"defendants will be safe in our hands; for as Imam Ali said, ‘If you have the ability to oppress people, then you should remember the power of god over you.’”
---Kurdish judge Ra'ouf Rashid Abdul-Raham who sentenced Saddam to death.
4th July: The Iraqi army has taken over the village of Awja, birth place of Saddam Hussain. The village lies 8 kilometres south of Tikrit. Fighting has left 50 rebels dead. The assault on the village involved Iraqi Security forces, Pro government militias and Air strikes.
4th July: Fighting between Daash/rebels and Peshmergas continues in Jalawa, Diyala province. The area was originally contested by the Kurds and the government in Baghdad. It has a mix Kurdish Arab population. Peshmergas had taken the area when federal forces withdrew but seem to have lost the Arab parts to Daash.
4th July: The Obama administration is planning to sell 4000 hellfire missiles to Baghdad soon (soon being a relative term).
4th July: The 46 Indian nurses being held by militants in Tikrit. They are currently in Erbil waiting to be flown out. The Indian government has arranged for an official aircraft with ministers from Kerala (the state the nurses hail from) and the centre flying down to escort them home. The nurses had earlier expressed their frustration at the Indian diplomats and had reprimanded them "prepare our coffins instead." It is unclear if 10 Bangladeshi nurse employed at the same hospital in Tikrit were also heading home.
4th July: The BBC is reporting of wide scale abuse of non Sunni Arab communities in Mosul. Militants are reported to be going door to door to identify Shias, Christians and Kurds.
A released Kurdish hostage: "For Shias, if they cannot be exchanged for prisoners, [the Isis rebels] would simply cut off their heads."
Others have the possibility of being ransomed.
4th July: The US joint security command run by special forces is now operational in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
4th July: A British fighter of Daash, Abu Osama, calls up Radio 5 in the UK and calls Britain "Pure Evil." He states that he will not return till the black flag of Daash is flying over Buckingham Palace.
4th July: Four children are killed when Daash fighters demolished two houses using explosives in Namil village, north of Tikrit. One if the houses belonged to the chief of the Salahuddin province police who had evacuated his residence prior to the incident.
4th July: Atta's/Government's claims for today:
Anti terrorism forces of the Iraqi government have killed 80 terrorist and destroyed 12 vehicles in Salahuddin province
Atta announces complete control over Karbala and other southern cities ending the crisis involving the cleric Mahmoud al Sarkhi
Iraq's new Sukhoi fighters carry out airstrikes in Kirkuk against Daash targets
Around 30 Daash fighters are killed in an assault on Baiji refinery, vehicles also destroyed
A Short Analysis, disinformation and propaganda
A commentator pointed out to a link in the last SITREP: http://www.voltairenet.org/article184499.html
Unfortunately I could not find its English version on Thierry Meyssan's webpage. I did however stubble upon this news article dated 26th June:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article184458.html
It states two glaringly distorted facts, the first that Judge Abdul Rahman was killed by Daash militants as revenge for Saddam's killing. This news later turned out to be false and part of Ba'athist propaganda.
Please check this, it is an excellent article that touches upon Ba'athist propaganda: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/28/iraqi-insurgents-circulate-the-lie-that-they-killed-the-judge-in-saddam-s-trial.html
The second that the gas attacks on Halabja were carried out by the Iranians. That the gas fired elsewhere drifted into Halabja. It quotes a NYT article that first suggested this. I tried looking up sources that the Iranians used chemical weapons on the Kurds, if at all during the war. It seems the only reports were from American intelligence sources and later in recent times Israeli intelligence scaremongering about the threat of Iranian chemical weapons.
Please read this link that adds caveats to its claims of Iran's use of these weapons:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/cw.htm
And this one that talks about limited use by Iran without corroborating any facts, but mostly 99.99% of corroborated Iraqi use:
http://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/program.htm
This one that talks about the US assisting Iraq in gassing the Iranians:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/cia-files-us-aided-iraq-with-iran-gas-attacks.html
And this one that touches the tip of the iceberg of Iranian suffering. To any Wahabi/Ba'athist readers, don't worry they are only Shias:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/an-ally-of-syria-iran-also-bears-scars-from-chemical-weapons-attacks--by-iraq/2013/09/12/2d2eaa6e-1b8b-11e3-80ac-96205cacb45a_story.html
This is from an Iranian survivors of Iraq/German/American Mustard Gas attacks 30 years later: "one of my wishes in life, is to take a deep breath."
Further reading:
According to this article, America did its best, but the Iraqis were just too incompetent. It seems they can't even learn to fly. I remember watching an episode of Mind Your Language where a police inspector holds Mr Brown (English teacher) responsible for his pupil's (Jamila's) shoplifting; stating "if anyone is to blame, it's the person who taught her English."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-confronts-difficulties-in-arming-iraqi-air-forces-with-missiles-and-f-16s/2014/07/03/3784ac22-0224-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html