Neo-Conned! Again
Page 101
As I hope the foregoing has demonstrated conclusively, there is no sense that the resistance is losing. There is, on the contrary, every indication that it is steadily gaining ground: partly through its own military efforts, partly through the ineptitude of the Bush government, and partly through the evident worthlessness of the puppet regime in Baghdad.2 If the summer months of 2003 appeared as “dark days” to the Ba'ath Party, they must look less dark now that even experts are expressing concern that American forces are weakening, and more and more patriotic folks at home are demanding a withdrawal so as to preserve both their sons and daughters and America's security. Is it likely that they will give up at precisely the moment that victory is beginning to look more and more possible? Far more likely is the continuation of the U.S. attempt to hide its search for a way to give up on the Iraq experiment behind an attempt to encourage resistance leaders to “participate in the political process,” especially now that Rumsfeld has made the scandalous admission that there will be “no military solution to ending the insurgency.”1 That the rebels are likely to see such an offer as simply an invitation to surrender their Iraqi identity and independence to a U.S.-backed government of unrepresentative Kurdish and Shiite factions illustrates both the slim prospect this approach has of success, and the U.S.'s ignorance of political reality on the ground.
We must, however, face that reality. What we are dealing with in Iraq is a domestic, nationalist resistance movement. It is the exact thing that Wolfowitz claimed in February 2005 did not exist, but which his unwitting parrot Max Boot effectively conceded in his June 2005 piece wherein he claimed the rebels would “lose.”2 This movement goes well beyond the false media designations of Shiite, Sunni, and Christian. Ba'athism in Iraq is the national vision; anything else is but a return to the sectarianism and division so beloved of Zionists and oil men. Ba'athism will return in Iraq, in some form or other, and its return will signal the American departure.
1. DoD News Briefing with Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Meyers, June 30, 2003 (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030630-secdef0321.html).
1. Ruth Walker, “Coming to Terms with the Guerrillas in Their Midst,” Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2004, online.
2. Walker, op. cit.
3. Norman Solomon, “A Voluntary Tic in Media Coverage of Iraq,” FAIR, November 18, 2004, online.
1. Ibid.
2. See Col. Sam Gardiner's essay detailing this and other “information operations” conducted before and during the war, on pp. 605–642 of the present volume.—Ed.
3. “Saddam Street Fighters Will Be No Match for Allies' Elite,” The Telegraph, March 9, 2003, online.
1. “Why the Rebels Will Lose,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2005, online.
2. President Addresses Nation, Discusses Iraq, War on Terror, Fort Bragg, N.C., June 28, 2005 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050628–7.htm#l).
3. Robin Wright and Jim VandeHei, “Unlikely Allies Map Future,” Washington Post, June 24, 2005, p. A25: the article reported explicitly that al-Jaafari “[rejected] the term 'insurgent.'”
1. Town Hall Meeting, June 29, 2005 (http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2005/sp20050629-secdef1684.htm#l).
1. Quoted by Traveling Soldier (www.traveling-soldier.org). In contrast, the Iraqi troops working with the puppet government in Baghdad seem humiliated by what they experience of the American attitude. A recent report on the training of the “Iraqi army” indicated that the Iraqi troops “complain bitterly that their American mentors don't respect them. In fact, the Americans don't: frustrated U.S. soldiers question the Iraqis courage, discipline and dedication and wonder whether they will ever be able to fight on their own …. “(Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru, “Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable,” Washington Post, June 10, 2005, online).
2. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2004.
1. Scheuer, op. cit., p. 257.
2. Ibid.
1. President Addresses Nation, Discusses Iraq, War on Terror, loc. cit.
2. “An Islamic Scholar Responds,” Wanniski.com, May 10, 2005, online (http://www.wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=4352).
1. The supposed links of terrorist events to al-Qaeda get very vague indeed, as illustrated by the current reporting on the Madrid train bombing. “A year after terrorists killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500 at two Madrid train stations, both U.S. and Spanish officials say that there is no evidence that the al-Qaeda leadership authorized or even knew of the plan. Instead, say officials, their belief is that those responsible, while inspired by al-Qaeda, were local Muslims who took an opportunity to carry out an attack that would show their anger over Spanish involvement with the United States” (Robert Windrem, “No Evidence Al-Qaeda Knew of Madrid Plot,” NBC News, March 11, 2005, online at www.msnbc.msn.com).
2. Andy Beckett, “The Making of the Terror Myth,” The Guardian, October 15, 2004, online.
3. Ibid.
4. As a Los Angeles Times piece put it late last year, “Most of the descriptions of al-Qaeda [prove] more legend than fact” (Dirk Laabs, “A Dwarf Known as Al-Qaeda,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2004, online).
5. Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2005, p. B13.
1. Beckett, op. cit.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. “Outsourcing Torture,” February 14, 2005, online.
5. Ibid.
6. The Moussaoui trial is indeed “an anomaly,” as a Christian Science Monitor report put it. “For all the billions spent on investigations into the events of September 11, one might reasonably have expected more results,” the report quoted Andrew Hess, Middle East expert at Tufts University's Fletcher School, as saying. “While Germany, and now Spain, have put accused terrorist logisticians and other figures in the dock for alleged crimes related to 9/11,” it continued, “the nation where they occurred has only Moussaoui to show for its efforts” (Peter Grier and Faye Bowers, “Moussaoui: A Window On Terror Trials,” Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 2005, online). [See also the comment of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift emphasizing this point, supra, p. 479, note 3.—Ed.]
1. Amnesty International, USA, Guantánamo and Beyond: The Continuing Pursuit of Unchecked Executive Power, May 13, 2005, p. 83 (http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR510632005ENGLISH/$File/AMR5106305.pdf).
2. Amnesty International, op. cit.
3. David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis, “Officials Say There Is No Evidence to Back Moussaoui's Story,” New York Times, April 27, 2005, online.
4. Amnesty International, ibid., p. 81.
5. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, “Got Him, Now What?” Newsweek, May 16, 2005, online.
1. James Vicini, “Accused 9/11 Figure Moussaoui Pleads Guilty,” Reuters, April 22, 2005, online.
2. Mayer, op. cit.
3. Ibid.
4. Mark Trevelyan, “U.S. Sends New al-Qaeda Evidence for German 9/11 Case,” Reuters, May 13, 2005, online.
5. “U.S. Declassifying Documents for Motassadeq Trial,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, April 12, 2005, online.
6. Trevelyan, op. cit.
1. Beckett, op. cit.
2. Ibid.
1. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/19/iraq.main.
2. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=69512005.
3. The AP and Reuters pieces are no longer accessible online.
4. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/dfd3d284–6a87–11d9–858c-00000e2511c8.htm#l.
1. As the New York Times happily admitted when recently reporting an alleged al-Zarqawi Internet posting: “it is hard, of course, to be sure of the authenticity of Internet postings” (Robert F. Worth., “Jihadists Take Stand on Web, and Some Say It's Defensive,” New York Times, March 13, 2005, online).
2. See, for example, ex-Mossad officer, Victor Ostrovsky's revealing book, By Way of Deception (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1990).
3. Recent polls indicate that 75 percent of young adults, when asked to choose between television an
d Internet as a source of information, opted for the latter compared to 15 percent for the former. See Neopets., Inc., “Youth Study 2004” (http://info.neopets.com/presskit/articles/research/ym2004.htm#1). Neopets is a corporation formed around the Internet site Neopets.com, an online youth community boasting 25 million members. Numerous other studies confirm the gradual inroads that online news is making over traditional media. Other data show that a mere 22 percent of people in their 30s and younger seek news information from the nightly television news programs of the major networks. (Jacqueline Marcus, “TV News Viewership Declines, Internet Use Rises,” CommonDreams.org, January 21, 2005). Finally, see information at the Center for the Digital Future, at the Annenberg School of the University of Southern California (http://www.digitalcenter.org), and various polls of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (http://people-press.org).
1. “Fallujah – America's Hollow Victory,” Aljazeera, November 23, 2004, online.
2. Judith S. Yaphe, “A Compendium of Iraqi Insurgent Groups and What It Is They Want,” Daily Star (Lebanon), October 19, 2004, online.
3. “Where is al-Zarqawi?” Newsday, December 22, 2004, online.
1. Ibid.
2. Roshan Muhammed Salih, “Al-Zarqawi: America's New Bogeyman,” Aljazeera.net, July 1, 2004.
1. Ed Vulliamy, Martin Bright, Nick Pelham, “False Trails That Lead to the al-Qaeda 'Links,'” The Observer, February, 2003, online.
2. “Hezbollah Has Never Exceeded the Limits of the Occupation, and It Is an Acceptable Model for Europe,” Arabmonitor.com, October 2004 (http://www.arabmonitor.info/approfondimenti/dettaglio.php?idnews=7241&lang=it). Accusations that American clandestine and paramilitary operations are the root of disturbances around the globe are not limited to the situation in Iraq. Of recent interest is a declaration by the government of Burma regarding three May 7, 2005, bombings there that “the terrorists … and the time bombs originated from training conducted with foreign experts at a place in a neighbouring country by a world famous organisation of a certain superpower nation.” The BBC News remarked that “even though the [government information] minister refused to name the suspected country and organisation, correspondents believe he was referring to the United States and the CIA” (“'Superpower behind' Burma Blasts,” BBC News, May 15, 2005, online).
3. Scheuer, op. cit., p. xv.
1. John Pilger, “Iraq: The Unthinkable Becomes Normal,” New Statesman, November 15, 2004, online.
2. Ibid.
3. Yaphe, op. cit.
4. Pilger, op. cit.
1. See also, on this point, the revealing piece by Middle East journalist Dahr Jamail, “Zarqawi: Everywhere and Nowhere,” Asia Times, July 7, 2005, online.
2. Hamza Hendawi, “Insurgents Show Hostility to Extremists,” Associated Press, April 10, 2005, online.
3. Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri, “Sunnis Step Off Political Sidelines,” Washington Post, May 22, 2005, p. A1. See also Nicholas Blanford, “Iraqi Resistance Tiring of Foreign Fighters,” The Daily Star, July 16, 2004, online.
1. Nancy Youssef, “As Sunnis Call Sweep Unfair, Iraq is Divided,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 4, 2005, online.
2. Patrick Graham, “The Message From the Sunni Heartland,” New York Times, May 22, 2005, online.
3. Sami Ramadani, “The Vietnam Turnout was Good as Well,” The Guardian, January 2, 2005, online. See also Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer, “Iraqi Sunnis Battle to Defend Shiites,” Washington Post, August 14, 2005, p. A01, on the unity of Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis in the face of foreign fighters' attempts “to spark open sectarian conflict.”
4. Ibid. See Steve Negus and Dhiya Rasan, “Iraq Sunni Group Attacks 'State Terrorism,'” Financial Times, May 18, 2005, online, as one report among indicating how “Iraqi forces” and Shiite militia activities are increasingly taking on the character of targeted strikes, assassinations, and “Salvador”-option-style operations. [See also the article by Mark Gery on pp. 761–795 discussing the sectarian strife that has developed as a result of the political situation created by the U.S. occupation and its response to opposition to it.—Ed.]
1. Ibid. Peter Maass's “The Salvadorization of Iraq?” (with a “milder” title in The New York Times Magazine, May 01, 2005, online) lends credence to this view: James Steele, senior U.S. adviser to Gen. Adnan's commandos (vide infra, p. 733, n. 2), led special forces in El Salvador in the '80s and “trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses”; and Steve Casteel, senior U.S. adviser in the new Iraqi Interior Ministry – which has control of Adnan's commandos – is a former top official in the U.S. DEA “who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America.” See also Michael Hirsh and John Barry, “'The Salvador Option,'” Newsweek, January 8, 2005, online, and Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars,” The New Yorker, January 24 and 31, 2005, online. Even the mythic al-Zarqawi has been said to reject attacks on civilians, according to journalist Dahr Jamail. When on an al-Zarqawi fact-finding trip to Jordan, Jamail had his driver tell him, “Zarqawi doesn't instruct his followers in the killing of innocent people. If he did this, I would be the first to turn against him. He only targets the Americans and collaborators” (Jamail, loc. cit.).
2. Associated Press, “Few Foreigners Among Rebels Captured in Fallujah,” USA Today, November 15, 2004, online.
3. See Mark Mazzetti, “Insurgents Are Mostly Iraqis, U.S. Military Says,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2004, online.
1. Ibid.
2. Adrian Blomfield, “Doubt Over Zarqawi's Role as Ringleader,” The Age (Australia), October 2, 2004, online.
3. Ibid. Indications are that the American approach to al-Zarqawi still suffers from the same bad habits. After declaring in May 2005 that he went to Syria for “a summit with the heads of Iraqi insurgent groups to map out a new strategy of suicide bombings against U.S. and Iraqi forces,” U.S. intelligence says instead as of June 2005 that it “now discounts reports” that al-Zarqawi ever crossed into Syria. Sounding eerily familiar to another intelligence scandal, U.S. officials now say that “U.S. intelligence was always skeptical of the military's assertions about Zarqawi, which they said were based largely on questionable information obtained during the interrogation of a detainee in Baghdad” (Robin Wright, “U.S. Doubts Zarqawi Went to Syria,” Washington Post, June 4, 2005, p. A12).
As the psychological impact of the al-Zarqawi phenomenon wears thin, it is perhaps likely that a new “Terror Chief of the Month” will be nominated to fill his shoes as Iraq-GWOT bogey man, much the way the emphasis shifted from Osama to al-Zarqawi in the last 18 months. One candidate might have appeared in an April 2005 piece for NBC News by Robert Windrem (“U.S., Iraqi Forces Hunt Alleged Insurgency Leader,” NBC News, April 11, 2005, online at www.msnbc.msn.com), which noted that, “acting on fresh intelligence, Iraqi and U.S. special operations troops are hunting a senior leader of the Iraq insurgency, a man they believe is a senior aide to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” The now-celebrated “U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity” says in the report that “[Ahmed Ibrahim] al-Dabbash is well connected and a very, very bad dude,” billing him a “Sunni fundamentalist,” “mid-level financier of Islamic terrorism,” and “commander in the Khalid Ibn Walid Brigade,” said to be one of the most active terrorist cells in Iraq.
Al-Dabbash got some publicity in Baghdad newspapers in April 2003 for setting up a group called the “Al-Dabbash Islamic Assembly” to protect the warehouses of the Ministry of Health in the al-Huriya district of the capital. Windrem notes that the assembly “prevented looters from robbing the warehouses and provided security for the workers,” “[provided] security and electricity for the neighborhood,” “fixed the main water pipes in al-Huriya, and distributed free food rations to 1,450 families,” and “opened a health center.” Al-Dabbash's mosque was attacked in December 2004 allegedly by members of prominent Shiite parties (probably SCIRI and al-Dawa); Windrem then points out that �
�U.S. military officials say it is not clear why or when al-Dabbash transformed into a terrorist.” It would be more accurate to say that there is not a shred of evidence that al-Dabbash is “a terrorist” – in even the broad American sense of the term – or active in the Iraqi resistance. Included with Windrem's piece was a picture revealing that his becoming a first-class “terror master” may be quite a challenge. The picture shows 14 males with al-Dabbash: four or five are obviously teenagers, and one is a boy of about six, and al-Dabbash is one of only two carrying a weapon. Some militia!
1. Sharon Behn, “Retired General Estimates 20,000 Militants Are In Iraq,” Washington Times, June 22, 2005, p. 14.
2. “The President's Speech on Iraq: Truth versus Spin,” CSIS, June 29, 2005, online; CENTCOM's intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. John Custer, confirmed this figure explicitly (“Syria Increasing Efforts to Seal Border With Iraq,” Bloomberg.com, July 6, 2005).
3. Patrick Seale explained for the London-based Al-Hayat how the results of the May/June 2005 operation in western Iraq, based on the idea that foreign fighters coming in from Syria make up a substantial part of the resistance, have failed to vindicate Bush-administration assertions. “A force of 1,000 U.S. Marines, supported by helicopters and jet fighters, swept this week through Iraq's North-West province of Anbar, on Syria's border, in a bid to destroy foreign jihadis and their safe havens …. The main target of the assault seems to be the town of Ubaydi and a string of villages on the north bank of the Euphrates, which are being given the Fallujah treatment – that is to say air strikes and tank fire against residential quarters, followed by house-to house searches to flush out the 'rebels' from the ruins …. The thinking behind the operation is that foreign fighters, together with their weapons, explosives and funds, are continuing to infiltrate across the porous Syrian border; in other words, that Syria constitutes a 'rear base' for the insurrection …. The trouble with this theory is that there is little evidence to support it. Living in fear of an American attack, Syria has done its best to seal its border. Moreover the insurgency seems to be an overwhelmingly Iraqi enterprise …. Foreign-fighter involvement, numbered in the dozens rather than the thousands, would seem to be minimal … and the fighters at Ubaydi seem to have been professional, well-trained, and determined – clearly composed of former military personnel – before melting away into the desert in the face of superior American firepower” (“Can the United States Win in Iraq?” Al-Hayat, June 12, 2005, online).