The jig is up. The Iraqis have figured out the Death Squads are a Bush creation

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA23Ak03.html

Southern tribes add to Iraqi resistance

<snip>Attacks against occupation forces appear to stem more from a growing nationalism. "This is not about vengeance," a former Iraqi Army officer from Kut, 200 kilometers south of Baghdad, said in the capital. "People have lost hope in the US-led occupation's promises, and they are thinking of saving the country from Iranian influence, which has been supported, or at least allowed, by the multinational forces."

British and US military leaders tend not to say who has been targeting their forces in the south. They simply call the resistance fighters "terrorists", or they point to the Mehdi Army led by Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as the only source of disturbance in the south.

While members of the Mehdi Army certainly carry out attacks against occupation forces in southern Iraq, other home-grown resistance seems to have taken root, fed also by earlier memories.

"People here have always hated the US and British occupation of Iraq, and remembered their grandfathers who fought the British troops with the simplest weapons," said Jassim al-Assadi, a school principal from Kut. Assadi was referring to the Shi'ite resistance that eventually played a key role in expelling British forces from Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s.

Armed resistance against the occupation in the south was slow to begin with because religious clerics instructed their followers to give the occupation time to fulfill promises made by the US and British administrations, Assadi said. "But now they do not believe any cleric's promises anymore. They have started fighting, and that is that."

A political analyst in Baghdad, who asked to be referred to as W al-Tamimi, said he believed that occupation forces have been working in tandem with death squads. "We have been observing American and British occupation forces supporting those death squads all over Iraq, but we were still hoping for reconciliation."

Tamini said the sheikh of his tribe, which is both Shi'ite and Sunni, was "under great pressure by the tribe's young men to let them join the resistance".

[malaise]

1. Anyone who believes that Muslims blew up that

precious mosque is beyond naive. Further the Iraqis caught two British soldiers dressed up as Arabs. Add to that the presence of Negroponte and we know what has been going on in Iraq. Divide and grab the oil.

Indeed the gig is up.

[Junkdrawer]

6. Agreed...Or, if you want it in more detail...

Pretend that you have absolutely no morals whatsoever and that your goal is to capture and exploit the world’s largest underexploited oil reserves - Iraq. You don’t want to start the pumping while your Saudi business partners still can meet demand, so let’s say your time frame to start pumping is 5 to 10 years out. Your problems are:

1.) The population of the country is 65%+ Shia, many with links to Iran and many more decidedly Anti-American.
2.) Immediate installation of a Pro-American puppet regime would be opposed, not only by Iraqis, but also by most of the world, especially Iran, Russia and China.
3.) Oil fields and pipelines are easy sabotage targets for any well-manned insurgency.

So invading with a sufficient force to bring post-invasion stability brings a Shiite regime with a pro-Iranian tilt. Joy, just what you don’t want. So what do you do? Try this little three phase plan:

Phase I:
Invade with a force sufficient to overcome Saddam’s weakened defenses, but insufficient to create stability. Leave plenty of weapon caches lying about because you want an insurgency. Why? Because an insurgency provides cover for:
1.) The expulsion of the U.N.
2.) The expulsion of unfriendly media
3.) The building of permanent military bases
The insurgency also creates the core of a brutal, professional colonial army – something you’ll need for Phase III.

Phase II:
Instigate a civil war and then retreat to the bases you built in Phase I. You can, at this point, talk about an “orderly withdrawal” because you really just need a small core of provocateurs to keep the civil war raging. This is when the real killings occur – the pacification if you will. The idea is to reduce the population of anyone who will oppose your later occupation. The magnitude of the killings during this phase will be so severe that there will actually be cries for your return, both at home and within the international community. See Bosnia.

Phase III:
Remember those military bases and the brutal, professional colonial army you built during Phase I? Now is when you use them to bring about your actual goal: a puppet government propped up by a brutal military presence. You can refer anyone who complains at this point to the atrocities of Phase II and suggest that your forced stability is the lesser of two evils. Oh, by the way, you can pump the oil now.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1503947

[malaise]

7. Brilliant

but apparently they were playing checkers not chess.

[formercia]

8. They seem to be on-track to depopulate Iraq

Anyone with money is trying to leave or has already left, the rest are cannon fodder.

[Junkdrawer]

11. The guys who did the Lancet study were on DemocracyNow...

and they said that it's already like Europe after WW I.. a large proportion of the young men are dead and there are a large number of widows and orphans with no breadwinner...

[NNN0LHI]

12. Bush is committing genocide in Iraq

There is little doubt of that any more.

Don

[Junkdrawer]

14. From the Kucinich/Cole/Lancet press conference...

...

The vast majority of these deaths were in males, although there was an interesting look at deaths among pre- -- children under age 15. And that was increased perhaps out of proportion to what I might have expected. And one could suppose that this represented schoolchildren -- school -- children out playing, not so much as with the older female population that could stay in the house most of the time.

We found that gunfire remains the major cause of death. About half of deaths are due to gunfire.

....

MR. COLE: Well, there is an impact on the workforce of these deaths, and it's -- you know, it's sort of like Europe in the '20s when you had the lost generation, the young men who just weren't there because so many had been killed. And it does distort the economy.

Traditionally, in the 20th century in such situations it has been common for women to come into the workforce in greater numbers to make up for the lack of the men. But in Iraq, this is difficult at the moment because of the poor security. It's reinforced traditional patterns of gender segregation. So that I don't believe it's the case that, you know, there are a lot of new factory jobs opening up and that the women are taking them instead of the young men who have been killed.

....

http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/kucinich-paul-congressional-hearing-on.html

[truedelphi]

17. If we had a Mainstream free press those two fake Muslims

Would have become as famous as Lewinsky's stained dress.

But we ain't got no stinkin' free press!

[malaise]

18. I wonder if the Independent in Britain didn't follow that

up - there was a report with pix.

[malaise]

19. I wonder if the Independent in Britain didn't follow that

up - there was a report with pix.

[petgoat]

22. Here's a report from WaPo when the Brits used tracked vehicles

to knock down the jail wall to get those two guys back out of Iraqi
custody.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900572.html?nav=rss_world

Elsewhere I've read that the captured Brits had been dressed as arabs and had explosives
in the trunk of their car.

[rodeodance]

2. The Iraqi have long memories of occupation.

[gratuitous]

3. Well, the appearance of John Negroponte on the scene

Negroponte just seems to have the worst luck. Seems like wherever he goes, death squads just materialize or spring up fully formed out of the ground. His appearance is a dead giveaway (no pun intended) that something bad is about to happen.

[Patiod]

9. Does he have bad luck or what?

Just there minding his own business *whistling little tune* when POOF! Death squads!

I for one am shocked! Shocked I tell you!

[rman]

4. makes sense

US forces are there to kill Iraqis - or at least to kill suspicious Iraqis, and we know it doesn't take much to be considered suspect by US forces - and the death squads are doing the same thing (kill Iraqis).

I'm still wondering if Iraqis who target one another are the same Iraqis that target US forces.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Ever notice that the Iraqis who kill Iraqis always do so right after we declare curfews?

The death squads are either invisible or they have been issued identification papers and uniforms to pass through US checkpoints.

I guess that latter.

Don

[rman]

13. good observation. nt

[Richard Steele]

21. Every night the streets on "full military lockdown" are full of corpses in the morning.

Doesn't take a genius to add that 2+2!

[petgoat]

23. The Golden Mosque in Samarra was under the control of the

US Army and the Iraq National Guard all night long.
20 minutes after they left the scene, the Mosque blew
up.

The text linked below is consistent with the story as told by
Dahr Jamail:

http://www.roadstoiraq.com/?p=723#comments

[Skidmore]

10. Wonder how many of those kidnappings are conducted by the

same groups? This morning on NPR there was a story of a guy whose father was kidnapped and he was talking about the sheer numbers of kidnappings occurring now that were driving people out of Baghdad.

[UTUSN]

15. K&R with a copy to the radio wingnut n/t

[caledesi]

16. Death squads = Negroponte

http://ww4report.com/negropontedeathsquad

[Jcrowley]

20. K&R n/t

[Disturbed]

24. Iraq's PM said that the US Occupation should end in

six months. Busholini vetoed that notion. And here I thought Iraq was a sovereign nation.

[TahitiNut]

25. The CHeney/Bush regime is overloaded with people with COVERT ops backgrounds.

From Cheney and Rumsfeld to Negroponte and Feith and Reich and dozens of others, these people all have backgrounds that just SCREAM covert operations experience (running, not doing) both inside and outside regular government positions. It's the single most common thing I can think of that would give them an obviously shared disdain for "rule of law" and Geneva Conventions. Since Poppy Bush is the former Director of the CIA and damned near every player in this regime is somehow connected either directly or indirectly with him and some kind of sneaky crap - including Iran/Contra - it makes a perverted kind of sense that they long ago lost any sense of obligation to behave lawfully and morally.

It fits in with the Plame outing, as well. That's also why they get compared to cockroaches - we, at least subliminally, see these people preferring the darkness and "undisclosed locations."

It's entirely within that scope they could do "false flag" operations.

[Jack Rabbit]

26. Raise your hand if you said this would happen in March 2003

:hi:

[roamer65]

27. Ditto.

:hi:

In 1991, I realized that Dimwit 41's decision to stop at the Iraq-Kuwait border was a good one. Too bad Dimwit 43 didn't have the same epiphany.

[shadowknows69]

28. I suspected it

it is in the interests of the war machine to keep the endless war going. As long as there is instability they will find a reason to be there. Even if we have to cause it. Eventually the population will be killed down to a manageable level.