Before I begin, let’s get something clear: I don’t mean this to be a prediction. I don’t do concrete predictions, because they’re all too likely to fall flat on their faces. It’s more that I’m doing an exploration of the realms of the possible.

Now I have no evidence that an attack on Iran by the US and/or its alleged ally, “Israel”, is inevitable or even seriously contemplated. However, here are the reasons I think such an attack is not impossible:

1. The first reason is the nature of the Zionist regime. It’s no great secret that for all its democratic pretensions, the Zionist regime is in trouble. It’s one of several countries in the world that keep its people under the thumb by the use of terror – not terror directed at the people directly, but terror as in keeping them in a state of perpetual fear. (This is also the way the Bush regime acted between 2001 and 2006, before people simply got tired of being afraid.) In any case, you can only use fear so long before it either drives people away or else desensitises them. This is happening now in “Israel” with more Jews moving out than are actually moving in. I say “Jews”, not “people”, because as far as the Zionist regime is concerned the non-Jews might as well not exist, as Golda Meir once stated officially.

So the Zionist state faces major problems. If it does nothing, the Arabs will simply swamp it because of higher birth rates and because even with total American protection, the Zionist entity cannot kill or ethnic cleanse every Arab within “Greater Israel”. It is trying to even things by importing fake Jews like the Mizos of India, a Mongoloid people some of whose members claim to be one of the “lost tribes of Israel” and who are using this as a passport to what they fondly imagine to be a “better life”. But there are simply not enough Jews, fake or genuine, willing to immigrate into “Israel” to even things out.

The second option before the Zionist state is to begin a war. A war can be sure to attract domestic support – just look at the US between 2001 and 2003. You can do anything in a war, accuse all opponents of being unpatriotic, anything. They will fall in line at once.

The last time, “Israel” started a war in 2006 against Lebanon which it was sure of winning easily; but it got its ass whacked right and proper by Hizbollah, which it therefore describes as a “terrorist” force. In fact, it’s obvious that the Zionists can’t win an asymmetric war. Despite turning the entire Gaza strip into a giant concentration camp, they have yet to defeat Hamas, a much smaller and weaker foe than Hizbollah.

So the Zionist entity can’t win a war against guerrillas, and it knows it. It can, however, fight and win a conventional war. This is because not only does it have automatic access to the most effective American weaponry and electronics, but also because it has a nuclear arsenal which it will use if faced with defeat. And because of reasons I shall examine shortly, it can be certain of being allowed to get away with that.

So, here is the first reason why there may be an attack on Iran: the fact that the Zionazi entity called “Israel” needs a war.

2. The second reason there may be a war is the nature of the Bush regime in the US. Anyone who seriously thinks that the neocons have been chastened by the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences is badly mistaken. Neocons don’t inhabit the same world as you and I do: they live in a fantasy world where black can be white and vice versa. They refer to you and me as people who live in the “reality based world” and proclaim that they “create their own reality”. You cannot expect sane thinking from such people because they have no ability to sanely process their inputs. You can find plenty of examples right here on this site of neocon thinking processes.

Just because Bush is on the way to being gone doesn’t mean the neocons are down and out. Bush himself will want to go out on a high; even he knows that the Iraq invasion has not exactly increased his popularity and he will want the tag of a “victorious” war president. A quick and facile “victory”, before the costs of war set in, will allow him to claim that he won the war; it was his successor who lost it.

Then, the US economy is in recession, and needs stimulation. War is a marvellous stimulant of an economy like that of the US (the Great Depression was finally cured by World War II), which is largely dependent on the military/industrial complex. Actually, with its massive donations to the political establishment, it’s now the military/industrial/political multiplex (MIP for short), and can – does – influence US government policy, as Eisenhower himself admitted a long time ago.

Of course, you shouldn’t forget the fact that the Republicans are on the defensive in the November elections: no one can really expect McCain to win. But McCain is the alleged “war hero”, unlike the “Muslim” Obama. So if there is a war, it automatically drastically strengthens McCain’s hand and lets the neocons stay in power for four years more.

And here we come to another little fact that doesn’t get mentioned much in polite society; the Zionist lobby and its effect on US politics. I say Zionist lobby advisedly, not Jewish, because the only raison d’ etre of this lobby is the protection and promotion of the interests of “Israel” and not of Jews anywhere else. However, the Zionist lobby works hard at equating Judaism with Zionism, so any anti-Zionist viewpoint can be condemned as anti-Jewish. Because the Zionist state needs a war, as I said, the Zionist lobby will argue in favour of this war. It will ensure the US does everything possible, and more, to make sure the Zionazis can get away with doing anything and everything in the course of this war. And because the Zionist lobby and the Zionazi entity seem to have an incredible influence on US foreign policy, they will try and force the US to fight “Israel’s” war for it. This is at least as true if the Democrats are in power as if the Republicans are; remember Hillary the Klingon saying she will “obliterate” Iran if it attacks “Israel” and Barack Obama (how I hate writing the man’s first name on MS Word, since it always auto-corrects it to “barrack”) saying Iran is "the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation".

3. The third reason there may be a war is the nature of the regime in power in Tehran. Now there are plenty of reasons to support Iran in this “controversy”; it’s the underdog, it’s obviously being targeted through no fault of its own, it’s the victim of neo-imperialism and economic megalomania. But at the same time it’s impossible to deny that there are many, many things wrong with the Islamic republic. It’s impossible to deny that the people are restive and there is mass disillusionment with the Ahmadinejad regime, which like the Lula government in Brazil (to mention only one example) systematically betrayed the promises it made when it came to power. This wouldn’t have mattered if Iran was a theocratic monarchy like the great US ally in West Asia, Saudi Arabia, or a complete and ruthless dictatorship like Egypt, another (now there’s a surprise, I think not)  US ally. But Iran is a democracy, with (at least relatively) free and fair elections, and politicians who fail to keep their promises should be prepared to pay for it with their positions come poll-time.

So, although President Ahmadinejad certainly never said that “Israel” should be wiped off the map (and – as I shall discuss – even if he had said it, he had no way of making it happen), he has been working to keep tensions high as a way of gathering support behind his regime, quite like the way the Zionazi entity has been operating on its own people. It may even be that the Iranian regime wants a limited attack carried out on it; this would be a nice cause celebre to gather the support of the population as the defender of the country.

Then, the Iranian armed forces, though much stronger than the pathetic Iraqi and Afghan armies, are extremely weak. Iran has never really recovered from the Iranian revolution and the eight year Iran-Iraq war. It ended up using waves of child soldiers in that war to attack Iraqi positions, so parlous was its inventory of weapons. And it has not really added much to that since then. Its air force still uses F4 Phantoms of Vietnam War vintage and F14 Tomcat fighters without spare parts. It has a speedboat navy and an infantry army. It certainly has neither nuclear weapons nor a programme that could produce any rapidly, because that would have automatically rendered it immune to American aggression (remember North Korea?). It does have some ballistic missiles, but there’s good reason to believe the capabilities of these missiles is exaggerated. All this is significant because it means that Iran is not a significant opponent in a conventional war. Its armed forces can be rapidly overwhelmed, so long as one doesn’t want to occupy the nation afterwards. In short, it’s just the sort of weak opponent the US loves to attack.

4. The fourth reason there may be a war is the slew of right wingnut regimes coming to power in the European Union, from Merkel in Germany to Sarkozy in France and the return of Berlusconi in Italy. These three countries are the driving force of the EU, and the foremost thing in common between the three gangsters in charge of these nations is that all three seem to think that having right wing economic views oblige them to have ultra-right wing political views as well, including support to neo-colonialism. I think it’s safe to say that had Merkel and Sarkozy been in power in 2003, Germany and France would have enthusiastically joined in invading Iraq.

I’m leaving Britain out of the discussion about European regimes because Britain, whichever party is in power, has so long surrendered its independence that it has no longer any pretence to a foreign policy of any nature; the White House only has to whistle and 10 Downing Street will promptly turn somersaults.

5. The fifth, admittedly speculative, reason there may be a war is the current Indian government’s determination to turn itself into a servant of the US. As I said here, there are excellent reasons to believe that the Unclear Deal our “prime minister” signed with Bush has hidden protocols; and here is my reading of those hidden protocols:

(a) India, which has one of the world’s largest economies, will throw it open to American firms without any of the normal checks and balances;

(b) India, with enormous and growing expenditure on its defence forces, will award all the lucrative contracts to the Americans; and

(c) India, with one of the world’s strongest and most brainless armies, led by officers who are totally subservient to the politicians, will send troops to enforce any future US occupation. There is a precedent. Even without any Unclear Deal, the then Indian government all but sent troops to Iraq in 2003. It identified the divisions to be sent and the military commanders all accepted their orders without demur, until they found out that they wouldn’t be paid by the Americans for putting their lives on the line, when they suddenly lost their enthusiasm. Meanwhile massive public outrage at the invasion also scuppered the government’s enthusiasm for the project. But the present government seems to be determined to enslave the country at all costs and doesn’t look like it gives a damn for what the people think.   

The Indian army matters as a factor in there being a war because the US is so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that it’s difficult to see it managing another occupation on its own. It needs warm bodies – cannon fodder on the ground. Most of its official “allies” have had enough of sacrificing their own personnel for Uncle Sam’s benefit, so it needs India, which gives not a damn about its soldiers’ lives. It gives not a damn about its soldiers’ lives because in India only the poor and the dispossessed join the army, not the elite who actually run things and who openly say that there is nothing more important than keeping Washington in good humour.

6. The sixth reason is the mindset of the American people. After all, the neocon propaganda machine doesn’t have to convince everyone in the world. It only has to convince enough of the American people to “manufacture consent”, as the phrase goes. I’m sorry if I’m offending any Americans here, but I know of no other people in the world who could have been brainwashed so easily into believing that Saddam Hussein was behind the 11/9 (so-called ”9/11”) attacks. Perhaps it comes from living in a country which refuses to allow mass logical thinking. It still refuses to use even the metric system and most of its people refuse to admit evolution even happened. Such people aren’t too difficult to brainwash, it seems to me. The propaganda machine is already in full swing.

Once the American people are convinced of the need for a war, the American government can claim popular support for its war and can order its vassal states to fall into line. As we saw during Iraq, the vassal governments uniformly ignored their own peoples’ opinion and decided to send troops to help in the invasion. Won’t be all that different this time round.  

OK, so these are the reasons why there may be a war. If there is a war, how might it go? The way I see it, it depends on the strategy the Americans and their Zionist controllers follow.

1. If the war consists of a limited bombing attack on one or more Iranian nuclear sites. This is the least likely scenario if one thinks the Zionists actually believe that Iran has a nuclear programme. It would do only limited damage, unite the Iranian people behind Ahmadinejad, and the Iranians would likely really begin on a nuclear weapons programme. It would most probably not react too aggressively, limiting itself to shooting down as many of the enemy aircraft as it could (and Russia is supplying surface-to-air missiles to even things up a bit) but would also most likely reduce oil production as a retaliatory measure. The price of oil would go so high the current rates would be called the “good old days”.
2. If the war consists of a massive bombing campaign on numerous Iranian sites, whether carried out by “Israel” or the US or a combination thereof, with or without the use of nuclear weapons. This is the most likely scenario. It would probably succeed in destroying the bombed sites. Tehran would have no choice – it would have to retaliate. This it could do by missile attacks against American bases in West Asia, and against “Israel”, but these would achieve little because ballistic missiles without nuclear weapons are not very destructive. It would almost certainly also block the Straits of Hormuz, closing off a good percentage of the world’s oil supplies. This they can do temporarily with missiles and substantially less temporarily by sinking blockships in the Straits. This is the same technique Nasser successfully used in Suez in 1956. Again, the global oil prices will rise sky-high.
3. If the war consists of an invasion and occupation of Iran. This is possible but not probable, because controlling a nation the size of Iran isn’t so simple even with Indian vassal troops doing the dying on the ground. Afghanistan and Iraq, with readymade ethnic and religious divides to exploit, still hold out against the invaders. There’s no reason to think the Imperium will be more successful in Iran, a nation which is much more homogeneous and united behind its government. The war will go on and on and on.

All right, let’s assume there has been a (major) war. Who benefits?

1. The Zionist regime benefits, in the short term, for reasons I mentioned earlier. It will not survive in the long term, but the timeline for its final collapse is so far off that it will help no one alive now, Palestinian or Iranian.
2. The neocons benefit because of the boost their election chances will receive.
3. The MIP multiplex benefits because of massive new orders for weaponry.
4. The US oil industry will be ecstatic because increasing oil prices will swell its profits and because right wing politicians will seize the opportunity to press for drilling for oil in ecologically fragile zones like Alaska and for attacks on other vulnerable oil producers like Venezuela to take over their oil industries.

And who loses?

1. The Iranian people, of course. This is obvious.
2. The Palestinians, since the Zionazis are likely to attack them while the world’s attention is focussed on Iran.
3. The soldiers of the attacking nations, whether Americans or Indian vassal troops or whatever, since in each case people with no personal stake in the military will be sending poverty draftees to die. 

I don’t say there will be a war. But reading what I do here, and re-reading what I’ve just written, I’m fairly certain that there will, and very soon, too.

There is a place in Cuba called Guantanamo Bay.

Yes, I know you know there is a place called Guantanamo Bay. So what? Why am I re-stating the obvious?

Because some places become metaphors, if you will, of things beyond themselves. Berlin became a metaphor of the Cold War, for instance. Berlin, and the Wall, were more than a city and a wall. Berlin was a state of mind.

Guantanamo is another state of mind.

Let’s see what Guantanamo has become.

In the first place, it is a relic of the time where small and weak countries could be arm-twisted into ceding  territory to bigger, more rapacious powers “in perpetuity” – whatever that might mean in the context of a planet scheduled to be fried by the sun in a few thousand million years. Hmm…perhaps that time never really left, what with the largest embassy in the planet coming up in Baghdad.

Then, of course, it is the mindset where one doesn’t have to be guilty of anything to be stuffed into a cage, blindfolded and deafened, for years on end, and – if one is very lucky – released without so much as a word of apology. More than the Gulag, it is the ultimate silencing of dissent in any form - because it's in the full public glare.

It’s a metaphor for a state of being where the end now officially justifies the means, so much so that the means become the most important thing and the end is relegated to a footnote. In fact the means can militate against the end; it does not matter. The means matter – nothing else does.

And of course Guantanamo  is a symbol of the ultimate dropping of a mask, where a system that pretended equality and liberty showed itself for what it had always been – you only had to ask the Hispanics, Native Americans, and blacks.

It’s a place in Cuba, it’s a state of mind, it’s a system. It’s no longer a place in Cuba any more. Really. We’re all living in Guantanamo.

We just haven’t realised it yet.

They are interesting because they invariably claim (or parrot American claims made by such neocon luminaries as Frederick Kagan) that the situation in Iraq is "steadily improving."

Maybe we should check out how the situation is "improving"?

First, the Iraqi militias are (allegedly) ganging up on Al Qaeda.

Now, there is no such thing as Al Qaeda inside Iraq. The organisation is called Al Qaeda In Mesopotamia (AQIM) (formerly Al Qaeda in Iraq, AQI) and is an independent franchise started by the late unlamented Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, and given belated recognition by the Osama bin Laden - Ayman Al Zawahiri duo. Still, if this is true, it's certainly good news, because AQIM had no plans to liberate the Iraqi people from occupation. What they wanted was for the Americans to stay indefinitely in Iraq so as to bleed them white and also so as to recruit a generation of Islamic holy warriors - the opposite of the secular opposition to the occupation. What happened to the Iraqis mattered not at all to them.

Even President Saddam Hussein, in the days prior to his "capture", had issued a statement asking Iraqis to beware of foreign jihadi elements.

Then, when the Iraqi resistance started (as even Bush has admitted) there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq, in whatever form. That began after the Iraqi resistance  - led by such folk as the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Al Qassas Brigade, Al Rashedeen Army, and other outfits that were either left-secular or  Islamic but not jihadi, and all domestic - had taken off and was in fact flourishing. It was only then that the jihadis whom the Ba'ath party had kept crushed began operating, and began trying openly for major internecine fighting between Shias and Sunnis - which is now an open civil war.

The domestic Iraqi militias, who had never wanted the focus to shift from the anti-American struggle to a civil war, hated the AQIM and (even if for purely tactical reasons they may have co-operated with it on rare occasions) would love to get it out of the way so that they could go back to their primary purpose – fighting the Americans.

Remember that AQIM attacks made up only a tiny fraction of anti-occupation attacks in Iraq – destroying AQIM is not going to have any adverse effect on the freedom movement. Far from it.

Thus, it’s no surprise that they may join hands against AQIM and may even successfully destroy it. All that its destruction will mean is that the Sunni militant groups can get back to fighting the Americans without having to bear the tag of association with jihadis.

If it also means a reduction in mass suicide bombings, not all of which can be conclusively proved to be the handiwork of AQIM (why were two British SAS men captured in Basra in Mahdi Army uniforms in 2005, in a car crammed with explosives, and why did the British storm a police station to release them before they could be interrogated?) – all the better.

Secondly, the claim is that things are improving because the number of deaths in sectarian violence has fallen and because people are returning to Baghdad. Duh, of course the number of deaths has fallen. Sectarian violence has just about ethnically cleansed all mixed population areas and turned Sunni and Shia areas into gigantic armed camps. When there are no victims any more, who are you going to kill?

And as for people returning – spare me. Countries like Lebanon and Syria have reached saturation point – they simply cannot accept any more refuges and are turning them back. What the hell are the refugees supposed to do, apply to Bush for visas? How about earning a living, however precarious? Of course they are going back, because the chances of dying of electric drill and bomb, however high, are better than the certainty of dying of starvation.

Meanwhile, Shia militia control Basra and the Kurds are becoming the top point of new violence in Iraq, which is slightly ironic – in 2003, when the Indian pro-American fifth column were agitating for Indian troops to be sent to Iraq, they kept saying that the soldiers would be posted in Kurdish areas, where there was no danger of any conflict for ever and ever, amen. And there is still no “Iraqi national government” and never will be – once the Americans are forced out, they will be at one another’s throats again. Just wait for it.

The Indian media, however, is not where you will find any news of all this.

    

Got a Headache?

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The best in the business

You’d better believe it.

(If you don’t, or if you believe - or even read - lies like these, we’ll shoot off your pecker – like we’re doing to all those ragheads in Eye-rack)

 

With enemies like George W. Bush, who needs friends?

Cut to Afghanistan, 2001. Approximately 90% or more of the country was under Taliban control. Just pockets in the extreme north and the Panjshir valley were still with the warlords of the northern Alliance, but these areas had held out so long that they were virtually impregnable.

In the Taliban-controlled south, however, things were not exactly great. The Taliban were under extreme economic pressure due to the mass sanctions against them. Drought ravaged the land. All the fantasies about Unocal-approved gas pipelines from Central Asia had been abandoned because the Americans no longer backed the Taliban as they had in the early days. And, where the Taliban had managed to earn substantial amounts from the sale of poppy products (opium, morphine and heroin) earlier, Mullah Omar had banned poppy growth and the Taliban had almost eradicated it. Yeah – there are some positive things to being an absolute ruler. You can get some things done.

Now, while in the earlier years the people had supported the Taliban simply because they needed security against the murderous and criminal Mujahideen “rulers”, once the security had been provided they needed something else. Once people can live free of the fear of being robbed, raped, or shot if they walked down to the corner shop, they begin to ask for more. Even if you’re a pure Islamic holy warrior host who won’t allow polluting things like culture, you still have to provide food, clothing and shelter for the population, and employment, and education, and other intangibles like satisfaction with life. Right?

It would be difficult for anyone, given the circumstances. For the Taliban, it was an impossibility. Jehadis are piss-poor rulers. Revolutions are all very fine when you’re fighting Western cultural pollution and Mujahideen bandits, but after a time, when all the women are in burqas and all the men have fist length beards, you have to begin filling their bellies and curing their illnesses. The Taliban might have got somewhere had they had something in the way of ruling talent, but they danced to the tune of Mullah Omar, a financial genius of such proportions that he kept the entire national treasury in two tin trunks under his bed in Kandahar. One trunk was full of Afghanis, the other of US dollars (vide Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords). Some whiz-kid, yes. And while we’re about it remember that Islam already outlaws such things as lending money for interest and so on.

So, it isn’t too surprising that by 2001 the Taliban were creaking and nearing collapse. I’m sure that if they didn’t have the residual civil war to keep them glued together, they would have fallen apart then. As it was, the relative moderates among the Taliban were not exactly happy with Omar’s policies. They didn’t like the Arabs of Osama bin Laden, whom they considered unwelcome foreign interlopers and a millstone round their neck. They wanted engagement with the world, not confrontation. They even, to this end, tried to signal to the US that they would be ready for bin Laden to be conveniently “grabbed” – but the US refused to act.

Then what happened? 11/9, or, as the Americans put it, 9/11. NATO invaded Afghanistan, and with the help of the Northern Alliance, “toppled” the Taliban. It wasn’t all that much of a “toppling”, the Taliban put up remarkably little fight, melting away into the tribal areas and waiting for the occupation to make a mess of things. Which it obligingly and promptly did, including indiscriminately bombing civilians, handing the nation back to warlords, and moving on to the invasion of Iraq, leaving the Taliban structure intact to fight another day.

And, therefore, today, outside the confines of Kabul, the Taliban have built right back up again, repositioned themselves as "nationalists", and the people, who hate and fear the occupation forces with excellent reason, are turning again to the Taliban as their saviours. There are excellent reasons to think the Taliban will be back in Kabul in some form in the not too distant future, perhaps as part of a “national unity” government, but back, yes, and more radicalised than ever. That’s what you get by gratuitously attacking an enemy which was about to implode anyway.

I’m not saying Bush was deliberately setting out to help the Taliban…but he couldn’t have done any better if he had.  

Well, it's been a while since I was bashing Bush, but now that Malcolm's left someone's got to do it...

Not that bashing Bush has ever been difficult. No.

However, since Bush's crimes are now glaringly in the open, and can't be covered up any more, he seems to have made the decision of projecting those crimes as a positive thing.

Want to know what I'm talking about?

Well, to any rational individual, the surge in Iraq is failing - has been failing since the moment it was declared. Yet, Bush is not just committed to the surge, he's got himself an open ended funding for it. Why? Why would he want to push for a failed strategy?

Here is my opinion: so that more American soldiers can die. This is why American soldiers are being pushed forward into the firing line, every day, and being killed in larger and larger numbers.

Because, once more and more American soldiers die, Bush and Cheney can claim that there can be no withdrawal from Iraq because of all the American blood that has been shed; since then it could be said that all that blood was shed in vain.

Because, Cheney, who is still plugging the long discredited line (even denied by Bush himself) that Iraq had any links with Al Qaeda, doesn't live in a sane world.  And Cheney is Bush's controller, as is obvious to just about everyone these days.

Because, once the word "sacrifice" is uttered, like the word "patriotism", the Democrats can be depended on to fall into line and crawl into a whimpering, foetal, compliant heap.

Because, the politics of the Republicans and Democrats alike take heed neither of reality nor of the wishes of the American people, including the soldiers who have to do the dying, and who are now overwhelmingly against this war.  

Because, so long as the war can be made to go on, everyone in the Bush cabal continues to benefit.

Bush, because if he can keep the troops in Iraq till he leaves office, can claim that the inevitable defeat occurred on someone else's watch, and he is therefore a "war president" who is not to blame.

Cheney and the other stakeholders, because so long as the war goes on the military-industrial complex continues to make excellent profits, as do private armies like Blackwater, all of which can translate into excellent kickbacks.

Nouri al Maliki and other Iraqi "government" figures, because the war is the only way they can stay alive inside their Green Zone and wield some pathetic excuse of authority  

and the oil lobby, which still hasn't given up hope of squeezing a profit out of Iraq, the raison d'etre of the invasion in the first place and the reason why an "oil law" is being forced on Iraq to privatise its entire oil output.

Unfortunately for Bush, as a strategy it sucks. This was why the Nazis got beaten in Stalingrad. "Where the German soldier sets foot, he remains," Hitler had declared, and entombed his Sixth Army. But no one ever accused the neocons of knowing or understanding history.

And this is why American soldiers, along with countless Iraqis, will continue to die.

After all the posing in uniform and the histrionics and the threats to resign his commission if not sent to Iraq, Herr Junior Fuehrer won't be going there after all. He won't even be resigning.

Now isn't that just fine, seeing that the situation in Basra has never been better, which is why the Brits are beginning to withdraw troops (or so Bush said). Maybe there was no fighting for Harry to do, and he seems certainly extraordinarily keen to shed Iraqi blood.

Or maybe they decided a Spare in the trunk is better than one in pieces.

I wonder if this guy is driven to prove that he's not a wimp, coming as he does from one of the world's most useless families? Or is it the von Battenberg blood showing through?

Knowing that they'll never have to fight, why do all these guys go through military training at all? Cachet? 

Pity, though. Despite the media blitz that would've followed, I'd have really enjoyed this little nazi being blown in half on his first day in country. Like the people here, I wonder what the impact would have been.

Incidentally, this morning on CNN I was watching a Marine Corps unit in "action" in Iraq. There was the usual incestuous, I mean embedded, journalist along, dressed like them in flak vest and Kevlar helmet, looking significantly into the camera as he did his thing about the glorious mission, OK, about the anti-terror mission, glorious missions have been abandoned since about late 2003. In the background were some Iraqi troops in blue uniforms, not a flak vest in sight, with berets on their heads. The allies who are supposed to "stand up."

When they break down doors and storm into houses where an armed fighter might be crouching, AK 47 at the ready, who goes in first, the armoured Marine or the virtually defenceless Iraqi?

I wonder!  

I first heard of Riverbend while reading one of Lew Rockwell’s articles – reprinted from lewrockwell.com – on antiwar.com. Rockwell was talking about her blog, Baghdad Burning, as a source of real news – as opposed to embedded reportage and similar trash – and talked about how relieved he was that after a long pause she was posting again. She could have been…cleansed…you know.

Well, I went over and checked out the blog for myself and I was hooked thereafter. Riverbend didn’t just speak honestly – she is one of the best writers I have ever come across. More than good enough to write professionally.

As car bombs and sectarian conflict erupted, as Riverbend found herself even unable to drive a car, as freedoms disappeared and American walls came up to create "Warsaw ghettos" between those who had never had any rancour towards each other, as Iraqi “government” forces raped women and were rewarded by the “prime minister” for doing so, Riverbend went on writing. She was the perfect antidote for the John McCain style of propaganda – a knife of truth against a septic tank of lies.

And now what happens?

Riverbend is leaving. Her family, like everyone else who wants a life better than mere survival, can no longer stay.

I’m reprinting her latest blog post:

The Great Wall of Segregation...

…Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis.

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion- a last case scenario- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

After Jordan or Syria- where then? Obviously, either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else. They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees, and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by, and getting a residency is even more difficult. There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border. Thousands of Iraqis aren't being let into Syria or Jordan- and there are no definite criteria for entry, the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.

An airplane isn't necessarily safer, as the trip to Baghdad International Airport is in itself risky and travelers are just as likely to be refused permission to enter the country (Syria and Jordan) if they arrive by airplane. And if you're wondering why Syria or Jordan, because they are the only two countries that will let Iraqis in without a visa. Following up visa issues with the few functioning embassies or consulates in Baghdad is next to impossible.

So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

It's difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.

Another voice silenced. Another victory for Bush the Liberator. I’m so sad and angry, I could spit.

On the other hand, we might at last see her face and know her real name. And she would at least survive, which is more than most Iraqis can expect these days.

Mission accomplished.

"Oh yes, Lord, we thy servants are fighting against a cruel, merciless magician who made us begin a war we could not win!"

Believe it or not, Karl Rove says it was Osama bin Laden's idea to invade Iraq.  

That proves it. The Bushies, sorry, patriotic Christian soldiers, are fighting against the hordes of Evil with one hand tied behind their backs.

Time to take the nuclear kid gloves off.

"Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb the world..."

It's becoming difficult even to lampoon these guys any more. They're parodies of themselves. 

Four years after that carefully staged demolishing of Saddam Hussein's statue by a small group of US-controlled Ahmed Chalabi militiamen, massive anti-American demonstrations 

"I note today that Sadr called for massive protests. I'm not sure that we've seen ... the numbers that he was seeking in his call from his hangout in