13 years ago today, Julian Assange published the Collateral Murder video showing US forces massacring Iraqi civilians in cold blood. He exposed the US's war crimes, yet the very war criminals he exposed are free & he is in prison. What a world we live in.pic.twitter.com/AlAqUGMTs5

— Hassan Mafi ‏ (@thatdayin1992) April 5, 2023

The Netherlands has decided to declassify data on airstrikes in the Middle East after media exposé | The Dutch government agreed to release previously classified information about its air sorties in Iraq and Syria, after media exposed as false claims that no civilians were killed in a 2016 strike by the European nation on a building in Mosul, Iraq. A US military assessment had identified the target as a terrorist HQ. ● The database, released on Thursday, details Dutch F-16 missions between October 2014 and December 2018, which were part of Operation Inherent Resolve, a US-led military campaign against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). It disclosed over 2,200 weapon deployments relating to over 600 airstrikes. The Dutch Ministry of Defence also pledged to conduct its own investigation into suspected killings of civilians by anti-IS coalition forces. ● The move was in reaction to an exposé published on the same day by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS, its current affairs program Nieuwsuur, and the newspaper NRC. It provides evidence that at least seven civilians, including a three-year-old girl, were killed in a Dutch airstrike at a residential building in Mosul on March 22, 2016. The strike hit a residence outside of the campus of Mosul University, where academics and their families were housed.

"Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah," said journalist Jeremy Scahill. | Peace advocates responded with disgust to the Navy's decision to name its new warship after the two battles of Fallujah, during which U.S. troops massacred Iraqi civilians. 💬 "Fallujah was a giant American war crime in Iraq." "The future America-class amphibious ship will be named the USS Fallujah, LHA-9," Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced Tuesday in a speech at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C. "The future USS Fallujah will commemorate the first and second battles of Fallujah, American-led offenses during the Iraq War." Del Toro called it "an honor for me, and for our nation, to memorialize the Marines, the soldiers, and coalition forces that fought valiantly and those that sacrificed their lives during both battles of Fallujah." ● U.S. troops slaughtered approximately 600 Iraqi civilians—including more than 300 women and children—along with 200 insurgents during the First Battle of Fallujah. Code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, the battle was launched in April 2004 to avenge the deaths of four Blackwater contractors. Twenty-seven U.S. soldiers were killed during the retaliatory siege. ● The Second Battle of Fallujah, known as Operation Phantom Fury, was fought from November to December 2004 to recapture the city from insurgent forces. In the process, U.S.-led occupation forces killed between 581 and 670 civilians across nine neighborhoods, according to Iraq Body Count.

■ The Third Battle of Fallujah (Stephen Lendman)
■ us massacres iraq fallujah (Qwant search)

PressTV - A report says Israeli businessmen are buying properties belonging to the displaced minorities in the ISIL-held regions in northern Iraq to prepare the ground for accommodation of more than 2,000 people there.

Rixon Stewart ■ Why on earth would Israelis buy property in ISIL occupied territory in Iraq, even if it was at bargain prices? There can only be one reason: Israelis are buying property there in anticipation of the expansion and establishment of a “Greater Israel“. This was one of the objectives envisaged by the original Zionists, before Israel had even been established as a modern nation state. According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl: “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” This area would encompass parts of northern and western Iraq. Moreover, we know that Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIL, is reputed to be a Mossad trained operative. Indeed there have been numerous reports linking Al Baghdadi with Mossad and this is more than speculation. Although the corporate media have largely ignored them they have been corroborated by NSA documents. Elsewhere reports have appeared claiming that Al Baghdadi’s real name is Elliot Shimon, a Jew by birth. This would also explain reports that Israel was covertly assisting Islamic State militants. Although largely ignored by the corporate Western media, Alexander Prokhanov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, maintains that Israel has been providing intelligence and training assistance to ISIL militants. From these disparate reports we can conclude that Israel is covertly working toward the establishment of a “Greater Israel”.

Federal Court Gives “Early Christmas Present” to War Criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Others, Immunizing Them From Civil Inquiry Regarding Iraq War. ● Late Friday, a federal judge dismissed a civil claim filed against George W. Bush and other high-ranking officials regarding their conduct in planning and waging the Iraq War, and immunized them from further proceedings.

“This is an early Christmas present to former Bush Administration officials from the federal court,” Inder Comar of Comar Law said. Comar brought the claim on behalf of an Iraqi refugee and single mother, Sundus Shaker Saleh. “This was a serious attempt to hold US leaders accountable under laws set down at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. I am very disappointed at the outcome.”

The tribunal at Nuremberg, established in large part by the United States after World War II, declared international aggression the “supreme international crime” and convicted German leaders of waging illegal wars. The case alleged that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz committed aggression in planning and waging the Iraq War. Specifically, the lawsuit claimed that high-ranking Bush officials used the fear of 9/11 to mislead the American public into supporting a war against Iraq, and that they issued knowingly false statements that Iraq was in league with Al-Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction, when none of those things were true. “The decision guts Nuremberg,” Comar said. “Nuremberg said that domestic immunity was no defense to a claim of international aggression. This Court has said the opposite.”

Patrick Martin & David North ■ The New York Times calls for torture prosecutions || The editorial published Monday in the New York Times, headlined “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses,” marks a new stage in the political crisis triggered by the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture authorized by the Bush administration. The language of the editorial, beginning with the headline, is remarkably blunt in condemning the torture carried out in CIA secret prisons under the Bush administration. [...] In effect, the most influential newspaper in the United States has declared that the Bush administration was a criminal government.

According to a number of global mainstream media sources, the Pentagon is covering up a disturbing video that was never made public with the rest of the recent torture report. According to various well respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, the appalling video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the notorious US torture dungeon in Iraq that made headlines roughly a decade ago, when the inhumane tactics being used at the prison were exposed. Sadly, it seems that the evidence released years ago was only scratching the surface. While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it comes out.

The US military has reportedly covered up the discovery of huge numbers of chemical weapons in Iraq – stocks which now lie in the occupied lands controlled by Isis. According to an exposé published today by the New York Times, American soldiers reported finding around 5,000 chemical warheads or bombs after the invasion of Iraq and deposition of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Between 2004 and 2011 at least 17 US soldiers and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to nerve agents or mustard gas chemicals, but were encouraged by the Pentagon to downplay or under-report any injuries, the Times reported.

RIA Novosti: Iraq: Chemical Weapons Created With Western Support "Found" by US Troops

xymphora ■ Weapons of Mass Propaganda || It must have made the Bush Administration mad that they couldn't mention this without disclosing the deep lies behind the American preoccupation with Saddam's WND (i.e., we know he's got them because we gave them to him). The NYT story has now come out as part of Barry's anti-ISIS propaganda, disguised as concern for the injured troops. They really are weapons of mass destruction, but the destruction is caused by tricking Americans into fighting yet another War For The Jews based on phony fears of yet another 'enemy' created by and supported by the American government.

From 2004 to 2011 [the second Iraq war started in March 2003], the US military and Iraqi troops "found" around 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs in Iraq [allegedly] created during the rule of former president Saddam Hussein in collaboration with Western countries, The New York Times reported. At least six times troops were wounded by the chemical weapons during the period, the newspaper reported Tuesday citing American and Iraqi senior officials, as well as US intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. In all except one of the incidents, the munitions were designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled with chemical agents in factories built in Iraq by Western companies, according to the news outlet. ["Ex Post Bellum facts" - draw your own conclusions...Ed.]

New York Times: The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s "Abandoned" Chemical Weapons

On Sept. 26, 2014, This is a special session from parliament either to join U.S. led air strikes on Islamic State militants in Iraq.

Haaretz: Erdogan: Turkish troops could be used to establish secure zone in Syria
The Intercept: The Khorasan Group: Anatomy of a Fake Terror Threat to Justify Bombing Syria

Lawmakers in Britain have approved a motion allowing the country to join the US-led coalition in bombing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets in Iraq. The motion was approved on Friday by 524 votes to 43 following hours of animated debate in the House of Commons. Prior to the vote, Prime Minister David Cameron made an impassioned plea for Britain to join the United States and a coalition of Western and Arab nations in air strikes meant to thwart the ISIL group in Iraq. Cameron told a tense House of Commons that there was no more serious issue than asking the country to devote armed forces to conflict. He repeatedly stressed that no combat troops were planned, but he could barely get through his statement, as lawmakers peppered him with questions about the move.

“I want people to consider, what if that happened to your family member or daughter?” || The U.S. military used a camera as a torture device at Abu Grahib. To add further humiliation to detainees who were already put in cages, urinated on, stripped naked then stacked in macabre human pyramids, their photos were taken during these degrading acts. “I wanted to use the camera to restore these peoples’ humanity through beautiful portraiture,” says photographer Chris Bartlett, whose exhibition, “Iraqi Detainees: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Ordeals,” opens tonight in New York. When confronted with images of torture, Bartlett says, even the greatest liberal or humanist among us has the tendency to flinch and look away. “It’s such a disturbing and disgusting issue that people want to turn off from it.” Bartlett, who often works in high fashion photography, shooting subjects like candy colored Tory Burch handbags, said he wanted to take “very kind, respectful, beautiful, portraits to draw people into the subject and learn more about their stories.”

The uneasy relationship between the White House and US military is on full display as President Barack Obama and his top generals continue to clash over the new strategy to combat the ISIL terrorist organization. ● Obama has authorized airstrikes against ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria, but has ruled out American boots on the ground in a combat role. US military officials have complained privately for weeks that airstrikes alone would not be sufficient to achieve the announced goal of deafening ISIL.

Antiwar.com: Hagel: Military, Not Obama, Will Make Decisions on Syria Strikes
Washington Post: Rift widens between Obama, U.S. military over strategy to fight Islamic State

The United States launched at least one airstrike against Islamic State militants near Baghdad on Monday, marking the expansion of the US military campaign against the extremist group. The airstrike was reportedly requested by Iraqi forces under attack. ● According to US officials cited by the Associated Press, the airstrike was authorized after Iraqi security forces requested air power support as they engaged Islamic State (IS) fighters south of Baghdad. An unnamed defense official, meanwhile, told NBC News that the most recent air attack near Baghdad was an “offensive” strike, and there was no suggestion that militants were making headway towards the country’s capital. US Central Command confirmed the air strike and affirmed that it was part of a new phase in the battle against IS. Previous airstrikes in Iraq were characterized by the US as “defensive” in nature, as they were used to protect American diplomatic sites as well as crucial Iraqi facilities like the Mosul Dam.

■ New Phase of ISIS War With Strikes Near Baghdad
■ IRAQ: THE REAL STRATEGY IS ABOUT TO SUCCEED [June 19, 2014]
■ “Going After” the Islamic State. Guess Who is Behind the Caliphate Project?
■ The CIA Engaged In Covert Terrorism to Give Government Plausible Deniability

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says ISIL Takfiri terrorists have massacred hundreds of captured Iraqi troops when the militants overran a military base in the north of Baghdad. ● The New York-based group said on Wednesday that the mass killing of 770 soldiers took place at Camp Speicher near the city of Tikrit back in June. The leading international watchdog also says the number of slain Iraqi troops was several times higher than what was initially reported. The HRW also says the new number is based on analysis of new satellite imagery, videos and a survivor’s account. On June 10, the terrorists took hundreds of prisoners from a Mosul prison. They ordered the prisoners to get on their knees and then opened fire, killing up to 670 people on the spot.

New reports indicate that hundreds or possibly thousands of members of Iraq’s Kurdish Izadi minority escaping ISIL militants remain abandoned on top of Sinjar Mountain. This is while Washington has claimed that its operation there against the Takfiri terrorists earlier this month was a success. “Because of the skill and professionalism of our military, and the generosity of our efforts, we broke the [Isis] siege of Mount Sinjar, we helped vulnerable people reach safety, and we helped save many innocent lives,” US President Barack Obama said on August 14. According to a report by The Guardian, which was based on satellite imagery and interviews, most of those stranded are said to be sick and old. Figures estimated by the Pentagon in mid-August show that 4,000 to 5,000 people remained on Sinjar in fear of being killed by ISIL militants.

The Islamic State group (IS) has executed 700 people from a Syrian tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria over the past two weeks, the majority of whom were civilians, a Syrian monitoring group said Saturday. ● The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has consistently tracked violence on both sides of the three-year-old Syrian civil war have said that around 700 members of the al-Sheitaat tribe, from the Deir al-Zor province, have been executed and that many of them were beheaded by IS jihadists. "Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat," Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman told Reuters by telephone from Britain. "Some were arrested, judged and killed." The conflict sucked in the al-Sheitaat tribe, who are about 70,000 in number, after the Islamic State captured two oil fields in July.

Whatsupic: Zionist front ISIS Begins Selling Iraqi Crude Oil to Turkey and Israel
Business Insider: ISIS Is A Zionist Plot; A Jew Is Leading The Group - Reports Claim
PressTV: Israel and ISIL are allies: Syrian envoy
RT.com: ISIS killed 500 Yazidis, buried some alive incl women and children - Iraq

The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria(ISIS) began selling Iraqi crude oil extracted from oil fields which its seized in recent months and exporting it through the Kurdish region to Turkish refineries and from Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan ultimately to Israel. ● [They] began shipping 100 tanks loaded with crude oil extracted from the Ajeel oil field which the Saudi-terrorist group took control of last month. ISIS sells the crude oil at a price ranging between $12-14,000 per tank to finance their operations. Israeli and Turkish companies which buy the oil use paved roads controlled by ISIS militants and take it through the cities near the border with Turkey to civil refineries inside Turkey or they go through the city of Makhmour to the Kurdistan region in coordination with the checkpoints." As the Islamic State is established, it's clear that ISIS wants to have all parts of their government and revenue sources well organized, and that energy exports are part of this scheme. The scheme includes the collection of taxes, but also other black market activities like trade in other illegal goods the group plunders from the land it captures. Given the call by [ISIS leader Abu Bakr] Baghdadi on the first day of Ramadan –asking for consolidation of the state and the recruitment of individuals to help run that state – one has to figure that the energy sector figures into his planning.

(‘FSA’ commander says collaborated with Israel)

American military planes have carried out a fourth round of airstrikes against insurgents in Iraq as a Republican senator warned the group was a threat to the US homeland. The strikes have included attacks by fighter jets and drones close to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region in the north...Rebpuclican Senator Lindsey Graham said of the rebels: "They are coming here. This is just not about Baghdad. This is just not about Syria. It is about our homeland."

Lindsey Graham predicts an ‘American city in flames’ if Obama doesn’t go to war in Iraq
The New Republic: Israel Is Challenging America to Support Kurdish Independence
RT.com: US starts providing weapons to Kurdish forces in Iraq - report
The Complete Annotated History Of "Liberating" US Presidents Bombing Iraq Back Into The Middle Ages

Justin Raimondo ■ Iraq: Why Bomb Now? || The problem with this narrative is that ISIS has been beheading its way through Iraq all these months with nary a peep from our vaunted "humanitarians." And yet suddenly, we are told, it was imperative that we act. Why? Are the Yazidis so special that their suffering counts for more than the Shi’ites and others who have faced the very same predicament – conversion or death – in northern, central, and eastern Iraq? Surely not. So we return to the original question: why now? The answer is the central axiom of real estate: location, location, location. ISIS was getting close to Kurdistan, and eyeing Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The feisty Kurds have taken advantage of the chaos spread by ISIS to seize disputed Kirkuk, which the Kurds consider their Jerusalem. Aside from the symbolic value of this prize, Kirkuk is also the site of oil fields worth a substantial amount of moolah. But before we segue into the familiar mantra about how this is a "war for oil," let’s step back and look at the larger picture – because it’s really much worse than that.

Extremists from the Islamic State have killed at least 500 people, including women and children, Iraqi officials said. Some of the victims were buried alive. ● The killings reported by Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to Reuters add to a long list of atrocities reportedly committed by the radical group in Iraq and neighboring Syria, where it wants to create a caliphate. "We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing [their ancient home city of] Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar," Sudani said. "Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar," he added. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he said.

Zero Hedge: Military Coup In Iraq: Prime Minister Maliki Refuses To Step Down
MEMO: UN chief renews calls for a "broad based" government in Iraq

Tyler Durden ■ While the biggest geopolitical news of the past week was Obama's announcement he would become only the fourth president in a row to order military action in Iraq, explicitly targeting the ISIS jihadists, the far bigger question are the developments that spurred the administration to finally act. ■ The NYT reports that "as the tension mounted in Washington" the catalyst for Obama's decision was sudden developments surrounding the Kurdistan capital, Erbil. "Kurdish forces who had been fighting the militants in three nearby Christian villages abruptly fell back toward the gates of the city, fanning fears that the city might soon fall. By Thursday morning, people were thronging the airport, desperate for flights out of town. "The situation near Erbil was becoming more dire than anyone expected," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the White House’s internal deliberations. “We didn’t want another Benghazi." ■ The reason for this is that the US has an embassy in Erbil: that falling to ISIS would be the supreme punch in the gut for an administration whose foreign policy has become the butt of all global jokes.

The Obama administration is using the ISIL terrorist group as a pretext to "dominate" the resources of Iraq and other nations in the Middle East, says Stephen Lendman, author and radio show host in Chicago.
“ISIL is used by America both as an ally in Syria for example, and as an enemy currently in Iraq,” Lendman told Press TV on Saturday. US President Barack Obama authorized on Thursday the use of targeted airstrikes on Takfiri ISIL terrorists, also known as ISIS or IS, to protect American personnel inside the country and also help the Iraqi refugees under siege by the terrorist group and stranded on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. Obama’s assertion about the purpose of the airstrikes in Iraq are “two, big, bald-faced, fat lies,” Lendman said. “It’s all about the oil. It’s about Iraqi oil. It’s about total dominance. It’s about regional dominance.” “America simply, in plain English, doesn’t care about humanitarian intervention. If it did, why would it have murdered literally millions of people post 9/11 alone?” he stated. Lendman described all of America’s post-9/11 wars as “illegal acts of aggression, from Afghanistan, to Iraq in 2003, to Libya, to Obama’s proxy war in Syria, and now the bombing of ISIL in Iraq again.”

Militant Islamic Group ISIS Trained at U.S. Base in Jordan
You Tube: Busted! U.S. Trained ISIS At Secret Jordan Base!
Stephen Lendman ■ Middle East in Turmoil

Barack Obama has authorised airstrikes over Iraq in order to prevent "genocide” from being carried out by Islamic State jihadists. ● The US president confirmed in a late-night address that US military planes had already dropped aid to the 40,000 Yazidi religious minority who have been trapped for days on Mount Sinjar, in the Kurdish northern region, after being driven out of their homes by Islamic State fighters. In a move which would see the US return to a military role in the country's long sectarian war, Mr Obama announced in a televised statement from the White House that he would approve targeted strikes on the fighters should they advance south towards the city of Erbil. "Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, there is no one coming to help. Well, today America is coming to help," Mr Obama said.

Itar-Tass: US Air Force strikes at militants positions in Iraq — Pentagon
RT.com: Two US fighter jets strike ISIS artillery in Iraq's Kurdistan - Pentagon
Zero Hedge: Markets Turmoil As President Obama Authorizes Air Strikes On Iraq "To Prevent Genocide"
The Telegraph: Shares fall, gold and oil rise on Iraq airstrike fears
Peter Symonds ■ Obama authorises a new air war in Iraq

Sunni militants from the Islamic State have ordered all girls and women aged 11 to 46 in and around the city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation, the UN reported. The potential number of victims is estimated at 4 million. The shocking news, adding to an already long list of crimes reportedly committed by the militants since the takeover of northern Iraq last month, was broken by UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock. "This is something very new for Iraq, particularly in this area, and is of grave concern and does need to be addressed," she told reporters in Geneva by videolink from Arbil on Thursday. "This is not the will of Iraqi people, or the women of Iraq in these vulnerable areas covered by the terrorists," she added.

Recommended reading: Nahida Izzat ■ Who are the Warmongers?

This series is based on an article by Jeff Gates, who is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, merchant banker, educator and consultant to governments worldwide, who served for seven years as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. He is the author of Guilt by Association, Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution.