Europe agrees to abductions, torture

So much for the pretense of the EU to be against what the U.S. is illegally doing. So now the EU is complicit in these abhorrent and illegal activities. And with that, the Geneva Conventions are also discarded. The ruling elites, who are the real powers to whom governments and economies answer, have now decided.

Now it's entirely up to the European People and perhaps the individual European countries whether they approve of this, for the EU has failed them, just as the US government has failed the American People. Do the People want continual war and rape in the world, and a police state at home or not? Only the People can stand up to the ruling elites now; their federal governments have failed them.
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European governments make their peace with Washington on abductions, torture.

European ministers have signalled an end to any pretence of opposing America’s practice of rendition, which involves shipping detainees abroad to be tortured—using European airports and even CIA bases located in eastern Europe.

Following a formal dinner in Brussels on December 7, in advance of the next day’s meeting of NATO foreign ministers, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium all proclaimed themselves satisfied with reassurances by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the US abides by the Geneva Convention in its treatment of prisoners.

“Secretary Rice promised that international agreements are not interpreted any differently in the United States than they are in Europe.”

The meeting was “very satisfactory for all of us,” he added.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot said he left Wednesday night’s dinner “very satisfied” by Rice’s comments.

NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer was similarly effusive. Rice had “cleared the air. You will not see this discussion continuing.”

He was as good as his word. The next day NATO foreign ministers met to discuss increasing the organisation’s military presence in Afghanistan to allow Washington to reduce the number of US troops stationed there. The issue of covert prisons and detainee treatment was not even discussed.

Human rights groups rejected Rice’s reassurances.

It should also be noted that under international law, a country must allow the International Red Cross access to detention facilities, so as to check official claims about the treatment and condition of prisoners. The US has flatly denied the International Red Cross any information about, let alone access to, its secret prisons, and all but blocked the international body from inspecting known facilities such as Guantánamo Bay and prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Triumph of the Beast

This article by Dahr Jamail - an independent journalist in Iraq - is riveting. If you are not acquainted with him, you can read more about him and his site here. Few articles I have seen have laid it out regarding torture as this one.

As one man said: “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.”

A must read.

Triumph of the Beast

The torture of Iraqi detainees by US military forces is undeniable. We now know the Bush administration condoned torture even before Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched upon Afghanistan and Iraq, in this post-9/11 hysteria of terrorist infiltration on American soil.

During a recent trip to Panama, President Bush pontificated that Americans “do not torture”—his deployment of executive authority to keep Congress from imposing rules on prisoner treatment notwithstanding. With the implementation of the Patriot Act of 2001, President Bush was given express power to declare anyone suspected of having a connection to terrorists or terrorism an “enemy combatant” and thereby suspend his right to habeas corpus. The Senate diligently voted to cast innocent people into pain and darkness without recourse or rights.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, in his confirmation hearing proceedings, represented the American way in matters of torture to be waterboarding, use of dogs to induce stress, forced nudity, hooding, sensory deprivation, food and sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, a face or stomach slap, the forcible injection of mood-altering drugs, mock executions, and threatening to send detainees to countries where they would be tortured, “might… be permissible in specific circumstances, if appropriately limited, depending on the nature of the precise conduct under consideration.”

The Senate Judiciary members failed to question Gonzalez about a March 2003 Associated Press report referring to the “the (U.S.) military listening closely to Israeli experts and picking up tips from years of Israeli Army operations in Palestinian areas and Lebanese towns.”

BBC’s Caroline Hawley in Baghdad reported the discovery of 173 Iraqis imprisoned in the central Jadiriya district of Baghdad by Iraqi security forces.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim concurred with the Hawley’s report that the detainees appeared malnourished, and may have been “subjected to some kind of torture. “In order to search for a terrorist, they used to detain hundreds of innocent people and torture them brutally,” Abdul-Hamid, added, an apparent precondition of democracy in Iraq.

Seymour Hersh has said that the U.S. government has videotapes of children being raped at Abu Ghraib prison. “Some of the worst things have happened you don’t know, okay?

Why the compulsion to torture? Roger Burbach and Jim Tarbell wrote in their book, Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire, as “an imperial nation flagrantly imposing its will on others.” Torture demonstrates a righteousness based on the conviction that the virtues of democracy need to be promoted with the real intention to “ensure that the US penetrates other countries’ economies” – the same purpose that animates the US policy in Central and Latin America. The catchphrase, “free market democracies” is deconstructed as “controlled democracies that would recognize the prerogatives of international conflict.” And what better way to emerge as an unchallenged world empire under the guise of the “war on terrorism” as the means to promote a “petro-military complex” than by perpetuating armed conflict and torturing others into compliance.

If one senses a beast bearing on the world, it is a familiar one; it came from the darkest organic forces in American Cold War politics.

The terrorist attacks, however misguided and criminal, can be directly traced to US military presence in Arab countries, and as an effort to stop foreign corporate takeover and a seemingly unending Bushist totalitarian military crusade. Tariq Ali writes in Planet Porto Alegre of Bush’s warmongering, “It is a multi purpose mantra. The first aim is to convince the public that the terrorists are crazed Muslims who are bombing modernity/democracy/freedom/ ‘our values’, etc.”

Much more to read here...

The Problem Is the Invasion Stupid…Not the Pull Out!

The Problem Is the Invasion Stupid…Not the Pull Out!

I want to clear this up once and forever…the problems that can be caused by an early pull out of Iraq should not mask the problems that the invasion itself caused. Regardless of what our exit strategy is the real problems have already been created. While the media try to tell you that an early pull out will embolden the enemy keep in mind that the enemy was created by the invasion itself!

Source (Dec.6)

US “guilty of lawlessness on a truly grand scale”

The problem is that the U.S. has not been held to international standards and law by the world community; and that makes many other nations co-conspirators in a real sense. World leaders aren't blind. Since the U.S. has not signed nor recognized the ICC while many other European nations have, this presents a real problem to the European countries. They could possibly be held guilty under the same circumstances as Nuremberg, while the U.S. walks away. Again.

The only solution that I can see is for the world community to confront the U.S. as a rogue nation, and GB perhaps along with it. And then stick to the international standards and laws.

Nice and high sounding words, but that's not the way the U.S. plays. Big money given or witheld, deception and terrorism are its tools of trade; pretty hard to resist.

Crime does pay if carried out on a large and brazen enough scale, and you remain on the 'winning' side politically, and true history (not the official books) bears this out.

Britain: Former law lord says US “guilty of lawlessness on a truly grand scale”

One of Britain’s top judges, the recently retired Lord Steyn, said Tuesday that the Bush administration’s policy of rendition and its treatment of detainees at Guantánamo are war crimes. He added that anyone who knowingly participates in or facilitates such practices is also guilty.

Steyn was interviewed by Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow on December 6 regarding the CIA’s practice of kidnapping and flying terrorist suspects through European airports to secret detention centres outside the US, where they are subject to torture.

Steyn dismissed Rice’s assertion that existing international law was unsuited for dealing with twenty-first century terrorism, and said her claim that the US was not involved in torture could not be sustained.

“Specifically, when you refer to torture it is very important to know what is meant by torture,” he said. “I’m speaking purely as a lawyer. The US administration has adopted a definition of torture which is extremely narrow. It involves causing death, total organ failure and so forth. The true definition is much wider and it includes coercive questioning.”

Read further...

Corporate plunder of Iraqi oil

This never was a question to many of us, but here is further confirmation and a basic "how it works" outline. And besides, the petro-dollar has to be maintained as is or the US economy will tank. Yesterday. And the petro-dollar is being challenged by Iran and Venezuela, so....guess what?

Report outlines plans for corporate plunder of Iraqi oil.

A report published in November by the London-based environmental and social justice network Platform makes clear that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was, and remains, a war for oil. The document, entitled “Crude Designs: the rip-off of Iraq’s oil wealth”, is a concise review of how Iraq’s vast energy resources, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, will be handed to transnational companies over the next several years.

“Crude Designs” found that if just 12 of Iraq’s undeveloped fields are contracted in a similar fashion to comparable oil fields in Libya, Oman and Russia, transnationals will reap profits of between $74 billion and $194 billion in 2006 dollars over a 30-year period. The estimate, which the report describes as “conservative”, is based on an oil price of $40 per barrel. The current price is closer to $60 per barrel.

The actual bonanza for the oil giants from the invasion of Iraq could run into the trillions. Out of the country’s 80 known fields, just 17 are currently in production. A further 63 undeveloped fields have an estimated 75 billion barrels of oil, while industry experts believe between 100 billion and 200 billion barrels lie in unexplored fields. The country also has enormous untapped reserves of natural gas.

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Venezuelen elections: U.S. interferes yet again

This is what Chavez is about

If this doesn't make you angry about interfering with another country, nothing will. And Venezuela isn't the only country; just that it is lately the target of U.S. dirty tricks, played against select countries since WW2. But Venezuela has a real democracy going, something that the military-industrial/corporate interests in the U.S. (and to a lesser degree Europe) cannot stand. This is brute elite/corporate neo-colonial power against the People, and Chavez is winning at this point. Expect even more dirty tricks up to and including "terrorist" attacks and an invasion.

Venezuelan vote boycott: Washington paves road to intervention

With predictable brazenness, the US State Department on Monday questioned, on grounds of a low turnout, the legitimacy of Sunday’s legislative elections in Venezuela. But, as the US government is well aware, the low vote total was caused in large part by a boycott and sabotage campaign mounted by right-wing opposition parties that Washington supports, both politically and financially.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli, noting that “the abstention rate was very high,” declared, “given that rate of abstention, plus expressions of concern by prominent Venezuelans, we would see that this reflects a broad lack of confidence in the impartiality and transparency of the electoral process.”

The election resulted in a clean sweep by parties supporting the government of President Hugo Chávez. These parties are expected to control all 167 seats in the National Assembly. Turnout was lower than anticipated, with approximately three quarters of potential voters staying away from the polls.

Facing inevitable defeat, the opposition, led by the two parties that had ruled on behalf of the Venezuelan oligarchy for four decades, opted not to participate.

The boycott was spearheaded by the group Súmate, which is funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and whose leader, María Corina Machado, was welcomed by Bush in the Oval Office six months ago. There can be no doubt that this political maneuver was organized in close collaboration with US officials with the aim of providing Washington and the US-backed opposition a pretext for denouncing the Chávez government as a dictatorship and preparing new provocations against Venezuela.

Over the past year, Súmate and the opposition parties, with strong backing from Venezuela’s right-wing privately owned mass media, have waged a non-stop propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the country’s electoral system.

More to read here...

Why is Paul Martin giving $20,000 to support the elite opposition? Canadians, pay attention!


Go to my larger politics blog

800 CIA Secret Flights to and from Europe

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

USA: 800 secret CIA flights into and out of Europe

Amnesty International today revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights in or out of European airspace including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland. The information contradicts assurances given last week by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, that Ireland's Shannon airport had not been used for "untoward" purposes, or as a transit point for terror suspects.

The organisation also rejected assertions by the US Secretary of State as she began a four-nation tour of Europe. In a statement today, Ms Rice argued that rendition -- transferring detainees from country to country without legal process -- was permissible under international law. Although the victims of rendition usually end up in countries known to use torture in their interrogations, Ms Rice added that the US government seeks assurances on treatment from receiving nations. "Flying detainees to countries where they may face torture or other ill-treatment is a direct and outright breach on international law with or without so called "diplomatic assurances". These assurances are meaningless. Countries known for systematic torture, regularly deny the existence of such practices," said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty International's Senior Director of Regional Programmes.

Amnesty international has obtained flight records for six CIA-chartered planes from September 2001 to September of 2005. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration over this period, these planes landed 50 times in Shannon and took off 35 times, suggesting that some flights were kept secret. Although Shannon airport is used as a refuelling stop for the US military, none of the planes were military transport planes. In total for this period, the six planes made some 800 flights originating or landing in Europe. The planes include:

Read on...



Go to my larger politics blog

U.S. defends abductions, torture, secret prisons

The bottom line to all of this is that all of it is patently illegal by international law. Now Bush and Rice are attempting to talk around the issues, supported a bit also by many other countries who talk softly about this, since their own countries were used for in and out going flights, and that the U.S. has told them to stay quiet. The following article has a lot of information.


The Bush administration faced a new barrage of questions and criticism Tuesday over the US policy of kidnapping and torturing suspects in the so-called “war on terror.” One victim of the illegal US practice of “rendition” filed suit against the US government in a Washington-area federal court, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced mounting political controversy in the course of her European trip.

The suit is the first to challenge the practice of rendition as a violation of US and international law.

Appearing by satellite hookup from Germany, al-Masri spoke at the ACLU news conference announcing the suit. “I want to know why they did this to me and how it ever came about,” he said, speaking through an interpreter

From Germany, Rice traveled to Romania to sign an agreement that will give the United States its first military base in a former Soviet bloc country. The facility, Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, is believed to be the site of the one of the secret CIA prisons, according to reports by several human rights organizations.

Polish officials denied reports that Szymany Airport has been the site of a secret CIA prison. At the same time, officials of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia would not comment on the ABC report that the CIA had shifted prisoners to North Africa.

Amnesty International announced Monday that it had obtained the flight logs of six planes that have been used in CIA renditions, making 800 flights in and out of European airspace. Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said the logs were “irrefutable proof that the United States is ‘disappearing’ people into secret facilities where they are held incommunicado without charge, trial, or access to the outside world.”

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We choose not to call it torture

Robert F. Kennedy gives a short comprehensive analysis of our governmental double speak going on about the term Torture.. Senator McCains bill which prohibits "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners" is being heavily campaigned against by Cheney, Rice and Gonzales.. Maybe we should ask them to say which of these terms they object to... Do they want to be allowed to be Cruel? Or Inhuman Or Degrading. Or maybe it's the term "prisoners" they object to. Is that term too broad for them? Excerpt that says it all: "In sum, the White House's policy which we can expect Condi to elaborate "comprehensively" is "we don't torture because we choose not to call it torture and we will fight all efforts to define torture according to its ordinary meaning."

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Merkel sugar-coats program of social cuts

Why am I reminded of the Iron Lady through Blair, and Reagan through Bush2? Already begun in earnest by Schröder, the dismanteling of social support and freedom is being replaced by more corporate and government power. It can also be seen in the Netherlands and western Europe. The elite powers have given the governments their missions. And we're heading back to the past very, very quickly.

Before Merkel dealt with substantive issues in her one-and-a-half-hour speech, delivered November 30, she said that “irrespective of all party differences” she wanted “to personally thank Chancellor Schröder for the fact that he decisively and courageously pushed opened a door to reforms with his Agenda 2010” and implemented these policies “against all resistance.” Schröder had thereby “done our country a service.” Coming at the start of her speech, these remarks represented a rebuff to the millions who had participated last year in demonstrations and protests against the anti-welfare Hartz IV laws and Agenda 2010.

What followed was a form of “newspeak” that would have left George Orwell speechless. The freedom to which Merkel refers is the freedom of the market: i.e., the freedom of the wealthy from any sort of social responsibility, the liberation of entrepreneurs from any commitment to fixed wages or social security contributions, and the stripping away of any democratic control over the government—a process already evident in the manner in which this government came to power.

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U.S. illegal 'renditions' also involves Europe

While Condi admits these illegal renditions, she denies any torture or wrong doing. Both are illegal, not just the torture. This is nothing more than double speak; of course she knows what is happening. And so do the Europeans countries who, by saying nothing, are already accomplices to one degree or another. Condi then is blackmailing Europe into keeping quiet for fear their own involvement will be made public.

I say: Let it all be known. A little sunlight is th best disinfectant.

Rice defends illegal “renditions,” threatens to reveal European collaboration in US crimes

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has responded to Europe’s appeals for information regarding Washington’s illegal practice of rendition by making clear that the practice will continue. In an attempt to turn the tables on European critics, she has implied that should Europe continue to make such demands, Washington will expose the complicity of the European governments, which allowed their airports to be used by CIA planes transporting prisoners to third countries and secret CIA-run prisons.

Renditions involve the moving of alleged terrorists, without any judicial process, to countries where, according to the US government, American law does not apply. Washington routinely sends these prisoners to countries which have been cited by the US State Department for practicing torture. “Extraordinary rendition” refers to the kidnapping of terrorist suspects on foreign soil before they are spirited away to detention centres overseas.

Germany is where CIA flights are known to have landed most frequently—on at least 437 occasions.

It is not credible that so many flights could have occurred without the knowledge of the government.

Read more here.

Chavez’s Party Wins 68% of Seats in Venezuela

Venezuela held a very interesting National Assembly election and Chavez's party won a stunning victory with an unheard of percentage of support. The election was certified by four neighboring countries as good. The opposition parties, seeing they had little chance, decided to boycott the elections and discourage as many voters as possible, hoping to achieve a turnout too low to be considered legitimate. They were backed by the U.S. who wants no part of a real democracy in a country whose resources they want, for the U.S. will then have no control of the resources and will have to do business "the old fashioned way....earn it." Not rob it and leave the population in poverty as is done in so many other countries.

Below are several articles, all from Venezuela Analysis. Click on them for each article or click on this to go to the general site where there are even more articles besides those below.

Chavez’s Party Wins 68% of Seats in Venezuela’s Parliament

Caracas, Venezuela, December 4, 2005—Chavez’s party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR), won 114 or 68% of the 167 seats in the new National Assembly, according to preliminary results that MVR deputy William Lara announced this evening. Pro-Chavez parties won all 167 seats in the new National Assembly.
Read more...

International Observers Ratify Transparency and Legitimacy of Venezuelan Vote

Venezuelan President Accuses US of Masterminding Opposition Election Boycott

How and Why Venezuela’s Opposition Imploded

Big oil involved in Iraq invasion?

Dick Cheney

Document puts lie to oil executives’ testimony

Did Big Oil participate in planning invasion of Iraq?

An official White House document recently acquired by the Washington Post puts the lie to testimony given by executives of five leading oil firms on November 9 before a joint meeting of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees regarding their collaboration in 2001 with Vice President Dick Cheney’s “energy task force,” officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group.

Even before the hearings, the oil bosses had been offered a blank check to lie by Republican Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska. Stevens, in a transparent attempt to spare the executives possible charges of perjury, waived the normal procedure of swearing in witnesses before congressional committees. The hearings were ostensibly called to discuss the suspiciously rapid increase in oil prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but Stevens’s maneuver suggests that he expected the matter of Cheney’s task force might arise. Nonetheless, the executives have placed themselves in potential legal jeopardy through their apparently false testimony. According to US Code, it is illegal to make “any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation” before Congress.

Read on...

America’s Covert War in Iraq

America’s Covert War in Iraq

Ficticious War on Terror

Max Fuller has written the most disturbing and thought provoking article of the year. In his“Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq”, (Global Research) 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 intended to enlist public support for an unpopular conflict.

he 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-consuming fraud that poses the greatest threat to personal freedom and global security the world has ever seen. If unchallenged, the dictatorial-powers of the president will continue to increase and the world to be plunged into another century of war.

Read on...

How the world works on one page

Is that possible? Explaining what is going on and has been for some 100 years (and far longer, really), and then on one page?

In one sense, of course not. And yet, this is much of what is really going on in a nutshell this last century and is far more digestible than volumes and volumes of details and evidence. I think this is a brief sketch that is a must read.

History reveals that a mere handful relatively speaking of individuals are able to determine the fate of millions through the economic and political power they wield. The role of the political class that represents the interests of the owners of economic power is to maintain the rule of the owners of capital by making damn sure that opposition is neutralised and/or made to look ridiculous or ultimately ‘removed’. Hence the ‘loony left’, ‘fellow travellers’, ‘dinosaurs’ et al are but a few of the pejoratives the corporate/state-run media use to marginalise the views of those who oppose such power.

But in times of crisis and failing propaganda and persuasion, more extreme measures need to be taken and such people and movements need to be re-labelled as ‘extremists’ or a ‘danger to the state’. Laws are passed making such opposition illegal, such as those now being enacted, even thinking ‘seditious’ thoughts become the subject of the state’s wrath.

Read on ...

America slowly confronts the truth

Robert Fisk

We all see many, many opinions given about whatever in politics. But there are, and always have been, a few voices that carry a great deal of weight and respect. Robert Fisk is one of those handful. That's why I will pass on his take on things; it carries weight, it has substance. Not just hot air or spin.

Americans are ready to discuss the United States' relationship with Israel. And America's injustices towards the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people.

But the moment that a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war veteran in Washington dared to suggest that the war in Iraq was lost, that US troops should be brought home now - and when the Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned - the old media dog sniffed the air, realised that power was moving away from the White House, and began to drool.

All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qa'ida attacks is replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the east coast, too, the editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing to American journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that US commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control.

When those same Iraqi gunmen this week again took control of the entire city of Ramadi (already "liberated" four times by US troops since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television with Bush's latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi forces - who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they are a knife in America's back - will soon be able to take over security duties from the occupation forces.

Read more from Robert Fisk...

The War on Al Jazeera

The U.S. government administrations and giant media corporations have been controlling the U.S. news for years. But the Bush administration has been controlling the war news from Iraq etc. very effectively as well. And Al Jazeerah has been a specific target all along.
What to do when the war you crafted starts getting bad press? According to a recently leaked memo, Bush would have liked to shoot the messenger -- literally.

Nothing puts the lie to the Bush Administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs.

The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq.

Then in late November came a startling development: Britain's Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked "Top Secret" minutes of the Bush-Blair summit.

Continued...

The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

While George Bush himself may or may not be the brightest, the administration, and specifically, the neocons controling it, are anything but bumbling idiots. They are following the general plans of PNAC and haven't deviated except to address changing situations. Besides this, it is my conclusion that, above and behind the neocons and the administration, are the true elites who control the economies, determine war and peace and the like; all to their advantage. It is they who control the banks and influence or even determine important political candidates/leaders. This article fits rather well with my own general take on 'how the world works.' And in regards to this article, there is evidence enough to support it, both current and historical.

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

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

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

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

Read on...