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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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 Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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Just a reminder:
Sept. 9, 2005: A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the government can continue to hold Padilla indefinitely. |
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arjuna
Joined: 31 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:14 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| arjuna wrote: |
| BJWD wrote: |
| arjuna wrote: |
| The Iraqi "insurgents" are fighting the invaders and occupiers of their homeland. Why should any sane person not support them? |
The insurgents are fighting war against Iraq. The Americans are in the middle of a caveman hate fest. Most of the large attacks aren't directed at the US forces but at the group of people who have a slightly different god. |
No one has a monopoly on hate. The condition for strife was intentionally created by the invaders. And, most importantly, the mofos (Americans and British) initiated the "civil war" through covert activities, and are probably continuing to support the different groups. This kind of thing has been standard behavior of the Empire around the world for a long time already. |
Where is the proof? |
The Coming Wars - Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker
The Salvador Option - Michael Hirsh and John Barry, Newsweek
Fear Up Harsh: The Iraqi Civil War in Context
by Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=569&Itemid=1
The causes underlying any civil war are always complex, confused, even contradictory -- as one would expect in an outbreak of madness. But those seeking to discover some of the key precipitating factors behind Iraq's furious plunge into chaos and disintegration might find one of them in the records of an obscure Congressional committee meeting on August 10, 2004.
At that meeting, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, General Peter Pace (now head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and General Bryan Brown, head of Special Operations Command, appeared before the House Armed Services Committee. In a long session larded with the usual rhetorical posturing, mutual backscratching with the committee's rubberstamp Republican majority - and a couple of polite queries from the timid Democratic minority - Wolfowitz announced the Pentagon's plan to give money, arms and training to a network of local militias in trouble spots around the world. These irregular forces - "not just armies," Wolfowitz emphasized - would be used to "counter terrorism and insurgencies," provide greater internal security" in regions of American interest and "deny sanctuary" to America's designated enemies, according to Pentagon transcripts of the testimony.
General Brown said the use of militas was part of the "unconventional warfare" being waged by the Bush Administration across the globe, "whereby special forces accomplishes our national objectives through, by and with surrogate forces." General Pace gave the legislators a view of the scope of such operations, mentioning "Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Paraguay, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran" and of course Iraq, which he mentioned twice. Wolfowitz told the Congressman that Bush wanted $500 million to set up this network - his own personal Janjaweed.
Writing in September 2004, I described the session this way:
Making copious citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked aggressive war against "potential" enemies, [Wolfowitz] proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour.
Any rogue state that countenances such freedom of speech within its borders will become a prime target for "the path of action," said Wolf, quoting Bush's most ringing Hitlerian phrase from the 2002 manifesto. To relieve the overstretched U.S. military, the "action" will be carried out largely by Bush's new hired guns: religious and ethnic militias, tribal forces, mercenaries, cultists, insurrectionists, druglords, pirates - basically anyone willing to slit throats and terrorize populations at the order of the Oval One.
Two months after this Congressional meeting, Bush duly signed a measure giving Special Operations Command the authority to provide "support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals," the Los Angeles Times reports. This was for the Pentagon side of the scheme; any money for militias funneled through the CIA would of course be cloaked in the "black budget." The Special Ops deal marked the first time that the Pentagon had been given such powers, which previously had been reserved for the CIA. The significance of this "liberation"of Special Forces became clear in the following months, when, after securing another four years in power, Bush signed a series of executive orders "authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations" in "as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia," as Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker last year. The orders turned the world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon advisor told Hersh.
In January 2005, I tied the revelations in Hersh's article to those unearthed back in October 2002 by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, which I had featured in a subsequent column. From the January 2005 piece:
More than two years ago, we wrote here of a secret Pentagon plan to foment terrorism: sending covert agents to infiltrate terrorist groups and goad them into action - i.e., committing acts of murder and destruction. The purpose was two-fold: first, to bring the terrorist groups into the open, where they could be counterattacked; and second, to justify U.S. military attacks on the countries where the terrorists were operating - attacks which, in the Pentagon's words, would put those nations' "sovereignty at risk." It was a plan that countenanced - indeed, encouraged - the deliberate murder of innocent people and the imposition of U.S. military rule anywhere in the world that American leaders desired.
This plan is now being activated.
In fact, it's being expanded, as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week. Not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action; the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with - and ultimately undermine - existing terrorist groups.
Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. These secret operations will be carried out with virtually no oversight; in many cases, even the top military commanders in the affected regions will not be told about them. The American people, of course, will never know what's being done in their name.
The covert units - including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads - will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.
Bush's executive orders also enabled the Pentagon "to run the operations off the books, free from legal restrictions imposed on the CIA," Hersh noted. The orders signed by Bush after the election in 2004 seem to bring the 2002 plan to fruition.
In January 2005, Pentagon plans to implement such operations in Iraq were leaked to Newsweek. The talk, again, was of the "Salvador Option" and also references to Britain's brutal and bloody repression of anti-colonial insurgencies in the years after World War II. The Iraq plans called for using Shiite and Kurdish militias to target Sunni insurgents - and civilians. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," a top Pentagon official told Newsweek. "We have to change that equation."
All observers agree that the "equation" has now definitely changed in recent months. The howling chaos of civil war has taken a quantum leap in Iraq since the bombing of the Shiite's venerated al-Askari shrine in Samarra - an operation of unusual planning and dexterity. As Mike Whitney noted in Information Clearing-House, drawing on AFP reports:
AFP is reporting that the bombing of the Golden Domed Mosque "was the work of specialists" and that the "placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours."
Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, "Holes were dug into the mausoleum's four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance."
Clearly, the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance. This is the work of highly-trained saboteurs and bomb-experts who were executing a precision-demolition to incite sectarian violence.
Now Iraq is being devoured in a maelstrom of carnage and fear. Reports of the horror are pouring in from all sides: mass beheadings, unspeakable tortures, the abandonment of vast swathes of Baghdad and other cities to warring militias, the evident complicity of the Iraqi government in many of the atrocities coupled with its obvious inability to stop any of them - and, apparently, a beserker rage infecting American forces, as attested in story after story of civilian massacres.
Yet none of this actually does any real harm to the true war aims behind Bush's illegal war. I will be taking up this theme in a Moscow Times column that will be posted here in a couple of days, but here is an excerpt from that piece, describing the Bush Faction's genuine war goals:
The reality clearly shows that Bush had three primary objectives in launching the invasion. First and foremost was the transfer of large portions of the national wealth of Iraq - and the United States - into the coffers of his political cronies, corporate backers and family members. Second was the frantic acceleration of the long-running, bipartisan militarization of America, which is now almost wholly dependent on war and rumors of war to keep its heavily-mortgaged economy afloat. Third was planting a permanent military presence in Iraq to "project dominance" over the strategic oil lands and serve as staging areas for further operations in regime change and political extortion as needed. ("Nice little country you got there, Abdul; too bad if something, like, happened to it - you savvy? Now howzabout signing that free trade agreement already?")
Yes, the myriad causes underlying the madness of civil war are always complex and confused. Once loosed, it is a whirlwind that rages in all directions; no one can control it. But it is obvious that certain groups would benefit the most from civil war, and thus would have the most to gain from trying to channel its fury to their own advantage. Ironically, these primary feasters on chaos are the same two gangs that have prospered the most from the global "War on Terror": the Bush Faction and al Qaeda. |
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arjuna
Joined: 31 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:29 am Post subject: |
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Iraq: Divide and Rule, 'Ethnic Cleansing Works'
Sunni, Shia violence, death squads, and civil war in Iraq
by Enver Masud
October 10, 2006
The Wisdom Fund
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2006/1010-Regions.html
Polls by the State Department and independent researchers show that Iraqis favor an immediate U.S. pullout, meanwhile, an "independent commission", according to the Sunday Times, "may recommend carving up Iraq into three highly autonomous regions".
We believe that the commission's recommendation will have little to do with the welfare of the Iraqis. Their recommendations will have much to do with expanding U.S. control of the energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia.
In a letter to President Clinton in 1998, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) -- the global domination project of the neoconservatives, which includes elements of Israel's "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" -- urged him to remove Saddam Hussein from power in order to secure "our vital interests in the Gulf" that holds "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil." This probably wouldn't happen, they said, unless "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor" took place.
[...]
Thomas H. Henriksen wrote in the Hoover Digest:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/2904886.html
From the founding of the United States, the federal government has relied on subterfuge, skullduggery, and secret operations to advance American interests. . . . The post-invasion stage in Iraq also is an interesting case study of fanning discontent among enemies, . . . Like their SOG predecessors in Vietnam, U.S. elite forces in Iraq turned to fostering infighting among their Iraqi adversaries on the tactical and operational level.
Investigative reporter and author James Bamford writes in "A Pretext for War":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385506724/thewisdomfund/
Oddly, among the things they were trained to do at Harvey Point was practice blowing up busses -- Palestinian-terrorist style. "We made a school bus disappear with about twenty pounds of U.S. C-4," said former CIA officer Robert Baer. . . . "We were also taught some of the really esoteric stuff like E-cell timers, improvising pressurized airplane bombs using a condom and aluminum foil, . . . By the end of the training, we could have taught an advanced terrorism course."
Pepe Escobar writing in Asia Times says:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF10Ak03.html
Pentagon financing of these myriad [Iraqi] militias and the active involvement of Allawi in all these operations suggest that the Pentagon itself is destabilizing the country it is supposed to control. Destination: civil war.
Robert Dreyfuss, who covers national security for Rolling Stone, says:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/11/18/our_monsters_in_iraq.php
I have repeatedly written about Shiite death squads and about abuses by the paramilitary Badr Brigade, the secret army trained and run by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Iraqi Sunnis and opposition leaders . . . have charged that the Iraqi government has been running assassination teams.
The U.S., with its advisors, control of finances, and by the security it provides, controls the Iraqi government.
Journalist, author, film-maker, John Pilger, writing in the New Statesman says:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200609040016
. . . in contrast to the embedded lie that the killings are now almost entirely sectarian, 70 per cent of the 1,666 bombs exploded by the resistance in July were directed against the American occupiers and 20 per cent against the puppet police force. Civilian casualties amounted to 10 per cent. In other words, unlike the collective punishment meted out by the US, such as the killing of several thousand people in Fallujah, the resistance is fighting basically a military war and it is winning. That truth is suppressed, as it was in Vietnam.
[...]
In June 2006, Ralph Peters, writing in the Armed Forces Journal, recommended:
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
As for those who refuse to 'think the unthinkable,' declaring that boundaries must not change and that's that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static, and many frontiers, from Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus, are changing even now (as ambassadors and special representatives avert their eyes to study the shine on their wingtips).
"Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works", says Peters.
The Iraq war has taken the lives of well over 100,000 Iraqis and Americans, maimed and wounded countless others, and the unexploded bombs and depleted uranium will continue to take their toll.
The Iraq war's cost to the American taxpayer "is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion," according to a report written by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard budget expert.
For the sake of the Iraqi people, the American soldier, and the American taxpayer, the U.S. should leave Iraq. A reasonable plan with timeline -- say 10 months, prepared with the assistance of the international community -- should be presented to the Iraqis so that they may prepare as best they can.
No doubt, there will be chaos and more killing, but in the long run the continued U.S. presence will do more damage than the damage the Iraqis may do to themselves -- there's no way of avoiding that after the destruction of their society, institutions, and infrastructure.
And one more thing. Iraq paid for its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the U.S. should pay reparations for its war of aggression against Iraq -- the "Supreme International Crime".
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2005/0629-FtBragg.html |
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arjuna
Joined: 31 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:32 am Post subject: |
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The Smoking Gun
By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12095.htm
02/27/06 "ICH" -- -- The AFP is reporting that the bombing of the Golden Domed Mosque �was the work of specialists� and that the �placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours.�
Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, �Holes were dug into the mausoleum�s four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance.�
Clearly, the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance. This is the work of highly-trained saboteurs and bomb-experts who were executing a precision-demolition to incite sectarian violence. The blast bears all the hallmarks of a covert Intelligence-agency operation.
Who benefits from such a vicious attack on the foundations of Islamic identity and culture?
The AFP�s report is consistent with earlier accounts provided by a Baghdad blogger who demonstrates that the destruction of the mosque was a �controlled demolition� which required considerable time and professional expertise. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m20950. The photographs of the nearby, but untouched, minarets provide a shocking example of the bomber�s skill.
Eyewitness accounts have appeared on various web sites claiming that there were �unusual activities� taking place at the mosque the night before the bombing. One witness reported that he heard their �cars the whole night until the next morning�. Another witness who lives near to the mosque says that at 8:30 that evening he was told �to stay in your shop and don�t leave the area� while Iraqi National Guard and American troops �patrolled the area until the next morning�. At 6:30 AM the American troops left.
At 6:40 the first explosion went off.
Almost immediately, the western media swung into high-gear producing over 1,000 stories containing the word �civil war� in the first 24 hours. As always, the media reliably regurgitates the narrative that best serves the interests of management and their political benefactors. In this case, it�s clear that �civil war� is being used to divert attacks from occupation forces and pit Iraqis against Iraqis.
But is this really the plan? After all, how does that make Iraq more governable?
By now, we should realize that the Bush administration has no plan to govern Iraq nor do they care a whit about the suffering of the Iraqi people. The only thing the matters is the extraction of petroleum from Iraqi oil-fields and its unobstructed transfer to the market. The rest is rubbish.
[...]
The present strategy reflects the growing desperation of the Pentagon planners and the civilian leadership. America is hopelessly mired in an �unwinnable� war. The choices for action have narrowed to either withdrawal or a stepped-up campaign of Black-ops designed to foment sectarian violence. The bombing of the Samarra Mosque fits perfectly into the latter category.
Henry Kissinger summarized the current Iraq strategy when he offered his opinion on the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Kissinger callously averred, �I hope they kill each other.�
The former National Security Chief�s axiom has now been elevated to the level of state-policy. The Iraq strategy replicates the Kissinger Doctrine; manipulating chauvinism and cruelty to advance the imperial agenda.
The demolition of the sacred mosque was a deliberate assault on the foundations of Muslim identity. It was intended to undermine Iraqi tradition and culture and weaken confidence in the resistance.
Neocon Michael Ledeen might refer to this as �creative destruction� but, in fact, it is terrorism writ large; the calculated use of violence directed at civilians to achieve a political objective. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 5:11 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Khomeini fatwa 'led to killing of 30,000 in Iran'
By Christina Lamb, Diplomatic Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:55pm BST 19/06/2001
CHILDREN as young as 13 were hanged from cranes, six at a time, in a barbaric two-month purge of Iran's prisons on the direct orders of Ayatollah Khomeini, according to a new book by his former deputy.
More than 30,000 political prisoners were executed in the 1988 massacre - a far larger number than previously suspected. Secret documents smuggled out of Iran reveal that, because of the large numbers of necks to be broken, prisoners were loaded onto forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes in half-hourly intervals.
Gruesome details are contained in the memoirs of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, The Memoirs of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, one of the founders of the Islamic regime. He was once considered Khomeini's anointed successor, but was deposed for his outspokenness, and is now under house arrest in the holy city of Qom. |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/02/04/wiran04.xml
Saddam executed 61,000 in Baghdad: study
| Quote: |
December 9, 2003 - 7:21PM
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Saddam Hussein's government may have executed 61,000 Baghdad residents, a figure much higher than previously believed, a new study suggests.
The bloodiest massacres of Saddam's 23-year presidency occurred in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shi'ite Muslim south, but the Gallup Baghdad Survey data indicates the brutality also extended into the capital.
The survey, which the polling firm will officially release later today, asked 1,178 Baghdad residents in August and September whether a member of their household had been executed by Saddam's regime, with 6.6 per cent saying yes.
The polling firm took metropolitan Baghdad's population of 6.39 million people, and average household size of 6.9 people, to calculate that 61,000 people were executed during Saddam's rule.
Past estimates were in the low tens of thousands. Most are believed to have been buried in mass graves.
The US-led occupation authority in Iraq has said at least 300,000 people were buried in mass graves in Iraq.
Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than one million people were executed.
Without exhumations of the mass graves, it is impossible to confirm a figure.
Scientists said during a recent investigation that they had confirmed 41 mass graves on a list of suspected sites that covers 270 locations. |
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/09/1070732207618.html?from=storyrhs
Links from Informationclearinghouse
| Quote: |
What Really Happened
Anti War
Albasrah.net |
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
Whatreallyhappend is a holocaust denial site. |
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