How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory

[panzerfaust]

In an exclusive extract from his new book, A History of the World since 9/11, Dominic Streatfeild explains how despite expert warnings, the US let al-Qaida buy an arsenal of deadly weapons – then tried to cover it up ...

...The article went out the next morning: "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq." Shortly after the newspaper hit the streets, Bush's chief political strategist Karl Rove swept into the media area of Air Force One and started shouting at Sanger. "Rove came and screamed at me in front of all the other reporters," he says. "Declared that this had been invented by the Kerry campaign." Apparently, the report had hit a nerve.

It was at this point that the story of the looting of Qa'qaa got really dirty...

from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/07/iraq-weapons-factory-al-qaida-us-failure

[Historic NY]

1. How many people were killed because of this malfeasence....here was the WMD.

[Junkdrawer]

2. Malfeasence...or a strategy of tension?

I wrote this 5 years ago...

NOTE: The following is just a guess based on many, many events that seem to suggest it as a possible BushCo strategy. It is extremely brutal and I hope I'm wrong.

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.

Well, there you have it. As I said, I hope I’m wrong.

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

[Selatius]

4. NOW you are thinking like a true war lord.

The joke at the time was that we should simply release Saddam and put him back in control, except with an American uniform. He ran the country better than the CPA could, definitely better than the current government too.

[Junkdrawer]

3. Kick

:kick: