Today in Iraq

Free Iraq blog: The Sadr city massacre ... A Black Operation by the American Intelligence? Muqtada Al-Sadr has pointed out that: "the American forces had provided an air cover, with several drones circling the Sadr city, and then cutting off all wireless communication throughout Sadr city, just before the setting off of the six car explosions that resulted in the death of around 60 people and the injury of 200 others in Sadr city on Sunday." Al-Sadr: The cars exploded under American air cover (In Arabic) March 13, 2006 [link] 'President' Talabani, meanwhile (in the same item above), accused "Takfiris (a.k.a. Al-Qaida) and Saddamist terrorists" for the attack, not mentioning that Al-Mahdi Army is in total control of Al-Sadr city (on the ground but not over its air space), and would only allow known 'faces' to enter their city. There is also a recent report that a police patrol in Basrah had captured, last Thursday (March 9, 2006) night, three persons in the act of planting a bomb near the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in Basrah. Upon investigation, they found out that the three were British wearing Arabic garb in disguise. Immediately afterwards, the British army arrived and arrested the police patrol along with their captives. The British then released the British captives and detained the Iraqi policemen. Basrah police capture three British wearing Arabic garb (In Arabic) March 12, 2006 [link] More agents-provocateurs in Iraq: There are yet more agents-provocateurs shenanigans in Iraq, including an American 'security contractor' caught driving alone in Tikrit during the daytime curfew with explosives in his car. Hit men have used children to carry their guns both to and away from the crime scene, so the shooters aren't caught 'holding' by the police. Having a private contractor deliver the explosives to the place of the provocation avoids the problem faced by the British military who were caught in Basra dressed as Arabs with a vehicle full of explosives. You just have to keep the private explosive delivery service separate from the military explosive planting operations. US-Backed Death Squads Kill Thousands In Iraq: Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7000 people have been killed by Iraqi interior ministry death squads in recent months, John Pace, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq, told the March 2 British Guardian. Pace said the Baghdad morgue has been receiving 700 or more bodies a month. The figures peaked at 1100 last July - many showing signs of torture. "The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills", said Pace. The killings had been happening long before the recent spate of sectarian killings following the February 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra. The Guardian reported that "Pace, whose contract in Iraq ended last month, said many killings were carried out by Shia militias linked to the interior ministry run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)". SCIRI is the main party in the coalition of Shiite religious parties that heads the US-backed Iraqi government. "The Badr brigade [SCIRI's militia] are in the police and are mainly the ones doing the killing", said Pace. "They're the most notorious." The Western corporate media seized upon the upsurge of killings that followed the Samarra mosque bombing to claim that Iraq is on the verge of "civil war" between its Shiite Muslim majority and its Sunni Muslim minority. The implicit and often explicit message that has accompanied the "Iraq-is-on-the-brink-of-civil-war" stories is that only the presence of the US and other foreign occupation troops is preventing Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis from massacring each other. During the US war in Vietnam, supporters of the war also claimed that the withdrawal of US troops would lead to a "bloodbath" - while the US war machine slaughtered at least 3 million Vietnamese. The Western media claims that a "premature" withdrawal of the US occupation troops from Iraq will lead to a religious civil war there serve the same purpose - attempting to discourage domestic support for the immediate withdrawal of all those troops. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on March 6, "eight in 10 Americans believe that recent sectarian violence in Iraq has made civil war likely", Reuters reported on March 7. The poll found that "fewer than 20 percent of respondents support an immediate withdrawal of all US troops". However, 52% support a phased withdrawal over the coming year. While the official White House line is to deny that Iraq is on the brink of a sectarian civil war, in the wake of the Samarra bombing at least one high-ranking US official has publicly given it credence. In testimony to the US Senate armed services committee on March 3, John Negroponte, the US national intelligence director, warned that "if chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy [i.e., the US occupation forces] were to be defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world". Negroponte was Washington's ambassador in Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005 - precisely at the time that the recruitment of local deaths squads was being considered in Washington. In January 2005, Newsweek magazine reported that the "Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the US government funded or supported 'nationalist' forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers." According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon chiefs were considering the recruitment of death squads from among SCIRI's Badr militia, which had been incorporated into the US-recruited Iraqi security forces, to target Sunni resistance fighters and their sympathisers. Negroponte would have been the man most qualified to supervise the implementation of such a death-squad program. While US ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, he supervised the recruitment by the CIA of local death squads from the Honduran army and police, and the arming of Nicaragua's anti-government contras. Negroponte wasn't the only veteran of Washington's "dirty wars" in Central America to be brought into Iraq while the "Salvador option" was being considered. The November 16 New York Newsday reported that the interior ministry's commando units had been built up "over the past year under guidance from James Steele, a former [US] Army Special Forces officer who led US counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. Salvadoran army units trained by Steele's team were accused of a pattern of atrocities." A brutal "dirty war" has grown out of the fertile soil of the U.S. occupation: On March 15, 2004, the New Statesman published an article by Stephen Grey, titled "Rule of the Death Squads," about the murder of Professor Abdullatif al-Mayah in Baghdad on January 19, 2004, 12 hours after he had appeared on Al-Jazeera to denounce the corruption of the Iraqi Governing Council. Grey quoted a senior commander at the headquarters of the U.S.-installed Iraqi police, "Dr. Abdullatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here. He made some politicians quite jealous . . . You can look no further than the Governing Council. There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. They are killing people one by one." The exile groups who began this dirty war in the early days of the occupation have come to form the core of successive governing institutions established by the United States. Their campaign of killing and torture has evolved and become institutionalized and their victims now number in the thousands. The State Department and U.N. reports do not address the possibility of a direct U.S. role in the campaign, but the Interior Ministry units that are most frequently implicated in these abuses were formed under U.S. supervision and have been trained by American advisors. The identities of their two principal advisors only reinforce these concerns. They are retired Colonel James Steele and former D.E.A. officer Steven Casteel, and they are both veterans of previous dirty wars. In El Salvador between 1984 and 1986, Colonel Steele commanded the U.S. Military Advisor Group, training Salvadoran forces that conducted a brutal campaign against the civilian population. At other stages in his career, he performed similar duties during U.S. military operations in Cambodia and Panama. After failing a polygraph test, he confessed to Iran-Contra investigators that he had also shipped weapons from El Salvador to Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, leading Senator Tom Harkin to block his promotion to Brigadier General. Until April 2005, Steele was the principal U.S. advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry's "Special Police Commandos," the group most frequently linked to torture and summary executions in recent reports. Steven Casteel worked in Colombia with paramilitaries called Los Pepes that later joined forces to form the A.U.C. in 1997, and have been responsible for most of the violence against civilians in Colombia. Casteel is now credited with founding the Special Police Commandos in his capacity as senior advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry. (...) Knight Ridder interviewed Steven Casteel for their story. He blamed the killings on "insurgents" impersonating commandos. As the article pointed out, this raised "troubling questions about how insurgents are getting expensive new police equipment. The Toyotas, which cost more than $55,000 apiece, and Glocks, at about $500 each, are hard to come by in Iraq, and they're rarely used by anyone other than Western contractors and Iraqi security forces." (...) Iraqis question whether the chaos unleashed on their country by the United States is the result of incompetence, as most Americans assume, or of a more sinister and deliberate design to destroy their country and society. In fact, setting aside the privatized paradise of Western investment envisioned by a few neoconservative dreamers, U.S. goals in Iraq are fairly limited and don't have much to do with the people of Iraq at all. They can be summarized as "lily pads" (U.S. bases) and oil, and a "government" in the Green Zone to legitimize access to both. The fate of the Iraqi people is only a major concern to U.S. policymakers to the extent that it threatens to impact these primary goals. Viewed from this perspective, the reactive twists and turns of U.S. policy in Iraq since March 2003 make a lot more sense: abandoning all but the oil ministry to looting; failing to "reconstruct" anything but the Green Zone and U.S. bases; the alternating marginalization and rehabilitation of different political and sectarian figures and groups; the seemingly counter-productive collective punishment and brutalization of the population; and, underlying everything, the political division of the country along sectarian and ethnic lines and the manipulation of these divisions to prevent the formation of a government that rejects U.S. objectives. In this context, whether U.S. policymakers realized it or not, a smashed Iraq was always going to serve U.S. goals better than a resurgent, independent Iraq under any government. The dirty war advances U.S. policy by terrorizing the population, as explained in the Newsweek article, but also by transforming nationalist resistance into internecine conflict between Iraqis, leaving U.S. forces secure in their bases. Indeed, U.S. casualty figures have fallen as Iraqi casualties have increased since the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra three weeks ago. 'Divide et impera' a classic colonial strategy: It is now clearer than ever before that the blueprint for Iraq from the very start was to deliberately allow the country to descend into chaos and encourage Muslim to kill Muslim as the Neo-Con juggernaut of ethnic cleansing roars on to steamroll its next victim. We don't even need to cast our eye over recent incidents to know that staged managed events and psychological operations are taking place in Iraq. The Pentagon admitted that the April 9 2003 Saddam statue toppling was orchestrated not by joyous Iraqis but by a Marine colonel, with a psychological team using loudspeakers to urge onlooking Iraqis to assist. Close angle shots of the scene broadcast live worldwide gave the impression that crowd numbered in the hundreds and not the 50 or so who were actually there. In September 2005, British SAS were caught attempting to stage a terror attack by disguising themselves as Arabs and attacking Iraqi police. The soldiers were arrested and taken to a nearby jail where they were confronted and interrogated by an Iraqi judge. The initial demand from the puppet authorities that the soldiers be released was rejected by the Basra government. At that point tanks were sent in to 'rescue' the terrorists and the 'liberated' Iraqis started to riot, firebombing and pelting stones at the vehicles injuring British troops. The only news outlet to ask any serious questions was Australian TV news which according to one viewer gave, "credibility to the 'conspiracy theorists' who have long claimed many terrorist acts in Iraq are, in fact, being initiated and carried out by US, British and Israeli forces." Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena's car was fired upon and an Italian secret service agent killed during their escape after Sgrena was told by the group that kidnapped her that a threat to kill her if Italian troops didn't pull out of Iraq wasn't made by them. Sgrena wrote articles condemning torture at Abu Ghraib and more dangerous to the US, articles about the use of napalm in Fallujah. The Pentagon admitted they would target non-embedded journalists before the war even started. The BBC's Kate Adie reported,

" I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks --that is the television signals out of... Baghdad, for example-- were detected by any planes ...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Baghdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists."

This means that Rumsfeld's Ministry of Truth in Iraq is putting out false statements by fake Jihad groups to try and maintain the facade that the resistance is run by brutal terrorists under the direction of Al-Qaeda/Iran/Syria or whoever else they want to bomb next. Every high profile kidnapping brings with it eyewitness reports of white men in suits and police carrying out the abductions. Throughout history we see the tactic of divide and conquer being used to enslave populations and swallow formerly sovereign countries by piecemeal. From the British stirring up aggression between different Indian tribes in order to foment division, to modern day Yugoslavia where the country was rejecting the IMF and world bank takeover before the Globalists broke it up and took the country piece by piece by arming and empowering extremists. The agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension in Iraq can be seen as long term plan and the only way to finally capture and enslave a country that has historically thrown out its occupiers on every occasion. That agenda was again underscored recently when Daniel Pipes, a highly influential Straussian Neo-Con media darling, who told the New York Sun that a civil war would aid the US and Israel because it would entangle Iran and Syria and enable those countries to be picked off by the new world empire without the need to sell a direct invasion to the public. Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, recently wrote,

"Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war's intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be "ripped apart" by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to "expedite" such a collapse anyway." "One of the long-standing goals of such neoconservative intellectuals has been to see the Middle East broken up into smaller ethnic or sectarian mini-states, which would include not only large stateless nationalities like the Kurds, but Maronite Christians, Druze, Arab Shi'ites, and others. Such a policy comes not out of respect for the right of self-determination - indeed, the neocons have been steadfast opponents of the Palestinians' desire for statehood, even alongside a secure Israel - but out of an imperial quest for divide-and-rule. The division of the Middle East has long been seen as a means of countering the threat of pan-Arab nationalism and, more recently, pan-Islamist movements."

The machinations of the Machiavellian's are unfolding according to plan. Let Iraq cascade into chaos and dilute the insurgency by manipulating it to become fractious and watch in-fighting ensue. Blame Iran and Syria for the anarchy (a sentiment echoed by Rice during the cartoon riots) and then move the troops in to decapitate two more rogue nations. A far more sinister force at play? Can we believe the media when they refer to "suicide bombers" or "sectarian violence" without evidence? Isn't the moniker "suicide bomber" loaded with political bias; suggesting crazed, Muslim fanatics who have no regard for their own lives or the lives of others? Where's the proof? Couldn't it be a device that the media purposely uses to reinforce racial stereotypes and, thus, support the war-effort? The same rule applies to sectarian violence. The phrase "sectarian violence" is meant to imply that this is not America's war at all, but that we are simply innocent bystanders keeping the warring parties from killing each other. What rubbish. The term "sectarian violence" suggests that the media knows who is detonating the bombs, provoking ethnic tensions, and producing the mountains of carnage. But do they? Most of them are locked up in the Palestine Hotel all day, polishing up the narrative they are provided by the Pentagon. The media reports what they are told to report and most of it is nothing more than the verbatim statements from administration and military officials. Who could read the papers or listen to the news and not draw that very same conclusion? Perhaps, there is a far more sinister force behind the seemingly random bombings that alternate between Shiite and Sunni communities. Perhaps, they are being ignited by people who want to see Iraq broken up into mini-statelets that are less threatening to the occupying army? Perhaps, they are part of a massive covert operation intended to weaken resistance and spread anarchy throughout the region?

Road to Iraq blog: Six months old baby and 4 children killed in U.S. Raid. You can see how American media telling the news about Iraq, just watch the headlines: Iraqis Say 11 People Killed in U.S. Raid Watch the language "Iraqis say", something like Iraqis are fools and you don't have to believe them, a "sub-human" as one SAS member said it. The criminals, they killed a 6 months old baby and 4 children, the oldest is 11 years old. Killing innocent Iraqis became a daily habit for the American forces. Will anybody do something to stop these mass murders? Sheeps and cows will. Americans won't. (apologize for generalizing...with Americans I mean certain ....only) U.S. kills, media helps hide the truth: Let's start with the headline in today's story of tragedy and war crimes: "Iraqis Say 11 People Killed in U.S. Raid." Oh, "Iraqis say," do they? Not quite. After the second paragraph of the story tells us "the military said only four people were killed -- a man, two women and a child," we eventually make our way down to the ninth paragraph where we learn that there's a little more than the word of the "Iraqis": "Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives." So, even with AP photographers on the scene documenting the atrocity, as "hard" and non-circumstantial as evidence gets, the AP still gives a "he-said, she-said" credibility to the ludicrous claim of the U.S. military that only four people were killed. As to the actual story, well, what can be said that hasn't been said hundreds of times before? Why were these 11 people killed? "The U.S. military said it was targeting and captured an individual suspected of supporting foreign fighters for the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist network." But much higher in the article, we were told that "the U.S. military acknowledged the raid and said it captured one insurgent." So it now appears it wasn't an "insurgent" at all, but a suspected supporter of resistance fighters. And based on that suspicion, the U.S. was willing to use warplanes and armor to flatten a house (a curious way to attempt to "capture" someone, incidentally), inside of which they had no idea who was present, and in the process to kill 11 people. By the way, the first sentence of this post contains the phrase "war crimes." You knew that phrase didn't come from the AP article, didn't you? Postscript: CNN reports the story something like this: "U.S. troops report that they were shot at from the house, and they returned fire." Sorry, attacking a house with bombs and tank shells is not just "returning fire." It's a complete and callous indifference to the possibility that any non-combatants might be inside, even if you accept the right of the U.S. troops to be there in the first place (which of course I don't).