"... if there is anyone out there who still believes that ANY of this was stupidity, bungling, or idiocy, or that the people who run The Idiot Bush are dummies, or that Bush himself is even one nanoputz in control of any of this - clap your hands.
The longer we demonize Bush, or patronize him, or invest in his supposed idiocy, the deeper we are burying ourselves in servitude and irrelevance.
Plus, They get one more big ole whopper of a benefit from our complicity in making it all George's fault.
They get to present us with a McCain or Giuliani-- a real Macho Man, a supernaturally competent brave forthright testituditious Hombre, who knows not only how to make a war, but gosh darn it, how to WIN one. Who can face down the Enemies of Freedom, and won't screw it up.
Or even worse, we can get a Hilary or Obama or Edwards- who will do ALL of the above, but be really sincerely nice about it."
DRANT #203
People are finally realizing that The Dummy is not stupid.
That Bush and company have WON -
Some of us have been bleating this for years-
(below, my DRANT #203 ("Idiocy by Design") Dec. 2006)
And- in today's
EMPIRE BURLESQUE -- (see below) Cliff Floyd puts it out there as well, as he has been doing for good while.
Plus a great essay by David Montoute about the Bushevik victory.
It's all there folks. No incompetence here. Idiocy by design-- and so far- they win.
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DRANT DAILY
Number 203
December 18, 2006
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The more ya call Bush an idiot, the more They win.
It means They gotya. You bought their Jive.
U have been outFoxed into thinking that everything that's gone down is a series of dunderheaded blunders by a grippe of fools, lead by the biggest schmuck ever to sleep with a president's wife.
Look pal, its all going EXACKLY the way They planned it. Millions of runs, lots of hits, and damn few errors. And never ever forget - They knew George was a putz when they picked him. No surprises there- ya got it ? One thing about George- he is totally disposable. He is the perfect fall guy. A putz for all seasons.
And such a delectably easy scapegoat for all of Us Good Americans who were liedtoliedtoliedto, and just got fooled and are really good people down deep ..... sooo delectably easy for US to say- Its all HIS fault. He's an idiot.
It serves everybody to blame the idiot George. Them and Us. But it wasn't him what did it, it was Us. And for Them, none of it was a mistake.
They wanted chaos, they got chaos.
Ya say that there's chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan ?
Ya say that savage ragheads with moustaches are running around killing each other, and a buncha muslim/islamic/ fanatics keep blowing somebody's wives and kids to slivers of mutton Tikka every night, and ya can't even go to the grocery store or school, or to see grandma, or even to the local Mosque any more- cause somebody wants to tie your hands behind ya, and chop your head and fingers off, and drill a hole in your skull ? Chaos is a half million INTERNAL refugees inside Iraq, and 2 million miraculously unkilled people having fled the country. Yah man. Thass right. But- not In Kurdland. Not where the OIL is.
You say Iraqi kids by the thousands are being born deformed by birth defects caused by our D.U. and radioactive cluster bombs ? And that's just over there- cause there are hundreds of kids being born with the same birth defects and worse, to wives and husbands of OUR soldiers when they get back here to the USA ?
You say you're buying the 1000% unadulterated crapola that the real problem is Them, the Iraqis, not the hundreds of thousands of American occupiers, torturers, "contractors" and their stooge "security forces" --- that this is all about so-called "Sectarian Violence " - a centuries-old civil war being fought between two weird sects about whose daddy was the real prophet ? You say its just like CNN says- the war in Iraq is really about Sunni vs. Shi'a, them against them, not them against us. We just happen to be dere at the time, trying to spread Democracy.
This is all precisely what was designed- mutual annihilation, neighbors and friends killing neighbors and friends, vicious pointless murderous chaos.
This is what they want everywhere- chaos and internecine annihilation. The more disorder and unstability, the less anyone gets in their way, and the more reason to stay in even greater numbers. And of course if a buncha ragheads or Africans or illegal aliens or indigenous non productive eaters happen to die, hey, the fewer competitors for precious resources the better.
And of course blame the victims.
The same same same in Palestine, where the US stooge Fatah and legitimately elected Hamas just can't seem to get along. Fatah getting fattah on US dollars every day, and Hamas deprived of many millions legitimately owed to them by Israel as taxes collected- so the Palestinian people starve, die, and hate even more.
Or in Lebanon, where the stooge Prime Minister watches from his palace window as hundreds of thousands of his people yell for his removal every day ?
Ah yes, more of that darned Sectarian Violence.
This is what the Busheviks wanted, this is what they created, and what they are getting.
They sent Bremer into Iraq to create the maximum in destructuring and chaos -- removing by decree any and all remnants of Iraqi infrastructure, administration, and order. Anyone who had functioned in any way previously, was out. Then they handed the keys to the inmates of the asylum. Nutcases like SCIRI and al Sadr. Of course, this translated as Sunnis Raus - who might have been slightly annoyed, ya think ?
Not to mention Israel, our genocidal Tonto in so much of this. Nothing serves them more than chaos and disorder, and death.
Who's gonna fight you when you build your apartheid walls, or bulldoze their houses ? Nobody, if you can succeed in creating total disarray, where just getting enough food and water is a daily war all itself. Nobody if your Supreme Court makes it Legal to kill anyone who tries to obstruct you.
You say that Israel's war against Hezbollah was a mistake ? Hah.
It succeeded totally.
Lebanon infrastructure trashed, the government in total chaos, and a beautifully packaged nokiddin identifiable nasty bearded Islamic Radical Cleric Enemy to fight.
Hey give me one more chorus of Sectarian Violence from the top Maestro.
Look further: Darfur, where US intervention and blatant interference -- (another round of GrabdaOil-- or didya not know that there's Oil there ?)
has felicitously destabilized an entire region. Genocide in Darfur in B flat, play it again Unka Sam.
Say, do you have a cell phone ? Or a remote on your 40 inch TV ? Do you know whats In those things ? Haveya heard of Coltan ?
Yup, then ya gots ta know all about The Republic of Congo, Rwanda and on and on.
Create chaos, arm everyone, finance both sides, grab the resources. Call it Sectarian Strife.
No boob jobs here, bunky.
No stupid blundering. This is all planned -- and its all working. Globally.
Do you see ? The major pimp media plays the backup track- and the sniggling Left does its onanistic Karaoke-
It ain't us, babe. Its Bush. Bush is an idiot. He has stupidly created disorder and chaos everywhere. What a dummy.
Everytime he does something, Bushdadummy makes a mess. Yuk Yuk.
And all the time, he and the people he works for are getting exactly what they want, and nobody even notices.
Nowhere is the planned chaos and destabilization working better than here, in the good ole USA.
You say that our educational system is in ruins, that our prisons are jammed to inhuman overflow, that we are breathing eating and drinking poison ? That every day every kid born here is jammed with toxins ?
That the gap between the richest and the poorest of us has exploded into proportions that recall nothing less than South American banana republics or Russian Serfdom ? That poverty and inequality is epidemic and health care unavailable, for tens of millions of full-time working people not to mention the unemployed or disabled or old ? That upward mobility and legitimate aspiration are as moribund as the Arctic Ice Shelf and that MOST Americans --the 60% of us who earn less than 38K a year -- are actually earning less than they did in 2000 ?
You think this is because Bush is an idiot, and screws everything up ?
Au seriously contraire bunky.
He and the people he works for are getting exactly what they wanted, and planned for and designed. When anyone self-righteously dares to argue withya about Wade Churchill's term "Little Eichmanns" tell them about this.......
Goldman Sachs profits just increased by 93% ! They made 9 BILLION dollars this year- or about 600 grand per employee.
They are out buying 10 million dollar manhattan fixer uppers, and cars that cost more than most of us make in a year.
Meanwhile, the vast rest of us have seen our wages and salaries and tips and pensions go DOWN by great handfuls.
Do you think this is because Bush is stupid ? Or that They screwed it up ? They need cheap labor, and cannon fodder. They need cheap dollars to pay off the Alps of Debt they have created.
Debt that We pay off. Debt that deprives us of the education and health care that's rightfully ours.
Debt that has gone directly to the Halliburtons and Bechtels and Goldman Sachs scum of the world.
The Pentagon budget will go up to 480 billion dollars this year.
And the profits of those who sell all that stuff to the Pentagon, and the profits of the people who issue and trade the stocks of the people who sell that stuff to the Pentagon, and the earnings of the people who protect all those people and their geometrically expanding vast property --- annnnnd the bribes to the elected officials who make the laws that make the wars and laws that create all that profit ----- all have exploded beyond believability.
But poverty here has exploded even worse, and is increasing and widening every day.
When the Idiot Bush said that he represented the haves and the have mores, it was much more a prophecy than a joke.
The Great Wealth Transfer
It's the biggest untold economic story of our time: more of the nation's bounty held in fewer and fewer hands. And Bush's tax cuts are only making the problem worse
By Paul Krugman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15923.htm
"...The economic pie is getting bigger -- how can it be true that most Americans are getting smaller slices? The answer, of course, is that a few people are getting much, much bigger slices. Although wages have stagnated since Bush took office, corporate profits have doubled. The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality is on the rise.
Rising inequality isn't new. The gap between rich and poor started growing before Ronald Reagan took office, and it continued to widen through the Clinton years. But what is happening under Bush is something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth -- and they know it..."
Now if there is anyone out there who still believes that ANY of this was stupidity, bungling, or idiocy, or that the people who run The Idiot Bush are dummies, or that Bush himself is even one nanoputz in control of any of this - clap your hands.
The longer we demonize Bush, or patronize him, or invest in his supposed idiocy, the deeper we are burying ourselves in servitude and irrelevance.
Plus, They get one more big ole whopper of a benefit from our complicity in making it all George's fault.
They get to present us with a McCain or Giuliani-- a real Macho Man, a supernaturally competent brave forthright testituditious Hombre, who knows not only how to make a war, but gosh darn it, how to WIN one. Who can face down the Enemies of Freedom, and won't screw it up.
Or even worse, we can get a Hilary or Obama or Edwards- who will do ALL of the above, but be really sincerely nice about it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mission Accomplished: A New Look at Bush's Victory in Iraq
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1321&Itemid=135
Posted: 22 Oct 2007 06:13 AM CDT
In the latest London Review of Books, Jim Holt provides a cogent, powerful account (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/holt01_.html) of a theme we have been sounding here for years; i.e., that the Iraq War has actually been a resounding success for the Bush Faction (and the various elites it represents and embodies). The Bushists have achieved almost all of their initial war aims and are now set to reap a windfall of up to $30 trillion that will maintain the American elite's whip-hand over the world for generations to come. And all it cost was a measly $1 trillion in taxpayer money, a few thousand pieces of lower-class cannon fodder from the U.S. military – and the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq: an excellent return on investment for Bush-Cheney Inc. and their cronies.We've covered this issue at various times from various angles; a sampling includes:Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil (http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=989 Itemid=135) (Jan. 8, 2007)Why Bush Smiles: Victory is at Hand in Iraq (http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=886 Itemid=135)(Oct. 17, 2006)Blood of Victory (http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd06182004.html)(June 18, 2004)Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law (http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2005/03/dubya-indemnity-bush-barons-beyond.html) (Aug. 15, 2003)From Pakistan to the Potomac: The Terror Warriors' Enduring Victory (http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/From_Pakistan_to_the_Potomac%3A_The_Terror_Warriors%27_Enduring_Victory/) (Aug. 9, 2007)Below is a brief mashup from the above articles:In a world of dwindling petroleum resources, those who control large reserves of cheaply-produced oil will reap unimaginable profits – and command the heights of the global economy. It's not just about profit, of course; control of such resources would offer tremendous strategic advantages to anyone who was interested in "full spectrum domination" of world affairs, which the Bush-Cheney faction and their outriders among the neocons and the "national greatness" fanatics have openly sought for years.
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Saturday, December 23, 2006
The Strategy of Disintegration: False flags, dirty tricks and the dismemberment of Iraq
http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/2006/12/strategy-of-disintegration-false-flags.html
December 22, 2006
By David Montoute
The erosion of a target country’s integrity and viability has always been a conscious goal of the Western colonial project. Creating instability and dissatisfaction with existing reality was a necessary prerequisite to "tame" and then integrate native peoples into the dominant hierarchical model. Today, of course, we are told that colonialism is a thing of the past. The leading nations of the international community no longer seek to enslave their less fortunate neighbours, but rather pursue policies of world benefaction - within the limits imposed by healthy competition, of course. When this miraculous conversion took place we are not told, but perhaps it occurred incrementally, parallel to the increasing divide between the world’s rich and poor. In any case, a casual glance at the state of the Muslim world is enough to shatter this foolish delusion.
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." (1)
As with 9/11, the trigger event for the War on Terror, incompetence is the preferred explanation for the nightmare scenario in Iraq today. Though counterintuitive to the domesticated populations of the West, a plan to deliberately fragment Iraq along ethnic lines is amply confirmed by the published record. Resuscitating earlier Zionist schemes, the US Council on Foreign Relations recently called for the dissolution of the "unnatural Iraqi state." (2) On the grounds of its ethnic diversity, Iraq is said to be a false, artificial construct, a product of arbitrary colonial decisions in the early 20th century. It is a judgment that could apply to many of the world’s countries, and yet the theme is being enthusiastically adopted by reams of 'experts’ who would never dream of questioning state sovereignty in Quebec, the Basque Country or Northern Ireland. In typical fashion, policy analyst Michael Klare recently dismissed Iraq as an "invented country…to facilitate their exploitation of oil in the region [the British] created the fictitious "Kingdom of Iraq" by patching together three provinces of the former Ottoman Empire…and by parachuting in a fake king from what later became Saudi Arabia." (3) Accepting the Bush Administration’s bogus rationale for the invasion, Klare ascribed Sunni resistance to the desire for a bigger share of oil revenues in the future partition of the country. Missing is any idea that resistance extends beyond "Sunnis" or could be motivated by Iraqi nationalism or the need for self-determination.
Ultimately, the ease with which Western academics casually decide to reshape the countries of their choice owes itself to the continuing legacy of Orientalism. In classic nineteenth century style, the chattering classes suggest that Iraq, despite its five thousand-year history, is now incapable of managing itself, and so its fate must be decided by outside powers. A country that held together in 1991 through six weeks of the most intensive bombing campaign in history, (which according to the UN left Iraq in a "pre-industrial age") and continued to survive through 12 years of the most complete and devastating sanctions ever imposed on any nation is now blithely consigned to history by concerned Western experts. To bolster their case, the myth of ancient sectarian hatreds, a staple of the 'humanitarian intervention’ crowd, is rehashed and fed on a daily basis by journalists who neither question the authorship of "sectarian" attacks nor report the view of ordinary Iraqis, who blame the Occupation army and its puppet government for the orchestrated chaos.
Dismantling Iraq
The preparations for the occupation of Iraq began almost immediately after the first assault in 1991. With the imposition of no-fly-zones in the north and south of the country and the western media already dividing the country into three mutually antagonistic regions, the stage was set. The first glimpse of the organized plan to destroy Iraqi society came with the organized sacking of museums (170,000 pieces lost) and burning of libraries following the fall of the regime in 2003. The looting had two aspects, one indiscriminate and spontaneous and a second, in which organized trafficking network looted pieces from Uruk, Nimrud, Niniveh, and the Nabi Jarjis Mosque. The theft required a prepared, logistical infrastructure, whilst the subsequent sale of the booty was facilitated by the systematic destruction of archives, inventories and museum records (4) Later, when the Occupation forces’ first chief, General Jay Garner, recommended maintaining the Iraqi military and creating a coalition government, defense secretary Rumsfeld removed him. His successor, Paul Bremer, went on to dismantle the army and other key national institutions, as well as 'losing’ some $9 billion of Iraq’s oil revenues along the way. The reconstituted puppet army was formed almost exclusively from the Kurdish and Shia communities, a move specifically designed to incubate sectarian tensions. Meanwhile, anonymous assassins began targeting Iraq’s academic community, eventually provoking a huge 'brain drain’ from the country and further debilitating the country’s capacity to recover.
When the armed opposition groups became active in the country, there then followed a string of events bearing the hallmarks of undercover operations designed to stoke up sectarian conflict and taint the Iraqi Resistance. What follows is a brief summary of the most suspicious incidents.
UN targeted, after 12 years in Iraq
When a truck bomb tore through U.N. headquarters four months into the occupation, killing special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 19 others, pro-consul Bremer suggested two possible culprits: "Saddam loyalists or foreign insurgents". The interim government’s Ahmed Chalabi, however, had received prior notice of the attack the week before. Chalabi had been warned that a "soft target" was to be attacked, although it would be "neither the Coalition Authority nor coalition troops". But the UN, whose security had been withdrawn that day, was never warned. (5)
Kerbala and Baghdad
By November 2003, with the guerilla campaign inflicting heavy losses on US forces, the media and interim governing authority began a steady drumbeat of sectarian brainwashing. After weeks of scare mongering about a civil war, coordinated explosions left 143 Shia civilians dead in Kerbala and Baghdad. The blame fell on 'Al Qaeda’, but journalist Robert Fisk asked the obvious question: "If a violent Sunni group wished to evict the Americans from Iraq…why would it want to turn the Shia population…60 per cent of Iraqis, against them?" No answer was provided, and the senseless attacks increased. (6)
Al Iskandariya
In early February 2004 American authorities claimed to have intercepted a message from Iraq asking 'Al Qaeda’ for help in fomenting a civil war. Almost immediately, as if to underline the message, an explosion killed 50 Shias in the small town of Iskandariya. "Terrorists spark fear of civil war," announced The Independent, contradicting the town’s residents who, without exception, attributed the blast to an American air strike. "They heard a helicopter overhead, and the whoosh of a missile just before the blast." The blast itself left a crater three metres deep, more consistent with a missile than a car bomb (7)
'Al Qaeda in Iraq’
As with the parent organization, nothing about this group rings true. Until 2004 'Al Qaeda,’ a Sunni-only set up, had never uttered a word against Shias. But as the Iraqi Resistance campaign gained unstoppable momentum, the reportedly deceased Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi suddenly resurfaced. Calling for war against the 'infidel’ Shia community, he went on to wage a parallel campaign characterized more by gratuitous attacks on civilians than by ejecting the US from Iraq. In the following years, wherever the US unleashed massive assaults in Iraq, Zarqawi was conveniently 'discovered’ to be hiding. The November 2004 assault on Fallujah was waged with white phosphorous and left at least 6,000 dead beneath the ruins, and yet US surveillance was so sharp that Zarqawi, with his one wooden leg, was apparently observed fleeing on the first day! Amongst Iraqis, the all-purpose Zarqawi was referred to as a kind of mobile WMD able to appear wherever required. His story remained incredible right up to the end, the released photo evidence showing the lightly bruised body of a man killed with a 500lb bomb. (8)
Nick Berg, Margaret Hassan and the Abu Ghraib scandal
By April of 2004 the game was well and truly up. Fallujah became the first major town to come under the open control of the Resistance. Simultaneously, US repression provoked an uprising by the Shia Mehdi Army and the US found itself waging a war on two fronts. Massive shows of inter-faith solidarity ensued with 200,000 Sunnis and Shias on April 9th gathering for collective prayers in Baghdad’s largest Sunni mosque, where the lead preacher derided the possibility of civil war as an American pretext for extending the occupation. The US faced a chorus of protest around the world as it bludgeoned Fallujah from the air in a desperate attempt to retake the city. Then, photographs of systematic torture in the Abu Ghraib detention center were released to the press, finishing off what little credibility the US retained in world opinion. Detracting from the negative publicity, however, previously unknown militant groups began kidnapping foreign nationals and releasing gruesome videos in which the kidnap victims were frequently beheaded on camera when the kidnappers’ demands were not met.
The first victim was businessman Nick Berg, in an alleged 'retaliation’ for Abu Ghraib. The killing, said to be the work of al Zarqawi, came under scrutiny when independent media questioned the execution tape’s veracity. It was determined that the video had first been uploaded to the Internet from London, and after examination of the images by a Mexican forensic surgeon, many observers agreed that the man shown in the film was already a corpse when beheaded. (9)
Anglo-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan had lived in Iraq for 30 years and dedicated her life to the welfare of Iraqis in need, fighting tirelessly against UN sanctions and opposing the Anglo-American invasion. So when she was kidnapped on her way to work in the autumn of 2004, Iraqis were incredulous. Spontaneous public information campaigns were started and a poster showing Mrs Hassan holding a sick Iraqi child appeared on billboards across the capital. "Margaret Hassan is truly a daughter of Iraq," it read. Patients of Iraqi hospitals took to the streets in protest against the hostage takers, and prominent Resistance groups, even including the phantom Zarqawi, called for her release.
Her kidnappers did not issue any specific demands, but in the captivity video Hassan pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops. In previous cases, the groups had identified themselves and used the videos to make their demands. But Margaret Hassan’s kidnapping was different from the start. This group used no specific name and no banners or flags to identify itself. In their videos appeared none of the usual armed and hooded men or Koranic recitations. Other abducted women, Robert Fisk noted, were released "when their captors recognised their innocence. But not Hassan, even though she spoke fluent Arabic and could explain her work to her captors in their own language."
A video soon surfaced purporting to show her execution and an Iraqi man, Mustafa Salman al-Jubouri, was later sentenced to life imprisonment by a Baghdad court for aiding and abetting the kidnappers. To this date, no group has ever claimed responsibility. (10)
The 'Salvador Option’
Long after piles of corpses began appearing by the roadsides, victims of anonymous assassins, Newsweek magazine reported on a Pentagon plan to use counterinsurgency death squads to eliminate Iraqi Resistance fighters and their supporters. The so-called 'Salvador Option’, named after a similar campaign in Central America in the 1980s, was confirmed by later reports of Interior ministry involvement in the burgeoning death squads. As the victims mounted, the corporate media filtered the story through its angle of Sunni fanatics targeting innocent Shia civilians. But the facts showed a different story. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the bulk of resistance attacks (75%) were on Coalition Forces, far exceeding that of any other category in their survey (with attacks organized by quantity, type of target, and numbers killed and wounded). In sharp contrast to the corporate media’s picture, civilian targets comprised a mere 4.1% of attacks. After 300,000 Baghdad Shias staged the largest popular demonstrations since 1958, M. Junaid Alam asked: "Would such a massive number of Shiites have shown up to protest the occupation if they thought that most of the Sunni-based armed resistance, also opposed to the occupation, was trying to kill them?" (11)
Car bombs
2005 saw a spectacular rise in the use of car bombs, many directed against innocent civilian targets. Though the Zarqawi network was said to have no more than about a thousand men in Iraq, it apparently had an endless supply of personnel ready to sacrifice themselves for the holy war. Other accounts, however, suggest a different explanation.
In May 2005, former Iraqi exile Imad Khadduri, reported how a driver whose license had been confiscated in Baghdad was questioned for half an hour at an American military camp, informed that there were no charges against him, and then directed to the al-Khadimiya police station to retrieve his license. "The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was…carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and … found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat…the only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated 'hideous attack by foreign elements’". (According to Khadurri, the scenario was repeated again in Mosul, when a driver’s car broke down on the way to the police station where he was sent to reclaim his license. The mechanic he then turned to discovered the spare tire to be laden with explosives.) (12)
In the same month, 64-year-old farmer Haj Haidar, who was taking his tomato load from Hilla to Baghdad, was stopped at an American checkpoint and had his pick-up thoroughly searched. Allowed to go on his way, his 11 year-old grandson then told him he saw one of the American soldiers placing a grey melon-sized object amidst the tomato containers. Realizing the vehicle was his only means of work, Haidar fought his initial impulse to run and removed the object from his truck, placing it in a nearby ditch. He later learnt that it had in fact exploded, killing part of a passing shepherd’s flock of sheep. (13)
At this point, legendary Iraqi blogger 'Riverbend’ reported that many of the supposed suicide bombings were in fact remotely detonated car bombs or time bombs. She related how a man was arrested for allegedly having shot at a National Guardsman after huge blasts struck in west Baghdad. But according the man’s neighbours, far from having shot anyone, he had seen "an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away." (14)
The SAS in Basra
In Basra on September 19th 2005, suspicious Iraqi police stopped undercover British soldiers in a Toyota Cressida. The two men then opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. Eventually captured, they were identified by the BBC as members of the SAS elite special forces. The soldiers were in wigs and dressed as Arabs and their car was packed with explosives and towing equipment. (15) Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV that the car was meant to explode in the centre of Basra’s popular market. Before his thesis could be confirmed, however, the British army’s tanks flattened the local prison cell and freed their sinister operatives.
The phony 'hostage crisis’
Plans to orchestrate sectarian chaos became more obvious in the Occupation’s third year. In one incident, the Baghdad police told commanders of the Shia Mehdi Army that gunmen near the village of Madain were holding 150 Shia civilians hostage. When the militia sent fighters to the area to negotiate their release, they were fired upon, losing at least 25 men. "I think it was a set-up; the fire was too heavy," said an aide said to the Mehdi militia, adding the attackers used snipers and heavy machineguns. (16) Local townspeople were unaware of the supposed hostage crisis and no hostages were ever discovered there.
"Could it be a good thing?" Samarra and the 'Civil War’
Although the incessant sectarian brainwashing was clearly having an effect, Iraqis continued to dismiss the idea of a civil war. (17) In the wake of the destruction of Samarra’s Golden Mosque, however, the scale of the killing in Iraq rose sharply. Those responsible for this critical attack wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms according to the mosque guards. Joint forces of Iraqi ING and Americans, patrolling the surrounding area the whole while, went on to assist a militia attack on a Sunni mosque in a pre-programmed 'response’. The response of most ordinary Iraqis, however, was quite different, According to Sami Ramadani "None of the mostly spontaneous protest marches were directed at Sunni mosques. Near the bombed shrine itself, local Sunnis joined the city's minority Shias to denounce the occupation and accuse it of sharing responsibility for the outrage. In Kut, a march led by Sadr's Mahdi army burned US and Israeli flags. In Baghdad's Sadr City, the anti-occupation march was massive." (18) The Western media, however, could now seize upon each and every incident as evidence of an irreparable social disintegration. Columnist Daniel Pipes approvingly observed that sectarian conflict would reduce attacks on US forces as Iraqis fought each other. His comments were then reflected on Fox News with onscreen captions that read: "Upside To Civil War?" and "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" (19)
History as mystery
The key to justifying the horrendous colonial assault on Iraq was the non-stop manufacture of lies. Zionist cheerleader Thomas Freidman had likened Saddam’s Iraq to an ethnically segregated Alabama in the era of lynchings, where Shia and Kurds held sub human status. That the Minister of Health was Kurdish, that the regime had two Shia Prime ministers (Sadoun Humadi and Mohammed Al-Zubaidi), or that the Vice President was a Christian, never intruded on Freidman’s 'analysis’. In fact, Iraqis rarely asked about the religion or ethnicity of the leaders and functionaries they reported to. It was simply not a matter of concern for them.
Meanwhile, for the 'human rights’ brigade, propagandists such as The Independent’s Johann Hari would hash out a two-dimensional caricature of a country in which a hellish regime murdered, each year, 70,000 of its own citizens (without anyone really noticing). In spite of the Ba’ath government’s admitted crimes, however, a visitor could pass through Baghdad in the 1990s without coming across tanks, car bombs, kidnappings, air strikes, fuel shortages (!) power cuts and vast detention gulags. And whatever the scale of Saddam’s crimes, they pale next to those of the Occupation. As Mike Whitney has said "Saddam had no intention of dismantling the government, the army, the civic institutions; of looting the museums and killing the teachers and intellectuals, of ethnic cleansing the Christians and the Sunnis, and inciting violence between the sects. Saddam had no plan to increase malnutrition, to reduce the flow of clean water, to cut off the electricity, to remove the social-safety net, to increase the poverty and unemployment, or to set Iraqi against Iraqi in a vicious struggle for survival. Saddam did not abide by the neoconservative theory of "creative destruction," which deliberately plunged an entire nation into chaos destroying the fabric of Iraqi society and leaving the people to flock to militias for safety." (20)
The truth is that the approaching peak of global oil production threatens to fatally weaken the US power bloc. (21) Hence, Saddam’s Iraq, an independent, oil-rich state in the most geostrategically important region on earth could not be allowed to survive. But the intractable resistance to the Occupation has obligated the US to turn to its contingency plan (officially, of course, it didn’t have one) In this plan, something similar to Oded Yinon’s tripartite balkanization of the country is being thrashed out. (22) Existing independent states are to be broken up and replaced by a cluster of weak and pliant protectorates. The particulars may be very different, but the engineered breakup of Yugoslavia undoubtedly serves as the model for this dismemberment. "In the 1990s" wrote Diana Johnstone, "the US-led International Community was no longer interested in state-building. Nation-state deconstruction was more compatible with economic globalization measures." (23) To this end, in Iraq as in Yugoslavia, the US has allied itself with "state-splitters" and sectarian bigots, all the while publicly claiming to uphold national sovereignty. In case of any misunderstanding, neocon ideologues have clarified matters: 'natural’ sectarian tensions, they say, will inevitably arise in the absence of a repressive state to subdue them. Therefore, under their benevolent guidance, Iraq must be allowed to devolve into its ethnic components.
Iraq resists
After the 1991 bombing of Iraq, and George Bush Sr.’s announcement of a 'New World Order’ of American hegemony, foreign policy forums effectively proclaimed the nation-state obsolete. In fact, the global imposition of the Western model of development after WWII had already ended the traditional independence of the State. The 'new’ ideology was simply a recognition of facts on the ground. After the Soviet collapse, celebrated advocates of the anti-nation-state ideology predicted an approaching 'End of History’, which would see all the world’s peoples integrate into a globalized, urban, capitalist, consumer lifestyle. Thus, the "chaotic diversity of cultures, values and beliefs that lay behind the conflicts of the past" would be removed in a general process of political and cultural homogenization. (24) It is still too early to predict the end of this delirious vision, but across the world, people are opting to forge their own future, increasingly deaf to the advice of the super elites. In Iraq, consciousness of the big picture is greater than anywhere. Thus, the planned breakdown into generalized sectarian conflict has not materialized. As the armed resistance intensifies its struggle against the US and openly confronts the Salafi Jihadist terrorists (25), a pendant has become extremely popular amongst Iraqis. Seen on the streets and on television, anchorwomen wear it while reading the news. The pendant has the form of Iraq.
When TV stations showed Kalashnikov-weilding teenagers going toe-to-toe with the world’s most powerful army in Fallujah, the images evoked a struggle of epochal significance. But alongside the armed resistance, journalists, intellectuals, trade unionists and Iraqis of all walks of life are, each on their own terrain, facing off against military-corporate rule. However we decide to contribute, it is incumbent on all people of conscience to join them.
The author can be reached at gnaoua22@yahoo.co.uk
Notes:
1.
http://canadianspectator.ca/stuff/WWIII.html2.
http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=65593.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/1/154940/816
4."Saqueo a la Arqueologia" Clio: El Pasado Presente Madrid, #.20, June 2003
5. Asia Times, 20 August 2003
6.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles360.htm7."Terrorists spark fear of civil war as 50 die in car bomb" The Independent, Wednesday 11th February 2004
8.
www.kurtnimmo.com/?p=4199.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CAR405A.html10.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1353695,00.html11."Does the Resistance Target Civilians? According to US Intelligence, Not Really" M. Junaid Alam Left Hook April 18, 2005
12.(
http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/0505/Combat-terroris
m_160505.htm)
13.
http://abutamam.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_abutamam_archive.htl
m14.
http://riverbendblog.blogspit.com/2005_05_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#11163628193049649615.
www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0365.html16. Omar al-Ibadi, (Reuters) Oct 28
17.
www.uruknet.info?p=12150In Riverbend’s words: "Iraqis have intermarried and mixed as Sunnis and Shia for centuries. Many of the larger Iraqi tribes are a complex and intricate weave of Sunnis and Shia. We don't sit around pointing fingers at each other and trying to prove who is a Muslim and who isn't and who deserves compassion and who deserves brutalization." Regarding the lies about ethnically-based oppression by the Ba’ath, see:
http://www.iraqresistance.net/article.php3?id_article=37218. Sami Ramadani, Friday February 24, 2006 The Guardian
19. www.uruknet.info
20.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_1341.shtml21."Crossing the Rubicon", Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers, 2004
22."The March of The Monoculture" Helena Norberg-Hodge, The Ecologist, Volume 29, No.3 May/June 1999
23."Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions", Diana Johnstone, Pluto Press 2002
As N. Hildyard once observed: "Scratch below the surface of inter-ethnic conflict, and the shallowness and deceptiveness of 'blood’ or 'culture’ explanations are soon revealed. 'Tribal hatred’ (though a real and genuine emotion for some) emerges as a product not of 'nature’ or of a primordial 'culture’, but of a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology and a struggle for identity." N. Hildyard, Briefing 11 – Blood and Culture: Ethnic Conflict and the Authoritarian Right, The Cornerhouse. 1999
24.Oded Yinon "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s"
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html25. "Anbar Revenge Brigade Makes Progress in the Fight Against al-Qaeda"
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=23
69940Posted by Marc Parent mparent7777 mparent CCNWON at 8:59 AM
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