed since early June.

The authorities have transferred a number of women to the 5th section of Baghdad’s al-Kadhimiya Prison, which is where condemned prisoners are held immediately before they are executed…

One of the women now in imminent danger, Samar Saed Abdullah, was sentenced to death in August 2005 for the murder of her uncle, his wife

Photo of Samar Saed Abdullah provided to CNN by her family

In an article written in September by CNN.com’s Arwa Damon, Samar Saed Abdullah describes her confession:

“They kept beating me, and they told me, ‘Say whatever we want you to say, and do not say anything else, and say yes, I was an accomplice to this crime.’ Although I had nothing to do with it. Finally, they made me sign a blank piece of paper, and they filled it out afterwards.”

An Iraqi organization, the Women’s Will Association, is trying to build an international coalition to put pressure on the Iraqi government to stop the executions immediately. This group and others suggest sending appeals immediately to representatives in Congress and to people and organizations like these:

Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights,
commissioner@coe.int

(United Nations) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,
civilsocietyunit@ohchr.org

Amnesty has suggested that urgent appeals be sent via the Iraqi embassy or diplomatic representative in your country, asking them to forward your appeals to Iraqi President Jalal Talabai.

Also, it can’t hurt to let the White House know what you think:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

It’s sad to say that the death of 21 people is not too bad, but this is a country that, since the U.S. invasion, often saw a daily civilian death toll topping 100.

But there is another, more insidious violence that is on the rise and will likely continue to rise for generations to come.

The Guardian.co.uk reports that doctors in Fallujah are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The report said, “Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems – are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.”

Actually, this rise in birth defects has been reported on – by, at least a handful of journalists – for years. Iraqi researchers and doctors – for years – have documented the rise of birth defects and cancer primarily in southern Iraq where most of the fighting took place in the first Gulf War. With the second war in Iraq, it seems obvious that the problem is spreading. Depleted uranium has been singled out as the most likely cause.

Depleted uranium, which is used for armor-piercing shells of various sizes, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years. Many governments have outlawed the use of DU as weapons. The United States has not.

In 2002 and 2003, I researched the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq for stories in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.

In the 2002 story:

“Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans…”

At the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a British-trained oncologist, showed me photo albums he kept of dead and deformed infants that he believed were linked to DU. There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities went on and on.

In the 2003 story:

“Doctors in Iraq say the number of cancers and birth defects may be devastating.

“‘This is the right time for active support to help prevent the catastrophic effects of the bombing,’ said Dr. Alim Yacoub, dean of the Al Mustansiriya Medical School in Baghdad.

‘“If there isn’t a centralized health plan soon, the consequences could be devastating,’ said Yacoub, the foremost Iraqi authority on the effects of DU. Yacoub has tracked the rise of cancer in Iraq for years, and places the blame squarely on DU.”

An Iraqi scientist, Souad N. Al-Azzawi documented the entire history of DU in Iraq and its devastating effects on the people there, in a presentation to the Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War in October. Al-Azzawi, who was forced into exile from Iraq, has devoted many years to her work, at considerable personal risk.

So, the problem isn’t that the rise in cancer and birth defects in Iraq is “unprecedented” or “unexplainable.” The problem is the United States government, and other governments, won’t do anything about it.

According to the U.N. press release on the report, “the Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the Israeli military operation, code-named ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed. Families are still living amid the rubble of their former homes long after the attacks ended, as reconstruction has been impossible due to the continuing blockade.”

The press release goes on to say, “Significant trauma, both immediate and long-term, has been suffered by the population of Gaza…” And that, “The report concludes that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.”

That is one of the most chilling parts of the report to me – the details of deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Not only for its implications for the ongoing efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but also for its implications about international law and international justice.

During the first Gulf War and again in 2003, the United States deliberately targeted Iraq’s electrical grid and its water sanitation systems. And, in fact, for years leading up to the second Gulf War, the United States and the United Nations, itself, enforced a draconian sanctions regime against Iraq, which caused the deaths of, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly the young and the elderly, in a misguided effort to get the civilian population to rise up against Saddam Hussein.

To date there have been no legal repercussions for the United States or the United Nations for that particular “systematic policy… which made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.”