Tag: Iraq

NOVANEWS By Nat Parry | Consortium News  Robert Jackson, the Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, once denounced aggressive war as “the greatest menace of our time.” With much of Europe laying in smoldering ruin, he said in 1945 that “to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime: it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of whole.” When it comes to the U.S. invasion of Iraq 15 years ago today, the accumulated evil of the whole is difficult to fully comprehend. Estimates of the war’s costs vary, but commonly cited figures put the financial cost for U.S. taxpayers at upwards of a trillion dollars, the cost in Iraqi lives in the hundreds o...

NOVANEWS A detained man accused of being an Islamic State fighter sits in front of newly displaced men near a check point in Qayyarah, east of Mosul, Iraq, on Oct. 26. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters) By Loveday Morris TULUL AL-NASIR, Iraq — Islamic State militants have rounded up thousands of villagers at gunpoint to use as human shields as they retreat toward their stronghold of Mosul, the latest brutal war tactic inflicted on civilians in areas the group controls. Military officials and some who escaped said that the vast majority of people in more than half a dozen villages were forced to walk north toward the city as the army advanced from the south, and that those who refused were shot. Some villagers said they ran and hid in the desert to avoid being captured, sleeping out ...

NOVANEWS By Firas Samuri Global Research   The government forces of Syria and Iraq continue to fight against terror groups with the support of their allies. Russian Air Force assists the Syrian army, and the International Coalition headed by the U.S. is “cooperating” with the armed forces of Iraq [against the ISIS which is supported by America's Middle East including Saudi Arabia and Qatar in close liaison with Washington]. It should be mentioned that the Liberation of Aleppo from Jabhat al-Nusra‘s terrorists by the Syrian army units last December became a tipping point in the Syrian war. Then the Syrian government has taken all possible measures to safely evacuate all of the civilians from the western neighborhoods of the city. The humanitarian pauses have been introduced and ...

NOVANEWS https://youtu.be/etqLR31bR78?t=9 © Alaa Al-Marjani / Reuters The Mosul region has suffered the highest number of civilian casualties among Iraq’s provinces in February, according to new UN estimates, as the US-backed coalition tightens its grip on densely populated western neighborhoods of the ISIS-held city. Trends Iraq carnage, Islamic State A total of 329 civilians were killed and 613 injured across Iraq in February, in “acts of terrorism, violence, and armed conflict,” according to new figures by UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). The Iraqi military operation to retake Mosul from Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and its desperate attempts to hold ground apparently caused a serious surge in civilian casualties. Ninewa Governorate, with its capital ...

NOVANEWS By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban  A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources. The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. And since Saddam was already knee-deep in a bloody war against Iran, he needed to be incentivized and encouraged by American client states in the region, such as Saudi ...

NOVANEWS By Middle East Eye Middle East Eye   Mesut Torun rejects allegations of links between IS and Baath Party and says battle of Mosul is ‘war of liberation’ against Iran, US Mesut Torun is the grandson of the former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. Born and raised in Turkey, the 33-year-old still flies the flag for the now-banned Baath Party and its struggle for what he calls the “liberation” of Iraq from Iran and the US. Iraqi government forces fighting to capture Mosul from Islamic State militants are committing “genocide” against the population, and are facing resistance from Baathists and other Sunni forces in the city, according to Torun. Mesut Torun says of the Mosul battle against the Iraqi government: ‘This is a war of liberation, a struggle for independence. We are ...