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Civil War Looms in Iraq
"US Generals forsee Iraqi partition" was the unnerving headline penned by Guardian journalists Julian Borger, Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton Taylor yesterday. They quote the leaked memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair written by William Patey, Britain's outgoing Ammbassador to Iraq, which revealed that "a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq" is currently more probable than the stabilization of the country. His comments were shockingly confirmed by General John Abizaid, the head of US Central Command, and General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, both of whom warned of the imminent probability of Iraq's slide to civil war.
While the media debate has shifted onto whether or not a civil war is imminent in Iraq -- and it's obvious from the comments of the above informed observers that it is -- unnnoticed and barely reported is the compelling evidence that some sectarian violence has been deliberately fostered and orchestrated by US and British military intelligence. When Iraqi police found "explosives and a remote-control detonator... in the car of the two SAS special forces men" disguised as Arabs, last year in September, veteran war correspondent John Pilger in the New Statesman was one of the few to note the odd details. "What were they planning to do...?" with the explosives, he wondered: "Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men's unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. ... the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr's followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival."
Orchestrating the Terrorist Insurgency?
"... 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."
Going back to my own research on this, in my Raw Story report just under a year ago, I noted two important points:
1. Press reports as well as official statements from al-Qaeda in Iraq suggested that al-Qaeda had teamed up with Saddam Hussein's old Ba'ath Party loyalists. Iraqi intelligence and US military officials have known for years that al-Qaeda operatives from outside Iraq had "formed an alliance with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein".
2. Pakistani military sources told the Asia Times in February 2005 that the US has "resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population," consisting of "former members of the Ba'ath Party". In other words, al-Qaeda's latest Ba'athist recruits undergoing what the London Times called "Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make remote-controlled bombs" were getting themselves "entrenched" in the civilian environment while also being covertly armed and supported by elements of the US military. The US had procured "Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry." A Pakistani military analyst noted that the "arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them." It is difficult to avoid the conclusions that US military intelligence has actively implemented a series of covert operations designed to manipulate and arm the terrorist insurgency, thus contributing to the deterioration of security.
Neo-Con Plan: The Dissolution of Iraq
But why? The dissolution of Iraq has long been an essential feature of hardline Israeli strategic thinking. In 1982, the Hebrew journal Kivunim -- the official organ of the World Zionist Organization -- published an article by former Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, who observed that:
"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria... In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."
The fragmentation of Iraq, in other words, is an integral part of Zionist grand strategy, a strategy that is staunchly supported by the neoconservatives in the White House.
Sources close to the incumbent Iraqi government fear that the drastic deterioration of security in Iraq will be exploited by the Anglo-American coalition to dissolve the fragile parliament and declare a state of emergency, thus permanently sealing the occupation. It is difficult to discern whether this specific scenario is plausible, but there can be no doubt that policymakers in Washington and London want to manipulate the situation to ensure long-term control over Iraqi oil reserves.
Nuclear-ization of Mid-East War
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