Home > Robert Fisk: Who Benefits from a Civil War in Iraq

Robert Fisk: Who Benefits from a Civil War in Iraq

by Open-Publishing - Friday 3 March 2006
19 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts International Books-Literature USA Robert Fisk

Lateline Video: Robert Fisk

TONY JONES: Well, Robert Fisk is one of the most experienced observers of the Middle East and in his latest book, ’The Great War for Civilisation - the Conquest of the Middle East’, he draws on almost 30 years of reporting from his base in Lebanon to look at the forces which have shaped current events and conflicts Robert Fisk, thanks for being there.

ROBERT FISK, WRITER & JOURNALIST: You’re welcome.

TONY JONES: Now, unless you’ve changed your position in recent days, the one thing that you and President Bush agree on is there’s not going to be a civil war in Iraq.

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, I listened to Bush. It made me doubt myself when I heard him say that. I still go along and say what I said before - Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry each other. It’s not a question of having a huge block of people here called Shiites and a huge block of people called Sunnis any more than you can do the same with the United States, saying Blacks are here and Protestants are here and so on. But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it’s Al Qaeda, it’s the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. I’d like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much. We don’t hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don’t hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up. We’re not hearing of death squads all being arrested. Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad. Something is going wrong with the Administration. Mr Bush says, "Oh, yes, sure, I talk to the Shiites and I talk to the Sunnis." He’s talking to a small bunch of people living behind American machine guns inside the so-called Green Zone, the former Republican palace of Saddam Hussein, which is surrounded by massive concrete walls like a crusader castle. These people do not and cannot even leave this crusader castle. If they want to leave to the airport, they’re helicoptered to the airport. They can’t even travel on the airport road. What we’ve got at the moment is a little nexus of people all of whom live under American protection and talk on the telephone to George W Bush who says, "I’ve been talking to them and they have to choose between chaos and unity." These people can’t even control the roads 50 metres from the Green Zone in which they work.

TONY JONES: OK.

ROBERT FISK: There’s total chaos now in Iraq.

TONY JONES: Let’s go back, if we can, to start answering that question about who wants civil war. Back one week to the bombing of the golden shrine in Samarra. Now, most people do think the only people with reasons for doing that would be the Al Qaeda in Iraq group led by al-Zarqawi. You don’t agree?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I don’t know if al-Zarqawi is alive. You know, al-Zarqawi did exist before the American Anglo-American invasion. He was up in the Kurdish area, which was not actually properly controlled by Saddam. But after that he seems to have disappeared. We know there’s an identity card that pops up. We know the Americans say we think we’ve recognised him on a videotape. Who recognises him on a videotape? How many Americans have ever met al-Zarqawi? Al-Zarqawi’s mother died more than 12 months ago and he didn’t even send commiserations or say "I’m sorry to hear that". His wife of whom he was very possessive is so poor she has to go out and work in the family town of Zarqa. Hence the name Zarqawi. I don’t know if al-Zarqawi is alive or exists at the moment. I don’t know if he isn’t a sort of creature invented in order to fill in the narrative gaps, so to speak. What is going on in Iraq at the moment is extremely mysterious. I go to Iraq and I can’t crack this story at the moment. Some of my colleagues are still trying to, but can’t do it. It’s not as simple as it looks. I don’t believe we’ve got all these raving lunatics wandering around blowing up mosques. There’s much more to this than meets the eye. All of these death squads that move around are part of the security forces. In some cases they are Shiite security forces or clearly Sunni security forces. When the Iraqi army go into Sunni cities they are Shiite soldiers going in. We are not making this clear. Iraqi troops, we’ve got an extra battalion. The Iraqi army is building up. The Iraqi army is split apart. Somebody is operating these people. I don’t know who they are. It’s not as simple as we’re making it out to be. What is this thing when Bush says we have to choose between chaos and unity? Who wants to choose chaos? Is it really the case that all of these Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the Iranians, Shiites and Sunnies together in the long massive murderous Somme-like war between the Iranians and Iraqis - suddenly all want to kill each other? Why because that’s something wrong with Iraqis? I don’t think so. They are intelligent, educated people. Something is going seriously wrong in Baghdad.

TONY JONES: Can we look at one thing that might possibly be wrong, the Sunnis feel like they are being left out of the political equation. The Shias could end up running the majority of the government because they are indeed in the majority in a democracy.

ROBERT FISK: They do run the Government now. The Shiites do run the Government.

TONY JONES: Indeed. Couldn’t that precisely be one of the reasons for the violence?

ROBERT FISK: Because the Sunnis don’t have power anymore? But we’ve been saying this if the start. Don’t you remember that after 2003 the Anglo-American invasion, the resistance started against the Americans and we were told they were Saddam remnants, ’dead-enders’, that was the phrase used. Not anymore, because there are 40,000 insurgents, but that was the phase used at the time. They were Sunnis. They didn’t like the fact they didn’t have power. Then we captured Saddam and Paul Bremer, the number two pro-Consule in Baghdad, says, "Oh, we’ve got him," and everything was going to be OK. And then the insurgency got worse still. The reason was because people who wanted to join the insurgency feared that if they beat him out he might come back. Well, the moment Saddam was captured, they knew they could join the insurgency and Saddam wouldn’t come back. I mean, there is something wrong in the narrative sequence that we’ve been given. You know, the idea that the Sunni community is suddenly sacrificing themselves en mass, strapping explosive belts to themselves and blowing themselves up all over Iraq because they don’t have power anymore is a very odd reflection. I think what is going on among the Sunni community is much simpler. The Sunnis are not fighting the Americans because they don’t have power and they’re not fighting the Americans just to get them out - and they will get them out eventually. They are fighting the Americans so that they will say, "We have a right to power because we fought the occupying forces and you, the Shiites, did not," which is why it’s very important to discover now that Moqtada al-Sadr, who has an ever-increasing power base among the Shiite community, is himself threatening to fight the British and Americans. Now, if the Shiites and Sunnies come together, as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the British, then we are finished in Iraq. And that will mean that Iraq actually will be united.

TONY JONES: But, Robert Fisk, what’s is happening now, by all accounts and, indeed, the accounts of these Washington Post reporters who’ve been into the morgue and report hundreds of bodies of Sunnies who evidently have been garroted or suffocated or shot, are all saying that Moqtada al-Sadr’s thugs have actually taken these people away and murdered them. That was in revenge for the Golden Shrine bombing.

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, look, in August, I went into the same mortuary and found out that 1,000 people had died in one month in July. And most of those people who had died were split 50/50 between the Sunnies and the Shiites, but most of them, including women who’d been blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs - I saw the corpses - were both Sunnies and Shiites. Now, I’m not complaining that the Washington Post got it wrong - I’m sure there are massacres going on by Shiites - but I think they are going on by militias on both sides. What I’d like to know is who is running the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the gunmen who work for the Interior Ministry? I go into the Interior Ministry in Baghdad and I see lots and lots of armed men wearing black leather. Who is paying these guys? Well, we are, of course. The money isn’t falling out of the sky. It’s coming from the occupation powers and Iraqi’s Government, which we effectively run because, as we know, they can’t even create a constitution without the American and British ambassadors being present. We need to look at this story in a different light. That narrative that we’re getting - that there are death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass suicide - is not possible, it’s not logical. There is something else going on in Iraq. Don’t ask me to...

TONY JONES: Alright. But...

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, go on.

TONY JONES: No, it does seem to be impossible to explain, but, of course, this is exactly what people were saying in Bosnia before that war started up - that people were too intermarried, that you couldn’t separate the community.

ROBERT FISK: Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. We discovered here in Lebanon - and this city I’m talking to you from - that, during the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and killed 150,000 people, that there were many outside powers involved in promoting death squads and militias here, and paying militias, not just Arab powers, but European powers were involved in stirring the pot in Lebanon. I think we’re being very naive. Just because I can’t give you the detail, like, of who ordered this death squad, doesn’t prevent us saying that something is wrong with the narrative we’re being given the press, from the West, from the Americans, from the Iraqi Government. There is something going wrong. Iraqis are not suicidal people. They don’t go around blowing up mosques every day. It’s not a natural thing for them to do. It’s never happened before. I can’t say to you, "Well, ok, here is the person who killed this person, or here’s the person who left this explosive truck." All I am saying to you is that it is time we said, "Hang on a minute, this is not how it looks."

TONY JONES: What if you put Iran into this equation, because, as we all know, Iran is under tremendous pressure from the West and particularly from the United States at the moment. It has links to these Shia militias and, possibly, links too, to these people you are talking about in the Interior Ministry.

ROBERT FISK: No, no, no, that’s wrong. The Iranians link is with the Iraqi Government. The main parties in the government of Iraq which have been elected, who are there now dealing with the Americans, these are the representatives of Iran. Moqtada al-Sadr is irrelevant to Iran. Iranians are already effectively controlling Iraq because the two major power blocks, the two major parties who were elected and who Bush has just been talking to, these are effectively the representatives of Tehran. That’s the point. Iran doesn’t need to get involved in violence in Iraq.

TONY JONES: Unless the pressure from the United States ratchets up on Iran to the point where there are military threats against these nuclear facilities. Could it not therefore create havoc in Iraq?

ROBERT FISK: Well, you could say the same about Syria, too, couldn’t you? And, of course the Americans are also accusing Syria of supporting the insurgents or letting them cross the border. But I think it it’s much more complicated than that. For example, my sources in this area, who are pretty good, tell me that the Americans have already talked to the Syrians and are trying to do a deal with them to try and get the Syrians to help them over the insurgency and the price of Syria’s help, I’m told, is that the Americans will ease off on the UN committee of inquiry into the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri, here in Beirut, only a few hundred metres from here, on the 14th February last year. You know, if the Americans are going to get out of Iraq - and they must get out, they will - they need the help of Iran and Syria. And I think you’ll find that certain elements within the State Department are already trying to work on that. Now, we hear the rhetoric coming from Bush. I mean, he’s got an absolute black-hole chaos in Iraq, he’s got Afghanistan - not an inspiration to the world, it’s been taken over effectively by narco warlords, many who work for Karzai, the man who’s just been making jokes about the Afghan welcome for Bush - and Bush wants another conflict with Iran? I don’t think the Americans are in any footing or any ability, military or otherwise, to have another war or to have another crisis in that region. They’re in the deepest hole politically, militarily and economically in Iraq. The fact that the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department seem to be in a state of denial doesn’t change that. We had Condoleezza Rice here - literally in that building behind me - a few days ago saying that there are great changes taking place in the Middle East - optimistically. Well, sure, there is a mosque war going on in Iraq with the Americans up to their feet in the sand, there’s an Iranian crisis, or so we’re told, the Saudis are frightened the Iraq war will spill over into Saudi Arabia, the Egyptians don’t know how to reconcile Syria and Lebanon, there are increasing sectarian tensions here in Lebanon. You would think that someone is building what used to be called Potemkin villages, you know, these extraordinary things that Catherine the Great’s court favourites use to build, facades of villages, so that everything looked nice in Russia even though things were barbarous behind the facades. I mean, this is a barbarous world we’re living in now in the Middle East. It’s never been so dangerous here, either for journalists or soldiers but most of all for Arabs. Hence the thousands of people in the mortuary.

TONY JONES: Robert Fisk, I am afraid we are out of time. We’ll have to leave it there and the rest of the discussion on Iran, I suspect, we’ll have to have when you’re in Australia in the near future. Good luck in Beirut.

ROBERT FISK: (Laughs) Good place to have it! You’re welcome.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/cont...

Forum posts

  • This video ought to be enough to prove to anyone that the US media is not telling us the whole story.

    The current newscasters and networks have not only failed, but they should be tried for complicity in war crimes.

    Take Back Our Public Airwaves.

  • Lets all hope that boob Israel launches a pre-emptive strike on someone so we can get this whole thing over with. I have no allegience to Israel whatsoever. Israel is the biggest violater of UN resolutions on the planet. The should build that wall all the way around themselves - and fill it with cement.

    Who benefits? The US of course. Surely you don’t believe for one minute that ’stability’ was the goal over there, do you. INSTABILITY benefits the US tremendously. While everyone is fighting, the US quietly slips in and steals all the OIL and other natural resources. We stir up the pot, then go in the back door and offer to fix the problem WE created.

    • Instability was always Israel’s mideast policy..even when the U.S was satisfied with "status quo"..
      ..we are NOW(since that senile idiot Reagan) going on the advice,AND DOING THE DIRTY WORK, of Bushista’s advisors like R.Pearle,D.Feith,P.Wolfowicz,H.Kissinger,M.Chertoff,J.Negroponte,D.Pipes,G.Tenet,D.Zackheim.er al....ON & ON & ON &ON all the way back to Col.E.Mandell House who manipulated Woodrow Wilson to allow the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1912,which gave the U.S. economy& monetary system over to the JEW Rothschild and his commrades Schiff and Warburg all jews!!!

  • But you know, dear readers, that the U.S. does not have to do anything that Israel says...

    There is a mutual outlook to a common destiny here between the two peoples and nations.

    If Bush were a truer Christian he wouldn’t have a need to keep talking to his God. And he would not be following zionist advice. If Americans were truer Christians they would no justify killing Arabs and Muslims.

    It is easier to blame someone else for the problems, but it reality, the American pubic can be faulted for letting others thinking and telling Americans what to do.

    Robert Fisk may have spent the last thirty years of his life in the Near East; but be sure that he has a selective colonial understanding of it, His primary friendships has been with Christians Arabs and vision of who and what are Muslim Arabs is slightly blurred. Caution is advised when reading his articles in equal measure to reading any other author professing Near East issues.

    • "There is a mutual outlook to a common destiny here between the two peoples and nations"

      OF course they both prefer to occupy other peoples lands directly or by proxy I couldn’t have said it more accurately myself, thanks for stating the obvious.

      cheers, jt

  • Well, at the moment nobody’s benefitting. But, if you accept that the original plan was to establish a pernanent American military presence in the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean region—a plan which twenty years of bribing, cajoling, threatening and finally attacking Saddam Hussein did not achieve—then it seems pretty clear that mayhem is designed to continue until the Iraqis cry "uncle" and "invite" the Americans to stay as long as they want on the permanent military bases they’ve been constructing apace.
    The explanation given to Congress to justify those bases is that facilities must be hardened to "protect" the troops from the daily barrage of grenade assauts. That they are not really "permanent" has been explained by Rumsfeld by differentiating them from similar facilities in Germany in that those who will be dispatched to man and maintain them will be rotated in and out on short deployments and will not be bringing their families. That there was/is no planning for these facilities is belied by the fact that their number has been reduced from the original fourteen to four. That we have few specifics is explained by the fact that their location and existence is classified information which no-one is permitted to discuss and embedded reporters have been forbidden to reveal.
    Of course, the people on the ground know what is going on. They know that all the heavy construction equipment and the concrete that’s been requisitioned is going for more than to built seven foot high sand barriers around the cities in the western province. They also know that the fibre optic cable being strung is not improving the telephone service of the Iraqi people. And they know that while they "enjoy" but three or four hours of electricity a day, the Americans play video games and watch movies all night.
    Perhaps the cozying up to Dubai and Yemen and Eritrea and Lybia and the renewed interest in Somalia suggests that the Pentagon is re-evaluating its desire to set up missile bases and communications monitoring stations in Iraq. Perhaps not. This was the elder Bush’s plan from the beginning and George the Lesser is hell-bent to bring it to fruition and demonstrate that Poppy’s dismissive attitude towards him was unfair. Indeed, since Bill Clinton obviously thought HE could get Saddam Hussein to come to his senses by applying pressure and offering rewards and was proved wrong, George the Lesser has still another incentive to achieve where his predecessors failed.

  • Fisk is an intelligence agency disinfo agent all the way. Read him carefully, see where he will go and not go. What hit the Pentagon? Is that really Saddam?

    • No, it’s not really Saddam! His wife said, "He is not my husband. His teeth aren’t even straight!"
      What a riot. Saddam is probably lounging on some Island living in the lap of luxury.

  • Mr. Fisk is quibbling. Any country that has an average death by fire arm rate of over 20 per day is suffering from civil war. It may not be a formal civil war, whatever that means, but it is a war in which the victims are a country’s civilians, and not that same country’s enemies.
    On another note: The US do indeed desire to control the flow of oil throughout the world. But they are being run by idiots. Just one point on the iceberg: Prior to the invasion, Iraq was delivering more than 2.5 million barrels a day, even during the worst of the sanctions. After the invasion, this number drops to 1.6 million a day. More evidence that the neocons are at the bottom of the bell curve when it comes to military strategy and global economics.

  • Mr. Fisk is quibbling. Any nation that has a violent death rate of over 10 people a day, like Iraq, is in a state of civil war. Go to http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27794, and you will find a blog that simply interchanges the names of Iraqi cities for US cities, and you will soon get the picture. You and I would call it a civil war if the same daily amount of death and destruction were being doled out here in the US. The rest is just semantics. Another definition for civil war is a war being fought by various factions in the same country. Isn’t this exactly what is happening in Iraq today?

  • I believe Mr. Robert frisk has to come out open and say it as the bishop D tutu bravely said:
    If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor: Bishop Desmond Tutu
    Please Mr., enough is enough, if the doer admit and bravely with 100% clearaty writes why our writers always goes round the Bush?
    Please see for yr self the Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1025.htm)

    (The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target)

    Para 23. Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s target

    America unforetunatly being used as proxy supper power, it is amasing these days, the small nations uses the supper power to do their dirty works, but do not be surprised in this new world oder, the resistence = terrorism, the occupation= lebirastion, we do not needfrom our writters to come out but we need to change the dictionary and re write it so the war crime = defending freedom and saving life?

    this is the work of this Zionist state where she plans and execute with full support of all Western power, in returns the West give her an open cheque to Guaranty her security while working with the criminal to destroy the Muslims world one by one, the reason given is that the West had committed a crime against the JEW and now they feel guilty, so they wipe a complete nation (Palestine) from its existence to say sorry to those who in fact planted that very event which the West blaming it self and paid price with over 50 Millions in just one war ( War II) , But the Bankers not satisfied. The study bellow clearly mention to divide whole region just to keep Israel survive.
    Before AhmediNajd President Jamaal Abdulnasser once said we will throw Israel into the see. The whole civilised world never forgotten this, you can find this in 1000s of books and news paper. but they do not remember , it was with their help the Israeli thrown Palestine into the deep see and wiped it off the map, dear readers have u asked yr self where is Palestine?.
    If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor: Bishop Desmond Tutu
    We have Solution, the Land of Palestine is more than enough to take the Arabs and the Jew IN THE SAME TIME ALL CAN GO BACK TO THEIR OWN VILLAGES AND TOWNS, THE Israeli CAN STAY IN THERE PLACE DESPITE THERE ORIGINS AS Ashkenazi(EAST EUROPEAN Jew). The only scarify the world need to do is to get rid of ZIONISM, cos this is not the core of problems not Jew nor Muslim or Christian, the problems is with ZIONISM. These group who rules so called Israel, are not Religious at all but using Jew as cover up, in any case until very recently the ZIONISM is apartheid system ( in fact the apartheid started in 1948 the same yr Zionism occupied Palestine. Is that a coincident?
    What ever you can call it Palestine Israel or PALIsrael does not matter, don’t the Zionist occupied Europe and USA by the name of cosmopolitan, why London be Cosmopolitan but not Telaviv? very strange may be not for us as GOIM?
    Please read the Israeli strategic plan and compare its progress of executions so far. do not forget Bishop TUTU when we read. We in the East have no doubt that this weak and illegitimate nation can not and will not and should not survive as a apartheid nations we welcome the Jew who want to live with us, they lived with us for centuries and they lived with us even in Spain so they can live again, but not the ZIONISM, can u be fare and just in yr judgment . can u support the oppressed People of Palestine to fight the ZIONISM with out hearting the JEW, in fact by doing that u will help the 95% of Jew. they r our Cosine before any body any way. God bless u in helping to bring the peace.
    (A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. German Proverb)

    be fare in yr judgment and know exactly who is wolf in sheep dress, and who is sheep (Goim)))
    These para bellow taken directly from the Israeli strategic study paper.
    1. We need an understanding of the central processes which typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs.
    2. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist, humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance............We are losing the ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the simple question of what is Good and what is Evil.
    3. ......The view which promises liberty and freedom to mankind seems absurd.
    4. That is, then, the main threat to our existence and that of the Western world.3 The war over resources in the world, the Arab monopoly on oil, and the need of the West to import most of its raw materials from the Third World, are transforming the world we know...........( this is enough justification to create Wars and kills millions and destroy peoples).
    6. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging.
    Arabs and Muslims proven that there were no problems within until the
    Zionism came, read Mark Glenn:
    http://www.crescentandcross.com/index.php?page=articles
    And http://www.crescentandcross.com/index.php?page=articles&subpage1=no_beauty_in_the_beastthere is no beauty in the beast:
    And the six simple words.

    (Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East
    — John Sheehan, S.J. (a Jesuit priest)

    22Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target ......... This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14.
    23. 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. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. 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. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.15
    26. ........... Israel’s policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority. ....... we ought to be active in order to accelerate this process in the nearest e.....................Shefa’amr plan of September 1980, it is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river.
    27. The problem should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of ’67. It should be clear, under any future political situation or mifitary constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river and beyond it, ........
    28 ........... we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. R ........

    Israel Shahak
    June 17, 1982
    Jerusalem
    So u be yr judge and jury, please remember Bishop TUTU.

    • Jack’s "Straight-Speak"

      OPEN HERE FOR: **THE MARCH for MILLIONS of VETERANS-2006.com: "Operation Firing For effect"** "Never Again Will One Generation Of Veterans Abandon Another" (Vietnam Veterans of America)
      **Submit a Personal Photo Here - "Showing Them Who’s Coming!"**

      Friday, January 20, 2006
      KIA In Alabama

      Below my brief comment is, “KIA In Alabama” by Stan Goff. As you read it ask yourself: How many more? How many more veterans of combat will come back to a VA they have to fight with trying to get the help they need? How many more will we allow to end up dead like Douglas Barber because this nation views its troops as disposable as yesterday’s unwanted garbage?

      One week before Douglas checked out he called me. During our conversation he told me the doctors at the VA had just put him on a new anti-depressant. The name of which at the moment I cannot remember. What I do remember however, is a red flag went up when I heard what he was being given. The cocktail of drugs they had him on has driven more than one over the edge—just as with Douglas. I am firmly convinced that the drugs he was being given, rather than deal with the PTSD, went a long, long way toward ending the life of Douglas Barber. For now, here is Stan’s article: — Jack
      ...............................................................................

      KIA In Alabama
      By: Stan Goff
      Feral Scholar @ http://stangoff.com/
      http://www.vaiw.org/vet/

      "All is not okay or right for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand." - Douglas Barber, 2005

      On January 16th, after having talked quite normally on the phone with at least two other people that same day, Douglas Barber, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) living in Lee County, Alabama, changed the answer-message on his telephone.

      "If you’re looking for Doug," it said in his Alabama drawl, "I’m checking out of this world. I’ll see you on the other side."

      He then called the police, collected his shotgun, and went out onto his porch to meet them. From the sketchy reports we have now, it seems the police wouldn’t oblige him with a "suicide by cop" and tried to talk him down. When it became apparent he wasn’t able to commit cop-suicide, 27-year-old Douglas Barber did an about face, rotated the shotgun and killed himself.

      There is a hell of a lot that we just don’t know about how this happened. I talked to Doug on the phone earlier this month, and he described how excited he was to have joined IVAW, how he looked forward to taking up the pen and speaking out. Others had spoken with him only days and hours before he permanently quieted the chaos in his head. None of the "classic" signs of suicidal thinking were manifest. He was gregarious and upbeat, playful.

      We know he had been prescribed medication. When he came back from Iraq, having served with the 1485th Transportation Company, a National Guard unit federalized to compensate for the extreme combat overstretch in Iraq, he was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress (PTSD), and the Veterans Administration medical system leans toward drugs. In fact, they frequently shazam PTSD into something called "personality disorder," which can be treated with drugs. One veteran I know was prescribed Paxil which made him feel suicidal, and when the VA insisted that it worked, this kid switched to his own anti-depressant — marijuana, which he says works better than the Paxil and doesn’t make him feel like killing himself.

      If one has a personality disorder, you see, then the "pathology" has no relation to one’s job, like participating in the occupation of Iraq. The etiology exists somewhere within the individual, like a genetic disorder... that was missed during induction, missed by one’s units, and missed during medical pre-screeening for deployment into Mesopotamia. We don’t know if Doug was taking medication, or had stopped taking medication, or even what medication he had been prescribed.

      We do know that he was a truck driver, and that his job in Iraq was driving supply convoys along the shooting gallery between Baghdad Airport and LSA Anaconda in Balad — a giant military base — a veritable city — that is subject to so many mortar and rocket attacks that the troops have renamed it Mortaritaville.

      We do know, from Doug’s interviews, that the stress of those convoys — each confronting its participants with the possibility that this could be one’s last road trip — were hard on Doug. In July 2003, his convoy was hit with an improvised explosive device, and the mortar attacks at Anaconda were so regular that they were almost a weather pattern. But Doug said there was something else that was even harder on him. When the grunts came in, they would describe how many civilians they’d killed.

      When Doug was in a traffic jam one day, feeling very vulnerable, and the US units dismounted to clear the traffic jam — angry and afraid and waving weapons at the civilians — a woman in a bus held up her baby for them to see... like that window-sign we see in cars on American highways — "Baby on Board." Only she wasn’t cautioning other drivers to be careful. She was trying to prevent an armed attack that could kill her child.

      Doug may have decomped from medication, I don’t know. That could have contributed to his suicide. It’s possible. He fought with the defunded, Bush-administration VA for two years trying to get counseling, and trying to get authorization for his disability. It’s very difficult to be a "productive member of society" when one fears sleep, and when one has lost meaning.

      I read a book on post-traumatic stress once. Rape is the most common cause, then combat. It said that trauma disrupts one’s sense that the word is a safe place, that trauma destabilizes our sense of meaning.

      Let me explain something, as a veteran myself of eight conflict areas, and something that Doug discovered in Balad. The sense that the world is not a safe place is not a "disorder." It is an accurate perception. And the sense of meaning many of us enjoy is an illusion, a cruel construction that normalizes the orderly activity of the suburb and nurses our children on simple-minded, Disney-fied optimism pumped through television sets in a relentless data stream.

      Post-traumatic stress is not a disorder. Calling it that earns it a place in the DSM IV, professionalizes and medicalizes this very accurate perception that the world is not safe, and that life is not a comforting film convention. Calling it an individual "disorder" cloaks the social systems responsible for experiences like Vietnam and Iraq. And it renders invisible the fact that Douglas Barber was not merely a suicide.

      Douglas Barber was nurtured on the illusions that secure our obedience, but when the real system needed to demonstrate to the rest of the world just how unsafe our nation could make them as the price of disobedience, the vile carnival barkers of the Bush administration, like administrations before them, did not recruit the children of Martha’s Vineyard or Georgetown. They went, as they have always done, to places like Lee County, Alabama, where simple people have formed powerful affective attachments to the myth of our national moral superiority.

      When that word view, that architecture of meaning, collapses in the face of realities like convoy Russian roulette, and women holding babies up to prevent being shot, and daily stories of slaughter by the people one sleeps with, the profound betrayal of it is not experienced as some quiet, somber sadness. It is experienced like bees swarming out of a hive that has been broken, as a howling chaos. So we quiet it with marijuana, alcohol, heroin, and even shotguns.

      The most fortunate of these survivors find one another. Doug had recently joined IVAW, where our veterans not only establish mutual support networks of plain love and care with one another, but where they can engage in the most "therapeutic" activity of all — fighting back against the criminality that sent them there in the first place.

      We arrived too late for Doug. We were going to met him in Birmingham later this month to involve him in the planning for a from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, and serve as the conscience of a nation that will spend trillions to drop bombs on Iraqis, and use a hurricane in the Black Belt as a pretext to accelerate gentrification.
      So when we launch out of Mobile in March on this 135-mile trek, we will carry Douglas Barber with us.

      *****

      Stan Goff is a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. He is the author of three books;"Hideous Dream - A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000), Full Spectrum Disorder - The Military in the New American Century (Soft Skull Press, 2004), and Sex & War (Soft Skull Press, 2006 [to be released soon]) http://www.softskull.com/ .

      He is the military affairs editor for From The Wilderness: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/, and writes foreign policy analysis for Sanders Research Associates: http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/Newsmanager/Index.aspx.

      He is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War http://www.vvaw.org/ , Veterans For Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org/, and Military Families Speak Out http://www.mfso.org/. His son is in the active duty army and is in Iraq now for the third time.

      Goff is on the coordinating committee of the Bring Them Home Now! Campaign: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ , and advises Iraq Veterans Against the War: http://www.ivaw.net/ on organizational development. His blog is called "Feral Scholar."

    • Satan and his children want civil war in Iraq and regular war in Iran and with more torture pictures coming out, some with women in them, God forbid, they may get what they want! Peace. Jaye, NJ USA

    • just visit this site:

      http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/safedeposit.asp
      You will know why America wants to create more wars. you will find out America is bankrupt nation it has no option either a Marshal law or confiscating your saving in the bank just read the article please

  • That’s easy Rob—the same people who make money off war: munitions manufacturers, international bankers, the corporate elite, bought and paid for politicians/whores, the same international corporate/military crooks that orchestrated the 911 job —come on man, stop dancing around the awful truth, if you’re not careful it’s going come up behind you hard and fast when you’re bent over trying not to offend the powers that be.

    • Do you really want to know who benefit from these wars please read:
      WAR IS A RACKET

      Major General - United States Marine Corps

      (In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

      How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?)
      complete article:

      http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

      or see A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

      by Dr. Zoltan Grossman
      The list and briefing are also available as a powerpoint presentation
      full topic:
      http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

      Mark Twain on the
      Philippine-American War

      “The completeness of the victory is established by this fact: that of the six hundred Moros not one was left alive. The brilliancy of the victory is established by this other fact, to wit: that of our six hundred heroes only fifteen lost their lives. General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been, ‘Kill or capture those savages.’ Apparently our little army considered that the ‘or’ left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out there-the taste of Christian butchers. . . .The enemy numbered six hundred-including women and children-and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.”

      http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

      After reading above, and seeing the power point powerful presentation, you will agree with GW Bush and Mr. Blair why theses people hate us, they hate our democracy they are the enemies of democracy. I agree with them 100% , any one disagree, I will ask Mr. fisk, is this the Western Democracy the east hate , And I want him and other to read this article please:

      An excerpt from Ian Buckley’s, latest article "Why is Islam so feared and derided today?" states:
      "Muslims will have to face the fact that they are hated

      http://www.crescentandcross.com/index.php?page=articles&author=barbra-renee_brighenti&subpage1=shadow_puppets_master

      If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor: Bishop Desmond Tutu

      God bless you

    • have you seen 9 11 on trials and proved guilty?

      it worth watching the trails. her is the address of wing tv main page:

      http://www.wingtv.net/index.html

      9 11 on trail:

      http://www.wingtv.net/911ontrial.doc/911ontrialindex.html

      if u can not watch all try to watch:
      Archived Witness Testimony
      Introduction
      Opening Statement
      and:
      Closing Argument.
      It is backed with scientific concrete evidence, impossible to refute in the court

      You can watch this passed by Mr,Tom:

      The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America - Part1

      The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America - Part2

      The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America - Part3

      I could not watch part 1 due to the sound problem, but part 2 is shocking worth to let all people know how this could happened to America, we not only killed left and right, but robbed left and right including centre.
      Infact we are 21st centurys SLAVE, YES SIR SLAVE, ok slaves?

    • the audio on the first part was not working normally. Here is a new link:
      The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America - Part1 (Fixed Audio)

      The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America - Part2

      The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America - Part3

      Or learn more about the documentary and/or order DVDs at: http://www.themoneymasters.com
      a must see if u want to brake the slavory chain for ever?

  • It seems some readers missed the point of R. Fisk’s article. His view is that there are paid assisins carrying out political killings of civilians driven by a political agendas . He states that the "militias" are mercenaries who are professional killers, killing on orders. Fisk states that the present killing is not just an open civil war but an orcharested plan — using mercenaries where soldiers in uniform cannoit be seen to murder civilians in numbers. Whose agenda are they following? Civil war sounds better than assination squads being employed to eliminate political opposition to the new favored gov in Iraq? Anyone here remember Operatiion Pheonix? how bout Op Condor. fun, fun, fun