Subject: "DOUBLE GAME" IN IRAQ EXPOSED: Invaders own
role in Orchestrating Terrorist Insurgency
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 15:15:04 -0500
We recall last year's "leaked" chatter of the Neo-Con
Plan: The Dissolution of Iraq From
ample evidence now quite clear and also plain on the ground in Iraq,
we also note the neo-CON's very own recognition of its BIG
miscalculation in ridding Iraq of the U.S. establishment's old proxy
strong man, the CIA's asset, (30-years of backing), of one Sadam
Hussein. A man who even before the fateful invasion of
Iraq in March 2003, could have been manipulated by the warmongers
and inventors of the "weapons of mass destruction" excuse
for war and occupation--before the death of untold numbers of Iraqis
and over 2000 US troops and tens of thousands of maimed men, whose
lives are largely ruined for good. ac
"While the media debate has shifted onto whether or not a civil
war is imminent in Iraq -- and it's obvious from the comments of the
above informed observers that it is -- unnnoticed and barely
reported is the compelling evidence that some sectarian violence has
been deliberately fostered and orchestrated by US and British
military intelligence. .....Pakistani
military sources told the Asia Times in February 2005
that the US has "resolved to arm small militias backed by US
troops and entrenched in the population," consisting of
"former members of the Ba'ath Party". In other words, al-Qaeda's
latest Ba'athist recruits undergoing what the London Times
called "Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make
remote-controlled bombs" were getting themselves
"entrenched" in the civilian environment while also being
covertly armed and supported by elements of the US military.....
It is difficult to avoid the conclusions that US military
intelligence has actively implemented a series of covert operations
designed to manipulate and arm the terrorist insurgency, thus
contributing to the deterioration of security."
- Bio of Nafeez Ahmed
- Location: London, United Kingdom
I’m the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (www.independent
inquiry.co.uk) and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and
the Anatomy of Terrorism (Arris, Olive Branch, 2005). I teach
undergraduate courses at the Department of International Relations,
University of Sussex, Brighton, where I’m currently a PhD
candidate. My research is about the relationship between European
imperialism since the 15th century, and Western practices of
violence and genocide. I’m also director of the Institute for
Policy Research & Development, based in central London. My first
book, The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked,
September 11, 2001, was an instant bestseller in the US, Germany and
Italy, and won the latter’s Naples Prize. My 2nd book, Behind the
War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq,
examines the role of energy in the pattern of Western
interventionism in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottomon
Empire.
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/
Monday, August 07, 2006
The Four-Frontal War: Covert Operations Escalate in Middle
East and the Horn of Africa
Civil War Looms in Iraq
Nafeez Ahmed
"US Generals forsee Iraqi partition" was the unnerving
headline penned by Guardian journalists Julian Borger, Ewen
MacAskill and Richard Norton Taylor yesterday.
They quote the leaked memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair written by
William Patey, Britain's outgoing Ammbassador to Iraq, which
revealed that "a low intensity civil war and a de facto
division of Iraq" is currently more probable than the
stabilization of the country. His comments were shockingly confirmed
by General John Abizaid, the head of US Central Command, and General
Peter Pace, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, both of
whom warned of the imminent probability of Iraq's slide to civil
war.
While the media debate has shifted onto whether or not a civil war
is imminent in Iraq -- and it's obvious from the comments of the
above informed observers that it is -- unnnoticed and barely
reported is the compelling evidence that some sectarian violence has
been deliberately fostered and orchestrated by US and British
military intelligence. When Iraqi police found "explosives and
a remote-control detonator... in the car of the two SAS special
forces men" disguised as Arabs, last year in September, veteran
war correspondent John
Pilger in the New Statesman was one of the few to note the odd
details. "What were they planning to do...?" with the
explosives, he wondered: "Although reported initially by the
Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in
the SAS men's unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. ... the SAS
men, disguised as al-Sadr's followers, were planning an attack on
Basra ahead of an important religious festival."
Orchestrating the Terrorist Insurgency?
I had written in some detail about this event at the time last
year -- the only news outlet that would touch the story was the
progressive online newsmagazine Raw
Story. But this was not the only event suggesting that American
and British military intelligence operatives have been playing a
double-game in Iraq. Iraqi nuclear scientist Dr. Imad Khudduri, who
worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 to 1998
when he left the country, reports that a driver in Baghdad had his
license confiscated
by US army officers at a check-point. They told him "to
report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for
interrogation" to retrieve his license. When he got to the
camp, he was questioned for 30 min before being released. As for his
license, the US army officers told him it had been sent for
processing to al-Khadimiya police station, where he had to hurry to
pick it up before the responsible officer left 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", reports
Dr. Khudduri.
"... 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’.
"The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq.
A car was confiscated along with the driver’s license. He did
follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told
to go to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for
him, the car broke down on the way to the police station. The
inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully
laden with explosives."
Going back to my own research on this, in my Raw Story
report just under a year ago, I noted two important points:
1. Press
reports as well as official statements from al-Qaeda
in Iraq suggested that al-Qaeda had teamed up with Saddam
Hussein's old Ba'ath Party loyalists. Iraqi intelligence and US
military officials have known for years that al-Qaeda operatives
from outside Iraq had "formed an alliance with former
intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein".
2. Pakistani
military sources told the Asia Times in February 2005
that the US has "resolved to arm small militias backed by US
troops and entrenched in the population," consisting of
"former members of the Ba'ath Party". In other words, al-Qaeda's
latest Ba'athist recruits undergoing what the London Times
called "Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make
remote-controlled bombs" were getting themselves
"entrenched" in the civilian environment while also being
covertly armed and supported by elements of the US military. The US
had procured “Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles,
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other
light weaponry.” A Pakistani military analyst noted that the
“arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because
US arms would be given to them.” It is difficult to avoid the
conclusions that US military intelligence has actively implemented a
series of covert operations designed to manipulate and arm the
terrorist insurgency, thus contributing to the deterioration of
security.
Neo-Con Plan: The Dissolution of Iraq
But why? The dissolution of Iraq has long been an essential
feature of hardline Israeli strategic thinking. In 1982, the Hebrew
journal Kivunim
-- the official organ of the World Zionist Organization -- published
an article by former Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon,
who observed that:
"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on
the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its
dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria... In
the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest
threat to Israel... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will
assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more
important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and
in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along
ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible.
So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities:
Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will
separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."
The fragmentation of Iraq, in other words, is an integral part
of Zionist grand strategy, a strategy that is staunchly supported by
the neoconservatives in the White House.
Sources close to the incumbent Iraqi government fear that the
drastic deterioration of security in Iraq will be exploited by the
Anglo-American coalition to dissolve the fragile parliament and
declare a state of emergency, thus permanently sealing the
occupation. It is difficult to discern whether this specific
scenario is plausible, but there can be no doubt that policymakers
in Washington and London want to manipulate the situation to ensure
long-term control over Iraqi oil reserves.
Nuclear-ization of Mid-East War
As covert operations to fracture Iraq are escalating, the
humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is deepening. Evidence mounts that
Israel is planning a wider regional war using nuclear weapons. As
ceasefire negotiations continued last week, the Israeli Committee
for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological & Chemical
Weapons reported (5.8.06) that:
"The Government of Israel has recently purchased from the
United States bunker-busting bombs (GBU-28), for use in its war in
Lebanon. These bombs contain depleted uranium -- a carcinogenic
substance that spreads in the form of a toxic and radioactive dust,
which enters the lungs and bones and is especially harmful to babies
and young children."
The invention of bunker-busting bombs are a brazen attempt to make
nuclear devices a viable weapons of warfare without automatically
implying Mutually Assured Destruction. In late May 2003, at
President Bush’s insistence, Congress voted to end the 10-year ban
on the development of tactical nuclear weapons -- also known as
‘mini-nukes’ or 'bunker-busting' bombs - that range up to a
third the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The
new nuclear
devices are designed to “produce small amounts of radiation,
earth-penetrating weapons to attack underground bunkers, larger
devices with greater radiation effects and weapons to destroy
chemical and biological agents.” These measures conflict with US
treaty obligations -- the US is a signatory to both the
comprehensive test ban treaty (although has not ratified it) and the
nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Despite being designed to concentrate the impact in order to limit
the nuclear fallout to the intended target, tactical nuclear weapons
remain extremely dangerous and inherently indiscriminate -- and of
course far more devastating for civilian populations than
conventional weapons. For example, according to Council on Foreign
Relations scientist Robert Nelson in Physics
Today, “anyone within the roughly 3W0.6 km2 area covered
by the base surge would receive a fatal dose of radiation. (W is the
explosive energy yield in kilotons of TNT.).” Estimating a typical
third-world urban population density of 6000/km2, this implies that
a single “1-kt weapon would kill tens of thousands”, whereas a
single more powerful “100-kt weapon would kill hundreds of
thousands of people.”
Nukes, in other words, are still nukes.
Have No Doubt: They Want War... on Four Fronts
Israeli's acquirement of tactical nuclear weapons within the
last few days is therefore of urgent concern, and indicates that the
regime is stepping-up its planning for an impending wider regional
conflict. It must be remembered that Israel has long planned this
war. The "clean break" strategy advocated a decade ago by
Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser David
Wurmser -- which "is progressing
as planned" according to Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Col.
Karen Kwiatowski PhD -- sees a conflict with Lebanon as an integral
dimension of a war to expand Israeli influence over Syria and Iran:
"An effective approach, and one with which American can
sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along
its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the
principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."
As the US, UK, and other powers scuttle around shouting for a
ceasefire agreement, according to former senior advisor to President
Clinton Sidney Blumenthal, neither the US nor Israel want peace:
"The National Security Agency is providing signal
intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are
supplying new armaments to Hezbollah ... neoconservatives on Vice
President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams,
the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the
National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA
intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian
supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both
countries... The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic
about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen
the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into
a four-front war."
The ceasefire
rhetoric is being used deliberately by Anglo-American and
Israeli officials to manufacture a justification for opening
multiple theatres of war in the region. As Robert Fisk at the Independent
observes, the draft resolution is absurdly pro-Israel, failing to
even call on Israeli troops to withdraw from Lebanon, and guaranteed
to be rejected by Hizbullah as merely an exercise in imperial
hubris.
Carving Lebanon?
Meanwhile, US efforts are currently designed to facilitate the
political divisions in Lebanon. While supporting Israel's invasion
of Lebanon, and condemning Hizbullah's resistance, the Bush
administration is simultaneously planning
"to help train and equip the Lebanese army so it can take
control of all of the nation's territory". The plan is
motivated by Hizbollah's growing popularity as the only force in
Lebanon capable of attempting to defend its people.
Indeed, the strategic planning behind the "clean break"
onslaught now in motion was already in place in the 1980s and is
mentioned in the Kivunim
article cited previously, which advises that: "Lebanon’s
total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the
entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian
peninsula and is already following that track." Moreover, this
is part of a broader process of reconfiguration of the entire Middle
East. "The entire Arabian peninsula is a natural candidate for
dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter
is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia", the article
continues.
"Low Intensity Warfare" in Iran and Somalia
It should not come as a surprise then to learn that the War on
Iran has, in fact, already begun -- as early as June 2005. Former US
marine and chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter,
revealed citing confidential
sources secret US military flights in Iran “using pilotless
drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.” The CIA’s
Directorate of Operations was financing and directing the Mujahadeen
el-Khalq (MEK), the notorious Iranian opposition group (formerly run
by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services) still categorized by
the State Department as a “terrorist organization.”
CIA-sponsored MEK terrorist operations currently include “remote
bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns
on a daily basis inside Iraq.” Additionally, the US military had
prepared a base of operations in neighbouring Azerbaijan “for a
massive military presence” designed to facilitate a “major
land-based campaign” to conquer Tehran. CIA paramilitary
operatives and US Special Operations units are training with
Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of “operating
inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct
action, and mobilizing indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in
Tehran.”
Covert operations are escalating in other potentially oil-rich
regions. In February this year, CIA
planes reportedly "delivered large amounts of money and
guns" to three warlords in Somalia who dominated Mogadishu.
"They named themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of
Peace and Counter-Terrorism" and began fighting against the
Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), a loose legal federation of Somali
clans supported "by local businessmen, to restore order by
using religious law to settle disputes and punish criminals. Each
clan's court has jurisdiction only over its own clan members, but it
was a start
on rebuilding a law-abiding society." The BBC describes the
UIC as "a
grassroots movement" which has "become increasingly
popular among city residents and the business community desperate to
see an end to the rule of the gun." An initiative that
Washington was not happy with. In late July this year, the
US "let Ethiopia send troops in to protect the isolated
'Interim Government' in Baidoa. That probably means renewed war, and
across borders this time... Just when Somalia was about to escape
from its long nightmare, a new and worse one has appeared: the
prospect of a war that would consume the entire Horn of
Africa."
Although Somali clan leaders have expressed the desire to cooperate
with Washington's demands on alleged al-Qaeda terrorists, Washington
suddenly seems less interested in tangible peaceful solutions. UIC
clan elders reportedly "met with US Ambassador William Bellamy
in Nairobi, Kenya and promised
to cooperate in the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists."
They even "signed an agreement with the US ambassador that if
they tell us exactly where these men are in Somalia, our clan
militia will go and capture them and turn them over." Since
then, the US has been surprisingly silent about the location of the
alleged terrorists -- but still wants to ignite a war that could
engulf the whole Horn of Africa. A spokesperson for the US embassy
had "no comment" on the meetings.
US interests in Somalia are rather familiar, and have remained much
the same since the 1992 Bush Snr. invasion called "Operation
Restore Hope". At that time the Los
Angeles Times revealed: “Far beneath the surface of the
tragic drama of Somalia, four major US oil companies are quietly
sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore
and exploit tens of millions of acres of the Somali countryside.
That land, in the opinion of geologists and industry sources, could
yield significant amounts of oil and natural gas if the US led
military mission can restore peace to the impoverished East African
nation.” As the Independent
adds, "The oil giants’ exclusive concessions to explore and
drill [are] worthless in the absence of a viable government to
enforce their claims.” The UIC, as an increasingly popular,
largely Islamic Sufi federation, fundamentally threatens to
permanently prevent the retrieval of these exclusive concessions to
US oil corporations.
Concluding Comment
It seems that the War Machine is now in full-swing. US covert
operations to control strategic resources are exploding in Iraq,
Iran and Somalia. Western diplomatic, military, intelligence and
financial maneuverings are carefully positioning Israeli policy to
fracture the conflict with Lebanon in a conflict on four (or more)
fronts. Tactical nukes are being prepared for imminent use,
increasing the probability of a full-scale regional conflagaration.
Meanwhile, Dick Cheney is still hiding somewhere in his bunker, and
Western leaders continue to promise us that they only want peace.
Orwell must be spinning in his grave.
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