Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq (Floyd - Moscow Times)

[dutchdemocrat]

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

Thursday, 01 December 2005

This is an extended version of a column appearing in the Dec. 2 edition of The Moscow Times.

The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?

Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this dread conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis drawn from information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents. Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities now attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.

We first reported here in June 2003 that the U.S. was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and re-opening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias – including Talibanic religious extremists armed and trained by Iran – were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.

Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs – who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports – with American advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon's own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush's "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.

For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again – unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.

Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry's spokesman – an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn't matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

SNIP

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=315&Itemid=1

[leftchick]

1. oh good God...

:cry:

[global1]

2. These Despicable and Reprehensible People That Are Running .....

this government are capable of anything.

..... bombing Al Jazerra
..... torture
..... lying us into this war in the first place
..... accusing those who oppose as being unpatriotic and wanting to rewrite history

.... and maybe even capable of pulling off the most viscious act in the history of the world - 911?

[dutchdemocrat]

3. One word

Negroponte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

The previous U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Jack Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.

Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the U.S., and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and the Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including U.S. missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Óscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing about the nuns. However, in a 1996 interview with The Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two together with a contact in the Honduran armed forces. The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any U.S. involvement, despite Negroponte's introductions of some of the individuals. Other documents detailed a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

SNIP

[Briar]

6. Yes, it's no coincidence

that Negroponte has presided over similar declines into state-sanctioned atrocity.

[iamahaingttta]

4. I've long thought...

... that the agenda was simply to empty the country of people altogether.
No people, lotsa oil... that's what they are hoping to accomplish.

Seems like others may be thinking the same thing.

[LibertyorDeath]

12. Hi Welcome to DU! iamahaingttta

"lotsa oil"

You got it but you'll never hear an American politician mention it
or talking head not in the bought and paid for corporate media.

Oil what oil you mean they've got oil. :)

[enough]

5. kick

[truth2power]

7. There are no words to express the rage I feel

at what we are visiting on the Iraqi people. How can so many soulless creatures be concentrated in one place as there are in this administration? It's like some hideous virus that just keeps replicating itself.

And meanwhile, Americans are busy shopping, concerning themselves with useless trivia, as though, fercrissakes, the world is NORMAL. Sometimes I just can't cope! :(

[bpilgrim]

8. WWIV

the fucking crazies either believe they will 'win' or NO ONE is CRAZY enough to stop'm :crazy:



peace

[Vidar]

9. For the truth, we have to rely on the British, Arabs, Russians.--..

Anyone other than the bought & sold US press.

[LibertyorDeath]

10. K&R This is a very important article

Recommend it!

Thanks dutchdemocrat

[JAbuchan08]

11. recommended

[EuroObserver]

13. Simultaneous DU thread here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5497259

[dutchdemocrat]

14. It was a very big diary at Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/1/75537/9445

But never really took off here. I posted it twice.

[pberq]

15. Kick! - Recommended

This theory has also been proposed in the past by Justin Raimondo over at antiwar.com.

The original goal was to have perpetual war, take over the entire Middle East, etc., etc. So creating chaos in Iraq could supply the justification for the continued military presence and the building of permanent bases.

[pberq]

16. fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife

How about this paragraph! This puts the whole thing in a nutshell.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/1/75537/9445

<snip>
The Bushists may have been forced to ditch their idiotic fantasies of "cakewalking" into a compliant satrapy, but they have by no means abandoned their chief goals in the war: milking Iraq dry and planting a permanent military "footprint" on the nation's neck. If direct control through a plausible puppet is no longer possible, then fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife is the best way to weaken the state. The Bushists are happy to make common cause with thugs and zealots in order to prevent the establishment of a strong national government that might balk at the ongoing "privatizations" that have continued apace behind the smokescreen of violence, and the planned opening of Iraq's oil reserves to select foreign investors – a potential transfer of some $200 billion of Iraqi people's wealth into the hands of a few Bush cronies, the Independent reports.