Once again, in one of the bloodiest attacks ever, two bombings killed and injured over 800 people.
(update:In the first reports those were called suicide bombings, now we hear about car-bombs of cars parked in a parking garage.)
Nearly a whole street was flattened.
This surely is not the kind of destruction which can be caused by home-made bombs, put together in some basement.
The people behind the attacks, we are told, are supposedly former supporters of the late Saddam Hussein or maybe members of AlQaida or other Sunni radical groups, supported by Syria (What interest would Syria have in destabilizing Iraq, while Syria´s ally Iran is supporting the Shiite dominated government?).
While the attacks were supposedly directed at government buildings, the people killed or maimed were mainly civilians on the street.
What kind of support could Saddam´s supporters possibly gain from the civilian population with this kind of brutal attacks against them. Do they actually think that anyone would vote for them after having lost family or friends in such an attack or being afraid the next attack might kill a loved one?
Saddam Hussein was mainly a secular politician, who opposed the Shiite religious opposition for political, not for religious reasons (the Shiite authorities were close to Iran, while Saddam on the behest of his US-supporters was fighting Iran)
During the early years of the American occupation, while some of the Shiite establishment allied themselves with the Americans, the more radical leaders of both Sunnis and Shiites called for resistance and at the same time national unity across sectarian borders.
It made no sense that Iraqis of either side would attack the civilian population of the other side while they saw the Americans still as their main enemy.
It made no sense at all that a short time into the American occupation supposedly religiously motivated attacks against mosques and public places started.
Iraqi blogger Riverbend wrote:
“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 don’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.”
But most of those bombings were suicide attacks, were are told, they must be real.
Really?
Here is an article by SOTT Focus on the issue:
Suicide Bombings – A Favourite US Counter-Insurgency Tactic
Roger Trinquier, an immensely influential French counter-insurgency expert, suggested in his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961) (Available online here) three simple principles of Counter Insurgency:
1. separate the guerrilla from the population that supports him;
2. occupy the zones that the guerrillas previously operated from, making them dangerous for him and turning the people against the guerrilla movement;
3. coordinate actions over a wide area and for a long enough time that the guerrilla is denied access to the population centres that could support him.Remote controlled bombings masquerading as “suicide bombings” that are carried out by the US, British and Israeli occupation forces fit these principles very neatly. By detonating bombs on a daily basis across Iraq and Afghanistan and via the propaganda organs touting them as being the work of Iraqi/Afghani “suicide bombers” belonging to the insurgency, the occupying military hopes to achieve several goals:
-cut off the widespread support base that the insurgency have amongst the Iraqis
-create tensions between religious lines, especially by ascribing the faked “suicide attacks” to either Shias or Sunnis.
In other words divide and conquer.
Here is a collectionof some of the reports of fake attempted “suicide attacks” coming out of Iraq:
In May 2005, former Iraqi exile Imad Khadduri, reported how a driver whose license had been confiscated in Baghdad was questioned for half an hour at an American military camp, informed that there were no charges against him, and then directed to the al-Khadimiya police station to retrieve his license.
“The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was…carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and … found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat…the only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements’”.(According to Khadurri, the scenario was repeated again in Mosul, when a driver’s car broke down on the way to the police station where he was sent to reclaim his license. The mechanic he then turned to discovered the spare tire to be laden with explosives.)
In the same month, 64-year-old farmer Haj Haidar, who was taking his tomato load from Hilla to Baghdad, was stopped at an American checkpoint and had his pick-up thoroughly searched. Allowed to go on his way, his 11 year-old grandson then told him he saw one of the American soldiers placing a grey melon-sized object amidst the tomato containers. Realizing the vehicle was his only means of work, Haidar fought his initial impulse to run and removed the object from his truck, placing it in a nearby ditch. He later learnt that it had in fact exploded, killing part of a passing shepherd’s flock of sheep.
At this point, legendary Iraqi blogger ‘Riverbend’ reported that many of the supposed suicide bombings were in fact remotely detonated car bombs or time bombs. She related how a man was arrested for allegedly having shot at a National Guardsman after huge blasts struck in west Baghdad. But according the man’s neighbours, far from having shot anyone, he had seen “an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.”
In Basra on September 19th 2005, suspicious Iraqi police stopped undercover British soldiers in a Toyota Cressida. The two men then opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. Eventually captured, they were identified by the BBC as members of the SAS elite special forces. The soldiers were in wigs and dressed as Arabs and their car was packed with explosives and towing equipment.
Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV that the car was meant to explode in the centre of Basra’s popular market. Before his thesis could be confirmed, however, the British army’s tanks flattened the local prison cell and freed their sinister operatives.
In 2005 American and British troops were still very much engaged in fighting the Iraqi insurgency. British and American military planners probably saw it in their interest to make the resistance look bad in the eyes of the Iraqi people.
Today, however, a divided and chaotic Iraq would no longer be in the American interest, since America is busy fighting In Afghanistan and Pakistan two other endless wars.
So in who´s interest would it be?
The “militants”, we are told by Reuters about the bomb attacks on July 31, 2009 against five Shiite mosques,
al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent groups, most active in ethnically mixed areas north of Baghdad, are trying to reignite the sectarian conflict that brought Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war in 2006 and 2007
Ask yourself who would gain from such a civil war and a divided Iraq?
Who has written policy papers proposing the need for an Iraq divided in 3 parts?
In February 1982 the Israeli policy planner and intellectual Oded Yinon wrote:
A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
The late human rights activist Israel Shahak, who translated this policy-paper, commented:
The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:
1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: “The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha’aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.
2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author’s notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the “defense of the West” from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest.
Some of the above mentioned American Neo-Conservatives then wrote another just as revealing policy-paper for the Israeli Netanyahu government in 1996
“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”
5 years before 9/11, this report is calling for an invasion of Iraq.
With contributions from: Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser all members of the “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy,” and all key Iraq-war players in Bush administration.
The paper b.t.w. also calls for “engaging” Hizbollah (the tactical defense force of southern Lebanon) as well as Syria and Iran militarily.8
Thanks Trudy… That needed to be said.
When I read about the bombing, what you have written was on my mind too.
I remember the story of the SAS guys in the so called “mainstream media” and remember how odd it was that these guys were dressed like arabs driving a private car with explosives inside and how the story just died on the vine, no follow up. Focus back on the London tube bombings and the 9/11 attacks and how they happened in the middle of major excercises. We really do have a vast criminal organization embedded deep inside Western Government.
Do you know that within a few minutes of the blast, the western media was already saying that it was “suicide bombers”? How could they possibly know this? At a blast site like this, there is so much shock and confusion and chaos that no one could possiby tell that it was suicide bombers right off the bat. A couple of years ago, there was a huge blast in a Baghdad marketplace teeming with thousands of people. Over a hundred were killed. Within 4 minutes CNN was reporting that two female suicide bombers had carried out the crime. This is the umpteenth time this has happened.
The Western Media is complicit in these crimes and media personnel must answer for crimes against humanity.
It never fails. No investigation, no trial no nothing. Within minutes they have their patsy. They magically know who did it right away with no investigation and no trial . Go as far as back as the JFK assassination. Within minutes they pinned it on Oswald. Same thing with 9/11. What was it, an hour max before they were blaming it all on Bin Laden? What’s more disturbing is that your average citizen buys it hook line and sinker.
Come to think of it, Alon Long makes a great point now that I look back at it he’s right. It’s a lot like the BBC saying that WTC 7 collapsed when it took another 30+ minutes for it to. Many of these “state run” western news organization regurgitate the same stories in the same way with very similar spin.
Hollywood found a great way to tell the story of a vast criminal organization embedded deep inside Western government in the television series Alias and SD5. I only watched maibe half a dozen episodes but clearly understood this is what has been happening since 9/11 and possibly even well before.
Don’t forget P2OG
In echo of the comments, above, I was struck by the following excerpts from a BBC Newsnight program, posted on YouTube in 2007. Barely 10 hours after the incidents of 9/11, Newsnight producers were able to line up a cast of high profile neocons and Ehud Barak, each of whom pointed a finger at his favorite Muslim bogeymen. They were all certain that the attacks were the work of Muslim “terrorists” / suicide pilots.
Ehud Barak names Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran; Hamas, Hezbullah, ‘Islamic Jihad’. “Whoever is willing to host terrorists should be dealt with appropriately”.
Richard Perle comes up with bin Laden *and* Iraq!
Frank Gaffney: “Unfortunately there will be infringements on personal liberty and freedoms”. Golly, how prescient.
Pointing Fingers 9/11 [10 minutes]
Excellent post, Trudy. Thank you.
They said on the tv `news` in Oz that Al Qaeda was responsible, but i noticed that they held back from also saying that suicide bombers were responsible – as is their usual wont to say, perhaps realising that more than a few would ask themselves the question – how would they know within the hour from the inspection of the epicentres of the two enormous blasts if indeed anything human had been there at all, let alone that it was a suicide bomber ?
But what they don’t realise is that many more are coming around to the view that Al Qaeda is a western intelligence fictional construct for the media to terrorise us with by having us think it a Islamic thing that can pop up anywhere causing instant mayhem.
True, it will, again and again and again, but each time they say Al Qaeda, we will know to translate that as Mossad/CIA/MI6 – basically just that trio of the Jewish State and Judaized Anglo Americans.
I agree with your assessment, NSN. Some of these sorry tales were exposed at the time. The Brit SAS spooks in the Toyota received sufficient negative coverage in Oz to leave the credibility of the excuses in tatters (did I hear someone say “Caught red-handed”?). Part of the end-game, when the Brits demolished the prison with tanks, was that the locals attacked the tanks with small-arms and Molotov cocktails. At least one tank was sufficiently engulfed in flames for the crew to bail out and they were also well alight when they emerged.
There’s another story of cold-blooded US treachery which attracted a lot of attention in Oz and helped turn us into skeptics (you’ll have to find a way to verify this for yourself).
In 2005, there were a couple of stories about large groups of children gathered in Baghdad suburbia to get sweets and gifts being handed out by US soldiers, being blown up by a near-by car bomb minutes after the soldiers left the scene. There was a lot of outrage, in the Oz blogosphere, about the similarity between two similar events less than a week apart. A news report after one of these events quoted a local Iraqi resident as having seen one of the soldiers fiddling around with something inside the car just before they left.
Cui bono is always a good place to start when sifting through the rubble of US and UK’s imperious attitude to people with the wrong-coloured skin. I read somewhere that AfPak is being used as a “test-bed” for new, and illegal, weapons. It’s not hard to believe.
[...] Another 147 people dead in Baghdad, cui bono? [...]