The Common Ills: More blood on Nouri's hands: 5 dead, 31 injured

Friday, January 25, 2013

More blood on Nouri's hands: 5 dead, 31 injured

Pinochet didn't spring from the neck of Zeus overnight. He was pampered and prodded by the US government, coddled and curried. By the same token, Little Saddam didn't just show up in Iraq this morning. The US government always knew what Nouri was.

Today they and so many others have blood on their hands.

Nouri's military has attacked the protesters.

Since December 21st, Iraqis have been taking to the streets. This is not --as the press would have you misbelieve -- just Sunnis. Cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to take part in the protests and he is a Shi'ite. That's just one example. In Falluja, the bulk of the protesters probably were Sunni today just because the province itself is Sunni dominant.

Press TV notes, "Four people have been killed and nearly 20 others injured in clashes between Iraqi security forces and anti-government protesters in the city of Fallujah. " AP offers, "According to police officials, the soldiers started shooting after a group of protesters on their way to a Sunni rally in Fallujah started throwing stones on an army checkpoint at the entrance to the city." So the military Nouri controls kills protesters and vouching for their innocence comes from the police Nouri controls? And no one bothers to question that or even comment on it?

Remember, Augusto Pinochet's Chile wasn't built in a day and neither was Nouri's Iraq.

You'd expect Russia Today to do a better job but then, regardless of the political system of any country, the natural inclination of the press to whore shines through. So RT offers, "Sunni activists gathered in the western city of Falluja to call for the resignation of PM al-Maliki in a protest dubbed the 'Friday of No Retreat.' Security forces initially fired shots in the air to disperse the crowds when protesters pelted them with stones, but later troops fired on activists who set a military vehicle on fire, reported Reuters."

They fired shots, RT insists, into the air at first. Reuters offers nine are injured.

Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, they all required a lazy and fawning press to notch up years of abuses.

Today the press allows Nouri to get away with one human rights crime after another. Even today as protesters are reported dead, the press refuses to get honest.

How cowed do you have to be in order to report on protesters being injured and killed by Nouri's forces and fail to point out that yesterday Nouri's forces sent two protesters (and one reporter) to the hospital and that January 7th, Nouri's forces assaulted four protesters in Mosul? Or that the January 7th assault is under investigation?

If you can't even note these events from this month, we better not expect you to actually dig deep and go back to 2011 when Nouri regularly dispatched his thugs to attack protesters. And reporters. Or note that he's used his military in the last weeks to keep reporters from observing protests so that they can't cover them.

The press is disgusting right now.

Let's not pretend they're the only ones.

Iraqi protesters are dead. I heard on Wednesday all this fawning over Hillary Clinton and how wonderful she was as Secretary of State and human rights first and a bunch of other crap. Hillary's State Dept won't call this out. Hell, spokesperson Victoria Nuland's used her words to beat up on the protesters. And Hillary knows Nouri's a thug. She did damn little to help the Iraqi people and that's on her because she came in knowing what he was. Now she couldn't do a great deal in terms of, "Nouri, stop!" He hates her. That's another reason Iraq wasn't her fiefdom. She was very public about what a tinhorn dictator Nouri was while she was in Congress. But what she could have done was call out the various abuses including Nouri's abuse of the press.

The State Department never called out Nouri -- not even when NPR and the Washington Post were reporting on the assault and kidnapping of reporters by Nouri's forces. Never.

That's on Hillary. And whatever legacy she's built.

More importantly, it's all on Barack.

Nouri is a dictator.

The Iraqi people got stuck with him in 2006 when Bully Boy Bush refused to allow the Iraqi parliament to name Ibrahim al-Jaafari prime minister. That's how puppet Nouri falls into place.

But the Iraqi people had a chance to get rid of him in the 2010 parliamentary elections. And they voted. And Iraqiya, not Nouri's State of Law, came in first.

But Barack back Nouri and had the administration negotiate a contract (the Erbil Agreement) to go around the popular vote, to go around democracy, to go around the will of the Iraqi people, to go around the Iraqi Constitution.

That's why Nouri's prime minister now.

He has never been a popular choice.

He's a little despot and, in 2010, the Iraqi people almost got their way, they almost got rid of him but Barack Obama refused to allow that to happen.

So these latest deaths are on Barack's head too.

Alsumaria reports that 5 protesters are dead and 31 more injured -- six of whom are children -- including 1 Alsumaria TV journalist. They note that Mohammed Dulaimi used his sermon to call for the judiciary to protect the protesters from the military. It also notes that the military first attempted to block the protesters from entering the square. Though this piss-press of the west can't tell you this because they lack honesty, spine and guts, the local government has no problem with the protesters -- they are supported by politicians, clerics and tribal leaders. Nouri has sent his federal forces into the provinces and that's who's attacking these protesters.

And All Iraq News is very clear that at least two people Nouri's forces fired on in Falluja were engaged in a peaceful sit-in.

The United States government and the world press needs to be condemning Nouri right now. Let's see who has the guts throughout the day to even say one damn word.

The following community sites -- plus PRI, Jody Watley, Pacifica Evening News, the ACLU, Susan's On the Edge, Cindy Sheehan, Ms. magazine and Antiwar.com -- updated last night and this morning: