Saddam Hussein offered to step down and go into exile one month before the invasion of Iraq, it was claimed last night.
Fearing defeat, Saddam was prepared to go peacefully in return for £500million ($1billion).
The extraordinary offer was revealed yesterday in a transcript of talks in February 2003 between George Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the President’s Texas ranch.
The White House refused to comment on the report last night.
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But than you have to remember that Kerry did concede rather quick and he is a member of scull and bones and he is married to a descendant of one of the families who together with Prescott Bush were caught in preparing a coup in America in 1936. Yes, you got it the Heinz family.
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Tuesday September 18, 2007
The Guardian
Members of Blackwater scan Baghdad from their helicopter. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty
The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, apologised to the Iraqi government yesterday in an attempt to prevent the expulsion of all employees of the security firm Blackwater USA.The ministry of interior yesterday took the decision to expel Blackwater after eight Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded in Baghdad when shots were fired from a US state department convoy on Sunday.
Diplomats, engineers and other westerners in Iraq rely heavily on protection by Blackwater. The Iraqi decision created confusion on the ground, with uncertainty over whether protection was still available and whether Blackwater staff should leave the country immediately.
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Randi Rhodes just reported that Bush called Malaki and that Iraq will reconsider its decision to ban Blackwater. who’s attorney is Ken Starr…!
Remember, Blackwater does not have that many Mercenaries in Iraq, but they are by far the most well connected.
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| George Bush [left] in al-Anbar province in Iraq [Reuters] |
The ‘Ghost of Anbar’ – also known as Abu Risha, the man behind the US success story in Iraq’s Anbar province, was brutally murdered in a roadside bomb this week.
As a result, People & Power revisit ‘Anbar’s Ghost’ which was shot just weeks before his death.
The story behind Abu Risha’s so-called success fuels with controversy. US officials credit him with leading Sunni tribes who killed Americans in the past into a new alliance with them.
Because of Abu Risha, American political and military leaders say, Sunni attacks on US forces have dropped dramatically and life is beginning to return to normal in Anbar, once the heartland of the Sunni Insurgency.
But was Abu Risha everything he claimed to be?
Filmmakers Rick Rowley and David Enders set off to find out – and to see who is paying the price.
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BAGHDAD, Sept. 11 — A cholera epidemic in northern Iraq has infected approximately 7,000 people and could reach Baghdad within weeks as the disease spreads through the country’s decrepit and unsanitary water system, Iraqi health officials said Tuesday.
The World Health Organization reported that the epidemic is concentrated in the northern regions of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya and that 10 people are known to have died. But Dr. Said Hakki, president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, a relief organization that has responded to the epidemic, said that new cases had turned up in the neighboring provinces, Erbil and Nineveh, indicating that the disease had spread.
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Most significant, Dr. Hakki said, were two cases in a village on the border between Kirkuk and Diyala Provinces, one involving a young girl. Baghdad is next to Diyala.
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So for those of you who haaven’t seen it hear it is once more.
But I grief for her loss, read her heartwrenching story:
Leaving Home…
Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.
Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.
I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.
The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.
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