Is Lithuania Sincere About Owning Up to its Holocaust Role?

Tevet 17, 5771, 24 December 10 08:00, by David Lev

(Israelnationalnews.com) This past week, the Prime Minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius, was a guest of the Israeli government, on a state visit to Israel. For many Jews, just the mention of the name “Lithuania” is painful; after all, the Lithuanians were among the most enthusiastic supporters of Nazis outside Germany, with Lithuanians from various backgrounds volunteering to help round up and kill Jews eve before the Nazis arrived in the country in 1941. Jews were rounded up by the thousands, brought to the forests surrounding the towns where they were massacred, falling into the huge pits they had been forced to dig. Lithuanian forests, beautiful and green, abound in these large, now- covered mounds.   
The assistance rendered by the Lithuanians, historians say, was one of the reasons the German killing machine that operated in the country between 1941 and 1945 was the among the most efficient in the entire Nazi empire – with 95% of Lithuanian Jews murdered by the time it was all over.

For years, Lithuania failed to own up to its responsibilities and its past, and it was only in 1995, five years after the fall of communism, that Lithuanian leaders apologized for their countrymen's role in murdering Jews. According to some Israelis and Jewish leaders, however, the Lithuanians' efforts to build bridges with Israel and the Jewish people today are, if not a sham, then a convenient way to build up its relations with Europe, which requires Vilnius to put on a mask of “introspection,” at least where the Holocaust is concerned.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, for example, is Nazi war criminal researcher Efraim Zuroff, who is very critical of Lithuania's relentless efforts to equate Lithuania's suffering under communism with the brutality of the Nazi occupation. The result, writes Zuroff, is a perversion of justice, such as Lithuania's “campaign to prosecute Jewish anti-Nazi Soviet partisans for supposed war crimes to create a false symmetry between crimes by Lithuanians against Jews [pillage and murder] and those by Jews against Lithuanians [being pro-Russian, ed.].”

However, Rabbi Yisrael Rosenson, an expert on Lithuanian Jewry, says that the country may deserve more credit than many Jews are willing to give it. “I would be hesitant to dispute anyone else's perception of modern Lithuania, but it seems to me that at least some elements of the country's society are making a very sincere effort to reevaluate their behavior, to make an honest accounting of their crimes against the Jews.”

Rabbi Rosenson, director of Michlelet Efrata, is the author of the Hebrew work “Jersusalem is No Longer in Lithuania,” an account of the history of the Jewish community before and during the war. The book's title alludes to the flourishing Jewish community in Vilna, once called "Jerusalem of Lithuania".
Speaking to Israel National News, Rabbi Rosenson says he understands why many Jews think of Lithuania as an unreformed land of Nazi sympathizers.  “While the Holocaust was of course  a horror everywhere, it was unique in Lithuania. Before the war, there were almost no public manifestations of anti-Semitism, yet even before the Nazis took over the country, many jumped on board with the Nazi agenda and began persecuting Jews, often outdoing the Germans.”

After the war, Lithuania fell into the hands of the Communists, being absorbed directly into the Soviet Union – further cause for anti-Semitism, as many Lithuanians identified Communism as a “Jewish plot.” During those years – under Soviet influence – the destruction of the Jews was ignored, and the only thing generations of Lithuanians learned about the war years was the Nazi hatred of Russians and Germany's war against Russia. As the Lithuanians felt persecuted by the Soviets, says Rabbi Rosenson, some even saw the Nazis as allies against Communism.

As soon as Communism in Lithuania fell in 1990, though many of those attitudes changed,  Rabbi Rosenson says, and today, the Holocaust – and the persecution of the Jews during the war period – is taken very seriously. “Lithuania has its own Holocaust Memorial Day – September 23rd, the day the Vilna Ghetto fell, and this day is taken very seriously by everyone, to the highest levels of leadership and society. The country also has many citizens who themselves, or whose parents, helped hide Jews – what we call “the righteous of the nations” - and these people are highly honored in Lithuania.

“Lithuania has its own Holocaust educational center, which coordinates programs for all children in the country's schools. Teacher delegations from Lithuania come to Israel at least twice a year, and the teachers run the programs in the schools. There are Holocaust research centers in Lithuanian universities, with many studies discussing the Lithuanian people's failures regarding their Jews. It seems to me,” says Rabbi Rosenson, “that these efforts are sincere, and that there has been a true effort among Lithuanians to analyze their behavior during the war.”

Of course, there were – and are – genuine Nazi sympathizers in Lithuania, Rabbi Rosenson says. “And there are many issues that have not been addressed. No discussion on compensation for property Jews lost has yet begun, and after independence in 1990, the country was very resistant to try its own war criminals who helped the Nazis during the Holocaust. On the other hand, we must remember that it wasn't until the 1980s that France tried Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie – and unlike Lithuania, France was not under Soviet occupation, with Moscow refusing to even discuss the murder of Jews.”

Lithuania's relationship with the state of Israel reflects this change, Rabbi Rosenson says. “Lithuania is striving to be a European country, so it has adopted European attitudes, which are sometimes critical of Israel. But in 1995, the Lithuanian Prime Minister came to the Knesset and apologized for what his people did – long before former leaders of other former Communist countries, like Ukraine, did. And the fact that Lithuania has an embassy in Israel is significant as well,” he says. “Lithuania is a small country with a limited budget for foreign representation, and it does not have embassies in Jordan and Egypt.

“By rights it shouldn't have an embassy in Israel either, as Lithuania has no diplomatic interest in this part of the world – but it does have a moral interest, and the establishment of their embassy here, along with their activities in commemorating the Holocaust, indicates to me that many Lithuanians have done a great deal of thinking in recent years. I wouldn't dispute those who feel differently, considering what we are talking about,” Rabbi Rosenson says. “But personally, I think this is more than a show to impress Europe – or us.”
On his visit here. Kubilius met with President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and other top officials. He visited the Kotel, Yad Vashem, and the Carmel forest, and he planted a tree in the JNF's Grove of Nations. At the tree plantin, Kubilius said that Israel had done a wonderful job of rebuilding the Land. "Over the last 2,000 years, the land was neglected, so much that in his famous novel about his trip to the Holy Land 150 years ago, the American writer Mark Twain describes it as deserted and ugly. But if you travel around Israel today, you will see a beautiful country, uniquely positioned as a bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa. If you study Israel's plants and birds, you will discover that there are so many different species in such a small country.”
 
www.IsraelNationalNews.com

Russia disappointed by U.S. vote against resolution condemning glorification of Nazism

19:14 22/12/2010

Russia is disappointed that the United States voted against a draft resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism, and a number of states, including all members of the European Union, abstained from voting on the draft, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

United States voted against a draft resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism, and a number of states, including all members of the European Union, abstained from voting on the draft, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Russia introduced to the UN a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism and the desecration of World War II monuments in November.

"It is extremely puzzling and regrettable that the United States voted against the resolution, supported by an overwhelming majority of UN member states, and that several other countries, including all the European Union members abstained from voting on the draft," the ministry said in a statement.

The resolution condemns the construction of memorials in honor of former Nazis and Waffen-SS soldiers and the holding of public pro-Nazi demonstrations. It also includes recommendations to prevent the proliferation of neo-Nazi ideas on the Internet.

Russia has been introducing similar resolutions to the UN since 2005. Every year, the resolutions are supported by an increasing number of countries. Last year 124 countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 55 delegations abstained. The United States was the only nation to vote against it.

Parades in honor of Waffen-SS veterans, involving veterans from the Latvian Legion and the 20th Estonian SS Division and their supporters, are held annually in Latvia and Estonia. Russia has repeatedly criticized the Baltic States for allowing these parades to take place.

In April 2007, a Soviet war memorial was dismantled in the Estonian capital of Tallinn just before the May 9Victory Day celebrations in Russia. The move led to street protests in which over 1,000 people were arrested and one Russian national was killed.
MOSCOW, December 22 (RIA Novosti)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=0&item=141263 The Big Lie: ‘1967 Borders’ is a Fallacy, Says Former Ambassador

Tevet 14, 5771, 21 December 10 06:26 by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(Israelnationalnews.com) The term “1967 borders,” the Arab world’s mantra for the borders of a PA state, never existed, says former Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker in a research paper for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Ever since neighboring Arab countries attacked Israel in 1948 as it became an independent country for the first time in 2,000 years, there were no borders, only temporary military lines defined by the 1949 “Armistice Lines” that ended, at least formally, the War for Independence.

However, the Arab world has repeated the term “1967 borders” so much that it has been adopted as fact by mainstream media and most international leaders. The term refers to the 1949 ceasefire line from which Israel military forces advanced at the beginning of the Six-Day War on June 4, 1967 and should  be called  "pre-1967 War Armistice Lines" or "1949 Armistice Lines". INN, it should be noted,  has used those accurate terms consistently..

Even Brazil, which recently decided to “recognize” the Palestinian Authority based on the supposed 1967 borders, stated during a United Nation debate on Resolution 242 in 1967 calling for negotiations for boundaries, “Its acceptance does not imply that borderlines cannot be rectified as a result of an agreement freely concluded among the interested States. We keep constantly in mind that a just and lasting peace in the Middle East has necessarily to be based on secure permanent boundaries freely agreed upon and negotiated by the neighboring States."

Baker (pictured) noted that Jordan, which also has adopted the fallacy of “1967 borders,” said in the same debate, "There is an Armistice Agreement. The Agreement did not fix boundaries; it fixed a demarcation line. The Agreement did not pass judgment on rights political, military or otherwise. Thus I know of no territory; I know of no boundary; I know of a situation frozen by an Armistice Agreement."
Although the “1967 borders” denote lines of separation, they have no basis in history, law, or fact,” Baker explained. “The 1949 armistice agreements specifically stated that such lines have no political or legal significance and do not prejudice future negotiations on boundaries,” he continued.

“There are no provisions in any of the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians that require withdrawal to the ‘1967 borders.’ There were never any geographic imperatives that sanctify the 1967 lines."
The "Armistice Lines” of 1949 were determined in agreements signed by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. They  were not borders, Baker pointed out. “The armistice demarcation line represented nothing more than the forward lines of deployment of the forces on the day a ceasefire was declared…. The line was demarcated on the map attached to the armistice agreement with a green marker pen and hence received the name ‘Green Line.’

“The Security Council in its resolution stressed the temporary nature of the armistice lines that were to be maintained ‘during the transition to permanent peace in Palestine.'"

The Armistice Agreement stated, “The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Lines is to delineate the lines beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move. The provisions of this article shall not be interpreted as prejudicing, in any sense, an ultimate political settlement between the Parties to this Agreement.  

"The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in...this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto." %ad%

Baker quoted Judge Steven Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice, who stated in 1994, "The armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them."

The current Arab campaign for recognizing the Palestinian Authority according to the supposed “1967 borders”  ironically is often based on the oft-quoted UN Resolution 242.  This is the resolution which Baker noted emphasizes in its very first paragraph the “...respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

The Palestinian Authority has accepted in previous agreements the concept that borders will be negotiated, but the Arab world’s “diplomatic war of attrition” has virtually erased this perception in the media and in the international community. A 1993 agreement signed by Arafat states that there are, "...remaining issues, including: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest."
The PA in the past several months has called for “negotiations” but in reality has demanded that Israel accept the so-called “1967 borders” without negotiation, lines which Baker’s research paper shows havs no legal or historical foundation as borders.

The Arab Lobby In America

By: Mitchell Bard, Date: Wednesday, December 08 2010

U.S. policy is not controlled by an omnipotent Israeli lobby but rather heavily influenced by an equally potent - yet much less visible - Arab lobby that is driven by ideology, oil, and arms to support Middle Eastern regimes that often oppose American values and interests.

It is understandable if this statement is surprising, given that few books or articles examine the Arab lobby, while there is a long history of conspiracy theories suggesting that Jews control everything from the media to the U.S. Congress to the global financial system. The Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer is the most recent screed to reinforce such beliefs.

Israel's detractors have embraced Walt and Mearsheimer's book because its argument fits in neatly with their fantasies about an all-powerful group of Jews who control U.S. foreign policy, but they should be offended by the racist, paternalistic tone of the book, which portrays the Arabs as impotent, unable to affect their own fate or influence U.S. actions. While the Israeli lobby is obsessively scrutinized, mischaracterized, and demonized, the role of the Arab lobby is denied, minimized, or ignored.

To be fair, Walt and Mearsheimer are not the only ones who give short shrift to the Arab lobby. For example, when DePaul professor Khalil Marrar contacted Arab American organizations to interview their representatives for his research on the subject, he was told, "There is no Arab lobby in Washington, DC."

Even one of the most prominent Arab Americans engaged in promoting the Palestinian cause, James Zogby, said in 1982, "There is no Arab lobby." In the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, former State Department officials who dealt with Middle East affairs were repeatedly asked about the Israeli lobby, but the Arab lobby was never discussed.

Walt and Mearsheimer do not subject the Arab lobby to the same analysis they apply to the Israeli lobby; they simply dismiss its influence. Claiming that oil companies have not exerted influence, they conclude that their case is proven.

Though it is largely unknown to the public, the Arab lobby in the United States is at least as old as, and perhaps older than, the Israeli lobby. The first organization established to present an Arab perspective in the United States was the Arab National League of America in the 1930s. Other groups followed. In 1951, King Saud of Saudi Arabia asked U.S. officials to finance a pro-Arab lobby to counter the pro-Israel lobby, and the CIA obliged. Even before that, oil companies and sympathetic officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and intelligence agencies were trying to influence policy.

When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George Brown, launched an attack on the Jewish lobby and Jewish ownership of banks and newspapers in 1974, Senator Thomas McIntyre (D-NH), a member of the Armed Services Committee, acknowledged the influence of the Israeli lobby, which he said "reflects the will of a strong majority of all Americans." But what about the oil lobby? he asked. "The influence of Big Oil is far more insidious, and far more pervasive than the influence of the Jewish lobby, for oil and influence seep across ideological as well as party lines, without public approval or support."

He added that "the Jewish lobby isn't in the same league with the General's own lobby - the Pentagon and the Defense establishment."
McIntyre expressed a reality well known to Washington players, but alien to ivory tower denizens with no real-world political experience. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Arab lobby - which is in large part, but not exclusively, an anti-Israel lobby - has grown to include defense contractors, former government officials employed by Arab states, corporations with business interests in the Middle East, NGOs (especially human rights organizations), the United Nations, academics (particularly from Middle East studies departments), Israel haters, a significant percentage of the media and cultural elite, non-evangelical Christian groups, European elites, hired guns, American Arabs and Muslims, and the leaders and diplomats from no fewer than twenty-one Arab governments (as well as from a number of non-Arab Islamic nations).
* * * * *
 
One of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the Arab lobby is that it has no popular support. While the Israeli lobby has hundreds of thousands of active grassroots members and public opinion polls consistently reveal a huge gap between support for Israel and the Arab nations/Palestinians, the Arab lobby has almost no foot soldiers or public sympathy. Its most powerful elements tend to be bureaucrats who represent only their personal views or what they believe are their institutional interests, and foreign governments that care only about their national interests, not those of the United States. What they lack in human capital, in terms of American advocates, they make up for with almost unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on the merits of their arguments.

The heart of the Arab lobby has long been Saudi Arabia, its supporters within the U.S. government, and the various PR firms, lobbyists, and other hired guns employed on the kingdom's behalf to make its case to decision makers and the public. In the past, the Arab lobby was focused on keeping Saudi Arabia happy, preventing the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East, and weakening America's relationship with Israel. Today, the Arab lobby in the United States is focused on feeding the American addiction to petroleum products, expanding economic ties between the United States and the Arab/Muslim Middle East, securing American political support in international forums, obtaining the most sophisticated weaponry, and trying to weaken the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Unlike critics of the Israeli lobby who suggest it has no redeeming qualities, I would acknowledge that some elements of the Arab lobby, usually those inside the U.S. government, do often take positions that are in the interest of the country and express valid concerns. For example, State Department officials were understandably concerned about Soviet penetration of the region during the Cold War and also have legitimate reasons to promote U.S. trade and the protection of American oil supplies. The problems arise when they abandon core American principles to support policies that are less clearly in the national interest.

The Arab lobby has demonstrated its power by ensuring that the U.S. pays disproportionate attention to the interests of Arab states and supports countries that share none of our values and few of our interests. These states are all dictatorial regimes with abysmal human rights records that have been fawned over by every president, including Jimmy Carter, who made human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy. While this may be partly attributable to Cold War realism, the U.S. was also constantly seeking better relations with Soviet clients such as Egypt and supporting the Saudis even as they threatened to turn to the Soviets and financed Soviet allies such as Syria. Worse, some of these nations, especially the Saudis, subvert American interests by supporting terrorism and promoting radical Islamic views on a global scale.

In truth, the lobby is more amorphous than its Israeli counterpart and is not centrally directed. Though defined similarly, the Israeli lobby does have one organization, AIPAC, which has effectively been deputized to lobby on behalf of Americans who believe that a strong U.S.-Israel alliance is in the interests of the United States. Supporters of Israel have the advantage of lobbying on behalf of a relationship with a single country, whereas the Arab lobby, at least in theory, has to reflect the interests of twenty-one Arab states and the Palestinians.

Representatives of the Arab lobby rarely attempt to express the view of "the Arabs."
In some ways the term Arab lobby is a misnomer. Most lobbies focus on a single issue - abortion/choice, second amendment/gun control, Israel, Cuba, China - but the Arab lobby really has two issues, which occasionally overlap. One is pro-Saudi, based on oil, and is represented primarily by the Saudi government, Arabists, defense contractors, and other corporations with commercial interests in the kingdom. American companies are not interested in regional politics; they care only about profits, so their principal concern is expanding trade opportunities.
The Pentagon also lobbies the arms dealers to sell weapons to the Arabs. The justification is typically the need for these countries, especially the oil-producing Gulf States, to defend themselves from external enemies, originally the USSR and now Iran. While many of these sales are justified by national security interests, they often have less to do with defending the Arabs than with the Pentagon's desire to lower the unit cost of systems it wants for U.S. forces and to extend the life of production lines.

Thus, the Arab lobby has had the petrodiplomatic complex led by Saudi Arabia at its heart from the beginning, but has incorporated a variety of other interested parties at different times. Some corporate executives may be hostile to Israel, but for the most part companies have been coaxed to join the lobby in specific instances where it satisfied their selfish business interests rather than because of a desire to weaken U.S.-Israel ties.
* * * * *
 
The other issue of concern to the Arab lobby is the Palestinian question. Though the first group sometimes gets involved in this, it is primarily Arab American groups, Christians, and Arabists who lobby on behalf of the Palestinians or, more often, against Israel. "Arab lobby" is also misleading. It suggests that the principal members are Arabs and that their focus is on the Arab world; but Arab Americans are only a small and mostly impotent part of the overall lobby that is being eclipsed by Islamic groups.

Moreover, the lobby has no real interest in any other Arab nations or issues. The lobby does not campaign for human rights in any of these countries, does not defend Christians or other minorities, does not even try to get aid for Arab states. The only time any interest is shown in another country is if Israel is somehow involved, as in the case of Israel-Lebanon clashes, when suddenly the lobby expresses great concern for the people of Lebanon. Otherwise, the lobby never talks about such issues as the Syrian occupation, Hizbullah's takeover, the undermining of democracy, or the various massacres perpetrated by Lebanese factions against each other or Syrian assassinations of their opponents.

While detractors of Israel see a lobbyist, philanthropist, or other Jew behind each Middle East policy decision, they ignore all those non-Jews (and sometimes Jews!) who are agitating behind the scenes for the adoption of policies favorable to the Arabs and/or hostile toward Israel. Thus, while Louis Brandeis may have lobbied Woodrow Wilson for American support for the Balfour Declaration, the president's closest adviser, Colonel Edward House, was vigorously opposing it. Harry Truman's friend Eddie Jacobson asked for the president's support for Israel, while his secretary of state threatened not to vote for Truman if he recognized the newly established state. Similar examples can be found in every administration.
What's more, the critics of U.S. Middle East policy never can explain anomalies in their conspiracy theories; first and foremost, why American policy is so often at odds with the "powerful" Israeli lobby. The Israeli lobby, for example, failed for years to convince U.S. administrations to provide sophisticated arms to Israel, was unable to prevent Eisenhower from issuing dire threats that forced Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai after 1956, did not deter Ronald Reagan from imposing sanctions in the 1980s and George W. Bush from punishing Israel during his term, and cannot, even now, prevent dangerous arms sales to Arab countries or the adoption of critical resolutions at the United Nations. The reasons for the Israeli lobby's failures are sometimes complex - Cold War calculations, competition with allies, presidential lobbying, economic considerations - but the Arab lobby often plays a role.
* * * * *
 
One obstacle the Arab lobby faces is the negative image of Muslims and Arabs; consequently one of its principal objectives is to fight the stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs as terrorists. Members of the lobby complain, for example, about the portrayal of Muslims in films as if they expect screenwriters to choose Norwegians or Swedes as villains rather than Arabs who have committed the types of atrocities reenacted in the movies. They have also tried to tar critics with the epithet Islamophobe, implying that anyone who dares suggest that radical Muslims may pose a danger to the United States is a racist. This is a conscious effort by the Arab lobby to imitate what it sees as the successful and cynical use by Jews of the term "anti-Semitism" to silence critics of Israel.

While Walt/Mearsheimer and others may rage against a Middle East policy that they believe is counter to American interests, most Americans themselves disagree. The public believes that Israel is a reliable ally, and that support for Israel is in our interest. By contrast, little public support is demonstrable for closer ties with the Arab/Muslim world. Frustration with American public opinion also explains the Arab lobby's propaganda efforts in the media and, especially, in schools to try to change attitudes.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in a long-term campaign to prettify the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, vilify Israel, sanitize radical Islam, and glorify the Palestinian struggle for independence. In the short run, the Saudis have taken a different tack from the Israeli lobby, focusing on a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying. As hired gun J. Crawford Cook wrote in laying out his proposed strategy for the kingdom, "Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond."

For seventy years, the Arab lobby has persistently tried to influence policy, directly, by lobbying decision makers, and indirectly, by seeking to manipulate the media and propagandize the American educational system, often to the detriment of the national interest.

Dr. Mitchell Bard is a leading authority on U.S.-Israel relations who has written or edited more than 20 books, including "48 Hours of Kristallnacht," "Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict," and "Will Israel Survive?"
This essay is excerpted from the book "THE ARAB LOBBY: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East," Copyright © 2010 by Mitchell Bard. Reprinted by arrangement with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Dutch MP Wilders and Israeli MK Eldad: Jordan is Palestine

Kislev 29, 5771, 06 December 10 12:50, by Elad Benari

(Israelnationalnews.com) Dutch politician Geert Wilders was in Israel on Sunday and gave a speech in Tel Aviv at a conference of the HaTikvah movement, headed MK Prof. Aryeh Eldad (National Union). 

Before the conference, MK Eldad spoke with Israel National News TV and explained his own proposed two-state solution in which two states refers to the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.

Wilders, who is the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom and who has been a staunch critic of Islam, started his speech by saying that Israel “is an immense source of inspiration for me.”  He added that he is “not ashamed to stand with Israel, but proud. I am grateful to Israel. I will always defend Israel. Your country is the cradle of Western civilization. We call it the Judeo-Christian civilization with good reason.”

Wilders blamed the Arab leaders as well as Islam for what he called “the plight of the Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza, and other places,” and said that ‘Palestine’, where many say that the PA Arabs should return, is, in fact located in Jordan.

“Israel, including Judea and Samaria, has been the land of the Jews since time immemorial,” said Wilders. “Judea means Land of the Jews. Never in the history of the world has there been an autonomous state in the area that was not Jewish. The Diaspora of the Jews, which began after their defeat by the Romans in 70 [C.E.], did not lead to the departure of all the Jews from their ancient homeland. Jews had been living in the Jordan Valley for centuries until the Arab invaders drove them out in 1948, when the provinces of Judea and Samaria were occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, which abbreviated its name to Jordan in 1950. And until 1967, when Israel regained the ancient Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, no one, not a single Islamic scholar or Western politician, ever demanded that there be an independent Palestinian state in the so-called West Bank.”

He added that Israel must not trade land for peace and not “assign Judea and Samaria to another Palestinian state – a second one, next to Jordan,” since, as he said, the conflict in the Middle East is not a conflict over territory, but rather an ideological battle.

Wilders mentioned the expulsion from Gaza of 2005 and said that this “sacrificing” of land by Israel did not attain peace but rather made the situation worse, simply because the conflict is ideological.

“Ideologies must be confronted with the iron will never to give in, ‘never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty.’ That is the lesson which the world learned from Winston Churchill when he confronted the evil ideology of Nazism,” said Wilders.%ad%

He added that Israel needs defendable borders and that for this reason Jews must settle Judea and Samaria. Wilders called the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria “an expression of the Jewish right to exist in this land. They are tiny outposts of freedom, defying ideological forces which deny not only Israel but the entire West the right to live in peace, dignity and liberty.”

Wilders also said that Islam threatens not just Israel, but the entire world, and added that “Without Judea and Samaria, Israel cannot protect Jerusalem. The future of the world depends on Jerusalem. If Jerusalem falls, Athens and Rome – and Paris, London and Washington – will be next.”

As for the PA Arabs, Wilders said that “Since Jordan is Palestine, it is the duty of the Jordanian government to welcome all Palestinian refugees who voluntarily want to settle there.”

“Allowing all Palestinians to voluntarily settle in Jordan is a better way towards peace than the current so-called two-states-approach (in reality a three-states-approach) propagated by the United Nations, the U.S. administration, and governing elites all over the world,” he said. “We only want a democratic non-violent solution for the Palestinian problem. This requires that the Palestinian people should be given the right to voluntarily settle in Jordan and freely elect their own government in Amman. If the present Hashemite King is still as popular as today, he can remain in power. That is for the people of Palestine to decide in real democratic elections. My friends, let us adopt a totally new approach. Let us acknowledge that Jordan is Palestine.

Wilders concluded his speech by saying: “Toda raba [thank you]… And shalom to all of you.”
www.IsraelNationalNews.com

The Congenital Liar

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/OpinionAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=197286

Since the earliest days of Barack Obama’s presidency, there have been two major conceptual differences between how Israel and how the US administration view the Middle East.

The first difference has to do with the region. While the US maintains that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum is the key to unlocking peace in the Middle East and getting other countries in the region on board to help stop the Iranian threat, Israel’s position is to first deal with Iran – neutralize it – which will then make it easier to reach an accord with the Palestinians.

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Israel’s logic is that Hamas and Hizbullah – Iran’s two proxies – will be much less able to gum up the works whenever diplomatic progress looms if Iran is defanged.
The second key conceptual difference has to do with how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the US still tied into the land-for peace formula – Israel gives up land and gets peace in return – and much of Israel, bitten badly by reality, no longer convinced that formula is relevant.

And along comes the cache of WikiLeaks documents and reveals that Obama’s linkage of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Iran is nothing short of fiction – a fiction he and his key aides have been spinning since the beginning of his tenure.

At his very first White House meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in May 2009, that famous meeting in which Obama called for a complete halt to all settlement construction, Obama was asked what he thought about Israel’s position that only if the Iranian threat were solved could there be real progress on the Palestinian track.

“Well, let me say this,” Obama said. “There’s no doubt that it is difficult for any Israeli government to negotiate in a situation in which they feel under immediate threat. That’s not conducive to negotiations. And as I’ve said before, I recognize Israel’s legitimate concerns about the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon when they have a president who has in the past said that Israel should not exist. That would give any leader of any country pause.

“Having said that,” the president went on, “if there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians – between the Palestinians and the Israelis – then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian threat.”

And that position, that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue – that stopping settlement construction – would somehow magically mollify the Arab world and get it to put its shoulder to the wheel regarding Iran has been a constant thread throughout the Obama regime. Here it was popularly dubbed “Yitzhar for Bushehr.”



What the WikiLeaks cache revealed, however, was that this argument was a fabrication. There was no need to crack the Palestinian-Israeli nut before getting the “moderate” Arab nations in the region – Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan – on board regarding Iran, because those nations were already fully camped out on board the deck of the ship, just waiting for action against Iran.

Now this doesn’t mean efforts should not be made toward trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but don’t say the reason is to get the Arabs to stop Iran.

The following quotes from Arab leaders culled from the WikiLeaks trove do not exactly portray a picture of leaders who need any further enticements before “getting on board.”

• Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, quoted by the monarchy’s envoy to the US in 2008 as exhorting the US to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons program, said in reference to Iran – according to one cable – that it was necessary to “cut the head of the snake.”

• King Hamad of Bahrain was quoted in 2009 as saying, “That program [the Iranian nuclear program] must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

• Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed in 2009 urged the US, according to another cable, not to appease Teheran and said, “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”

• Maj-Gen. Muhammad al-Assar, assistant to the Egyptian defense minister, was quoted in a cable in 2010 as saying that “Egypt views Iran as a threat to the region.”

Obama was obviously well aware of the views of these leaders, most of whom he personally met, yet he continued to propagate what he must have known to be a falsehood – that these countries would only sign on to sanctions and otherwise support efforts to neutralize Iran if there were progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Obviously these countries wanted to see progress on that track, but this desire had nothing to do with Iran. Nor would an Israeli-Palestinian accord lead them to be supportive of aggressive steps toward Iran, because they were already practically dreaming of those steps.

To link the two issues – the conflict with the Palestinians, and Iran – was to badly muddle the issue. Why exactly Obama felt compelled to do so is one of the key questions the WikiLeaks documents raised in relation to our region.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140929

WikiLeaks: Arabs Admit Iranian Threat not Linked to PA Demands
Kislev 23, 5771, 30 November 10 09:20, by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(Israelnationalnews.com) The Arab world contradicted its public stand in private cables and ignored any connection between solving the Iranian threat and meeting PA demands for a state, WikiLeaks revealed.

Most of the diplomatic cables that were revealed are full of gossip and previously known but unconfirmed observations, as well as incorrect predictions. However, one of the most astounding leaks was the Arab world’s overriding concern over the Iranian nuclear threat and not over the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel has always rejected linking the two issues, but many America officials, especially senior army brass, have maintained that the unsolved issue of the PA is the kingpin of all other Middle East problems.

The WikiLeaks disclosures totally debunked this notion.

“Note that Arab leaders did not condition their opposition to Iran or call for a U.S. attack on settling the Arab-Israeli or Israel-Palestinian conflicts,” said Barry Rubin, the Director of the Gloria Research in International Affairs.
"This is contrary to what Administration officials, academia, and parts of the mass media who argue these issues are basically linked have been claiming, and that is that the conflict must be ‘solved’ before doing much else,” he added. “As I've told you, the Arab regimes worry first and foremost about Iran and have greatly downgraded their interest in the conflict or antagonism toward Israel."
The near obsession with Iran among Arab leaders was documented in leaked cables that point to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as urging the United States to attack Tehran. Saudi Arabia has denied the documents’ accuracy.

Bahrain, an oil-rich Gulf state, told American officials they could use their country as a base for an attack on Iran if there were guarantees that its security would be protected in the event of a counterattack or sanctions by Iran.
A year ago this month, Bahrain's King Hamad told U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, "That [nuclear] program must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it." As previously reported, Saudi King Abdullah advised the United States to attack Iran. The Saudi ambassador commented to the United States, "He told you to cut off the head of the snake.”

The major exception to fears of Iran is Syria, where Syrian President Bashar Assad has allied himself with the Islamic Republic as part of a northern axis that includes Lebanon and Turkey. He not only doubted that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but he also said it would not attack Israel in order not to harm Arabs in the country.

Although mainstream media have reported Assad’s statements without comment, his remarks cannot be taken at face value. Like the Palestinian Authority’s single minded- goal to become a state based on its demands incorporated in the Saudi Initiative of 2002, Syria has one principal objective – taking the strategic Golan Heights and its valuable water resources away from Israel.

According to the leaked documents, Assad also said that the “Annapolis meeting” on the Middle East two years ago, “I know it [Annapolis] is just a photo op.  But I am sending someone anyway.  We do what we think is good for our interests.”
In another cable, Assad admitted that Hamas is an “uninvited guest” in Damascus, where the terrorist organization’s Khaled Mashaal has made his headquarters. He also verified what Israel has warned for more than a year – that Hizbullah is the most powerful political faction in Lebanon.

One surprising statement in a leaked cable came from Qatar’s Amir Hamad bin Khalifa, who told U.S. Senator John Kerry last February, "When you consider that many in the region perceive that Hizbullah drove Israel out of Lebanon and Hamas kicked them…out ‘of the small piece of land called Gaza,’ it is actually surprising that the Israelis still want peace.”

MK Eldad: 'Jordan is Palestine' Conference Planned

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140567
Kislev 3, 5771, 10 November 10 08:41, by Gil Ronen

(Israelnationalnews.com) MK Prof. Aryeh Eldad (National Union) is planning to hold a conference under the heading 'Jordan is Palestine' in the coming days. Dutch politician Geert Wilders will attend.

"The purpose of the conference is to present an alternative plan to the two-state solution,” Eldad told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew language service. “We are saying that there already is a Palestinian state, Jordan, 70% of whose residents are Palestinians,” he explained. “It already takes up three quarters of the territory of the British Mandate, so that the partition has already been carried out. We demand that Jordan be recognized as [the Palestinian state] formally, and not just de facto."

Eldad says that all Israel needs to do, in order to find a partner for the idea, is to raise the plan publicly. “The world does not pay attention to these statements because we still have a taboo on merely broaching the subject.”

Last year, Eldad added, he initiated a debate on this matter at the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, but MK Tzachi HaNegbi, Chairman of the Committee, was concerned it could “upset the Jordanians” and decided to bury it.
Eldad said that Wilders sees clearly the reality in Europe, which is gradually turning Muslim – and understands that Israel is the forward position in the West's struggle against Islam. “If Israel falls, the West will fall too,” he said.

Geert Wilders – the Next Dutch PM?
Tammuz 17, 5769, 09 July 09 12:07, by Maayana Miskin

(Israelnationalnews.com) The Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) led by Geert Wilders is leading both of the nation's major opinion polls. While the party currently holds only nine seats of the 150 seats in the Dutch Lower House Parliament, both the Synovate Political Barometer and pollster Maurice de Hond say the party stands to be the largest in Parliament following the next national elections.

A Synovate poll released Wednesday shows PVV in a tight race with the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA), which currently holds 41 seats. If elections were held this week, both parties would win 32 seats, Synovate pollsters found.
Maurice de Hond's polls show PVV winning roughly 32 seats as well. A third poll, the TNS NIPO, shows PVV winning 28 seats to 24 for the CDA. If PVV were to win the plurality of Parliament seats, Wilders would be called to assemble the Netherlands' next ruling coalition.

Wilders is known worldwide for his views on Islam. He created the short movie Fitna, which links Koranic verses to modern terrorism, and has called the Koran “fascist” and Islam a “totalitarian ideology.” He suggests that the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam, and he has called for his country to ban the building of new mosques.

He is currently planning a sequel to Fitna that will document the effects of mass Muslim immigration to non-Muslim countries.
Backlash over Fitna and over Wilders' controversial statements on Islam appears to have boosted his popularity. PVV's popularity rose in polls after an Amsterdam court decided to press charges against Wilders over his statements regarding Islam, and rose again after Wilders was denied entrance to Britain, where he planned to show his movie.

PVV won a significant victory last month, when it received four out of the Netherlands' 25 seats in the European Union Parliament. PVV got 17 percent of the vote, putting it just three percent behind the leading CDA.
Anti-Islam and anti-immigration parties won elsewhere in the EU as well: the whites-only British National Party won two seats for the first time, Austria's Freedom Party gained seats, and the anti-immigration Jobbik party won three of 22 seats in Hungary.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132290
Arutz Sheva Posts Censored "Fitna" Movie Explaining Islam
Adar Bet 23, 5768, 30 March 08 02:48, by Hillel Fendel

(Israelnationalnews.com) Now on Arutz Sheva: Fitna, the controversial and censored movie by Geert Wilders that aims to energize the West into fighting back against its mortal enemy.

The movie, which shows the Western world some of the aims and means of its latest mortal enemy, extremist Islam, was banned first by the internet registrar Network Solutions and LiveLeak. The full version can now be seen in full on Arutz Sheva.  Arutz Sheva provides this service in order educate the Western world as to the dangers facing non-Muslims and Western democracies all around the world.
The movie ends with a call for Europe to defeat Islamic ideology, just as it defeated the threats of Nazism and Communism in the past.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125728
 
Liveleak Publishes, Then Retracts
After his own site - FitnaTheMovie.com  - was closed down by Network Solutions, Geert Wilders published Fitna on the video website Liveleak on Thursday evening, March 27, 2008. By March 29, Liveleak had removed Fitna from the site due to threats from Muslims. The movie was replaced by an announcement from Liveleak explaining their decision:

"Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers. "This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.

"Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.
"We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high."

Condemnation
The movie has drawn condemnation from Arab countries around the world, as well as from Australia, Holland, the European Union and the United Nations.  Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, for example, rejected the film's premise of equating Islam with acts of terror and violence and said it is an attempt to incite racial hatred. Even the Netherlands' Central Jewish Board called the film's focus on anti-Jewish preaching by Muslims "counterproductive" and "generalizing."

Content
The movie screens explicit texts from the Koran, as well as Moslem clerics calling for murder and violence towards all non-believers.

One frenzied Moslem cleric is seen calling for the murder of Jews; he unsheathes a sword and cries out, "By Allah, we shall cut off the Jew's head!  Allah is great! Allah is great! Jihad for the sake of Allah!"  The audience, in a similar frenzy, cheers him on. 

One of the Koranic verses quoted in the movie reads, "Those who have disbelieved our signs, we shall roast them in fire. Whenever their skins are cooked to a turn, we shall substitute new skins for them, that they may feel the punishment. Verily, Allah is sublime and wise."  This is followed by scenes of enemies of Islam being dragged through the streets, a bombed-out bus in London, an imam calling for death to all Jews, and signs at Moslem rallies reading, "Be prepared for the real Holocaust," "God bless Hitler," and "Islam will dominate the world."

Another quoted verse: "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks, and when ye have caused a bloodbath among them, bind a bond firmly on them."  Another Moslem preacher is then seen saying calmly, "Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered - this is the path to victory." 

Imams and Moslem leaders are shown preaching, "Islam is a religion that wants to rule the world. It has done so before, and eventually will rule it again... By Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again!  The day will come when we will rule America!  The day will come when we will rule Britain! ... You will take over the USA! You will defeat them all! You will get victory!" %ad%


US Media Interest
The United States media has been relatively quiet on the story, compared to the amount of attention the movie continues to receive in the European press. The New York Times, for instance, last reported it on Thursday. 

The Washington Post has an Associated Press story concentrating on the reactions to the movie, with nothing about its content; the report relates to the film as an "insult" to Islam, with quotes by many Islamic political leaders to this effect and comparing it to the Danish cartoons about Muhammed.  An earlier Reuters story in the Washington Post followed the same line, though it included one and a half sentences describing the film's actual content.
www.IsraelNationalNews.com
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Is UN Creation of Israel a Myth? Ask Foreign Policy Journal

Cheshvan 19, 5771, 27 October 10 02:37, by Dr. Mordechai Nisan

(Israelnationalnews.com) The October 26 edition of the Foreign Policy Journal features an article by its founder and editor, Jeremy R. Hammond, in
Jeremy R. Hammond has offered a sophist-style 'scholarly' refutation of the international foundation for Israel’s establishment in 1948.
which he claims that:

1. The UN General Assembly had no right to propose the partition plan for Israel and the Arabs (which the Arabs rejected, starting the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, ed.)
2. The Arab population was not given the right to self determination because the UN wanted to create the Jewish State

Hebrew University’s Middle East Studies noted lecturer, Dr. Mordecai Nisan, was asked by INN to respond to the article. Here is his response:
It is conventional to accept, at least theoretically, the authority of international law and its institutions as the definitive mechanisms for defining political situations and offering solutions to political conflicts. The alternative is force and violence as the benchmark of history. Certainly that has been a mighty and decisive benchmark considering that the map of the world and the delineation of borders predominantly were decided by war and its results.

In his essay on “The Myth of the U.N. creation of Israel,” Jeremy R. Hammond has offered a sophist-style scholarly refutation of the international foundation for Israel’s establishment in 1948. Basing himself on the intrinsic right of the Arabs of Palestine to the Land, any other claim criterion is nullified: the League of Nations, the United Nations, and Great Britain as the mandatory power of Palestine, are all excluded from legitimately determining the fate of Palestine in the political turmoil of 1947.

As a result of Arab refusal to partition Palestine, and the Jewish determination to secure a state in at least part of Palestine, war was the inevitable reality. At a certain point in early 1948, while fearing war with the Arabs within the country and Arabs from the surrounding Arab countries, Ben-Gurion understood that war was the only scenario on the horizon.

Of course it is a myth to assert or believe that the U.N. created Israel, because it was the Zionist military victory buoyed by an iron-will national tenacity which created a Jewish state in the teeth of Arab hostility and belligerency. It could not have been otherwise. Once Hammond denies authority to law and legally sanctioned international institutions to decide, he – like the Arabs - has pointed to force as the only alternative. The Arabs vitiated the view of the U.N., but to their great loss.

The idea that a minority population, as was the Jewish population in Palestine in 1948, has a right to affirm its national claim is not unknown in the thorny instances of intra-state conflicts. A minority like a majority may also have a rigorous claim to self-determination. It was after all this kind of demographic and ethnic situation which gave birth to Pakistan as a Muslim state in 1947, separate from Hindu-majority India; or, if you like, to Catholic Ireland seceding from the United Kingdom in 1922. Perhaps African Christian/animist southern Sudan will take this momentous step in 2011. In such instances, pluralistic countries dissolve into their distinctive parts, for better or worse.

In Eretz Israel in 1948 and even before, the irreconcilable Jewish-Arab confrontation led to the breakdown of political order and the founding of an independent Jewish state, with Arab–populated areas of Palestine coming under the rule of Jordan and Egypt. Wanting all, in breach of the international decision for partition, the majority Arabs of Palestine ended up with nothing.
Hammond’s line of argument leads to the dissolution of the conflict-management or resolution-capacity of the U.N. And that is probably for the better, considering its endless meddling and globalist interventions in futile ways (read Lebanon), and its contrasting negligence to effectively intervene when the situation demands it (read Rwanda and Darfur).

Obviating its right to deny the Arabs all of Palestine means that the U.N. Partition Resolution 181 is, for Hammond, invalid. That being the case, there is no reason to accept the authority of U.N. Resolution 194 that calls for Palestinian refugee return. An emasculated U.N. cannot be manipulated to be only good for the Arabs and bad for the Jews when that is politically convenient. Hammond argues that the U.N. did not have a right to create Israel, so then it does not have a right to dissolve its existence under the guise of sanctifying resolution 194 from 62 years ago.
It is transparently true that Israel’s founding came through the sword, but one exercised on behalf of the transcending right of an ancient and integral people, the likes of whose special claim to the Land of Israel no other human collectivity can equal whatsoever. To continually hound Israel by raising the question of its legitimacy will only assure, may I suggest, future wars whose results will likely approximate in bold colors the results of 1948. %ad%
www.IsraelNationalNews.com

The WikiLeaks Iraq Logs

10/26/2010 12:49 PM


A Protocol of Barbarity

The online whistleblower platform WikiLeaks is posting close to 400,000 US military reports from the Iraq war on the Web. The logs show in detail how brutally the war was waged and the helplessness with which the United States acted. By SPIEGEL Staff
By the end of this one day, 231 people will have been killed by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), snipers or roadside bombs. Security forces will have reported finding another 86 bodies, most of them bound, tortured and shot, "execution style," as the reports read.

On this day, 58 home-made bombs will explode and 33 others will be defused, insurgents will fire on US troops in 61 incidents, nine weapons stockpiles will be discovered and an unknown number of people will be kidnapped in seven ambushes. At three points throughout the day, there will be a brief flash of hope that the kidnapped deputy health minister will be found alive, after all.
The 1,345th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Nov. 23, 2006, is a particularly brutal day in the war in Iraq, bloodier than any before it.

It is 2:19 a.m. when an American patrol drives over an improvised explosive device, or IED. Four US soldiers are injured in the blast, sustaining serious injuries to their feet, calves and thighs. They have to be evacuated by helicopter. The next incident happens two hours later, when insurgents storm an Iraqi police guard post and threaten to kill the policemen unless they hand over their weapons. The insurgents make off with four Kalashnikovs.

Starting at 7:00 a.m., members of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia named -- somewhat boastfully -- after the savior eagerly anticipated by all Shiites and known by its Arabic acronym JAM, congregate in several places in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Interior Ministry employees take the men to the Hurriyah district. Soon afterwards, an American soldier reports: "The al-Hurriyah third has now been surrounded by the joint MOI (Interior Ministry) and JAM troops who are poised there for a big battle."
1:13 p.m.: The circle of Shiites surrounding the neighborhood is tightening. A US military report collects "information on a planned attack by joint Ministry of Interior and Jaysh al-Mahdi troops against a Sunni area."

2:00 p.m.: Sunni insurgents have set up their own roadblock in Baghdad. They are armed with machine guns and RPGs. Mortar fire strikes the grounds of the Health Ministry 20 minutes later.

Bloody Series of Attacks
Starting at 3:00 p.m., six car bombs explode consecutively in various locations, including a square, a market and a busy street in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. The Americans report 181 dead and 247 wounded. It later turns out that there are 215 dead and 257 wounded, and that almost all the victims are Shiites. It is the bloodiest series of attacks since the beginning of the war.

Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr publicly calls on his fellow Shiites to exercise restraint, but internally he calls for revenge. An American soldier notes: "In response to Sunni attacks, Muqtada al-Sadr personally issued orders calling on JAM special forces to attack all Sunni populated neighborhoods in and around Baghdad."
Right after the attacks, Sadr militias throughout the country are told to make their way to Baghdad immediately. "Multiple ambulances ... loaded with unknown weapons came into Sadr City," the reports continue. Kalashnikovs are distributed. Starting at 5:26 p.m., Shiites fire a number of mortars at predominantly Sunni residential neighborhoods. According to the report, there are 14 dead and 25 wounded.

The Americans take note of the looming battles between Sunnis and Shiites. At 5:30 p.m., a group of JAM fighters and supporters in police uniforms attacks a Sunni mosque. At 6:30 p.m., other fighters have set up a fake checkpoint near the Muhsin Mosque and are abducting civilians. At 8:30 p.m., militias attack the Prophet Muhammad Mosque in the Jihad neighborhood. At 8:55 p.m., other Shiites have congregated near the al-Ashara al-Mubashara Mosque and split themselves up into groups of 10. "The JAM enter peoples' homes and kill them," the report reads. At 10:10 p.m., 300 insurgents "are gathering close to an Iraqi Army checkpoint." Iraqi army soldiers "have withdrawn from the checkpoint and the (insurgents) are planning to attack the al-Shulah area." At 10:35 p.m., JAM militias have converted a police vehicle into a launching ramp for Katyusha rockets and plan to attack Sunnis in the Adhamiya district.
Rudimentary Grid
Twenty-four hours of war, compiled in 360 reports by American soldiers, organized in a rudimentary grid of everyday incidents with titles like "Bomb explosion," "Under enemy fire" and "Discoveries of weapons," and archived in a Pentagon database that, once again, offers a close-up look at the daily routine of an armed conflict. This time, however, the war is one that supposedly ended three-and-a-half years earlier. It is an armed conflict that then US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, standing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished," declared to be over when he said on May 1, 2003: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." On that day, the chronicle of the Iraq war -- that SPIEGEL, the British newspaper the Guardian, the New York Times together with other media now have at their disposal -- had not even begun.
The Afghanistan war logs consisted of almost 92,000 reports, but this time there are 391,832 documents that can be evaluated. They begin on Jan. 1, 2004, a day on which seven explosions were reported between Kirkuk in northern Iraq and Basra in the south, and end on Dec. 31, 2009, when three attacks were reported. During this period alone, 3,884 US soldiers died, as well as 224 soldiers from allied nations, well over 8,000 members of the Iraqi security forces and 92,003 Iraqi civilians whose deaths are documented by at least one source. (Editor's note: Reasonably reliable figures are lacking for 2004.)

Together, this makes more than 104,111 deaths, a figure that approximates the number of victims reported dead in these documents, namely 109,032. And although this war wasn't nearly as devastating, in terms of the sheer number of casualties, as the Vietnam War with its 3 million deaths, its effects on the standing of the United States in the world were no less disastrous.

An Insider's View of the War
Do we now know everything there is to know about this war? Do such attempts to make the war easier to comprehend, with seemingly endless numbers of incident reports and figures, offer us any new insights? Is it even worthwhile to add another 400,000 pages of documents to the existing flood of books, reports and other documentation? Two institutions that are archenemies appear to think that the answer is yes.

In one respect, the US Armed Forces, which compiled these documents, and the website WikiLeaks, which is now publishing them, share something in common: Both organizations see these documents as an insider's view of the Iraq war, and thus as accounts that offer the most detailed, comprehensive and realistic version of the bloody truth so far.

More than anything else, what is new about these documents is the perspective they present: It is Americans themselves who report on the dramatic events that occurred again and again at checkpoints, where the excessive nervousness of the soldiers led to hundreds of deadly incidents. It is the Americans themselves who document civilian deaths all over Iraq, deaths that occurred in both insurgent and US military attacks. The documents report on the deaths of 34,000 civilians.
Another unique aspect of the leaked documents is that it is the Americans who describe the brutal violence that the Iraqis, now liberated from the control of their former dictator Saddam Hussein, inflict on each other. A civil war is only prevented at the last minute. It is neither America's opponents, nor its skeptical allies nor the oppositional media who have compiled these documents describing just how disastrous Operation Iraqi Freedom really was. It was the very people who ousted Saddam.

The Fog of War
Once again, the three original print publications and additional media have been given access to the documents. Once again, the documents were reviewed and vetted. And, once again, there are no doubts about the authenticity of the materials. They are first-hand reports that also reflect the confusion of the moment and the notorious "fog of war."

What is new is the heated debate over the question of whether the publication of such material is permissible, and whether, as American politicians claim, using threatening language directed at WikiLeaks, that these documents endanger lives. They argue that the leaks put American and allied soldiers (there are still about 50,000 GIs stationed in Iraq) at risk by describing their routines and thus making them -- and the Iraqi informants whose identities are revealed in many reports -- easier targets for their enemies.

That, at least, is the line of argumentation used by the Pentagon in response to a request by SPIEGEL for comment on the publication of the Iraq documents. "We know our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources, and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment. This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed," a statement read.

The Defense Department, however, has remained silent about a letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to US Senator Carl Levin that came to an altogether different assessment of the Afghanistan war logs that preceded the Iraq documents. "The review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure," the letter read. Nevertheless, the Pentagon is once again demanding that WikiLeaks "return the stolen material and expunge it from their websites as soon as possible." Earlier, the US government asked allied nations that also have soldiers stationed in Afghanistan to prepare indictments against WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, 39. Assange so far still feels safe outside the United States and was practically treated like a pop star in Sweden.

'Criminal Enterprise'
The American right, on the other hand, wants revenge for what it sees as high treason. Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Marc Thiessen, a member of the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, characterized WikiLeaks as a "criminal enterprise" whose goal is to obtain secret information on questions of national security and disseminate it as broadly as possible. Thiessen also argued that Assange should be arrested and convicted for his alleged crimes, and that if the countries where the Australian spends his time refused to extradite him, the FBI or the CIA should take matters into their own hands and simply arrest him.
These threats have had some impact. WikiLeaks is currently experiencing a serious crisis. Several staffers have resigned from WikiLeaks amid sharp criticism of Assange, alleging he is "some kind of emperor or slave trader." The number of supporters has also shrunk. After one of the website's programmers left, the site was at times inaccessible during recent weeks. And Assange still hasn't been cleared of allegations by two Swedish women that he sexually abused them. Assange has vehemently denied the allegations and maintained his innocence, but Swedish prosecutors are still pursuing the investigation.

One area in which Assange's self-confidence hasn't been dented is that of criticism of his leadership style. "I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off," Assange wrote to one internal critic.

The new scoop offers a chance for the WikiLeaks chief to regain credibility. The presentation of the Iraq material is meant to demonstrate that WikiLeaks may be a little down, but that it is still capable of acting and is dedicated to its core business again: the publication of documents. That's why Assange's remaining team have been holed up in their temporary headquarters in London and have been working for weeks to scrub the material of names of possible informants -- partly as a concession to various non-government organizations that harshly criticized WikiLeaks after the publication of the Afghanistan documents.

Names Removed
As was the case with the Afghanistan material, with the Iraq documents SPIEGEL has again done everything possible to ensure that lives are not put at risk. This includes removing the names of potential victims of individual reprisals or of places that could be targeted for collective reprisals. But, as with the Afghanistan war logs, SPIEGEL has also decided to present the documents themselves, even though they do not mention a number of key events in the Iraq war or explain the underlying political circumstances -- a fact that many criticized with the Afghanistan documents. A reporter with the Washington Post, which, unlike its competitor the New York Times, was not given pre-publication access to the material, bragged that the classified information he could gather at any Washington cocktail party was more interesting than anything the Afghanistan documents had to offer.

To a certain extent, such criticism also applies to the Iraq documents. For instance, hardly a substantive word is to be found on the Abu Ghraib scandal. Reports on prisoner abuse at the hands of Americans do appear in the material, but not until a year after Abu Ghraib, and the documents also note that the culprits were punished under military regulations. Nevertheless, the incidents and behavior they describe -- kicks, striking prisoners with a rifle butt, sexual humiliation -- pale in comparison to the acts of barbarism Iraqi security forces inflict on their fellow Iraqis.

The now-published source material also includes no reports on the storming of the Sunni stronghold Fallujah and the murders of civilians in Haditha, or on the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which went on for years. Nevertheless, the Iraq material, like the Afghanistan documents, does provide a first-hand view of the war, which makes it journalistic material in the best sense of the word: These documents are a primary source for writing the first version of the history of the conflict.


Changing Our View of War
The resulting narrative is entirely capable of changing our view of wars being fought today. The material shows how the world's sole remaining superpower allows itself to be crippled by the omnipresent fear of roadside bombs lurking around every bend in the road. These brief, matter-of-fact incident reports are only a small excerpt from a war that lasted longer than World War II. In this case, however, they have the cumulative effect of painting a precise picture of an asymmetrical war in which a superpower equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry often stands helpless on the battlefield and doesn't know what is happening to it.

In addition, the thousands of threat analyses, accounts of combat missions and arrest reports make it possible to reconstruct how the escalation of a struggle between two factions of Islam, the Shiites and the Sunnis, unfolded, how society became brutalized, and how kidnappings, executions and prisoner torture became part of everyday life. Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran, also became involved in this war. And although the Americans completed the withdrawal of their combat forces at the end of August, they remained the key players in this war until then -- both as perpetrators and victims.

Religious Extremists
A flood of reports show that it wasn't just ordinary police officers and soldiers who cooperated with the Shiite militias in their fight against the American occupiers, but that politicians as well as high-ranking police and military officials were directly involved in attacks on US troops and civilians between 2006 and December 2009, when the reports end. That involvement meant ordering IEDs put in place, offering the militias protection and storing their weapons. The Mahdi Army, in particular, appears to have infiltrated large segments of the police.
For example, a report dated August 4, 2006 documents that Rahim Kaukas, the head of a Shiite district in Baghdad, instructed his construction workers, who were paving several streets, to leave a gap every 200 to 300 meters (650 feet to 980 feet). JAM militia members buried their IEDs in the gaps, and the workers then sealed the gaps with fresh tar. The bombs could then be triggered remotely at the moment an American patrol approached.

A police colonel, identified as Kassim, was arrested in late July 2008 and charged with planning, together with a JAM commander, an attack on the police station in Kanat, where American and Iraqi security forces were both stationed. When JAM militias began feeding gasoline from a stolen tanker truck into the sewage system in Rusafa, a Sunni neighborhood, which they intended to set on fire, an Iraqi Army major promised his support. "Maj(or) Hussayn with the (Ministry of the Interior) commandos will provide support to the operations by setting up a perimeter around the gasoline tanker while it dumps its fuel into the sewer," one of the documents reads.


Dramatic Increase in Brutality
There are hundreds of similar reports about government assistance for the religious extremists. Together, they show how the distinctions between insurgents and government employees became increasingly fuzzy. In Baghdad, JAM militias have been able to openly move around the city for years, traveling in pickups and armed with RPGs and Kalashnikovs. They wear the uniforms of the Interior Ministry, the army or the police. And they like to use coffins for weapons transports, with a convoy of vehicles masquerading as funeral processions.

All of this happened under the eyes of the security forces, if not with their help. The reports indicate that bodies of murder victims were often found near police stations, that IEDs were placed within sight of checkpoints, in places where they ought to have been discovered, and that weapons were stockpiled behind police stations.

The reports also show how the brutality of the war increased dramatically between 2004 and 2007. Anyone could murder anyone else. The war was being waged with thousands of homemade bombs. Al-Qaida terrorists, the mortal enemies of both the JAM militias and the Americans, often hid their explosive devices in cans of baby food. During raids, US soldiers repeatedly found complete explosive devices hidden in cribs. Hand grenades were found hidden in stuffed animals for small children, and the Islamists occasionally hid their ammunition in schools and daycare centers. An IED hidden in a flashlight "blew off the arm of a boy and burned a little girl," a soldier notes succinctly in one report. The children were taken to the hospital. "Nothing else to report," the soldier concludes.


Booby-Trapped Bodies
The documents describe scenes of sheer terror on a massive scale. A document dated Nov. 3, 2007, for example, relates that an Iraqi woman approached US troops to tell them that Islamists had cut off her baby's head. The officers sent out a few soldiers to look into the matter. The report ends: "Confirms baby is decapitated."
At first, al-Qaida deliberately targeted foreigners in its terrorist attacks. Starting in 2004, terrorists began kidnapping foreigners, decapitating them and dumping their bodies by the roadside like trash. Kim Sun Il, a South Korean working for a US military contractor, was found on a road between Baghdad and Fallujah on June 22, 2004. His body was booby-trapped with explosives so that whoever discovered him would be killed as well. An al-Qaida group had kidnapped Kim to blackmail South Korea into withdrawing its troops from Iraq. When Seoul refused, the terrorists beheaded the 33-year-old.

The body of another Western hostage was tossed out of a black BMW in front of a Baghdad mosque. The head was missing, the arms were handcuffed and the legs were bound with a rope. The "body was still warm and blood not thickened," a soldier wrote, describing the corpse of his fellow American, whose name was Eugene Armstrong.

A Catalog of Gory Details
When these extreme acts of violence failed to achieve the desired results, the insurgents began directing their acts of terror against Iraqis, especially those who worked with the US occupiers. In January 2005, insurgents threw a beheaded Iraqi in front of the Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad. Another man was found hanged. A note in his pocket read: "Avoid election."

Al-Qaida's most important targets were local men who worked for the Iraqi police or as soldiers. In January 2006, terrorists carrying Kalashnikovs pulled a man, a night watchman for a school, out of his car at an intersection in Mosul -- in broad daylight. They tied him up and forced him onto the ground. They yelled "God is great, God is good," and then "decapitated target individual with a knife," in the words of the US military report. The terrorists even filmed the scene for use as propaganda and threat material.

As blunt, monotonous and filled with military jargon as they are, it takes a strong stomach to read the thousands of documents. In almost perfunctory fashion, the US soldiers kept a journal of horrors, a catalog of the gory details of everyday life in a murderous country.

Almost every day, US soldiers found murder victims who had been dealt with in unspeakable ways. And if the sight of the bodies themselves wasn't horrific enough, the soldiers also had to approach them with great caution, because they often contained concealed explosives. In one instance, on Oct. 11, 2007, the body of a beheaded man was so bloated that the soldiers assumed that terrorists had stuffed the corpse with explosives. "The remaining few pieces of the body were cremated with a thermite grenade," the report reads. Rather than risk recovering the body, they blew it up.


'Paradise Boys'

During the last two years covered by the reports, al-Qaida in Iraq allegedly used children and adolescents as walking bombs. The groups of boys between 11 and 16 years of age called themselves "Paradise Boys" or "Youth of Heaven." The war logs indicate how seriously the Americans took these groups. In May 2009, a soldier writes: "Recent reports suggest a resurgence in the 'Paradise' Boys." The Americans had a good idea how the groups of adolescents functioned and where they met. "In most instances the children are unaware that they are the couriers of explosive devices. And 'Paradise' Boys' leadership either instruct the children to emplace a seemingly insignificant item near a specific site, or they remote detonate the device while it is still in the child's possession."

At times, the cool, businesslike reports read as if their authors had lost track of which enemy they were fighting at any given time, who exactly had infiltrated whom, and which insurgents were involved in which attacks.

This routinely led to disastrous situations at checkpoints around the country. The Americans, fearing attacks, tended to shoot too soon rather than too late. Their explanations read like helpless excuses. One report, for example, states that a man was holding something behind his back. Another report reads: "Upon search of the (deceased), USF (US Forces) determined that the weapon was plastic." In another incident, the report relates that witnesses said the man involved had an eye defect and couldn't see properly.

Most of all, the Americans were oddly restrained, not even intervening when they had information about a planned massacre, like on Nov. 24, 2006, the day after 231 people died. A report written in the evening, titled "Attack Threat," provided information about plans by Iraqi Army troops and Shiite militias to attack the Hurriyah neighborhood at 3:30 p.m., despite a curfew.
The report even specified which army unit was involved: the 1st Battalion of the 1st Brigade of the 6th Army Division. "A first lieutenant named Baha personally supervised the burning of the Nida Allah Mosque," the report reads. The attacks were underway, the report stated, and there is "little resistance from residents due to the overwhelming attack force."

There is nothing in the documents to indicate that attempts were made to stop the bloodshed, even though the Iraqi Army's 1st Brigade was a model unit. A year earlier, it had become the first Iraqi military group to assume responsibility for security in a Baghdad neighborhood.


Infiltration of Police
It wasn't until the spring of 2009 that the government made a half-hearted attempt to neutralize the JAM militias. A May 13, 2009 US military report states: "Apparently (the Interior Ministry) is finding it too difficult to go after members of militias. ... So they are doing it indirectly by executing arrests for criminal activities (which are often used to financially support these terrorist activities). They are identifying their targets as criminals, not as members of JAM."
The militias reacted by attacking senior Interior Ministry officials almost daily, with car bombs, drive-by shootings and arson attacks. Within a few days, a counterterrorism official was seriously wounded, an investigator specializing in international organized crime was shot dead and a number of bombs were found on the cars of Interior Ministry employees.

When police chiefs were replaced to combat the infiltration of the police department, the insurgents and their allies within the police department blew up their successors.
The documents paint a desolate picture of the condition of military and police units, which were pervaded with forces working against the US troops and the government, not just from below but, more importantly, from above.

Neighbors Playing with Fire
The Iraqi policemen noticed the man in front of the al-Zahraa Mosque in Kirkuk immediately. His clothing bulged suspiciously just above his hips. The faithful were already flocking to the mosque for Friday prayers. The police rushed toward the man and managed to overpower him before he could detonate his explosive vest.
The would-be suicide bomber had made it easy for the police. He was high on drugs, and the bomb wasn't even hidden properly underneath his clothing. When he finally talked to investigators, he spoke with a Syrian accent. "It is believed that he (the detainee apprehended) is affiliated with AQI (al-Qaida)," one of the classified American reports states.


Syrian Involvement
It is a routine entry. At several points in the now-released US military documents, there are reports of Syrian involvement in suicide bombings in Iraq, as well as of Syrian financial and training assistance for terrorists from the neighboring country.
Not all incidents ended as harmlessly. According to a report dated August 14, 2005, a suicide bomber in the city of Mahawil was about to detonate explosives strapped to his body. When security forces opened fire on the man, he managed to set off the bomb, killing himself and two civilians.

The bomber was from Syria -- and a few other perpetrators also came from the country. On July 11, 2007, US troops detained a Mercedes bus on its way from Syria into Iraq. When they inspected the vehicle, they found 260 suicide belts, albeit without explosives, 120 gun cases, 200 kilograms of ammunition, 40 kilograms of ignition powder and 100 reloading devices for magazines.
Some time earlier, an "unconfirmed" warning was received indicating that a Syrian terrorist group planned to send 35 suicide bombers to Iraq, including 15 women. They were to be given fake security passes that would enable them to infiltrate the Green Zone, the heavily secured Baghdad district occupied by the Americans and the Iraqi government.


Monitored by Camera
Terrorists also received training in the neighboring country, as a US soldier reported on Nov. 17, 2006. "New tactic, technique, and procedure for suicide vest improvised explosive device operations has surfaced," it warns. "A new tactic, technique and procedure is being taught and fielded in Syria" in training camps, among other places, it continues.

According to the Nov. 17 report, suicide bombers were now being outfitted with a miniature camera so that they could be monitored by a second attacker -- to ensure that the suicide candidates struck the correct targets and killed as many people as possible. A useful added feature for the terrorists was the fact that, if the suicide bomber failed to detonate his or her bomb, the second attacker could do it by remote control.
For a long time, Syrian intelligence officials allowed jihadists from other countries who had come to fight in Iraq to enter the country through the Damascus airport. The jihadists then crossed the Syrian-Iraqi border to join the insurgents' holy war against the US troops.

In 2007, in the northwestern Iraqi city of Sinjar, Americans found the "personnel files" of 590 terrorists smuggled in through Syria. Their future employer, al-Qaida in Iraq, carefully differentiated between designated suicide bombers and insurgent fighters.

In a memo dated August 17, 2008, a defector stated that he had spent seven months in an al-Qaida training camp in Syria. A June 2008 report describes 90 terrorists from various countries waiting for further instructions in the border region between Syria and Iraq. An insurgent arrested in Iraq in 2009 had 19 Syrian stamps in his passport. The last stamp was dated April 1, 2009.

Unstable Border
Iraq also shares an unstable border with other neighboring countries. Even Jordan, a US ally, is a popular safe haven for members of Saddam's banished family and a few senior members of his regime. With the help of these exiles, insurgents smuggled anti-aircraft missiles into Iran from Jordan. Weapons and ammunition were also transported along the roughly 800-kilometer (500-mile) desert road between Amman and Baghdad.

Arms were also reportedly smuggled into Iraq from Iran, some by sea. The reports clearly show that the Americans regarded the border with Iran with particular suspicion.

There were warnings of a khaki-colored boat that allegedly docked in Basra, where the Shatt al-Arab River flows into the Persian Gulf, on Feb. 1, 2007. The ship had supposedly come from Iran and was officially carrying a load of chickens and eggs. But the intelligence service of the Iraqi Defense Ministry was alarmed. Eighty Katyusha rockets were reportedly hidden among the eggs and clucking hens.
The case is one of many. Weapons were constantly being seized at the border. One log even reports on a delivery of missiles that, if detonated, could have led to nerve paralysis. On April 17, 2008, there was an exchange of fire between smugglers and security forces that lasted for hours and ended when the Iraqis managed to drive away the arms dealers. They fled in the direction of Iran but left behind 163 tank mines on their heavily packed donkeys.


Stored in Banana Crates
According to a report dated Oct. 13, 2006, the Mahdi Army bought a large number of Katyusha rockets from Iran, paying about $500 apiece, and stored them in a mosque in Basra. The missiles were later transported in ambulances to various locations around the city. A short time later, the militia warned Basra residents that it would launch an offensive at the end of Ramadan unless the British forces occupying the Basra region at the time withdrew.

Also in Basra, a cache of 14 boxes of 12.7 mm caliber machine-gun ammunition was found during a routine patrol on Dec. 13, 2009. The ammunition was also from Iran. On August 31, 2009, security forces discovered 17 steel rails and more than 1,000 car jacks in an industrial section of Amarah, a city in southeastern Iraq. Shiite militias use these materials to build their rocket launchers. The items were being stored in banana crates.

The special attention the Americans were paying to weapons shipments from Iran reads more like a deliberate search for proof that Iran was one of the main supporters of the Shiite militias in Iraq, especially given the relatively sporadic discoveries of such weapons. The reports do show, however, that such weapons shipments existed. Nevertheless, the documents offer no evidence that the government in Tehran controlled the arms trade centrally.

The Security Forces as Perpetrators of Terror
On Jan. 17, 2007, police officers in the city of Salman Pak reported the discovery of a body. Assuming that it was a political murder, they called in a team of investigators from the national police to recover and examine the victim. But even the national police were unable to find more than the victim's severed, but otherwise unharmed, head. There was no trace of the rest of the body.

Nevertheless, police had no trouble identifying the victim, who turned out to be a fellow officer. The killers had stuck a piece of wire through the dead man's ear and attached his ID card to it. According to the card, the dead man was Adil Abu Hussein, an officer with the national police. His ID number was 001487. When he was still alive, Hussein was a member of the Wolf Brigade, the most notorious Interior Ministry police unit.


Elite Force
It isn't the first time that members of the 2,000-member special forces unit appear as corpses in the Americans' Iraq war logs. On July 8, 2005, a Baghdad taxicab drove up to the Al Jamouri Hospital in Mosul and dropped off four bodies, each of them peppered with gunshot wounds. The driver reported that a red Opel had forced him to stop his cab, and that armed men had then jumped out of the car, pushed him behind the driver's seat and shot his passengers. Those passengers were also members of the Wolf Brigade.

The troop was established in 2004 as an elite force to combat acts of terrorism inspired by al-Qaida within Iraq. The Americans had trained the unit, which was intended to serve as the Iraqis' strongest weapon in the fight against the bombing terror. But the police unit quickly became a weapon of terror itself. During his short term in office, from 2005 to 2006, Baqir Solagh, a Shiite and the country's then interior minister and commander-in-chief of the Wolf Brigade, recruited most of his police officers from the radical Shiite militias. Sunnis in Baghdad soon feared that the police were deploying death squads to destroy their Sunni enemies. The religious strife between Sunnis and Shiites was moving in the direction of a civil war at the time. The Wolf Brigade set up secret prisons in various locations around the country, where some of the prisoners were abused.

American military doctors scrupulously diagnosed, bruise by bruise, the wounds of Iraqi prisoners that had previously fallen into the hands of the Iraqi counterterrorism unit. In a report dated Dec. 13, 2006, a military doctor notes three times that he has "found signs of abuse" indicating that the victim was "struck by a blunt object." The examined victims had said, apparently truthfully, that they had been beaten with an object similar to a baseball bat. In the last column of his investigative report, the doctor notes that he believes the perpetrators were "National Police Wolf Brigade."


'All the Pain and Agony'
After five suspicious Iraqis were arrested on Dec. 14, 2005 for allegedly placing a roadside bomb, the police investigator on duty threatened the main suspect with a double punishment. First, he said, the man would never see his family again. Second, he would be turned over to the Wolf Brigade, which would subject him to "all the pain and agony" for which the elite unit "is known to exact upon its detainees."
The documents also report on the secret prisons of the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, in which prisoners, most of them Sunnis, were subjected to the same kinds of tortures as prisoners had been in the days of Saddam Hussein.

A report dated Nov. 13, 2005 describes the discovery of an "(Interior Ministry) internment facility" where 173 prisoners were being held. The case made headlines around the world at the time, and even the American military reports do not gloss over the condition of their allies: "Many of them (the prisoners) bear marks of abuse to include cigarette burns, bruising consistent with beatings and open sores."
The new material also provides information about camps that have never been described in the international press before. On April 10, 2006, for example, American military officials reported that they had found an illegal secret prison containing 62 prisoners in Baghdad's Rusafa neighborhood. The prisoners were also Sunnis, and four of them exhibited signs of torture.


Hacking Off Fingers
Other documents describe cases of severe torture. In mid-June 2007, for example, Kither al-Bakar, an Iraqi, was arrested on the suspicion of having placed a roadside bomb. He was subsequently interrogated by members of the Iraqi security forces who belonged to the counterterrorism unit in Tal Afar. The Americans took notice of his case about two years later, when they discovered that his right leg had been amputated below the knee, as well as several toes on his left foot. Several fingers were amputated on both hands. There were a number of serious chemical burns on his body and he had severe skin decay.

The victim stated that three Iraqi officers had tortured him by pouring acid on his hands and hacking off some of his fingers, and that they had hidden him whenever the Americans came to inspect their counterterrorism headquarters. After an investigation into the case, the Americans reported that three arrest warrants were issued against the torturers, but they were never enforced. The victim was released in May 2009. The final sentence of the document: "His current location is unknown."
According to a report dated Feb. 24, 2009, Iraqi police stopped a brown Hyundai in Baghdad at the site where a bomb had killed a policeman the day before. They began yelling at the driver, a young man who was unshaven and who was wearing gray pants and sandals. He jumped out of the vehicle and the police shot him several times in the chest. When his body fell to the ground, a policeman began to jump and stomp on the body so much that it was rendered unidentifiable. Then they ordered the witness to leave the area immediately. The American who compiled the report noted: "The Iraqi Police motives were likely anger and a lack of trust in the Iraqi criminal justice system to convict the person responsible and give him the proper punishment."


No Need to Investigate
In hundreds of cases, American doctors identified wounds caused by torture. Prisoners repeatedly complained that they were burned with boiling water, their fingernails were pulled out, the soles of their feet were beaten with electric cable, electroshocks were applied to their genitals and bottles or pieces of wood were inserted into their anuses. But again and again there are cases in which the Americans shielded the torture practices of their Iraqi colleagues. At the bottom of the reports appear the words: No need to investigate.

When questioned, the torturers sometimes came up with the most abstruse excuses. In one case, an Iraqi interrogations specialist claimed that his victim had sustained his injuries after falling from a motorbike as he attempted to flee the police.
But in only one case, at the police interrogation center in Baghdad, did an investigator admit that he had used torture methods to extract confessions from prisoners. In an Oct. 31, 2006 report, an American soldier wrote: "He explained that his weapon of choice for obtaining the confession was a two-foot long, wooden stick with a diameter of a quarter." The Iraqi policeman was arrested.
Sometimes the Iraqis delivered evidence of their brutality on their own. In December 2009, a video fell into the hands of the Americans that depicted the murder of an Iraqi prisoner. Twelve Iraqi army soldiers were involved. The images show how the soldiers led the prisoner, whose hands were bound, into the street, then pushed him to the ground, beat him and finally shot him. The evidence, the American report states, had been "forwarded to the appropriate command for initiation of inquiry/investigation."

The report does not state whether there was any follow-up in the case.
US Soldiers as Perpetrators and Victims
A report dated July 12, 2007 appears in a category called "Direct Fire," which described military clashes between Americans and Iraqis. The report is only a few lines long, and it's one of 59,000 in this category. It isn't even particularly noticeable, not even because of the number of victims it describes: "13 AIF KIA," meaning that 13 anti-Iraqi forces were killed in action. There were also two wounded adults and two wounded Iraqi children.

But the incident described by the brief report on that July morning would change the way many people viewed the war three years later. Hundreds of thousands would watch this mission on the Internet, and they would see people falling to the ground and dying -- all from the perspective of the American shooters.
The information contained in the sparse lines of a report written in military jargon is also documented as a video. It is the original video taken from one of the two Apache helicopters, codenamed Crazyhorse 18 and 19, involved in the incident.


'Look at Those Dead Bastards'
This April, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange presented the video at the National Press Club in Washington. He had titled it "Collateral Murder."
The roughly 18-minute video is difficult to watch, partly because it isn't clear what's worse, the images or the recorded conversations of the helicopter crew. "Nice," says one crew member after a deadly salvo. "Look at those dead bastards."
But it quickly becomes apparent that two employees of the Reuters news agency were among the dead. When questioned, the helicopter crews of the 227th Aviation Regiment, which had taken off from Camp Taji at 9:24 a.m. on that July 12, stated that they had mistaken the cameras the Reuters employees were carrying for weapons.
But in the video, only two or three of the men were even carrying weapons, which wasn't unusual in the eastern part of Baghdad at the time. The video also shows how the crews asked for permission to open fire on a minibus rushing to the scene -- and how they obtained it.


Distorted Reality
When another group of Iraqis later attempted to flee into a building, the helicopter crews fired several Hellfire missiles at the building. The original incident report from that day, now published for the first time, states: "Building destroyed 6 anti-Iraqi forces killed in action."

The brutal reality of the war, captured by the helicopter camera, is not only documented but also distorted in the military incident report, which has now been published by WikiLeaks. The supposed "anti-Iraqi forces" killed were in fact mostly Iraqis who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the two journalists.
Nevertheless, five days after the incident, the Army concluded that the rules of engagement had not been violated. The two severely injured children, who were in the minibus when it came under fire, lost their father in the attacks. He had been driving them to school when he stopped to help the injured Reuters driver.

Many Similar Incidents
The Iraq war logs describe many similar incidents that correspond to such reports.
According to the documents, only four days after the Apache helicopter attack in eastern Baghdad, there was another "engagement" involving Americans that left another group of civilians dead. The same note was appended to the reports on both incidents, namely that the incident could lead to political or international reactions and that it would likely attract attention in the press.

Once again, two helicopters codenamed Crazyhorse were involved, but this time their numbers were 20 and 21.
At about 2:00 p.m. on that day in July 2007, an American patrol came under small-arms fire. Soon afterwards, shots were fired at US soldiers from the Iraqi Electricity Ministry building. The central operations command requested air support for the soldiers under attack. In addition to the two helicopters, two F-16 fighter jets were deployed.

At 2:55 p.m., Crazyhorse 20 reported engaging two "anti-Iraqi forces" on the ground. But then, according to reports from the ground, a nearby mosque called upon fighters to assemble and attack the Americans. The reports later mentioned 50 to 60 "possible" insurgents.

Almost at the same time, Crazyhorse reported a "final gun run" -- in other words, a last attack with the onboard cannon. The "unconfirmed" casualty count, according to the report, read: Twelve dead and eight to 10 wounded opponents -- and 14 dead civilians.

Attempt to Surrender

In another incident, on Feb. 22, 2007, the crew of the helicopter codenamed Crazyhorse 18 had identified a truck apparently loaded with heavy weapons and then destroyed it. When two Iraqis fled the scene in a dump truck, the helicopter pilots took up the chase and opened fire on the truck. Then something unexpected happened. The dump truck stopped, and the Iraqis "came out wanting to surrender," the report relates. The helicopter crew radioed for advice from a military lawyer on how to deal with the situation. The report continues: "Lawyer states they can not surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets." The pilots resumed their pursuit and killed the Iraqis.

The document leaves little doubt that this was a deadly attack on people who wanted to surrender. It could prove damaging for the US Army, despite the opinion of the military lawyer quoted in the report -- because the US military handled things differently in similar cases in the past. During the Gulf War in 1991, for example, a group of Iraqi soldiers signaled their willingness to surrender after they heard the sound of a drone overhead. The Americans accepted that surrender.
In the summer of 2009, there were still about 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. But in addition to the regular military, a no less impressive shadow army was also fighting: about 100,000 employees of civilian contractor firms working for the US government in Iraq. They included cooks for the soldiers, but also bodyguards for the US diplomatic staff and their embassies. They were often the front line in this war. So far about 1,500 American employees of private service providers and security firms have died in Iraq, and about 40,000 have been wounded.


The Role of Blackwater
The most famous of these private defense contractors is Xe Services, which used to be called Blackwater. Blackwater's mercenaries had the reputation of not thinking twice before they acted. They were often under fire, but they were also particularly ruthless in waging war.

A report from the very beginning of the period covered describes a case that made headlines worldwide. On March 31, 2004, insurgents attacked a Blackwater convoy in Fallujah, killed four Americans and hung the bodies from a bridge across the Euphrates River. Then, on Sept. 19, 2005, a suicide bomber slammed his car into a Blackwater convoy in Mosul. His accomplices opened fire on the vehicles, which had come to a stop. Four Americans died.

A few weeks later, also in Mosul, Blackwater employees were the first to open fire. The secret military reports describe the incident as follows: "Blackwater while leaving provincial hall, a vehicle approached the convoy at high rate of speed, and the unit tried waving off the vehicle with hand and arm signals. The vehicle continued to approach the unit, and the unit engaged the vehicle." One civilian was killed and another wounded.

On Feb. 7, 2006, a soldier noted that, near Kirkuk, "two civilians had been shot by a convoy consisting of four black SUVs." They were Blackwater vehicles. "A demonstration began immediately following the shooting by residents of the Rehem-Awa district." Army officials tried to contain the crowd, and discussed "the issue with ... local political leaders at the Iraqi police headquarters."
Sometimes the reports express clear dismay over the behavior of the civilian contractors. A special unit reported that, in May 2005, the mercenaries "shot up a civilian vehicle in Baghdad. Rounds also were fired over (our) heads." There was a family sitting in the car. The father died, and the mother and daughter were injured.
War Trauma and Suicide Attempts
But the US military logs also document the adverse effects of the war on the GIs themselves, revealing that the military leadership was helpless in its reaction to the suicides, mental breakdowns and murders of fellow soldiers.
On May 11, 2009, five Americans died in Camp Liberty, near the Baghdad airport. The men were killed execution-style by a fellow soldier, Corporal John Russell of the 54th Pioneer Battalion, who had been stationed in the tranquil German town of Bamberg before he was deployed to Iraq. The report, filed under a category called "Non-Combat Event Other," stated that Russell had become "unruly" during a treatment session at a center for war trauma, and that he "was in parking lot verbally indicating he was going to commit suicide."

After that, the military police sent Russell, accompanied by another soldier, back to his unit. It was a mistake. Suddenly Russell "grabbed the escort's weapon, forced the escort from the vehicle and returned to the combat stress center in the vehicle." Soon afterwards several other soldiers "found a major, a corvette captain, a corporal and two privates with (gunshot wounds to the head) in the clinic's waiting room. The two officers were doctors at the cli


Terse Language
At times, the US Army's Iraq war logs read like a doctor's report describing, in terse language, the constitution of a military at war with its own inner demons. The massacre perpetrated by Russell is the worst crime to date committed by a US soldier against his fellow soldiers in Iraq. According to a study by the Rand Corporation, an American think tank, one-fifth of all Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans returning home suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To treat acute cases, the US military has set up four combat stress centers in Iraq that include psychiatrists on their staffs.

After the execution-style killings at Camp Liberty, the then-deputy commander of US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Charles Jacoby, ordered an investigation. It concluded that the Army was poorly equipped to cope with soldiers with emotional problems. More than a week before the shooting incident, Russell's fellow soldiers were alarmed that he had frequently talked about committing suicide, even to a military chaplain. The chaplain, the authors of the report concluded, was also being routinely abused as a sort of suicide watchdog.

Russell's commanding officer sensed that something was wrong with his man. Three days before the massacre, he removed the firing pin from Russell's gun. On the morning of the shooting, the unit was so worried about his behavior that a fellow soldier accompanied him to the clinic. Before that, a commander had ordered that at least one man had to constantly keep an eye on Russell. But apparently there weren't enough men to keep it up around the clock. "There is no clear procedure or established training guidelines in any of the references for managing soldiers identified as 'at risk' for suicide or the proper way to conduct suicide watch," the final report states.

Unable to Cope
In 2008, 143 soldiers in the US Army committed suicide, and the number of suicides has risen since then. One hundred and sixty-three soldiers killed themselves in 2009, which meant that more soldiers committed suicide that year than died in attacks in Iraq. And most of the incidents involving soldiers unable to cope with the stress of war occurred in 2009 -- when, curiously, the worst of the Iraq war was long over.

Long before John Russell shot and killed five fellow soldiers, it was already clear how poorly the monitoring of suicidal soldiers was working. Military doctors had treated a sergeant at Camp Taji, 25 kilometers north of Baghdad, for psychological problems, and his superiors had confiscated his weapon. But then the man grabbed the gun of a fellow soldier and shot himself in the head.
Some soldiers with PTSD symptoms were immediately flown out via Medevac, while others returned to their units and were only required to attend a course in stress management.

The military now takes war trauma, suicide attempts and suicides associated with the Iraq war so seriously that the Pentagon has decided to send all soldiers to seminars before they are deployed. In the seminars, the soldiers will learn how to cope with traumatic stress. The prevention program will cost the Pentagon $117 million a year.
Demoralized Withdrawal

George W. Bush's successor has now declared, for the second time, that combat operations in this war are over. On Sept. 1, 2010, Operation New Dawn, an assistance and training mission, replaced Operation Iraqi Freedom. But aside from this excessively optimistic terminology, there were no signs of triumph to be seen. There were no flag-bedecked aircraft carriers or returning veterans being cheered as they marched up Broadway in New York.

The army that withdrew after seven years of war -- under cover of night and weeks before the scheduled withdrawal date -- was a demoralized force that had long since ceased to believe in the campaign's noble goals. The idea that the US soldiers, by overthrowing dictator Saddam Hussein, could create a "dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," as President Bush believed, had long since been absent from discussions.
The documents faithfully reflect this change. In the roughly 400,000 documents, the word "democracy" appears only eight times. The "improvised explosive devices" which instilled fear in the hearts of American soldiers, however, are mentioned 146,895 times.

HANS HOYNG, CORDULA MEYER, JULIANE VON MITTELSTAEDT, FRIEDERIKE OTT, MARCEL ROSENBACH, GREGOR PETER SCHMITZ, HOLGER STARK
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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