Iraq

NOVANEWS    Denis Foynes   UNITED NATIONS — A United Nations report on Iraq says the human rights situation there remains fragile and huge development challenges loom as the country transitions out of a nearly decade-long conflict. Torture and poor judicial practices are widespread, says the report [.pdf], released Monday by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). The report claims that the 2,953 civilian deaths it attributed to violence in 2010 were mostly carried out by insurgent and terrorist groups. It stressed that minorities, women, and children suffered disproportionately from these abuses. While there have been improvements in some areas of human rights, many challenges remain and some areas were actually worse off ...

NOVANEWS Racist Charles Graner Jr set free after serving six and a half years of a 10-year sentence. The convicted ringleader of detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib has been released from a US military prison, an army spokeswoman said. Racist Charles Graner Jr was released on Saturday from the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after serving more than six and a half years of a 10-year sentence, spokeswoman Rebecca Steed said. Racist Graner, 42, will be under the supervision of a probation officer until December 25, 2014, she said. Steed said she could not release any information about Graner’s whereabouts or his destination after release. Graner’s wife was a fellow Abu Ghraib defendant. Racist Graner was an Army Reserve corporal when he and six other members of the Marylan...

NOVANEWS Kelley Beaucar Vlahos Antiwar Forum Spc. Charles Graner, the sick low-level bully and ringleader in the scandal that rocked the already shaky U.S war effort to its deepest, darkest core in 2004, has been released from jail, three and a half years ahead of schedule. Recall with revulsion the many now iconic photos of Abu Ghriab: young Lynndie England with an Iraqi prisoner on a leash, the hooded detainee hooked up to a fry station, the pyramid of naked male bodies. The dogs, the dead bodies, the U.S soldiers, thumbs up over a fresh, bloodied and bruised corpse . Charles Graner was behind all of those photographs and more. According to jailhouse interviews with England, who spent a year in prison and had the married Graner’s baby behind bars, the then-Army reservist seized upo...

NOVANEWS Second Deadly US Raid in Area in a Week antiwar.com US troops launched an “aerial landing operation” today in the Khidhr village, just south of Tikrit, raiding a home and killing a small boy along with his neighbor, a local policeman. The boy’s father was also wounded in the raid. The raid was the second such raid by US forces in the area in the past week, as one on Saturday in the nearby Balad Township killed four civilians and sparking complaints from local police that they were “executed in cold blood.” Today’s raid came on the house of the young boy and his father, and the policeman was shot and killed after hearing gunfire and coming outside to see what was happening. The US has not commented on why the raid was conducted. This is par for the course for reason US behavior ...

NOVANEWS SAN DIEGO — The Navy has denied parole for a Camp Pendleton Marine convicted of murder in a major Iraq war crime case, rejecting the request by his lawyer who had argued that he should be released because of an error at his 2007 trial. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Juan Garcia said Tuesday that parole at this time would be “premature” for Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, who is set to be released in July 2015 at the earliest. Hutchins was convicted for leading an eight-man squad that kidnapped an Iraqi man from his home in the village of Hamdania in 2006, marched him into a ditch and killed him. Garcia said he thoroughly reviewed the case and commended Hutchins for his good behavior during his jail time, which he called “evidence of his rehabilitative desire.” But “the offenses fo...

NOVANEWS by Karen St. John   Dick Camp’s Battle for the City of the Dead, in the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004, is a sensitive, intense and beautiful book.  It might seem odd to describe it that way, as the contents of the book is anything but delicate, subtle or delightful.  It is a book of horrific stress, death, grief, and living nightmares.  It is not a recreational read.  But the beauty of the book is in its format as a documentary. The battle takes place in Najaf, Iraq, and walks in the footsteps of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines who were after Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.   The detailed day by day, almost our by hour, assault of the battle in the cemetery is a profound tribute to the soldiers who fought in the battle.  There is absolutely no mistake that when ...

NOVANEWS by Army Spc. Kandi Huggins U.S. Division North CONTINGENCY OPERATING SITE WARRIOR, Iraq, July 26, 2011 – Since the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, thousands of soldiers have witnessed progress throughout their deployments to Iraq. For Army Sgt. Kevin Chapman, a squad leader with the 1st Infantry Division’s Company D, 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Advise and Assist Task Force, being a part of the transition from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn has shaped his career as a soldier.Chapman said he always wanted to serve in the armed forces, and enlisted in the Army in 2005. “I joined the Army to try to make a difference for my country,” the Conyers, Ga., native said. “I knew it was something I could make a career out of and do for the rest of my lif...

NOVANEWS Report comes a day after Iran confirmed it was installing a new generation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges. Reuters Iran has shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane over its Fordu nuclear site, a state-run website reported on Wednesday, a day after it confirmed it was installing a new generation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges. “An unmanned U.S. spy plane flying over the holy city of Qom near the uranium enrichment Fordu site was shot down by the Revolutionary Guards’ air defense units,” MP Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari was quoted as saying by the Youth Journalists Club, affiliated to Iran’s state TV. “The plane … was trying to collect information about the site’s location ,” he said, without giving details. He did not say when the incident happened. The Fordu site...