British troops in pitched battle in Basra (fomenting civil war)

[RBHam]

By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland
21 September 2005
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Bloody conflict between British forces and Shiite civilians, police and militias has exposed the myth of Iraqi sovereignty and confirmed that the British Army acts as a colonial occupier.

On Monday, September 19, two British Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers were arrested in the southern city of Basra. The SAS is the British Army’s covert special operations and dirty tricks unit.

Dressed to look like Arabs, the two soldiers were driving a white car, allegedly packed with weapons and explosives, when Iraqi police challenged them at a security checkpoint.

Mohammed al-Abadi, an official at the Basra governorate, told newswires that police had believed the SAS men were “suspicious.” When one policeman approached the car, “one of these guys fired at him,” Abadi said. One police officer was reportedly killed and several others wounded.

“Then the police managed to capture them,” al-Abadi continued. “They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and to ask their commander about their mission.”

Reports of the men’s arrest led to protests outside the police Felony Crimes Department where they were being held. Reuters television footage showed two British armoured personnel vehicles sent to the station attempting to reverse away from the crowd as it came under attack. As flames engulfed the vehicles, one soldier was seen scrambling from a top hatch, as he was pelted with stones and set on fire.

Ismail al-Waili, head of Basra’s Security Committee, said that more than 10 British Army vehicles and helicopters proceeded to attack the facility, in what al-Waili described as a “barbaric act of aggression.” They demolished a wall in the raid, leading to an escape by more than 100 prisoners. But the two soldiers were not there. Having interrogated local police, the army mounted a raid on a nearby house said to be under the control of Shiite militias and recovered the SAS men.

Two civilians were reported killed in the clashes, and up to 15 injured.

more...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/basr-s21.shtml

[marmar]

1. The goings-on in Basra...

are much uglier than we know of, methinks. Stay tuned - I think this is going to blow up huge and become one of those watershed situations.

:hide:

[RBHam]

2. Civil War and Unrest Justifies permanent miltary bases...

Everything is going according to the PNACer plan...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4832137

[RBHam]

3. cr

ap

[The Magistrate]

4. An Interesting Article, Sir

For the record, assertion that the English troops were fomenting civil war is conspicuously absent in it.

[RBHam]

6. My opinion in brackets, sir...

It's time for America to know the ugly truth, your worship...

Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/into-dark-pe...

Continued in 2005:
Darkness Visible: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism is Now in Operation (2005)
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/darkness-vis...

As markejed wrote:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4832137

This is about the Pentagon, but there's no reason to believe the British would not develop their own version of the same game. You really have to read the articles in full, here's just a few introductory quotes:

From part 1:

This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, when he warns that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, that this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large?

Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.

This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There – in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon – came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.

From part 2 (referring to Seymour Hersh's article, "The Coming Wars"):

This plan is now being activated.

In fact, it's being expanded, as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week. Not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action; the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with – and ultimately undermine – existing terrorist groups.

Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. (...)

The covert units – including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads – will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.

Again as , markejed commented, the Basra incident looks close enough to this scenario, doesn' it?

[JohnyCanuck]

7. False flag ops by NATO special forces and intelligence agencies

Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra?
Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reports

by Michael Keefer

September 25, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

Does anyone remember the shock with which the British public greeted the revelation four years ago that one of the members of the Real IRA unit whose bombing attack in Omagh on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine civilians had been a double agent, a British army soldier?

That soldier was not Britain’s only terrorist double agent. A second British soldier planted within the IRA claimed he had given forty-eight hours advance notice of the Omagh car-bomb attack to his handlers within the Royal Ulster Constabulary, including "details of one of the bombing team and the man’s car registration." Although the agent had made an audio tape of his tip-off call, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the RUC, declared that "no such information was received" (http://www.sundayherald.com/17827).

This second double agent went public in June 2002 with the claim that from 1981 to 1994, while on full British army pay, he had worked for "the Force Research Unit, an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence," as an IRA mole. With the full knowledge and consent of his FRU and MI5 handlers, he became a bombing specialist who "mixed explosive and … helped to develop new types of bombs," including "light-sensitive bombs, activated by photographic flashes, to overcome the problem of IRA remote-control devices having their signal jammed by army radio units." He went on to become "a member of the Provisional IRA’s ‘internal security squad’—also known as the ‘torture unit’—which interrogated and executed suspected informers" (http://www.sundayherald.com/print25646).

The much-feared commander of that same "torture unit" was likewise a mole, who had previously served in the Royal Marines’ Special Boat Squadron (an elite special forces unit, the Marines’ equivalent to the better-known SAS). A fourth mole, a soldier code-named "Stakeknife" whose military handlers "allowed him to carry out large numbers of terrorist murders in order to protect his cover within the IRA," was still active in December 2002 as "one of Belfast’s leading Provisionals" (http://www.sundayherald.com/29997).

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20050925&articleId=994

The Pentagon's 'NATO Option'
by Lila Rajiva

<snip>

It was called “the strategy of tension” and it was carried out by members of secret stay-behind armies organized by NATO and funded by the CIA in Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and other European countries. The strategy apparently involved supplying right-wing terrorists with explosives to carry out terrorist acts which were then blamed on left-wing groups to keep them out of power.

<snip>

It turns out that what Washington meant by counter-terrorism, might often have been, well, terrorism.

Here’s the money part from one of the field manuals (FM 30-31B):

"...when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force ….US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger…”

That’s to say, if there wasn’t any terrorism to speak of, the secret armies were prepared to get some going.

<snip>

As one of Gladio’s operatives said, “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0210-22.htm

[DemInDistress]

5. good story...

A New Democratic Iraq requires that the US-UK be immune from any
nefarious random acts of violence.The Bush Crime Family invaded Iraq
to steal their oil keeping it for us {Coalition friends}.I can't help
but believe we are behind many remotely detonated carbombs and stoke
the fires of hatred in Iraq.hey,work with us and we'll make you rich
bribery works well with the corrupt.You reap what you sow !!

[Moderator]

8. RBHam

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.


DU Moderator