Kurt Nimmo & Mike Whitney & John Kaminski – 2005-10-02 08:11:52
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=15936=0=1=x
British Thugs Caught Planting Bomb in Basra
Kurt Nimmo / Another Day in the Empire
(September 20, 2005) — Baghdad Dweller reports two British soldiers held by “Iraqi authorities” in Basra (also described as “Shiite militiamen” in the corporate media), and subsequently freed after the British stormed a police jail, were working undercover as bombers. Baghdad Dweller includes a link to the Washington Post, where the following appears: “Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives. Photographs of the two men in custody showed them in civilian clothes.”
Even though the Washington Post mentions two Brits were detained, apparently caught red-handed shooting Iraqi police and planting explosives, it does not bother to mention the SAS or its long and sordid history of engaging in covert pseudo-gang behavior and conclude the obvious: Britain, and the United States — the latter having admitted formulating the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) in 2002, a brain child of neocons staffing the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board, designed to “stimulate reactions” on the part of “terrorists” (in Iraq, that would be the resistance)—are intimately involved in sowing chaos and spreading violence in Iraq and more than likely soon enough in Iran and Syria.
Of course, this unfortunate and embarrassing incident in Basra will fall off the front page of corporate newspapers and websites soon enough, replaced with more appropriate, if fantastical, propaganda implicating the Iraqi resistance and intel ops such as al-Zarqawi for the violence, obviously engineered to create a civil war in Iraq and thus divide the country and accomplish the neocon-Likudite plan to destroy Islamic culture and society.
Addendum
It is not surprising the corporate media in the United States and Britain would omit crucial details on this story. In order to get the whole story, we have to go elsewhere—for instance, China’s Xinhuanet news agency. “Two persons wearing Arab uniforms [see the M.O. cited above] opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,” an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. “The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.”
So, the next time you read or hear about crazed “al-Qaeda in Iraq” terrorists blowing up children or desperate job applicants, keep in mind, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, the perpetrators may very well be British SAS goons who cut their teeth killing Irish citizens.
Who’s Blowing Up Iraq?
Mike Whitney / Uruknet.info,
(September 20, 2005) — “The Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES.” Washington Post, Ellen Knickmeyer, 9-20-05; “British Smash into Jail to Free Two Detained Soldiers”
In more than two years since the United States initiated hostilities against Iraq, there has never been a positive identification of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Never.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t exist; it simply suggests that prudent people will challenge the official version until his whereabouts and significance in the conflict can be verified.
At present, much of the rationale for maintaining the occupation depends on this elusive and, perhaps, illusory figure. It’s odd how Al-Zarqawi appears at the precise coordinates of America’s bombing-raids, and then, miraculously vanishes unscathed from the scene of the wreckage. This would be a remarkable feat for anyone, but especially for someone who only has one leg.
Al-Zarqawi may simply be a fantasy dreamed up by Pentagon planners to put a threatening face on the Iraqi resistance. The Defense Dept has been aggressive in its effort to shape information in a way that serves the overall objectives of the occupation. The primary aim of the Pentagon’s “Strategic Information” program is to distort the truth in a way that controls the storyline created by the media.
Al-Zarqawi fits perfectly within this paradigm of intentional deception.
The manipulation of information factors heavily in the steady increase of Iraqi casualties, too. Although the military refuses “to do body counts”; many people take considerable interest in the daily death toll.
Last week, over 200 civilians were killed in seemingly random acts of violence purportedly caused by al-Zarqawi. But, were they? Were these massive attacks the work of al-Zarqawi as the western media reports or some other “more shadowy” force?
One member of the Iraqi National Assembly. Fatah al-Sheikh, stated,
“It seems that the American forces are trying to escalate the situation in order to make the Iraqi people suffer…. There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupation to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people, and spread rumors in order to scare the one from the other. – The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will try to start an internal Shiite incitement.”
Al-Sheikh’s feelings are shared by a great many Iraqis. They can see that everything the US has done, from the forming a government made up predominantly of Shi’ites and Kurds, to creating a constitution that allows the breaking up to the country (federalism), to using the Peshmerga and Badr militia in their attacks on Sunni cities, to building an Interior Ministry entirely comprised of Shi’ites, suggests that the Pentagon’s strategy is to fuel the sectarian divisions that will lead to civil war. Al-Zarqawi is an integral facet of this broader plan. Rumsfeld has cast the Jordanian as the agent-provocateur; the driving force behind religious partition and antagonism.
But, al-Zarqawi has nothing to gain by killing innocent civilians, and everything to lose. If he does actually operate in Iraq, he needs logistical supporting all his movements; including help with safe-houses, assistants, and the assurance of invisibility in the community. (“The ocean in which he swims”) These would disappear instantly if he recklessly killed and maimed innocent women and children.
Last week the Imam of Baghdad’s al-Kazimeya mosque, Jawad al-Kalesi said, that “al-Zarqawi is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation.
He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people.” Al-Kalesi added that al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north and that “His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death.” (AFP)
Most Iraqis probably agree with al-Kalesi, but that hasn’t deterred the Pentagon from continuing with the charade. This is understandable given that al-Zarqawi is the last tattered justification for the initial invasion. It’s doubtful that the Pentagon will ditch their final threadbare apology for the war. But the reality is vastly different from the spin coming from the military. In fact, foreign fighters play a very small role in Iraq with or without al-Zarqawi. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) revealed this week in their report,
“Analysts and government officials in the US and Iraq overstated the size of the foreign element in the Iraqi insurgency.. Iraqi fighters made up less than 10% of the armed groups’ ranks, perhaps, even half of that.” The report poignantly notes that most of the foreign fighters were not previously militants at all, but were motivated by, “revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country.”
The report concludes that the invasion of Iraq has added thousands of “fresh recruits to Osama bin Laden’s network;” a fact that is no longer in dispute among those who have studied the data on the topic.
The al-Zarqawi phantasm is a particularly weak-link in the Pentagon’s muddled narrative. The facts neither support the allegations of his participation nor prove that foreigners are a major contributor to the ongoing violence. Instead, the information points to a Defense establishment that cannot be trusted in anything it says, and that may be directly involved in the terrorist-bombings that have killed countless thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Regrettably, that is prospect that can’t be ignored. After all, no one else benefits from the slaughter. (Note: Since this article was written, the Washington Post has added to our suspicions. In an Ellen Knickmeyer article “British Smash into Iraqi Jail to free 2 detained Soldiers” 9-20-05, Knickmeyer chronicles the fighting between British forces and Iraqi police who were detaining 2 British commandos. “THE IRAQI SECURITY OFFICIALS ON MONDAY VARIOUSLY ACCUSED THE TWO BRITONS THEY DETAINED OF SHOOTING AT IRAQI FORCES or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES.”
Is this why the British army was ordered to “burst through the walls of an Iraqi jail Monday in the southern city of Basra”.followed by “British armored vehicles backed by helicopter gun-ships” ending in “hours of gun battles and rioting in Basra’s streets”? (Washington Post)
Reuters reported that “half a dozen armored vehicles had smashed into the jail” and the provincial governor, Mohammed Walli, told news agencies that the British assault was “barbaric, savage and irresponsible.”
So, why were the British so afraid to go through the normal channels to get their men released? Could it be that the two commandos were “trying to plant explosives” as the article suggests?
An interview on Syrian TV last night also alleges that the British commandos “were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets”.
“Al-Munajjid] In fact, Nidal, this incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that were lacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq.
Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in some armed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But those were only suspicions that lacked proof.
The proof came today through the arrest of the two British soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves, according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sow sedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraq for a longer period.
[Zaghbur] Ziyad al-Munajjaid in Baghdad, thank you very much.
Copyright Syrian Arab TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005
And then there was this on Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, September 19, 2005; Interview with Fattah al-Shayk, member of the National Assembly and deputy for Basra.
“The sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the city of Basra arrested them.
They [the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and killed some of them. The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime.”
Copyright Al Jazeera TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005 (Thanks to Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research for the quotes from Al Jazeera and Syrian TV)
Does this solve the al-Zarqawi mystery? Are the bombs that are killing so many Iraqi civilians are being planted by British and American Intelligence? We’ll have to see if this damning story can be corroborated by other sources.)
Courtesy and Copyright © Mike Whitney
Sick Strategies for Senseless Slaughter
John Kaminski
(May 24, 2005) — The cat is out of the bag now. It happened quite by accident, as most revelations do. And it is seen by most of the world as the most revolting of the American/Israeli atrocities in the past few years, although it’s hard to prioritize that claim because of the level and frequency of barbaric acts that are committed on a regular basis by those affluent automatons who call themselves the good guys.
Yet everyone but the comatose American populace — blinded by its Orwellian media and stupefied by its demented diet of physical and mental poisons — can see it.
So permit me to spell it out for those cowardly people who say they’re living in the freest country on Earth, but absolutely refuse in their silent ignorance to see the blood they’re spilling. No country that condones deliberate torture for any reason can ever be trusted.
The first hint came in Imad Khadduri’s “A warning to car drivers” written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.net on May 11. The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on the Web, www.uruknet.info and www.globalresearch.ca. I consider these two sites essential to keeping up with the real news of the world, and highly recommend that you monitor them, too.
Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq. Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can’t be understood by straightforward explanations.
I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite, it makes no sense. Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship. Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue to insist.
So Who’s Doing All These Demented Deeds?
Khadduri’s report went like this:
A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour.
At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work”.
The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.
The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated “hideous attack by foreign elements.”
The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along with the driver’s license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told to go to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the way to the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives.”
If this were the only example of this type I heard, I might have let it pass as just a story. But it wasn’t.
There was also the sorry tale of the Iraqi man who saw American soldiers plant a bomb which shortly thereafter exploded, and when he said so out loud for all to hear, he was hauled away, never to be seen again.
A Report from ‘Girl Blog from Iraq’
This story was reported on arguably the most authentic and riveting source of news from Iraq, the heart-rending “Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq,” which is compiled by someone known only as Riverbend or Iraqi Girl . Again, recommended reading. She recounts:
The last two weeks have been violent… The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations — bodies being found here and there. It’s somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it’s not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.
The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics —several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later — apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.
But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma’moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It’s a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher’s shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.
I didn’t think much about the story — nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper — hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw 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.
The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs— they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.
In any case, they are terrifying. If you’re close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then the wails begin – the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles. and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris.
Then there was this one.
US Soldiers Plant Bomb in Tomato Truck
On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes. Haj Haidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad.
A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers. The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point. He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes. He immediately recognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier. Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car. Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear. He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago.
Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head. He thanked God for giving him the courage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb.
“They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the ‘terrorists’, or ‘insurgents’ or who call themselves the ‘Resistance’.
I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tell you the story. They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint the Resistance after failing to defeat it militarily. Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobody but God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir.”
Rumsfeld’s Secret Army of Provacateurs
The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined in Frank Morales’ piece on globalresearch.ca: “The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi ‘Insurgents’ – and Global Terrorism,” by Frank Morales clearly demonstrates how Donald Rumsfeld said he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did.
Morales writes: Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, “a super-Intelligence Support Activity” network that would “bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception,” to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.
We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others. Nor have we ever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitated one of the great slaughters in history. Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a real person or just another bin Ladenesque boogeyman. Nor if the al-Qaeda website which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run by the CIA.
Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion and destruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City. The purpose of all these despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans have been doing all along to the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it.
There is not now nor ever was an Arab terror threat. That was all invented by Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and Warren Buffett. These people are all traitors to not only their countries but to humanity in general, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately.
And so should the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by their complicity or their ignorance, support them.
The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understand how the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience, thrives on war and profits from the misery of others.
The neocon murder menace has been for months ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we need to invade Iran – which some predict will happen in June – and just this week, rumors of troop movements in the Caribbean and lockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur an imminent invasion of oil-producing Venezuela.
The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding. By our silent complicity and cowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior in the name of profit, we are all accessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society, not to even mention the extinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to be safe and secure in the homes of our choice.
So now that you know, what are you going to do about it? You know if you do nothing, these same things will one day happen to you.
John Kaminski is a writer whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the world. These stories have been compiled into two anthologies, America’s Autopsy Report and The Perfect Enemy. In addition, he has written “The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn’t Believe the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001,” a booklet written for those who still believe the government’s cynical lies about that tragic day. All three books are available at http://www.johnkaminski.com
Cleric Says al-Zarqawi Died Long Ago
Ajazera.net
(16 September 2005) — Al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation, an Iraqi Shia cleric says in an interview.
Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the imam of the al-Kazemiya mosque in Baghdad, told France’s Le Monde newspaper on Friday: “I don’t think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people.”
Al-Kalesi claimed that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Kurdish northern region of Iraq at the beginning of the US-led war on the country as he was meeting with members of the Ansar Al-Islam group affiliated to al-Qaida.
“His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is therefore a ploy used by the Americans, an excuse to continue the occupation. It’s a pretext so they don’t leave Iraq.”
Al-Kalesi made the comments to Le Monde as he passed through Paris after attending an inter-religious gathering in the eastern French city of Lyon organised by the Roman Catholic Sant’Egidio Community.
Fake Statement
The cleric dismissed statements attributed to Zarqawi. He said an audio message posted on the Internet on Wednesday and attributed to al- Zarqawi, was meant to push Shia “to find refuge with the Americans rather than join the resistance.”
The voice message had declared “all-out war” on Iraqi Shia and claimed responsibility for a series of attacks that killed more than 150 people, most of them Shia waiting to be hired as day labourers in Baghdad. “If the occupation continues, the situation will only get worse and Iraqis will increasingly join the resistance,” al-Kalesi said.
Iraq’s main Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, has condemned the call to arms against Shia, calling it “very dangerous” and saying it “plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war.”
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