Lenin’s Tomb
Let me be the first to condemn this atrocity, carried out by the "Zionists and occupiers"!
Its clear that lenin is allowing space for the assorted conspiracy theorists to theorise because RESPECTs biggest donor is a noted conspiracist!
Note, again, the use of that indispensable thoughtstopper, the cant term "conspiracy theorist"; and note who's using it, and to what end.
I am wondering: What would it take for the P20G group, or Operation Gladio, or those arrested SAS bombers, to be even mentioned on, say, Newsnight? Just mentioned, in connection with the destruction of the Samarra mosque, for which - after all - no one has yet been arrested. Mentioned as precedents, as guides to understanding, as leads perhaps worth following up. As possible clues.
Presumably the answer is: it would take a miracle. It would take a renaissance of investigative journalism.
The term "conspiracy theorist" is so weirdly effective; it serves to frighten people shitless and shut them up dependably, even when their suspicions are entirely rational and supported by umpteen documented precedents, very recent news items (SAS bombers) and unashamed official statements(P2OG).
Interesting to note that, according to ICC, there were, along with the "sectarian attacks", 9 Yanquis killed in resistance operations today and yesterday - which is above average.
Maybe indicative of who the resistance are blaming?
has there not been ANY follow-up of the two SAS men dressed as Iraqi's with a big stash of weapons? surely some internet media sources may have looked into it?
As the late HST used to say, "there's no such thing as paranoia anymore, it's all true." The more sophisticated power gets, the more likely it is to use all sorts of techniques to control outcome. The U.S. military even publishes manuals on the subject. It's only smart business practices, including making the awareness of such practices seem looney.
Let's just call it Enhanced Pattern Recognition and stop playing on their terms. Anyone who's ever seen a will probated or experienced co-worker sabotage when mere pittances were at stake is foolish to think people would not stoop to such machinations when real power and money hung in the balance.
Well said, Madame X.
Ahmad: No idea, I've certainly heard nothing more about it.
warszawa, the use of the term "conspiracy theorist" doesn't shut you up, you keep gabbing on and on and on and ariston...
the list that justin posted about conspiracy theorists describes you painfully accurately warszawa, no joke. Its a wonder that the "Bush Gang" has taken steps to silence you, since you know SO much about their activities...amazing you sleep at night dr. tinfoil hat...
sorry has = hasn't
ps it was the "Bush Gang" which done that typo...you can't prove it wasn't...wheels within wheels my friend, wheels within wheels...
and hamsters within wheels, within S.D.'s head.
Eyewitness accounts
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/?p=723
"fourteen 'enduring' bases" is, I believe, the technical term.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
intern...1401237,00.html
Great photo!
Wouldn't the Vatican look marvelous as an enormous pile of rubble?
Or how about that famous cathedral in London...Wren's Monstrosity or whatever it's called?
No matter who did it...I just hope they do it a lot more!
Nothing improves an urban landscape like the removal of a "holy building".
Hi Red!
YKTMX here - any news on the RevLeft server?
Stopper dittohead (I can hardly bear to type that "moniker" out - it's nearly as cringeworthy as the word "moniker"): Carry on, please, you're doing a fine job of discrediting yourself and the cant term "conspiracy theory".
redstar2000: Er, right. Statements like that will help to build a constituency that passes comfortably inside a single pair of trousers.
I don't, actually, like the snide comments from people who (rightly) predict that "Zionists" and/or Americans will be blamed for this...and (more worryingly for the left, that the nutters of them SWP may well agree)...but it is the case that after 9/11 SWP members went along, for a while, with the theory that "The JEWS" were behind it...you want evidence: Lynn Hubbard at Birmingham Trades Council.
The link provided by sonic is very interesting. It provides an eyewitness account by a very brave man who gives his name, and who says he lives and works near the shrine:
"My name is Muhammad Al-Samarrai, I own an internet-cafe near the mosque, I sleep in my shop because I am worry about my computers from thieves.
8,30 (evening) joint forces of Iraqi ING and Americans asked me to stay in the shop and don’t leave the area.
9,00 (evening) they left the area.
11,00 (evening) they came back and started to patrol the area until the morning.
6,00 (next day morning) ING leave the area .
6,30 Americans leave the area .
6,40 first explosion.
6,45 second explosion.
- He confirmed again that the curfew starts at 8,00 (evening) until next day 6,00 (morning), INGs and the Americans will surround and patrol the city all that time.
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/?p=723
If there were such a thing as investigative journalism, someone would be following up that lead and looking for corroborating eyewitness accounts. But it would take a very brave reporter indeed to do any serious work at all in Iraq these days:
Arab TV journalists killed in Iraq
Thursday, February 23, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Three journalists for Al-Arabiya television, including a well-known woman correspondent, were kidnapped and killed while covering sectarian violence in Samarra, police and the Arabic-language channel said."
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORL...nalists.killed/
Poor Denham,
>i>you want evidence: Lynn Hubbard at Birmingham Trades Council.
Hard to see the relevance of this. In any case: That's not evidence, it's an unsupported assertion. A libel, in fact, unless and until you produce evidence. I've just googled her name and found very little, and absolutely nothing of any relevance whatsoever. Exactly what are you on about, and why?
Lenin - surely the United States would prefer a pliable client government to the murderous chaos of a civil war?
And furthermore, what they really wouldn't want is an Tehran-controlled Shia theocracy, and it seems to me that such a situation would be the only conceivable outcome of a civil war.
Hmm...
The plot thickens: CNN reports that Halliburton are in IRAN:
"In January Halliburton and the local Oriental Kish Oil won a $308 million contract to drill for gas in Iran's giant South Pars field. "Halliburton and Oriental Kish are the final winners," Akbar Torkan, managing director of Pars Oil & Gas, said on national TV. The statement sparked fury among Iran's hardliners. One newspaper warned, "Footsteps of the Yankees heard moving in on Iran's oil sector."
While Halliburton insists its activities in Iran are entirely legal, some in Congress claim that the Houston oil services giant is milking a loophole in the U.S. embargo that allows foreign subsidiaries of American companies to work in Iran. "They are operating on the very boundaries of legality of U.S. law," says Dan Katz, chief counsel for Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D--New Jersey), who has long argued that Halliburton--once run by Vice President Dick Cheney--is exploiting its political clout."
http://
www.democraticunderground...ress=364x503235
I am unsurprised by the violent reaction to this despicable crime, because the fundamental dispute between Shiites and Sunnis outrageously spawns hatred, nonstop. I am unsurprised, therefore, by the reprisal attacks at Sunni mosques.
As a Shiite, I am shocked, however, at the murder of three Sunni journalists in Samarra.
"Their intention is perfectly clear.
1. prevent any nation ever challenging US global hegemony;
2. Dominating oil. The aggression against Iraq is not about oil per se, it is about control of oil. Before the Iraq crisis, the US imported about $18 billion of oil annually from the Mideast, but spent $31 billion keeping military forces there. Why? Control of Mideast oil gives the US domination over Europe and Japan, who draw most of their oil from the region. Domination of Mideast and Caspian oil will assure the US a permanent stranglehold over China and India, as well as Europe and Japan.
The second, but almost invisible driving force is Israel's far right Likud government, which has come to dominate Bush Administration policy and US media commentary on the Mideast. The Clinton Administration was close to Israel's moderate Labor Party; Bush's camp is totally aligned with Israel's aggressive far right and mirrors its views and policies to a remarkable, unprecedented degree. Likud, and its powerful American supporters, want the US to crush Iraq into pieces. The principal beneficiary of the war against Iraq will be Israel." (Eric Margolis, 2003)
"The de facto partition of Iraq, long predicted by this column, could be accelerating. Washington may decide to carve up the country into `Iraq utile,' as France used to define Chad, and `Iraq inutile', or useful and useless Iraq. Oil is in the north and southeast. Let the Turks and Kurds divvy up the north; the US and Britain will control the bigger southeast fields; the oiless Sunni triangle, where resistance to US occupation is fiercest, will be sealed off and left in isolation."
(Margolis, 2003) http://www.bigeye.com/101303.htm
If the COW special forces did this, then it is another mile-marker on the road toward total political and miltary bankruptcy in the Arab world. If Moqtada Al-Sadr did it, then he's smarter than we think.
Goddamn the fools who got us into this.
The north, possibly, but it seems to me that the US and Britain cannot possibly hold the South-East: all information suggests it is already effectively being run from Tehran. AFAIK, British troops are basically confined to barracks at this point.
|My apoligies for being off topic and if I have missed others mentioning the quite surrounding this matter here
http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=992
Front page news anyone?
This one slipped under the radar...http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=992.
The murder of the three journalists is puzzling. It seems unlikely that the perps would be a criminal gang, as they would presumably want to hold the three for ransom. On the face of it, neither the iraqi government forces, nor any legit resistance forces would have anything to gain by the murders. That leaves the foreign jihadis or the U.S. What either would have to gain---set against the risk of discovery---is unclear, at least to me. Any suggestions?
Lenin is right to raise the specter of the Zionists having a hand in trhis. I know there is no evidence so we can't say any more than that yet: but they have a motive - let's be patient for the evidence, when it arises there will be a watertight case laying the blame at the door of Tel Aviv.
'Schwartz' - No seriously, why not try your hand at sarcasm?
Denham - you're a slanderer and a liar (again), and you know that for those reasons you are banned. No, the SWP never did blame Joooz for the 9/11 attacks. Our response, written shortly afterwards, is available on our website.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commen...1716598,00.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/
...BA9D51C406C.htm
"The international community has reacted with outrage to the news that Afghanistan's ruling Taleban movement has begun destroying the country's statues."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...sia/
1196363.stm
"The Taleban authorities in Afghanistan have shown foreign journalists the results of their demolition of two giant Buddhist statues earlier this month."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...sia/
1242856.stm
"Photographs from Afghanistan have confirmed that the country's third largest giant Buddha statue has been reduced to rubble on the orders of the country's Taleban government."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...sia/
1222776.stm
"Dramatic pictures of the Taleban's destruction of ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan have been released. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...sia/
1229256.stm
"The rubble of ancient giant statues of Buddha, which were blown up by the Taleban authorities in Afghanistan last month, is said to have been offered for sale. Reports say several truck-loads of rubble from the statues turned up in Pakistan and was offered to dealers."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...sia/
1256394.stm
The irony is killing.
.
I don't, actually, like the snide comments from people who (rightly) predict that "Zionists" and/or Americans will be blamed for this...and (more worryingly for the left, that the nutters of them SWP may well agree)...but it is the case that after 9/11 SWP members went along, for a while, with the theory that "The JEWS" were behind it...
Replace your racist phrase with "Israel", as, without knowing anything whatsoever about the person you're talking about, I'm sure it was the one they used.
Israel is a suspect for 9/11 simply because it has fulfils all of the possible criteria you can assemble for candidates for suspects.
Israel has, if nothing else, a demonstrated history of attacking US assets in and pretending it was Arab-instigated in order to direct American aggression toward Arabs.
Before you claim ignorance familiarise yourself with the Levon Affair (Israel destroying US and UK assets in Egypt), Chomsky's forthrightness on the USS Liberty (Israel destroying a US naval ship, including the use of napalm on life-rafts), and the transmission device Israel installed in Tripoli slightly before several terrorist attacks in Europe, one of which saw CIA agent Musbah Eter and Mossad agent Mohammed Amairi arrested and, after diplomatic wrangling, deported.
.
How can this be? Democracies don't attack one another!!!
How can this be? Democracies don't attack one another!!!
The democratic peace theory is an interesting one. I have tried to come up with examples of liberal democracies attacking one another and have only come up with a few. For instance, the US attack on Guatemala after the election of a left-wing democratic government.
However, that did not involve an actual 'war', which is what 'democratic peace' theory refers to. In fact, I don't know of a single example where two democratic nations have gone to war against one another. Now, the reasons for this are probably very far from those posited by the proponents of this Kantian idea, but it deserves some reflection. I'll be researching it shortly myself.
The United States Civil war - both sides were liberal democracies...
RD - nah, a society based on the slavery of human beings is not a liberal democracy.
Sonic - I think Hitchens might write something about this event and show a sudden interest in the religious sensitivities of the Shia. 100% u turn when it serves his masters...
I expect the rule will only work if the definitions of 'democracy' and 'war' are tweaked as required.
There weren't many "mature" democracies prior to WWII, and their rivalries were played out through colonial ventures perhaps? It might be worth looking for "proxy" wars between clients of the first world democracies.
The Nazis came to power through an ostensibly democratic process, but of course it's very easy to point to problems with this process which renders the example inadmissible.
However the same reasoning could be (and is being) used to declare Chavez' Venezuela non-democratic, which is a desired (required?) pre-condition for intervention by the US.
Similarly, the recent presidential election in Iran was 'democratic' within the bounds of the Islamic Republics' constitution, but this is dismissed because of the Council of Guardians.
However, once you start this process of disqualification due to constitutional peculiarities the validity of the 'rule' starts to look shaky - when does a 'democracy' cease to be 'democratic'?
Just as Iran has the 'Council of Guardians', the US has the Electoral College and the UK has its monarchy. These are constitutional 'safeguards' against a lack or a surfeit of 'democracy.'
If pushed right wing Americans will proudly stress that the US is not a democracy, but is in fact a Republic - i.e. the US is more Roman than Athenian.
Many more 'democracies' came into being after WWII, but the entire period up until the collapse of the USSR was distorted by the cold war and the subordination of imperialist rivalries to the western alliance system. I reckon the rule of 'democratic peace' has not yet been tested sufficiently.
Great photo!
Wouldn't the Vatican look marvelous as an enormous pile of rubble?
Or how about that famous cathedral in London...Wren's Monstrosity or whatever it's called?
No matter who did it...I just hope they do it a lot more!
Nothing improves an urban landscape like the removal of a "holy building".
This actually trumps Denham's slanders for unabashed fuckwittery. Pretty impressive, in its way.
I'm with the "show me more evidence" faction. It is a long jump from SAS men dressed up as Arabs riding around Basra with all sorts of weaponry to a "SAS demolish mosque". According to the poor understanding of this illiterate, SAS men have been riding around in Arab cloths armed to the teeth since WW2.
Given the amount of ill-feeling apparent between different Iraqi factions, I'ld say stirring up unrest is completely unnecessary. I'ld also say that imposing a daytime curfew just when you are getting the results you want would be a strange thing to do. I don't think I'm the only one here who can be accused of ignoring facts that don't fit my thesis... that said, I'm keeping that theory around, waiting for more evidence to feed it with.
Len - I've sent you and M an email, but it may have bounced back. Check with him, if you would?
According to the poor understanding of this illiterate, SAS men have been riding around in Arab cloths armed to the teeth since WW2.
Quite, and, among other criminal acts, killing them. These SAS men were alleged to have been in the possession of bombs and detonators, two weapons not needed for either reconnaissance or immediate self-defence.
This [Vatican/Rubble] actually trumps Denham's slanders for unabashed fuckwittery. Pretty impressive, in its way.
You are wrong, iconoclasm is reputable.
Given the amount of ill-feeling apparent between different Iraqi factions, I'ld say stirring up unrest is completely unnecessary.
Uh, hundreds of bombs on thousands of civilians, no civil war. One bomb one mosque, civil war. Seems it was a very effective strike by whoever did it.
It couldn't possibly have been the Sunni supremacist "resistance", could it Lenin?
After all, they're heroes "writing their names in the stars".
Must have been a zionist plot.
Emissionary,
Did you spot the howls of outrage in the media when the Taliban provincial governor who oversaw the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas became a member of liberated Afghanistan's government?
No, niether did I.
Uh, hundreds of bombs on thousands of civilians, no civil war. One bomb one mosque, civil war. Seems it was a very effective strike by whoever did it. Sadly, yes.
As for reducing St. Pauls etc. to rubble: I like St. Paul's a lot. St. Peter's is a bit gaudy, but I think demolition is probably a bit extreme, as a form of criticism - couldn't we just redecorate?
Simon B - I always suspected you were an AWL troll. Now I know for sure.
No, there is no "Sunni supremacist" resistance. There is a national resistance movement whose armed wing is largely but not exclusively Sunni. Then there are some groups with barking religious sectarian views (takfiris if you like) who carry out attacks on civilians. I did note this in my post, so how it could have escaped you in good faith is beyond me.
and which branch attacked the shrine?
and which branch attacked the shrine?
That's kind of what we're trying to figure out. No one knows.
Lenin,
"I always suspected you were an AWL troll. Now I know for sure."
I've never hidden being AWL. I'm suprised you didn't know already.
"There is a national resistance movement whose armed wing is largely but not exclusively Sunni."
Why do you think that is?
Say, this "Zionist conspiracy" line is a fucking riot every single time.
So it could be those you support?
I've never hidden being AWL. I'm suprised you didn't know already.
You didn't say. Not that I care: you can tell AWL members a mile away from the actual phone box.
Why do you think that is?
Because Sunni areas have seen the harshest end of the occupation. Take Fallujah, for instance. It was one of the most pacific towns, post occupation and yet yet when a few people decided to peacefully protest against the occupation in that city, the US decided to shoot on them. From that incident developed a series of altercations leading to the attack on four US mercenaries and a US assault that was repelled, followed by another that absolutely destroyed the city. Now, in those circumstances, I think you would arm yourself.
In most Shi'ite areas, excepting Meysan, armed resistance has been minimal, even though it is known that there are Shi'ite groups operating. The reason is because the situation in these areas is less urgent, and so they can play for time while pressing their demographic majority to its natural advantage.
So it could be those you support?
Unlikely for the reasons I've outlined: namely that it was not a resistance attack. And when you said 'which branch', I actually thought you meant which branch of intelligence. Could you try to be more specific in future? Ta.
Did you spot the howls of outrage in the media when the Taliban provincial governor who oversaw the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas became a member of liberated Afghanistan's government? No, niether did I.
Well, on the other hand, IRA Murderer-Commander Martin McGuiness, British War Criminal Tony Blair, American War Criminal George Bush, and Zionist War Criminal Ariel Sharon, all got into government too. Each of those individuals can be shown to be directly linked to instigating the military deaths of many civilians for their own political ends, in many cases dwarfing the crimes of the Taleban.
Say, this "Zionist conspiracy" line is a fucking riot every single time.
It's even more of a gas when it's true, like the repellent Zionist assistance of the Holocaust (they helped throw half a million Hungarian Jews onto Nazi fires - something left-wing Jews have been shouting about for sixty years now), or the cowardly Zionist attack on the USS Liberty (where they even hunted killed those fleeing the burning boat - try reading Chomsky, I know "Words Iz Hurd 2 Reed" and all), or the bloodthirsty Zionist genocide in Sabra and Shatila (where women and children were raped and systematically executed in the closest thing the world has seen to the Polish death-camps since the end of World War II - ironic but true), or the sly and crafty destruction of US assets in Egypt (both muderous in it's own right and repellent as a direct attempt to incite race-war - again sad but accurate).
No commentary from you on those crimes, or, for that matter, Israel's current role in creating the New South Africa. Hmmmm, one wonders if you are employed in some Zionist enterprise along the way. Then again, being Zionism's PR agent is a bit like being Head Shit Sniffer at the municiple sewage treatment works. I mean, sure you'll be busy, and sure you'll be your own boss, but your job stinks.
Indeed, your feeble defence of Zionist aggression and genocide is the only true humour here. You make Rosco P. Coltrane appear suave and the very epitome of sophistication.
Emissionary, was that whole bit addressed to me? The "feeble defence" bit, and the stuff about being a Zionist PR? If it was, I think we got our wires crossed somewhat. I was referring to the constant sarcastic refrain of "Must have been a zionist plot" from people like Simon B, which is presumably intended to wind Lenin up and to dismiss the idea of Zionist involvement from the outset as merely a wacky conspiracy theory, when in fact, as most of us are aware and as you have summarised, there are very solid historical reasons for not dismissing it.
It's happened about a half dozen times in this thread, and it was getting on my tits.
Phew Emissionary, I am sure your screen had to be wiped down after that "fearless tirade against Zionism".
And right on cue...
Morrissey quizzed by anti-terrorist police
British pop star Morrissey was quizzed by the FBI and Britain's Special Branch after he called President Bush a "terrorist".The singer said he was "baffled" to be held and interviewed by the authorities. But he was released when they realised the melancholic warbler was not a threat to the free world.
Difficult to believe this is a real news story and not an Onion spoof.
I am sorry if it seems that I want to cover up Zionist involvement in the destruction of the Al-Alskariya mosque. It is plain to see that the lurking Zionist enemy have the motive and desire to sow discord across the muslim world with their devilish plots, control of the US government, ability to time travel etc etc. I must also add that, without evidence, it must also be considered that extra-terrestrials may have also been involved.
I would honestly like to hear reasons why the dread "Zionists" would have carried out this specific attack?
Unlikely for the reasons I've outlined: namely that it was not a resistance attack.
How do you know?
How do you know?
*sigh* A resistance attack is an attack against the structure or forces of the occupation. An attack on a major Shi'ite shrine that has hitherto gone untouched in a majority Sunni city is not a resistance attack but a deliberate provocation.
It seem the Democratic Front BNP/AWL has produced a new website:
http://www.nordish.net/forum/sho...ead.php?
t=14481
*sigh* A resistance attack is an attack against the structure or forces of the occupation
But some Sunnis se Shiites as part of that structure.
While I too am with the 'show me more evidence' faction, those who think that suggesting the possibility of US involvement is some loony conspiracy theory are really setting themselves against the US' own track record. My guess is that having set the sectarian divisions in motion the US probably doesn't have to invent sectarian terrorist groups. But the US clearly are conducting 'black ops' in Iraq, and it does have a track record of setting up and encouraging stooge terrorist groups to do it's dirty work (think of pretty much any Latin American country) and of flattening mosques (eg Falluja - the City of Mosques). It would be foolish to make allegations about who conducted this bombing without evidence, but it would be naiive in the extreme to simply assume that the US couldn't be behind it.
But some Sunnis se Shiites as part of that structure.
Do they indeed? More likely that some extremist groups dislike Sunnis tout court, which is why I'm saying it could feasibly be the takfiris. But there are grounds for thinking it isn't so. If it were Sunni extremists a la Tawhid wal-Jihad, they would have gone after worshippers while praying. This has curiously been conducted in such a way as to maximise the symbolic damage by destroying a Shi'ite shrine (that was venerated by both Sunnis and Shi'ites, it has to be said), while not even killing the five mosque guards who were kidnapped by "insurgents disguised as police". That looks like a deliberate provocation to generate civil war: there are only two groups in Iraq with an interest in that, and they are structurally mimetic - the occupiers and the takfiris.
"This has curiously been conducted in such a way as to maximise the symbolic damage by destroying a Shi'ite shrine (that was venerated by both Sunnis and Shi'ites, it has to be said)"
Good point, lenin.
Does anyone know whether there has been any past history of Shias and Sunnis destroying each others' holy places? Any precedents for that?
I don't know if there's a precedent, but I have read that Moqtada al-Sadr has sent his men out to protect Sunni mosques in the South in response to this. He is also reported by the Beeb as saying that no Sunni could have done this.
Yes, and as you say, they didn't even bother to kill the guards. Surely anyone rabidly sectarian enough to destroy an ancient shrine would not hesitate to destroy the Evil Ones who guard it?
Two liberal democracies at war with each other - Britain and Finland during the second world war (although Britain never sent any troops, it was more about keeping in with USSR) I believe that is the only time it's ever happened...
But I don't think we should make much out of this.
There was only one war between S. American States in the twentieth century, totally out of step with the rest of the world - but I'm not sure there's any lesson to be learned from that either.
Sonic's link from yesterday is very useful, and it seems to be updated daily, and is written by an Iraqi whi making the effort to report first-hand accounts in English:
Baghdad Dweller
Yet another Iraqi Blog
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/
Attwar, the TV Anchor
Now, let’s talk about the death of the three Iraqi journalists.
TV anchor Attwar, age 26 years is a significant young woman born in Samarra, moved to Baghdad just 3-4 years ago, Attwar worked for Al-Jazeera first and then she moved to Al-Arbyia.
I am not writing Attwar’s autobiography here but this has connection to the events, Attwar (I think you are smart enough to know that she is a Sunni) was well-known of her support for the Iraqi cause and blaming the occupation for the mess in Iraq.
One ex-Abu Ghraib prisoner tells this story about Attwar:
"When I came out through the gates of Abu-Ghraib there was TV team waiting outside asked me for an interview, I said yes, then came TV anchor Attwar and asked “How do you fell no…. “ she couldn’t finish her question because she burst in tears when she saw how do I look like, bare feet, torn clothes….
This is an example of Attwar mentality.
What the media didn’t told on Attwar’s death is this:
Attwar and her other two colleagues found dead but the TV team was four members, bad news four the US but one of the team survived the assassination to tell this:
Attwar being born in Samarra, her relatives and friends are still there, she managed to interview eyewitnesses on the explosion and people live in the area around the mosque.
Notice, they found the TV-team’s bodies later but didn’t found the documentary she made,
Who benefit from killing Atwwar, Sunnis? She is a Sunni. Resistance? She sympathise with the resistance. Shiite riot? Samarra is dominated by Sunnis.
The answer is simple, Attwar killed because she knew “too much”.
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/
- Why is the BBC, for example, not following this up?
off-topic, but:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/
site...1717218,00.html
what the hell? is this for real?
The reason you won't come up with many (any?) examples of wars between "liberal democracies" is that what people typically assume to be "liberal democracies" are actually just the US and its industrialised client states of Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. There's hardly likely to be any wars between these countries, in the same way as there was little prospect of a war between different provinces of the Roman Empire.
As some of the more perceptive posters have hinted above, mainstream historiography simply does not term any non-US-model state to be a democracy, hence why wars only appear to have been fought between either "liberal democracies" and "authoriarian states", or between different "authoritarian states".
Perhaps some concrete examples are in order: Note that in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia's Soviet Democracy was arguably the most democratic regime to have ever existed on the planet. Yet at least 3 "liberal democracies": Britain, France, and the US, waged aggressive war on that country. Mainstream historiography's treatment of this situation is simply to declare (usually implictly) that Bolshevik Russia was not a "liberal democracy", end of story.
Similarly, as has been mentioned above, Hitler's Nazi Party was able to rise to power well within the limits of the "liberal democratic" Weimar Republic. (Every 4 years throughout his Chancellorship he would dutifully get the Reichstag to rubber stamp the "Enabling Act" renewing his emergency powers to govern by decree, in absolute accordance with the 1919 Weimar Constitution!) Yet mainstream historiography would never dream of labelling the Third Reich a "liberal democracy", because it is assumed (rightly, actually) that any regime that produces someone like Hitler could simply not be called a "liberal democracy". There would be no problem with the mainstream analysis here if it wasn't so hypocritical: Since the late '70s and early '80s, and proceeding at great speed especially after 2001, actual liberal democracy has been eroded in both Britain and the US, much in the same way as what happened to the Weimar Republic after 1933. And yet could you really see mainstream historiography question the "liberal democracy" of either the US or Britain? No way. For mainstream historians, the allies of the US are liberal democracies by definition. And this is how Tony Blair can abolish freedom of speech and parliamentary democracy (see Lenin's post: "Abolishing Democracy") without received opinion batting an eyelid.
"While I too am with the 'show me more evidence' faction, those who think that suggesting the possibility of US involvement is some loony conspiracy theory are really setting themselves against the US' own track record. My guess is that having set the sectarian divisions in motion the US probably doesn't have to invent sectarian terrorist groups. But the US clearly are conducting 'black ops' in Iraq, and it does have a track record of setting up and encouraging stooge terrorist groups to do it's dirty work (think of pretty much any Latin American country) and of flattening mosques (eg Falluja - the City of Mosques). It would be foolish to make allegations about who conducted this bombing without evidence, but it would be naiive in the extreme to simply assume that the US couldn't be behind it."
Patterns and practices! BINGO!
spiv alert
http://www.politics.co.uk/press-...e-
$15165706.htm
Add Japan to the list of the US's industrialised client states (aka "liberal democracies").
I don't want to dismiss the possibility of US involvement, but is this really evidence?
"Yes, and as you say, they didn't even bother to kill the guards. Surely anyone rabidly sectarian enough to destroy an ancient shrine would not hesitate to destroy the Evil Ones who guard it?"
Surely any US operative rabidly Machiavellian enough to destroy the shrine in order to spark a civil war wouldn't get fussy about killing a few Arabs in the process?
Yes, Kalkin, it is indeed all very peculiar.
But what do you say about the murder of the three Iraqi TV journalists? What about the reports that they were hostile to the US occupation, that they were busy interviewing local people and eyewitnesses - and that although their bodies were found, their film and audio material was missing? And what about the first-hand reports of US involvement from a named individual who lives and works near the shrine?
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/
Of course the occupying armies are indirectly responsible for the latest atrocities, and not just because thay are legally responsible for Iraqi security, but also because their policies of divide-and-rule have had their desired effect of weakening Iraqi nationalism and preventing the emergence of a non-sectarian national liberation movement. However, although few doubt the US would plant bombs, I think we can assume that the nature of the attack is consistent with the extreme salafist groups who have committed similar anti-shia atrocities in the past.
warszawa posted a question here:
"Does anyone know whether there has been *any* past history of Shias and Sunnis destroying each others' holy places? Any precedents for that? Especially in the last (say) hundred years?"
A random example plucked from Google:
In March 1991 the residents of Karbala joined those of Basra, 315 miles to the south, in the uprising against Saddam.
Karbala, located about 50 miles north of Al-Najaf, was probably the major city that suffered the heaviest damage during and after the Shia uprising in 1991. Some of Shia Islam's holiest shrines were devastated and thousands of rebels and their supporters are said to have died from the artillery and rocket fire and the gunfire of troops on the streets.
davec: "the extreme salafist groups who have committed similar anti-shia atrocities in the past."
Well, if it was atrocious salafists who dunnit, why didn't they kill the guards? And I repeat my question from earlier in the thread:
Does anyone know whether there has been any past history of Shias and Sunnis destroying each others' holy places? Any precedents for [precisely] that?
Raoul, that link describes the bombardment and shooting-up of shrines (and hospitals, and much else) by the army of the secular Baathite regime, in the course of putting down an uprising by Shia rebels (some of whom were apparently holed up in mosques).
So it doesn't answer my question.
Bomber Harris hit several churches in Dresden. That doesn't mean he was enaged in a sectarian attack on German Christians.
Because warszawa can't find any evidence of it having occured before, logically that means it couldn't have happened now! I am sure there is a flaw in prof. tin foils logic somewhere...
I am sure there is a flaw in your brain, bumface.
Meanwhile: how conveeeenient...
BBC: Iraq chaos threatens troop withdrawal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
4747316.stm
warszawa also thinks that 9/11 and 7/7 were both convenient. Convenient for whom, prof. tin foil hat?
I think warszawa already knows the answers, knows whatreallyhappened without having to know facts!
You make my point for me incessantly.
Your point being that the Bush Gang organised and executed 9/11? Nope, I do not. Try again tin foil hatter.
My point being that a two-pound bag of sugar would fit comfortably inside your cranium alongside your rudimentary brain.
Now go away and stop trying to derail the thread.
Criticism about derailing threads from tin foil hatter! I have truly seen it all.
Who is it "convenient" for?
hugs and kisses
In March 1991 the residents of Karbala joined those of Basra, 315 miles to the south, in the uprising against Saddam.
Karbala, located about 50 miles north of Al-Najaf, was probably the major city that suffered the heaviest damage during and after the Shia uprising in 1991. Some of Shia Islam's holiest shrines were devastated and thousands of rebels and their supporters are said to have died from the artillery and rocket fire and the gunfire of troops on the streets.
thats evidence then.
That really is the best you can do, isn't it? Sad, really.
Fri Feb 24, 11:14 AM ET
The bombing of a revered Shiite shrine which sparked a wave of violence in Iraq was the work of specialists, Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said Friday, adding that the placing of the explosives must have taken at least 12 hours.
“According to initial reports, the bombing was technically well conceived and could only have been carried out by specialists,” the minister told Iraqia state television.
Jaafar, who toured the devastated thousand-year-old shrine on Thursday a day after the bombing which brought down its golden dome, said “holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives.”
“Then the charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance,” the minister added.
To drill into the pillars would have taken at least four hours per pillar, he also estimated.
Damage to the mausoleum, holding the tombs of the 10th and 11th Shiite Imams, was extensive.
“The dome was completely wrecked and collapsed on the tombs which were covered over by debris. The shrine’s foundations were also affected as 40 percent of the power of the blast was directed inwards,” he added.
“It’s a historic site, a symbol of Iraqi culture and must be treated as such,” he said, adding that he would call on Iraqi officials and on UNESCO to help rebuilt the golden mosque.
Jaafar said he survived a double bomb attack while returning from Samarra when blasts went off in front of his convoy and behind it.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse. Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/?p=72...6#comment-
14021
- So again: Who would have had the opportunity to do that? (At least 16' hours work on the four pillars, without anyone detecting them.)
Talking of precedents (and keeping the three murdered Iraqi TV journalists in mind):
22 November 2005
EXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY
Madness of war memo
By Kevin Maguire And Andy Lines
PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_...-
name_page.html
- And I repeat my question:
Does anyone know whether there has been any past history of Shias and Sunnis destroying each others' holy places? Any precedents for [precisely] that?
Lenin you said "There are perfectly excellent reasons why the US would desire a civil war: Sectarian divisions along religious lines interrupts and militates against the possibility of generating a national, unified resistance to the occupation. It also ensures that those who might otherwise be fighting US troops are busily hunting after and killing key opponents of the occupation. It also diverts attention away from a series of scandals involving US and UK troops. And finally, it provides justification for remaining in Iraq, which means no one will ask any questions about the fourteen permanent bases they've built there."
I don't agree Lenin with this for the following reasons:
The US bases are surrounded by hostile forces - US troops have the run of the bases but fear to patrol outside them. Spheres of power and influence they are not.
Sunni and Shia cities are no go areas for US troops. Lots of self-governing is going on within these cities and cooperation between them is likely to increase rather than degenerating into civil war. It's an oil producing country and each region can only benefit by holding the place together and cooperating - future investment relies on it.
A fragmented Iraq would be difficult to control and would lead to increased Iranian hegemony in the pro-Iranian South, which incidentally is where a large share of Iraq's oil is located. If this region were to break away from Iraq and fall under Iranian control, it would cause immense difficulties for the US.
The idea of Kurds breaking away and forming their own state is also unthinkable - it would be met with attacks from Turkey and would be a welcome diversion for Turkey's ruling class.
Looks like the foolish neo-cons bit of more than they could chew and the only thing for them to do is go home with their tails between their legs and admit they got it all wrong.
The minute the US leave - the climate within Iraq will change dramatically for the better. US presence leads to instability and a lack of security and it is only in the controlled cities where the US fear to tread that there is some semblance of law and order. Iraqis now that but when will our disgusting media report the facts on the ground?
You get the impression from the opinion formers that the US are the only thing keeping the country together and preventing the barbarian hordes from killing one another. This after the abomination that befell Fallujah!
Does something have to have had happened in the past for it to happen now? Why, what weird logic. In warszawas world, nothing novel EVER happens. Warszawa doesn't seem to understand that for there to be a precedent, it must have happened before. For the 1st time at some point. Or am I missing something...
I understand that perfectly well, tittyhead. I am asking a simple historical question: whether there has ever been any precedent.
w: "But what do you say about the murder of the three Iraqi TV journalists?"
Well, that's evidence. So are the Iraqi minister's statements about the difficulty of planting the charges that you quote later. However, you didn't answer my question. Why are hypothetical American provocateurs more likely to care about guards' lives than hypothetical Takfiri ones? I'm not disputing the possibility of American involvement, I'm asking a question about why a fact that both you and lenin seem to think is evidence for it is, actually, evidence, because I don't understand why it is.
on the 'democratic peace' theory, there are a number of wars between 'democracies', such as the 1999 Indo-Pakistan war (before the Musharraf coup), and the question is usually loaded so as to support the theory. For example the USA of WW1 with it's Jim Crow laws, and Britain with a government ruling through crown perogative, are defined as 'liberal democracies' whereas the Kaiser's Germany, is not. Similarly the UK, USA and France have engaged in numerous actions with the consequences of war (the destruction of hostile democratic governments in Guyana, Iran, Guatemala,Chile) through subversion. this is not a reflection of their internal political structure, but rather of their strength as world powers or super-powers, confronting weak opponents, in which the expense and risk of war was unnecessary.
Kalkin:
Why are hypothetical American provocateurs more likely to care about guards' lives than hypothetical Takfiri ones?
Because the americans are getting paid simply to do a job (blow up the mosque), and the Takfiri are motivated by the hate towards the very people (the guards) that werent killed.
Kalkin, I did answer your question: I said it was indeed all very peculiar. Your question was as good as mine. But all the eyewitness accounts I've seen so far substantiate my suspicion that the US-led occupiers may well have planted those bombs. They certainly had most to gain from it: For example, another excuse to extend the occupation; for another example, a host of potential resistance fighters busy killing each other instead.
http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/
Journalists questioning those eyewitnesses (and/or others) were murdered without ado and their film and audio material was stolen. And the US undeniably has a long history of killing journalists in Iraq - doesn't it? And the SAS were caught carrying bombs in Iraq just a few weeks ago - weren't they?
Precedents. It's called having a previous record. And people with previous records are usually suspects when a crime is committed. Just not in this case, or at least not in the mass media of the suspects' home countries:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...ast/
4747316.stm
They have never had any intention of leaving Iraq, and now they are using the Samarra attack as another excuse to stay.
OH GOD! NO! Dont do the 'democratic peace' theory, no, not here, not without a look at the McDonlds peace theory too. ;-)
:-)
Did you know Donald Rumsfeld was on the board of Freedom House, that group that decides the freedom ratings, that decides what is a liberal democracy ... that that crazy guy that should be locked up, Rummel, i think his name is, uses?
Iraq contains 11% of the world's recoverable oil. The US cannot and will not forfeit their control in Iraq and the entire Middle East. If they do, "the American way of life" is done for. The Democrats understand that perfectly well, and that's why they too support the indefinite occupation of the country, with 14 permanent military bases and the world's biggest "embassy". There is no secret about any of this. None.
Ive recently learnt that America is the birth place of the Fascist salute, that extremist Jews are trying to start WWIII, that there's a plan to dominate the world called PNAC, and offended Muslims who protest are killed, and a man can be locked up for the 'wrong' opinion expressed 17 years ago. Ive also learnt that Zionist are not simply Jews at all, but part of a Religious fanaticism in
American foreign policy that hopes (actively pursues) to bring about God's plans for Armageddon. And that you can lose public office if a Jew claims to be offended by your comments.
just thought i'd share that. ;-)
Anonymous answers Kalkin's question about the guards much better than I did. This was a coolly planned and professionally executed symbolic act - not a raging riot. (That came later.)
Anonymous, please do everyone a favour and have the courtesy to choose a pen-name and stick with it. I don't even know if you're the same Anonymous I mentioned in my last post.
The extremist Jews trying to start WWIII live in Irsael/Palestine, and planned to blow up a Mosque to start a war a few years ago (1980's?). Not that i think they carried out the Iraq bombing.
Sorry warszawa. :-)
Oh, and yes it was.
Not that it matters, eh. Except to some people ... it's all justinformation and ideas after all.
This sentence,
"Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and they are indifferent to their brutalization."
...Is just stupid. Friedman is referring to Sunni extremists without actually saying that. But he doesn't add that some Shia extremists also feel the same way about Sunnis. I'm sure in the "Christian World" there are certain Catholics who feel that way about Protestants, etc. Iraqis have intermarried and mixed as Sunnis and Shia for centuries. Many of the larger Iraqi tribes are a complex and intricate weave of Sunnis and Shia. We donÂ’t sit around pointing fingers at each other and trying to prove who is a Muslim and who isn't and who deserves compassion and who deserves brutalization.
(Riverbend blog. May 2005)
http://
riverbendblog.blogspot.co...736857847338021
Dahr Jamail: "Who benefits?"
http://members.boardhost.com/
DT3...1140824855.html
FOX NEWS (no, this is not a spoof, but a genuine screen-grab):
"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"
http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006...d-for-
whom.html
Interesting that the NYTimes ran with CIVIL WAR! headlines lately, instead of:
NAJAF, Iraq - Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has ordered his Mehdi Army militia to protect Sunni mosques in majority Shiite areas in southern Iraq, an official from his office said on Thursday.
“Moqtada Sadr has ordered the Mehdi Army to protect Sunni mosques and religious places in Basra and in other regions” where his movement is influential, Saheb Al Amiri told AFP.
The move follows attacks against dozens of Sunni mosques nationwide after the bombing in Samarra on Wednesday of one of the holiest Shiite shrines.
The Mehdi Army militia was partly disarmed following clashes with US forces in 2004.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/
Disp...february113.xml
The following is an email I sent to Juan Cole, of "Informed Comment".
"Greetings Juan
Since your below comment, at 6:38 a.m. on February 22, 2006 :
"Then real disaster struck. The guerriillas (sic) blew up the domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra. The shrine, sacred to Shiiites (sic), honors 3 Imams or holy descendants of the Prophet."
and your several other comments, hence, on the event; neither yourself, nor does any of the other Western Media, seem to be concerned on who perpetrated this calamity, but expend all your energy on enumerating the unfolding consequences.
I find that to be journalistically unprofessional, and certainly not an "Informed Comment".
The suspicion of the "guerrillas" responsibility for this attack posed itself immediately as the reported sequence of events, as reported by the mass media, flagrantly contradicted with the account offered by the Interior Minister's statement in recounting what had happened (as per below posting).
The glaring suspicion, and especially after several eye witnesses have come forward, does point a damning finger to the Iraqi "Special Police Forces" that were so heavily invested in by the CIA over the past few years, at Langley and in Jordan.
Smothering what is most important in this tragedy, regarding the real perpetrators, with the mere recounting of the consequences belies an "Informed Comment".
All the best,
Imad Khadduri"
http://abutamam.blogspot.com/200...on-who-
are.html
oops, that letter wasn't by me. Just forwarding it on.
ok, that last comment was me. anyhoo.
This story looks interesting:
http://
technology.guardian.co.uk...1716842,00.html
How on earth can the Harry's Place Phoney Left continue to deny and ignore the blindingly obvious?
What is it with this unswerving loyalty to the British Bourgeois State apparatus, and this continued self-delusional insistence that Tony Blair is some sort of "centre-left" politician?
From a Q&A page on John Pilger's website:
Do you think that Tony Blair has a definitive ideology?What do you think his objectives are?
PK Sutton
I think Tony Blair is a leading light of the new right wing. He is at least as right wing as Margaret Thatcher, if not more so. He represents the current obsession that portrays ideology as economic necessity. Apart from that, I don't think he's very significant.
Warszawa you said "Iraq contains 11% of the world's recoverable oil. The US cannot and will not forfeit their control in Iraq and the entire Middle East. If they do, "the American way of life" is done for. The Democrats understand that perfectly well, and that's why they too support the indefinite occupation of the country, with 14 permanent military bases and the world's biggest "embassy". There is no secret about any of this. None."
Those 14 bases are not currently helping the US extract any oil, and the longer they stay, the more hostile Iraqi's will become. We have seen a situation recently where the US was ejected from Uzbekistan where it had a base over its criticism of the government suppressing a revolt - there is nothing permanent about bases. The US needs friendly regimes for its bases to be effective, that is far from being the case in Iraq. Allawi's govt is a puppet govt, it has no power, this has created a power vacuum in the country. Allawi can't offer Iraqis security or electricity! As if they are happily going to let the US continue to dominate the situation when it is the US that is undermining the everyday existence of Iraqis! The US cannot even move freely within Iraqi society!
They destabilized Iraq and those forces that are now working to bring about stability are seen as a threat. The point about the American Way of Life is understood quite well by most by now, but exactly how will civil war benefit the Americans?
How will they expropriate Iraq's oil if the country descends into civil war?
How can they control all those forces that want them out and how long will they be able to wave sabres at Iran when Southern Iraq is pro-Iranian. Any attack on Iran will lead to a massive uprising.
None of it was expected by leading dimwits Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld - they thought that by destabilizing Iraq, Iraq society would collapse, just like the Soviet Union collapse, (read Fukuyamas latest offering for an insight) and Iraqis would stupidly elect puppet leaders like Chalabi and Allawi. Well Iraq got those people, but not through any exercise of the popular will but through fixing the elections. Iraqis are not stupid and see that.
Bremner and Fukuyama are close to slashing their wrists over their role in supporting the neocon wetdream, regretting now having given their unconditional support. Did the neocons really believe in their mission to bring democracy to the M.E. and were they just so dumb in thinking they could institute changes from the top down? Did they really think theyt they could by-pass the whole democratic process and just install their own leaders?
They should have read Marx and Lenin!
They backed the wrong horse by opting to install the Allawis and Chalabis. They are consequently reaping what they sowed, every action taken by the US in Iraq is now a blow for real democratic forces. If they benefit it will be by seeing the trade unionists and secular civic leader
A "Labour" government, whose main priority is to scare us all shitless while selling us a permanent war based on a shameless lie:
"This Charming Man is a Potential Terrorist Sympathiser"
http://www.qlipoth.blogspot.com/
cazaa, I agree that the Bush Gang would probably have preferred a compliant Iraq rather than one filled with people that detest them. They haven't got that. But they undoubtedly have a Plan B to deal with the situation as it turned out. (And a Plan C, and a Plan D, etc.) I wouldn't be fooled by the public image of these people as a bunch of helpless, bumbling incompetents; which is not to say that they don't make mistakes. It's ttrue that there's no oil getting out of Iraq to the US (yet). But the contracts are signed. And note that there's no oil getting out of Iraq to anywhere else either. The US - and Britain - are still firmly in control of Iraq and the entire Middle East, they aren't losing an intolerble number of troops, and they've made it abundantly clear that they don't give a damn about dead Iraqis. All they have to do is secure the oilfields and the pipelines. Things are undoubtedly going to get much nastier as oil grows increasingly scarce - and the US, Britain and Israel are all nuclear powers, unlike any of the Arab territories they're occupying. When push comes to shove...
You're right warszawa.
The whole philosophy behind NewLabour is instictively authoritarian.
The big question for me is whether the Prime Minister is actually evil or just really really really stupid, naive, out-of-touch, self-important, hopelessly self-obsessed, arrogant, condescending, and bigotedly racist, religiously prejudiced, and class prejudiced.
He reminds me of Lieutenant Scheisskopf in Joseph Heller's Catch 22, whose proposed solution to the problem of how to make his men march in file on parade was to stick a rigid steel bar straight through the middle of them.
This is just like Blair. He really genuinely believes that the highest state of civilisation is a society where the market controls every aspect of human life. This, for him, is "democracy", and anybody who doesn't share this ideal is either mad, evil, or a combination of the two, and therefore any amount of force is justified to stop them.
The best summary i've ever seen of Blair's philosophy and what makes him tick is written by the Dutch political scientist Paul Treanor. Have a read of it, it's really excellent:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Pa...anor/
blair.html
Thanks, cazaa. I don't live in Britain and I think about Tony Blair as little as possible. But I've printed the article out and I'll read it tomorrow. 'Night.
Warszawa- I think it's more about controlling the oil spigot to successfully blackmail China, than around issues of peak oil. I have serious issues with this latest buzz theory (i.e. peak oil) but lets not digress.
Do you have any ideas on what Plan B, C, D and so on might be? How do they extract themselves from the quagmire? So far they have shown that the only way they have to put down the so-called "insurgents" is through massive fire, raining down death and destruction from a safe height and breaking every established human rights convention on the cities in which they are denied access, even if that leads to 90% of the population living in refugee camps outside of the city, as in Fallujah, and then they return to their safe bases. That's why you are not seeing the casualties among the US and UK troops. But Iraqis are dying in their hundreds.
Hardly winning hearts and minds, and these things are not forgotten easily.
Lenin,
America did not remove all of its troops from Saudi Arabia, it left 500.
I think there had been, give or take, 5,000, so it is a major reduction.
That last Anonymous wasnt me by the way.
Of course we know for sure that the Us and Jews sorry Zionists did it. We just have to figure out why......
What a pathetic lot of bankrupt racists you are......
"Of course we know for sure that the Us and Jews sorry Zionists did it."
Isaac, if you can substantiate that I or Lenin or anyone in this comments box ever said such a thing, do so. If you can't, it's clear that you're the one who's pathetic and bankrupt. It is any case clear who's the racist. The only eyewitnesses so far interviewed were Iraqi Arabs who said they saw and heard Americans at the shrine. Deal with that, and don't dismiss their testimony out of hand.
NOTE: Under the name "Anonymous", somebody did drag in "the Jews", quite irrelevantly to the point at issue. Its known as muddying the waters. Now - as Isaac demonstrates -anyone who suspects, quite rationally, that the CIA or the SAS had a hand in it can be accused of anti-Semitism. The accusation is nasty, disingenuous and easily dismissed. I hope nobody will be fooled by it.
"The big question for me is whether the Prime Minister is actually evil or just really really really stupid, naive, out-of-touch, self-important, hopelessly self-obsessed, arrogant, condescending, and bigotedly racist, religiously prejudiced, and class prejudiced."
Blair is to the British as Bush is to the Americans.
Their actions are evil, and indicative of their viewpoints.
Both are cut from the same cloth and give their service and allegiance as puppets to their neocon string pullers (which I prefer to call transnational gangsters).
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/16484
All of them, these transnational gangsters, have a gross character disorder in that they; do not have a conscience, totally lack empathy for fellow human beings that they consider less than themselves, are driven by deep insecurities. They consider deception as just another tool, no different than torture, murder, etc., to be used in their implementation of “Robust Internationalism”, a euphemism for world domination and a ruler and ruled society. Their deceptions are premeditated, and with the help of a compliant, gangster corporation owned media, well executed/acted. The efficacy of their efforts are attested to by the number of dipsticks that still believe they are all genuine champions of freedom, democracy, and civil rights. Duh!
"This is just like Blair. He really genuinely believes that the highest state of civilisation is a society where the market controls every aspect of human life."
No he doesn't!
This tragic business has realy brought the antisemitic conspuracy-theorists out of the woodwork, hasn't it? (see "Emmissionary", above)...And ex-socialists like Mr ill-named "Lenin" have nothing worthwhile to say, have they? They don't want to offend their new-found Islamist friends, by telling them that they are effin' idiots.
There were some good comments on DP theory above. Its worth pointing out that it is an ideology associated with increasing levels of inter-state violence in the contemporary world. In other words its a theory used by its proponents to justify imperialist wars. Aside from technical issues like how you define 'war' and 'democracy' (Germany was in terms of sufferage rather more democratic then Britain was in 1914: which had a lower sufferage then any other European country aside from Roumania at the time), other technical issues related to whether or not the 'democratic peace' has anything to do with democracy, others related to rather absurd anachronism's (the use of Kant's perpetual peace), there is the wider issue of what the international system has really been over the last two hundred years.
A perpetual war against subjegated peoples with occassional bloodbaths amongst the hegemonic powers...the latter being the exception to organised state violence rather then the rule...Someone (I think they might already have) ought to study the Liberal way of war, and the extreme aggression with which democracies wage their conflicts against everyone else.
"conspuracy-theorists" (sic)
Yet again: look at who's deploying this cant term, and ask yourself why.
"Tragic" is another indispensable tool in the power-worshipper's toolbox. The Samarra attack was "tragic", i.e. there's nothing more to be said about it (except for automatically blaming it on Those Savage Islamists). It's not tragic in the Shakespearean or Aristotelian sense, of course; it's just, like, very, very kind of sad, really.
Meanwhile, the occupation continues unabated, and Our Lads are above suspicion, even when they have a record as long as your arm.
http://
mywayofthinking.blogs.com...asra_raid_1.jpg
http://www.sourcewatch.org/
index...perations_Group
Talking of "democracy":
http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006...n-
humanity.html
Guys, I'm now fed up with the phoney, rather embarrassed, conspiracy theories about the golden dome bombing, with you desperately trying to pretend and pass off the fact the people who did this aren't actually on your team, and you don't in fact support this acts intended consequences. You're the ones hoping for full scale blood bath that blows up the country, dumbos. Enough of the play acting, please!
You failed and the funs over.
Phibius - "I'm with the "show me more evidence" faction. It is a long jump from SAS men dressed up as Arabs riding around Basra with all sorts of weaponry to a "SAS demolish mosque". According to the poor understanding of this illiterate, SAS men have been riding around in Arab cloths armed to the teeth since WW2."
Would you allow your daughter to date a known serial rapist with multiple convictions?
lenin - "The democratic peace theory is an interesting one. I have tried to come up with examples of liberal democracies attacking one another and have only come up with a few."
The attacks are internal - you could start with the minimum wage.
Mike (predictably): "conspiracy theories"
Tim, Denham, "Mike", stopper dittohead: The Dream Team. (I'd love to see them on University Challenge.)
A more interesting question to ask yourself is why do people believe so fervently in conspiracy theories?
Regarding the "democratic peace" debate, here is another excellent article from Paul Treanor:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Pa.../
democracy.html
Despite the terminology he uses, it's clear from what he says that Paul Treanor is criticising "liberal democracy"/"parliamentary democracy" as in "free market" countries with a formal and mostly illusory "democratic" process, such as britain, the US, etc.
Nothing Treanor says entails a criticism of REAL democracy, as in a democracy of workers councils, etc.
Have a read anyway. It really is fantastic.
'This tragic business has realy brought the antisemitic conspuracy-theorists out of the woodwork'
Surely anti-semitism is a freedom of speech issue, and the AWL should bravely, heroically publish anti-semitic material on it's website . . . otherwise people might start to think it's just anti-Muslim racism they collude with?
" Of course we know for sure that the Us and Jews sorry Zionists did it. We just have to figure out why......
No, we know why, we just have to figure whether they did.
***
Terror using modern tools (letter bombs, car bombs, etc.) and weapons was first adopted in the Middle East by Zionists working outside state control and outside of any geographically limited area. This was truly the first non-state, global terror network. In the single month of July 1938, the Irgun killed 76 Palestinians in terrorist attacks. On July 22,1946, a Zionist truck-bomb blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem (housing also the British civil administration) killing 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 others while injuring over 200. This was the first use of a car bomb in the Middle East. While Irgun claimed responsibility, later evidence also showed involvement of the Hagannah. The first letter bombs used by groups operating from the Middle East were made by Zionists and sent to British Cabinet Ministers in London in June 1947.
Economic sabotage was also first introduced by the Zionists. In 1939 the Haganah blew up the Iraqi oil pipeline near Haifa. Moshe Dayan was one of the participants in this act. The first airplane hijacking was committed by Israel. On 12 December 1954 Israel hijacked a civilian Syrian airliner shortly after take-off. In 1973, Israel shot down s Libyan civil aircraft (which strayed over Sinai in a sandstorm) killing all its 106 civilian passengers.
On Nov. 6 1944 Zionist belonging to Stern assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, in an ambush in Cairo (well beyond the borders of Palestine).
The first attack on a ship by terrorists was on November 25, 1940 when the S.S. Patria carrying illegal Jewish immigrants was attacked by Zionists with explosives in Haifa Harbor (attack was to embarrass the British and for rivalry among Jewish groups). 268 Jewish immigrants drowned.
On January 5, 1948, the Haganah forces planted bombs in the Palestinian-owned Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 20, among them Viscount de Tapia, the Spanish consul.
Between 1947 to 1949, over 530 Palestinian villages were emptied of their populations by a process of ethnic cleansing including targeted terror with over 33 massacres according to Israeli and other historians. More than half of the Palestinian villages and towns were depopulated by Israeli military actions before Israel was established in May 15, 1948 and thus before the beginning of the first major Arab Israeli war according to Israeli historians. Israel also continued to terrorize the natives into leaving even after the hostilities ended and cease-fires were signed. This post war ethnic cleansing occurred in 64 of the 531 Palestinian localities depopulated according to Israeli historians.
More cross border massacres and terror ensued afterwards. 700 Israeli troops (Force 101) attacked the border village of Qibya on October 14, 1953. The tro
Whereas the SWPs lauding of Gilad Atzmon clearly shows what sort of racism the SWP colludes with, eh James O...?
And another "fearless tirade" against the dread "Zionists"...
Ah, the AWL have pulled the Atzmon issue out of the woodwork again. They don't have a shred of moral authority on this subject, and have transformed themselves into a clique of scabs on the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement.
Well, I'm glad to see the morons have stayed well away while I was gone... oh. Bugger.
Little Jimmy "O": if alleged anti-semitism (like, for instance, the "Independent" cartoon showing Sharon eating a child) became an "issue", I would be in favour of the AWL publishing the cartoon. I'm in favour of people seeing the evidence in order to make their minds up. It's called being rational. Not something that you're familair with.
I note, by the way, that according to the supple-spined Prof. Callinicos
the SWP would not, now, back Rushdie over the "Satanic Verses". So we have a supposedly "Marxist" organisation that is in favour of censorship at the behest of religious authorities!!!! How much lower can these Sharia-Socialists of the "SWP" grovel? Why don't you all simply convert?
Denham: according to the supple-spined Prof. Callinicos the SWP would not, now, back Rushdie over the "Satanic Verses".
Callinicos: Many commentators have compared the Danish cartoons row with the furore provoked by Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. In it Rushdie presented a fictional, alternative history of the origins of Islam.
The book caused great offence among Muslims, including many in Britain, and led to the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a judgment (fatwa) condemning Rushdie to death.
There is no comparison between The Satanic Verses and the Danish cartoons. The latter are crude attempts to insult Muslims, while Rushdie’s novel was a complex work of art by an author of Indian Muslim origins who was trying explore the roots of the faith into which he was born.
Socialist Worker defended Rushdie’s right to publish The Satanic Verses. But we also recognised the real anger and hurt the novel caused among Muslims in Britain and other Western societies.
Literacy: not so much.
fucking italics... i swear i closed them. the quote ends of course before "literacy:"
So, to sum up:
1. There appears to be no precedent whatsoever in Islamic history for such a cold-blooded, targeted pinpoint attack on a holy place, with human casualties carefully avoided.
2. Shias and Sunnis alike have condemned the bombing unanimously.
3. No one has claimed responsibility.
4. Even extreme Shiite groups have denied responsibility and condemned the bombing without reservation.
5. The Iraqi construction minister says the bombing was a professional job - a carefully-planned and executed controlled demolition that had taken at least 12 hours to prepare.
6. Three Iraqi TV journalists, including a woman from Samarra who was known to be very much against the US-led occupation of Iraq, were murdered the day after the attacks. Their bodies were found but their sound and film material had disappeared. They had been interviewing eyewitnesses.
7. The only two eyewitnesses yet quoted on this board - or anywhere else I could find - said Americans had been in and around the mosque all night.
8. The Western media have reported none of the salient details, but have asserted or insinuated - without any evidence whatsoever - that "Shiite extremists" (or "Al Qaeda") were to blame. No one has called this a "conspiracy theory", despite the lack of evidence.
9. FOX NEWS has asked: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" Dahr Jamail has asked, equally pertinently: "Who Benefits?"
10. The BBC informs us that the US, British and Australian governments see the Sammara bombing and its aftermath as a further reason for staying put in the world's second most oil-rich nation. The "chaos" has to be "sorted out" (it goes without saying that they will do the sorting-out).
In further news, Jack Straw has invited Condoleeza Rice to visit Blackburn.
From the NYT:
"Many of the retaliatory attacks after the bombing were led by Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr..."
No source. No other discussion. Anyone have more info--beyond what was above--Done on orders? Against orders (which would seem to be the case from above)? Etc.
You're spot on, warszawa.
For all the Harry's Place Phoney "Left" crowd go on about us Real Leftists being "apologists for Islamofascism" etc etc, it is they who shut their eyes, put their fingers in their ears, and scream at the top of their voices in the face of concrete factual evidence linking Imperial forces to the destruction of the mosque.
As far as I can see, not one Real Left contributor to this blog (or anywhere else, for that matter) has EVER attempted to apologise for the crimes of "Islamofascism" (i hate the use of the term, by the way), or indeed any other variety of fascism.
This is in stark contrast to the HP crowd's absolute refusal to even recognise, let alone to condemn, the long list of crimes of the United States' State, the British State, the Israeli State, etc, etc, etc.
Notice, by the way, that we Real Leftists correctly term the fascism of the Israeli State just that: Israeli State fascism. Meanwhile the HP crowd liberally throw around the term "Islamofascism" as though it were a completely inoffensive designator. And this from the likes of Toynbee, Aaronovitch, etc, who profess to be so bothered about political correctness!! The term "Islamofascism" is just as offensive to Muslims as the term "Judaeofascism" would be to Jews.
Lest it not by now be perfectly clear to the HP mob: Yes, we Real Leftists condemn suicide bombings and indeed any form of terrorism. BUT THE TERRORISM OF IMPERIALISM IS ON A FAR FAR FAR GREATER SCALE. MOREOVER, IT IS INCREDIBLY MORE DANGEROUS PRECISELY BECAUSE WESTERN MEDIA PROPAGANDA AND SOCIALISATION DUPES MANY MANY PEOPLE INTO NOT EVEN RECOGNISING THAT IT IS TERRORISM AT ALL.
I hope i've made myself clear.
"You're spot on, warszawa." Thanks, ant. But I just noticed that in points 4 and 8, I wrote "Shiite" where I meant "Sunni". I hereby correct that, and it doesn't alter the argument in the slightest.
There's no evidence whatsoever that Islamist extremists of any stripe were involved, yet that has already become the Official Version. That has already congealed into The Truth. And no one describes it as a "conspiracy theory", because we all know that those filthy Arabs, Sunni or Shiite, are capable of anything. That "knowledge" is evidence enough, apparently. So let's Move On.
Lenin, great report.
A few points:
There are currently 17 US military bases in Iraq, the vast H1, H2, and H3 bases [with control of through-put oil pipelines to Syria and beyond] in Western Iraq, currently under on-going construction often being forgotten (globalresearch.com is the only internet site still showing [necessarily outdated] maps of the bases as they existed under the Saddam regime). The Americans will now sit on the sidelines [while their agent provocateurs go to work, once again, in ensuring an Iran/Iraq style civil war] until civil society is destroyed, then "supporting" the demoralised puppet winners.
You write:"And of course, the US has a policy of trying to provoke terrorist attacks or "stimulate reactions" from terrorist groups through the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group."
Actually provoking terrorism. Period.
The belief that the attack was the work of American and Israeli covert-operations (Black-ops) is widespread throughout the region as well as among leftist political-analysts in the United States. Journalist Kurt Nimmo sees the bombing as a means of realizing “a plan sketched out in Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” (the balkanization of Arab and Muslim society and culture.) Nimmo suggests that the plan may have been carried out by “American, British or Israeli Intelligence operatives or their double-agent Arab lunatics, or crazies incited by Rumsfeld’s Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) designed to ‘stimulate’ terrorist reaction.”
Nimmo is not alone in his judgment. Other prominent analysts including, Pepe Escobar, Ghali Hassan, AK Gupta, Dahr Jamail, and Christian Parenti all agree that the Bush administration appears to be inciting civil war as part of an exit strategy. Certainly, the Pentagon is running out of options as well as time. Numerous leaked documents have confirmed that significant numbers of troops will have to be rotated out of the theatre by summer. A strategy to foment sectarian hostilities may be the last desperate attempt to divert the nearly 100 attacks per day away from coalition troops and finalize plans to divide Iraq into more manageable statlets.
The division of Iraq has been recommended in a number of policy-documents that were prepared for the Defense Department. The Rand Corporation suggested that “Sunni, Shiite and Arab, non-Arab divides should be exploited to exploit the US policy objectives in the Muslim world.” The 2004 study titled “US Strategy in the Muslim World” was to identify key cleavages and fault-lines among sectarian, ethnic, regional, and national lines to assess how these cleavages generate challenges and opportunities for the United States.” (Abdus Sattar Ghazali; thanks Liz Burbank) ...
The final confirmation of Washington’s sinister plan was issued by Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign
Continued
The final confirmation of Washington’s sinister plan was issued by Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, in a New York Times editorial on 11-25-03. The CFR is the ideological headquarters for America’s imperial interventions providing the meager rationale that papers-over the massive bloodletting that inevitably follow. Gelb stated:
“For decades, the United States has worshipped at the altar of a unified Iraqi state. Allowing all three communities within that false state to emerge at least as self-governing regions would be both difficult and dangerous. Washington would have to be very hard-headed and hard-hearted, to engineer this breakup. But such a course is manageable, even necessary, because it would allow us to find Iraq’s future in its denied but natural past.”
There you have it; the United States is only pursuing this genocidal policy for ‘Iraq’s own good’. We should remember Gelb’s statesman-like pronouncements in the years to come as Iraq slips further into the morass of social-disintegration and unfathomable human suffering.
=====>Mike Whitney : Whose Bombs were they?
http://
www.informationclearingho...rticle12063.htm
And further:
Iraq shrine bombing was specialist job: minister:
The bombing of a revered Shiite shrine which sparked a wave of violence in Iraq was the work of specialists, Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said Friday, adding that the placing of the explosives must have taken at least 12 hours.
http://
informationclearinghouse....rticle12070.htm
Warszawa: no-one doudts your, personal, commitment to peace. It's jut that your SWP friends, and peple like Sami Ramadani ('Guardian' regular) plainly want civil society to fail in Iraq, and gloat when it does. I've heard the loathsome Linsey German often enough to know that. People of good will -regardless of their view of the war - should now br hoping for a positive, non-sectarian outcome. The likes of the SWP, the "Stop the War Coalition" and Mr Ramadami are just gloating over the sectarianism and blaming it all on "imperialism". They're sick.
Jim Denham, I'm not in the SWP and never have been. I'm not personally acquainted with anyone who is. I don't even live in Britain. I have no interest in whatever petty squabbling goes on amongst and within far-left groups in my native country; I had enough of it as a student many years ago.
I post here because I think it's one of the best blogs around. And it would be good if people didn't sabotage discussions worth having in order to make points of very little interest to anyone except themselves.
The War on Terror is an orgy of destructive lies, and it's going to get very much worse, probably very soon. The world is being eaten by capital. It would be good if we could all focus on that, rather than on what X said to Y in the bar, unforgivably, after the conference in Hartlepool in January (or was it February?) 1998.
There appears to be no precedent whatsoever in Islamic history for such a cold-blooded, targeted pinpoint attack on a holy place, with human casualties carefully avoided.
Sunnis and Shiites are waging a low grade sectarian war in Pakistan, Saudi, and many other countries; things similar to this go on all the time. However there was no precedent for bombing the UN or red cross before either. So what?
2. Shias and Sunnis alike have condemned the bombing unanimously.
After shooting up a few Mosques and Sistani first calling for protests then calling on Shiites to show restraint (in other words, the Sunnis as a whole are responsible) they piped down. Hardly inspiring.
3. No one has claimed responsibility.
What does that prove? They often don't claim their worst acts precisely so their supporters don't turn on them and the occupation can take the blame.
4. Even extreme Shiite groups have denied responsibility and condemned the bombing without reservation.
That was expected.
5. The Iraqi construction minister says the bombing was a professional job - a carefully-planned and executed controlled demolition that had taken at least 12 hours to prepare.
Those son of a bitches.
6. Three Iraqi TV journalists, including a woman from Samarra who was known to be very much against the US-led occupation of Iraq, were murdered the day after the attacks. Their bodies were found but their sound and film material had disappeared. They had been interviewing eyewitnesses.
Like I said, those son of a bitches.
7. The only two eyewitnesses yet quoted on this board - or anywhere else I could find - said Americans had been in and around the mosque all night.
Some crank pro-Saddam site; no other news agency in the world is running that shit.
8. The Western media have reported none of the salient details, but have asserted or insinuated - without any evidence whatsoever - that "Shiite extremists" (or "Al Qaeda") were to blame. No one has called this a "conspiracy theory", despite the lack of evidence.
I haven't seen the media say once it was "Shiite extremists". Iraqis have tended to blamed Al Qaeda and the occupation, whereas western media has pointed the finger at Sunnis a bit - the sad truth - though as a whole whoever did it is less of a priority for them. The western media always in effect absolve the terrorists of their actions by only focusing on the consequences and putting the blame on 'the decision'.
9. FOX NEWS has asked: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" Dahr Jamail has asked, equally pertinently: "Who Benefits?"
Good question. Who benefits is the most telling question here - obviously not the Bush administration that is desperate to start pulling troops out of harms way in this election year and get the sunnis involved in the government. The best guide to how this has been going to down is to have seen
...Fox News this week - smelly pants, as they say.
10. The BBC informs us that the US, British and Australian governments see the Sammara bombing and its aftermath as a further reason for staying put in the world's second most oil-rich nation. The "chaos" has to be "sorted out" (it goes without saying that they will do the sorting-out).
Told you - bad news for the coalition governments.
Well, as another commentator has already pointed out Denham's lies over the SWP's position on Rushdie, ill also remind him that they supported the author of 'Bezhti' the previous year. ( Cue Denham's comments on the SWP being 'Islamist' and therefore supporting criticism of Sikhism).
'if alleged anti-semitism (like, for instance, the "Independent" cartoon showing Sharon eating a child) became an "issue"
The AWL are so smothered in Zionist propaganda they are unable to distinguish real anti-semitism - hardly surprising - the Sharon cartoon depicted a mass murderer as a mass murderer; it did not include all Jews, Israelis or even Zionists. Now presumably we can look forward to the AWL publishing the Iranisn holocaust denial cartoons; what a debased position in which the commitment to 'securalism' means publishing any and all racist bile provided each minority group is given they same treatment.
'I'm in favour of people seeing the evidence in order to make their minds up'
All they had to do was use the Internet to find images of the cartoons. Just as in the same wat you can find a copy of Mein Kampf in every library but I'd never expect a self-proclaimed 'left' group to publish a copy.
James O - having been in the middle of a cartoon protest myself, I know they were protesting against cartoons of *Muhammed* - not racism.
...having been in the middle of a cartoon protest myself, I know they were protesting against cartoons of *Muhammed* - not racism.
Oh, were "they" Eric? All of "them"? That's funny, because on the Trafalgar Square protest "they" were quite clear it was about racism. (Maybe "they" should make "their" minds up?)
Eric, youve already demonstrated your standards of evidence are pretty lame and I think I can afford to ignore your 'I was there' argument. As Meaders points out, all the speakers at the Trafalger square protest made quite clear their protest was not against images of Muhammed - of which there are many in existance - but against the racism in the cartoons.
Oh, were "they" Eric?
Yawn.
I went to the demo in Trafalgar Square last week, held a week after the one you are refering to. The people there were quite clear about the cartoons being an insult to the prophet. Not one speaker went on about racism, but rather demanded that Muslims be given all copyrights for Muhammed cartoons, and ranted about *their* civilisation being insulted.
These were the real grass roots Muslims from community centres all over the country - not the Arab princes and urban elite types that showed up to the fashionable lefty protest a week before - which is why this protest was three times as big as the one you were at.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/47.../uk/
4726472.stm
I thought the SWP were proud of having Atzmon attend their little shindig. James O obviously wishes that whole issue would just worm its way back into the woodwork, poor James O. Unfortunately it shows what kind of an anti-racist party the SWP is, ie not one.
Eric, that BBC report does not support your argument, and since you believe 'Arab princes' were involved in the earlier protest, I think we can establish your grasp on events is pretty loose.
Stopper Dittohead - yes, youve got me, I knew we'd never get away with it. Unfortunately, by your own arguments youve condemned the AWL's publishing of the Danish cartoons, and as such - as I have already made clear - have no legitimacy in discussing this issue.
Mr Denham,
I'm not a member of the SWP, nor have i ever been. I am a member of the Socialist Party (formerly the so-called "Militant Tendency") and as such i too have my own constructive criticisms to make of SWP strategy and tactics from time to time.
I feel that whatever criticisms i may have of the SWP, though, pale into insignificance next to due condemnations of the murderous nature of Western capitalist-imperialist aggression. I understand Lenin himself is a memeber of the SWP. Fine. But nowhere have i seen in anything Lenin has to say on these boards ANYTHING that would substantiate the aspersions of the HP crowd that he is some sort of apologist for "Islamofascism".
My point was that the term "Islamofascism" is itself inherently racist - as offensive to Muslims as the term "Judaeofascism" would be to Jews. The HP mob's unthinking and uncaring use of this term demonstrates the extent of the double standard. Namely, that it is ok to insult and abuse any Muslim you like in the name of counter-terrorism and freedom of speech, but the condemnation of the Fascist Israeli State is anti-semitic.
These people should think very carefully about their current perspective on reality.
And i am very disappointed with Nick Cohen.
Is this the World Bomb? Is it more powerful than the bombs that took out the Samarra mosque?
Will it take out lenin's tomb?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ameri...cas/
4655196.stm
Excerpt;
"And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".
US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".
Consider that for a moment.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.
Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?
The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.
And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it."
Plan ahead folks, save those old cans and strings ...
Since I don't know what an AWL is (nor do I want to know), my legitimacy is just fine whereas the SWP's legitimacy when it comes to its much trumpeted (by its own hacks, admittedly) anti-racist stance is non-existent.
stopper dit: "my legitimacy is just fine"
who, besides talking heads and academic habermas wannabes, talks like that? Or do you just feel better announcing your legitimacy? Perhaps you could have a fake election on this site, and thus declare that the people of Lenin's Tomb support your legitimacy.
snotter tittyhead is clearly illegitinmate.
And Eric Forth, that "reply" wasn't worth the paper it wasn't written on.
Towards a Renaissance of Citizens' Balls:
http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006...zens-
balls.html
'Eric Forth'/Pete/etc almost certainly wasn't at that protest. If he was, he would have heard Salma Yaqoob among others denounce the 'Muhammad' caricatures as racist. He also gives himself away by relying on police estimates relayed through the media of attendance figures for the respective rallies. He also gives the game away by referring to the previous week's rally as a 'fashionable lefty' protest. It was not that: it was organised by the Muslim Association of Britain. The British Left, barring Respect, the SWP and a Cuban solidarity group, was conspicuous by its absence.
The fact is that 'Eric'/'Pete'/etc would no sooner surround himself with a large crowd of non-white people, especially Muslims, than he would leap into a vat of hot oil. At most, he circled his white van round the roundabout at the south flank of the square a few times and tried to get a look. Even then I suspect he'd fill his undercrackers on undertaking the second revolution.
Lenin, you're letting your opposition to American imperalism cloud out your capacity for rational analysis. Contrary to what you say, sectarian violence does not serve the interests of American hegemony. Civil war makes it harder, not easier, for the United States to install military bases in Iraq; it threatens oil production; it threatens to spread religous violence across the Middle East. The United States may be short-sighted, but it's not that short-sighted.
And, also contrary to what you say, the images of chaos and death weakens support among the American public for a continued military presence in Iraq. It's no accident that, since the attack in Samarra, American conservatives like Bill O'rEilly and William F. Buckley are calling on the United States to withdraw from Iraq.
One more thing, Lenin. You're hung up on the fact that the bombers of the Mosque were wearing police uniforms. Well, it's not like it's unprecedented for the Resistance to carry out attacks while wearing police uniforms. Just go to Google and type in the terms, "insurgents+police+uniforms"
Peter H,
Have a read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Div...Divide_and_rule
Of course it would be in the United States' interest to encourage Civil War in Iraq. They are facing the very real possibility of being forcibly ejected from that country. The last thing the US wants is a united opposition in the form of a National Liberation Movement kicking them out of the world's second largest supply of Black Gold. At the end of the day, there are millions upon millions more Iraqis in Iraq than "Coalition" occupying forces, and all the military hardware in the world will not be enough to counter a determined and united popular resistance movement.
There are so many precedents to suggest that the Americans are responsible for blowing up the mosque, that it hardly seems worth listing them here. If you're interested though, i suggest William Blum's "Killing Hope" is as good a place as any to start.
I get the feeling though that you won't be a bit interested, as you seem to have already made up your mind who is responsible for the explosion. Empirical evidence to suggest that the US occupation forces are culpable, as well as a list of precedents as long as your arm, and motives a five-year old would comprehend, somehow don't seem to convince you types in the slightest.
No, much easier to take the comfortable cosy BBC line: "Our boys" wouldn't dream of doing such a thing, right?
From Robert Fisk's latest:
"And so myth-making and tragedy go hand in hand. Iraq's monumental catastrophe has become routine, shapeless, an incipient "civil war".
Note how the American framework of disaster is now being portrayed as an Iraqi vs Iraqi war, as if the huge and brutal US occupation has nothing to do with the appalling violence in Iraq."
http://members.boardhost.com/
DT3...140972184.html#
Ant,
Sorry, but nowhere in my comment did I defend the United States or claim that it incapable of implementing divide-and-rule tactics. What I did argue that civil war in Iraq is harmful, not beneficial, to American hegemony.
Besides pointing me to an author endorsed by Osama Bin Laden, the only substantive argument you make is that the United States doesn't want a united resistance. I agree, but a united Shia-Sunni insurgency doesn't exist at this point. As Lenin acknowledges, the only time that the insurgency has had a large Shia component was in the spring/summer of 2004, when the US fought with the Mahdi Army. It's not that Shi'i support the United States - they don't -but they're even more turned off by the (Sunni) religious discourse of the insurgency.
Like I said, I'm not a defender of the United States. I agree it's done many horrible things in Iraq. What concerns me is not the honor of America, but the tendency of some on the left to replace serious analysis with mindless conspiracy theorizing.
What I did argue that civil war in Iraq is harmful, not beneficial, to American hegemony.
Really? Well, that's cheered me up a bit. It would be good to see something good coming out of this atrocity. Thanks.
I think Peter H has a point. A sectarian civil war in Iraq isn't the US's strategy of choice – it would rather be coining it from oil revenues. The recourse to counter-insurgency tactics arises out of a failure to "stablise" the country. Also: I'm less than convinced the Samarra shrine attack was the work of black ops.
Peter H,
US occupying forces have been busying themselves digging in in hugely fortified bases. As long as they have control of the oil supply, a civil war with internecine killings aplenty outside of their immediate zones of control will not trouble them greatly.
On the other hand, a united Iraqi National Liberation Movement directed solidly against those bases WOULD trouble them greatly. Hence that is what they desperately wish to avoid. And a good way of staving off Iraqi national unity would be to stir up rival factions against each other, would it not?
"...the tendency of some on the left to replace serious analysis with mindless conspiracy theorizing."
The vacuity of this statement is almost beyond comprehension. Firstly, given that most of the actual facts on the ground, as well as innumerable precedents and obvious motives, suggests US complicity, makes my argument anything but mindless. On the contrary, it is yourself who espouses the mindless argument, since you are desperate to ignore all of this evidence in favour of your own heavily misguided prejudices about US Foreign Policy.
Secondly, please don't try the classic appeal to knee-jerkism that is the mention of the phrase "conspiracy theory". It might work with liberal pro-imperialist apologists and the ignorant in general. It will not, however, work here.
Lastly, is the fact that Osama bin-Laden endorsed William Blum's writings supposed to turn me off Blum? That might work in the minds of the Bush Administration, but it won't work with me. If a child molester says he likes chocolate, am I supposed to pretend i don't like chocolate either? Grow up mate, and START READING ABOUT STUFF.
"As long as they have control of the oil supply, a civil war with internecine killings aplenty outside of their immediate zones of control will not trouble them greatly."
Ant, I think you're overstating the grip that the US has over Iraq. You can't overlook the fact that while the US has nominal control over Iraq's oil, it has failed to convert that oil into a revenue stream, and it has failed because of Iraqi resistance operations.
This is not a trivial matter for the US ruling class – it doesn't have a bottomless chest to fund military operations and the lack of oil money from Iraq has fucked their plans.
"it has failed to convert that oil into a revenue stream, and it has failed because of Iraqi resistance operations."
But that's not true. The revenue of the clique is principally fictitious oil. The price of futures has skyrocketed since the invasion.
The oil industry has done splendidly out of the Iraq adventure - record profits for Exxon Mobil - they're in no great hurry to pull the oil out of the ground in Iraq. The US regime never intended to finance the war out of their own pockets - the war's whole point is the transfer of funds from the taxpayers (US and Iraqi) to the clique.
http://www.democracynow.org/arti...e=thread&
tid=25
Exxon Mobil making a record $5 million/hr
And indeed, I think most oil companies have made a fortune out of rising oil prices. BP-Amoco and Shell are doing splendidly:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/busin...ess/
4688106.stm
But it's true, of course, that resistance operations are frustrating and thwarting the plans made by the US and its client state. The initial plans to privatise the whole industry and sell it off to big oil companies collapsed around their ears, as it became clear that it would only be manageable as a state owned enterprise. The preferential contracts now being drawn up won't amount to diddly-squat until they have a stable Iraq that is friendly to US interests. As it now seems, Iraq will tend to align with Syria and Iran whether the resistance ultimately succeed in driving out the troops or not.
And bat is right that the lack of oil revenue has caused problems: how many times did we hear that the occupation would pay for itself? Iraq' oil industry was supposed to be in rude health by now, creating a flow of revenue that would pay for reconstruction, employment and the consolidation of a pro-American regime, perhaps with some democratic credentials. Iraqis would be grateful for the end of sanctions, for prosperity and for the end overthrow of Saddam etc.
The US government is pledging billions of $ in taxpayer money for military operations in Iraq, but there's a literal economic limit as to how much they can tax people and a limit to what people will accept. Large sectors of business too will probably start to find things getting tough and call on Washington to end the whole thing, just as they did over Vietnam. The US economy is already in crisis, and I suspect that billions being sucked into the black hole of mercenaries, reconstruction firms and embezzlers - while enriching a number of companies loyal to the GOP - will not be going down well with fiscal conservatives, not to mention large sectors of US capital.
High oil prices means big profits for oil companies, but massively increased costs for other companies. And the oil companies currently declaring superprofits are the big multinationals, as opposed to the smaller "independents" that backed the neocon invasion plan.
More details from this Monde Diplo article from April 2003.
"Large sectors of business too will probably start to find things getting tough and call on Washington to end the whole thing, just as they did over Vietnam."
We'll wait a long time for that, lenin. The US can survive without privileged access to Vietnam's rice and T-shirts. Losing control of Iraq, by contrast, is surely not an option under any circumstances ("The American way of life is not negotiable"), unless the US quickly finds a way to convert Texan sand into oil. The Democratic Good Cops agree, and are therefore tactfully supportive while the Bad Cop does his worst in the Persian Gulf.
Bush did say in his State of the Union address that the US is "addicted" to oil, but he promised that "technology" would solve that pressing problem. I suspect he meant military technology.
As Chabert's link yet again makes clear, it's no accident that this oilmen's administration has invaded Iraq. (STEVE KRETZMANN: "Yeah, I mean, asking George Bush to tackle energy independence is like asking Jack Abramoff to tackle corruption.") Cheney knows perfectly well that the US's vast and growing energy needs cannot be met without acquiring control of foreign oil & gas that other countries also ever-more-urgently require.
One of Bush's very first acts, after he took office in January 2001, was the appointment of Cheney to head a National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG). The records of that group are still being illegally held back. The only seven pages ever released - after an extremely lengthy and bitter legal struggle - include detailed maps of Iraqi, Saudi and UAE oilfields, plus a list of "Iraq Foreign Suitors":
http://www.judicialwatch.org/
071...071703.c_.shtml
Why would covening the NEPDG have been such a No.1 priority straight after the elction? Why are the Bush Gang still refusing, illegally, to release the "meat" of the Cheney Energy Task Force records? And how can Dick Cheney be so sure that "The War on Terror will not end in our lifetimes"?
Yabbut:
"And bat is right that the lack of oil revenue has caused problems: how many times did we hear that the occupation would pay for itself?"
We heard that from Bush! Are you assuming the Bush clique is trying to keep the US treasury solvent? Why would they want that? What gives you the idea they want that? Every single policy is designed to bankrupt the treasury. They want the US population in debt to the riches members of their own clique. They don't want the occupation to 'pay for itself'; they want the US and Iraqi populations to pay for it with money borrowed at interest from rich folks. Kepitalism!
" High oil prices means big profits for oil companies, but massively increased costs for other companies. And the oil companies currently declaring superprofits are the big multinationals, as opposed to the smaller "independents" that backed the neocon invasion plan."
But what's wrong with that from the Bush clique pov? That's ideal, no?
Bat, the article says:
"Bush Junior does have a network of personal ties, not to the multinational oil companies but to the independent businesses: dozens of small firms, many headquartered in Texas, that make their money pumping oil within the US or its continental shelf. These firms all need high oil prices to survive. The cost of producing a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia may be as low as $1.50, but dredging a barrel out of the Gulf of Mexico may cost $13 or more. The last thing the independents want is a price collapse. Their demise, as their patriotic lobbyists are quick to point out, would leave the US overwhelmingly dependent on unreliable imports of foreign oil.
Multinational companies - giants such as Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, Shell, Total and Chevron-Texaco - have diversified sources of production and have less to fear from a price collapse."
Do you see the Bush policy engineering a price collapse?
And what if the US population is dependant on foreign oil? Is the Bush regime running a taxi fleet?
From a slightly-too-hasty article written for the conservative National Review in January 2002:
"He's a Texas oilman through and through and is joined at the hip with big oil." — Doug Hattaway, Gore campaign spokesman on George W. Bush, June 2000.
"[...]The fortune that Big Oil paid to elect George Bush and Dick Cheney — two oilmen from Texas — was poured straight down the crank-shaft. Enron has gone bust, Haliburton is gasping, and oil prices have plummeted. [...] Since George W. Bush was sworn in, wholesale prices have dropped from over $30 per barrel to just $20. A gallon of gas has now dipped to below $1 in parts of the country. [...] Millions of American motorists are thrilled to see the bargain prices, but the vast majority of these consumers contributed not a dime to Bush-Cheney 2000. The energy capitalists who did are clearly getting hosed."
http://www.nationalreview.com/
nr...ett010402.shtml
Five years later... How times change, eh?
Kepitalism!
Kleptalism!
But sure, the Republicans - particularly those associated with the likes of Grover Norquist - have an interest in bankrupting the treasury, thereby "defunding big government" and helping to roll back the remains of the New Deal. It seems to me, however, that much of big capital will find this state of affairs objectionable. Particularly those who are now being squeezed to the very last squeak of their pips by rising oil prices.
But it's not just American capitalists whose pips are feeling the pressure; oil prices are rising for their competitors too. Pips are squeaking pitifully in the "business community" worldwide. Who's best equipped to cope with that? Who has the biggest pips?
"that much of big capital will find this state of affairs objectionable. Particularly those who are now being squeezed to the very last squeak of their pips by rising oil prices."
EXACTLY. And THIS is why the Bush clique needs a dictatorship. This is why they can't run things as before. This is why they have been spying on senators. This is why they need back-up powers of coercion, stacked courts, etc, as well as lots of money to buy allegiance (sharing the booty through the markets), to keep the policy going.
"it's not just American capitalists whose pips are feeling the pressure; oil prices are rising for their competitors too"
Yes exactly.
But also: these guys, the Bush clique, are rentiers, finance capital, and very advanced in their thinking. They don't really care about US industry they don't own. They've bought their cooperation with the abolition of taxation and the trade advantages etc etc. Industry is doing just fine - oil price shmoil price, they don't pay taxes anymore, they have falling wages, they are not going to kick up a fuss about oil prices. The owners of industry can hedge for rising oil prices if a seven year old is their CFO. This is not the huge problem for the US ruling class it appears to be.
Or, to be more precise, its only somewhat of a problem for part of the second rung, and there is a minority of finance who doesn't like the high risk of the policy, but this dissent within capital is controlled by both carrot (profit) and stick (tyranny); and now they have lost their leverage, because the congress and the judiciary have no power anymore; so far they have been well rewarded for this submission.
Once again, I feel I've put my finger on where I disagree with w. and chabert's view of the world. What some left wing commentators see as stresses in the system which limit the extent to which the ruling class can get away with things, w. and chabert see as playing into the hands of the elite clique who are really in charge of everything. To those who point out "this will cause the system to collapse", they respond "yes, and that's exactly what they want".
Basically, w. and chabert seem to argue that everything is going according to plan for the Bush clique, in Iraq and throughout the world. That the splits that lenin and bat identify in the ruling class really don't matter, that the Bush clique can just ignore them. In short, it's an analysis that the Bush clique are all-powerful - except, of course, for the "kryptonite/silver bullet" which w. and chabert believe is the only think that can finish them off, and which I won't name because I don't want to open that can of worms again.
In short, where I really disagree with w. and chabert is that I feel they massively overestimate the extent to which the ruling clique can get away with things, and underestimate the splits and pressures in the ruling class itself. I think this in turn is a symptom of the extreme marginality and pessimism of the whole American left. Living in the belly of the beast, no wonder they can't see any weak spots.
And yes, I fully expect to be sneered at, ridiculed and called irrational, useless and brainwashed for this post. But surely those who think our enemies are invulnerable are better candidates for brainwashing?
"the extreme marginality and pessimism of the whole American left. Living in the belly of the beast, no wonder they can't see any weak spots."
H. Blackrose, just for a start: I'm not American and I don't live in America. Last I heard, Chabert doesn't live in America either.
So much for that.
"Basically, w. and chabert seem to argue that everything is going according to plan for the Bush clique, in Iraq and throughout the world."
Where? I said that they had plans for dealing with plans that didn't work out according to plan. I said they had a Plan A, B, C, etc., and the means (including a huge army and billions of dollars) to implement those plans. I could have added that they alter their plans, or at least the execution thereof, as circumstances dictate. In all this, they are no different from the management of any large multinational firm; and they have some of the best-paid, cleverest, most experienced and cold-blooded strategists and planners in the world working for them. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone, as they are indeed the most powerful and fabulously wealthy über-firm in the world. Why should they not enjoy the services of some extremely competent people? If they're so dumb, how come they ain't poor, or in jail?
"Basically, w. and chabert seem to argue that everything is going according to plan for the Bush clique, in Iraq and throughout the world."
See above. I certainly never said that "everything is going according to plan for the Bush clique". But they have successfully stolen two elections, gotten away with 9/11, cowed the opposition, robbed the Treasury, dismantled most of the remains of the welfare state, cut taxes for their wealthy and powerful supporters, forced down real wages, introduced the Patriot and Homeland Security acts, invaded and occupied two countries, gotten away with Katrina, clamped down on civil liberties, bought the judiciary, and replaced the electorate with Diebold. That's just for starters. Nor do they look to be on the verge of powerlessness now. And it's not just about the Bush clique; would you be content if they were replaced by the Clinton clique? Presumably not.
"In short, it's an analysis that the Bush clique are all-powerful"
This is nonsense (you'll call me nasty for saying so, but really - what else am I supposed to call it?) The Bush Gang cannot turn sand into oil, for instance; therefore, they are not all-powerful. That's why they're in Iraq. They are precisely as powerful as they appear to be, which is very, very powerful indeed, and certainly a hell of a lot more powerful than you or I.
To clarify: I think the capitalist world is headed for a very nasty crash pretty soon. And I think the hopeless blindness and disorganisation of the left in Britain and the US will almost certainly ensure that the ruling class survives that crash much better than we will.
You behave like someone who thinks she can walk
through walls just by willing those walls away. Instead, it might be better tactics to look for the wall's weakest point, and then to exert some pressure there: http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006...zens-
balls.html
You certainly won't manage it alone, but you might recruit some help from your fellow-prisoners.
If, instead, you're going to continue accepting their Unique Selling Point (that cardboard casus belli) without demurral, be so kind and suggest a better way to defeat them while doing so. Because it's not as if any of us have unlimited time at our disposal. Is it?
Chabert, Warszawa, I cannot commend enough your posts above. I'm reading Lenin's Tomb far too much between the hours of 9 to 5 these days. Your discussions above about bankrupting the nation got me thinking about Iraq and so many other countries.
What did we do to Iraq? From Qasim to March 2003. We slowly manipulated and then took advantage of a political climate to install easily manipulated people into power. We fomented the beginnings of a police state which had some people worried, some people indifferent and gave birth to new "patriots", but ultimately it served to divide the populace. Of course the country's hastily drawn borders contribute greatly to its factionalism.
We funded Iraq's military machine and that of it's enemy, and the country moved into a decade or more of constant war. Our policies bled the country's economy dry, and a once prosperous, innovative society watched its middle class erode away untill you had very rich magnates and racketeers at the top, and a very young, uneducated, lower class and little in between.
And that is what they are doing now to Americans. And why wouldn't they? They know that Americans don't see it happening to other nations, so why would they see it happening to themselves?
It's about more than oil. Last year Americans spent more than they earned for the first time since the Great Depression. Consumer spending accounted for 70% of the country's GDP. When the nation's coffers are dry, who will swoop in and reorganise and rebuild but the administration's friends who have been made rich through one of the greatest swindles in the history of the world. The same friends who will rebuild Iraq, who rebuilt New York, who are rebuilding New Orleans and will rebuild the next American city to get smothered with with the flag while the country sleeps.
"that everything is going according to plan for the Bush clique"
So far so good for them. Have you an example of something that is presenting an insurmountable problem? Are they losing money someplace? What's going wrong for them?
"That the splits that lenin and bat identify in the ruling class really don't matter, that the Bush clique can just ignore them"
No, they matter a lot and the Bush clique can't ignore them. What they do every day is act, in increasingly extreme and daring ways, to deal with them. And so far, they are succeeding. Have you an example of a failure to contain opposition? There have been some things that look like they were probably concessions, relating to the currency. There have been failures - in Venezuela - an incomplete success - in Haiti. But the assumption that the Iraq death squads etc- which they announced in the newspapers only a few months ago they were intending to start - is not Bush policy is ludicrous. Their aim has been to break up Iraq and render it helpless and subservient and unstable for the forseeable future.
"they massively overestimate the extent to which the ruling clique can get away with things, and underestimate the splits and pressures in the ruling class itself."
Alright, what haven't they gotten away with? Extremists on the supreme court; abolition of taxation for the rich; expropriation of trillions from the treasury without accounting; violations of the constitution everywhere; lying to congress; spying on Americans; the torture gulag; assassinations; death squads in Iraq; misuing fed funds for illegal domestic propaganda; killing journalists; outing a CIA agent; purging the Pentagon and intelligence agencies of dissidents; covering up the truth about 9/11; ethnically cleansing NO and planning a massive theft of private property there; rigging elections; disenfranchizing the citizenry; tons of publicly exposed corruption. What haven't they gotten away with?
sorry, just repeated what w said...
EG "t's about more than oil. Last year Americans spent more than they earned for the first time since the Great Depression. Consumer spending accounted for 70% of the country's GDP."
Yeah exactly. It's all about expropriation; all the policies are means to one end. I have to disagree with lenin above saying well they want to bankrupt the treasury for this or that ideological reason. Mebbe, but the money is enough a motive. This is kepitalism! The money isn't for the power, the power is what you need to protect the money.
Why the policies are so extreme and kind of accelerated is the only question: is it because they can? (that would be enough). Or perhaps because they think they have to? (because of the instability of the global financial system?) We know it isn't because the class was worried about domestic uprising in the US - no sign of that.They weren't spying without warrants because they're worried about PETA and Quakers. They haven't been quietly intervening in the stock market against their purported ideological mania to make nickles and dimes. They didn't rewrite the bankruptcy laws for the principle of the thing. And they haven't been sowing chaos in Iraq because they couldn't make a deal with Sadam Hussein or, after the invasion, the Iraqi elite.
W, Chabert, Eli.
Thanks.
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