Iraq Militia Stone Youths To Death For "Emo" Style

*Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shi'ite militants against youths wearing Western-style "emo" clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.

Militants in Shi'ite neighborhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.

The killings have taken place since Iraq's interior ministry drew attention to the "emo" subculture last month, labeling it "Satanism" and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.

"Emo" is a form of punk music developed in the United States. Fans are known for their distinctive dress, often including tight jeans, T-shirts with logos and distinctive long or spiky haircuts.

At least 14 bodies of youths have been brought to three hospitals in eastern Baghdad bearing signs of having been beaten to death with rocks or bricks, security and hospital sources told Reuters under condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Nine bodies were brought to hospitals in Sadr City, a vast, poor Shi'ite neighborhood, three were brought to East Baghdad's main al-Kindi hospital and two were brought to the central morgue, medical sources said.

Six other young people, including two girls, were wounded in beatings intended as warnings, the security sources said.

"Last week I signed the death certificates of three of those young people, and the reason for death I wrote in my own hand was severe skull fractures," a doctor at al-Kindi hospital told Reuters. "A very powerful blow to the head caused these fractures which totally smashed the skull of the victim."

A leaflet distributed in the Shi'ite Bayaa district of east Baghdad seen by Reuters on Saturday had 24 names of youths targeted for killing.

"We strongly warn you, to all the obscene males and females, if you will not leave this filthy work within four days the punishment of God will descend upon you at the hand of the Mujahideen," the leaflet said.

Another leaflet in Sadr City bore 20 names. "We are the Brigades of Anger. We warn you, if you do not get back to sanity and the right path, you will be killed," it said.

In a statement last month the interior ministry said it was monitoring "the 'emo' phenomenon, or Satanism" which it said was spreading through schools, particularly among teenage girls.

"They wear tight clothes that bear paintings of skulls, they use school implements with skulls and wear rings in their noses and tongues as well as other weird appearances," it said.

After reports of the stonings circulated on Iraqi media, the interior ministry said this week that no murders on its files could be blamed on the reaction to "emo".

"Many media have reported fabricated news reports about the so-called 'emo' phenomenon - stories about tens of young people killed in various ways, including stoning," the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

"No murder case has been recorded with the interior ministry on so-called 'emo' grounds. All cases of murder recorded were for revenge, social and common criminal reasons."

CLERICS DENOUNCE KILLINGS

Iraq's leading Shi'ite clerics have condemned the stonings.

Abdul-Raheem al-Rikabi, Baghdad representative for Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric, Ali al-Sistani, called the killings "terrorist attacks".

"Such a phenonomenon which has spread among young people should be tackled through dialogue and peaceful means and not through physical liquidation," Rikabi told Reuters.

In a response to questions on his website on Saturday, Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shi'ite cleric whose followers dominate Sadr City, described "emo" youths as "crazy and fools", but said they should be dealt with only through the law.

"They are a plague on Muslim society, and those responsible should eliminate them through legal means," he said.

Abu Ali al-Rubaie, a leading Sadr aide in Sadr City, said the cleric's followers had nothing to do with the killings.

"In this issue and in all such problems we always use peaceful and educational methods to correct any wrongdoings. We are not connected in any way to those groups allegedly responsibility for killing those young people."

In the years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, most of Baghdad's neighborhoods were under the firm grip of Sunni and Shi'ite religious militias which enforced strict dress codes.

Today, the militias have largely disappeared, Baghdad is far more peaceful and many youths experiment with Western styles, although much of Iraqi society remains conservative.

On the streets of Baghdad, people said they had heard of the killings through the media. Many expressed disapproval of the "emo" style, but said murder was no way to respond.

"I saw them a couple weeks ago ... a bunch of girls, high-school aged, walking together, dressed in black. They had long black eye makeup and bracelets with skulls and chains on their handbags with skulls," said Abdullah, 31.

"If they are close friends who have something in common, that's all right. If other things we hear about them are true, like sucking each other's blood or worshipping the devil, that is not accepted in our society. But I think this is just a trend to imitate the West."

Al-Qaeda Terrorists Airlifted From Libya to Aid Syrian Opposition

*Source: InfoWars

The same Al-Qaeda terrorists who fought U.S. troops in Iraq and helped NATO overthrow Colonel Gaddafi are now being airlifted into Syria to aid rebels there in toppling President Bashar al-Assad.

Libya’s transitional ruling authority has agreed to send weapons and fighters over to Syria to help the Free Syrian Army fight government forces.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source told the London Telegraph, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

In a separate piece, the Telegraph also reports that terrorist commander Abdulhakim Belhadj, now head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” after being sent there by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the interim Libyan president.

A rival Libyan rebel brigade detained Belhadj at Tripoli airport for traveling on a fake passport and threatened to jail him before Jalil stepped in to intervene.

“Members of the Free Syrian Army on the borders of Lebanon and Turkey denied rumours circulating in Tripoli that “hundreds” of Libyans had tried to cross into Syria,” states the article, amidst other reports that Libyans have already been detained trying to infiltrate the country from the Turkish border.

As we previously documented, Abdulhakim Belhadj is the former front man for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department.

Belhadj was captured by the CIA in Malaysia in 2003 and extradited to Libya where Colonel Gaddafi had him imprisoned. Belhadj is a committed jihadist who fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi also admitted that Belhadj’s LIFG fighters were the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, responsible for killing U.S. troops.

A 2007 West Point report indicated that the Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk area of Libya is a world capital for Al-Qaeda or mujahideen suicide bomber recruitment. Author Webster Tarpley details this intelligence in his excellent analysis piece, The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq. The West Point report detailed how the LIFG and Al-Qaeda had formed an “increasingly co-operative relationship”.

Libyan rebels have gone on to impose a “reign of terror” across the country, throwing blacks in concentration camps while torturing and murdering thousands of others before imposing Sharia law. The official Al-Qaeda flag now flies high and proud above Libyan cities as armed gangs roam the streets.

Following the fall of Tripoli, reports circulated that Libyan rebels had acquired a deadly arsenal of weapons, many of which are now on their way to Syria to aid in the overthrow of Assad.

“Qatar and Turkey were reported to be airlifting “volunteers” from Libya to fight alongside the rebel Free Syrian Army, some also transporting weapons,” reports Israeli intelligence source DebkaFile.

These terrorists have already been implicated in the killing of 10 air force personnel at a Syrian military base last week, even as the western media continues to characterize opposition fighters as “protesters,” just as they did with Libyan rebels who were commandeering fighter jets and firing rocket-propelled grenades.

While being hailed as liberators and freedom fighters by the media, terrorists who killed U.S. troops and who are now throwing black Libyans in torture camps, are yet again going to be used as the vanguard of the next act of US/NATO middle eastern regime change, all carefully orchestrated under the smoke and mirrors of the contrived “Arab Spring”.

In related developments, DebkaFile also reports that “Israeli armored brigades pushed forward up to the Lebanese and Syrian borders,” over the weekend, while US and Russian warships are now “in the midst of a naval buildup opposite Syrian shores.”

As we reported last week, in an identical pattern to how U.S. warships surrounded Libya in the days before the NATO bombardment began, the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush was repositioned off the coast of Syria in recent days having moved from its usual theater of operations in the Straits of Hormuz.

This followed reports that Russian warships carrying sophisticated missile defense systems entered Syrian territorial waters last week as a deterrent to any NATO-led assault.

Hero Soldiers 'Thrown in the Trash': Military Dumped Body Parts of Dead Servicemen Killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in LANDFILL

*Source: DailyMail

* THIRD scandal over how the Army treats its dead
* Bodies at Arlington National Cemetery put in WRONG graves
* Military lost body parts and shipped fetal remains in cardboard boxes

Body parts belonging to U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were routinely cremated and then dumped in a landfill site.

For five years, between 2003 and 2008, staff at the Dover Air Force base mortuary, Delaware, disposed of parts that could not be identified or were later recovered from the battlefield.

Family members were not told what happened to their relatives - and the company running the landfill site was not even informed what was being thrown away.

A damning new report reveals the military mishandled the remains of soldiers returning through Dover Air Force Base

It is the third scandal engulfing the Army in its treatment of its dead.

Gari-Lynn Smith, portions of whose husband’s remains were disposed of in the landfill after his 2006 death in Iraq, told the Washington Post she was 'appalled and disgusted' by the way the Air Force had acted.

She said: 'My only peace of mind in losing my husband was that he was taken to Dover and that he was handled with dignity, love, respect and honour.

'That was completely shattered for me when I was told that he was thrown in the trash.'

Lt Gen Darrell G Jones, the Air Force’s deputy chief for personnel, said the body parts were cremated, then incinerated, and then taken to a landfill by a military contractor.

He likened the procedure to the disposal of medical waste. The Dover mortuary changed its policy to burying the parts at sea in June 2008.

Dover's mortuary processed over 4,000 sets of remains from 2008 to 2010, most of which were Iraq and Afghanistan war dead

It is not known how many body parts were disposed of, during the five years, at the King George County site, operated by Waste Management Inc.

The scandal is the latest to hit the military base which receives all America's war dead and prepares them for burial.

Earlier this week it was revealed that body parts belonging to deceased soldiers were lost or sawed off without the family’s permission.

An 18-month probe into Dover's mortuary, pictured here, revealed one soldier had his arm cut off by staff without the family's permission

A damning report found that an arm bone belonging to a dead marine was hacked off without asking his parents by staff at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

An ankle and some soft tissue went unaccounted for due to ‘gross mismanagement’ and may have been mixed in with the remains of other soldiers.

Whistleblowers also claimed that the fetal remains of dependents of military personnel were shipped from Germany back to the U.S. in cardboard boxes that had already been used.

Three officials have been disciplined at Dover - but none have lost their jobs.

The scandal at Dover Air Force base began after complaints by three whistleblowers - civilians who worked as embalmers or technicians - who sparked an 18-month investigation by the Air Force Inspector General.

A separate probe was carried out by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency which looks into claims by whistleblowers.

Among the most egregious instances was when the family of one marine asked to see his dead body one more time - so staff at Dover hacked his arm bone off.

The heat from a bomb attack in Afghanistan had caused the soldier’s arm to fuse at 90 degrees to his body so he was unable to fit into his uniform or his casket.

But instead of speaking to his family to see what was for the best, staff went ahead and trimmed it anyway.

The investigation found the two body parts that went missing were a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghanistan in April 2009.

The investigation found two body parts went missing entirely, including a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghainstan and a small piece of flesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan

The second was a small piece of flesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan in July 2009.

The investigation did not discover what happened to them - but raised the possibility they fell out of the plastic bags where they were being stored in the morgue refrigerator and got mixed in with the remains of others.

The whistleblowers also drew attention to shipping of fetal remains belonging to relatives of military personnel back to the U.S.

Instead of being transported in the more dignified aluminium cases they were shipped in re-used cardboard boxes.

In a statement accompanying her report Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said the findings were ‘deeply troubling’.

She said: ‘The mortuary for the United States military should boast the best conditions and best practices of any mortuary.’

The report added that there was a ‘pattern of the Air Force’s failure to acknowledge culpability for wrongdoing relating to the treatment of remains of service members and their dependents.

The Dover scandal comes just months after it was revealed Arlington National Cemetery had 211 graves either mislabelled or containing the wrong person's remains

It said: ‘While the report reflects a willingness to find paperwork violations and errors, with the exception of the cases of missing portions, the findings stop short of accepting accountability for failing to handle remains with the requisite ‘reverence, care and dignity befitting them and the circumstances’’.

Among the other findings was a chilling insight into the chaos at Dover including one incident in July 2009 when the remains of two airmen killed in in Afghanistan were brought in.

One unnamed employee admitted that it was ‘hard to keep track of everything’ and that the medical examiners were ‘messing with the bags a bit’.

He said: ‘And then they would walk to the back, and then they’d come back and - it was - it was a really hectic day.’

Earlier this year a report by the Army Inspector’s Office found that at least 211 graves at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, had been incorrectly labelled or had the wrong body in them.

There were also cases of remains being moved without families' consent or graves left empty when they should have remains in them.

The cemetery is considered sacred ground and has been the final resting place of the nation's veterans since 1864.

More than 300,000 servicemen and women are now buried there.

General Norton Schwartz, the chief of staff of the Air Force, apologised for the mistakes made at Dover.

He said: ‘We understand the obligation of this work, the sanctity of this work, the need for reverence, the need for dignity and respect of our fallen, just as if these were our sons and daughters’.

An Army and FBI probe is still investigating the outrage at the nation’s most hallowed military graveyard.

Iraq Kicks US troops Out Of The Country

*Source: RussiaToday

President Obama announced this afternoon that US troops will finally be out of Iraq by the year’s end.

Though this had been the president’s plan since he first campaigned for office, until the very last moment US diplomats and leading military officials tried to ink a secret plan that would allow Americans to stay in Iraq for years to come.

"After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over," President Obama announced this afternoon from the White House in Washington DC.

To many, the move comes too little, too late — with 4,400 Americans killed in Iraq since the war began under President George W Bush; some top-brass at the Pentagon have insisted only months earlier, however, that a withdrawal in 2011 might not be wise.

Commenting on the planned withdrawal earlier this year, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he own message to troops in Iraq was that Americans “just be present in some areas where they still need help.”

Meanwhile, America tried inking a deal with Iraq that would grant US troops immunity for war crimes overseas that would lend to ongoing military presence into 2012, despite the president’s initial campaign promise to withdraw troops as soon as possible. Obama today says that the move to withdraw is with “full agreement about how to move forward” from both countries, but also comes after Iraq was unwilling to extend powers to the American military that would put them above the law.

Bottom line: Iraq told Obama to get out.

The US and Iraq had debated keeping residual forces overseas long after the proposed withdrawal would take place, but with no guarantee over the legal loopholes US servicemen would be granted, a full removal of troops will occur by January 1, 2012, says Obama today.

As recently as April of this year, Secretary Gates told reporters, "I think there is interest in having a continuing presence,” but noted that it would come to whether or not Iraq would want American military men to stay. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise then that, following a video conference with Iraq prime minister Nouri al-Maliki this morning, Obama announced his plans to end the operation.

According to Iraq Body Count, 100,000 civilians have been killed in the eight-plus years of the war. Fiscally, it costs America over $800 billion.