DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, June 10, 2006Cartoon by Steve Bell.
Bring 'em on:
One 101 st Sustainment Brigade Soldier was killed and one was wounded
by an improvised explosive device while conducting a combat logistics
patrol at about 12:55 a.m. June 9, west of Kirkuk, Iraq.
(MNF- Iraq)Bring 'em on:
Spc. Luis D. Santos, 20, of Rialto, Calif., died in Buritz, Iraq, on
June 8, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device
detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations. Santos was assigned
to the 1st Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat
Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.
(DefenseLink)U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said 39 raids were conducted across Iraq late Thursday and early Friday,
including some directly related to the information they obtained from
the strike against al-Zarqawi. Those were in addition to 17 raids
carried out immediately after the terror leader was killed. He said at
least 24 people had been detained and one person killed in the raids.
OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTSBaghdad:A car bomb killed five people and wounded 14 others in central Baghdad. No other details were immediately available about the blast.
A
roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in an outdoor market
in Baghdad on Saturday, killing four people and wounding 27. The victims were all civilians.
Gunmen in two cars shot to death a metal worker and wounded two others in their shop in western Baghdad.A mortar landed on a house in the capital, seriously wounding a 50-year-old woman and a 2-year-old girl.Khan Bahi Saad:Police found the severed heads of two brothers in the small town of Khan Bani Saad near Baquba, 65 km north of Baghdad. They had been kidnapped from their workplace in Baquba a week ago.
Kirkuk:Gunmen ambushed and wounded three civilians in a car 25 km northeast of Kirkuk.Two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol in central Kirkuk.One policeman was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol in central Kirkuk.Hawija:A civilian in a car was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the town of Hawija about 60 km southwest of Kirkuk.
Mosul:A gunfight broke out between Iraqi soldiers and gunmen in Mosul, killing two people, including a Syrian truck driver caught in the crossfire.
Gunmen stormed neighbouring butcher shops and shot dead five butchers and wounded one in Mosul.Tikrit:3 foreign nationals open fire on Iraqi civilians in Tikrit on Friday, 3 Iraqis dead. (Video)Shotlist:
Exterior of the hospital
Shots of bodies on ground
Shots of their relatives, blood on the vehicle, bullets on the ground
Interview with Police official (don't want say his name)(in Arabic)
Shots of their relatives
Shots of woman body on the vehicle, her relatives crying, details
Baquba:American troops raided houses in the al-Galibiye district of Baquba killing four civilians and injuring one. (Video)Shotlist:
Shots of bodies on the vehicle
Interiew with Ahmad Jasim (in Arabic)
Interview with Selam Jasim (in Arabic)
Blood on ground, bullets, people crying, details
Interview with Fadima selam (in Arabic)
Interview with Hamid Jasim (in Arabic)
Shots of destroyed vehicle, incident area, details
Interview with Doctor Adnan Jasim (in Arabic)
Shots of destroyed houses, bullets, bodies being taken, people crying
Photo caption:
Mourners grieve outside one of the houses in Ghalibiya, 15 kilometers
west of Baqouba in Iraq Friday, June 9, 2006 after five civilians were
killed and three were wounded in the town Friday, according to the
regional joint cooperation center and Dr. Ahmed Rifaat of Baqouba
General Hospital, but the circumstances of the incident remained
unclear. (AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)
>> NEWSAn
Iraqi man who was one of the first people on the scene of the U.S.
airstrike targeting Zarqawi said he saw American troops beating a man
who had a beard like the al-Qaida leader: The witness, who lives
near the house where al-Zarqawi spent his last days, said he saw the
man lying on the ground near an irrigation canal. He was badly wounded
but still alive, the man told Associated Press Television News.
U.S.
troops arriving on the scene wrapped the man's head in an Arab robe and
began beating him, said the local man, who refused to give his name or
show his face to the camera. His account could not be independently
verified. The U.S. military made no mention of any physical contact
between U.S. troops and al-Zarqawi other than an attempt to provide him
with medical attention.
Iraq war bill deletes US military base prohibition:
As originally passed by the House of Representatives, the Pentagon
would have been prohibited from spending any of the funds for entering
into a military basing rights agreement with Iraq.
Senate aides
said Republican staffers removed the provisions from the bills before
House and Senate negotiators convened this week in a late-night work
session to write a compromise spending bill.
Wisconsin Rep.
David Obey, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee,
tried to reinsert the language, but it was opposed by Rep. Jim Kolbe,
the Arizona Republican responsible for foreign affairs portions of the
spending bill.
>> REPORTSISLAM MEMO REPORTS ON RAMADI(Wednesday June 7, 2006 at night)
" Iraqi sources are anticipating that the attack of the American
occupation forces against Ramadi may not materialize after several
Sunni officials in the government had issued threats that they will
resign from their positions in the government and from parliament if
the American attack on Ramadi does take place."
(Friday June 9, 2006, 6 at night)
"American forces, supported by tens of military vehicles and hundreds
of soldiers, have joined in the fierce battles that has been raging
between Resistance fighters and the occupation forces.
Islam
Memo correspondent reported an increase in the intensity of the
fighting as American air force jets and helicopters have joined in the
fighting.
The correspondent reported that four American military
vehicles have been destroyed so far with a number of dead and injured
American sildiers. He pointed out that American soldiers have forced
their way into many homes and have positioned sniper positions on their
roof tops.
The Stadium and Officers districts have witnessed
very intense fighting between the Resistance fighters and the
occupation forces during the past half an hour."
(Friday June 9, 2006, 7 at night)
" The American occupation forces has called upon the Resistance
fighters in Ramadi who are engaging them to drop their weapons and
surrender.
Islam memo correspondent reported that giant loudspeakers
announced the following: "To all armed men, your Amir has died, and
there is no need anymore for you to fight. Therefore, drop your weapons
and surrender to the American and Iraqi forces and we promise that we
shall not harm you".
The correspondent reported that the
response to these American calls was immediate as many mortar and RPG
shells started to bombard the occupation forces concentrations in the
Stadium district and the Governorate building."
read in full...AN ARMY WHERE WOUNDED SOLDIERS ARE ON THEIR OWNIraqi
Army soldier Ali Katham Hussein would have a Purple Heart if he were in
the U.S. Army. But he's received no medals for valor. He can't even
afford to have the shrapnel and bullet lodged in his chest removed.
Neither can the Iraqi army.
"In Saddam Hussein's time, if you got hurt, you received compensation," he said.
Three
months ago, insurgents ambushed Ali Katham Hussein's unit near Abu
Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. Hussein was shot nine times in the
attack -- bullets pierced his chest, stomach, arm and leg.
Leaning
on a crutch on a dusty, trash-littered Iraqi army base in west Baghdad,
he pulled up his shirt to reveal two moist bandages taped to his chest.
"After I got shot, I didn't get treated in a military hospital," he said. "I paid from my own pocket to get treatment."
In
fact, there are no Iraqi military hospitals. Like all injured Iraqi
soldiers, Hussein had to pay for his own treatment at an Iraqi civilian
hospital.
read in full...SOMETHING OUT OF APOCALYPSE NOWCivilians
who spent time at the Haditha Dam base of the Third Battalion of the
First Marines describe the place as something out of
Apocalypse Now or
Lord Of The Flies.
It was "feral" one said. Soldiers didn't wash. They had abandoned
regulation billets and had built make-shift, primitive huts bearing
skull-and-crossbone signs. The place stank. One American civilian
engineer attached to the camp, with the task of keeping the huge
hydro-electric dam nearby operating, said he was terrified of the
soldiers he had to live alongside..
read in full...>> COMMENTARY AND ANALYSISDAHR JAMAIL: THE MOTHER OF ALL DISTRACTIONSIn wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. -- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II
Propaganda
is when the Western corporate media tries to influence public opinion
in favor of the Iraq War by consistently tampering with truth and
distorting reality. It is to be expected. And it is to be recognized
for what it is. On occasions when the media does its job responsibly
and reports events like the November 19, 2005, Haditha Massacre, it
must also be willing and able to anticipate and counter propaganda
campaigns that will inevitably follow. It is to be expected that the
responsible members of the media fraternity will stick to their guns
and not join the propagandists.
This piece is a summary of five
most commonly deployed crisis management propaganda tactics which the
State and Media combine that we can expect to see in relation to the
Haditha Massacre. Listed in a loose chronological order of their
deployment, the tactics are: Delay, Distract, Discredit, Spotlight and
Scapegoat. Each of the five public relations campaigns will here be
discussed in the context of the Haditha Massacre. (...)
Distract(...)
the mother of all distractions came on June 8, 2006, in the media spasm
over the alleged killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We can be certain of
this week's front page news. The ridiculous thing is that Zarqawi
himself is perhaps more a US propaganda and media fabrication more than
a real threat to the Iraqi people, let alone the security of the US.
The story of Zarqawi served to simplify and put an al-Qaeda face on
what is really a much more complicated situation regarding the
resistance and rising sectarian tensions in Iraq. Now with Zarqawi's
alleged death reported by the US Government, the media is swallowing
the state's version of this story whole, despite all the fraud that
we've seen in past US propaganda stunts, such as the Jessica Lynch
"rescue," the Pat Tillman fabrication, the pulling down of Saddam
Hussein's statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad, and even the capture of
Hussein himself. Will the death of Zarqawi slow the violent resistance
in Iraq? No. Will the death of Zarqawi bring improvement n the
electricity, water and medical infrastructure in Iraq? No. Will the
death of Zarqawi bring stability and security to the Iraqi people? No.
But is the death of Zarqawi a perfect distraction from the Haditha
Massacre, total failure of the US occupation of Iraq, and the ongoing
US military assault on the city of Ramadi? Absolutely. And his death
conveniently distracts the corporate media from reporting that while
the Prime Minister of Iraq appointed most of his cabinet last weekend,
the position of Vice President Abel Abdul Mahdi, which had been set
over a month ago, was the re-appointment of one of the most aggressive
supporters of the economic agenda of the Bush administration in Iraq.
An agenda which includes the implementation of corporate globalization
of Iraq's laws and far, far greater US corporate control of Iraq's oil
supply.
read in full...ROBERT FISK: SO, IT'S ANOTHER "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"The
man immortalised by the Americans as the most dangerous terrorist since
the last most dangerous terrorist, is killed - by the Americans. A
Jordanian corner-boy who could not even lock and load a machine gun is
blown up by the US Air Force - and Messrs Bush and Blair see fit to
boast of his demise. To this have our leaders descended. (...)
Yesterday,
with an inevitability born of the utterly false promise that the
bloodbath in Iraq is yielding dividends, we were supposed to believe
that the death of Zarqawi was a famous victory. The American press
dusted off their favourite phrase: "terrorist mastermind". No one, I
suspect, will be able to claim the $25m on his head - unless he was
betrayed by his own hooded gunmen - but the American military, stained
by the blood of Haditha, received a ritual pat on the back from the
Commander-in-Chief. They had got their man, the instigator of civil
war, the flame of sectarian hatred, the head chopper who supposedly
murdered Nicholas Berg. Maybe he was all these things. Or maybe not.
But it will bring the war no nearer to its end, not because of the
inevitable Islamist rhetoric about the "thousand Zarqawis" who will
take his place, but because individuals no longer control - if they
ever did - the inferno of Iraq. Bin Laden's death would not damage
al-Qa'ida now that he - like a nuclear scientist who has built an atom
bomb - has created it. Zarqawi's demise - and only al-Qa'ida's killers
would have listened to him, not the ex-Iraqi army officers who run the
real Iraqi insurgency - will not make an iota of difference to the
slaughter in Mesopotamia.
Messrs Bush and Blair slyly admitted
as much yesterday when they warned that the insurgency would continue.
But this raised another question. Will the eventual departure of Bush
and Blair provide an opportunity to end this hell/ disaster? Or have
the results of their folly also taken on a life of their own,
unstoppable by any political change in Washington or London?
read in full...RIVERBEND: ZARQAWI...So
'Zarqawi' is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that
greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I've lost track
of time...). I didn't bother with the pictures and film they showed of
him because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken,
bleeding bodies.
The reactions have been different. There's a
general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed,
whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even
exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be?
When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003... The
timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really
fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki
is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis
aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water,
death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail
right now.) (...)
How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or
Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along
with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was
greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single
family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at
first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who
will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that
an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want.
The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him
anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing
flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."
So now that
Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he
was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right?
The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt,
military strikes and sieges will die down... That's what we were
promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to
kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy
foreign troops?
read in full...TIME TO DISPEL SOME MYTHSZarqawi
was not very important in the first place, and hardly represented the
majority of the resistance or insurgency. When he arrived in northern
Iraq he was a nobody. After the war he descended into Iraq proper and
began to organize the disparate foreign fighters who had come to fight
with Saddam's army against the American invasion. Shocked by the
disappearance of Saddam's army and the easy American victory, these
arab fighters from Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, were without
leadership, and Zarqawi was a charismatic leader, and fearless,
according to all accounts. Although he claimed several significant
attacks, such as the United Nations bombing and the assassination of
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq leader Muhamad Bakir
al Hakim, Zarqawi and his foreign fighters were a numerically
insignificant proportion of the anti American fighters.
It took
the United States to make Zarqawi who he became. Intent on denying that
there was a popular Iraqi resistance to the American project in Iraq,
the Americans blamed every attack on Zarqawi and his foreign fighters,
and for a while it seemed every car accident in Baghdad was Zarqawi's
fault. The truth was that much of Iraq's Sunni population, alienated by
the Americans who removed them from power and targeted them en masse
during raids, supported and participated in the anti American
resistance. Even many Shias claimed resistance. Muqtada Sadr, the most
powerful and popular single individual leader in Iraq, led two
"intifadas" against the Americans in the spring and summer of 2004, and
his men still rest on their laurels, claiming they too took part in the
Mukawama, or resistance. But by blaming Zarqawi for everything the
Americans created the myth of Zarqawi and aspiring Jihadis throughout
the Arab world ate it up and flocked to join his ranks or at least send
money. Zarqawi was the one defying the Americans, something their own
weak leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere, could
not do, having sold out long ago. It was then comical when the
Americans released the Zarqawi video out-takes and mocked him for
fumbling with a machine gun. Having inflated his reputation they were
now trying to deflate it. But it was too late.
read in full...MCCAIN SIDES WITH AL QAEDAWell,
of course he doesn't, but since the rightwingers don't think the rest
of us are celebrating the death of Zarqawi in a manner pleasing to them
(never mind that most of the left isn't saying anything much different
than Bush himself--this isn't going to stop much), then let's play the
same game as them and ask: Why does John McCain offer strategic advice
to terrorists? From Larry King, on the significance of Zarqawi's
killing:
MCCAIN: I
think that it will remove a very important propaganda tool, a person
who has probably served as a real effective recruiter. But, Larry, I
want to caution if I were the al Qaeda people right now I would be
planning a lot of attacks in the next few days and weeks to show that
his removal really didn't affect them but it does affect them.
link1/500TH OF A ZARQAWIHere's
how you know the Pentagon was more interested in getting Zarqawi for
his symbolic value than it was concerned with wiping out the
organization he ran: there was a $25 million bounty on Zarqawi's head,
but for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian they think will replace him,
just $50,000.
A JOLLY SYMBOLIC DEATHIt's
so hard to take Zarqawi's death at face value (yesterday I was
muttering to myself that the US had had all these old photos of Zarqawi
but had for years been using an artist's rendering which had the
eyebrows all wrong) because Zarqawi's been such a convenient tool of
Bushite propaganda for so long. Before the invasion, he was the sole
piece of "proof" of a Saddam-Al Qaeda nexus, although he was not then
connected to Al Qaeda and was operating in Kurdish- rather than
Saddam-controlled Iraq, under the protection of the no-fly zone. He was
more convenient alive than dead, so he was left to operate his
bioweapons lab unmolested. Later, Fallujah was ordered to surrender
Zarqawi; he had already fled, and the city was turned into smoking
rubble. Then there was the Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter, cited by Bush in
speech after speech months after it was discredited as a fake. So you
can't help but wonder when the timing of the man's death is so
symbolically convenient, as Bush admitted today:
The
problem we have in this war is that all they've got to do is kill some
innocent people by a car bomb, and it looks like they're winning, see.
It takes a major event like an election or the death of Zarqawi to
understand that we're making progress.
If it looks
like they're winning, it's not because of "a" car bomb, but several
hundred car bombs. Zarqawi you can presumably only kill once, so when
it's announced on the same day as the cabinet is completed, hopefully
obscuring the preceding six months of sordid horse-trading, that's just
jolly symbolic. And... convenient.
linkTHAT LITTLE INCIDENTSo
does anyone else think that that little incident Sunday when an
American howitzer accidentally went off while they were cleaning it, or
whatever the story was, and blew up several houses in Hibhib, the place
where Zarqawi was just killed, wasn't such an accident?
read in full...RUMMY BEING MODESTRumsfeld:
"I think arguably over the last several years, no single person on this
planet has had the blood of more innocent men, women and children on
his hands than Zarqawi." I assume Rummy is just being modest.
linkPULLING CORPSES OUT OF THE HAT"The
Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to
date." -- Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's chief spokesman
There
can be no doubt that the 'death' of 'Abu Musab al-Zarqawi' is part of a
carefully planned disinformation campaign designed to divert attention
away from the slaughter of Haditha (and elsewhere), a campaign that the
corporate and state media have gleefully participated in. Indeed,
'al-Zarqawi' is itself a psy-ops programme in its own right, replete
with faked letters of authenticity, fed to the press by the US
military, which calls into question the source of the Internet videos
of beheadings, and who is behind the wave of kidnappings and murders
currently sweeping Iraq.
The BBC in particular have had a field
day with 'al-Zarqawi' calling him amongst other choice phrases, a
"psychopath" and predictably, describing those who question the role
(let alone the existence) of 'al-Zarqawi' as "conspiracists" (BBC Radio
4, AM News 9/6/06).
So too with Channel 4 'News'. Jon Snow's email 'news'-letter (8/6/06) had this to say
The bombing and killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the point man for al-Qaeda in Iraq, is a dramatic and important moment.
Important?
For whom exactly? In what way can the death of the alleged 'al-Zarqawi'
be an important moment for the illegal occupation of Iraq? The
implication is that with 'al-Zarqawi' out of the way, the resistance to
the occupation will, by some process known only to Jon Snow, melt away.
Point man? This kind of nonsense is not even worthy of comment.
He's
been responsible for the beheading and slaughter of untold numbers of
people. He was certainly a Godfather of the Sunni insurgency and
specifically of targeted sectarian killings.
Alleged
beheading? Godfather? Please Mr. Snow, who writes your abyssmal,
infantile copy? The only assertion of 'al-Zarqawi's involvement in
beheadings were the deaths of David Berg and Ken Bigley about which
there are more questions than answers. Neither beheadings have been
proved to be the work of 'al-Zarqawi'. If they have Mr Snow, where is
your proof? A video tape of masked individuals? Pu-leese!
read in full...WHY ZARQAWI WOULD HAVE HAD TATTOOS?Wayne Madsen writes:
The
U.S. military spokesman's revelation that Zarqawi's body was partly
identified from tattoos is noteworthy. Abu Abdel-Rahman al-Iraqi,
described as the Deputy Emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq on an Al Qaeda web
site, stated that Zarqawi was a martyred mujahed sheikh. Zarqawi was a
lieutenant of strict Wahhabi Islam adherent Osama Bin Laden. However,
why Zarqawi would have had tattoos is baffling. Islam specifically
forbids tattoos. According to Islamic texts, the Prophet Mohammed
forbade tattooing...
Of
course, like the al-Zarqawi wearing a gold ring (also forbidden for
devout Muslims), the al-Zarqawi sporting tattoos probably was not and
never was a Wahhabi Muslim. More likely, the al-Zarqawi we recognize
(with a barrage of recent images in preparation for his theatrical exit
from the corporate media stage), was a Jordanian patsy, probably a
garden variety criminal who served prison time and was groomed by
Jordan's Dairat al-Mukhabarat intelligence service to believe he was
engaged in a jihad against the Great Satan.
read in full...CONSPIRACIES AND COUNTER-INSURGENCY TACTICSThat
'al Zarqawi' existed more or less in the lurid dreams of Donald
Rumsfeld was backed up by American military intelligence agents in Iraq
who reported in October 2004 that 'al-Zarqawi' was "more man than myth"
and that his position as arch al-Qaeda terrorist in Iraq was
essentially a creation of the Bush administration who wanted to "find a
villain for the post-invasion mayhem."
The was also the very
obviously fabricated February 2004 'letter' that was alleged, by the
U.S. government, to be a communiqué from al-Zarqawi to Bin laden. Who
can forget the stoicism of the Pentagon when it refused to reveal from
whom it had obtained the 'letter' and the patriotism of Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt when he said: "the important thing is that we have this
document in our hands, how it was found is not as important as the fact
that we have it and that we can use it."
No doubt.
In the
letter, Zarqawi conveniently took pre-emptive responsibility for the
wave of sectarian attacks and shrine bombings in Iraq over the last 2
years. In the letter 'Zarqawi' 'wrote':
"We
are striving urgently and racing against time to create companies of
mujahidin that will repair to secure places and strive to reconnoiter
the country, hunting the enemy -- Americans, police, and soldiers -- on
the roads and lanes. We are continuing to train and multiply them. As
for the Shi'a, we will hurt them, God willing, through martyrdom
operations and car bombs."
In a tape released in
April 2004 'al-Zarqawi' called on Iraqis to "burn the earth under the
occupiers' feet." As yet no one has been able to explain the logic
behind 'al Zarqawi's' plan to encourage Iraqis to join him in fighting
American troops while at the same time attacking and killing Iraqis. It
is also a mystery why 'al-Zarqawi' believes that attacking and killing
Iraqi civilians is the best way to 'destroy the infidels'.
If we
were in any way conspiratorially minded, we might suggest that
'al-Zarqawi' was simply a ficticious point man in a U.S. military
psychological operation designed to hide the U.S. government's military
and political policy in Iraq - but everyone knows 'conspriacies' do not
exist. Long-standing American and British counter-insurgency tactics
that amount to the same thing on the other hand...
read in full...PRICE TAG OF LOST WARSBush's
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed US taxpayers
$300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of
Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year.
Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These
are not the full costs. The huge figure does not include the destroyed
equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and
disabled.
Gentle reader, are you getting enough vicarious
pleasure from the slaughter of Iraqi women and children to justify this
price tag? Is murdering "ragheads" that important to you? If so, you
are one sick person, just like every member of the Bush administration.
read in full...A MULTI-FACETED IRAQI RESISTANCEThe
corporate-western media would have us believe that a U.S./British
victory in Iraq is being thwarted by a civil war, essentially between
Sunni and Shia religious factions. Many are confused by what the same
media portrays as chaos and anarchy fomented by "terrorists" and
"insurgents" bent on gaining power. A careful reading of Pedro Rojo and
Carlos Varea's in-depth, fact-based analysis reveals a multi-faceted
Iraqi Resistance working toward a single, overriding objective:
defending their national sovereignty and defeat of the enemy - the
U.S/British invaders bringing an end to the occupation
read in full...FANATIC MILITIAS USED IN A DIRTY WAROkhwan Sinna wa Shi'a, hatha alwatan ma nbi'a
(We are brothers, Sunnis and Shiites; we are not selling this homeland)
This slogan was chanted by the Iraqis in Baghdad and other provinces
days after the occupation in April 2003, denouncing any sectarian
division in the Iraqi society, on every occasion. There was hope. Until
very recently, in spite of all the killings, Iraqis were million per
cent confident that there is NO sectarian sensitivity between the
Shiite and the Sunnis.
Now, death on seemingly sectarian bases is the strongest reality in Iraq. (...)
So
what happened? Is this the beginning of the civil war? If yes, why the
so called sectarian killings, which actually began 3 years ago did not
succeed in creating civil war then? Why now? Who is behind them? Who
are the death squads after all? To begin with, it has become common
knowledge, beyond any argument that the Interior Ministry and the Iraqi
Army are involved in the death squad, whether the Iraqi ministers or
the American authorities, admit it or not (3). There are tons of eye
witnesses' testimonies, documents, evidences, films...
The type
of killing now connected to the death squads began around early 2005,
on the hands of the Iraqi police commandos. But some important points
worth mentioning here: that the first Iraqi interim government was
(elected) in January 2005 and was heavily Shiite (Jafari government),
that around that time the talk of the Salvador option in Iraq was being
heard (4), and that the police commandos were formed, mainly of Shiite
militias, especially Badr (the armed branch of the Supreme Council of
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and the Mahdi Army (the Sadr Movement
militia).
But does all this mean that the death squads are
Shiite militias within the interior ministry forces? The answer is: NO,
not exactly. I know that any Iraqi who has seen a death squads'
operation (which is becoming a familiar day light phenomenon) would
want to shoot me in the head for this answer; because a convoy of
heavily armed men, masked, black-suited, in expensive modern cars and
pick ups, calling Sunnis the worst of names, shooting in the air,
calling for revenge, attacking individuals, shops, kidnapping people,
beating them to death or shoving them in cars trunks, would not look
like anything other than a sectarian militia. But this is only part of
the story. (...)
It was the American Governor of Iraq, Bremer,
who engineered the Shiite militias join the Iraqi security forces,
according to article 91 of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)
put by Bremer himself, to fight the (Sunni insurgency) by Iraqi hands.
Death Squads in Iraq are units inside the security forces, whose
members are not just religiously fanatic sectarian militias, by foreign
intelligence: American, Israeli, Iranian or any other country. They are
also Iraqis "educated" and trained outside Iraq, brought into Iraq
before the occupation, and shortly after it. Their job is to instigate
sectarian conflict leading to create a (federal) Iraq, e.g. a divided
Iraq.
It is true that the hands are Iraqis, but the minds and
the money are not. It is also true that some political sectarian
militias are involved in the death squads, especially those who are
connected to the Iranian project in Iraq. But it is interesting to
notice how the mainstream media, and the Iraqi government keep on
nurturing the idea that the sectarian killings are done by the Sunni
insurgency, what they call the rogue units in the police, and the Mahdi
Army. (...)
read in full...THE POWER OF WEAKNESS, AGAINImagine
that instead of facing rag-tag bands of poorly equipped and trained
insurgents, our Marines and soldiers in Iraq were in a very difficult
fight with an opponent similar to themselves, but somewhat stronger.
What
would fighting the strong do for them? Being David rather than Goliath,
they would see themselves as noble. Every victory would be a cause for
genuine pride. Defeats would not mean disgrace, but instead would
demand greater effort and higher performance. Even after a failure,
they could still look at themselves in the mirror with pride. Knowing
they faced a stronger enemy, their own cohesion would grow and their
demand for self-discipline would increase.
If the enemy's
overmatch were too great, it could lead our units to hopelessness and
disintegration. But a fight with an enemy who were stronger but still
beatable would buck us up more than tear us down on the all-important
moral level.
Now, to see the situation as it is, turn that
telescope around. Every firefight we win in Iraq or Afghanistan does
little for our pride, because we are so much stronger than the people
we are defeating. Every time we get hit successfully by a weaker enemy,
we feel like chumps, and cannot look ourselves in the mirror (again,
with IED attacks this happens quite often). Whenever we use our
superior strength against Iraqi civilians, which is to say every time
we drive down an Iraqi street, we diminish ourselves in our own eyes.
Eventually, we come to look at ourselves with contempt and see
ourselves as monsters. One way to justify being a monster is to behave
like one, which makes the problem worse still. The resulting downward
spiral, which every army in this kind of war has gotten caught in,
leads to indiscipline, demoralization, and disintegration of larger
units as fire teams and squads simply go feral.
Again, this
process is fundamental to Fourth Generation war. Martin van Crevald has
stressed the power of weakness as one key, if not the key, to 4GW, and
he is correct. It shows just how far America's military leadership is
from grasping Fourth Generation war that its response in Iraq has been
to order all troops to undergo a two to four-hour "refresher course in
core values."
They are caught in a hurricane, and all they can
do is spit in the wind. The rest of us should get ready for the house
to blow down.
read in full...QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"Surely if this Al-Zarqawi was such a prize and as they were
controlling the "battle space" (sic) - first one to the scene without
any incident - surely they would have wanted to arrest him with his top
lieutenants and interrogate them ? After all what could seven men do
against thousands. And if the "bad guys" (resic) died in the ensuing
battle so be it... puzzling."
-- comment by G. Damiani at Juan Cole's Informed Comment