http://mediekritik.lege.net/

[Leif Erlingsson]

Lite äkta nyheter:

(Detta är ett hopklipp av ett antal inlägg i annat forum, varför vissa smärre upprepningar förekommer.)


Först en länksamling. Detta är information jag nyligen har tagit del av - och jag rekommenderar varmt er som läser detta att göra sammalunda. Därefter mina kommentarer och analyser, samt ytterligare lite material.


Från helgens demonstration i Washington, större än under Vietnamkrigets dagar, DETTA ÄR STORT!: (C:a 500 000 människor eller mer, se på bilderna!)

http://www.bushflash.com/dc.html


Historic march in Washington, D.C. September 24th, 2005:

http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/DCMARCH2005512K.mov
(QuickTime)
http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/DCMARCH2005512K.wmv
(Windows Media)
http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/DCMARCH2005512K.rm
(Real Media)


Progressive Democrats' möte söndagen 25 sept. i Washington:

http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/PDA1512K.mov
(QuickTime)
http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/PDA1512K.wmv
(Windows Media)
http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/PDA1512K.rm
(Real Media)


George Galloway, engelsk MP, och andra talar vid protestmöte:

http://www.traprockpeace.org/audio/galloway_dc_092405_96k.mp3


DET STÖRSTA SEDAN 1968!

Detta är det största som har hänt sedan 1968-våren. Och det kommer att sprida sig över hela världen. Media-blockaden kommer inte att lyckas tysta detta! Med lånade formuleringar från min vän Gunnar Thorell, som själv var med i de första antikrigs-demonstrationerna 1968: En fantastisk folkfest verkar bära den här rörelsen! Vi kommer att få se en metamorfos som under Vietnamkriget. Den här sortens rörelse bärs av en energi som liknar naturkrafernas. Högerextremisterna kommer att för omväxlings skull få jobba i motvind. Krigsrätt för Bush och Blair! Självklart egentligen! Komiskt att se att nästan ingenting av det här - dvs "jordskred" för fred o demokrati - visas fram i "medierna". Men Sverige och svenskarna kommer snart att traska efter! Vi är ju som en lite försiktigare delstat i USA. Redaktioner och ledningsgrupper kommer att tvingas tänka om / el. bytas ut, i "moderniseringens" tecken.


OM ATT STÅ PÅ FOLKENS SIDA, MOT STATSTERRORISTERNA

Jag offrade en stor del av min nattsömn i går natt för att hinna ikapp med alla filmer och ett ganska långt inspelat möte med bl a George Galloway från
http://www.traprockpeace.org/audio/galloway_dc_092405_96k.mp3

En predikant i en annan filmsnutt mer eller mindre uppmanade till revolution. Galloway talade om vikten och hur svårt det är att stå på folkets sida i ett land som står under attack från det egna landets militär. Med historisk referens till en brittisk parlamentariker som gjort exakt detta i samband med både den amerikanska och franska revolutionen. Det finns definitivt väldigt mycket energi, men ännu inte tillräckligt mycket för att det ska bli revolution av det våldsamma slaget - iallafall inte det närmsta halvåret. Tack och lov, skulle jag nog vilja säga, eftersom en våldsam revolution skulle vara väldigt farlig.


EN NATURKRAFT, OMÖJLIG ATT STOPPA

Men det är definitivt en naturkraft och den kan omöjligt stoppas. Jag tänkte på väg till jobbet att till våren är det 38 år sedan 68-våren. Antingen är den 05-hösten eller så blir det 06-våren, det senare låter mer medialt, som blir en ny våg över världen av spontant organiserade auktioner, omöjliga att stoppa.

Syftet med att inte visa detta i TV, radio, tidningar (av en halv miljon demonstranter blev det i stort sett en arresterad morsa) är givetvis att det inte ska sprida sig. Men det kommer att sprida sig, och media har skjutit sig själva i foten med att inte publicera det - de har därmed, när folk inser detta, förbrukat den lilla trovärdighet de eventuellt hade. Man kommer endast att gå till media för att läsa om senaste såpa-skandalen och senaste filmstjärnan eller Kate Moss som snortat kokain, men för att få vet vad som händer så kommer man att gå till riktiga nyhetstjänstter såsom t ex DemocracyNow. Traditionella media blir som Hänt i Veckan, inget att ta på allvar.


DET VI SOM ÄR MOT TERRORISTERNA / KRIGSFÖRBRYTARNA BEKÄMPAR

``The colonial invasion of Iraq and the ugliest of lies of the lie machine that propagated and justified these barbarous acts will forever remain among the greatest and unpardonable crimes against humanity.'' - Jose Luis Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain

I översättning: ``Den koloniala invasionen av Irak och de otäckaste av lögner från den lögnmaskin som spred dessa och rättfärdigade dessa barbariska handlingar kommer alltid att förbli bland de största och mest oförlåtligaste av brott mot mänskligheten.'' - Jose Luis Zapatero, Spaniens premiärminister

Och jag upprepar att det vi - jag och andra - bekämpar är terrorister som i sken av och under beskydd av polisiär verksamhet mördar elektriker i London, som placerar ut sprängladdningar i London vilka dödar vanliga människor - folket, vi bekämpar terrorister som placerar ut sprängladdningar i Bagdad och Basra, som försöker provocera fram inbördeskrig i Irak för att kunna dela upp landet och därmed lättare kunna ta hand om oljan. (Det verkar dock som att Irakierna själva förstår vad som ligger bakom, och att dessa terroristhandlingar i själva verket kan ena Irakierna mot den gemensamma fienden, de utländska terroristerna från USA:s och Storbritanniens specialstyrkor som verkar utföra en stor del av dem, även om det säkert förekommer nut cases som dras med och inspireras av USA:s exempel.) Det är verkligen terroristerna som är folkfiender, terroristerna i Vita Huset och terroristerna i 10 Downing Street. Och deras medlöpare.


STATSTERRORISTERNA ÄR FOLKFIENDER - I FÄNGELSE MED DEM!

Och vi behöver inte, efter att i storleksordningen en halv miljon människor demonstrerat enbart i Washington, och många, många på andra platser i USA, tveka om att dessa terrorister verkligen är folkfiender. Både till sitt eget folk och till folket i Irak.


FOLKFIENDERNA ÄR GEMENSAM FIENDE TILL FOLKEN I USA, ENGLAND, IRAK OCH ALLA FOLK SOM STÅR PÅ FOLKETS SIDA, MOT TERRORISTERNA

Det Amerikanska, det Engelska och det Irakiska Folket har en GEMENSAM fiende. Dessa tre folk står på samma sida. Och på den andra sidan står terroristerna.

Själva måste vi fråga oss om vi är på terroristernas eller på folkets sida.


VI MÅSTE SJÄLVA TA OSS FRED, FRIHET OCH RÄTTVISA!

För dem som eventuellt inte läste min "Det andra valfiaskot" i vintras så upprepar jag detta citat:

Vi tycks ännu en gång befinna oss i en tid när ingen annan ger oss fred, frihet och rättvisa, utan vi måste själva ta oss detta. Liksom det var på den tiden då arbetarrörelsen, de kristna väckelserörelserna och fackföreningarna växte fram. Tiderna tycks vara så svåra att en bred mobilisering åter är nödvändig. En ny "väckelse" tycks behövas. Själva vårt samhälle, våra mest grundläggande värderingar, tycks åter befinna sig i den allra största fara, genom det som tillåts hända och som massmedierna främjar genom sin tystnad. Det tycks ännu en gång vara dags att samlas kring de grundläggande parollerna fred, frihet och rättvisa!

Leif Erlingsson
den 16 januari 2005


Hela artikeln finns här: http://uscrisis.lege.net/valfusk2004/


NEWCRIMINOLOGIST OM KORRUPTIONEN DJUPARE ÄN MAN VILL VETA BAKOM 911 & LONDONBOMBERNA

Subject: 911 & Londonbomberna - korruptionen djupare än en normalt funtad person vill veta, enligt dessa källor

http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=-1677497717

25 September, 2005

Haroon Aswat . . . FBI agent threatens former USDA federal agent, now staff reporter for The New Criminologist.

Author BERRY-DEE, Christopher

Haroon Aswat - the man British Police believe was behind the London bombings - was working for MI6, it has been confirmed by leading U.S. and French intelligence asset/agents.

Now an FBI agent in Seattle - name removed for security reasons, but can be published at the drop of a hat - has demanded that former USDA federal agent, Dr Janette Parker, stop talking to the British media about how the FBI obstructed their own top terrorism investigator, John O'Neill in his enquiries.

Dr Parker, who worked alongside O'Neill, although not in an official capacity' is fearful of her life. ``Janet is a highly-professional and honest person. She is very brave,'' says Christopher Berry-Dee, publisher of TNC. ``But, now the cat is out of the bag, and we have ensured that she will be protected by circulating her information to leading British newspapers and the media.''

Dr Parker writes: ``The American press can be silenced but not the British press. MI-5 and MI-6 and not happy about the intelligence failure on the American side of the Atlantic, especially withholding information about Haroon Aswat's intention for additional bombings and his fund raising in Seattle area in March 2002 (after 911).''

Haroon Aswat is the primary suspect as the mastermind of the London Bombings 7/7. The FBI can assert that Haroon was not in Seattle on March 6, 2002, but British intelligence had him under close surveillance and they know whether he was in England or not.

Dr Parker, who is supported by many other FBI agents and John Loftus (see: http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=1124824797 ) adds: ``You can fool some of the people some of the time, all the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time.''

By trying to discredit Dr Parker, she claims: ``The effort of the FBI to hide their own internal problems has now made it impossible for me to expose the corruption and fraudulent documents at the University of Washington Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. There were 40 doctors involved and 8 departments. Two doctors pled guilty to Medicaid billing fraud and obstruction of justice charges. The FBI had been conducting an investigation into the medical billing fraud but did not get indictments against them.'' In verified documents, sent to TNC and the British media, Dr Parker's explosive investigative results cover far-ranging matters, from terrorist training camps, money laundering for the extreme Islamic terror campaigns, FBI cover-ups, prostitution and brutal homicide, threats to her own welfare, physical abuse and intimidation, to include possible phone taps and email interception.

With the events, unfolding in Chicago, (see: http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=1529297048 ) even a blind man can see that the current U.S. administration is rotten thru-and-thru, and this corruption has long spread to the UK - where British citizens should be demanding of Prime Minister Blair why SIS/MI6 was using Haroon Aswat as an agent, and why, as John Loftus claims, was Aswat - who was on the British security services `Watch List', allowed to leave the UK, when the British Police were desperately searching for him?

Pinning down Aswat's movements - as all of the movements of the London Bombers - prior to the bombings is crucial, claim New Scotland Yard. ``Dr Parker's information IS crucial,'' says TNC. ``Her knowledge of Special Agent John Neill's work in counter-terrorism, could make her a very valuable asset if the Met really mean what they say.''

The 911 disaster ( of course the U.S. emergency services hotline number) could have been prevented, as could have the London Bombings.

As a deeply embedded intelligence source recently told TNC:

``Bush and Blair are just puppets. Their strings are tugged by money, corruption, ego, by the Intel services. You don't even want to know the truth.'' In a chilling observation, our source, who has been verified as having carried out executions on behalf of H.M. Government, and MI6, and a man who has served 25-years for terrorism offenses, added:

``The Northern Ireland Bank Robbery . . . the Dublin Art theft . . . the stealing of millions of pounds of UK Government Bonds - two in the name of Mark Thatcher - has all been covered up . . . MI6 would order me to commit murder, then the SAS would try and shoot me because I knew too much.''

``International terrorism is VERY BIG business,'' our source confirmed. ``The U.S. and UK trade in terrorism like it is some kind of off-the-shelf commodity. Forget the destruction of lives to normal people, women and children. I have been there and done it all. Your Dr Parker has done the right thing. Like me she is cladding herself with insurance - like a Kevlar jacket, and I wish her all the best.''

In a strange twist, an FBI agent emailed TNC, saying: ``We wish you all good luck, and I personally hope that something good comes out of all of this.'' The people of the U.S. should be very proud of Dr Parker. And those of us who are concerned about terrorism in the UK should salute her.

- END -


NÅGRA PUNKTER OM DEN MYCKET FARLIGA DYNAMIKEN JUST NU

Några punkter lånat från inlägg på annan lista av Bosse M, fast med en del egna formuleringar, om dynamiken just nu:

1. 911 var det Pearl Harbour som skulle motivera/legitimera alla nuvarande och framtida oljekrig. Men bortom Afganistan fanns det inte nog olja för att motivera en pipeline och dessutom är inte området stabiliserat. Oljeregimerna där vill att USA flyger och far.
   
   
2. Kuppförsöket mot Venezuela 2002 gick om intet. Chavez var väldigt populär. USA + FN har betett sig svinaktigt i Haiti och det jäser nu av motstånd i hela latinamerika.
   
   
3. Istället angreps Irak. Vilket har minskat oljeexporten till hälften och destabiliserat hela världsekonomin och USA:s oljeförsörjning.
   
   President Jimmy Carter sa rent ut den 19 september att det var Al Gore som vann presidentvalet år 2000 och att valet 2004 är högst tvivelaktigt:
   
   http://american.edu/media/speeches/carter.htm Jimmy Carters Town Hall meeting with the American University Community 4 p.m., September 19, 2005 Bender Arena
   
   Sponsored by the Center for Democracy & Election Management and Office of the President, Jimmy Carter: ``there's no doubt in my mind that Al Gore was elected president. He received the most votes nationwide and in my opinion he also received the most votes in Florida. And the decision was made by a 5-4 vote on a bipartisan basis by the US Supreme Court. I would in 2000 there was a failure. The year 2004 is hard to grade. I don't have any detailed information as to what went wrong in Ohio. If Ohio had gone one way or the other it would have changed the outcome of the election. And the other thing that I know about Ohio was that theres general consensus, that the secretary of state of Ohio, who was responsible for the administration of elections was highly partisan in his public approach and perhaps even in his private administration but I don't know about that.
   
   Väldigt många människor i och utanför USA förstår att Bush inte skulle tillåta valmanskåren att rösta bort honom 2004.
   
   Jag skrev själv om detta när det begav sig: http://uscrisis.lege.net/valfusk2004/ "Det andra valfiaskot och den pinsamma tystnaden"
   
   
4. "Guds straff" - Orkanerna Katrina och Rita stoppar olje-hamnar och oljeborrning i Mexikanska gulfen. 40% av USA:s olja kommer denna väg. Hur stora störningar ger detta i olje/raffinaderi-arbetet? Hur länge räcker de strategiska reserverna? Man prospekterar i Alaska och andra känsliga områden, oljebolagen behöver inte längre tänka på skadorna. Västafrikas oljeländer rustar och USA bygger baser.
   
   
5. Alltfler soldatfamiljer ansluter sig till antikrigs-rörelsen, och kraven är inte längre bara att Bush måste försvinna, utan att Bush och Blar måste ställas inför rätta för sina krigsbrott - de måste sättas i fängelse.
   
   Vad återstår då för desperata regimer? Mer al CIAada terror? Kanske WMD:s ? Nukes mot Iran ? - Fast andra analytiker säger att i så fall sätter nog Kina nukes mot USA. Krig mot ... ... ... spelar det någon roll mot vem? Det enda sättet att hindra världen från att ställa Bush och Blair inför krigsförbrytartribunal kan vara att förstöra världen.
   
   Alternativa media - som DemocracyNow - är redan större än Fox. Kejsaren är naknare än någonsin. ETT **VÄLDIGT** BRA FÖRSLAG: En SANNINGSKOMMISSION liksom den som i SydAfrika verkade mot Apartheid-Bootha regimen - för att stoppa eskaleringen! Detta var Bo Modéns förslag - och det var ett BRA förslag. Hur genomföra?

MER LÄNKAR OCH ARTIKLAR OM STATSTERRORISTERNAS TERRORVERKSAMHET

Tillägg om "Staged Terror":

Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 10:42:56 +0200
Subject: [mot_krig] Provokatörer

Muqtada Al-Sadr visar genom sin talesman att han har genomskådat ockupanternas taktik som går ut på att härska genom att söndra. Det är väldigt viktigt då Al-Sadr har ett stort och växande inflytande bland den shia-muslimska befolkningen i Irak. Om "Sadr city", Najaf, Nasiriyah och Basra, m.fl städer i södra Irak, revolterar är ockupanternas saga all. Inte underligt att engelsmännen är nervösa. Se nedan!

HOÖ

RELATED: British Special Forces Caught Carrying Out Staged Terror In Iraq?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/23/wirq23.xml

The Telegraph (UK), 23 September 2005, has a report on terrorism in Iraq:

Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, Moqtada al-Sadr's top official in the sprawling Sadr City slums of Baghdad, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain was plotting to start an ethnic war by carrying out mass-casualty bombings targeting Shia civilians and then blaming the attacks on Sunni Arab groups.

"Everyone knows the occupiers' agenda," insisted Mr Daraji, who is currently the only Mahdi army official authorised to speak directly on Sadr's behalf.

"They are in bed with Mossad the Israeli intelligence service and their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq." But Mr Daraji insisted that Sadr was not going to call for a Shia uprising in Basra, where he enjoys only a limited, if growing, following in the city's slums.

"We have to take the moral high ground and resist this provocation by the British," he said.

"This is a very dangerous, very sensitive time in Iraq but we must calm our supporters or we will fall into the British trap."

According to The Telegraph, Sadr has been keen to cultivate a degree of legitimacy since he agreed to join the political process last year.


BASRA-TERRORISTERNA FRÅN BRITTISKA SAS

De två Brittiska SAS-killarna i Basra är terrorister. De planterade bomber som skulle döda civila, i ett led att ge dålig PR åt det irakiska folkets motståndskamp. Notera hur medierna alltid skriver om varje gång civila dödas i Irak, men sällan när amerikanare eller britter dödas, trots att denna sorts attacker är i majoritet. (Även om just antalet döda kan vara större bland de civila p g a större antal civila offer per attack än militära, som är bättre skyddade.)

Det finns mycket som tyder på att många av terrorbombningarna mot civila utförs av amerikanska och brittiska specialstyrkor snarare än av irakiska "insurgenter". Irakiska tjänstemän har ihållande påtalat detta sedan våren 2004. Den amerikanske journalisten Dahr Jamail skrev den 20 april 2004 att den då senaste tidens bilbomber i Bagdad i vida kretsar ansågs vara CIA:s verk: ``The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them. Why? Because as one man states, `CIA agents are too busy fighting now, and the unrest they wanted to cause by the bombings is now upon them.' True or not, it doesn't bode well for the occupiers' image in Iraq.''

Ghali Hassan skrev i Online Journal i lördags: http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/092405Hassan/092405hassan.html ``Despite mounting evidence that Al-Zarqawi was killed in northern Iraq at the beginning of the war, his phantom is used to justify the ongoing atrocities in Iraq.''


VERKLIGHETENS EMMANUEL GOLDSTEINS

Denne Al-Zarqawi används på samma sätt som Emmanuel Goldstein används av det styrande partiet i den dystropiska värld som Eric Arthur Blair under författarnamnet George Orwell målar upp i sin "1984". Än finns han här, än finns han där. Men aldrig fångas han, för likt Orwells Emmanuel Goldstein så är han sedan länge i verkligheten i hemlighet neutraliserad.

Förresten så skriver Ghali Hassan också: ``As a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda has disintegrated. It's members have been killed, imprisoned and some have melted away in the population of Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, in George Bush's "war on terror," today's Al-Qaeda is alive and fighting on many fronts. In other words, Osama bin Laden is much more useful alive to U.S. imperialism and propaganda than his dead body. Al-Qaeda has become a convenient phantom to justify an ongoing war on defenceless peoples.'' Ghali Hassan skriver inte det, men såväl Al-Qaeda/ Osama bin Laden som Al-Zarqawi fungerar på samma sätt som Emmanuel Goldstein, som hat-objekt och objekt att fokusera rädsla, etc. Och som avledare från de verkliga terroristerna = fienderna. Som i det här fallet är amerikanska och brittiska specialstyrkor och de som kontrollerar dessa, nämligen de terroristregimer som måste sättas i fängelse fortare än kvickt.

Ghali Hassan igen: ``it is the U.S. and Britain who are terrorising the Iraqi people on a daily basis. . . . the Iraqi people are defending themselves and their country against terrorism. . . . Iraqi sources argued rightly that the U.S. forces and their collaborators are behind every major sectarian killing and kidnapping in the country. The promotion of Shiite-Sunni conflict is the creation of U.S. forces. The attacks on specific religious groups, such as on Shiites, were aimed at provoking sectarian strife among Iraqis. After every large killing of civilians, the U.S. and mainstream media are deliberately blaming the Iraqi Resistance for the violence. The main aim is to distort the image of the Resistance and weaken its popular support in Iraq and abroad.

Vi bekämpar terroristerna som dödar elektriker i London, som placerar ut sprängladdningar i London, som placerar ut sprängladdningar i Bagdad och Basra, som försöker provocera fram inbördeskrig i Irak för att kunna dela upp landet och därmed lättare kunna ta hand om oljan. Men det verkar som att Irakierna förstår vad som ligger bakom, och i själva verket kan dessa terroristhandlingar från USA:s och Storbritanniens regeringar/specialstyrkor verka sammansvetsande och enande på de olika befolkningsgrupperna i Irak. Det verkar faktiskt som att det redan gör det. Enade står man emot en yttre folkfiende.

Och just folkfiende är nog det rätta ordet, för jag såg filmbilderna från anti-krigs-demonstrationer större än under Vietnam-kriget från helgen i Washington. Folket vill inte ha krig, vare sig i Irak eller i USA. Men krigsbrottslingarna och terroristerna i Washington och London - Buskisarna och Ljugarn Blair - lyssnar inte på folket. Vare sig i de egna länderna eller i Irak. Folket är deras fiende, eftersom alla som inte är med dem är mot dem. Och folket vill inte ha dem.

Förresten är det konstigt att dra alla Irakier över en kam som Muslimer. En stor andel är inte mer religiösa än flertalet svenskar som är med i Svenska Kyrkan. Dessutom så verkar det vara just de mest upplysta irakierna som måste bort:

Ghali Hassan: ``thousands of prominent Iraqi scientists including doctors, intellectuals and politicians have been murdered by Israeli Mossad and C.I.A. agents. Similar patterns of Western terrorism against civilians have their history in the British occupation of Kenya and India, and in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The U.S. plan to divide Iraq -- on ethnic and religious lines -- and control its wealth was prepared several years before the war. It was no secret.''

Jag tror INTE att vi här i vårt land löser något genom våld. Våld måste alltid vara den allra sista utvägen när inget annat är möjligt. Som för Irakierna, inför militär övermakt och terror från specialstyrkor. I USA tror jag att lösningen är att medvetandegöra en så stor andel att man kan verka politiskt och genom domstolar för att lagföra och fängsla krigsbrottslingarna. Nu vet jag att högsta domstolen är korrumperad, men till och med korrumperade domare lär lyssna till vad flertalet av deras egna vänner tänker. Om man kan göra medvetenheten tillräckligt stor och så att den tränger in även i etablissemanget, då kommer det att svänga. Men om det inte gör det då, ja, då kan det nog gå så långt som till revolution. Men jag hoppas inte det. Revolutioner är så oförutsägbara och oftast blir det inte bättre efter än före.


DAHR JAMAIL'S IRAQ DISPATCHES / MER OLIKTÄNKANDE, MER CENSUR

Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:57:28 -0400
From: iraq_dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com
Subject: Iraq Dispatches: More Dissent, More Censorship

** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

September 26, 2005

More Dissent, More Censorship

A quarter of a million people jammed the streets of the capital this past weekend, as Mr. Bush conveniently found himself visiting the US Northern Command's HQ in Colorado Springs.

While veterans from the current debacle in Iraq and scores of military families who oppose the Bush Junta joined the throngs of protestors in Washington DC to express their dissent, there were other goings-on related to Iraq while Bush had his photo-op in Colorado.

A contractor I know working in Iraq wrote me recently. He gives me periodic updates about how life is on the base where he works in support of the military. He wrote:

"Another convoy hit hard-3 drivers killed and many others wounded- I don't know if it's my friends yet. They don't like to advertise these kinds of things much around here because they cause the exit planes to fill up - the only problem is, there are more plane loads waiting in Houston [to come here]. The gullible waiting for their chance at the tarnished brass ring. [Me and my friends] agree this countries' policies of oil have led us down the path of Armageddon."

At least 1,917 US soldiers have died in Iraq now, 16 just in the last week. At least 10 times that number have been wounded for life, both physically and psychologically.

Thus, it shouldn't come as a surprise that so many people marched in the capital this weekend, nor that so many of them are veterans and family members who have simply had enough of this. The people I spoke with at the demonstration expressed feelings of anger and impatience towards this so-called administration.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise, either, to have seen a sign in the demo with a little pretzel drawn on it which read, "Give the pretzel another chance!"

The recent news of a few brave soldiers from the 82nd Airborne speaking out (on condition of anonymity in a Human Rights Watch report) about how they "vented their frustration by systematically torturing Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals" may have shocked some people here in the US. However, it isn't news to soldiers in Iraq, of course, or for Iraqis for that matter.

A soldier currently in Iraq who works as a medic wrote me a few days ago:

"I do sick-call for the detainees. Right now, I think they have mechanics guarding the detainees. I've talked to them a couple of times and they've made comments like "if they were detained, they are probably bad..." A couple of times I've pointed out that: 1) they might very well be innocent and 2) that they are still human. The guards seemed to really acknowledge that. But it's almost like everyone knows the emperor is naked, but are trying to cling to the idea that he is wearing new clothes. When someone points out that he might be naked, it gives them the freedom to acknowledge that as well. The real travesty, I think, is the American people. With no exposure to Iraqis, all they see on the news is that we are killing the bad guys, and they don't see the refugee camps, or how we trash cities (collateral damage seems a nice phrase, because it's not their homes which are being destroyed. Not the sons and daughters of their friends who are being killed.) They don't see the casual way most soldiers feel about destroying property. All they see is what they are told, and unless it's stamped with a corporations seal, it lacks legitimacy in their eyes and it gets relegated to an "extremist position.""

My friends' opinion of the misleading of the American people by the corporate media about the horrific reality in Iraq applies in other countries as well. Bush Administration pressure on the media is not limited to within the US.

In a previous weblog < http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000256.php >, I wrote about how a newspaper in Turkey had been pressured by the US Embassy to run fewer news stories about Iraq from journalists like myself, Robert Fisk and Naomi Klein.

Last night, here in DC, I spoke with Stelios Kouloglou, a journalist with Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation in Greece. His program on the public television station has won several awards for investigative journalism and remains extremely popular in his country.

On the one year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, April of 2004, his station broadcast a documentary he produced entitled, "25 Lies to Sell the War," a title which needs no explanation to anyone who is not fully encapsulated in denial.

"I found out through a leak that the US embassy in Greece was applying political pressure to our government in order for them to pressure my television station for running my documentary," he told me at his hotel.

"It became clear, after your election in '04 when Bush stayed in office, that his administration became much more aggressive," he explained. "The US embassy began asking for our program to be discontinued. They were telling this not just to our program spokesperson, but directly to our government! Their protest took a much more official character, and they did not even attempt to conceal this."

Being a journalist for 25 years and having covered the war in Yugoslavia as well as having worked in Moscow during Perestroika, he said this type of overt political pressure to be a first for him.

"I've never experienced political pressure like this, not even in Russia when I was being critical of Gorbachev, nor in Yugoslavia when I was being extremely critical of Milosevic," he added.

More recently and a bit closer to home here in the US, Doug Ireland writes:

"The internationally renowned correspondent for The Independent - the great British journalist [and citizen] Robert Fisk - has been banned from entering the United States. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all known for his incisive reporting from the Middle East for more than 20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation that has followed it, has repeatedly exposed US and British government disinformation campaigns. He also has exposed how the bulk of the press reports from Iraq have been "hotel journalism" - a phrase Fisk coined."

He continues:

"The daily New Mexican reports that "U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday [20 September] to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation's readings-and-conversations series on Wednesday night. According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order. Davis made last-minute arrangements Wednesday for Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radios daily news show, Democracy Now!, to interview Fisk via satellite from a television station in Toronto..." A recording of this satellite interview will soon be available on the Lannan Foundation's website."

As we prepared to leave his hotel last night, my colleague Stelios Kouloglou half-jokingly offered, "You can come visit Greece anytime, whether for vacation or for political asylum."

I only half-laughed as I shook his hand.

_______________________________________________
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PLANTERANDET AV (VISSA) BOMBER I IRAK

Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra?
Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reports

Michael Keefer, GlobalResearch.ca

jailedbrits.jpg

September 25, 2005

Does anyone remember the shock with which the British public greeted the revelation four years ago that one of the members of the Real IRA unit whose bombing attack in Omagh on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine civilians had been a double agent, a British army soldier?

That soldier was not Britain's only terrorist double agent. A second British soldier planted within the IRA claimed he had given forty-eight hours advance notice of the Omagh car-bomb attack to his handlers within the Royal Ulster Constabulary, including "details of one of the bombing team and the man's car registration." Although the agent had made an audio tape of his tip-off call, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the RUC, declared that "no such information was received" ( http://www.sundayherald.com/17827 ).

This second double agent went public in June 2002 with the claim that from 1981 to 1994, while on full British army pay, he had worked for "the Force Research Unit, an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence," as an IRA mole. With the full knowledge and consent of his FRU and MI5 handlers, he became a bombing specialist who "mixed explosive and ... helped to develop new types of bombs," including "light-sensitive bombs, activated by photographic flashes, to overcome the problem of IRA remote-control devices having their signal jammed by army radio units." He went on to become "a member of the Provisional IRA's `internal security squad' -- also known as the `torture unit' -- which interrogated and executed suspected informers" ( http://www.sundayherald.com/print25646 ).

The much-feared commander of that same "torture unit" was likewise a mole, who had previously served in the Royal Marines' Special Boat Squadron (an elite special forces unit, the Marines' equivalent to the better-known SAS). A fourth mole, a soldier code-named "Stakeknife" whose military handlers "allowed him to carry out large numbers of terrorist murders in order to protect his cover within the IRA," was still active in December 2002 as "one of Belfast's leading Provisionals" ( http://www.sundayherald.com/29997 ).

Reliable evidence also emerged in late 2002 that the British army had been using its double agents in terrorist organizations "to carry out proxy assassinations for the British state" -- most notoriously in the case of Belfast solicitor and human rights activist Pat Finucane, who was murdered in 1989 by the Protestant Ulster Defence Association. It appears that the FRU passed on details about Finucane to a British soldier who had infiltrated the UDA; he in turn "supplied UDA murder teams with the information" ( http://www.sundayherald.com/29997 ).

Recent events in Basra have raised suspicions that the British army may have reactivated these same tactics in Iraq.

Articles published by Michel Chossudovsky, Larry Chin and Mike Whitney at the Centre for Research on Globalization's website on September 20, 2005 have offered preliminary assessments of the claims of Iraqi authorities that two British soldiers in civilian clothes who were arrested by Iraqi police in Basra on September 19 -- and in short order released by a British tank and helicopter assault on the prison where they were being held -- had been engaged in planting bombs in the city

See:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=972
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20050920&articleId=982
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WHI20050920&articleId=981

A further article by Kurt Nimmo points to false-flag operations carried out by British special forces troops in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and to Donald Rumsfeld's formation of the P2OG, or Proactive Preemptive Operations Group, as directly relevant to Iraqi charges of possible false-flag terror operations by the occupying powers in Iraq ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050924&articleid=992 ).

These accusations by Iraqi officials echo insistent but unsubstantiated claims, going back at least to the spring of 2004, to the effect that many of the terror bombings carried out against civilian targets in Iraq have actually been perpetrated by U.S. and British forces rather than by Iraqi insurgents.

Some such claims can be briskly dismissed. In mid-May 2005, for example, a group calling itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" accused U.S. troops "of detonating car bombs and falsely accusing militants" ( http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications45605&Category=publications&Subcategory=0 ). For even the most credulous, this could at best be a case of the pot calling the kettle soot-stained. But it's not clear why anyone would want to believe this claim, coming as it does from a group or groupuscule purportedly led by the wholly mythical al-Zarqawi -- and one whose very name affiliates it with terror bombers. These people, if they exist, might themselves have good reason to blame their own crimes on others.

Other claims, however, are cumulatively more troubling.

The American journalist Dahr Jamail wrote in April 20, 2004 that the recent spate of car bombings in Baghdad was widely rumoured to have been the work of the CIA:

"The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them. Why? Because as one man states, `[CIA agents are] too busy fighting now, and the unrest they wanted to cause by the bombings is now upon them.' True or not, it doesn't bode well for the occupiers' image in Iraq." ( http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail200404.htm )

Two days later, on April 22, 2004, Agence France-Presse reported that five car-bombings in Basra -- three near-simultaneous attacks outside police stations in Basra that killed sixty-eight people, including twenty children, and two follow-up bombings -- were being blamed by supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on the British. While eight hundred supporters demonstrated outside Sadr's offices, a Sadr spokesman claimed to have "evidence that the British were involved in these attacks" ( http://www.inq7.net/wnw/2004/apr/23/wnw_3_1.htm ).

An anonymous senior military officer said on April 22, 2004 of these Basra attacks that "It looks like Al-Qaeda. It's got all the hallmarks: it was suicidal, it was spectacular and it was symbolic." Brigadier General Nick Carter, commander of the British garrison in Basra, stated more ambiguously that Al Qaeda was not necessarily to blame for the five bombings, but that those responsible came from outside Basra and "quite possibly" from outside Iraq: "'All that we can be certain of is that this is something that came from outside,' Carter said" ( http://www.inq7.net/wnw/2004/apr/23/wnw_4_1.htm ). Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters of course believed exactly the same thing -- differing only in their identification of the criminal outsiders as British agents rather than as Islamist mujaheddin from other Arab countries.

In May 2005 `Riverbend', the Baghdad author of the widely-read blog Baghdad Burning, reported that what the international press was reporting as suicide bombings were often in fact "car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs." After one of the larger recent blasts, which occurred in the middle-class Ma'moun area of west Baghdad, a man living in a house in front of the blast site was reportedly arrested for having sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman. But according to `Riverbend', his neighbours had a different story:

"People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw 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."

( http://riverbendblog.blogspit.com/2005_05_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#111636281930496496 )

Also in May 2005, Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi-exile physicist whose writings helped to discredit American and British fabrications about weapons of mass destruction, reported a story that in Baghdad a driver whose license had been confiscated at an American check-point was told "to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license." After being questioned for half an hour, he was informed that there was nothing against him, but that his license had been forwarded to the Iraqi police at the al-Khadimiya station "for processing" -- and that he should get there quickly before the lieutenant whose name he was given went off his shift.

"The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if 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 inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. 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'."

( http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/0505/Combat-terrorism_160505.htm )

According to Khadduri, "The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq." On this occasion, the driver's life was saved when his car broke down on the way to the police station where he was supposed to reclaim his license, and when the mechanic to whom he had recourse "discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives."

Khadduri mentions, as deserving of investigation, a "perhaps unrelated incident" in Baghdad on April 28, 2005 in which a Canadian truck-driver with dual Canadian-Iraqi citizenship was killed. He quotes a CBC report according to which "Some media cited unidentified sources who said he may have died after U.S. forces `tracked' a target, using a helicopter gunship, but Foreign Affairs said it's still investigating conflicting reports of the death. U. S. officials have denied any involvement."

Another incident, also from April 2005, calls more urgently for investigation, since one of its victims remains alive. Abdul Amir Younes, a CBS cameraman, was lightly wounded by U.S. forces on April 5 "while filming the aftermath of a car bombing in Mosul." American military authorities were initially apologetic about his injuries, but three days later arrested him on the grounds that he had been "engaged in anti-coalition activity" ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/Kafka-does-iraq-the-dist_b_7796.html ).

Arianna Huffington, in her detailed account of this case, quite rightly emphasizes its Kafkaesque qualities: Younes has now been detained, in Abu Graib and elsewhere, for more than five months -- without charges, without any hint of what evidence the Pentagon may hold against him, and without any indication that he will ever be permitted to stand trial, challenge that evidence, and disprove the charges that might at some future moment be laid. But in addition to confirming, yet again, the Pentagon's willingness to violate the most fundamental principles of humane and democratic jurisprudence, this case also raises a further question. Was Younes perhaps arrested, like the Iraqi whose rumoured fate was mentioned by `Riverbend', because he had seen -- and in Younes' case photographed -- more than was good for him?

Agents provocateurs?

Spokesmen for the American and British occupation of Iraq, together with newspapers like the Daily Telegraph, have of course rejected with indignation any suggestion that their forces could have been involved in false-flag terrorist operations in Iraq.

It may be remembered that during the 1980s spokesmen for the government of Ronald Reagan likewise heaped ridicule on Nicaraguan accusations that the U.S. was illegally supplying weapons to the `Contras' -- until, that is, a CIA-operated C-123 cargo aircraft full of weaponry was shot down over Nicaragua, and Eugene Hasenfus, a cargo handler who survived the crash, testified that his supervisors (one of whom was Luis Posada Carriles, the CIA agent responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner) were working for then-Vice-President George H. W. Bush.

The arrest -- and the urgent liberation -- of the two undercover British soldiers in Iraq might in a similar manner be interpreted as casting a retrospective light on previously unsubstantiated claims about the involvement of members of the occupying armies in terrorist bombing attacks on civilians.

The parallel is far from exact: in this case there has been no dramatic confession like that of Hasenfus, and there are no directly incriminating documents like the pilot's log of the downed C-123. There is, moreover, a marked lack of consensus as to what actually happened in Basra. Should we therefore, with Juan Cole, dismiss the possibility British soldiers were acting as agents provocateurs as a "theory [that] has almost no facts behind it" ( http://www.juancole.com )?

Members of Britain's Elite SAS Forces

It appears that when on September 19 suspicious Iraqi police stopped the Toyota Cressida the undercover British soldiers were driving, the two men opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. But the soldiers, identified by the BBC as "members of the SAS elite special forces" ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm ), were subdued by the police and arrested. A report published by The Guardian on September 24 adds the further detail that the SAS men "are thought to have been on a surveillance mission outside a police station in Basra when they were challenged by an Iraqi police patrol" ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/Story/0,2763,1577575,00.html ).

As Justin Raimondo has observed in an article published on September 23 at Antiwar.com, nearly every other aspect of this episode is disputed.

The Washington Post dismissively remarked, in the eighteenth paragraph of its report on these events, that "Iraqi security officials variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives" ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/20/MNGSSEQNGN1.DTL ) . Iraqi officials in fact accused them not of one or the other act, but of both.

Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV on September 19 that the soldiers opened fire when the police sought to arrest them, and that their car was booby-trapped "and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market" (quoted by Chossudovsky). A deliberately inflammatory press release sent out on the same day by the office of Moqtada al-Sadr (and posted in English translation at Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog on September 20) states that the soldiers' arrest was prompted by their having "opened fire on passers-by" near a Basra mosque, and that they were found to have "in their possession explosives and remote-control devices, as well as light and medium weapons and other accessories" ( http://www.juancole.com ).

What credence can be given to the claim about explosives? Justin Raimondo writes that while initial BBC Radio reports acknowledged that the two men indeed had explosives in their car, subsequent reports from the same source indicated that the Iraqi police found nothing beyond "assault rifles, a light machine gun, an anti-tank weapon, radio gear, and medical kit. This is thought to be standard kit for the SAS operating in such a theater of operations" ( http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7366 ).

One might well wonder, with Raimondo, whether an anti-tank weapon is "standard operating equipment" -- or what use SAS men on "a surveillance mission outside a police station" intended to make of it. But more importantly, a photograph published by the Iraqi police and distributed by Reuters shows that -- unless the equipment is a plant -- the SAS men were carrying a good deal more than just the items acknowledged by the BBC. ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050923&articleid=989 )

I would want the opinion of an arms expert before risking a definitive judgment about the objects shown, which could easily have filled the trunk and much of the back seat of a Cressida. But this photograph makes plausible the statement of Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, a spokesman for Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia:

"What our police found in their car was very disturbing -- weapons, explosives, and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists. We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets..." (quoted by Raimondo)

The fierce determination of the British army to remove these men from any danger of interrogation by their own supposed allies in the government the British are propping up -- even when their rescue entailed the destruction of an Iraqi prison and the release of a large number of prisoners, gun-battles with Iraqi police and with Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, a large popular mobilization against the British occupying force, and a subsequent withdrawal of any cooperation on the part of the regional government -- tends, if anything, to support the view that this episode involved something much darker and more serious than a mere flare-up of bad tempers at a check-point.

US-UK Sponsored Civil War

There is reason to believe, moreover, that the open civil war which car-bomb attacks on civilians seem intended to produce would not be an unwelcome development in the eyes of the occupation forces.

Writers in the English-language corporate media have repeatedly noted that recent terror-bomb attacks which have caused massive casualties among civilians appear to be pushing Iraq towards a civil war of Sunnis against Shiites, and of Kurds against both. For example, on September 18, 2005 Peter Beaumont proposed in The Observer that the slaughter of civilians, which he ascribes to Al Qaeda alone, "has one aim: civil war" ( http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1572936,00.html ). But H. D. S. Greenway had already suggested on June 17, 2005 in the Boston Globe that "Given the large number of Sunni-led attacks against Shia targets, the emerging Shia-led attacks against Sunnis, and the extralegal abductions of Arabs by Kurdish authorities in Kirkut, one has to wonder whether the long-feared Iraqi civil war hasn't already begun" ( http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/06/17/facing_factsin_iraq ). And on September 21, 2005 Nancy Youssef and Mohammed al Dulaimy of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau wrote that the ethnic cleansing of Shiites in predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighbourhoods "is proceeding at an alarming and potentially destabilizing pace," and quoted the despairing view of an Iraqi expert:

"'Civil war today is closer than any time before,' said Hazim Abdel
Hamid al Nuaimi, a professor of politics at al-Mustansiriya University
in Baghdad. `All of these explosions, the efforts by police and purging
of neighbourhoods is a battle to control Baghdad.'"

( http://www.realcities.com/mid/krwashington/12704935.htm )

Whether or not it has already begun or will occur, the eruption of a full-blown civil war, leading to the fragmentation of the country, would clearly be welcomed in some circles. Israeli strategists and journalists proposed as long ago as 1982 that one of their country's strategic goals should be the partitioning of Iraq into a Shiite state, a Sunni state, and a separate Kurdish part. (See foreign ministry official Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," Kivunim 14 [February 1982]; a similar proposal put forward by Ze'ev Schiff in Ha'aretz in the same month is noted by Noam Chomsky in Fateful Triangle [2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999], p. 457).

A partitioning of Iraq into sections defined by ethnicity and by Sunni-Shia differences would entail, obviously enough, both civil war and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. But these considerations did not deter Leslie H. Gelb from advocating in the New York Times, on November 25, 2003, what he called "The Three-State Solution". ( http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq/three.htm ).

Gelb, a former senior State Department and Pentagon official, a former editor and columnist for the New York Times, and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is an insider's insider. And if the essays of Yinon and Schiff are nasty stuff, especially in the context of Israel's 1981 bombing attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, there is still some difference between speculatively proposing the dismemberment of a powerful neighbouring country, and actively advocating the dismemberment of a country that one's own nation has conquered in a war of unprovoked aggression. The former might be described as a diseased imagining of war and criminality; the latter belongs very clearly to the category of war crimes.

Gelb's essay proposes punishing the Sunni-led insurgency by separating the largely Sunni centre of present-day Iraq from the oil-rich Kurdish north and the oil-rich Shia south. It holds out the dismembering of the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s (with the appalling slaughters that ensued) as a "hopeful precedent."

Gelb's essay has been widely interpreted as signaling the intentions of a dominant faction in the U.S. government. It has also, very appropriately, been denounced by Bill Vann as openly promoting "a war crime of world-historic proportions" ( http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/gelb-n26.shtml ).

Given the increasing desperation of the American and British governments in the face of an insurgency that their tactics of mass arbitrary arrest and torture, Phoenix-Program or "Salvadoran-option" death squads, unrestrained use of overwhelming military force, and murderous collective punishment have failed to suppress, it comes as no surprise that in recent military actions such as the assault on Tal Afar the U.S. army has been deploying Kurdish peshmerga troops and Shiite militias in a manner that seems designed to inflame ethnic hatreds.

No one, I should hope, is surprised any longer by the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- that fictional construct of the Pentagon's serried ranks of little Tom Clancies, that one-legged Dalek, that Scarlet Pimpernel of terrorism, who manages to be here, there, and everywhere at once -- should be so ferociously devoted to the terrorizing and extermination of his Shiite co-religionists.

Should we be any more surprised, then, to see evidence emerging in Iraq of false-flag terrorist bombings conducted by the major occupying powers? The secret services and special forces of both the U.S. and Britain have, after all, had some experience in these matters.

Global Research Contributing Editor Michael Keefer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph. He is a former President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. His most recent writings include a series of articles on electoral fraud in the 2004 US presidential election published by the Centre for Research on Globalization

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"Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism. And it does whip up fear. Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few." William Odom, retired U.S. Army general. (C-SPAN November 2002)
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- REALLY THE END OF THE END -