Trained Demolition Experts Blew the Shiite Mosque in Samarra

The AFP is reporting that the bombing of the Golden Domed Mosque "was the work of specialists" and that the "placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours."

Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, "Holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance."

Clearly, the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance. This is the work of highly-trained saboteurs and bomb-experts who were executing a precision-demolition to incite sectarian violence. The blast bears all the hallmarks of a covert Intelligence agency-operation.

Who benefits from such a vicious attack on the foundations of Islamic identity and culture?

The AFP’s report is consistent with earlier analysis provided by a Baghdad blogger who convincingly demonstrates that the destruction of the mosque was a "controlled demolition" which required considerable time and professional expertise. The photographs of the nearby, but untouched, minarets provide a shocking example of the bomber’s skill.

Eyewitness accounts have appeared on various web sites attesting to the fact that there were "unusual activities" taking place at the mosque the night before the bombing. One witness reported that he heard their "cars the whole night until the next morning". Another witness who lives near to the mosque says that at 8:30 that evening he was told "to stay in your shop and don’t leave the area" while Iraqi National Guard and American troops "patrolled the area until the next morning". At 6:30 AM the American troops left.

At 6:40 the first explosion went off.

In a matter of hours the western media swung into high-gear with over 1,000 stories containing the word "civil war" in the first 24 hours. As always, the western media simply reiterates the narrative that best serves the interests of management and their political benefactors. In this case, it’s clear that civil war is being invoked to divert attention from occupation forces and pit Iraqis against Iraqis; the ultimate objective of the bombing.

But is this really the plan. After all, how does that make Iraq more governable?

It is imperative that we challenge the stated purpose of why the United States is occupying Iraq. The fabrications of "liberation" and "democracy" are simply used to obscure the facts.

"We don’t do body counts" (General Tommy Franks) any more than we do reconstruction or security. The last three years have provided ample evidence of this in Iraq, just as have the 4 years in Afghanistan. The Bush administration has no intention of rebuilding Iraq or of providing even minimal requirements for security. Rather, they will continue to operate the same way they have from the beginning; by wielding overwhelming force whenever possible and concealing their methods behind a impenetrable wall of propaganda.

The present strategy undoubtedly reflects the desperation with the existing state of affairs. America is hopelessly mired in an "unwinnable" war. The choices for action have now been narrowed to either withdrawal or massive and destabilizing clandestine-operations intended to provoke internecine violence.

What other option is there?

The media simply parrots the cynical aspirations of the political establishment repeating the "civil war" mantra at every opportunity.

Henry Kissinger summarized the current Iraq strategy best when he offered his remedy for the ongoing conflict between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s. Kissinger said blandly, "I hope they kill each other."

The former National Security Chief’s axiom has now been elevated to the level of state policy. This is the Kissinger Principle; the conviction that racism and anarchy can be manipulated to achieve imperial objectives.

The destruction of the sacred shrine shows that the Iraq war has entered a new phase. The very symbols of Muslim identity are under withering assault in hope of inciting greater hostility and division. The foundations of Iraqi culture and character are being systematically targeted by professional paramilitaries executing a scorched-earth policy.

This is terrorism writ large and presumably with Washington’s blessing. Neocon Michael Ledeen breezily calls it, "creative destruction" but, in fact, it is the willful and cynical decimation of an ancient society that never posed a credible threat to American security.

Courtesy & Copyright © Mike Whitney

Uncovering the Roots of American Terrorism in Iraq

Mike Whitney

December 2, 2005 Max Fuller has written the most important article of the year and perhaps the decade. In his "Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq", Fuller painstakingly lays out the details and documentation to prove that the United States intelligence agencies are behind the vast incidents of murder and torture being carried out in Iraq today. If Fuller’s thesis is correct, then the War on Terror, that mighty engine of imperial carnage, is nothing more than a public relations scam to enlist public support. The war on terror is the "seminal lie" from which all the administration’s criminal excesses are mere tributaries. America’s unprovoked aggression in Iraq, as well as the appalling assault on civil liberties, has been carried out in the name of the war on terror. In fact, it has been used as to mask everything from police-state legislation at home to massive human rights violations abroad. The war on terror is an all-inclusive fraud that is the greatest threat to personal freedom and global security the world has ever seen. If unchallenged, we can expect the dictatorial-powers of the president to increase and the world plunged into another century of war. Fuller’s article sweeps away the illusions created by the war on terror. With laser-like intensity he focuses a steady beam of light on the most expansive clandestine intel-operation of all time; the terrorizing of an entire nation, pushing it inexorably towards civil war. The Interior Ministry is at the epicenter of Iraq’s violent malaise. It is the headquarters for the Badr and Wolf Brigades; the American-trained death squads which are responsible for the massive assassination program directed at "alleged" Sunni resistance fighters. The torture chambers, death squads, and random bombings are not caused by foreign terrorists, nor are they the work of Iranian agents striving for a theocratic regime in Baghdad. They are, in fact, the nefarious activities of American puppet-masters, who matriculated in the terror wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Now, under Uncle Sam’s benign gaze, they are plying their trade in Iraq; wreaking havoc and spreading suffering on an unimaginable scale. What does this mean? It means that the "central front in the war on terror" is a phantom; a specter; a chimera that cloaks itself in the dull braying of plutocrats who promise democracy, but only deliver greater deprivation, sorrow and fear. It means that the ideological headwaters of global terrorism is Washington and that behind the scratchy façade of Al Qaida videos and dubious accounts of suicide bombers, the insidious fist of the imperial master continues to pound away at its victims. It means that, as Martin Luther King said, "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own country." The media has played a central role in trying to obfuscate the details of America’s involvement in the terror-war by characterizing the hundreds of murder victims as the result of tit-for-tat sectarian violence or of rogue Shiite militias loosely connected to the Interior Ministry. But, as Fuller deftly demonstrates, the more likely explanation is that the Ministry is executing a clear strategy of gratuitous terror devised and directed by their American handlers. The immense media disinformation campaign is designed to shift blame away from its American roots and promote the idea of massive sectarian unrest. This feeds the notion of an incipient civil war, which in turn achieves the American policy objective of Balkanizing the country to control its resources. The one reporter who diverged from these fabrications was Yasser Salihee, reporter for Knight-Ridder news. Salihee had uncovered critical information about the weaponry, vehicles and origins of the death squads, and was expected to file reports on those topics. His coverage, however, was cut short when he was assassinated in a gangland style hit at a checkpoint outside Baghdad by an American sniper. With just one precision shot to the forehead, another unembedded journalist was removed from covering Bush’s folly. Fuller’s research exposes the Interior Ministry as the hub of the clandestine death squad activity. The assumption that the ministry is manned exclusively by theocratic Shiites is just more misleading media gibberish. In fact, one of the more brutal counterinsurgency groups, the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, is headed by a former officer in Saddam’s Baath Party. (The Commandos were founded by the son of the former Iraqi Chief of Staff Falah al-Naqib, who many believed to be a CIA asset.) The connections of Interior Ministry chieftains to their CIA managers are deep and confusing but, as Fuller notes, "the Police Commandos were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units." (Reuters, National Review Online) Fuller says: "A key figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele, a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of that country’s civil war…. Another US contributor was the same Steven Casteel who as the most senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as 'rumor and innuendo’….Casteel’s background is significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random, disjointed killing sprees." Needless, to say, the CIA does not move major assets like Steele and Casteel into a prickly situation like Iraq to shuffle papers by a water-cooler. These are the main gears in the machinery of the Iraqi death squads; the movable parts in Washington’s apparatus of state terror. There is nothing either "random" or "disjointed" in the butchery produced by their labors. Fuller adds: "The Police Commando headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the US (Defend America)." The administration has provided a "state of the art" communications network to "coordinate mass murder". "DeBaathification" is a sham. Many of the top-ranking officials in the Ministry are Sunnis, including "deputy Minister for Intelligence Affairs (also leader of the Interior Ministry’s spy service) currently held by General Hussain Kamel". So, too, the notion of rogue Iranian-supported militias carrying out random attacks on "alleged" Sunnis suspects is equally deceptive. Nearly everything that appears in the corporate media has been intentionally misleading as part of the broader information war, to keep the American people from grasping the truth about the chief perpetrator of terrorism in Iraq today; the US intelligence agencies. As the Los Angeles Times notes, "The entire intelligence establishment is a creation of the Anglo-American secret services, which began building at least as early as the beginning of the occupation." You’ve been fooled; I’ve been fooled; and everything the Pentagon has said has been a lie. The fetid entrails of this terror-beast reside in Washington, not Baghdad or Tehran. The recent revelations (carefully excluded from the American press) of two British commandos dressed in traditional Arab garb caught in Basra with a trunk-load full of explosives (William Bowles) has even cast doubt on the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the rash of terror bombings plaguing the country. Certainly, the ensuing anger generated from these attacks is more compatible with the administration’s goals of sectarian division than they are with the nebulous theories about the apocryphal al-Zarqawi. Fuller says: "What is possible is that both sides of the apparent sectarian violence are run as part of a huge CIA-lead intelligence operation designed to split Iraq at the seams. I tentatively suggest that the intelligence apparatus at the Interior Ministry is contriving attacks on Sunnis and that British and US Special Forces in conjunction with the intelligence apparatus at the Iraqi Defense Ministry are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias. Overseeing the entire operation is the 'cream’ of CMAD under the direction of top-level US intelligence asset Mowaffak Rubaie, a man already experienced at participating in bombing campaigns, undoubtedly working hand in glove with the CIA and the National Security Council in the US." "a huge CIA-lead intelligence operation designed to split Iraq at the seams". Amen. Given Fuller’s thesis, it’s likely that most of the alleged "suicide" bombings are nothing more than stationary vehicles set off by remote-control and reported as suicide attacks by the compliant media to perpetuate the racial stereotypes of crazed Muslim fanatics. Fuller’s article is a difficult read with hefty documentation that tends to have a mind-numbing effect. Never the less, the ponderous emphasis on facts and actual news reports serve his greater purpose of proving a very tenuous and thorny theory, that the US is overseeing a humongous clandestine operation that has fractured the country and destabilized the region. As Fuller says, "(The) presence of Anglo-American forces in Iraq does not merely exacerbate the present violence; in Iraq we are the violence." The fictional War on Terror The war on terror is a fabrication so large and all-encompassing that it includes both political parties, the Pentagon, the main-body of corporate and financial elites, and virtually the entire western media. It is the underlying myth that animates the American war-machine and breathes life into the coercive apparatus of state terror. Fuller’s article uncovers a fissure in the block-wall of government secrecy and gives us a good look at the worm-infested core of imperial rule. Global terrorism flows from Washington like a toxic river that has breached its banks and threatens to flood everything in its path. Courtesy and Copyright © Mike Whitney

AGAIN BRITISH SOLDIERS CAUGHT DRESSED IN ARAB CLOTHING SETTING UP A CAR BOMB

OCT 15 2005

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Also See: United states caught in Iraq car bombing

Related: British Special Forces Caught Carrying Out Staged Terror In Iraq?

This is solid proof that the coalition forces are behind these car bombings and not the Iraqi people.

Just as Sept 11 was a fraud and no weapons of mass destruction were found we are now seeing

that even the insurgency is a fraud to send Iraq into civil war.

Damascus Syria gets destroyed then we will experience a Global Nuclear war.

It's about to happen.

Who needs terrorists or insurgents if we can do that job much better!!!!!

A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday.

Residents of western Baghdad's al Ghazaliyah district told Quds Press that the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon (11 October 2005). Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away.

That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the Iraqi puppet police.

Five minutes after the arrival of the Iraqi puppet police on the scene a large force of US troops showed up and surrounded the area. They put the two Americans in one of their Humvees and drove away at high speed to the astonishment of the residents of the area.

Quds Press spoke by telephone with a member of the al Ghazaliyah puppet police who confirmed the incident, saying that the two men were non-Arab foreigners but declined to be more precise about their nationality.

Quds Press pointed out that about a month ago, the Iraqi puppet police in the southern Iraqi city of al Basrah arrested two Britons whom they accused of attempting to cause an explosion in the city.

The Britons were taken into custody by the Iraqi puppet police only to be broken out of prison by an assault of British occupation troops. That incident has created a tense relationship between the British and the local puppet authorities in al Basrah, Quds Press noted.

Former CIA Analyst: Western Intelligence May Be Behind Mosque Bombing

Ray Mcgovern says US in most danger ever, from its own government

Prison Planet | February 26 2006

Former CIA analyst a and presidential advisor Ray McGovern does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing in light of previous false flag operations that have advanced hidden agendas of the ruling elite.

During the mid-eighties, McGovern was one of the senior analysts conducting early morning briefings of the PDB one-on-one with the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

He joined Alex Jones to discuss many topics from martial law to government false flag terrorism and provocation tactics.

McGovern firstly suggested that Posse Comitatus, the law that forbids the military to take on a policing role within the US, is being systematically overthrown.

"Not only have the top ranks of the intelligence community been politicized and corrupted, so has the army. The military establishment is goose stepping around, saluting the President and saying whatever the President wants them to."

A former officer himself, McGovern declared that the unprecedented movement towards a martial law mentality within government and military is a deeply unsettling one and that the US is hurtling toward a dictatorship.

"As I look at the top Pentagon brass, I have to conclude that unlike my days as a US army officer, those folks have been so politicized that if the US President told them to go ahead and exercise police functions in this country they would go ahead and salute and they would do it, and that's really scary."

Moving on to the "war on terror", 27 year veteran McGovern concurred that staged terror has long been used by our governments in order to forward their own agendas at home and elsewhere:

"There's lots of evidence that the government in the past has used these things for its own purposes, for overthrowing governments, as it did in Iran in 1953, and in Guatemala in 1954, the Gulf of Tonkin was a little different...LBJ did deceive Congress and the war went on for seven years."

Concerning 9/11 McGovern declared that although he is still in two minds, he is deeply suspicious of the official version of events and "there is certainly a cover up." The amount of unanswered questions and blatant lies told by Cheney and the NeoCons makes it very easy for him to believe the government was involved.

Moving on to the recent Askariya mosque bombing in Samarra, Iraq McGovern commented;

"The main question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on."

Ray McGovern is part of a collective of former Intelligence officers who call themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Their writing can be found on www.truthout.com

Prison Planet.tv subscribers look out for the full interview to be posted soon.

Who was behind the Samarra blasts?

Tehran Times / Hassan Hanizadeh | February 28 2006

Last Wednesday’s terrorist bombings of the holy shrines of the tenth and eleventh Shia Imams, Imam Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan Askari (AS), in Samara, Iraq, was a very serious incident which increased the possibility of a civil war breaking out.

In addition, Shia Muslims all over the world are now accusing the U.S.-led occupying forces of complicity in the act.

The United States is suspect because it occupied Iraq on the pretext of establishing democracy in the country, but U.S. officials now realize that the democratic process has not turned out as they had planned and not benefited U.S. interests.

Thus, the U.S. has changed its approach and is now trying to create sectarian and ethnic strife in Iraq.

The obvious interference of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in preventing the formation of a national cabinet reflecting the vote of the majority of Iraqis proves that the U.S. contention that it seeks to establish democracy in Iraq is a blatant lie because the U.S. does not want to accept the results of the parliamentary election.

Khalilzad recently said that the Iraqi interior, defense, oil, and security affairs ministers must be approved by the U.S. and no one opposed to U.S. policy should be allowed to become a minister in the cabinet of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Khalilzad’s recent remarks and the fact that he is claiming a veto right over cabinet appointments indicate that the United States seeks to prevent the formation of a national government in Iraq by creating chaos in the country.

Alongside the U.S. efforts to trigger a sectarian conflict in Iraq, the Zionist lobby, surprised by Muslims’ united reaction to the Western media outlets’ insult of Prophet Muhammad (S), is now trying to break this unity.

The unholy alliance of the United States, the Zionist regime, and the terrorists operating in Iraq planned the bombing of the holy shrines in order to justify the continued presence of occupying forces in the country.

Of course, this treacherous plan to bomb the holy sites in Iraq will not be limited to the shrines of Imam Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan Askari (AS). Other religious sites may also face the same fate in the future since the occupying forces are trying to ignite sectarian and ethnic conflicts in order to dismember the country into mini-states.

However, both the religious authorities in Najaf and the religious-political leaders in Iraq are well aware of this devious U.S. plot and have therefore called on Iraqis to foster unity and avoid impulsive reactions.

This call was welcomed by all Sunni and Shia Iraqis, who have condemned the terrorist actions of the occupying forces.

Of course, the Iraqi people, and particularly the religious authorities, are monitoring the suspicious activities of the occupying forces, and they will not allow religious differences to cause the country to break apart.

Therefore, after the formation of a national government, the entire Iraqi nation will call for the withdrawal of the occupying forces, and then there will be no option left for the foreign troops besides withdrawing from Iraqi territory.