INCITNG CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ
IS THERE A US PLAN TO DIVIDE THAT COUNTRY?
PLANNING FOR MEDIA PROTESTS MARCH 15

Is Iraq at the “breaking point?” 29 dead yesterday including 3 US service members. More fighting in Iraq reported by MSNBC :

”Fresh attacks across Iraq despite the extension of an unusual daytime curfew heightened fears Saturday that Iraq may be heading toward civil war.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11491483/

AVERTING CIVIL WAR OR ENCOURAGING IT?

CBS News was asking ‘is it Civil War?” on Sunday’s Face the Nation, as other US outlets say it has begun. In more beltway middle of the road blather with NY Times moderate Tom Friedman and and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley the conventional wisdom gets yet another hearing. His lips moved but said very little that was new or memorable.

TIME is also civil war crazed:

’In spite of the Bush administration’s continued calls to end the sectarian violence that has torn through Iraq since the explosion of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, another wave of killings shook the country today, spreading the dread of civil war like brush fire among both Sunnis and Shiites who are already on edge.”

ON THE OTHER HAND

The New York Times leads with peace initiatives from Sunni politicians — an approach that the Guardian took on Saturday. The Guardian in England focuses on initiatives to end the violence. This approach seems different than than that fatalistic acceptance of the civil war scenario.

”Iraq’s leading Sunni political bloc said on Saturday it will rejoin talks to form a government of national unity if the Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, follows through on measures designed to banish the prospect of religious war between Shi’ite and Sunni communities.

“It was a rare ray of hope in an otherwise grim week that saw the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrines. A wave of protests by angry Shi’ite and reprisal attacks by militiamen against Sunni civilians, political parties and mosques killed more than 200 people.”

WHO WAS BEHIND THE ATTACK?

Who was behind this Mosque attack? It seemed to me to be reminiscent in one way of the pre-war Reichstag fire in Germany in the sense that an outrageous symbolic event predictably incites a crisis and provokes revenge and retaliation. Mike Whitney says we don’t know who done it but that it was likely carefully planned by well trained para military units:

”It is difficult to imagine that the perpetrators of this heinous attack didn’t anticipate its disastrous effects. Certainly, the Sunni-led resistance does not benefit from alienating the very people it is trying to enlist in its fight against the American occupation.

“Accordingly, most of the prominent Sunni groups have denied involvement in the attack and dismissed it as collaboration between American and Iranian intelligence agencies. A communiqué from “The Foreign Relations Department of the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party” denounced the attack pointing the finger at the Interior Ministry’s Badr Brigade and American paramilitaries.

“The Ba’ath statement explains: “America is the main party responsible for the crime of attacking the tomb of Ali al-Hadi…because it is the power that occupies Iraq and has a basic interest in committing it.” The escalation of differences between America and Iran has found their main political arena in Iraq, because the most important group of agents of Iran is there and are able to use the blood of Iraqis and the future of Iraq to exert pressure on America. Iran has laid out a plan to embroil America in the Iraqi morass to prevent it from obstructing Iran’s nuclear plans. “

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12063.htm

Why blame the US? Critics in Iraq say it is because it the US started reinforcing the ethnic card, playing on and playing up ethnic and religious differences that were always there but for years were subsumed in the idea of Iraq as one nation. They sought to fragment the country.

One of the features I like in the Information Clearing House emails, (perhaps because it is conspicuously absent from most media coverage) is the constant reminder every day of the costs of this war:

Number Of Iraqi civilians Slaughtered In America’s War 100,000 +

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7170.htm

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Slaughtered (Officially acknowledged) In Bush’s War 2288
http://icasualties.org/oif/

The War in Iraq Costs
$243,402,318,292

See the cost in your community:

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

DIVIDE AND RULE

Is divide and rule the strategy? “Divide and rule, a tactic that has been used for centuries especially by British colonialism and every act of the occupiers since March 2003 points to this as the central strategy of the USUK.”

Bill Bowles makes this charge in a report filed from his info nerve center in London earlier demanded, “Let’s turn the ‘civil war’ into a media war!”

”….the corporate/state media still need to be called to task over their distorted and misleading coverage, replete with every stereotype; ethnic, religious, ‘tribal’, et al. , as well their predictable ‘I told you so’ bullshit and predictions of doom.

“Yet the reality is, that if the agent provocateurs are allowed to continue in their murderous assault on the good people of Iraq, on behalf of their USUK paymasters, the situation could well reach the proverbial ‘point of no return’.

“Therefore, I suggest readers take it upon themselves to bombard the MSM with stories, links, eyewitness accounts etc of what really went down at the Askariyah shrine in Samarra.”

Http://www.williambowles.info

For more on what is happening to challenge mainstream media coverage, read on.

PLAN TO DIVIDE IRAQ DISCUSSED

Could this crisis in Iraq be designed to lend support to a strategy associated with Dick Cheney and other US planners. Investor advisor Gary Halbert’s Forecasts & Trends E-Letter reports on discussions abour “Dividing Iraq into 3 States After Saddam. I just received this on an email post but I think it goes back to last year:

“..STRATFOR.COM released a fascinating report last Friday. Statfor.com is one of the most respected geopolitical intelligence services inthe world. Stratfor’s high-level sources tell them that one of the leading long-term strategies being cnsidered by US war planners is one that will DIVIDE Iraq into three separae regions. Under this plan Iraq would CEASE TO EXIST.

Stratfor believes the plan would divide Iraq as follows:

1 The central and largest part of Iraq that is populated by the Sunni Arabs would be joined with JORDAN to form one “United Hashemite Kingdom,” which would be ruled by Jordan’s KingAbdullah. This area would include Baghdad, which would no longer be the capital.

2 The Kurdish region of northern and northwestern Iraq, including Mosul and the vast Kirkuk oilfields, would become its own autonomous stat.

3 The Shia Region in southwestern Iraq, including Basra, would mak up the third state, or more likely it would be joined with Kuwait.

“Strafor’s sources indicate that the plan to divide (and thus eliminate) Iraq as described above is not the only plan under consideration, and it s also not finalized. However, such a plan makes a lot of sense to me.

“Stratfor says that such a plan reportedly was discussed at an unusual meeting beween Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and pro-US Iraqi Sunni opposition members n London in July. Further, they say that in September, the Israeli newspaer, Yedioth Ahronoth, stated that the US goal in Iraq was to create a United Hashemite Kingdom that would encompass Jordan and Iraq’s Sunni areas.”

http://www.profutures.com/

US CHRISTIAN LEADERS APOLOGIZE FOR WAR

34 Churches embraced a statement in a world conference in Brazil that reads in part:

”We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from this path of preemptive war.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0225-03.htm