The Mysterious Murders of the ASM Clerics
By RON JACOBS, counterpunch.org
Is it a coincidence that US puppet Allawi is calling for the death penalty to be administered to the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) Sunni clerics who oppose elections, while, at the same time two of these clerics have been gunned down by unknown forces? This coincidence seems to be more intentional than coincidental. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out that these two men were killed by death squads employed by the US and its client government in Baghdad. John Negroponte, the current US ambassador to Iraq, organized such death squads while he was the ambassador to Honduras during the US wars in Central America and was quite successful at the endeavor. It is not a real stretch of the imagination to assume that he and his employer are up to the same thing in Iraq.
In the same way that Israel hopes to stifle the Palestinian resistance by killing off its leaders in extrajudicial assassinations, the US could be hoping for a similar result in Iraq. Whether they will be successful depends on, among other things, the depth of the Iraqi resistance. If the level of commitment to getting rid of the occupiers extends is as deep among those on the ground staging the attacks on US and Iraqi accomplice forces as it is among the leadership (clerical and secular), then it will take more than the murder of a few leaders to destroy the resistance. If not, then a few more assassinations of various outspoken clerics and other leaders could very well force the resistance into a steady retreat for the foreseeable future. If the resistance is as deep as it seems to be, then the only way the US would be able to impose its will would be by intensifying the slaughter it is carrying out across Iraq.
Some media outlets speculate that Shia forces are carrying out these assassinations, although these same outlets provide no verification for such speculation. Others suggest (with the urging of US intelligence, one assumes) that perhaps the mysterious creation known as al-Zarqawi is responsible. Although it is possible that this is the case, one has to ask why any such forces would think murdering clerics would be to their benefit. After all, for the mainstream Shia, these murders will only alienate these clerics' followers even further from the political process that mainstream Shia leaders like al-Sistani hope will take hold after the US-sponsored elections take place. Without the participation of the majority of Iraqis and without a representative parliament, the likelihood of that process succeeding is greatly diminished. So, it would seem that the mainstream leadership not completely in debt to the US (that is, those who are not named Allawi) would oppose acts that further alienated the Sunni groupings in the opposition. As for the possibility that al-Zarqawi or his allies are responsible, this assumes that al-Zarqawi actually exists and is not a US black-ops creation or tool, and that if he does, it would be to his benefit to kill off clerics who agree with his group's call for an end to the occupation and a boycott of the US-created elections-a deduction that makes no sense.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs11272004.html
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