As was the case in the 1920's, Middle Eastern leaders are well aware of the imperial and destructive nature of Western nations designs on their countries and populations. A few days ago Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, demanded the pull-out of British forces around Basra in Iraq, saying their presence was causing turmoil both in Iraq and southern Iran. His comments came amid accusations by Iran that British forces were involved in a series of bombings in southern Iran. Tony Blair dismissed these claims as an attempt to divert attention from the international campaign to curb Teheran's nuclear programme. Yet history is on the side of the Iranians.
In dismissing the call for the removal of British troops from Iraq, Blair claimed that his grunts were in Iraq not only as part of a U.N. mandate but also at the request of the Iraqi government itself. Unsurprisingly, both claims are disingenuous in the extreme. The UN mandate for a multinational 'peace-keeping' force in Iraq is currently made up of troops from the very same countries that ignored the fact that there was no UN mandate to invade Iraq in the first place and went right ahead. The fact that Kofi Annan bestowed UN status on American and British troops after the non-existent handover of power in the summer of 2004 is simply a testimony to the spinelessness of the UN. The simple fact is that the presence of British and U.S. troops in Iraq is the result of the very same imperialist designs that lead Nazi troops to be in Poland in 1939.
As for Blair's claim that an ongoing invitation has been extended by the puppet Iraqi government; there is no Iraqi government that is free to make decisions that have not been sanctioned by the U.S. and British governments. Current Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has repeatedly called for a "coalition" troop withdrawal, yet at the same time has made it clear that neither he nor any member of the Iraqi government has any power to force the British or Americans to withdraw. So much for Iraqi sovereignty. Recently, CIA asset and Ayad Allawi who used his short term as Iraqi interim prime minister in 2004 to shoot prisoners in cold-blood and who provided bogus intelligence to justify the Iraqi invasion, has been spearheading a campaign to have al-Jaafari removed as Prime Minister with talk of the need for "liberal" and inclusive governments. He made no mention of arbitrary state-sanctioned murder however.
Like Allawi then, Blair is publicly upbeat about all that he, his predecessors and his American comrades can do for Iraq, but also like Allawi, Blair makes no mention of the real form of Western control that is being exerted on the Iraqi people. For example, two days ago, one of the wealthiest bankers in Iraq, Ghalib Abdul Hussein Kubba, was kidnapped during an audacious raid that left his five bodyguards dead, murdered by single gunshots to the head in the garden of a rented villa in western Baghdad.
The Times report tells us that up to a dozen men arrived in the wealthy Baghdad suburb, sporting Iraqi security force uniforms, weapons and even night-vision goggles on their helmets. "They moved and spoke like soldiers. Only their vehicles were non-military." Not exactly the attire of the average Iraqi insurgent that the British and American governments claim as the cause of all the problems in Iraq.
A little background on Mr Kubba tells us that:
he was originally a leading figure in the southern city of Basra, Mr Kubba rose to financial prominence through canny banking deals and big-business ventures, facilitated by his strong relationship with leading Baathist figures in the regime of Saddam Hussein. People in Basra allege that he was a close friend of Uday Hussein, Saddam's gangster son. Yet in 2003, after the regime fell, Mr Kubba was appointed head of Basra's interim council by the British. He became the president of Basra commerce, headed many local businesses and was a leading figure in the city's al-Fadilah Islamic party.Mr Kubba is not the only one with links to former Baathist figures in Saddam's regime:
West turns blind eye as police put Saddam's torturers back to work
IRAQI security forces, set up by American and British troops, torture detainees by pulling out their fingernails, burning them with hot irons or giving them electric shocks, Iraqi officials say. Cases have also been recorded of bound prisoners being beaten to death by police.
In their haste to put police on the streets to counter the brutal insurgency, Iraqi and US authorities have enlisted men trained under Saddam Hussein's regime and versed in torture and abuse, the officials told The Times. They said that recruits were also being drawn from the ranks of outlawed Shia militias.
Iraqi forces blame U.S. for death squadsNote that these death squads come from inside the U.S.-controlled Iraqi interior ministry. Of course, the use of covert death squads by the American and British governments to impose "democracy" is a tactic that is as old as their colonial designs on the Middle East (and many other parts of the world). Indeed, there are rumors that current US ambassador to Iraq and veteran El Salvador death squad organiser, John Negroponte is up to his old tricks.
Challenging recent claims that Iraqi Shia militias were running death squads in the war torn country, the leader of the Badr Brigade, a powerful Shia militia that fought the toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from exile, blamed on Sunday the U.S. errors for the chaos that has plagued Iraq.
Iraq's Sunni Arab minority has repetitively accused the country's Shia leaders of running death squads operating from inside the Interior Ministry, run for almost a year by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
The noticeable surge in daily bloodshed, including roadside and car bomb attacks by unknown elements dressed in officially-distributed Iraqi commando outfits has reached an alarming level.
See here for a blog dedicated to digging into the truth behind the thousands of kidnappings and assassinations going on in modern democratic, U.S.-controlled Iraq.
But employing terror tactics in modern Middle Eastern nations is best effected by those that have a long history of waging brutal wars of deception in the Arab world. Thankfully, there is one group that the Americans and British can turn to fulfill that specific need:
Israel trains US assassination squads in IraqBut to people like Blair, all of this is merely the outplaying of "democracy", and little things like the inhuman torture of hundreds of innocent men in guantanamo on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld as they 'lounge' around their holiday cells between sessions of genital electrocution are but "anomalies" that will one day have to be dealt with. Maybe.
Tuesday December 9, 2003
The Guardian
Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq.
US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.
In the meantime, there is the worldwide war of terror to be waged, and a country of 86 million people to be obliterated.
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