Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich

After years of appeals and delays, the last US Marine charged over the 2005 killings of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha faces a court martial on Thursday in California.

United States troops may have left Iraq, but there is still unfinished business in the legal arena with one of the most controversial criminal cases involving the US military during the nearly nine-year-long Iraq war. Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 31, faces nine counts of voluntary manslaughter and other charges for his role in the November 19, 2005 deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children.

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Bill Van Auken: Military trial begins for Marine charged in Iraq massacre - The charges stem from the November 19, 2005 killings carried out by a squad of Marines in the city of Haditha in Iraq’s western Anbar Province. The killings took place after the convoy in which the Marines were riding was struck by a roadside bomb, leaving one Marine dead and two wounded. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, Wuterich, according to a Marine investigation, ordered four teenagers and the driver of a passing taxi cab out of the vehicle and shot them dead. According to another Marine, Sergeant Sanick De la Cruz, who participated in the shooting and testified in exchange for immunity, the five were killed as they attempted to surrender. Wuterich has claimed he shot them as they sought to flee, something allowed under the US military occupation’s rules of engagement. De la Cruz admitted to shooting at the five victims after they were dead and then urinating on their bodies. In what turned into a three-hour killing spree, Wuterich, the squad leader, led his men in a room-to-room sweep of three houses, throwing grenades and firing assault rifles. They killed 19 more civilians, including 10 women and children, one of them just three years old, as well as a 76-year-old man confined to a wheelchair.

Google/AFP: Last defendant in Iraq war case to stand trial
The Guardian: US marine to stand trial over 2005 killings that left 24 Iraqis dead

We have all been lied to. For decades, the leaders of both major political parties have promised us that they can fix our current system and that they can get our national debt under control. - As the 2012 election approaches, they are making all kinds of wild promises once again. Well you know what? It is all a giant sham. The United States has gotten into so much debt that there will be no coming back from this. The current system is irretrievably broken. 30 years ago the U.S. debt was a horrific crisis that was completely and totally out of control. If we would have dealt with it back then maybe we could have done something about it. But now it is 15 times larger, and we are adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt every single year. ■ The facts that you are about to read below should set America on fire with anger. Please share them with as many people as you can. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is absolutely nightmarish. Words like "abuse", "financial rape", "theft" and "crime" do not even begin to describe what we are doing to future generations. We were the wealthiest nation on earth, but it wasn't good enough just to squander all of our own money. We had to squander the money of our children and our grandchildren as well. America has been so selfish and so self-centered that it is hard to argue that we don't deserve what is about to happen to this country. We have stolen the future of America, and yet we strut around as if we are the smartest generation that ever walked the face of the earth. All of this prosperity that we see all around us is just an illusion. It is a false prosperity that has been purchased by the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines must combine resources to thwart any efforts by countries such as China and Iran to block America’s access to the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and other strategic regions, according to a draft of a Pentagon review.

The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines must combine resources to thwart any efforts by countries such as China and Iran to block America’s access to the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and other strategic regions, according to a draft of a Pentagon review.

New York Times: EU Agrees in principle to ban on Iranian oil

Damascus is criticizing the US for sending an envoy to Cairo's Arab League discussions about ending the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. London-based political analyst Chris Bambery says the US is preparing for a military intervention in Syria.

According to Barbery, sanctions against Syria are only the beginning of Western intervention. "The key ally in this enterprise, Turkey, has been involved with the Free Syrian Army – training them, and we know there are also American advisers in those camps in Turkey," he says. And, "when you combine all that – sanctions, diplomatic moves, the involvement with the Free Syrian Army, it begins to create a dynamic that though perhaps the Americans don’t want involvement in the military operation in Syria, they can pull it in that direction.”

Syria’s Foreign Ministry says the US is getting involved in affairs that are none of its business. And now, Damascus has pulled heavy weapons and tanks from cities after pressure from the Arab League, which says that security forces continue to kill civilian protestors regardless.

PressTV: UK to make Syria another Libya?
Michel Chossudovsky: Pentagon is preparing to send several thousand US troops to Israel

[Hacking group] Anonymous has issued a message calling President Barack Obama and co-authors of National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA) "terrorists" and demanding that the president resign because he has no right or authority to implement a bill that contradicts the Constitution of the American people. Anonymous vows to remove the corrupt leaders from government and says, "We The People! Veto" the president's NDAA decision. "We The People! Veto your decision to implement the National Defense Authorization Act," states Anonymous in a Jan. 3 written and recorded statement via a YouTube video to perpetrators who voted for the NDAA.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants it to be clear that it is not the “Airport Security Administration.” These days, special teams of TSA officials can be seen appearing randomly at the country’s train stations, bus depots and ferry launches. Twenty-five “viper” (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have made 9,300 unannounced visits at various transportation centers around the U.S. These included testing passenger bags for explosive residue at a Greyhound station in Orlando, Florida; inspecting trucks at weigh stations in Tennessee; checking passengers of cruise ships in the Carolinas; and inspecting spectators at NASCAR races and tourists boarding ferries in North Carolina. The Department of Homeland Security says the viper teams should be expanded in number and has requested funding for about a 50% increase. The FY 2011 TSA budget for non-airport operations (a.k.a. “surface transportation security”) was $110 million.

Google/AFP: New York governor urges mandatory DNA samples

A French court will be looking into the case of Mohammad Ad-Dorra, 12, who was killed after being repeatedly shot, on September 30, 2000, while seeking shelter from Israeli military fire in his father’s lap; the father was also shot by several rounds.

Eleven years ago, French reporter, Sharl Anderlan, was present at the shooting, and, along with his Palestinian Cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, videotaped the incident. Anderlan was later accused of fabricating the video, despite the fact that the shooting took place in broad daylight in front of several persons, and reporters, who were also witnesses to the incident. Ad-Dorra was shot and killed just days after the second Palestinian Intifada started. The uprising began after former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, conducted a provocative visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, along with his armed body guards. Mohammad Jamal Ad-Dorra was born on November 22, 1988, and was shot dead on September 30, 2000. He and his father were walking in Salah Ed-Deen Street, in Gaza.

When the shooting started, they tried to take shelter behind a concrete barrel and the father started waving to the soldiers, trying to indicate that he was a civilian with a child, but the shooting did not stop. The father could not fully shelter the child, and both of them were shot by several rounds of live ammunition.

Two weeks after the shooting, France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, signed an affidavit stating that Israeli soldiers deliberately opened fire at the child and his father. He further stated that the soldiers were firing towards the child, “not once, but several times”. He also said that the soldiers were also firing at Palestinian policemen, and at a Palestinian police station 30 meters away.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq has expressed approval of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s quest to detain Iraq’s vice president on terrorism charges, despite almost everyone else recognizing it as part of a troubling pattern of consolidating dictatorial power. - “There is a serious effort by the Iraqi judiciary to have a free and fair and just investigation,” Ambassador James Jeffrey said. “It seems a lot of care is being taken at this point to maintain judicial independence and to have a very broad investigation.” Maliki, a Shiite, ordered the arrest of his Sunni Vice President Hashemi just as the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Many saw the move in the context of a broader pattern by Maliki of corruption, illegally crowding out Sunni authorities in Iraq’s government, and consolidating undue power for himself. In fact, nearly everybody agrees this is the case except for Maliki, his political allies, and the United States.

From another grisly find...(The We!)

A mass grave containing at least 10 human skulls was discovered in northern Afghanistan by construction workers digging the earth to build a car park in an army compound, Afghan officials said on Wednesday.

The discovery of the grave Tuesday in the northern Balkh province in the Deh Dadi district near the site of a major battle during the country's bloody civil war of the early 1990s is yet another reminder of the country's turbulent past. "We brought 10 to 15 skeletons out of the grave and then stopped digging," said Mohammad Nahim, a spokesman for the Afghan army in the north said. Nahim added that the army asked forensic and human rights bodies to investigate the grave, where the hands of skeletons, some poking out from dusty sweaters, had been tied behind their backs with blue rope. [See item below.]

The men were travelling with a local interpreter and driver on the Jalalabad road, east of Kabul. They work for a "private security company" [MI6/CIA] and were carrying AK-47 assault rifles - one of the most commonly used weapons in Afghanistan. Thousands of private security guards operate in Afghanistan, including many foreigners. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has in the past accused them of undermining the security services and taking work from Afghan nationals. The men were were arrested along with their driver and interpreter. Kabul police have called on their employers to explain why they were transporting the guns without proper documentation. Kabul police chief Ayub Salangi told the BBC at least 15 of the AK-47s did not have serial numbers. [...] The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says that such cases, while hardly routine, have occurred in the past. A British man was briefly detained in 2007 for having more 100 pistols. In the same year an American bounty hunter, Jack Idema, was pardoned by President Hamid Karzai after a period in jail for running a private prison in Kabul and torturing Afghans. [See item below.]

Ola Tunander is a Norwegian Academic and author of many papers and books relating to the "Deep State" . He was appointed Research Professor at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 2000. He recently published a professional paper in Norwegion entitled, "The use of terrorism to construct world order". Introduction. Tunander's full report [2004].

Abstract: In any state, certain areas are ‘securitized’ and by definition removed from the democratic political process. In an emergency situation – in short of war or terrorist attacks – the security sphere ‘invades’ the sphere of democratic politics. An autocratic security force or ‘security state’ appears to act in parallel to the regular democratic state, and this duality or ‘dual state’ was described by Hans Morgenthau already in 1955. After September 11, terrorism has become an instrument to ‘securitize’ what used to be public and tilt the ‘dual state’-balance in favour of the ‘security state’. The US ‘security state’ with its intelligence hegemony enters the scene as global protector that defines the world order in terms of a Pax Americana. Terrorism is used to construct a new world order. This development has been followed by mutual transatlantic accusations between European critiques and US neo-conservatives. According to the critiques, the Strategy of Tension, as we know it from Cold War Europe, has received a global dimension. During the Cold War, the US ‘dual security structure’ – with its specifically tasked units masquerading as ‘enemy forces’ – was developed by the US ‘security state’ in order to keep the political strength and the readiness and capability of the Western defences. Now, this structure has seemingly been made into a self-propelled mechanism that is able to transform the world order into a Pax Americana.

With their common enemy dead and gone, the uniting factor which bound Libya’s former rebels in their fight against Muammar Gaddafi has melted away. Now, in-fighting among the different armed factions is spilling onto the streets. - Meanwhile, thousands of Libyans remain behind bars waiting for the new rulers to try them for their crime of failing to jump ship. One of the first amnesties of the new Libya was when hundreds of men and women, many of them sub-Saharan immigrants, were released from a makeshift prison. Most of them had spent several months in captivity for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I’m really excited about a lot of his ideas,” Cpl. Thorsen told CNN pundit Dana Bash from Paul headquarters in Ankeny, Iowa Wednesday night. “Especially when it comes to bringing the soldiers home,” added Thorsen. “I’ve been serving for ten years now and all ten of those have been during wartime. I’d like to see a little peacetime army and I think he has the right idea.”

Almost immediately, CNN’s Bash began berating the veteran and questioning him over his support for a candidate that would want to largely discontinue America’s foreign military presence. Bash pointed the camera towards a large tattoo on the solder’s neck that recognizes the September 11 terrorist attack and asks Thorsen how he could consider a candidate like Paul while other Republicans write him off as a security threat.

“Some Republicans out there have been saying that Ron Paul would be very dangerous for this country because he wants to bring troops like you back from your post from all over the world,” said Bash. “I think it would be even more dangerous to start nitpicking wars with more countries,” responded the vet.

At that point, CNN’s broadcast became scrambled, but Thorsen managed to begin, “Someone like Iran.” The soldier managed to squeeze off the word “Israel” before the broadcast ceased and the network returned to Blitzer live from in-studio.

CNN’s latest attempt at censoring Rep. Ron Paul’s message from the masses comes days after the network broadcast an edited interview of the candidate in which he is portrayed as agitated and irritated by a CNN host grilling him over controversial newsletters penned under the congressman’s name from the 1990s. After the broadcast, an unedited version of the interview circulated to the Web and showed that the station had largely doctored the original piece.

Suzanne Nossel, former assistant to Richard Holbrooke in his capacity as UN Ambassador and currently Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Assistant for International Organization Affairs, has been selected as the new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. In the discharge of her duties at the State Department, she diligently exploited human rights to benefit imperial ambitions. Ms. Nossel had previously worked for Human Rights Watch, as well as for Bertelsmann Media Worldwide and the Wall Street Journal as Vice President of Strategy and Operations. Editor's Note: It should be noted that Amnesty International receives funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute as well as the UK Department for International Development and the European Commission.