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Al-ZARQAWIi DIED LONG AGO BUT UNITED STATES USES HIS NAME TO JUSTIFY OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 21 September 2005
2 comments

Wars and conflicts International USA

Saturday 17 September 2005, 8:12 Makka Time, 5:12 GMT

Al-Kalesi said al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq’s Kurdish region

Al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation, an Iraqi Shia cleric says in an interview.

Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told France’s Le Monde newspaper on Friday: "I don’t think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people."

Al-Kalesi claimed that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Kurdish northern region of Iraq at the beginning of the US-led war on the country as he was meeting with members of the Ansar Al-Islam group affiliated to al-Qaida.

"His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is therefore a ploy used by the Americans, an excuse to continue the occupation. It’s a pretext so they don’t leave Iraq."

Al-Kalesi made the comments to Le Monde as he passed through Paris after attending an inter-religious gathering in the eastern French city of Lyon organised by the Roman Catholic Sant’Egidio Community.

Fake statement

The cleric dismissed statements attributed to Zarqawi.

"If the occupation continues, the situation will only get worse and the Iraqi will increasingly join the resistance"

Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi,
Imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad

He said an audio message posted on the Internet on Wednesday and attributed to al-Zarqawi, was meant to push Shia "to find refuge with the Americans rather than join the resistance."

The voice message had declared "all-out war" on Iraqi Shia and claimed responsibility for a series of attacks that killed more than 150 people, most of them Shia waiting to be hired as day labourers in Baghdad.

"If the occupation continues, the situation will only get worse and Iraqis will increasingly join the resistance," al-Kalesi said.

Iraq’s main Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, has condemned the call to arms against Shia, calling it "very dangerous" and saying it "plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war."

Forum posts

  • Bush figures that any explanation will do for his continued illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq.
    He has used at least a dozen other explanations, and when one is proven to be a lie he immediately switches to another. Right now he claims to be bringing DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM to Iraq. He does this with cruise missiles, gun ships, huge tanks, grenades, automatic weapons and 140,000 soldiers with itchy trigger fingers that will kill anything that moves without his imperial permission.
    Bush can’t leave Iraq. He want the oil of Iraq. He wants land of Iraq for huge military bases from which he can launch invasions of Syria and Iran. He wants to confiscate one of Saddam’s palaces for a huge 1,800 U.S. embassy from which his "diplomats", like Bolton, can threaten any nation that dares to challenge the God-given authority of Bush. That’s why he had no exit strategy...he planned to keep permanent presence in Iraq as part of his imperial desire to dominate the world.
    So, any excuse to keep Bush supporters happy will do...and they are gullible enough to believe any and all of Bush’s lies.

    • We will hope Nature strucks America with earth quakes, storms and volcano erruptions in a way that even the Bush gang can not afford any war.