PRAGOTI

Basra, Fallujah, Mosul, Kirkuk, Baghdad – names and places and associations of nameless and faceless numbers of the dead and the dying, history’s witnesses to the stories of death, destruction, plunder and subjugation. Six years of war and occupation justified by lies, six years of complicity of the ‘international community’ and six years later an illusory pullout scheme and 138,000 troops according to one report and 142,000 according to another.

Pakistan Daily has published the list of Iraqi academics assassinated by US and allied occupation forces. The objective of these targeted assassinations is to "kill a nation", the destroy Iraq's ability to educate its people, to undermine its research and scientific capabilities in literally all fields of endeavor, to transform a nation into a territory, and ultmately to destroy civilization. 

Of particular significance is the assassination of  prominent scientists and physicians, professors of medicine in the country's leading academic institutions, its social scientists and historians, its physical scientists, its biologists, its engineers. 

we are dealing with a carefully devised covert operation. The plan to kill the nation's scientists and intellectuals emanates from US intelligence and the military. It is a deliberate process. 

Is the new Obama administration going to turn a blind eye to this diabolical and criminal agenda? 

Before hurling his leather-soled missiles, al-Zaidi certainly had Bush's true legacy in Iraq in mind, which includes hundreds of thousands of dead and "disappeared", over 4 million internally and externally displaced, 70% unemployment, a lack of electricity, a lack of drinking water, a cholera epidemic, the balkanization of Baghdad - a shabby, dangerous collection of Sunni and Shi'ite ghettos separated by high blast walls - and the horrendously incompetent kleptocracy that calls itself the Iraqi parliament,says Pepe Escobar

The International Federation of Journalists says the reporter who threw shoes at United States President George Bush over America's role in Iraq should be set free. His protest, says the IFJ, reflected deep anger at the treatment of Iraqi civilians during the US occupation over the past four years of which journalists have been major victims.