-------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 05:09:02 -0500 Subject: Sunni, Shia Violence, Death Squads, and Civil War in Iraq From: The Wisdom Fund <•••@••.•••> Reply-To: •••@••.••• February 19, 2007 The Wisdom Fund Sunni, Shia Violence, Death Squads, and Civil War in Iraq Excerpts from <http://www.twf.org/News/Y2006/1010-Regions.html>http://www.twf.org/News/Y2006/1010-Regions.html Handout at <http://www.twf.org/News/Y2007/Sunni-Shia.pdf>http://www.twf.org/News/Y2007/Sunni-Shia.pdf Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.--Robert Fisk, All This Talk of Civil War, and Now This Carnage. Coincidence?, Independent --- NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.--Michael Hirsh and John Barry, Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq, Newsweek --- British armed forces broke into Basra jail, and freed two undercover, "British" agents arrested by the Iraqi police while allegedly traveling in an unmarked car, in civilian - some say Arab - dress, and in possession of explosives.--Enver Masud, Basra: Were the 'British' Undercover Agents Carrying Explosives? Why?, The Wisdom Fund --- The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream," is that the "Salvador Option" has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the U.S., which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the breakup of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration.--John Pilger, The Return of the Death Squads, New Statesman --- Seymour Hersh's recent revelations that the Israeli government is encouraging Kurdish separatism in Iraq, Iran, and Syria should ring a bell for anyone who has followed the long history of English imperial ambitions.--Conn Hallinan, Divide and Rule, Irish Democrat --- . . . in contrast to the embedded lie that the killings are now almost entirely sectarian, 70 per cent of the 1,666 bombs exploded by the resistance in July were directed against the American occupiers and 20 per cent against the puppet police force. Civilian casualties amounted to 10 per cent. In other words, unlike the collective punishment meted out by the US, such as the killing of several thousand people in Fallujah, the resistance is fighting basically a military war and it is winning. That truth is suppressed, as it was in Vietnam.--John Pilger, The return of people power, New Statesman --- . . . the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the "Salvador Option" after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rights abuse.--Kim Sengupta, Operation enduring chaos, Independent --- The Pentagon's ever-expanding secret armies are deeply enmeshed in such efforts as well. As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes . . . as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA agents.--Chris Floyd, Assassinations, Terrorist Strikes and Ethnic Cleansing: Bush's Shadow War in Iraq, TruthOut.org --- In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. THE WAR ON ISLAM -- Recipient Human Rights Foundation Gold Award FREE from <http://www.twf.org/Library/woi3aL.pdf>http://www.twf.org/Library/woi3aL.pdf SUBSCRIBE to our mailing list at <http://www.twf.org/twflist/subscribe.html>http://www.twf.org/twflist/subscribe.html -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/