Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
On Aug. 13 about 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops began a massive new military operation north of Baghdad. According to the U.S. military, the goal of the operation, named Lightning Hammer, is to "target insurgents who have fled a crackdown in the restive city of Baquba."
The operation is part of a larger military offensive, Operation Phantom Strike, whose goal is "to disrupt al-Qaeda in Iraq and Shia extremist operations in Iraq."
New U.S. military operations across Iraq
appear to be worsening the situation.
BAGHDAD, Aug 22 (IPS) - Both operations have included extensive use of air strikes. Many
residents speak with bitterness about the operations and the language
used to describe them.
"This is not the first time that we have
heard nice words about military operations that they say aim for our
security and prosperity," 50-year-old teacher Kassim Hussein told IPS
in Baghdad. "Yet every time it was more killing, sieges and poverty. It
is a war that we did not have to fight, but we are the biggest losers
every time it is ignited by the Americans."
According to a press
release on the official website of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq
dated Aug. 13, Operation Phantom Strike "consists of simultaneous
operations throughout Iraq focused on pursuing remaining AQI (al-Qaeda
in Iraq) terrorists and Iranian-supported extremist elements."
The
MNF press release claimed that the operation had "liberated large
segments of the Iraqi population from AQI" and that the operations were
"appreciably improving the lives of the Iraqi people."
But many
Iraqis recall U.S. military offensives in Fallujah (60 km west of
Baghdad), al-Qa'im (400 km northwest of Baghdad), Haditha (240 km
northwest of Baghdad) and other cities practically destroyed under the
flag of fighting terror.
"I have no house now because of another
phantom operation in my city," Hamid Salman, a retired government
worker from Fallujah told IPS in Baghdad. "I have to live with my
brother in his small house here in Baghdad, and tens of thousands of
Fallujah people are suffering the same situation. That was all the
American ghosts and furies did for us."
According to an Aug. 19
air power summary from the U.S. Air Force, a B-1 bomber destroyed three
buildings in Baghdad, and F-16 fighter jets dropped guided munitions
and fired cannon rounds in Baghdad and Iskandariyah (40 km south of
Baghdad). A total of 68 air support missions were flown in Iraq that
day alone.
"Death walks with the military," former Iraqi army
Brigadier General Mustafa Hashim told IPS in Baghdad. "There is never a
clean military operation, and so more civilians are expected to be
killed, injured or evicted from their homes."
According to the
group Just Foreign Policy, an independent organization "dedicated to
reforming U.S. foreign policy to serve the interests and reflect the
values of the broad majority of Americans," more than one million
Iraqis have died as a direct result of the U.S.-led invasion and
occupation.
The group's number is based primarily on data
extrapolated from a scientific study published in the Lancet medical
journal in Britain Oct. 11, 2006.
"The method the U.S. army
follows when attacking a city is to intensify fire regardless of the
possibility of civilians' existence in the targeted place," said
Hashim. "In fact, they would shoot even when they are certain of
civilians' existence. Their culture is to achieve victory no matter
what."
While the U.S. military has issued many reports about the recent operations, Iraqis continue to doubt the claims of success.
"It
is all about the media, politics, elections, and conflict inside the
U.S. Congress and such business," Waleed al-Ubaydi, a political analyst
at Baghdad University told IPS. "They know in advance that their
offensives are not going to achieve much, but they have to show their
people and the world that they are active on the ground.
Al-Qaeda
and other fighters have put their cells to sleep for the time being,
concentrating on taking the U.S. army by surprise here and there. This
is an endless story unless a miracle takes place in a time when
miracles do not take place any more."
Many Iraqis say the U.S.
occupation leaders should consider what matters to civilians, since
most Iraqis are now living under the worst conditions possible. They
say it is the responsibility of the occupation forces to provide people
with decent living conditions, rather than fight Bush's war on Iraqi
ground and at Iraqi peoples' expense.
"Bush has nothing to lose
here except his reputation which he has already lost," Hamdan Salih, an
unemployed lawyer in Baghdad told IPS. "He is pushing Iraqis to fight
each other and meanwhile attacking our cities in search of his own
enemies, who most of the time happen to be our sons and brothers. He is
sacrificing Iraqi pawns for the American oil king."
Ali al-Fadhily, our
correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr
Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels
extensively in the region)
(c)2007 Dahr Jamail.
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Writings 
On Aug. 13 about 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops began a massive new military operation north of Baghdad. According to the U.S. military, the goal of the operation, named Lightning Hammer, is to "target insurgents who have fled a crackdown in the restive city of Baquba."
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