Modern Western Civilisation: SHEIKH IMRAN HOSSEIN

An interesting video on our culture:  a voice of a sheikh and something to think about... their view.

Disclose.tv - 'Modern Western Civilisation' [Sheikh Imran Hosein]

Afghanistan: The history of the occupation

Reasons???

There could have been other reasons for the American/Anglo war waged against Iraq, excluding the falacy of WMD, the "Iraqi threat" to U.S. security...., such as oil and America's colonialist aim to comtrol the world, but the most important aim is the security of the Zionist entity... and the creation of Arab regimes friendly, or under Israeli/American control... ASK Iraq : A War For Israel ?

http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml

By Mark Weber

Dec. 2004

"Jewish-Zionist plans for war against

Iraq had been in place for years."

"For some Jewish leaders, the Iraq war is part of a long-range effort to install Israel-friendly regimes across the Middle East ."

 "The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil [ Iraq , Iran , North Korea ]. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya , as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt 's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen."

"This is so widely understood in Washington that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May 2004 to acknowledge that the US invaded Iraq

"to secure Israel ," and "everybody" knows it."

The United States Invasion of Iraq in March-April 2003, and the occupation of the country since then, has cost more than a thousand American lives and many tens of billions of dollars, and has brought death to many thousands of Iraqis.

Why did President Bush decide to go to war? In whose interests was it launched?

In the months leading up to the attack, President Bush and other high-ranking US officials repeatedly warned that the threat posed to the US and world by the Baghdad regime was so grave and imminent that the United States had to act quickly to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq.

On September 28, 2002, for example, he said: "The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given... This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year."

On March 6, 2003, President Bush declared: "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people... I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he's a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I've got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction... The American people know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."

These claims were untrue. As the world now knows, Iraq had no dangerous "weapons of mass destruction," and posed no threat to the US . Moreover, alarmist suggestions that the Baghdad regime was working with the al-Qaeda terror network likewise proved to be without foundation.

So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack?

Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel . With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush - who was already fervently committed to Israel - resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies.

This is so widely understood in Washington that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May 2004 to acknowledge that the US invaded Iraq "to secure Israel ," and "everybody" knows it. He also identified three of the influential pro-Israel Jews in Washington who played an important role in prodding the US into war: Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary; and Charles Krauthammer, columnist and author. [1]

Hollings referred to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues to acknowledge this truth openly, saying that "nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on." Due to "the pressures we get politically," he added, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies.

Some months before the invasion, retired four-star US Army General and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark said in an interview:

"Those who favor this attack [by the US against Iraq ] now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States . But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel ." [2]

Fervently Pro-Israel

President Bush's fervent support for Israel and its hardline premier is well known. He reaffirmed it, for example, in June 2002 in a major speech on the Middle East . In the view of "leading Israeli commentators," the London Times reported, the address was "so pro-Israel that it might have been written by Ariel Sharon ." [3]

Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor, echoed the President's outlook in a May 2003 interview, saying that the "security of Israel is the key to security of the world." [4]

In an address to pro-Israel activists at the 2004 convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Bush said: "The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state." He also told the gathering: "By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel , you're also serving the cause of America ." [5]

Long Range Plans

Jewish-Zionist plans for war against Iraq had been in place for years.

In mid-1996, a policy paper prepared for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined a grand strategy for Israel in the Middle East . Entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," it was written under the auspices of an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Specifically, it called for an "effort [that] can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq , an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right..." [6]

The authors of "A Clean Break" included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, three influential Jews who later held high-level positions in the Bush administration, 2001-2004: Perle as chair of the Defense Policy Board, Feith as Undersecretary of Defense, and Wurmser as special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control.

The role played by Bush administration officials who are associated with two major pro-Zionist "neoconservative" research centers has come under scrutiny from The Nation, the influential public affairs weekly. [7]

The author, Jason Vest, examined the close links between the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), detailing the ties between these groups and various politicians, arms merchants, military men, wealthy pro-Israel American Jews, and Republican presidential administrations.

JINSA and CSP members, notes Vest, "have ascended to powerful government posts, where... they've managed to weave a number of issues - support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general - into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core... On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war - not just with Iraq , but 'total war,' as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington , put it... For this crew, 'regime change' by any means necessary in Iraq , Iran , Syria , Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative."

Samuel Francis, author, editor and columnist, has also looked into the "neo-conservative" role in fomenting war. [8]

"My own answer," he wrote, "is that the lie [that a massively-armed Iraq posed a grave and imminent threat to the US ] was fabricated by neo-conservatives in the administration whose first loyalty is to Israel and its interests and who wanted the United States to smash Iraq because it was the biggest potential threat to Israel in the region. They are known to have been pushing for war with Iraq since at least 1996, but they could not make an effective case for it until after Sept. 11, 2001...

"What has been happening inside the Bush administration is no less a nest of treason than the Soviet spy rings of the New Deal era, and if political reality doesn't demand its exposure, simple loyalty to the United States does."

In the aftermath of the 2001 Nine-Eleven terror attacks, ardently pro-Zionist "neo-conservatives" in the Bush administration - who for years had sought a Middle East war to bolster Israel 's security in the region - exploited the tragedy to press their agenda. In this they were backed by the Israeli government, which also pressured the White House to strike Iraq .

The Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian, the respected British daily, reported in August 2002: " Israel signalled its decision yesterday to put public pressure on President George Bush to go ahead with a military attack on Iraq , even though it believes Saddam Hussein may well retaliate by striking Israel ." [9]

Three months before the US invasion, the well-informed Washington journalist Robert Novak reported that Israeli prime minister Sharon was telling American political leaders that "the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime." Moreover, added Novak, "that view is widely shared inside the Bush administration, and is a major reason why US forces today are assembling for war." [10]

Israel 's spy agencies were a "full partner" with the US and Britain in producing greatly exaggerated prewar assessments of Iraq 's ability to wage war, a former senior Israeli military intelligence official has acknowledged. Shlomo Bron, a brigadier general in the Israel army reserves, and a senior researcher at a major Israeli think tank, said that intelligence provided by Israel played a significant role in supporting the US and British case for making war. Israeli intelligence agencies, he said, "badly overestimated the Iraqi threat to Israel and reinforced the American and British belief that the weapons [of mass destruction] existed." [11]

For some Jewish leaders, the Iraq war is part of a long-range effort to install Israel-friendly regimes across the Middle East . Norman Podhoretz, a prominent Jewish writer and an ardent supporter of Israel, has been for years editor of Commentary, the influential Zionist monthly. In the Sept. 2002 issue he wrote: "The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil [ Iraq , Iran , North Korea ]. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya , as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt 's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen."

Patrick J. Buchanan, the well-known writer and commentator, and former White House Communications director, has been blunt in identifying those who pushed for war: [12]

"We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America 's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging US relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity...

"Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?

"Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel , Sharon , Likud."

Uri Avnery - an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, and a three-time member of Israel 's parliament - sees the Iraq war as an _expression of immense Jewish influence and power. In an essay written some weeks after the US invasion, he wrote: [13]

"Who are the winners? They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the ed-op pages of the influential newspapers... The immense influence of this largely Jewish group stems from its close alliance with the extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who nowadays control Bush's Republican party. ...Seemingly, all this is good for Israel . America controls the world, we control America . Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power."

In Britain , a veteran member of Britain 's House of Commons bluntly declared in May 2003 that Jews had taken control of America 's foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US into war. "A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians," said Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy and the longest-serving House member. "There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States ," he added. [14]

Summary

For many years now, American presidents of both parties have been staunchly committed to Israel and its security. This entrenched policy is an _expression of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America 's political and cultural life. It was fervent support for Israel - shared by President Bush, high-ranking administration officials and nearly the entire US Congress - that proved crucial in the decision to invade and subdue one of Israel 's greatest regional enemies.

While the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq may have helped Israel , just as those who wanted and planned for the war had hoped, it has been a calamity for America and the world. It has cost tens of thousands of lives and many tens of billions of dollars. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the US . In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the United States , and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti-American terrorists.

Americans have already paid a high price for their nation's commitment to Israel . We will pay an ever higher price - not just in dollars or international prestige, but in the lives of young men squandered for the interests of a foreign state - until the Jewish-Zionist hold on US political life is finally broken.

Notes

1. Remarks by Ernest F. Hollings, May 20, 2004. Congressional Record - Senate, May 20, 2004, pages S5921-S5925.

2. The Guardian ( London ), August 20, 2002.

3. R. Dunn, " Sharon Could Have Written Speech," The Times ( London ), June 26, 2002.

4. A. S. Lewin, " Israel 's Security is Key to Security of Rest of World," Jewish Press ( Brooklyn , NY ), May 14, 2003. Rice's interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharnonot is quoted.

5. Bush address to AIPAC convention, Washington, DC, May 18, 2004.

6. Text posted at: www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm See also: B. Whitaker, "Playing Skittles with Saddam," The Guardian ( London ), Sept. 3, 2002.

7. J. Vest, "The Men From JINSA and CSP," The Nation, Sept. 2, 2002.

8. S. Francis, "Weapons of Mass Deception: Somebody Lied," column of Feb. 6, 2004.

9. Jonathan Steele, " Israel Puts Pressure on US to Strike Iraq ," The Guardian ( London ), August 17, 2002.

10. Robert Novak, " Sharon 's War?," column of Dec. 26, 2002.

11. L. King, "Ex-General Says Israel Inflated Iraqi Threat," Los Angeles Times , Dec. 5, 2003.

12. P. J. Buchanan, "Whose War?," The American Conservative, March 24, 2003.

13. Uri Avnery, "The Night After," CounterPunch, April 10, 2003.

14. F. Nelson, "Anger Over Dalyell's 'Jewish Cabal' Slur," The Scotsman (Edinburgh), May 5, 2003; M. White, "Dalyell Steps Up Attack On Levy," The Guardian ( London ), May 6, 2003. #2018 12/04

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About the author

Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois ( Chicago ), the University of Munich , Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). For nine years he served as editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review.

American torture on Foreign Soil

America kidnapped meBy Khaled El-Masri, KHALED EL-MASRI, a German citizen born in Lebanon, was a car salesman before he was detained in December 2003.

THE U.S. POLICY of "extraordinary rendition" has a human face, and it is mine.I am still recovering from an experience that was completely beyond the pale, outside the bounds of any legal framework and unacceptable in any civilized society. Because I believe in the American system of justice, I sued George Tenet, the former CIA director, last week. What happened to me should never be allowed to happen again.

I was born in Kuwait and raised in Lebanon. In 1985, when Lebanon was being torn apart by civil war, I fled to Germany in search of a better life. There I became a citizen and started my own family. I have five children.On Dec. 31, 2003, I took a bus from Germany to Macedonia. When we arrived, my nightmare began.

Macedonian agents confiscated my passport and detained me for 23 days. I was not allowed to contact anyone, including my wife.At the end of that time, I was forced to record a video saying I had been treated well. Then I was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to a building where I was severely beaten. My clothes were sliced from my body with a knife or scissors, and my underwear was forcibly removed. I was thrown to the floor, my hands pulled behind me, a boot placed on my back. I was humiliated. Eventually my blindfold was removed, and I saw men dressed in black, wearing black ski masks. I did not know their nationality. I was put in a diaper, a belt with chains to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood.

I was thrown into a plane, and my legs and arms were spread-eagled and secured to the floor. I felt two injections and became nearly unconscious. I felt the plane take off, land and take off. I learned later that I had been taken to Afghanistan.There, I was beaten again and left in a small, dirty, cold concrete cell. I was extremely thirsty, but there was only a bottle of putrid water in the cell. I was refused fresh water.That first night I was taken to an interrogation room where I saw men dressed in the same black clothing and ski masks as before. They stripped and photographed me, and took blood and urine samples. I was returned to the cell, where I would remain in solitary confinement for more than four months.

The following night my interrogations began. They asked me if I knew why I had been detained. I said I did not. They told me that I was now in a country with no laws, and did I understand what that meant? They asked me many times whether I knew the men who were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, if I had traveled to Afghanistan to train in camps and if I associated with certain people in my town of Ulm, Germany. I told the truth: that I had no connection to any terrorists, had never been in Afghanistan and had never been involved in any extremism.

I asked repeatedly to meet with a representative of the German government, or a lawyer, or to be brought before a court. Always, my requests were ignored.In desperation, I began a hunger strike. After 27 days without food, I was taken to meet with two Americans the prison director and another man, referred to as "the Boss." I pleaded with them to release me or bring me before a court, but the prison director replied that he could not release me without permission from Washington. He also said that he believed I should not be detained in the prison.

After 37 days without food, I was dragged to the interrogation room, where a feeding tube was forced through my nose into my stomach. I became extremely ill, suffering the worst pain of my life.After three months, I was taken to meet an American who said he had traveled from Washington, D.C., and who promised I would soon be released. I was also visited by a German-speaking man who explained that I would be allowed to return home but warned that I was never to mention what had happened because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret.

On May 28, 2004, almost five months after I was first kidnapped, I was blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to an airplane seat. I was told we would land in a country other than Germany, because the Americans did not want to leave traces of their involvement, but that I would eventually get to Germany.After we landed I was driven into the mountains, still blindfolded. My captors removed my handcuffs and blindfold and told me to walk down a dark, deserted path and not to look back. I was afraid I would be shot in the back.I turned a bend and encountered three men who asked why I was illegally in Albania.

They took me to the airport, where I bought a ticket home (my wallet had been returned to me). Only after the plane took off did I believe I was actually going home. I had long hair, a beard and had lost 60 pounds. My wife and children had gone to Lebanon, believing I had abandoned them.

Thankfully, now we are together again in Germany.I still do not know why this happened to me. I have been told that the American secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, confirmed in a meeting with the German chancellor that my case was a "mistake" and that American officials later denied that she said this. I was not present at this meeting. No one from the American government has ever contacted me or offered me any explanation or apology for the pain they caused me.

Secretary Rice has stated publicly, during a discussion of my case, that "any policy will sometimes result in errors." But that is exactly why extraordinary rendition is so dangerous. As my interrogators made clear when they told me I was being held in a country with no laws, the very purpose of extraordinary rendition is to deny a person the protection of the law. I

begged my captors many times to bring me before a court, where I could explain to a judge that a mistake had been made. Every time, they refused. In this way, a "mistake" that could have been quickly corrected led to several months of cruel treatment and meaningless suffering, for me and my entire family.My captors would not bring me to court, so last week I brought them to court.

Helped by the American Civil Liberties Union, I sued the U.S. government because I believe what happened to me was illegal and should not be done to others. And I believe the American people, when they hear my story, will agree.

Holiday Time in Baghdad

While the American deaths nearly doubled since last year, ( http://seattletimes.nwsource.com ) the drafting of the new constitution the debate continues with the Sunnis; you can book your hotel to visit Iraq and tour the region. The advertisement is marketed to tourist indicating that Iraq is the place to be and visit in spite of the continual bombardment of attacks. ( www.kayak.com ) You can search for flights, hotels and cars!

The Al Mansour Hotel in Baghdad had a high rating of 6 out of 10. One can play tennis, enjoy your leisure time at the health spa and club. You may also relax and enjoy the warm evenings by relaxing near the outdoor pool. They also provide a laundry service, room service, currency exchange and to top it off you can purchase gifts at the gift shop in the lobby and mail them to your friends back home. After a relaxing day near the pool, you can enjoy the evenings chatting with your war friends, journalists and US contract workers at the bar. However, when I attempted to get the hotel price online at Kayak, it failed to provide me with any information. I did find the exact location and the hotels telephone number, just in case I want to vacation in Iraq .

The Palestine Hotel is also listed as their places to consider for your holiday enjoyment. As I recall, the hotel was kindly guarded by the American Army surrounded with tanks and barriers. You only needed to look like a foreigner to enter into the complex. The army presence provided an immense amount of security for those who were concerned about bombings. I stayed in a different hotel, because of the Army presence. Their presence increased my visibility, with my blond hair and blue eyes, I wanted to blend in with the crowd as much as possible.

My hotel was the Al Mansour Hotel, and my cost was 100 American dollars a night. The American menu for dinners accommodated the journalists needs down home cooking and the bar was well stocked for hard to get alcoholic beverages. We had two guards posted at the parking entrance near the front door. One fine evening while chatting at the poolside, my partners and I heard some random gun shots. We were used to the sounds of bullets flying through the air, so we did not really pay any attention and continued with our pleasant conversation. Later that evening, we discovered that one of the guards was shot and killed by a fellow friend, because he would not allow him into the hotel.

This was one of many pleasant stories of my time in Baghdad .

RAMADIS PLEDGE TO "DRIVE OUT" US TROOPS

Citizens of town in central Iraq take pride in their resistance to American-led occupation.   By Wisam al-Jaff in Ramadi
"Nothing's happening. They haven't shown up until now," the former army officer muttered into his mobile phone, keeping his eye trained on the road leading to a former palace now used as a base by the local US Marine garrison.   "We expect that at any minutes the Americans will enter," he explained. "And that's why we are now trying to protect our town. The Americans have nothing else to do here but arrest people."
After months of skirmishing with US forces, insurgents and citizens of this town say that they are preparing to drive out the Americans altogether.   They are attempting to emulate their neighbours in Fallujah, where the US Marines have essentially abandoned the town to the insurgents.   The two centres share tribal ties - both are dominated by the Dulaim tribe - as well as religious conservatism and a history of resistance to central authority that dates back to Saddam's day.   Many citizens proudly point out that Ramadi is the hometown of Mohammed Madhlum al-Alwani, a military officer who was executed for attempting to lead a coup against Saddam. Today, however, the Americans are the enemy.   Ramadi has been a centre of anti-Coalition activity since autumn 2003, but residents told IWPR they would intensify their activity - because though sovereignty has been transferred to Iraqis, foreigners remain.   "We were patient. We waited for the handover. We told the mujahideen to be patient and to wait for June 30 [the original scheduled day for the transfer of power], but we were disappointed," said Hameed al-Fahdawi, 48, the owner of a stationary store.   Attacks, he said, "will continue as long as the Americans stay in the town."   During the past three months, Ramadi has seen numerous fire-fights between insurgents and US troops, as well as the more common roadside bombs and mortar barrages.   Although insurgents in the town did not have the same street presence as those in Fallujah, pickup trucks filled with weapons, their windscreens removed to enable occupants to shoot out of the front of the vehicle, could be found on the side-streets.   For many in Ramadi, as in Fallujah, the fight is a question of religious injunction.   "Jihad [holy war] is an obligation according to Sharia law. Any man or youth who can carry a weapon must defend the town when the Americans enter," said Uthman al-Dulaimi, 38, who owns a shop for religious books. "Americans raided mosques and arrested many imams, and defiled the holy Quran," he said. "They have no fear of God, they don't respect our religion."   For others, ejecting the Americans is a matter of pride.   "They provoke us when they enter our town. We are Arabs and we have our tribal traditions," said Khalid al-Namrawi, a former captain in the Iraqi army. "We will not allow any stranger or foreigner to enter and wander among us, even on over our dead bodies."   He added that some locals feel threatened by US forces in their town, expecting their homes will be raided and their money and gold stolen.   "Nobody can stop them. They arrest suspects at will and release them after torture and humiliation in prison," al-Namrawi claimed. Many in Ramadi are anxious to follow Fallujah's example.   "The people of Fallujah made us raise our heads high, and became an example in resistance, and locals of Ramadi should emulate them," said Suleiman al-Asafi, 50.   "It's a disgrace to us that we do not resist the occupier when they enter the town, while our brothers in Falluja sacrifice all they have.   "We must sacrifice, and take Fallujah as an example. It's impossible to achieve our goals without sacrifice." Wisam al-Jaff is an IWPR trainee.

SHEIKH GUARANTEES SOUGHT FOR JAIL RELEASES

American military hopes to end the insurgency by turning to Iraqi tribal traditions.   By Abdel Karem al-Hashemy in Baghdad
Taxi driver Satar Majeed Suleiman walked out of Abu Ghraib prison this June, after spending nearly a year behind bars. Like many of his fellow prisoners, Suleiman says he had no involvement in the anti-Coalition insurgency for which he was detained. "I was shooting in the air to frighten thieves, when an American patrol passed by," he said.
As a result, he spent months in a harsh place where, though he was not beaten, he had little protection against the cold of the desert winter and the heat of summer.   US forces do not "arrest anyone without a reason", said Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan, US military commander responsible for the area west of Baghdad , which includes Suleiman's home of Bab al-Sheikh.   Ryan agreed to release Suleiman after the taxi driver's local tribal leader, Sheikh Abdul Rida al-Aweili, agreed to vouch for the detainee's good behaviour. Similar assurances are being sought across the region, one of the centres of Iraq 's insurgency.   They have led to the release of elderly men in poor health, tribal elders, and at least two women, whose detention, Aweili said, had been a cause of tension.   "We are sure that some were arrested because of false accusations," the sheikh said.   He also said the assurances were being made to enable tribal leaders to reassert their authority, and to restrain their followers, angry at intrusive raids and what they consider to be unjustifiable detentions.   While not conceding the innocence of those detained, the US military acknowledged that it erred in ignoring the role of the sheikh as mediator between the population and the central authority.   "It was a mistake for us to ignore the tribal customs of the Iraqi culture," said Captain Joseph James, public affairs officer for Ryan's 2-12 Cavalry, in an email to IWPR. Now, the unit has begun to release prisoners if their sheikh will guarantee that they will not participate in attacks.   "Sheiks should submit a list of names for prisoners that they guarantee not to conduct future attacks against Coalition forces," James said.   "If the agreement is breached, Sheiks will be notified and that they should either bring the person to the Coalition or show us his whereabouts.   "In return, the US troops are committed not to arrest any person without notifying the tribal council, not arresting women, not raiding houses and mosques, and to respect Iraqi tradition and customs."   If the attacks cease, James continued, the US military can "move forward" in developing the region, saying that, altogether, some 336 detainees have been released through the policy in the Abu Ghraib region.   "We hold to the agreement [with the American troops] and we must respect it. Any one who breaches it will be held accountable by his tribe leader," said Sheik Hashem Najem al-Hasen al-Mohammadi, head of the region's Iraqi tribes association. Still, many of the released detainees remain angry over their detentions.   "They treat dogs better than us," said Abd al-Wadood Katab, 40, a professor of psychology at the University of Tikrit .   Katab said he was held 14 months in the southern detention centre of Bucca for possessing weapons and inciting violence.   "They used to leave us with no cold water, they shouted and struck us. I haven't done anything to be arrested - all Iraqis possess weapons," he said.   Abdel Karem al-Hashemy is an IWPR trainee.

American security and Iraqi stability

American security and Iraqi stability depend on a prompt handover.

by William R. Polk

From childhood, we Americans are deluged with slogans. We often select our breakfast food, our soap, and our toothpaste by jingles and catchphrases rather than by reading the labels. So we fall easily into accepting evocative expressions in place of analysis even when it comes to national security. Our parents were sold on the slogan that the First World War was the “war to end all wars,” although the 20th century had more of them than any other in history. We went into Vietnam fearing the “domino effect,” although the struggle there had little relationship to events in any other Asian country. We were rushed into the war in Iraq by the assertion that little, poor, remote Iraq was at the point of attacking mighty America, and now we are bogged down there allegedly by a ragtag faction of Ba’athist diehards.

Seldom do we hear hard-headed analysis of what is happening, what is possible, what the alternatives are, how much each will cost in lives, treasure, prestige, and security. When I was the member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East, I had the duty to try to understand the reality in the problems we then faced, to comprehend the forces at work, and to identify what could be done. Now as a private citizen, I ask: what is the reality of Iraq, what do we face there, and what can we do?

Leaving aside Kurdistan, where roughly a quarter of all Iraqis live, Iraq is a shattered country. Its infrastructure has been pulverized by the “shock and awe” of the American invasion. Few Iraqis today even have clean drinking water or can dispose of their waste. About 7 in 10 adult Iraqis are without employment. Factories are idle, and small shopkeepers have been squeezed out of business. Movement even within cities is difficult and dangerous. And the trend in each of these categories is downward. Iraq’s society has been torn apart, and perhaps as many as 100,000 Iraqis have died. Virtually every Iraqi has a parent, child, spouse, cousin, friend, colleague, or neighbor—or perhaps all of these—among the dead. More than half of the dead were women and children. Putting Iraq’s casualties in comparative American terms would equate to about one million American deaths. Dreadful hatreds have been generated.

Not all hatreds are on the Iraqi side. American soldiers, often not knowing why they are in Iraq but only that they are getting shot at in 50 to 100 attacks each day, are fearful. Against an indistinguishable enemy, who fades into the general population, their fear turns into general hatred. To GIs, the natives are “ragheads,” just as in Vietnam they were “gooks.” And they may be suicide bombers. Hatred of the enemy appeared in a film made by NBC News inside a mosque in Fallujah showing a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi. It also appeared in the photographs of the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Those scenes, in turn, helped to cement the image of the uniformed, indistinguishable foreign troops as the common enemy, whom the Iraqis are beginning to call the “crusaders.”

Such graphic demonstrations of hatred and contempt also, of course, echo far beyond Iraq among the more than one billion Muslims throughout the world. They have tended to corrupt the greatest of America’s national treasures, the nearly universal respect of mankind. As one former senior Army officer Andrew Bacevich said, “My sense is that such an impression has already taken hold in the Arab world.” He is certainly right.

Thus, even when, as in the Fallujah battle, the insurgents were outnumbered at least 20:1, and it was obvious that they could not win against a phalanx of helicopters, gunships, fighter-bombers, tanks, and artillery, they fought to become martyrs for their cause and thus to inspire others to take up their mission. They lost the battle of Fallujah as they will lose every battle. But they have not lost the war. This is the reality with which America must deal.

* * *

Guerrilla warfare is not new. In fact, it is probably the oldest form of warfare. But in recent centuries, so much attention was given to formal warfare that most soldiers forgot about informal war. Although few guerrilla leaders have given us accounts of how they organized, got their supplies, fought, retreated, regrouped, and fought again, history provides a rich lode of information. We can study experiences dating from the 20th-century conflicts in Europe, Asia, and Africa, including the Irish struggle against the British, Tito’s and the Greek ELAS’s struggles against the Germans in the Balkans, Mao Zedong’s war against the Japanese and then against the forces of Chang Kai-shek in China, the Viet Minh’s defeat of the French in Indo-China, the Algerian war of national liberation against the French, the Chechens’ centuries-long war against the Russians and, of course, our Vietnam and Russia’s Afghanistan.

The story they tell was well summarized by Mao Zedong when he described the guerrilla as a fish that must swim in the sea of the people. Absent popular support, Mao’s sea, the guerrilla is at best an outlaw and, more likely and sooner, a corpse. But with the support of the people, he is elusive, nourished, and ultimately replaceable. Consequently, almost no matter what forces are brought against him, he—or at least his cause—has proven indefatigable. If we are ignorant of this history, we are doomed to repeat it.

Generation after generation of soldiers and strategists have done just that— repeated it. Often ignorant of history and of the reflections of their predecessors, they attempted to find techniques to defeat the guerrillas. The ultimate way was by killing them. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was essentially a war of extermination as was the British war against the Irish and the Tsarist and Communist Russians’ war on the Chechens. Even genocide rarely succeeded because new generations arose to replace the dead.

If not all could be killed, at least their lands and other resources could be taken away from them and given to alien settlers. This was the gist of colonialism as practiced by the French in Algeria and the Russians in Central Asia. Since we regard neither genocide nor colonialism as politically correct today, experiments have been made with various other tactics. In Vietnam, America tried a variety of them, as did the Soviet Union in Afghanistan without ultimate success. Today, in Iraq and in occupied Palestine, Americans and Israelis are repeating these campaigns, focusing primarily on the application of overwhelming military power designed to dishearten the insurgents. In 40 years, the Israelis have not achieved security; the chances that the Americans will in five years appear unlikely.

Why is this so? The answer is essentially simple: people of all religions and races share a common desire to control their own lives. Our Declaration of Independence puts it eloquently for us, and President Woodrow Wilson summed it up neatly for others when he spoke of the quest for “the self-determination of peoples.” Thwarted in this quest, some people—whom, if we approve of them, we call “freedom fighters” or, if not, “fanatics” or “terrorists”—take up arms, as Americans did in our revolution. They are usually few in number, perhaps 15,000 or so in Iraq today and roughly the same in Algeria in the 1950s, but many more people who do not themselves actually fight support them.

Knowing that they cannot defeat the foreign enemy, they seek not so much to win battles but to wear him down, to inflict upon him what he will regard as unacceptable casualties and other costs, and to erode his political support. Thus, almost inevitably, the techniques of guerrilla warfare fade into terrorism.

We have mistakenly acted as though terrorism was a thing or a group against which one can fight. But terrorism is merely a tactic that can be used by anyone. Ancient Britons used it against the Romans, the Zionists against the British, the Algerians against the French, the French against the Nazis, the Chechens against the Russians, the Basques against the Spaniards, and so on. It is the traditional “weapon of the weak,” who resort to it when all else fails.

At the beginning of the struggle against Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration charged that Iraq was a terrorist state acting in close collaboration with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. In the emotional reaction to the attacks in New York and Washington, sloganeering drowned out intelligence. Saddam Hussein’s regime was certainly evil, but Iraq was not a terrorist state. It had no significant relationship with any terrorist organization as the American, British, and Israeli intelligence agencies knew. In fact, Osama bin Laden, a religious fundamentalist, had offered to raise a military force to fight Saddam’s secular government and denounced Saddam with the strongest condemnation a Muslim can utter, that he was a kafir, a godless person. Despite the findings of official American investigations, however, the rallying cries stick in our minds. Seven in 10 Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was working with Osama bin Laden in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

While that is wrong, Iraq has changed under American blows so that it is now a prime recruiting ground and justification for terrorism. As the commander of the 1st Marine Division, Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, put it just before the attack on Fallujah, “After we take Fallujah, the terrorists will have no sanctuary, nowhere to hide.” I remember similar words about the Vietcong. And within a day after the general said this, fighting broke out in a dozen Iraqi cities. The Russians could have told General Natonski that a decade after they did to the Chechen city of Grozny what his troops did to Fallujah, fighting continued. That is what we are now seeing in Iraq. This is the reality with which we must begin. So what can America do?

* * *

Today, there are no good options—only better or worse alternatives. Three appear possible:

The first option has been called “staying the course.” In practice, that means continued fighting. France “stayed the course” in Algeria in the 1950s as America did in Vietnam in the 1960s and as the Israelis are now doing in occupied Palestine. It has never worked anywhere. In Algeria, the French employed over three times as many troops—nearly half a million—to fight roughly the same number of insurgents as America is now fighting in Iraq. They lost. America had half a million soldiers in Vietnam and gave up. After four decades of warfare against the Palestinians, the Israelis have achieved neither peace nor security.

Wars of national “self-determination” can last for generations or even centuries. Britain tried to beat down (or even exterminate) the Irish for nearly 900 years, from shortly after the 11th-century Norman invasion until 1921; the French fought the Algerians from 1831 until 1962; Imperial and Communist Russia fought the Chechens since about 1731. Putin’s Russia is still at it. There was no light at the end of those tunnels.

At best, staying the course in Iraq can be only a temporary measure as eventually America will have to leave. But during the period in which it stays, say the next five years, my guess is that another 30,000 to 40,000 Iraqis will die or be killed while the U.S. armed forces will lose at least another 1,000 dead and 20,000 seriously wounded. The monetary cost will be hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is not only the casualties or treasure that count. What wars of “national liberation” demonstrate is that they also brutalize the participants who survive. Inevitably such wars are vicious. Both sides commit atrocities. In their campaigns to drive away those they regard as their oppressors, terrorists/freedom fighters seek to make their opponents conclude that staying is unacceptably expensive and, since they do not have the means to fight conventional wars, they often pick targets that will produce dramatic and painful results. Irish, Jews, Vietnamese, Tamils, Chechens, Basques, and others blew up hotels, cinemas, bus stations, and apartment houses, killing many innocent bystanders. The more spectacular, the bloodier, the better for their campaigns. So the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, the IRA a Brighton hotel in 1984, an Iraqi group the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. Chechens blew up an apartment house in Moscow in 2003, while a Palestinian group blew up an Israeli-frequented hotel in Taba, Egypt in 2004.

Faced with such challenges, the occupying power often reacts with massive attacks aimed at terrorists but inevitably kills many civilians. To get information from those it manages to capture, it also frequently engages in torture. Torture did not begin at the Abu Ghraib prison; it is endemic in guerrilla warfare. Two phrases from the Franco-Algerian war of the 1950s-60s tell it all: “torture is to guerrilla war what the machine gun was to trench warfare in the First World War” and “torture is the cancer of democracy.” Guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency inexorably corrupt the very causes for which soldiers and insurgents fight. Almost worse, even in exhausted “defeat” for the one and heady “victory” for the other, they leave behind a chaos that spawns warlords, gangsters, and thugs as is today so evident in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

The longer the fighting goes on, the worse the chaos. Viewing the devastation of Fallujah, one correspondent wrote, “Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe … The city smelled like dust, ash—and death.” Viewing the same scene, the deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said, “This is what we do … This is what we do well.” This is not new or unique; it is classic. Recall the statement the Roman historian Tacitus attributed to the contemporary guerrilla leader of the Britons. The Romans, he said, “create a desolation and call it peace.”

The second option is “Vietnamization.” In Vietnam, America inherited from the French both a government and a large army. What was needed, the Nixon administration proclaimed, was to train the army, equip it, and then turn the war over to it. True, the army did not fight well nor did the government rule well, but they existed. In Iraq, America inherited neither a government nor an army. It is trying to create both. Not surprisingly, the results are disappointing. Most Iraqis regard the American-selected and American-created government as merely an American puppet. And the idea that America can fashion a local militia to accomplish what its powerful army cannot do is not policy but fantasy. An Iraqi army is unlikely to fight insurgents with whom soldiers sympathize and among whom they have relatives. Many have reportedly thrown off their new uniforms and joined the insurgents.

Much has been made also of the constitution we wrote for the Iraqis. It reads well, as did the one the British wrote for the Iraqis 80 years ago in 1924, but it is not anchored in the realities of Iraqi society. Absent the institutions that give life to a constitution, it will be simply a piece of paper as was the one the British provided. Representative government grows in the soil of the people or it does not grow at all. It cannot be mandated by foreign rulers.

Thus, the best America might gain from this option is a fig leaf to hide defeat; the worst, in a rapid collapse, would be humiliating evacuation, as in Vietnam.

The third option is to choose to get out rather than being forced. Time is a wasting asset; the longer the choice is put off, the harder it will be to make. The steps required to implement this policy need not be dramatic, but the process needs to be unambiguous. The initial steps could be merely verbal: America would have to declare unequivocally that it will give up its lock on the Iraqi economy, will cease to spend Iraqi revenues as it chooses, and will allow Iraqi oil production to be governed by market forces rather than by an American monopoly.

The second step, more difficult, is to make a truce and pull back its forces. If President Bush could be as courageous as Gen. Charles de Gaulle was in Algeria when he called for a “peace of the brave,” fighting would quickly die down. This is not wishful thinking; it is what happened time after time in guerrilla wars.

Then, and only then, could Iraqis themselves set about creating a national consensus. It would probably not come through elections, although they might legitimize the process. We would probably not like the government that emerged, but we are already beyond being able to control that choice. What we should help and encourage is the essentially indigenous process of building civil institutions. Only as they emerge will some form of reasonably peaceful, reasonably free, reasonably decent government have a chance. This is the most sensitive and difficult part of the whole affair. It cannot be rushed, and we cannot do it for the Iraqis.

The danger during this period is twofold: on the one hand, Iraq, like Afghanistan, could shatter with local warlords seizing the pieces, or Iraq could split into a sort of eastern Balkans with Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab successor states. The one would certainly create mafia-style terrorism, while the other would promote mayhem as thousands of suddenly created refugees flee from now alien states. Further regional instability would be created, and possibly either Turkey or Iran or both would intervene, Turkey to suppress the Kurds and Iran to protect the Shi’ites. The results are unforeseeable but certainly ruinous.

On the other hand, in an attempt to avoid this disaster, we and our Iraqi protégés could, as we are now attempting, create a new Iraqi army. We should heed the lesson of Iraqi history. In the past, the British-created army destroyed moves toward civil society and probably would do so again, paving the way for the ghost of Saddam Hussein. In the period during and following American evacuation, Iraq would need a police force but not an army. A UN multinational peacekeeping force would be easier, cheaper, and safer. The balance between “security” and cohesion would be difficult to achieve and maintain, and we could be of only minimal help, but either extreme would be worse.

Meanwhile, a variety of service functions would have to be organized. Given a chance, Iraq could do them mostly by itself. With its vast potential in oil production, probably the greatest in the world, it could soon again become a rich country with a talented, well-educated population. Step by step, health care, clean water, sewage, roads, bridges, pipelines, electric grids, and housing could be provided by the Iraqis themselves, as they were in the past. When I visited Baghdad in February 2003, on the eve of the invasion, the Iraqis with whom I talked were proud that they had rebuilt what had been destroyed in the 1991 war. They can surely do so again. More important, in carrying out the rebuilding and reordering process, particularly at the grassroots level, Iraqis would begin to take control of their lives and start building the neighborhood institutions and consensus on which, if it is to grow at all, representative government will depend.

Economically, Iraq will also have to mend itself. Here the American role is primarily negative. We have imposed policies during our occupation that worked against the recovery of Iraqi industry and commerce. Abrogating these would spur development since any reasonably intelligent and self-interested government would emphasize getting Iraqi enterprises back into operation and employing Iraqi workers. That process could be speeded up through international loans, commercial agreements, and protective measures so that unemployment, now at socially catastrophic levels, would be diminished. Neighborhood participation in running social affairs and providing security are old traditions in Iraqi society and allowing or favoring their reinvigoration would promote the excellent side effect of grassroots political representation.

As fighting dies down, reasonable security is achieved, and popular institutions revive, the one million Iraqis now living abroad will be encouraged to return home. In the aggregate they are intelligent, highly trained, and well motivated and can make major contributions in all phases of Iraqi life. Oil production will play a key role. The income it generates can make possible great public works projects that will help to lure back Iraqi émigrés, employ Iraqi workers, encourage local entrepreneurs, and salvage the class of merchants and shopkeepers who traditionally provided security in Oriental cities. In its own best interest, the Iraqi government would empower the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) to award concessions by bid to a variety of international companies to sell oil on the world market. This is obviously to the best interests not only of Iraq but also of the Western world.

Contracts for reconstruction paid for by Iraqi money would be awarded under bidding, as they traditionally were, but to prevent excessive corruption would perhaps initially be supervised by the World Bank. The World Bank would, of course, follow its regular procedures on its loans. Where other countries supplied aid, they would probably insist on (and could be given) preferential treatment in the award of contracts as is common practice everywhere.

In such a program, inevitably, there will be setbacks and shortfalls, but they can be partly filled by international organizations. The steps will not be easy; Iraqis will disagree over timing, personnel, and rewards, while giving the process a chance will require a rare degree of American political courage. But, and this is the crucial matter, any other course of action would be far worse for both America and Iraq. The safety and health of American society as well as Iraqi society requires that this policy be implemented intelligently, determinedly—and soon.

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A former member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council, William R. Polk was responsible for the Middle East. He has been a professor of history at the University of Chicago and Founding Director of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is now senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation.

'I got my kills ... I just love my job'

(Filed: 09/11/2004) Toby Harnden in Fallujah observes
American soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division taskforce avenging their fallen comrades as battle begins After seven months in Iraq's Sunni triangle, for many American soldiers the opportunity to avenge dead friends by taking a life was a moment of sheer exhilaration. As they approached their "holding position", from where hours later they would advance into the city, they picked off insurgents on the rooftops and in windows. The attack on Fallujah graphic The attack on Fallujah [Click to enlarge] "I got myself a real juicy target," shouted Sgt James Anyett,
peering through the thermal sight of a Long Range Acquisition System (LRAS) mounted on one of Phantom's Humvees. "Prepare to copy that 89089226. Direction 202 degrees. Range 950 metres. I got five motherf****** in a building with weapons." Capt Kirk Mayfield, commander of the Phantoms, called for fire from his task force's mortar team. But Sgt Anyett didn't want to wait. "Dude, give me the sniper rifle. I can take them out - I'm from Alabama." Two minutes tick by. "They're moving deep," shouted Sgt Anyett with disappointment. A dozen loud booms rattle the sky and smoke rose as mortars rained down on the co-ordinates the sergeant had given. "Yeah," he yelled. "Battle Damage Assessment - nothing. Building's gone. I got my kills, I'm coming down. I just love my job." Phantom Troop had rolled out of Camp Fallujah, the main US military base, shortly before 4am. All morning they took fire from the Al-Askari district in Fallujah's north-east, their target for the invasion proper. The insurgents, not understanding the capabilities of the LRAS, crept along rooftops and poked their heads out of windows. Even when they were more than a mile away, the soldiers of Phantom Troop had their eyes on them. Lt Jack Farley, a US Marines officer, sauntered over to compare notes with the Phantoms. "You guys get to do all the fun stuff," he said. "It's like a video game. We've taken small arms fire here all day. It just sounds like popcorn going off." Another marine stepped forward and began to fire an M4 rifle at the city. "He's a reservist for the San Diego police. He wants a piece of the action, too". A Phantom Abrams tank moved up the road running along the high ground. Its barrel, stencilled with the words "Ali Baba under 3 Thieves" swivelled towards the city and then fired a 120mm round at a house where two men with AK-47s had been pinpointed. "Ain't nobody moving now," shouted a soldier as the dust cleared. "He rocked that guy's world." One of Phantom's sniper teams laid down fire into the city with a Barrett .50 calibre rifle and a Remington 700. A suspected truck bomb was riddled with bullets, the crack of the Barrett echoing through the mainly deserted section of the city. The insurgents fired 60mm mortars back, one of them wounding a soldier. There were 25mm rounds from Phantom's Bradley fighting vehicles, barrages from Paladin howitzers back at Camp Fallujah and bursts of fire from .50 calibre machineguns. One by one, the howitzers used by the insurgents were destroyed. "Everybody's curious," grinned Sgt Anyett as he waited for a sniper with a Russian-made Dragonov to show his face one last, fatal time. A bullet zinged by. Dusk fell and 7pm, "A hour", the appointed hour to move into the city, approached. The soldiers of Phantom all reflected. "Given the choice, I would never have wanted to fire a gun," said Cpl Chris Merrell, 21, manning a machinegun mounted on a Humvee. "But it didn't work out that way. I'd like a thousand boring missions rather than one interesting one." On his wrist was a black bracelet bearing the name of a sergeant from Phantom Troop. "This is a buddy of mine that died," he said. "Pretty much everyone in the unit has one." One fear playing on the mind of the task force was that of "friendly fire", also known as "blue on blue". "Any urban fight is confusing," Lt Col Newell, the force's commander, told his troops before the battle. "The biggest threat out there is not them, but us." His officers said that the plan to invade Fallujah involved months of detailed planning and elaborate "feints" designed to draw the insurgents out into the open and fool them into thinking the offensive would come from another side of the city. "They're probably thinking that we'll come in from the east," said Capt Natalie Friel, an intelligence officer with task force, before the battle. But the actual plan involves penetrating the city from the north and sweeping south. "I don't think they know what's coming. They have no idea of the magnitude," she said. "But their defences are pretty circular. They're prepared for any kind of direction. They've got strong points on all four corners of the city." The aim was to push the insurgents south, killing as many as possible, before swinging west. They would then be driven into the Euphrates. • Tony Blair's problems over Iraq deepened still further last night when one of his most respected former advisers suggested the entire conflict had been illegal. Sir Stephen Wall, who was head of the European Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, said: "We allowed our judgment of the dire consequences of inaction to allow us to depart from the rule of law." Related links All-out assault on Fallujah