November 18, 2004 - It’s no secret the Bushcons hate NGOs and believe they are casting a negative light on the Strausscon plan for Word War IV. As Naomi Klein writes ( http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0620-06.htm ), the Strausscons are keen "to sweep up those pesky non-governmental organizations that are helping to turn world opinion against U.S. bombs and brands," for instance CARE, the organization Margaret Hassan worked for.

Klein continues:

The best NGOs are loyal to their causes, not to countries, and they aren’t afraid to blow the whistle on their own governments. Think of Medecins sans frontieres standing up to the White House and the European Union over AIDS drug patents, or Human Rights Watch’s campaign against the death penalty in the United States.

In order to keep NGOs in check—that is to make sure they toe the Strausscon line—the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies created NGO Watch ( http://www.ngowatch.org/ ), and organization designed to "bring clarity and accountability to the burgeoning world of NGOs," in other words make sure they don’t cause trouble for the Strausscons as they go about killing countless people and destroying civilian infrastructure.

The American Enterprise Institute, of course, is where the Strausscon camarilla draws its sustenance. "The American Enterprise Institute is an NGO itself and it is supported by the most powerful corporations on the planet," Raj Patel, policy analyst at the California-based NGO Food First, told Klein.

"They are accountable only to their board, which includes Motorola, American Express and ExxonMobil." As for influence, few peddle it quite like the AEI, the looniest ideas of which have a way of becoming Bush administration policy. And no wonder. Richard Perle, member and former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, is an AEI fellow, along with Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president; the Bush administration is crowded with former AEI fellows.

"The Bush administration may be willing to go it alone, but what it really wants is legions of self-censoring followers, from foreign governments to national journalists and international NGOs," Klein explains.

Is it possible the Strausscons wanted CARE out of Iraq? Is it possible the murder of Hassan was a message to other meddlesome NGOs and individuals? Consider the following, posted on the ReliefWeb site ( http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/ebbd6f4432ea87aac1256de
a0047ef29?OpenDocument ):

CARE Australia has confirmed that CARE’s Office in Baghdad was attacked [in late November, 2003]. Three rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) were used in the attack with two causing minor damage to the facade of the building and a third hitting a palm tree in the front yard. CARE Australia’s Chief Executive, Robert Glasser has said, "CARE has relocated expatriate staff from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, while the security situation is reviewed." ( http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/ebbd6f4432ea87aac1256de
a0047ef29?OpenDocument

As ABC radio reported, CARE received a threat from a "terror group that called itself the Iraqi Resistance," as the Sydney Morning Herald described it:

"We are going to kill you and attack your places without any further notice. We are issuing this communique after we attacked the Care office and we are letting you know that the deadline for all such places, hotels, houses, oil companies, will be the third and the last day of Eid (Eid al-Fitr). Otherwise these buildings will be totally destroyed."
( http://reg.smh.com.au/login.do?status=FAIL&errMsg=&errCode=1
0001&server=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smh.com.au&data=%2Farticles%2F2 ... )

By CARE’s own admission, the NGO has "maintained a continuous presence in Iraq since the Gulf War in 1991, throughout the period of sanctions, and during the most recent conflict. CARE has assisted 11.5 million Iraqis since the end of the recent war."

Such attacks and repeated warnings forced CARE to follow the UN, Red Cross, Caritas, and Oxfam in withdrawing foreign staff from Iraq. Margaret Hassan, however, as an Iraqi citizen, remained behind.

Is it possible the Iraqi resistance would attack and organization dedicated to saving Iraqi lives? Does it makes sense for the resistance to kill CARE workers and attack them "without any further notice," especially if they are working to save the lives of Iraqi children?

However, the NGO-hating Strausscons in the Pentagon—the same people who bomb hospitals in Fallujah because they want to shroud the number of people killed by the recent U.S. assault—may very well be interested in attacking CARE, especially after the organization writes things such as this:

action in March and April [2003] resulted in an unknown number of civilian deaths and injuries, and huge damage to vital infrastructure, which continues to cause a lack of clean water, electricity and basic health care. CARE remains deeply concerned about the current situation. … As theb> only international non-governmental organization to have worked continuously in central and southern Iraq since 1991, CARE is well positioned to provide a rapid and co-ordinated response to the conflict and to scale up activities to meet needs. Along with other aid agencies, CARE is calling for security issues to be addressed and for restoration of public services, so that civilians can start to rebuild their lives.

Not only has CARE provided humanitarian service, it has also waged a political campaign against the invasion and occupation. Patrick Carey, senior vice president of CARE USA, testified before Congress on July 18, 2003 ( http://www.careinternational.org.uk/news/what_do_care_think/
iraq/iraq_congressional_testimony.htm ) Carey lectured Congress about the lack of security, the restoration of public services, paying civil service salaries, and preventing the outbreak of disease in Iraq—crucial humanitarian concerns the Strausscon warmongers are not interested in. In fact, the argument can be made that the Strausscons are deliberately pulverizing Iraqi society as part of their overall plan to fracture and weaken the Muslim Middle East—a plan long envisioned by far right-wing fascists in Israel’s Likud and Strausscon criminal organizations such as PNAC, AEI, and JINSA in the United States.

Moreover, in February 2003, "CARE International UK joined the million-strong march in London to raise awareness of the potential humanitarian consequences of war in Iraq. Driven by concern about the health, safety and dignity of the Iraqi people, CARE staff joined over a million others in the biggest protest in UK history," according to their web site.

In short, CARE posed itself as a political opponent of the Strausscons—and in particular, Margaret Hassan, who remained behind, was likely viewed as an obstruction that had to go. Bush’s Pentagon had more to gain from Hasssan’s abduction and murder than the Iraqi resistance.

Consider the following, as reported by Rory McCarthy of the Guardian
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1353695,00.html ):

* In previous kidnappings, Iraq’s several insurgent groups have been quick to identify themselves and claim responsibility, using videos to make their demands. From the moment Mrs. Hassan was seized her case was different.
* At one point her kidnappers described themselves as an "armed Islamic group". But unlike previous incidents they gave themselves no specific name and used no banners or flags to identify themselves.
* Again in the final video showing her apparent death, shot in the head by a masked gunman, there was no insignia to identify a particular group.
* Her kidnappers were unmoved [by posters showing Mrs. Hassan holding a sick Iraqi child put up on billboards across Baghdad]. At one point they threatened to hand her over to Tawhid and Jihad, the extreme militant group based in Fallujah that is led by a young Iraqi named Omar Hadid and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the wanted Jordanian militant.
* Her case appears to confirm accounts from figures in the insurgency that the movement is made up of several independent groups with little overall leadership and with frequently different methods and agendas.

Or she was murdered by an "independent group" with no relation to the Iraqi resistance, a possibility the corporate media will of course dismiss as an outrageous conspiracy theory—if they consider it at all—since naturally the resistance, as Bush tells us, is comprised of little more than terrorists, criminals, and Saddam dead-enders. Of course, the above items may also be viewed as a conspiracy theory, although the corporate media likes to call it "informed speculation" on the part of "experts" who claim to know more about the situation in Iraq than tinfoil hatters such as me.

Initially I believed Hassan was kidnapped in a covert operation to discredit the Iraqi resistance. I still believe this theory is at least partially true, but with an additional, possibly more sinister element—Hassan was killed in brutal fashion as a warning to NGOs and humanitarian organizations to stay out of Iraq.

Now that Bush has won his "political capital" and plans to spend it—and he faces little if any substantial or effective opposition—his Strausscons in the Pentagon will move all speed ahead with their plan to crush the resistance, as shamelessly elucidated by the likes of William Kristol and other Strausscon "thinkers" who make the rounds at Fox News, on the pages of the Weekly Standard, and elsewhere across the length of the Bush Ministry of Disinformation, Lies, and Omissions.

As Lewis E. Lehrman and William Kristol ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46730-2004May
21.html )write in the Washington Post, "any armed insurgency opposed to a peaceful transition in Iraq must be destroyed. Fallujah must be conquered and terrorists denied safe haven in Fallujah and other centers of insurrection," in short, as last week’s desperate assault on Fallujah demonstrated, a "scorched earth" policy must now be followed, including massive war crimes such as bombing hospitals, executing prisoners, denying food and shelter to civilians, and shooting anything that moves (even family pets).

As Margaret Hassan would be a witness to these war crimes—and stand as one of a few brave and selfless souls remaining in Iraq to help the victims of the murderous Strausscons—she had to go in the most gruesome and unambiguous manner.

I sincerely believe Margaret Hassan was murdered by counterinsurgency forces comprised of American, British, or Israeli operatives—and possibly a combination of all three. As I have stated previously, I cannot provide evidence of this, only a hunch based on a close study of past U.S. covert actions and, as well, the unequivocal fact that the Strausscons have declared war on the people of the Middle East and will do anything—including egregious war crimes and stealing elections—in order to realize their immoral plan.