DRANT #206

"...As Iraqi society descends further and further into mayhem, comedians, satirists and commentators of all kinds have made great hay from the supposed incompetence and stupidity of our leaders. But as the Canadian Spectator suggested recently, if it should happen that the United States is not run by buffoons, "one must conclude that chaos, impoverishment and civil war in the Muslim world…far from being the unintended consequences, are precisely the objectives of U.S. policy..."
David Montoute
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Saddam is lynched, and bingo ! everywhere ya look, there's loud disbelief at the ongoing stupidity, the bungling, the sheer incompetency of the USA and its accomplices.
About how the idiot Bush and the idiot Americans and their stooges have done it again with their dunderheaded Clarabelesque gaffes.
Bush may be a dummy, but the people who run him are not, and their global aims are best served by disorder, destabilization, and conflict, locally and globally. Secure people and secure nations with secure governments living in peaceful co-existence do not serve them. They best are served by individual and collective weakness, fractious mutability and precarious insecurity in environments of fear distrust and hatred. Chaos and disorder are not the unintended negative byproducts of stupidity, but rather are the desired results of a well-conceived and long standing plan-- to serve not the best interests of the world, humanity or even the USA, but to fulfill a limitless greed for power, money and domination.
Every "stupid" move the dummies have made has not only been brilliantly designed, but - to this point, extraordinarily successful.
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Baghdad Burning
Riverbend (in Iraq)
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#116738820591750213

"...The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam... Again, I can't help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.

What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it's just not safe.
...Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam's execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq..."
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Saddam's Death Squad Hanging
Robert Dreyfuss
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/03/saddams_death_squad_hanging.php

Meanwhile, the Bush administration and the U.S. occupation authorities are flailing around, just days before the announcement by President Bush of the latest, 2007 version of his "Strategy for Victory." The sheer bungling of their efforts recalls the comment of Anthony Cordesman, the conservative military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "like sending in a bull to liberate a china shop..."
"...in about a week, the United States managed to conduct ham-handed raids on the offices of two of the biggest Iraqi political parties. In four years, it is hard to imagine anything more stupid and clumsy. Certainly, there is no plan or strategy behind any of this..."
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BUSH AT THE BAT
Malcom Lagauche
http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=29499&s2=03

"...The Arab world is in an uproar and even a member of the sham judge team assembled for his trial has condemned the actions of Malaki and company. Much more blood will flow and the divides among Iraqis will deepen.
Washington is desperate to stop the violence in Iraq. It has made only bad decisions in its attempts to quell the chaos. Each has been worse than the prior one. The latest, to hang Saddam, is its worst..."
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HELLO ?
"Who gains ?" The USA and Israel gain. The Carlyle Group and Halliburton and Bechtel and the other members of the rapacious herd of American arms manufacturers and dealers reallllly gain. They create chaos, disorder, enmity, breakdown, thus justifying the arming and installation of still more nations, and their occupying troops and "contractors" -- further to impose their odious control and fatten their hideously bulging wallets.
"Bungling ?" Instead of fighting The Occupier, around the world the masses are fighting each other - so-called "sectarian violence" -- with encouragement, arms and money supplied to both sides by The Occupiers and the people they work for. Instead of seeing the real enemy, people see evil in their neighbors.
"More blood will flow ?" "The divides will deepen ?" Of COURSE. That's the whole idea. It seems impossible for the author to get it- that the USA WANTS the divides to deepen, and the blood to flow.

None of this is by mistake. This is all part of a bigger plan, what David Montoute has called "The Strategy of Disintegration," and what I (DRANTs 203,4,5) have been saying is idiocy by design. The USA plan is and has always been precisely to sow and proliferate and cause and finance and impose and ARM chaos, disorder, mutual annihilation, internecine "civil" warfare, the collapse of infrastructure and the very breakdown of society. Globally: in the Middle East, in Africa, Lebanon, Gaza, The West Bank, Iraq, Darfur, Angola, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria, and ya better believe it bunky right here at home: New Orleans and Detroit, Buffalo, and
Greeley, Colo.; Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas;
Not to mention:
Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn.
The politicians cry beloved country, and claim to act for the security of the "Homeland" and "American Values" and "Democracy" -- but really folks, its all about BUSINESS.

The "Demonization" of Muslims and the Battle for Oil
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, January 4, 2007
"...The "war on terrorism" purports to defend the American Homeland and protect the "civilized world". It is upheld as a "war of religion", a "clash of civilizations", when in fact the main objective of this war is to secure control and corporate ownership over the region's extensive oil wealth, while also imposing under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank (now under the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz), the privatization of State enterprises and the transfer of the countries' economic assets into the hands of foreign capital..."

Nowhere is this made more evident than in the tale of the USA, Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, where the US government has repeatedly subordinated its national interest and sabotaged its fundamental security to serve so-called "Globalization" - the venal business interests of a cabal of interlocked global corporations, who have no loyalty save to their own private interests, and serve no one but themselves.
The disfunctional, incestuous, murderous relationship between the USA/CIA and Saddam is a chronicle of mutual exploitation, ongoing deceit, and reciprocal betrayal. (For greater detail, I suggest you access Juan Cole's article on the US/CIA relationship with Saddam, The Amazing Center for Cooperative Research, or a concise BBC Saddam timeline.

Background:
The CIA first trained Saddam in 1959, when the ambitious young army officer joined a short-lived attempt at military overthrow of the Iraqi (Qasim) government, until ultimately another Baathist (Socialist) political coup finally took in 1968, when the CIA helped their boy put his uncle (Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr) in charge, immediately instituting a bloody campaign to kill all the Commies and other troublemakers (lotsa Shi'a and Kurds, of course).
But, in 1972, the Bakr government signed a treaty with the USSR, and then nationalized Iraqi Oil. The Oil companies were not happy, the USA was not at all pleased, so the CIA supported a Kurdish uprising via their pal The Shah of Iran. Then, the Shah did a complete 180, made a side deal direct with Saddam, and the Kurds were toast. (Note: Iraqi oil is not quite legally de-nationalized -- yet. See below.)

NAJMALDIN KARIM: "...it was during 1975, when (Ford was President and) Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State and there was a Kurdish resistance against the Baathist regime in Iraq, at that time Saddam Hussein was the vice president but he was really the de facto president. And the United States at the time was helping the Kurds, and there was a covert operation where the Kurds were getting help from the United States. And then, the Shah of Iran decided that he will make a deal with Saddam Hussein. And at that time, Kissinger was obviously the person who was running the foreign policy of this country, and it was during the Ford administration. And when Kissinger was asked why did he cut the aid to the Kurds, and his answer was “Covert operation is not missionary work,” if I’m quoting him correctly, but that's basically what he said. And as a result of that, 250,000 refugees went into Iran, and I was one of those. And many, many more returned to Iraq, and a lot of those were deported into the southern deserts, and thousands of them were killed, and we still don't know what happened to them.

As Security Honcho, VP Saddam banned and persecuted all Iraqi opposition parties, and finally the CIA helped him become Head-Arab-in-Charge, with yet another palace coup and subsequent bloody purge in 1979, when the Iranian overthrow of The Shah and accession of the Shi'a Ayatollah Khomeini resulted in waves of Shi'a unrest inside Iraq, and led to Iraq's CIA supported invasion of Iran in 1980. Both Israel and the USA were found to be supplying arms to both sides. (A recurring theme- see Palestine, Lebanon, etc)

WHAT THE SCRIBES SAY
Malcom Lagauche
"...At the same time Saddam and Rumsfeld met, Iran was killing Iraqi soldiers and civilians with missiles supplied by the U.S. The U.S. had already made the deal with Iran to sell them missiles and other military material, with Israel getting the obligatory 10% for being the middleman."

In 1982, after an attempted assassination in Darfail, Saddam allegedly committed the crimes for which supposedly he was hanged.
Despite the fact that Iraq was on the official US list of Terrorist Nations (1979), and the notoriety of the atrocities committed at Darfail, President Reagan twice sent his currently and deservedly unemployed but at the time his special envoy to the Middle East - Donald Rumsfeld -- to Iraq, ostensibly to improve Iraqi-US good will, but mostly to 1) Ensure Saddam's participation in the Bechtel Corporation's enormous Aqaba pipeline project, and 2) to set Saddam up in the biological war business, not to mention supplying the Bell 214ST helicopters and biological and other weapons used in the betrayal and murder of thousands of Kurds, most notably in the Anfal campaign of 1987.
Excerpt from a cable from Sec of State George Schultz to Rumsfeld briefing him for his second visit (1984): (One must remember that before being Sec of State for Reagan, Schultz was CEO of, gasp, The Bechtel Group!):
“Iraq officials have professed to be at a loss to explain our actions as measured against our stated objectives. As with our CW (Chemical Weapons) statement, their temptation is to give up rational analysis and retreat to the line that US policies are basically anti-Arab and hostage to the desires of Israel.”
The USA and CIA - continuously back to back and belly to belly with Saddam.

Inverse Engagement: Lessons from US-Iraq Relations, 1982-1990
Douglas Borer, PhD.
(note: This is an actual US Army document, from the "US ARMY Professional Journalists")

"In 1983 the first of four reports of the use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces was received in Washington, and in 1984 a report issued by the United Nations provided the first public documentation of Iraq's violation of international law on the use of such weapons.15 The Reagan Administration responded to these chemical weapon attacks by filing paper protests with the Iraqi government, sponsoring a resolution in the UN general assembly, and tightening some export controls on chemical supplies and technology.16 At the same time, however, the United States continued to provide Iraq with intelligence data on Iranian troop movements and formations, ignoring the fact that such data was being used to optimize the deployment and use of chemical attacks against the Iranians.

It is obvious that from a moral, ethical, or legal perspective, the US position in these policies is an impoverished one. However, in the amoral, realpolitik world of international diplomacy, where strategic concerns often take precedence over moral and ethical principles, one might choose to argue that the US position was not necessarily an illogical one. But does such an amoral realist's analysis actually hold true under closer scrutiny in terms of its strategic logic? The key question is this: When George Bush took over from Ronald Reagan, what had happened to the original strategic rationale for engaging Iraq? In 1988, immediately after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, using US-built helicopters, Saddam unleashed brutal gas attacks on the Kurds. Approximately 30 villages were gassed with chemical agents that included mustard gas and nerve toxins. Normally the United States would lead the outraged international response to any such act. (One can only imagine the response at the time if the Sandinista government in Nicaragua had gassed the US-supported Contras.) In fact, the Reagan Administration did sponsor a resolution in the United Nations condemning the use of chemical weapons, and it tightened some export controls; however, the great majority of all dual-use export licenses were approved by the Reagan Administration.17 While the record clearly shows that the United States refused to pursue a highly confrontational approach (in the form of economic sanctions), there is little evidence that Washington made any serious attempt to alter Saddam's behavior by using any form of leverage that the burgeoning asymmetrical economic ties had created during six years of engagement."

How do you think Saddam felt when he found out that George I and the CIA (via Israel fuhevvinsakes) had been secretly selling weapons to Iran ?
Or when Israel bombed his Osirak Nuclear power facility ?
Did we mention that George I was head of the CIA under Ford (have you heard of Team B?), and VP under Reagan ? That he was and always has been in this up to his tear ducts ? Whatta concidunce.
Does anyone see the smallest spec of "moral ethical or legal" concerns in any of this ? Or any "strategic rationale" ?
Much worse- does anyone see the slightest indication that the primary consideration of the US Government from Nixon on - (or ever since Herbert Hoover muscled his Big Oil pals (now Exxon) into the British takeover of Iraq and its oil in 1922), had anything to do with the actual best interests of the USA ?
It would seem that US policy regarding Iraq, Iran and Saddam was consistent only in its self-contradictory inconsistency and illogic.
But -- that's only if one assumes that the US Government works on behalf of We (the group formerly known as) The People.
Once you realize that the US Government has actually been working for Big Oil and the Global corporations, everything they did makes sense.
The Guerilla News Network outlines this particular tale, including the brilliant Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured U.S. Government Focus On Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein.
REAGAN/BUSH:
In 1988, Iraq uses "chemical weapons to cinch its victory" over the Iranians. (NY Times 8-18-02)
In 1988, The USA gives Saddam 500 million bucks to buy US farm products, steps up its dissemination of Intel to Saddam, and - exports to Iraq key components for it's SCUD missiles. Not to mention, supplies the copters and poison gas used by Saddam at Halabja. Dow Chemical itself sells $1.5 million worth.
In 1989 George I, apparently a big Saddamophile, takes office. Defying Congress and major international banking boycotts of Iraq, Bush and James Baker
(yes, Him) greatly expand US financial and technical support to Saddam throughout 1989, including a $1billion loan, which goes straight to Iraqi WMD development, and as late as August 1990, Bush is still selling advanced weapons products to Saddam.
But by 1991, Bush is not only pronouncing Saddam's name atrociously, but called him Public Enemy Number One.
So, to answer Prof. Borer's question (above) what the hell happened ? The real answer is fundamentally- nothing. Nothing has changed. Even now. Morality was and is irrelevant, and the interests of the USA are subordinated to those of The People Who Really Run Things: Big Oil, the Arms Industry, Boeing, Bechtel, Halliburton G.E., Raytheon et ALL. Saddam dead or alive means nothing, its all business as usual.
Here's what did happen historically just prior to Desert Storm:
1- Saddam turns down Reagan/Schultz/Rumsfeld and the gigantic Bechtel pipeline project, making himself supremely useless to them.
2- The USSR falls apart, obviating the need for Iraq as a counter force in the region, and almost instantaneously turning the fundamental US world strategy from Cold War Anti Communism to the pursuit of world dominance and hegemony. (see PNAC, below)
3-The Iraq-Iran War ends, and more moderates enter the Iranian political power structure, so Saddam is no longer desperately needed there either.
4- The US and Kuwait enter a quiet conspiracy to manipulate oil prices to their profit and Iraq's detriment.
5- Opposition, dissatisfaction and open dissent grow in Saudi Arabia, threatening the Saudi dictatorship and their oil supply and reserves.
6- Tensions between Iraq and Kuwait grow, and the now infamous meeting between (US Ambassador to Iraq) April Glaspie and Saddam concludes with her giving him assurances that the US has "no opinion regarding Iraq's 'border dispute' with Kuwait," opening what Saddam assumed was the door for his invasion in August 1990. Oops.

Desert Storm was supposedly about kicking Saddam out of Kuwait and "restoring order to the region." Remember that Saddam had attacked both Saudi Arabia and Israel with SCUD Missiles. Soooo - why did Bush I leave Saddam in the palace ? Why did the USA not fulfill the numerous attempts at overthrow ? Since we all know the umm close relationship between the Bush family, Carlyle Group, the CIA and Saudi Arabia, I need not belabor that- except to point out that "restoring order" really meant keeping the Saudi Royal Dictatorship in place by force, and the oil flowing from Kuwait. By leaving Saddam to remain in power after the war, Bush and the Saudis had plausible justification for installing and keeping 20,000 odd US armed forces personnel PERMANENTLY in Saudi Arabia. You may recall that a few Ladens or so hated this idea.
The USA/CIA encouraged uprisings in Iraq's north (Kurds) and South (Shi'a) and then abandoned them both to Saddam's revenge. In the end, it was deemed "not to be in our interest" to turn Iraq into three ethnic tribal subdivisions. How times change.
The deal was, we got to keep sucking up the Saudi oil, and to sell them billions of dollars worth of arms and technology, and the Saudi Royals got to stay put. Oh, and they also got to give billions of dollars in bribes to various opposition groups, particularly radical Islamic organizations, to keep them quiet. We know how well that worked out. (see below)
In actuality, keeping Saddam in place kept a well known and marketably despisable face on the enemy, justified Israel's expansion and vastly increased war-ready status, and facilitated the US attempt at creation of a broad-based opposition - the idiotic Iraqi National Congress, and a gigantic and extraordinarily well-funded PR campaign to demonize Saddam. (see CIA/Rendon Group)
CLINTON:
But don't just blame poor George I. Starting in 1993, under Bill Clinton, it was business as usual or even worse. The INC, the Rendon Group and CIA fave Ahmed Chalabi persevered in various plots to de- stabilize Iraq, assassinate Saddam, raise a Kurdish rebellion, and the Clinton's CIA specifically ignored well-founded evidence of Saudi corruption, human rights abuses, and particularly- its vast financial support for Islamic militants, including the first WTC bombing of February 1993. We know where that would lead.
Clinton maintained the genocidal embargo, and aerial bombardment of Iraq, ignored clear evidence that Iraq had dismantled its WMD and chemical weapons, and enabled Saudi Arabia in its ongoing support for the above-mentioned militants to the enormous benefit of ongoing lucrative arms sales by US arms dealers and aircraft manufacturers. Even after his botched coup attempt, Chalabi was a major VIP in Washington.
With the publication of the "Clean Break" memo in 1996- the plan was memorialized:
Destabilize the entire Middle East, topple the governments in Lebanon, Syria, Iran. Abandon Oslo and Land for Peace, further an Israeli policy of aggressive settlement expansion, and occupation of Palestine in "self-defense," and sabotage the PLO and Arafat.
The famed PNAC letter to Clinton of January 1998 demanded military action against Iraq, and the PNAC memo "Rebuilding America's Defenses" of 2000, clearly laid out the plan to ignore the UN, unilaterally attack Iraq, and depose Saddam. Sharon was sent to The Temple Mount in September 2000, and the Al Aqsa Intifada began. Clinton had already markedly increased the ongoing bombing of Iraq, and signed the bi-partisan Iraq Liberation Act, which basically set up an opposition Iraqi government and funded and mandated regime change. One of the groups financed by this was SCIRI.
There is no doubt that Clinton's ongoing embargo and air assault actually caused more human suffering, death and destruction than Bush I's Desert Storm.
BUSH II:
Under Bush II, in coordination with Sharon's (now Olmert's) Israel, not only Iraq, but Lebanon and Palestine have been politically de-stabilized, had their infrastructures destroyed, and descended into sub-human conditions. None of this was accomplished in error.
When General Jay Garner was sent to oversee post-invasion Iraq, he made the egregious mistake of actually trying to communicate with Iraqis, rebuild the country, reinforce inclusive continuity, and maintain the infrastructure while facilitating meaningful democratic processes including a rapid national election for a new government which would allow the people to decide the disposition of their oil assets. For some reason, he had forgotten for whom he was working. He thought he was there to represent the best interests of his country. This got him immediately fired.
What Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted was the exact opposite. Someone who knew who was his daddy. Paul Bremer was their man.
When he arrived, things were actually relatively calm. Less than one US soldier was getting killed a day, and the insurgency was sporadic, largely confined to Sunnis.
Bremer did what he was told- in short order he purged all Baathists from local government bureaucracies and universities, disbanded the Iraqi Army, insulted the pre-eminent Shi'a Ayatollah Sistani, and shuttered the newspaper of Muqtada Al- Sadr. Najaf exploded, and we all know how that turned out.
"We had things running good on Wednesday, and by Saturday we had 400,000 new enemies. I don't know if you can lay all this at Bremer's feet, but you can lay enough of it there to make it count."
Immediately, he grabbed all the oil, and made damn sure there were no elections. Oh, and did we mention - he turned Iraq into a GMO playground, and somehow managed to lose track of 9 billion dollars.
In short, Bremer was sent to Iraq to create chaos and destabilize what remained of Iraq. Once in power, he created an environment where the oil could be pumped with no accountability, oversight or basic record keeping, and where staggering piles of cash (over $12 billion) flew all over the country without the most rudimentary accounting controls.
All of this subverted the most fundamental elements of the interests of the USA, escalating the casualty rate to quadruple the previous, greatly energized the insurgency, and serving the interests only of the global corporations trafficking in oil, arms, and the so-called reconstruction of Iraq: KBR (Halliburton), Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Blackwater Security, G.E. and myriad others including poppa Bush's Carlyle Group of course.

Future Of Iraq: The spoils Of War
By Danny Fortson,Andrew Murray-Watson & Tim Webb
07 January 2007
The Independent

"...The largest beneficiary of reconstruction work in Iraq has been KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root), a division of US giant Halliburton, which to date has secured contracts in Iraq worth $13bn (£7bn), including an uncontested $7bn contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure. Other companies benefiting from Iraq contracts include Bechtel, the giant US conglomerate, BearingPoint, the consultant group that advised on the drawing up of Iraq's new oil legislation, and General Electric. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, 150-plus US companies have won contracts in Iraq worth over $50bn..."

Many American businesses may have bitten the dust in the years since Desert Storm, but the arms business has metastasized to DOUBLE what it was in 1990.
By sowing global destabilization, the American arms industry has now grown to comprise approximcahnman@aol.comately twenty percent of the entire annual national budget.
The price of gas at the pump has nearly doubled, from $1.75 to approximately $3.00 since 2001.
The profits of the major oil companies have exploded exponentially, to the point where Exxon posted the largest corporate quarterly profit in history.
The value of Halliburton's shares have more than tripled since the invasion, in obscene but clear proportion to the numbers of Iraqi and American casualties, the more death, the more profit. Cheney's personal Halliburton portfolio has appreciated- get this-- three THOUSAND percent.
And let's be sure and include alla US GUYS. The Dow has set new records, and investors are celebrating. The stock market businesses, traders, funds, etc. and their clients- (does this mean you Bunky ?) are raking in stupifying profits. Goldman Sachs made (no kidding) 93 million dollars in PROFIT in the last quarter, for a total of 14 BILLION dollars pre tax PROFIT in 2006.
Forgive me, but I see no bungling here. No stupidity.
Nor do I see a drop of idiocy or mishandling in the capture, trial or lynching of Saddam Hussein.
The plan for Iraq has obviously been to engender tribal and religious conflict, a vicious program of ethnic cleansing and widespread murder.
Basra, as an example, has been turned into a pure Shi'a enclave, and hundreds of thousands of INTERNAL refugees are homeless inside Iraq itself, not even to consider the millions of refugees who have fled the country.
Saddam's "capture" - globally televised- was staged to demean, divide, and shame the people of Iraq. Can one imagine watching a similar scene of an American President ? and what feelings that would engender ?
Saddam's disgraceful and outrageous "trial" was widely televised, designed to enrage both his supporters and enemies, and re-open as many old wounds as possible. He was treated like a common thief, subject to the assassination of his lawyers, and solitary confinement. While his conviction was an obvious outcome, his "execution" made grossly and supremely manifest the whole scheme to de-stabilize Iraq, create civil war, and fracture the country into irremediable fragments.
For his "execution": The US made a show of delegating control to the Iraq (sic) government.
Maliki was one of Saddam's oldest enemies- from the outlawed Dawa party. He handed the lynching over to the worst elements of Sadrist loonies.
The hanging was situated in one of Saddam's most infamous old prisons, and deliberately scheduled for the holiest of Sunni Holy Days, a day itself emblematic of the fundamental religious disputes between Sunni and Shi'a.
Again, there was no bungling here. All of this was according to plan, and the world has totally been taken in by the brilliance of its convincing appearance of slovenliness or haphazard incompetence. What Bush has done so well.
There were no mistakes. Do you think for a moment that the cell phone photos were made and proliferated world-wide by mistake ?
Sadrists snarling at Saddam, Saddam as noble martyr, crying out to Allah for his beloved nation, insulting Israel and the Shi'a.
Puhleeeeze.
Brilliantly done, and the predictable results: more chaos, more hatred, more killing-- not just in Iraq, but world-wide.
Everywhere it serves to incite people, further to turn their eyes from the real crimes being perpetrated on them, turn their anger on each other, and not on their enslavers.

A final footnote:
Yesterday, the Iraqi (sic) Government announced a new law whereby Iraq's Oil reserves will be handed to foreign oil corporations, primarily Exxon, BP, Chevron, on terms that are profoundly unfair to the people of Iraq, and (no surprise here) grossly favorable to Big Oil.
I just thought you might wanna know.