[Centraal] Irak na de oorlog - deel 31

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Powell's former chief of staff on Iraq intel: 'I participated in a hoax'

In an interview that aired on PBS on Friday, Feb. 3, Colin Powell's former chief of staff claimed that the speech Powell made before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, laying out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which Powell had never been made aware. He said, "My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council."

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Some Shiite political leaders already were angry with the United States because it has urged them to form a government in which nonsectarian figures control the army and police. Khalilzad warned this week — in a statement clearly aimed at Shiite hard-liners — that America would not continue to support institutions run by sectarian groups with links to armed militias.

One top Shiite political leader accused Khalilzad of sharing blame for the attack on the shrine in Samarra.

"These statements ... gave green lights to terrorist groups. And, therefore, he shares in part of the responsibility," said Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the former commander of its militia.

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De volgende keer als de passaatwind deze kant opkomt, allemaal even naar buiten, kinderen mee, diep inademen en dan luidop 'dankjewel' zeggen.

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# Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
# While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
# Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
# Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
# Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

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Op zaterdag 25 februari 2006 12:57 schreef klez het volgende:

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Je bedoelt die Amerikaanse konvooien? Of de oliepijpleidingen?
De soennieten die verslag doen van de onderhandelingen met Zarqawi, allemaal is het een Amerikaans complot...

De complexiteit van de Amerikaanse (oorlogs-) strategie neemt hier inmiddels mythische vormen aan.
Dat ik als "America-Lover" dit nog moet zeggen: die is er niet...

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Schitterende BBC docu over Israeli false flag ops.
http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle5073.htm (link out of date )

Deze schitterende docu van de BBC gaat over 1 van de meest befaamde false flag operations van Israel, waarbij Israel een Amerkaanse schip aanviel en het liet lijken op een Egyptische aanval. Gelukkig faalden ze.

In tegenstelling tot de Lavon Affar eiste deze false flag operatie echter vele tientallen levens.

Over de mogelijke bedoeling waraom Israel met ongemerkte vliegtuigen een duidelijk herkenbare Amerikaanse schip aanviel, zijn veel theorieen. Isreal houdt vol dat ze het schip voor een Egyptische schip aanzag. Vrij ongeloofwaardig aangezien Egypte niet zulke schepen had en al helemaal niet met de Amerikaanse vlag. Het meest geloofwaardig is dat ze hetzelfde doel hadden als tijdens de Lavon Affair, namelijk het creeren van spanningen tussen Arabie en het westen.

INteressant is dat in deze docu aan het licht wordt komt dat Cairo slechts enkele minuten was verwijderd van een nucleaire aanval door de VS als vergelding voor deze aanval.

Veel kijk plezier en blijf kritisch.

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Lyndon Johnson ordered cover-up: Former navy lawyer

ASSOCIATED PRESS

10/22/03: (Toronto Star) WASHINGTON — A former navy lawyer who helped lead the military investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American servicemen says former president Lyndon Johnson and his defence secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident was an accident.

In a signed affidavit released at a Capitol Hill news conference, retired captain Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the navy's inquiry to "conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

Boston was senior legal counsel to the navy's original 1967 review of the attack. He said in the sworn statement that he stayed silent for years because he's a military man, and "when orders come, I follow them."

He said he felt compelled to "share the truth" following the publication of a recent book, The Liberty Incident, which concluded the attack was unintentional.

The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast June 8, 1967. Israeli planes and torpedo boats opened fire on the Liberty at what became known as the outbreak of the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War.

In addition to the 34 Americans killed, more than 170 were wounded.

Israel has long maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, an explanation that the Johnson administration did not formally challenge. Israel claimed its forces thought the ship was an Egyptian vessel and apologized to the United States.

After the attack, a navy court of inquiry concluded there was insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship, stopping short of assigning blame or determining whether it was an accident.

It was "one of the classic all-American cover-ups," said retired admiral Thomas Moorer, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who spent a year investigating the attack as part of an independent panel he formed with other former military officials. The panel also included a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins.

"Why would our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own?" Moorer asked from his wheelchair at the news conference. He was chief of naval operations at the time of the attack.

Moorer, who has long held that the attack was a deliberate act, wants Congress to investigate.

David Lewis of Lemington, Vt., was on the Liberty when it was attacked. In an interview, he said Israel had to know it was targeting an American ship. He said a U.S. flag was flying that day and Israel shot it full of holes. The sailors on the ship, he said, quickly hoisted another American flag, a much bigger one, to show Israel it was a U.S. vessel.

"No trained individual could be that inept," said Lewis of the Israeli forces.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev disputed any notion that Israel knowingly went after American sailors.

"I can say unequivocally that the Liberty tragedy was a terrible accident, that the Israeli pilots involved believed they were attacking an enemy ship," Regev said. "This was in the middle of a war. This is something that we are not proud of."

Calls to the navy seeking comment were not immediately returned.

In Boston's statement, he does not say why Johnson would have ordered a cover-up. Attempts were made to reach Boston at his home in Coronado, Calif., but he did not return calls seeking comment.

Moorer's panel suggested several possible reasons Israel might have wanted to attack a U.S. ship. Among them: Israel intended to sink the ship and blame Egypt because it might have brought the United States into the 1967 war.

Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 01:59 schreef Sebastral het volgende:
Godzijdank beschikken wij en onze bondgenoten over een integere overheid die ons beschermt tegen het kwaad

Hoop gelul

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 18:39 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Het is verbazingwekkend dat sommigen zich wel kunnen voorstellen dat vele honderden mensen deelnemen aan een groots complot dat vrijwel niet uitlekt en waarvoor niets is dan speculatie en ogenschijnlijk nadelig is voor de samenzwerende partijen, maar dat het volgens hen ongeloofwaardig is dat religieuze fanatici een andere sekte zo intens haten dat ze bereid zijn vele wreedheden te begaan. Toch een kunst om daar in te kunnen geloven, vind ik.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 19:19 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

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Het is verbazingwekkend dat sommigen die inmiddels weten dat de oorlog, waarin duizenden en duizenden mensen zijn omgekomen, op valse voorwendselen tot stand is gebracht, het tegelijkertijd onmogelijk achten dat dezelfde mensen die achter deze oorlog zaten zoiets zouden doen als een moskee opblazen om de situatie naar hun hand te zetten.

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In plaats daarvan wordt uitgeweken naar "de terroristen" of "de extremisten", de een nog mythischer dan de andere.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 19:23 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Wel, alles is mogelijk, maar niet alles is even waarschijnlijk. Zodra er nou wat bewijzen of zelfs maar aanwijzingen zouden zijn dat Amerika achter de aanslag zit, dan kan je er over denken. Echter, vooralsnog is daar dus nog geen reden toe.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 19:33 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

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Means, motive and opportunity.

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Voor de rest je eigen gezonde verstand.

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Dit zijn professioneel uitgevoerde operaties, met een duidelijk doel. Niet zomaar een groep halve wilden die uit haat of andere irrationele motieven een wilde actie doen.

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"They hate us for our freedoms" is niet de echte wereld.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 19:37 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Zie de moord op miljoenen Joden in Europa tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 20:03 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

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Hier ben ik afgehaakt.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 19:33 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

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Means, motive and opportunity.

Voor de rest je eigen gezonde verstand. Dit zijn professioneel uitgevoerde operaties, met een duidelijk doel. Niet zomaar een groep halve wilden die uit haat of andere irrationele motieven een wilde actie doen. "They hate us for our freedoms" is niet de echte wereld.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 19:33 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

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"They hate us for our freedoms" is niet de echte wereld.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 21:56 schreef klez het volgende:

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Al-Qaida is uitstekend in staat tot doordachte, professioneel uitgevoerde operaties.

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 18:39 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Het is verbazingwekkend dat sommigen zich wel kunnen voorstellen dat vele honderden mensen deelnemen aan een groots complot dat vrijwel niet uitlekt

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 18:39 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Het is verbazingwekkend dat sommigen zich wel kunnen voorstellen dat vele honderden mensen deelnemen aan een groots complot dat vrijwel niet uitlekt en waarvoor niets is dan speculatie en ogenschijnlijk nadelig is voor de samenzwerende partijen, maar dat het volgens hen ongeloofwaardig is dat religieuze fanatici een andere sekte zo intens haten dat ze bereid zijn vele wreedheden te begaan. Toch een kunst om daar in te kunnen geloven, vind ik.

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Secret US plans for Iraq's oil

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Fadhil Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.

Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."

Privatisation blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oil fields.

He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas.

Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

View segments of Iraq oil plans at GregPalast.com

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Ms Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price: "I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight: "Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."

A State Department spokesman told Newsnight they intended "to provide all possibilities to the Oil Ministry of Iraq and advocate none".

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 13:12 schreef klez het volgende:

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Wat prachtig dat onze leiders zulke ingenieuze scenarios kunnen verzinnen om onze belangen te verdedigen. Stel je voor dat ze dit op de in de niet-westerse wereld gebruikelijke wijze zouden doen...

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“The only viable strategy, then, may be to correct (Iraq’s) historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south” Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations; from “Three-state Solution” NY Times 11-25-03

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Op donderdag 2 maart 2006 03:51 schreef Sebastral het volgende:

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De kunst is oa om journalisten te vinden die niet onder controle van bepaalde mediacorporaties staan [afbeelding]

Wanneer blijkt dat autoriteiten valse voorwendselen hebben verzonnen om oorlog te kunnen voeren zou er wellicht wel eens meer onzuivere koffie achter kunnen zitten . Greg Palast reports;
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En de neocons zijn de mensen achter bush; They use organizations like the Bilderberg Group, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum at Davos, Bank of International Settlements, World Trade Organization, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bohemian Grove, Group of Eight, Trans-Atlantic Business Council and others to calibrate their rhetoric, achieve consensus and to some degree even set policy superceding the authority of sovereign governments themselves.
[..]

Ze doen het op de 'gebruikelijke' niet-westerse manier; de eigen machtspositie en bankrekening vergroten en het volk uitzuigen .

Ze zeggen het gewoon tussen de bullshit door wat ze van plan zijn en vertrouwen daarna op de achteloosheid van het stemvee. Echt ;
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"They'd never do that"

Een burgeroorlog in irak dus. Daarom wordt advies van veiligheidsdiensten genegeerd enzo . Aanwijzingen zat

>> Whose Bombs were They? <<

>> Pentagon-Controlled Iraqi National Guard Implicated in Samarra Mosque Bombing <<

>> Is Iraq Civil War By Design? <<

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Op woensdag 1 maart 2006 23:10 schreef Godslasteraar het volgende:
vvoor de liefhebbers


Splitting Islam
...........................................
The United States did not create the Sunni-Shi’ite split in Islamism, just as it did not create the earlier Sino-Soviet split in communism. It can, however, put itself in a position to take advantage of the divide as it very likely will develop, as it did with the analogous split during the Cold War..................


http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_09_26/cover.html

edit: effe een link geplaatst, handiger.

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We Can't Force Democracy
Creating Normality Is the Real Mideast Challenge

By Robert D. Kaplan
Thursday, March 2, 2006; Page A21

The whiff of incipient anarchy in Iraq in recent days has provided a prospect so terrifying as to concentrate the minds of Republicans and Democrats, Iraq's sectarian political factions, and even the media. Staring over the abyss, only the irresponsible few appear distracted by partisan advantage. In that sense alone, the bombing of the golden dome in Samarra may serve a useful purpose. For the fundamental nightmare of the new century is the breakdown of order, something that the American experience offers precious little wisdom in dealing with.

President Bush has posited that the American experience with democracy is urgently useful to the wider world. True, but there is another side of the coin: that America basically inherited its institutions from the Anglo-Saxon tradition and thus its experience over 230 years has been about limiting despotic power rather than creating power from scratch. Because order is something we've taken for granted, anarchy is not something we've feared. But in many parts of the world, the experience has been the opposite, and so is the challenge: how to create legitimate, functioning institutions in utterly barren landscapes.

"[B]efore the names of Just and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power," Thomas Hobbes wrote in "Leviathan." Without something or somebody to monopolize the use of force and decide right from wrong, no man is safe from another and there can be no freedom for anyone. Physical security remains the primary human freedom. And so the fact that a state is despotic does not necessarily make it immoral. That is the essential fact of the Middle East that those intent on enforcing democracy abroad forget.

For the average person who just wants to walk the streets without being brutalized or blown up by criminal gangs, a despotic state that can protect him is more moral and far more useful than a democratic one that cannot. Monarchy was the preferred political ideal for centuries, writes the late University of Chicago scholar Marshall Hodgson, precisely because the monarch's legitimacy -- coming as it did from God -- was seen as so beyond reproach that he could afford to be benevolent, while still monopolizing the use of force. To wit, the most moderate and enlightened states in the Middle East in recent decades have tended to be those ruled by royal families whose longevity has conferred legitimacy: Morocco, Jordan, the Gulf emirates and even Egypt, if one accepts that Hosni Mubarak is merely the latest in a line of Nasserite pharaohs.

Imperfect these rulers clearly are, but to think that who would follow them would necessarily be as stable, or as enlightened, is to engage in the kind of speculation that leads to irresponsible foreign policy. Recall that those who cheered in 1979 at the demise of the shah of Iran got something worse in return. The Saudi Arabian royal family may be the most reactionary group to run that country, except for any other that might replace it. It is unclear what, if anything, besides the monarchy could hold such a geographically ill-defined country together.

In the case of Iraq, the state under Saddam Hussein was so cruel and oppressive it bore little relationship to all these other dictatorships. Because under Hussein anybody could and in fact did disappear in the middle of the night and was tortured in the most horrific manner, the Baathist state constituted a form of anarchy masquerading as tyranny. The decision to remove him was defensible, while not providential. The portrait of Iraq that has emerged since his fall reveals him as the Hobbesian nemesis who may have kept in check an even greater anarchy than the kind that obtained under his rule.

The lesson to take away is that where it involves other despotic regimes in the region -- none of which is nearly as despotic as Hussein's -- the last thing we should do is actively precipitate their demise. The more organically they evolve and dissolve, the less likely it is that blood will flow. That goes especially for Syria and Pakistan, both of which could be Muslim Yugoslavias in the making, with regionally based ethnic groups that have a history of dislike for each other. The neoconservative yearning to topple Bashar al-Assad, and the liberal one to undermine Pervez Musharraf, are equally adventurous.

Afghanistan falls into none of these categories. We toppled a movement in Afghanistan, the Taliban, but we did not topple a state, because none had really existed there. Even at the high-water mark of central control in Afghanistan in the mid-20th century, the state barely functioned beyond the major cities and the ring road connecting them. The governing self-sufficiency of Afghan villages has been a factor helping President Hamid Karzai establish a legitimate, noncoercive order.

Globalization and other dynamic forces will continue to rid the world of dictatorships. Political change is nothing we need to force upon people; it's something that will happen anyway. What we have to work toward -- for which peoples with historical experiences different from ours will be grateful -- is not democracy but normality. Stabilizing newly democratic regimes, and easing the development path of undemocratic ones, should be the goal for our military and diplomatic establishments. The more cautious we are in a world already in the throes of tumultuous upheaval, the more we'll achieve.

The writer is a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and author of "The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War."

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Op donderdag 2 maart 2006 10:22 schreef CeeJee het volgende:
Ach, ooit was men er 100% van overtuigd dat de invasie van Irak voor goedkope olie was. Toen de feiten niet pasten bij die verwacthing is met terugwerkende kracht de agenda veranderd. Wat er ook gebeurt, het zal altijd het gevolg zijn van de sinistere plannen van blanke rechtse mannen. Iedereen die niet tot die groep behoort is een willoze pion die geen enkele blaam treft voor welke wandaad dan ook.

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Op donderdag 2 maart 2006 10:06 schreef klez het volgende:
Het uiteenvallen van Irak en dus het mislukken van het Neocon democratisch experiment zou meteen het failliet van die beweging in de VS beteken.

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Op donderdag 2 maart 2006 10:22 schreef CeeJee het volgende:
Ach, ooit was men er 100% van overtuigd dat de invasie van Irak voor goedkope olie was.

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Wat er ook gebeurt, het zal altijd het gevolg zijn van de sinistere plannen van blanke rechtse mannen.

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Op donderdag 2 maart 2006 19:58 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Hm, nu willen de Koerden en de soennieten, die onlangs weer deel zijn gaan nemen aan de formatiebesprekingen, dat Jaafari, de door de sji'ieten gesteunde kandidaat voor het premierschap, geen minister-president wordt. Crisis op crisis op crisis...