October 21, 2005
Much is being made of attacks against Shia this and Shia that. (Note: There are Shia as well as Christians in my family).
In any case, many questions are asked: Who is killing the Shia?
Today, I ask the same question, who is killing the Sunnis?
From CNN: At
about the same time, gunmen in an Opel fired on Sunni worshipers as
they were leaving the al-Hamid mosque, killing three elderly men. Yes,
it is the same question, because the answer is one and the same -
foreign intelligence groups are at work to try and foment a civil war
in Iraq, pitting brother against brother.
They have been trying this since the first horrific attacks on Shia pilgrims in 2003.
I
have mentioned numerous times that 1) It is in the interest of Israel
that Iraq never again become a military might. As a democracy, one of
the first things an Iraqi government will do is call for the liberation
of Jerusalem.
2) It is in the interest of Iran that Iraq not
become anything of much, really. A unified stable Iraq will allow the
US to look eastward. The Iranian plan is to keep the US bogged down in
Iraq indefinitely.
3) Syria is also wary of its situation in the Iraqi quagmire, but it is allowing materiel to slip over the border.
4)
Turkey understands that once violence subsides and stability reigns in
Iraq the first order of the day would be for the Kurds to annex many
Turkmen villages and then declare either a) Greater Kurdistan or b)
declare independence. As we all know, federalism would include that
(See Quebec)
5) The Saudis have a vested interest in ensuring
that a Shia-led government fail in Iraq. Their Shia minority have
started to become restless. In Egypt, in 2003, the Shia minority there
began to demand they be recognized as an official minority in the
country. Egypt said there were 700,000 Shia in the country. The Shia
community said they numbered 2 million.
Once again, I find
myself having to write of the distinct groups fighting for different
reasons and receiving training, funding, and inspiration from different
sources.
By the way, during the January elections, Iraqi
resistance groups distributed a flyer saying they would not participate
in any attacks against Iraqi civilians at the polls. Who then attacked
the civilians?
Iraq has been under the glaring eyes of many
since 1972, the year Saddam Hussein nationalised the oil industry, much
to the chagrin of the British. The following year trouble began to brew
in the north of the country.
There is a really good book out there that examines the current crisis in Iraq by examining the country in the early 1970s.
Titled The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy or Division?, the
book examines Saddam's authoritarianism, ruthlessness, and dictatorship
but also sheds some light on the Baathists built a modern nation.
Anderson
and Stansfield, the authors say that Saddam had decided in 1970 to
reach a political settlement with the Kurds - known to us as the
so-called March Memorandum.
The book says, and as all Iraqis
over the age of 40 know, the Kurds were granted autonomy, the right to
speak and teach Kurdish, Kurdish newspapers and a cut of the oil
proceeds coming from Kirkuk.
But, the book says, US and
Israeli intelligence agencies did not like the truce between Saddm and
the Kurds and so began mobilizing in the north of the country.
In the book, the authors write
In
a Washington Post interview in the summer of 1973, Barzani had
deliberately dangled a tempting carrot in front of the Unites States…
'If America will protect us from the wolves we would control the Kirkuk
[oil] field and give it to an American company to operate.’ (This was 30 years ago, it would take 30 years of planning by the US government to see this plan bear fruit)
Saddam
took this to mean treason. By early 1974, the memorandum had fallen to
the wayside and there was warfare in northern Iraq.
Hoping to
weaken the central Baghdad government and punish it for the 1972
nationalization of oil, US and British intelligence units influenced
Iran to deploy two full regiments in the north of Iraq. The Iranian
Shah, a CIA asset at the time, started pouring money, logistical
support and weapons into northern Iraq.
Pressured by the war
that was costing money and men, Saddam signed the Algiers Agreement in
1976, giving Iran much control of the Shatt Al Arab waterway.
The war in northeren Iraq came to a grinding halt when for his side of the agreement, the Shah cut off supplies to the Kurds.
So,
Iran has always played a role in Iraq. So too Turkey, which in the
1990s maintained a well-stocked forward base to chase down and kill PKK
fighters.
But only Iraqis, and some who have studied the history of geopolitical chess games in the region could know this.
Serving in the US military in Iraq does not history one teach. Yodaism.
But
let's look at what the pean of diplomacy Henry Kissinger also said:
"The Road to Jerusalem is through Baghdad and not vice versa".
Why? Here Kissinger is that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be resolved if Baghdad is sacked and its leadership ousted.
But Michael Hirsh in a Newsweek article on June 23, 2003 wrote:
IT
WAS WOLFOWITZ, the gentlemanly superhawk, who within days of 9-11
prodded the Bush administration into a radical new strategy: forcefully
confronting states that sponsor terrorism. It was Wolfowitz?the ex math
whiz who fell in love with the idea of ?national greatness? as a youth
and is now seen as the Bush administration?s chief intellectual?who
pressed Bush hardest to transform the war on terror into a campaign for
regime change and democracy in rogue nations, especially in Iraq and
the Islamic world.
Now the deputy defense secretary and his
fellow neoconservatives are on the defensive. They are battling a
growing crowd of critics on Capitol Hill and around the world as the
Bush administration's credibility and its assumptions are tested as
never before.
In Iraq, after another week in which U.S. troops
died and got into fierce fire fights, elements of more than half of
America's Army divisions are tied down. Some U.S. officials have begun
muttering the dreaded Q word quagmire, a term Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld had mocked on a visit to Baghdad in the days just after the
three-week war. In the Mideast, the hard-liners' move to replace Yasir
Arafat with the moderate Mahmoud Abbas and to ignore the conflict until
after the Iraq war has touched off a new cycle of violence that stunned
even the White House in its savagery.
It seems increasingly
difficult to argue that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad. In
the face of a possible congressional probe into why Saddam Hussein?s
weapons of mass destruction have not been found, two Pentagon neocons,
Doug Feith and Bill Luti, sought earlier this month to identify
themselves with, of all people, Bill Clinton. In a fumbling news
conference, they insisted that their intel squared with the previous
administration's.
But there is a plethora of outside interference in Iraq. Stretching back decades.
The most glaring and damning report, which many Americans have never heard of is the PNAC - Project for a New American Century. This reported was drafted in September 2000, one year before 911, by a US thinktank.
The
report was drafted for Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush Paul
Wolfowitz, and Lewis Libby, then Cheney's chief of staff, before the
2000 U.S. elections.
The invasion of Iraq, and control of the Arab Gulf region, is clearly defined as a central strategy in the report:
"The
United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in
Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq
provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime
of Saddam Hussein."
Ever wonder why Blair will not budge from
his support of Bush? Here, according to the report the UK is "the most
effective and efficient means of exercising American global
leadership"; that this ally play a vital role in the 'fight and
decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars'; sees the
U.N. as a weak, bureaucratic offset of the U.S.'s political will:
peace-keeping missions are 'demanding American political leadership
rather than that of the United Nations'.
But here's the kicker.
The report says "even should Saddam pass from the scene, bases in Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently - despite domestic opposition
in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops - as 'Iran may well
prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has".
Why have no Americans stood up and said "Gee, boss, wait a minute?"
Gutenberg
gave us the printing press and broke the Roman Catholic church's hold
on literacy. This allowed the age of enlightenment, the reformation,
industrialisation, on and on and on.
Why is no one reading this stuff?
Well here is why. This Aljazeera report, off Agence-France Presse, shows that freedom of the press has regressed in the west.
The US is ranked 44. Canada is 21. Namibia is 25. Iraq is 157 - seems liberation didn't do much there.
The US in Iraq is ranked at 137.
Oh, have you heard the one about burning Taliban persons and then taunting other enemy fighters?
It's a good one.
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