More on the True Face of the War in Iraq

Iraq has been reduced to a cartoon in many Americans' eyes, thanks to the White House, Pentagon and Corporate Media. The war is now largely depicted as al Qaeda versus the Iraqi people and the noble Coalition forces. Well, that is as skewed a picture as we used to get about Vietnam, when we were told that the war there was the evil Viet Cong versus the Vietnamese people and their noble American protectors.

The war in Iraq is far more complex than that, just as the Vietnamese war was far more complex. In Iraq, there are five main factions, 1) the Shiites with their often warring militias, 2) the Sunnis with their various tribes and militias, 3) the al Qaeda faction, which actually overlaps the Sunni faction somewhat, because al Qaeda largely draws from the Sunni population and foreign volunteers who are also usually Sunni as best as I can tell, 4) the Kurds in the north, who have several often warring factions too, and 5) the Turkomen in the north, who are opposed by the Kurds and have strong support from Turkey, which has been crossing the Iraqi border to attack Kurdish guerrillas for several months.

Al Qaeda is the most difficult to figure out, because there are many, many contradictions about al Qaeda. First of all, the United States created and organized the forerunners of al Qaeda, the Mujadhedeen warriors fighting the old Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda itself, the term of which is often translated as "the Base", was actually apparently created from the "database" of Mujadhedeen members on computer lists.

Al Qaeda, their leader bin Laden (or so we are led to believe) and the CIA actually had some kind of ongoing murky relationship in the 1990's, the CIA utilizing al Qaeda "soldiers" against the Serbs in Kosovo during the NATO-led actions against Yugoslavia. In fact, there is confirmed evidence that the CIA and Pentagon were supporting elements of al Qaeda even a few weeks befor 9/11, as noted in this 2005 report:

Both the CIA and German intelligence (BND) supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda.

This report by the German TV ZDF Network, reviewed by Mira Beham, is revealing in many regards.

First the report corroborates earlier analysis on the role of the BND and the CIA in supporting the KLA, several years prior as well as in the wake of the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.

Second, it further documents and confirms the KLA's links to Al Qaeda and the role of the latter in the Kosovo conflict:

"What German journalists and their Dutch colleagues at VPRO Radio Television investigated has a long tradition. Since the beginning of the 1990s the BND has maintained contacts with the KLA, which was then considered to be a terrorist organization. Although we have to admit that the KLA has stronger ties with the CIA than the BND. Commander Hoxha had ties with the CIA, the BND and with the Austrian military intelligence service which has devoted great attention to this region and has very good connections with the KLA."

Despite its links to organized crime and Al Qaeda, the KLA rebel army had been skillfully heralded by the Western media in the months preceding the 1999 NATO bombings as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Its leader Hashim Thaci had been "designated" (by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) as chief negotiator at the Rambouillet peace talks.

The fact of the matter is that the Atlantic Alliance had been supporting a terrorist organization. The KLA was not supporting the rights of ethnic Albanians. Quite the opposite..........

Macedonia August 2001: Central to an Understanding of 9/11

The reference in the report to Macedonia is crucial to an understanding of 9/11 and the war on terrorism, because it confirms that US military advisers had integrated a terrorist paramilitary organization linked to Al Qaeda, barely a few weeks before 9/11.

Moreover, it also confirms that US paratroopers were sent in to save the Al Qaeda sponsored fighters and their US military advisers.

"Samedin Xhezairi, also known as Commander Hoxha, joined the Kosovo Liberation Army when armed conflict in Kosovo began, fighting in three operation zones. He was a fighter in Chechnya, trained in Afghanistan and acted as the commander of the Mujahideen 112th Brigade operating in the summer of 2001 in the region of Tetovo [Macedonia]. In August of the same year 80 members of the 3/502 battalion of U.S. paratroopers evacuated him from Aracinovo [Macedonia], together with his Albanian extremists and 17 instructors of the U.S. private military company MPRI which was training the Albanian paramilitary formations."

In other words, the US military was collaborating with Al Qaeda, which according to the Bush administration was involved in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.

Yet, the US military was working hand in glove with "enemy number one" barely a few weeks before 9/11, and we are led to believe that the Bush administration is committed to waging a battle against Al Qaeda. Michel Chossudovsky, 15 February 2005

(source)

There was no viable al Qaeda presence in Iraqi territory before America invaded Iraq in 2003. There was only the maniacal Zarqawi, who had recently set up a training camp in northern Kurdistan, which was under the protection of the United States military and beyond Sadam Hussein's reach. Bush had been informed about Zarqawi's presence by the Pentagon, who wanted to take him out, but Bush refused their request, repeatedly. Why?

Al Qeada moved into Iraq proper only after we invaded, and the Pentagon itself revealed somewhat later that they actually began building up Zarqawi's mystique and influence through their propaganda mills to, to put it bluntly, scare everybody. Now that's amazing!

When did the CIA and American military actually sever their well-hidden ties with al Qaeda, if they ever did?

So just what is al Qaeda exactly and who directs and supports it? Bin Laden, you might say, but he is either holed up in a cave or village several thousand miles away OR DEAD. And there is actually powerful evidence that the real bin Laden has been dead since December, 2003. Benazir Bhutto actually said so, rather matter-of-factly, in an interview with David Frost just before she was slain.

Regarding Iraq, the Shiites, Sunnis and the very strangely affiliated al Qeada forces (or at least a tier of them) in Iraq all want American occupation forces out of their country. Al Qaeda, because of its utterly vicious penchant for slaughter, has angered many Sunnis who might otherwise sympathize with them, while the Shiites have never much liked al Qaeda. The non-al Qaeda Sunnis, who were fighting the Shiites, al Qaeda and the American military all at once, agreed to a bargain with what they tend to consider the Devil, the US Military, and signed on to the "Awakening Councils" to gain time and money and to concentrate on the other two foes. But now indications are that the Awakening Councils are starting to unravel, as noted in this video.



The United States, no matter how you cut it, is considered a brutal, deadly occupation force, which it absolutely is, and the vast majority of Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites all want America out. A recent poll of Iraqis showed that 70% want the U.S. to leave right now. The Iraqi government may say another thing, because they are largely divorced from the Iraqi people, some of them being utter American puppets, and are all hunkered down in the Green Zone, requiring troops and body-guards to go anywhere in the Red Zone.

Sunnis and Shiites have both set their intention to get rid of the Americans in their varying ways and strategies, whether it takes a year or decades, so to think that somehow the United States can defeat several thousand poorly understood al Qaeda fighters, if they have that many personnel in the first place, and all will live happily ever after is utterly delusional. We are, in actuality, still diametrically opposed by millions of Iraqis. There is no light at the end of this tunnel.

Even Pentagon Study Debunks Saddam's Alleged Links to al Qaeda

Read this and weep. Some of us were shouting this from the rooftops in 2003, but all the flag-waving lock-steppers thought we were delusional or worse. We were lied into invading Iraq through the momentum of emotionalism generated by 9/11 and the subsequent fear-mongering and blind vengeance-seeking, a war that has cost over a million lives if you accept the latest findings from British statistical analysts, has wounded countless more, driven millions into exile, turned vast swaths of Iraq into toxic wastelands and sewages, and destoyed infrastructure throughout that hapless country. But somehow this is a good thing to some Americans, certainly to the White House, which would like to see this onslaught against humanity continue for decades, as if Iraqis are cattle in a slaughterhouse, just another bloody commodity.

McClatchy Washington Bureau

Posted on Mon, Mar. 10, 2008

Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam and al Qaida

Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: March 10, 2008 07:39:58 PM

WASHINGTON — An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

He and others spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because the study isn't due to be shared with Congress and released before Wednesday.

President Bush and his aides used Saddam's alleged relationship with al Qaida, along with Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments for invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the radical Islamist terror group and Saddam's secular dictatorship.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or misinterpreted intelligence....(click here to read the entire article).

The State of the (Iraqi) Union

We are told fairy tales every day by the government and corporate media that things are getting better every day and every way in Iraq. So why are Americans dropping four times as many bombs as several years ago, still launching major offensives, spending some 11 billion dollars a month, and on and on? Because the delusion that Iraq is some sort of quasi-American suburb under attack by alien "terrorists" is just that, a delusion. Despite all the internicene conflict that we have helped foster by continuousy playing one side off against another, this is still a war of resistance against a brutal, brutal occupation, no matter how many candy-bars the Pentagon tells you they have handed out. Most red-blooded Iraqis are going to continue to fight against the occupation just as we would, if, say, China came over here to "liberate us". But most Americans are so far down the rabbit hole that they can't see this.

Anyway, one of the best and well-sourced journalists on the planet is Pepe Escobar, who writes The Roving Eye column for Asia Times. He has just published his own State of the Union retort to Bush's recent speech. However, Pepe's piece refers to the state of union in Iraq. This is such an important bucket of reality to splash in our collectively stupored faces that I am including a fair bit of it below, plus the link to the entire report:

The state of the (Iraqi) union

By Pepe Escobar

I say this to the evil Bush - leave my country.
We do not need you and your army of darkness.
We don't need your planes and tanks.
We don't need your policy and your interference.
We don't want your democracy and fake freedom.
Get out of our land.
- Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi Shi'ite leader

The George W Bush-sponsored Iraqi "surge" is now one year old. The US$11 billion-a-month (and counting) Iraqi/Afghan joint quagmire keeps adding to the US government's staggering over $9 trillion debt (it was "only" $5.6 trillion when Bush took power in
early 2001).

On the ground in Iraq, the state of the union - Bush's legacy - translates into a completely shattered nation with up to 70% unemployment, a 70% inflation rate, less than six hours of electricity a day and virtually no reconstruction, although White House-connected multinationals have bagged more than $50 billion in competition-free contracts so far. The gleaming reconstruction success stories of course are the Vatican-sized US Embassy in Baghdad - the largest in the world - and the scores of US military bases.

Facts on the ground also attest the "surge" achieved no "political reconciliation" whatsoever in Iraq - regardless of a relentless US corporate media propaganda drive, fed by the Pentagon, to proclaim it a success. The new law to reverse de-Ba'athification - approved by a half-empty Parliament and immediately condemned by Sunni and secular parties as well as former Ba'athists themselves - will only exacerbate sectarian hatred.

What the "surge" has facilitated instead is the total balkanization of Baghdad – as well as the whole of Iraq. There are now at least 5 million Iraqis among refugees and the internally displaced - apart from competing statistics numbering what certainly amounts to hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. So of course there is less violence; there's hardly any people left to be ethnically cleansed.

Everywhere in Iraq there are myriad signs of balkanization - not only in blast wall/partitioned Baghdad. In the Shi'ite south, the big prize is Basra, disputed by at least three militias. The Sadrists - the voice of the streets - are against regional autonomy; the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC)- which controls security - wants Basra as the key node of a southern Shi'iteistan; and the Fadhila party - which control the governorate - wants an autonomous Basra.

In the north, the big prize is oil-rich Kirkuk province, disputed by Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen; the referendum on Kirkuk has been postponed indefinitely, as everyone knows it will unleash a bloodbath. In al-Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes bide their time collaborating with the US and controlling the exits to Syria and Jordan while preparing for the inevitable settling of scores with Shi'ites in Baghdad.

Obama and Hillary vs Iraqis

Meanwhile, in the Democratic party presidential race, Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war on Iraq, viciously battles Kennedy clan-supported Barack Obama, who opposed the war, followed at a distance by John "can a white man be president" Edwards, who apologized for his initial support for the war. Obama, Edwards and Clinton basically agree, with some nuance, the "surge" was a fluke.

They have all pledged to end the war if elected. But Edwards is the only pre-candidate who has explicitly called for an immediate US troop withdrawal - up to 50,000, with nearly all of the remaining out within a maximum of 10 months. Edwards insisted Iraqi troops would be trained "outside of Iraq" and no troops would be left to "guard US bases".

For their part, both Clinton and Obama believe substantial numbers of troops must remain in Iraq to "protect US bases" and "to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq". This essentially means the occupation grinding on. Both never said exactly how many troops would be needed: they could be as many as 75,000. Both have steadfastly refused to end the "mission" before 2013.

It's hard to envision an "occupation out" Obama when among his chief advisers one finds former president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski - the "grand chessboard" ideologue who always preached American domination of Eurasia - and former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who always fought for Israel's dominance of the "mini-chessboard", the Middle East.

So far Obama has not given any signs he would try to counter the logic of global US military hegemony conditioned by control of oil; that's why the US is in Iraq and Africa, that's the reason for so much hostility towards Venezuela, Iran and Russia. As for Clinton - with the constant references to "vital national security interests" - there's no evidence this twin-headed presidency would differ from Bush in wanting to install a puppet, pliable, perennial, anti-Iranian, peppered-with-US-military-bases regime in Iraq.

But more than US presidential candidates stumbling on how to position themselves about Iraq, what really matters is what Iraqis themselves think. According to Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad, apart from the three provinces in Iraqi Kurdistan, more than 75% of Sunnis and Shi'ites alike are certain Washington wants to set up permanent military bases; this roughly equals the bulk of the population in favor of continued attacks against US troops.

Furthermore, Sunni Arabs as a whole as well as the Sadrists are united in infinite suspicion of the key Bush-mandated "benchmark": the eventual approval by the Iraqi Parliament of a new oil law which would in fact de-nationalize the Iraqi oil industry and open it to Big Oil. Iraqi public opinion as a whole is also suspicious of what the Bush administration wants to extract from the cornered, battered Nuri al-Maliki government: full immunity from Iraqi law not only for US troops but for US civilian contractors as well. The empire seems to be oblivious to history: that was exactly one of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's most popular reasons to dethrone the Shah of Iran in 1979....

to read the entire Roving Eye Report, click here.

Bush Cheney Lies---

Bush and Cheney continue to lie for what they want.....this time they want to take their shock and awe invasion show to Iran. Any excuse will do for those two to want to invade. Funny thing....they have both known for over one year that Iran had no nuclear weapons program but they lied about that too.

Why haven't these two lunatics been tried for treason or at the very least impeached?

What the Bush Regime isn't telling you about Iraq...

There's an old saying....If you can't beat them join them. So Bush's new general has decided to stop fighting the insurgents and instead to become their partners. Bush is now having the US "joining the insurgents" in order to "switch" to the winning side in Iraq. But they are selling out the very Iraqi government they created and supported.

Some folks have no morals and no ethics and will do "anything" to come off as a winner. Who is ever going to want to ally with criminals like Bush and Cheney?

Here's the report....

It's Political and it's Edgy...The Most Popular You Tube Ever!!

Holding up Truth to Lies.....Impeach Cheney AND Bush NOW!!!