Iraq: March 2013
As I've watched the events unfold in the Middle East over the past 24 years it has become alarmingly clear to me that we
didn't invade Iraq in 2003 because we
thought they had weapons of mass destruction. We lied.We knew they did NOT have
them. Well, at least 6 or 7 "decision and policy makers" knew they
didn't.I will explain this the best I can but we now know that mostly every
other nation in the world(including the United Nations weapons investigative
team which included Scott Ritter) knew it back then. But Still we invaded.
The US, the UK , Saudi Arabia and Israel
were in on the plan. The plan I'm speaking of is called the Plan for the New
American Century (PNAC) and to understand exactly what it is I would suggest
that you google General Wesley Clark's
speech in which he mentions 2 meetings he had in 2002 with a liaison
from then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld office.Generally speaking that
plan(which was laid out in about 1997) called for the US to control 7 countries
including Libya, Syria ,Iraq and Iran.
I believe that the
architects of the plan (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and others) were so sure that the anti-Muslim,
anti-Mid-east feelings among Americans brought on by media lies over the past
25 years would allow them to get away with almost anything. If they created a big enough lie they could
get the American people to "go along" with their plan.They had to act
fast and they did. 9/11 served as the perfect "incentive" to begin
their plan.I also believe that they had the perfect president to "sell"
this plan to the people. I may be wrong but I believe President George W. Bush
believed the lie. He simply doesn't have the intellect or talent to lie so
convincingly to the American public. He was the perfect president at the
perfect time for the real "evil doers", Cheney and company. In1953
when we were involved with over-throwing the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mossadegh, it was easier to get away
with the covert actions that our CIA carried out.The only surprise there was
that it took 26 years for the Iranians to over-throw our puppet, the Shah of
Iran and begin their own Islamic revolution.Today we have become much craftier
.We use the corporate owned (and controlled) media to garner popular support.
You may come to the same conclusion as to what's really been going on in Iraq from 2003 to this day.I believe we attacked Iraq hoping
that it would bring about exactly what is occurring there now. Chaos.Rumsfeld had
to know we wouldn't be "showered with flowers" from thankful Iraqi's,
as he stated in 2003.Our plan, in my opinion, was to create more turmoil in the
mid-east so we could "install" yet another puppet regime.We had to
know that Maliki would do what-ever we asked and that he would need our help in
doing so.I wont get into the complicated issues now of ideological analysis and the imperialist-capitalist nature of
the use and its rulers neoconservatives, neo-liberals, and Zionists who plan
these wars and stand behind them , all driven by greed. Nor will I get into
what is the comprador nature of Arab reaction such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
who place themselves willingly in the service of imperialism against the
interest of their own people and of the Arab nation.
The help I
speak of comes in the form of selling
more weapons to Maliki's sectarian government and in return we get protection
for the "green zone" (the largest area of it's kind in the world
which is home to the US Embassy,private military contractors and major US
consulting companies.It's size is 3.9 sq. miles) ,a guarantee of keeping the
oil flowing to us from the worlds second largest oil reserve and Israel
benefits by keeping these countries weak and in constant turmoil,thereby
"distracted".In a way, what we've created in the mid-east is like a 5
ring circus. As all your attention is on one act you have little or no idea
what's going on in the other 4 rings.
MEDIA LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS
Before I get to the events unfolding in Iraq today let me give an
example of how the role of the corporate controlled media plays on public
opinion and therefore on how it makes it easier for governments pass laws and
execute policy for war. I'll very briefly go back to the first invasion of Iraq
by the US in 1991. Many of us were "on board" because of the following
4 lies.
.
Lie number 1)
The first rule of getting the
American public to agree to go to war is to de-humanize or demonize the enemy.
We all heard about how Saddam Hussein deliberately gassed his own people (the
Kurds) in the north of Iraq. Truth is ,he didn't. In 1988 the 8 year war
between Iraq and Iran was raging,taking a serious toll on both sides with no
one winning. War seldom ever has any winners. The town of Halebja ,Iraq, was
attacked and over-taken by the Iranians. According to Steven C. Pelletier , who
was the CIA's Senior Political Analyst on Iraq during the 8 year war and was
also a professor at the Army War College from
1988 to 2000, the gassing came about in the course of a fierce Iranian-Iraqi
battle. At first he thought it was the Iraqi's who used chemical weapons to try
to kill Iranians who had seized the town and that the Kurdish civilians who
died had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage, as they
say. They WERE NOT the targets as we had
all been told!But as time went by the story changes.The US Defense Intelligence
Agency investigated and found that it was IRANIAN GAS that killed the Kurds…not
the Iraqi's! Some dispute this but at the very least all experts agree that the
Kurds were collateral damage and not the targets.
Lie number 2)
Time to pull at our heart strings.
Remember the young girl who came forward and told stories of Iraqi soldiers
raping women in the Al-Adan hospital? The same girl who was brought before
congress by Congressman Lantos .She then claimed that the Iraqi soldiers took
more than 40 new born babies out of the incubators and tossed them onto the
cold, cement floor. Well, it turned out that Kuwait had hired a US public relations firm,Hill and Knowlton,
paid them 1 Million dollars a month and trained the girl to lie. That 15 year
old girl ,named Nayirah, turned out to be Nayirah-al-Sabah.The daughter of the
Kuwait's ambassador to the United
States.
Before I get into lie number 3 I'd like
to try and explain why Saudi Arabia, an Arab country and part of OPEC, would
allow our military bases to be built there.After the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 a
company called Chas T.Main sent someone
to Saudi Arabia to negotiate a plan that would guarantee that Saudi oil would
never stop flowing into the United States. According to John Perkins
("Confessions of an Economic Hit Man") he landed in the KSA sometime
in 1974. A secret deal was worked out.
The KSA would deposit billions of it's dollars into a US bank. We would use only
the interest to build a modern infra-structure and energy grids. At that time
Saudi Arabia had no garbage collection system so Perkins set up Waste
Management(a garbage collection company based in Texas) to collect and dispose of Saudi Arabia's
garbage. In exchange ,Saudi Arabia agreed to never stop the flow of oil into
the United States. Because the surrounding countries were furious over the KSA
breaking away from OPEC (as far as the US is concerned) they quickly recognized
the need for protection and almost as a last thought allowed us to build
military bases with American troops stationed there.Those troops didn't leave
until 2003.
Lie number 3)
President Bush claimed that as many as
120,000 Iraqi troops and 850 tanks were in the south of Kuwait and poised to
attack Saudi Arabia.Then the Defense
Department upped that number to 250,000 troops and 1,500 tanks! According to
Peter Zimmerman these numbers were greatly exaggerated and Iraq had no intentions
of invading Saudi Arabia but Bush's lies may have been told to scare Saudi
Arabia into letting us send as many as 500,000 US troops into the KSA to lunch
our massive attack.It worked as Saudi Arabia didn't blink an eye.
I feel I must say again at this point
that I love my country but I sometimes have problems with our government.Before
I get into the 4th and final lie lets consider the time line., In December of
1989 the United States invaded Panama. A sovereign country.Why?It wasn't
because Noriega used or sold drugs, as we had claimed. God, we knew that about
him for years and years.In fact, Noriega most likely even worked for the CIA
for a time.After Jimmy Carter had worked out a deal to return the Panama Canal
with beloved Panamanian leader ,Omar Torrijos,many were furious.None more than
the Reagan administration and when Torrijos began entertaining thoughts of
letting Japan upgrade the canal to shorten the waiting time it meant US
companies like Halliburton, Bechtel, Root and Brown,Stone and Webster and other
hugh contractors might be missing out on an opportunity to make big money.It is
widely suspected that the CIA had Noriega plant a bomb in the plane that took
Torrijo's life on July 31st ,1981.Then when Noriega began those same talks with
Japan it was the last straw. In December ,1989 we invaded Panama.Defense
Secretary Richard Cheney (who was a chairman at Halliburton) put the death toll
between 500 and 600 innocent Panamanians but independent human rights groups
put the number much higher. Their number of dead was between 3,000 and 5,000
and 25,000 left homeless. We will never know as the US did not allow media into
the area until it was cleaned up. For us to claim that Iraq invaded Kuwait 6
months later to take it back was a little hypocritical,in my opinion.
Lie
number 4)
We were all told by President Bush and his administration that Iraq
was aiming to take back the territory it lost in 1947. We were told Saddam was
intent to have Kuwait once again be a part of Iraq . It simply wasn't true.
During it's 8 year war with Iran, as I've said before, both those countries
were weakened in many ways .Kuwait was
helping Iraq by paying them large amounts of money throughout this
period to support Iraq's war efforts.. When the war ended Kuwait wanted that
money repaid immediately. Iraq asked for some time a it needed to "get
back to normal".Kuwait refused to wait and began extracting oil from Iraqi
wells. Iraq warned them to stop but still did NOT invade,. Instead Iraq lodged
complaints to the UN Security Council and to the United Nations.Then Iraq
requested a meeting with the US ambassador. The US indicated it would NOT
interfere with what Iraq "Had to do" , and added it would not
interfere in Arab issues. Saddam understood this to be a green light. Remember
now, Saddam had already warned Kuwait. The "Trap" had been set. All
wars are started by lies, myths, propaganda and de-humanizing the so-called
enemy. As you now know ,all 4 tactics were swallowed hook, line and sinker by
the American public.
There were many atrocities committed by the US in the 1991 invasion but
none worse than the bombing of the Amiriya shelter in Baghdad.Early in the
morning on February 13th, 1991 the US dropped (2) 2,000 pound laser guided
bombs (Bunker busters) onto (then into) the shelter.400 Iraqi civilians were
killed. Mostly women and children and another 200 were severely injured.How
much more pain and suffering could we cause? Unfortunately Iraqi's are still
suffering.Now that I've established our lack of credibility when it comes to
reporting the truth lets move on. You've read the 4 lies which led to gaining
the American publics support for the 1991 invasion. We now know there were
never any weapons of mass destruction that led us to support the 2003
invasion.Now our media is lying about who the(so-called) Iraqi-Iranian
government is really fighting..
IRAQ TODAY (2014)
It's bad enough that so many
Iraqi's in the Fallujah area are suffering from Maliki's(the current Prime
Minister of Iraq) regime and his Iranian militia's today but let me take us
back to April and November of 2004 for a moment.Back then ,Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld told out troops (and the British troops) that we had to clear out foreign fighters from Fallujah.
That's the very same lie we are still using in Fallujah and through-out
al-Anbar (Ramadi) Province today.Back then we launched operation"Shake and
Bake" against the entire city of Fallujah where Iraq citizens (who wanted
to free Iraq of it's occupiers) were fighting . Most Fallujah residents trying to get by, day to day.We used white
phosphorus and depleted uranium in both battles (April and November, 2004) and
by December the slaughter had been complete. Today the birth defect rate is
alarming. Prior to 2004 there was an average of 4 or 5 birth defects a month.
TODAY THERE ARE 2 TO 3 PER DAY because of the WP and DU used by US troops. To
find a complete report on the atrocities committed and how we wouldn't even
allow those Iraqi's who survived bury their
dead I would suggest finding a
report written by Dr. Muhamad Taqeq al-Darraji. He now lives in Italy but at
the time he served on the city council of Fallujah and served as a defender of
human rights.. He left prior to the November massacre.
Between 2006 and
today Nouri al-Maliki has been letting Iranian fighters enter Iraq without
visa's. There are even Iranians serving in his current government.Among the
first to enter and serve was Ali al Adeeb. He entered and was given Iraqi
citizenship almost over night. His real name is Al Yazdi and he is from Yazd
City in Iraq.Maliki's long range plan is to "Persian-ize " (Iran ins
are Persian, not arab.There is a long history of bitter rivalry between these
two cultures) Iraq .There are now thousands of Iranians fighting for Maliki
throughout Iraq .Most are in the western areas and Anbar fighting.In 2006 Farsi
was often heard (the language spoken by Iranians) in the prisons where torture
of Iraqi citizens was rampant. Qassem Soleimani (Commander of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard) was often seen in Iraq and he continues to travel back and
forth between Iran and Iraq to this day A friend of mine(Hayfaa Ahmed) was a
refugee in Ashraf City. She has personally seen these Iranian militias in the
refugee camp. As soon as the US forces left (late 2011) ,these Iranians would
enter the camp and randomly kill the elderly men and women. She was lucky to
escape with her daughters and is now living in Germany. She longs to return to
Iraq one day and I pray she can.
The pre-2003
Iraq is now considered to have been paradise by most Iraqi's compared to the
fighting that is now increasing by the day.Between US sanctions (in the early
1990's) and all the fighting, nearly 3 million Iraqi citizens have perished. 3
MILLION!! The Iraqi's are now united in their fight to finally free Iraq from
it's US/Iranian puppet, Nouri al-Maliki.However ,now the media is continuing to
either lie or report only half-truths by stating that the "Iraqi army"
and Maliki are fighting mostly "terrorists". Yes, there are some
terrorists but they are mostly Iranian militia .The fight by the Iraqi's is
particularly united in the western parts of the country where Maliki is
currently using weapon's bought rom the US government to kill Iraqi citizens
now ,under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda
and it's followers.The fighting has increased from around September
,2013, when the Iraqi people announced the establishment of areas to join the
uprising against this corrupt government. They are determined to stand their
ground.Speaking from the European Parliament in Brussels,Straun Stevensen
recently said:"Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is waging war on his own
people.His Shia led government,with the backing and encouragement of his
puppet-masters in neighboring Iran,is engaged in a genocidal military campaign
against the Sunni population whom Maliki has branded as terrorists. Men, women
sand children are being massacred in cities like Fallujah and Ramadi in
relentless bombing raids,rocket attacks and tank battles, under the pretext
that these people are all members or supporters of Al Qaeda.The americans have
fallen for this ruse hook, line and sinker and are rushing in supplies of
automatic weapons ,tasks, aircraft and rockets to help Maliki's killing
machine" Where I differ is the "Americans have fallen for this
ruse" line. Our government (and media) know exactly what is going on!!!
A few weeks ago (January
,2014), soon after Maliki's visit to America
it was announced that the start of military operations against terrorism
and al-Qaeda in the western region would intensify. All of the involved parties
(The US, Israel, Iran, Iraq ,Saudi Arabia to name a few) know that al-Qaeda is
not stationed in any cities (big or small) but rather in remote areas in the
vast desert of Anbar. Specifically, these operations were directed against the
people in the cities of Fallujah and Anbar.
Another friend of mine living in
Baghdad (I'll call him Akkadian) tells me that al-Maliki's government has been
desperately looking to draft more people into's it's the so-called "Iraqi
army". That has so far proven to be unsuccessful. 2 weeks ago he witnessed
the bussing in of Iranians who are not required to obtain visa's. Once in, they
stay in Iraq and offer tactical support to the small number of al-Aqaeda in
Anbar and then join the fight against Iraqi's.He also noticed something he
found to be strange. In the northern part of Baghdad ,workers are demolishing
the Shirine of el Kadhimaian. The "official" reason is that they want
to enlarge it but he has discovered that that's only partially true. Yes, they
want to enlarge it but the reason is to house many of these illegal Iranians
flooding in.Then ,on January 25th ,Maliki's forces bombed a children's
orphanage in al-Karma. It goes on and on.January's death toll isn't including
the people killed by the military in the continuing assault on Anbar. Citing a security source, NINA reports that
hospitals have received 141 civilians have been killed in Ramadi and Falluja
alone this month with another 509 injured and the reporter added that this can not be considered as
final number because there are dead and wounded in areas which could not be
moved to the hospital. Through
yesterday, Iraq Body Count counts 1037 violent deaths in Iraq so far this
month. It's doubtful many counts will
include the 141 civilians killed by the bombings and shellings from Maliki's
forces. NINA also notes military
shelling left 3 civilians dead in Ramadi with eight more injured. In fact,
(a) it's left many civilians dead, injured and homeless (over 150,000 people
have fled their homes) If they try to flee to Baghdad the'll be stopped since
the military is preventing anyone entering Baghdad from Anbar), (b) it started
the last week of December and it's ongoing with no clear end in sight and (c)
he lost control of Falluja, Ramadi, other parts of Anbar and also of Baghdad.
IN CONCLUSION
I don't think anybody really knows with
certainty what our "end game" is in Iraq. Or in Libya, Lebanon and
other surrounding countries for that matter. The Israeli government no longer
has strong presidents (Saddam Hussein
and Kadhafi)) who refused to be subservient to the west, to worry about.What I
do know is that the chaos we created is killing more and more innocent Iraqi
citizens every single day and somehow we have converged our interests there
with the interests of Iran.Something else I know is that most Iraqi people like
Americans. Somehow they are able to differentiate between our government and
the American citizens. I'm not sure we'd have that capacity had we been invaded
by a foreign country but I hope we can use that fact to secure a healthy
relationship with them in the future.It's supposed to be a government by and
for the people but that is now a far cry from what we have here in the US these
days. My hope is that more Americans will eventually discover the truth about
what we did and what is continuing to happen to the Iraqi people. If enough of
us can reach out to our representatives in Washington perhaps we can make a
real difference. We don't need to send in troops. Iraq doesn't want that. But
if we can stop selling weapons to the al-Maliki government and stay completely
out of Iraq there might be hope. Not just for Iraq but for the US and Iraq to actually work out some kind of a
normal, supportive long lasting
relationship. Let the Iraqi's free them selfs of al-Maliki and the
Iranians. Then, and only then, can we hope for a fresh start. But we must
discover the truth first and we'll never find that on main stream media. I will
continue to give updates as often as I can.
There
are many Iraqi citizens I need to thank. Many are still in Iraq and you all know
how much I respect and appreciate you. I must thank Dr. Muhamad Tareq
al-Darraji, Akkadian, Hayfa Ahmed and Al-Waleed Khalid for their continued help
and friendship. If anyone would like to contact me for more info my e-mail
address is: meslerjohn@yahoo.com
