Sorcha Faal is not always the most reliable of sources, yet there are some compelling elements to her latest post, here.  Definitely worth a read.

The Ft. Hood shootings occur just when Congress is forcing through the controversial health care bill.  A similar incident occurred back in October of 2002.  At this time, Congress was voting on whether to declare war on Iraq, but all eyes were focused on the activities of the “DC Sniper,” whose rampage of terror coincided perfectly with these political events.

On Friday, Governor Perry of Texas announced that there were THREE shooters.  Similar reports confirmed this, although news of the other shooters quickly disappeared from the news.  At this point, Hasan is regarded as the “lone gunman.”

Perry’s remarks can be found HERE.

Fort Hood PSYOP Test Fails, Leaves 13 US Soldiers Dead, Muslim Officer Blamed

by Sorcha Faal

From: Whatdoesitmean.com

In what one Russian Military Analyst (jokingly?) speculated could possibly be a “very sick” way of publicizing a new American movie opening this week about the US Pentagons decades long experiments in mind-control technology (“The Men Who Stare At Goats”), has instead, according to these reports, resulted in a tragic massacre of at least 13 US Soldiers preparing for deployment to the Iraq war from the giant US military base of Fort Hood, Texas.

From Western propaganda news media reports on this massacre the American people are being told that a US Army Military Trained Psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan [photo top left], became despondent over his recently receiving orders to deploy to Iraq and in “typical” lone gunman fashion “decided” to open fire on hundreds of his fellow soldiers killing and wounding them without discrimination.
Completing the “new legend” (in almost record time too) about this “lone gunman” being made responsible for this massacre, the Western propaganda machines are reporting such idiocies as Major Hasan having previously “complained to relatives of harassment by fellow-officers mocking him for being Middle Eastern” (Major Hasan’s parents came from small Palestinian town near Jerusalem) and his “attracting the attention of police six months ago for internet postings analyzing the motives of suicide bombers that was not formally investigated”.

Interesting to note in these reports, however, about Major Hasan is his past psychiatric training, paid for by the US Military, at Virginia Tech University where he graduated from that schools Center for Applied Behavior Systems with a degree in biochemistry, a school which FSB reports have long warned “is most likely” one of the US Department of Defenses top PSYOP training centers and where in April, 2007, it suffered the worst school massacre in US history when a Chinese student named Seung-Hui Cho, reported to be a subject to mind-control experiments, single-handedly gunned down 32 fellow students.

Even more interesting to note is that from the initial chaotic scene of the Fort Hood massacre not just the wounded Major Hanson taking into custody, but so were three other “alleged” gunmen, two of whom were released leaving one, at last report, still in US Army custody.

Now to understand the circumstances that placed Major Hasan at Fort Hood in the first place one has to understand that he was one of the US Militaries top PSYOP specialists and had received his medical degree, with honors, from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2001, and did his internship at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

Major Hasan then became one of the top researchers at the US Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress in the field this US Military funded organization stated was:
“Center scientists are actively engaged in studies of military deployment, combat stress and the mental health of active duty, Guard and Reserve and veterans. This research helps military command (leaders, physicians and mental health providers) mitigate, respond to and foster recovery from the consequences of war and other military extreme environments that can occur in combat, peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance.

In addition, a primary focus of the Center is conducting studies of the impact of deployment on servicemen and women and their families. This research includes surveillance of psychiatric problems among battle injured soldiers, and measuring the psychological effect of treating severely injured and disfigured soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan on health care providers at institutions like Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center.”

[Note: The US Military has completely removed the website of their Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress organization early on the morning of 6 November 2009]

From his position at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Major Hasan became one of the originators of what is called the US Army’s “Warrior Combat Reset Program” set up to help American soldiers returning from war zones, or being redeployed to them, cope with what is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and which according to these reports led to his being at Fort Hood to “electronically prepare” an experimental group of US Soldiers for their return to the Iraq war zone.
Important to be understood about these reports is their detailing that nearly all of the US Military Forces are suffering what is termed a “catastrophic” level of stress disorders, murders, rapes and suicides so bad that American commanders are now warning that the readiness of their forces in is danger of “outright collapse”, and which is no wonder being that in just three short months this will become the longest war in US history.

Making the recycling of these battle hardened US Soldiers (to keep killing and dying for reasons they don’t even know about anymore) even more crucial are new American Military reports stating that over one-third of “Americans ages 17-24 are unqualified for military service because of physical and medical issues.”
So to yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood, and Major Hasan’s “true role” in it, we need to turn to a little known, but extremely shocking case filed in the United States this past spring by a San Francisco lawyer named Gordon Erspamer and alleging:
“That [US] government scientists conducted human experiments at Edgewood is not in question. “The program involved testing of nerve agents, nerve agent antidotes, psychochemicals, and irritants,” according to a 1994 General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) report (PDF). At least 7,800 US servicemen served “as laboratory rats or guinea pigs” at Edgewood, alleges Erspamer’s complaint, filed in January in a federal district court in California. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency’s infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, “The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed.” Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs “were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge.”

And among these “experiments” conducted on US Soldiers by their government, and according to FSB files was a “research specialty” of Major Hasan’s, one was one called Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control Electronic Dissolution of Memory (RHIC-EDOM) which was pioneered for the US Military in the 1960’s by New York University Professor J. Anthony Deutsch who…“indicated that the mind is a transmitter and if too much information is received, like too many vehicles on a crowded freeway, the brain ceases to transmit. The Professor indicated that an excess of acetyl choline in the brain can interfere with the memory process and control. He indicated excess amounts of acetyl choline can be artificially produced, through both the administration of drugs or through the use of radio waves. The process is called Electronic Dissolution of Memory (EDOM). The memory transmission can be stopped for as long as the radio signal continues.”
So strong was the American Military and Intelligence establishments’ belief that only by “erasing” the previous “battle stained” memories of their Soldiers could they be made to continue killing and dying that in 2007 they contracted with Russia’s Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow to purchase a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology (SSRM Tek) which is a software-based mind reader that tests a subject’s involuntary response to subliminal messages and which was used by the Soviet Military on Russian troops being redeployed to Afghanistan.

Unfortunately for the Americans, and who were undoubtedly warned by their Russian counterparts about this, the previous Soviet experiments using SSRM Tek software combined with RHIC-EDOM technology had a very dangerous side-effect of “triggering immediate battle memories” instead of “erasing” them and resulting in masses of Russian troops who were undergoing these experiments to “erupt” in “immediate violence” which left an estimated 37 of them dead when they began (for no apparent reason) to begin firing upon each other.

In the United States today 13 American Soldiers lie dead, and many more are wounded leaving countless numbers of wives, children, fathers and mothers to mourn over their seemingly senseless killing.

But, like the events of 9/11, the assassinations of their President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King have shown us, these Americans have been well schooled in seeing only what they are told to see when tragedies like these, and Fort Hood now, occur.

Sometimes the childlike stories concocted by their propaganda masters to explain these horrific events are enough to placate the American people, but one has to wonder when at least some of them will wake up to the stark and brutal truth about what is happening to them.  One can only wonder if these Americans had demanded the truth before if these Soldiers were massacred would still be alive?
That is not in our knowing. But what is in our knowing is this, before they awaken from their long slumber these Americans can expect many more such deaths. We’re sure their propaganda organs are up to the task.
© November 6, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved

Written by Katin for IPCRESS Blog.

On the morning of June 20th, Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave a speech to a small crowd in Baghdad. Maliki’s message was for people to prepare for the withdrawal of American forces from the country’s urban areas–a maneuver scheduled to take place by the end of this month. There was a grave tone to Maliki’s words as he warned the group of possible terrorist attacks:

“I and you are sure that many don’t want us to succeed and celebrate this victory,” he said. “They are getting themselves ready to move in the dark to destabilize the situation, but we will be ready for them, God willing.”

The people he was addressing were Turkomen, an ethnic group from northern Iraq. For years, these people have been petitioning the government to establish an autonomous state, and they have been at odds with the Kurds in that region. Still, much of the violence in Iraq has been taking place in urban regions to the South of them, so Maliki’s warning of imminent danger probably held only limited significance for these people.

Strangely enough, just three hours after Maliki uttered those dire words, the suicide bombers attacked a mosque in the Turkomen town of Taza Khurmatu, 10 miles south of Kirkuk. It was the most powerful bomb used so far this year. 80 clay buildings were leveled, over 70 people died, and 200 people were injured. Why “Al Qaeda” decided to attack a town in this rather quiet, rural region of Iraq is a mystery to these people. The attack received brief coverage here in the States and was quickly explained as the work of “Sunni extremists” attacking a “Shiite mosque.” The bizarre coincidence of the Prime Minister having warned a group of Turkomen of such an attack–just three hours previously–was hardly mentioned. However, when we place the event in context with all the other suicide bombings (and their attendant coincidences,) we find that perhaps this wasn’t coincidence at all.

Recent reports from Washington have echoed Maliki’s comments, and the “chatter” is that Al-Qaeda will be increasing operations toward the end of the month, in an effort to “disrupt” the plans for American withdrawal from the urban areas. Does this make sense to anybody? If your enemy is making plans on withdrawing, why would you want to disrupt things? Wouldn’t you want to plan disruption AFTER they have gone, rather than giving them an excuse for possibly staying longer?

The US has solidified its position in Iraq and is preparing to redeploy its troops. The bombings–which are ALL state-sponsored acts of violence–are intended to keep the Iraqi people terrorized and act as a warning of what may happen if insurgent activities against Coalition forces are renewed. This is the program which has been in effect now for several years. Whenever insurgents rise up to attack US troops, the “suicide bombers” mysteriously appear and kill scores of Iraqi citizens. When insurgent activity decreases, the “suicide bombers” disappear. The same pattern occurs outside of Iraq. Somali pirates attack US shipping, and shortly after, “Al Qaeda” appears and starts blowing up Somali citizens.

The Coalition is now planning on moving their forces North, toward the Republic of Georgia and the Russian border. The recent wave of “suicide bombings” indicates that area populations are being “softened up” and the political structures destabilized prior to the advance. Two days after the Taza bombing, another “suicide bomb” went off in the North Caucasus region of Ingushetia. This is the tiniest of the former Russian states and borders Georgia. The target was Yunusbek Yevkurov, who was named President of the republic eight months ago by Russian President Medvedev. The bomb exploded as the presidential motorcade was passing through the town of Nazran. Reports claim the bomb was “planted in a foreign-made vehicle, where a suicide bomber might have been sitting, which was parked by the side of the road.”

Over the last two weeks, four officials from Daghestan and Ingushetia have been targeted for assassination. Daghestan’s interior minister, Lieutenant General Adilgirey Magomedtagirov, and two senior Ingushetian officials were killed in bombings. Yevkurov was wounded. In April, a group claiming to be the “Riyadus Salikhiin Suicide Brigade” left a video on the Internet, warning of more suicide bombings.

As the suicide bombers proceed to destabilize the North Caucus area, Coalition forces will be preparing for action in Iraq’s northern region. Eastern Turkey lies in between the Kurdish section of Iraq and the Republic of Georgia. We can expect more violence to erupt between the Kurds and the Turks in the weeks ahead,

Did you know that The Terrorists have a college?  Not a “training camp,” but a college.  It’s true.  I read it on the Internet.  And this isn’t just anywhere, this is from the “Internet Terror Monitor,” a CBS production.

The news items are posted by “CBS News Investigates” and are often quite short.  This tasty tidbit was posted on the 11th:

Message Warns Against Logging On To Jihadi College Page

A message posted on several jihadi Internet forums Monday warned members not to send emails or log onto the website of a newly-established Internet jihadi military preparation collage called Osama College For Jihadi Sciences.

The message claimed that the website and database contents have been accessed by security services.

The Osama College For Jihadi Sciences?  For real?  On the Internet?  It’s like a correspondence course for terrorists.  But this simply HAS to exist, because CBS referred to it on May 6th:

Enrolment Deadline For Jihadi College Extended

The administration of “the Osama College for Jihadi Sciences” announced that the deadline for enrolment in the college has been extended until further notice.

Those interested in applying were invited this time to fill in a registration form where they needed to give their name or alias, specify whether they’re male or female and indicate their nationality. They were also asked to tick the discipline required, which included suicide attacks and explosives making.

The “college” is a web-based jihadi initiative that caters to supporters of terrorist groups, providing them with distance learning programs via email. It was launched on April 10th.
LINK

Uh.. there was a deadline for suicide bomber applicants?  Is this supposed to be some sort of a joke?

Is it really necessary to try and debunk this sort of stuff?  I mean, if you’re so stupid as to actually believe this nonsense, then there isn’t much point in discussing the matter.  A “web-based college” for people who want to learn to be suicide bombers?

If you Google “Osama College For Jihadi Sciences,” you get these two “news” blurbs, and then a book on Google, entitled, “Internet security: hacking, counterhacking, and society” written by Kenneth Einar Himma.  The entry, on page 132:

In late 2003, an affiliate of al Qa’ida announced the opening of Al-Qa’ida University for Jihad Sciences on the Internet, with a college on electronic jihad.

This must be different from the Osama College for Jihadi Sciences, which was supposedly launched just last month.  It appears The Terrorists have several colleges on the Internet for training people to be suicide bombers. Of course, they’re up to all sorts of other evilness.  The author goes on to tell how The Terrorist Hackers are planning on disabling all the porn sites.  No kidding.  I guess they must be waiting for just the right moment to launch this dastardly plan.

It’s interesting that searching for “Osama College for Jihadi Sciences” returns only the two CBS posts.  Hard to believe NO ONE anywhere is talking about the Osama College for Jihadi Sciences.  ummmm….

Many people who buy-into the whole phony War On Terror have difficulty understanding how major media outlets LIE to them.  The Internet Terror Monitor is a good example of how this process takes place.  The Internet Terror Monitor is not a “real” news source.  The URL indicates that it’s a “blog,” although this word isn’t used at all on the webpage.  All posts are unattributed.  The page gives the impression that it’s REAL news, but it’s hardly “reporting” at all.  In fact, nearly all the posts are references to something “discovered” on a terrorist website.  If you didn’t know, The Terrorists are quite prolific.  They produce an overwhelming number of videos, announcements, and random commentary on their discussion forums.  You can even buy compilations of this “Terror News” online.  It’s a cottage industry.  This was posted on the 8th:

Online Jihadi Tell TTP: “Strike in India To Ease The Pressure in Swat”

A member of a militant Islamist website suggested Taliban militants in Pakistan should launch attacks in India to get some relief from the attacks waged against them by Pakistani forces in SWAT valley.

“Wage any attack in India, in a football stadium or a market,” suggested Kasser Sanam, who titled his message “Urgent Message to the Mujahideen in Pakistan.”

This is just… bizarre.  The Pakistani government launches attacks on the Taliban, and the Taliban–in retaliation–decides to attack… INDIA!  Does anyone from CBS even TRY to explain the logic behind that military decision? Who believes this?  CBS provides for comments on the page (part of the “blog” feel) although no one ever seems to use this function.

So, The Internet Terror Monitor posts this nonsense news, with the CBS stamp of approval.  As it’s only a “blog,” CBS isn’t really committed to getting behind the story.  If the material seems to be received well, they may later run with a “real” news story using this stuff as source material.  And there are so many “terrorist” videos and proclamations, produced by an ever expanding universe of terrorist organizations, that it would require several people working full-time just to keep up with all the stuff.  Then, the stories get referenced back and forth by “researchers,” such as Dr. Himma.  At some point, it all becomes “news.”  In a way.  Even the most firmly-rooted Establishment types have trouble buying this crap, though.  Most of it stays in this psychological realm of suspended disbelief.

Operation Desert Slaughter
Thoughts on Holocaust Memorial Day.

by Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research, January 28, 2008

It is seventeen years since America and Britain embarked on their ‘Final Solution’ for the population of Iraq.

The forty two day carpet bombing, enjoined by thirty two other countries, against a country of just twenty five million souls, with a youthful, conscript army, with broadly half the population under sixteen, and no air force, was just the beginning of a United Nations led, global siege of near mediaeval ferocity.

Having, as James Baker boasted they would, reduced ‘Iraq to a pre-industrial age’, the country was denied all normality : trade, aid, telecommunications, power, sanitation, water repairs, seeds, foods, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment.

As I write, seventeen years ago, Iraq would be entering the second week of a barbaric, near twenty four hour a day, carpet bombing, which, then, as now (lest we forget – yet again) scrupulously ignored Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Convention of 1977:

‘It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies such as irrigation works (denying them) to the civilian population or to the adverse Party … for any motive.’

The Blitzkrieg on Iraq deliberately targeted all ‘indispensable to survival’.

Within twenty four hours, most was destroyed. The electricity went off within two hours, leaving patients on life support machines and vital equipment, babies in incubators, or those on oxygen to die.

Refrigerators defrosted, all medicine needing refrigeration, blood banks and vital saline solutions for the injured were destroyed. Food rotted and between the bombing and the bank closures (latter for fear of looting) replacements were scarce to unbuyable.

In Najav, seventy dialysis patients, ‘old friends’, said the senior nurse in charge of the unit, died for want of electricity. The water supply was deliberately destroyed, parts denied subsequently by the pathetic, US-UK dominated Sanctions Committee – a Committee without a backbone between them – and remains lethal to this day.

This was the plan  by US Central Command, it seems, all along. The destruction of Iraq’s water system has been described by Professor Nagy and Stephanie Miller as: ‘a slow motion holocaust’. Few could have put it better.

(See: How the US deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water. by Thomas J Nagy : http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NAG108A.html )

The telecommunications tower was also one of the earliest casualties, an elegant, soaring, structure on the edge of Baghdad’s Mansur district. It lay, broken and crumpled, as did the remains of those who worked inside it. Iraq was thus cut off from the world, the extent of the bombing and atrocities largely unknown for considerable time. Iraqis throughout the world had no way of knowing if their families, friends, loves, were dead or alive. Radio and television stations across Iraq were blitzed so no warnings to populus could be given (journalists too have special protection in wars, but decision makers, seemingly are not only illiterate, but ignore legalities.)

Hospitals, health clinics, schools and kindergartens were bombed, education eradicated so totally that the stores for educational materials, in buildings separate from the schools (usually in a central distribution point some miles away) were also bombed.

Agriculture in all forms was deliberately targeted.

Chicken farms bombed, flocks of sheep and goats, broadly half of all buffalo were killed, dairy farms obliterated.

Crops, food processing factories reduced to rubble. A war crime stupendous in its immensity, for which not one murderous, genocidal, infanticidal, decision maker or pilot has stood trial.

Pharmaceutical factories were bombed, the medical syringe factory was destroyed.

And in an especially psychotic policy, the countries who were Iraq’s trading partners and had built factories and installations for the country, bombed those which they had built. America’s gung-ho goons whooped over bombing the Pepsi and Coca Cola factories. ‘Bravery’ doesn’t come more deviant, sub-normal and retarded than that.

Due to the use of defoliants and napalm, half of all Iraq’s trees, including the great, ancient palms, died. Remaining palms did not bear their succulent fruit for about five years.

In the tranquil, family farming settlements, amongst the palms, women and livestock alike aborted and often died.

Survivors consistently described a ‘vapor’ coming from the ‘planes, then the horrific aftermath,  affecting those living in the shelter of the palm groves or copses of trees, where dwellers settled for relative cool from Iraq’s searing summers.

And, of course, in this decimation from above, which dropped more ordinance daily than was dropped daily in the second world war, five times more explosive power was dropped than on Hiroshima.

The weapons used were depleted uranium, which continues to irradiate Iraq and the region, the people, flora and fauna -and will continue to do so for four and a half billion years. ‘..protection of the natural environment against widespread, long term and severe damage’, is another absolute dictate under the Geneva Convention. It proscribes absolutely ‘… damage to the natural environment (prejucing) the health and survival of the population.’

Contraventions don’t come bigger than condemning inestimable generations yet unborn, to death and deformity. The Nuremberg Principles are exercised by the treatment of both civilians and prisoners and the: ‘… murder or ill treatment …of prisoners of war … further, extermination … and other inhuman acts against any civilian population’.

The ‘inhuman acts’, committed against the Iraqi people in 1991 constitute war crimes which, since no one was brought to justice, one can only hope haunt those responsible for all time.

The slaughter on the Basra Road, after the ceasefire, the fleeing civilians and retreating troops, ripped to pieces, or incinerated in General Norman Schwartzkop’s ‘turkey shoot’.

The whole war, of course, was nothing else. Saddam Hussein had offered, indeed, started to retreat from Kuwait before the carnage began, but as ever, for the United States, conciliation was ‘too late’. Buses, lorries, cars were also targeted throughout the forty two day massacre. Lorries carrying medicines, meat, essentials were burned, with their drivers. Western troops took their repulsive ‘trophy photos’, with the pathetic remains of the incinerated and dismembered.

When the (UK) Observer, to its credit, printed the picture which became the symbol of the 1991 atrocities, the Iraqi soldier, with his near melted face welded to the windscreen of his vehicle, there was an outcry.

The sensitivities of readers should not be exposed to such horrors. Maggie O’Kane, writing in the Guardian Weekly (16th December 1995) describes searingly, reality. Relatives, praying, hope against hope, that those they loved, had somehow miraculously survived the hadean inferno that was the Basra Road massacre. “On the day the war ended, at a bus station south of Baghdad, dusk was falling and the road was covered with weeping women.

The Iraqi survivors of the `turkey shoot’ on the Basra Road were crawling home with fresh running wounds. Their women were throwing themselves at the battered minibuses and trucks, pulling, pleading, begging. `Where is he, have you seen him ? Is he not with you ?’ Some fell to their knees on the road when they heard the news.

Others kept running from bus, to truck, to car, looking for their husbands, their sons or their lovers – the 37,000 Iraqi soldiers who would not come back. It went on all night and it was the most desperate and moving scene I have ever witnessed.” There was worse. Think of the excesses of horrors the Western media has deluged its readers with over the years, those perpetrated by people of other cultures, with other features: Stalin, Pol Pot, indeed Saddam Hussein and consider this in Maggie O’Kane’s article: ‘

When Sergeant Joe Queen returned to his home town of Bryson City North California, after the Gulf war, the first thing he saw was a huge banner draped outside Hardees Burger Restaurant, which read: `Welcome Home Joe Queen.’ Joe Queen, who’d been awarded a bronze star, wanted to chill out after the war, but Bryson City wouldn’t let him Joe, 19-years old, had gone straight from Desert Storm to become one of the first American troops to cross the Saudi border in an armored bulldozer. His job was to bury the Iraqis alive in their trenches and then cover over the trenches real smooth so the rest of the Big Red One, as The First Armored Mechanized Brigade is called, could come nice and easy behind him. ‘Joe Queen doesn’t know how many Iraqi troops he buried alive on the front line.

But five years later, in his military base in Georgia, he remembers well how it worked:

`The sand was so soft that once the blade hits the sand it just caves in right on the sides, so we never did go back and forth. So you are traveling at five, six, seven miles an hour just moving along the trench… You don’t see him. You’re up there in the half hatch and you know what you got to do. You did it so much you could close your eyes and do it… I don’t think they had any idea because the look on their faces as we came through the berm was just a look of shock. `While I was retreating, I saw some of the soldiers trying to surrender, but they were buried. There were two kinds of bulldozers, real ones, actual ones, and also they had tanks and they put something like a bulldozer blade in front of them. Some of the soldiers were walking towards the troops holding their arms up to surrender and the tanks moved in and killed them. They dug a hole in the ground and then they buried the soldiers and leveled it.’ One survivor described the friends buried alive, who he had laughed with, eaten with …’I really don’t know how to describe it. We were friends. I ate with some of them. I talked to some of them. I cannot express how I felt at that moment….. I saw one soldier and his body was just torn apart by a bulldozer. The upper part was on one side and the lower on the other side.’

I hope your nightmares and those of your colleagues haunt for all time Joe Queen. May the specter of those for whose live burial you and your murderous colleagues were responsible, follow in all your footsteps, for all time.

These mass graves also carry the names of the leaders who ordered the decimation of Iraq in 1991,their military Commanders and soldiers, on every one of them. Ironically, the mass graves of Saddam Hussein have seemingly not materialized, just war graves and those from the uprising encouraged by the US and UK at the end of the 1991 decimation. The war, of course, never ended. The thirteen year subsequent embargo cost maybe one and a quarter million lives.

Additionally, the US and UK, bombed Iraq (illegally) until the (illegal) invasion of 2003. In 2002, they stepped up their destruction of life, limb and of entire housing projects with families within, children playing, doing homework, flocks of sheep and goats with their child shepherds.

‘Approximately a year before the United States initiated Operation Southern Focus, as a change to its response strategy, by increasing the overall number of missions and selecting targets throughout the no-fly zones to disrupt the military command structure in Iraq. The weight of bombs dropped increased from none in March 2002 and 0.3 in April 2002 to between 8 and 14 tons per month in May-August, reaching a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons in September 2002.’ (Wikipedia.)

A recent study by the Centre for Public Integrity, has also uncovered lies of impeachable stature, leading to invasion, by the Bush Administration..

‘The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them, or had links to al Qaeda, or both. ‘Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al Qaeda.’ (http://www.publicintegrity.org)

Iraq’s post invasion (2003-2007) excess under five mortality has been estimated at over one million. In Afghanistan, post invasion, at 1.9 million (2001-2007.)

For another humanitarian abomination of our time, the Israeli siege of the Gaza strip (June 2007 and ongoing) total excess death figures are elusive.

CIA figures for infant mortality, however (2004) are woeful at 23.54 per thousand births. Sweden (2007) just 2.76 per thousand births. Given Israel’s withdrawal of electricity and just about all needed to sustain life since last June, some serious statistical data is needed – and relentless and absolute demands for humanity and human rights for our global neighbors in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, the forgotten of Lebanon’s ‘Simmer Rain’ decimation, by ‘we the people …’

Like Joe Queen’s genocidal actions, the atrocities committed in these countries are being carried out in our name. ‘Silence is complicity’. (For much more shameful complicity – since 1950 – please see Dr Gideon Polya: ‘Body Count’, an academic, key and indispensable work: http://www.globalbodycount.blogspot.com)

‘There was no one left to kill’, declared General Norman Schwartzkopf after the Basra Road bloodbath, where even the injured holding white flags, and doctors accompanying them were obliterated.

‘Morally, we won’, an Iraqi doctor told me shortly afterwards. Indeed. ‘We are the new Jews’, is an oft heard, Arab refrain now.

As I write, on Holocaust Memorial Day, it is impossible not to reflect that is does not take forced labor camps, forced transport and Zyclon B to create a holocaust. When the figures of the dead in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza, reach six million, as the world stands by, will they too get their own Holocaust Memorial Day?

Will we all, regardless of color or creed, ever learn, before it is too late?

Felicity Arbuthnot is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Felicity Arbuthnot

An excellent piece exposing the the use of “suicide bombers” as a false-flag operation to demonize Muslims.

From: Signs of the Times
SOTT.net
Mon, 20 Aug 2007

LINK to original article.

The true face of Iraqi suicide bombers. Two SAS agents dressed in full “Arab Garb” driving a car full of explosives were caught carrying out a false flag terror attack in Basra, Iraq September 20th 2005

Since 9-11 reports of “suicide bombings” have increased exponentially in the news. We are led to believe by the experts that it is one of the favorite weapons of the insurgency against the occupation forces, since it is a cheap and simple way to create chaos. Hardly a day goes by without at least one bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan being immediately seized upon by the media as the work of Iraqi insurgents.

It is one thing for an insurgency to commit suicide bombings against the occupation forces, it is another thing entirely to use them to target and kill civilians. We have been brainwashed into believing that the insurgents in Iraq are such brutal, uncivilized, fanatical crazy extremists that they will anything to fight ‘freedom’ – even kill their own people.

This picture presented to us by the US government and mainstream media is so insane that Joe Quinn, in response to the massive ’suicide’ bombings in Mosul that killed 350+ people last week, felt confident to say:

“The person who can present a convincing argument (i.e. logical and backed up with reliable data) that explains why any anti-American Arab or Islamic group, “terrorist” or otherwise, would kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as a response to the US occupation of Iraq, will receive a prize of 1 million USD.”

Looking at this from a historical perspective, precedence for the type of bombings in Iraq that are attributed to the insurgency or “al-Qaeda” is virtually non existent. During world war II, a number of countries were occupied by the Nazis. Countries such as France, Denmark, Norway and many others all had resistance movements who used various tactics to hamper the Nazi take over. Yet, there are no records whatsoever that the resistance fighters resorted to the mass murder of their fellow country men in an effort to evict the Nazis. Sure there was factional infighting, but nothing on the massive scale that we are seeing in Iraq. And of course, how could there be? It defies all logic.

Fast forward to the Vietnam war and here too we find no evidence that the Vietcong waged a campaign to kill their own fellow citizens as part if the fight against American forces.

Of course, there are those who would suggest that Muslims are a different breed, that they, like so many other ungrateful peoples who attempted to throw-off the chains of empire, are little more than uncivilised savages and we cannot therefore hope to understand their mentality or actions. Such an ill-informed attitude however is in no way backed up by any evidence and must therefore be dismissed for the obvious racism that it is.

When the Iraqis first fought the British Empire in the 1920’s, there was no “suicide bombings” by insurgents against Iraqis. On the contrary and according to good strategy, they united despite minor cultural and religious differences to confront the common British enemy.

Likewise in Afghanistan during the 10 year war with the Soviet union there were no instances of suicide bombings targeting Afghan civilians. Here too, the Afghan tribes united despite previous disagreements against the common aggressor.

Does no one find all of this even mildly odd? After 9-11, suddenly this bizarre phenomenon of an insurgency using suicide bombings against their own people rather than the invaders appears, as if to provide supporting evidence for the reality of the crazed “suicide bombing” hijackers that attacked America – or so the official story goes.

Could the answer be as simple as that what is being touted as suicide bombings are in fact the work of US/British/Israeli counterinsurgency teams? In Iraq, are we in fact dealing with the what are better know as “false flag operations”?

This certainly would explain a lot of the confusion over why Iraqi groups would kill their own people in response to a US invasion of their country. After all, the people who are dying by the hundreds every day in Iraq are the people who support the insurgency, and the US, British and Israeli forces in Iraq are fighting that insurgency, so who benefits from the daily mass murder of the supporters of the insurgency?

Past counterinsurgency tactics involved such things as ethnic cleansing (“draining the dam” as this tactic was known) and/or the destruction of crops like with agent orange in the case of Vietnam. But these methods had little success.

In recent years it seems that devious and deviant minds in the employ of the military industrial complex came up with much more insidious modern tactics.

Roger Trinquier, an immensely influential French counter-insurgency expert, suggested in his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961) (Available online here) three simple principles of Counter Insurgency:

1. separate the guerrilla from the population that supports him;

2. occupy the zones that the guerrillas previously operated from, making them dangerous for him and turning the people against the guerrilla movement;

3. coordinate actions over a wide area and for a long enough time that the guerrilla is denied access to the population centres that could support him.

Remote controlled bombings masquerading as “suicide bombings” that are carried out by the US, British and Israeli occupation forces fit these principles very neatly. By detonating bombs on a daily basis across Iraq and Afghanistan and via the propaganda organs touting them as being the work of Iraqi/Afghani “suicide bombers” belonging to the insurgency, the occupying military hopes to achieve several goals:

cut off the widespread support base that the insurgency have amongst the Iraqis

create tensions between religious lines, especially by ascribing the faked “suicide attacks” to either Shias or Sunnis.

In other words divide and conquer.

The sheer carnage shown on TV back in the West only supports the idea that the Iraqis/Afghans can’t take care of their own country without help from the occupation forces or that they are uncivilised savages. This propaganda reinforces the US government’s persistent claim that it would be dangerous to pull US troops out of Iraq and for the American military grunts on the streets of Iraq it helps them to rationalise their continued presence. Either they are trying to show a lesser class of human how to become civilised, or they are doing god’s work in wiping them out.

There is ample evidence for the inquiring reader to discover that so-called suicide bombings against civilians are not the product of the insurgency. Some will say that it is the product of “al-Qaeda”, which is true if you first clarify that “al-Qaeda” is simply a tool of the very same counterinsurgency, namely CIA/MI6/Mossad. Always ask yourself, “who benefits?”, and in this case it is pretty obvious who doesn’t benefit.

For years Israel has very effectively used ’suicide’ bombings as a tool in the perpetration of its slow genocide of the Palestinian people, with the effect that, today, the world’s sympathy lies with the perpetrator (Israel). As a result, all peace initiatives have been stalled and the world has provided tacit if not outright approval of Israel’s covert genocidal policies.

The knowledge gained by the Israelis has certainly been passed on to the their counterparts in MI6 and the CIA as this SOTT editorial from September 2005 illustrates:

“Today in Basra, Southern Iraq, two members of the British SAS (Special Ops) were caught, ‘in flagrante’ as it were, dressed in full “Arab garb”, driving a car full of explosives and shooting and killing two official Iraqi policemen.

This fact, finally reported by the mainstream press, goes to the very heart and proves accurate much of what we have been saying on the Signs of the Times page for several years.

The following are facts, indisputable by all but the most self-deluded:

Number 1:

The US and British invasion of Iraq was NOT for the purpose of bringing “freedom and democracy” to the Iraqi people, but rather for the purpose of securing Iraq’s oil resources for the US and British governments and expanding their control over the greater Middle East.

Number 2:

Both the Bush and Blair governments deliberately fabricated evidence (lied) about the threat the Saddam posed to the west and his links to the mythical ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to justify their invasion.

Number 3:

Dressed as Arabs, British (and CIA and Israeli) ’special forces’ have been carrying out fake “insurgent” attacks, including ‘car suicide bombings’ against Iraqi policemen and Iraqi civilians (both Sunni and Shia) for the past two years. Evidence would suggest that these tactics are designed to provide continued justification for a US and British military presence in Iraq and to ultimately embroil the country in a civil war that will lead to the breakup of Iraq into more manageable statelets, much to the joy of the Israeli right and their long-held desire for the establishment of biblical ‘greater Israel’

Coming not long after the botched London bombings carried out by British MI5 where an eyewitness reported that the floor of one of the trains had been blown inwards (how can a bomb in a backpack or on a “suicide bomber” INSIDE the train ever produce such an effect), more than anything else today’s event in Basra highlights the desperation that is driving the policy-makers in the British government.

British intelligence would do well to think twice about carrying out any more ‘false flag’ operations until they can achieve the ‘professionalism’ of the Israeli Mossad – they always make it look convincing and rarely suffer the ignominy of being caught in the act and having the faces of their erstwhile “terrorists” plastered across the pages of the mainstream media. “

As in Israel, ’suicide’ bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan often occur at a time that most benefits the occupiers. A recent ’suicide’ bombing in Afghanistan illustrates this aspect well:

Seventeen civilians, a dozen of them schoolboys, were killed and 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

The timing just couldn’t have been better. NATO had been under a lot of international pressure due to their random use of Aerial bombings with very large numbers of civilian casualties. This incident (as in most cases) harmed no troops, most victims were children. The desired effect of the bombing was described in the article:

The UN representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, was shocked.
“I am especially concerned by the reports I am seeing of a large number of children being among the dead from todays bomb,” he said in a statement.” Such utter disregard for innocent lives is staggering and those behind this must be held responsible.”

You see? The enemy is uncivilised, crazy, half human in contrast to the civilised benevolent white crusaders who sacrifice so much in the fight against evil. The article concludes:

“There have been more than 70 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, as compared with about 140 in all of 2006. Most are aimed at the security forces but civilians are usually the primary victims.”

It should be pointed out that these so-called suicide bombings seem to be a speciality of Western intelligence agencies and their client regimes. In recent months we have also heard a lot about suspicious suicide bombings targeting civilians in Pakistan, whose intelligence agency, ISI, has close ties to the CIA.

In Chechnya there have been 28 acts of suicide bombings from June 2000 until 2006. The difference is that these attacks were against Russian civilians and not their own people. Perhaps the defining point is that Western (US/British/Israeli) counterinsurgency teams are not involved in these attacks because they do not wish to hand the Russians a victory. Certainly suicide bombings would demonise the Chechnyan rebels and provide propaganda value to the Russians. This is not to say that Russia does not engage in its own counter-insurgency, it is just that faked suicide bombings do not appear to form a core part of their strategy.

As mentioned before, during the 10 years of Russian occupation of Afghanistan, no suicide attacks were carried out by the insurgency against the Afghan population. Why? It certainly didn’t benefit the Americans to kill Afghans who were engaged in killing Russians, the key enemy of the Americans at the time. The Americans were heavily involved in recruiting and supplying the insurgency with all kinds of military hardware. Now however, the situation is different. In Afghanistan it serves the American agenda to murder as many Afghani civilians as possible under the cloak of Taliban “suicide bombings” because it provides the justification for the troops to stay there to fight this manufactured “evil”. In Iraq, the goal is the same, with the added element of the Neocons’ desire to destroy the real Iraqi resistance by dividing and alienating them from the ordinary people that support their fight against a brutal occupier. It seems that the American, Israeli and British tactic in Iraq is that if the ordinary Iraqi people will not be intimidated into accepting occupation and rejecting the real insurgency, then they will be murdered. Plain and simple.

Despite Joe Quinn’s offer of 1 million dollars then, he can rest assured that it is unlikely that he will have to go and talk to the bank anytime soon.
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I am making a plea to everyone who reads this, please, please DO NOT TAKE ANY VACCINE THAT IS PURPORTED TO ‘PREVENT’ THIS FLU.

Remember 1976 and the so called Swine Flu outbreak that was purported to be a coming pandemic? It only infected recruits at Ft. Dix. Why? Because I believe that the so called Swine Flu virus infected the recruits due to the vaccines they were given. Whether the government developed the Swine Flu 1976 virus and infected the recruits as a means to test the public to see if people would comply with a call to take vaccination against Swine Flu, or the recruits became infected via contaminated vaccine they were given as part of the recruit regimen, that outbreak was as phony as they come. I was one of the people duped into taking a Swine Flu shot and it made me so sick. I was sick in bed for three months after taking the vaccine.

Do not take seasonal flu vaccine if you are told that it could help prevent this brand new Swine Flu variant. It won’t do a thing to prevent this flu. What it will do is serve up new genetic material to the Swine Flu virus that I have dubbed Spanish Flu 2, the Sequel. The Spanish Flu variant will use the gene sequences in the vaccine in humans to develop more of the changes that make the virus more readily infect humans. We do not want to give this virus more human genetic material so that it will infect humans more readily person to person. This is what vaccinated individuals do for pandemic strains.

There is also a safety issue in any experimental vaccine, much like the one in 1976. Some people even feel that such a vaccine for pandemic strain might require more than one vaccination which could actually be a binary set up. The first shot might just add some genetic code that stays dormant in the body until one gets the second vaccine shot which then serves to only cause infection. It could trigger Guillain-barre syndrome, Typhus or some other condition.

An Influenza vaccine does not protect or prevent a person from contracting flu. It is purported to, maybe, prevent some complications of flu and maybe shorten duration. I am not even sure it does that. Personally, I feel the vaccine weakens our immune system and also sickens us due to contaminants in the vaccine. I feel that people can better protect themselves by washing hands often and thoroughly. People should also use protective gloves when out and about during epidemics. Don’t be afraid of “looking odd.” I would not be ashamed to use a mask and gloves. I see that the Mexicans are using them.

A big problem during a pandemic is that these simple supplies will become extremely scarce awfully quickly. Stock up now. Medical supplies. personal hygene supplies and don’t forget fido, or any other pet. Once a pandemic hits, it will be too late to stock up. Water, too.
We may lose clean water and electric power, so be prepared.

So, please, people, DON’T TAKE ANY VACCINES OFFERED. THEY COULD KILL YOU BEFORE ANY VIRUS KILLS YOU.

Pat Doyle

Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics Univ of West Indies Please visit my “Emerging Diseases” message board at: http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php Also my new website: http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/ Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa Go with God and in Good Health

Written by Katin for IPCRESS Blog

Last week, a series of supposed suicide bombers attacked targets in Iraq, killing nearly 150 people.  Establishment news sources pointed out that these actions broke a long period of calm and we may be seeing a renewed effort by the “Sunni Insurgency.” But these attacks are not the product of domestic terrorists.  The timing of the assaults clealry indicates that the bombers are not working for the betterment of the Iraqi people or to somehow force the Americans out of their country.  These attacks are staged and are intended to maintain discord and to send a message to our political opponents in the region.

First of all, consider the general political atmosphere of the attacks.  Obama is preparing for “discussions” sometime with Iran.  The Establishment media have been building this up as the Big Test for Obama’s foriegn policy plans and many of the conservative mouthpieces have been pointing to the dangers of negotiating with a “terrorist state.”

Against this backdrop of international political tension is the government’s decision to redeploy American troops in Iraq to Afghanistan.  Last Thursday, the 23rd, was to be the largest movement of American forces out of Iraq.  Also in motion is the general withdrawal of troops out of Iraq.  June is the deadline for the first group to be leaving the country.  So, with Iraq now safely under control and thousands of American troops preparing to leave the country for the USA and Afghanistan, what do you suppose the “terrorists” would have planned?  One doesn’t have to be a military strategist to guess what the most effective strategy here would be, in fact, it would seem obvious to anyone: wait until the Americans begin removing forces and then renew attacks.  WHY would these “terrorist masterminds” wait until just before the troops leave to stage their assaults?  WHY would the “terrorists” stage an action which might result in the Ameircans deciding to postpone the troop deployments?

According to the Establishment story, the “wave of suicide bombings” followed the arrest of the notorious “terrorist mastermind,” Abu Omar al-Baghdadi on Thursday morning.  The first bomb goes off within an hour after his arrest, in fact.  The speed of the “terrorist” response is shocking–if unbelievable. They must have suicide bombers all vested-up and waiting to go for moments such as this.  Sort of a Rapid Deployment Suicide Bomb Force.

But the story keeps getting stranger.  Omar of Baghdad is a fiction.  The American military has stated this, as have several other sources.  If he is such a key figure in the Insurgency (with ties to “al Qaeda”) then where are the details of his arest?  Where are the photos?  His arrest is certainly bigger news than the suicide bombings, so why haven’t we heard anything about it?  You would think that this would be the opportunity to show such a person actually exists, but the news is kept obscured by the other events.

After the last of the suicide bombs go off on Friday, there is an announcement the next day tha Hilary Clinton has made a surprise visit to–of all places–Baghdad!  Shazam!  WHY would Clinton fly into Baghdad just after the bloodiest series of suicide attacks in several years?  Was there any pressing NEED for her to be there this weekend?  Wasn’t she concerned at all about her safety?

Add to all this nonsense the unfortunate targets of the “suicide bombers:” Iranian pilgrims visiting holy sites.

The Establishment Media makes no attempt to put any sense to this bewildering coincidence of events.  The “Sunni Insurgency,” determined to drive the Infidels out of their country, has adopted the strategy of attacking other Iraqis and trying their best to keep the opposition forces divided.  If that makes any sense.  Traditionally, it is in the interest of the OCCUPYING force to keep the local population divided and confused.  It is in the interest of the OCCUPYING force to foment civil war and unrest to legitimate their remaining there as “guardians” while the opposition weakens itself with sectarian assaults.  So, what possible military interest is served by “Al Qaeda” or “Omar of Baghdad” attacking other Iraqis?  Even more bizarre is the fact that the bombings also targeted IRANIAN civilians at a religious event.  If Iran is supposedly secretly financing and arming the terrorists, then WHY would Omar and the gang be attacking them?  It’s interesting to note that on Thursday, a suicide bomber attacked some American troops, but the effort failed and no soldiers were killed.  Imagine that.  Just like many of the other supposed suicide bombings of the past, the “terrorists” choose civilian targets rather than military ones.

These bombings are staged by the US (possibly with the help of Israel) to maintain a specific political agenda.  They are intended to legitimate our retaining a military presence in this country while at the same time weakening any political opposition.  These attacks also send a message to Iran: that we will continue to kill and terrorize Iranian civilians who step out of their country, and we will get away with it by blaming it on “Sunni Insurgents.”  Of course, the Iranian government does not believe the suicide bomber explanation and inist that these events have been staged by the US.  Exactly how the US manages to pull off these things is a matter of speculation, but hardly important.  David Copperfield can make a 747 disappear.  Just because I can’t prove how he does it does not mean that it isn’t a trick.  I know it’s a trick, because in the real world,  747s don’t simply de-materialize at David Copperfield’s command, and then reassemble themselves minutes later.  In the same way, it’s simply impossible for me to believe that “fanatical” Iraqi women would strap on bomb vests and then go to a religious event or marketplace in order to kill a group of innocent civilians (many of whom are children.)  And for what purpose?  To instigate a civil war where the Sunnis would regain political control?  Sorry.  I’m just not buying that.  The alternative explanation makes much more sense.

The US and Israel have thousands of Arab prisoners.  These people are tortured and subjected to the most modern forms of physical and psychological punishment.  How unbelievable is it to imagine that some of these unfortunate people are selected for “suicide operations?”  This option becomes more plausible when we notice the strange timing of these events and how the suicide bombings always work out for the benefit of the Occupiers.

It’s disturbing that opposition groups here in the US don’t pick up on this.  Most 9/11 Truthers, who have been working for years to expose the hoaxed suicide bombings of September 11th, unthinkingly accept as fact these obviously staged events which are taking place right now in Iraq.

LINK

By Edmund Conway
16 Mar 2009

IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’

The International Monetary Fund is poised to embark on what analysts have described as “global quantitative easing” by printing billions of dollars worth of a global “super-currency” in an unprecedented new effort to address the economic crisis.

Alistair Darling and senior figures in the US Treasury have been encouraging the Fund to issue hundreds of billions of dollars worth of so-called Special Drawing Rights in the coming months as part of its campaign to prevent the recession from turning into a global depression.

Should the move, which is up for discussion by the summit of G20 finance ministers this weekend, be adopted, it will represent a global equivalent of the Bank of England’s plan to pump extra cash into the UK economy.

However, economists warned that the scheme could cause a major swell of inflation around the world as the newly-created money filters through the system. The idea has been suggested by a number of key figures, including billionaire investor George Soros and US Treasury adviser Ted Truman.

Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF, said: “The principle behind it is that everyone would get bonus dollars and instead of the Federal Reserve having to print them, everyone gets them.

“The objective is to create a windfall of cash. However if everybody goes out and spends the money it could be very inflationary.”

This video appeared on YouTube this Sunday and shows Cynthia McKinney revealing news she received of 5,000 bodies which were dumped in the swamps of Louisiana immediately after Hurricane Katrina.  Mostly male, they each had a single bullet hole in the head. 

There is nothing anywhere on the Internet about this.

In the guise of humanitarian aid
Bush dispatches US military forces to Georgia

Barry Grey

August 14, 2008

In a major escalation of the conflict with Russia over Georgia, President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced a “vigorous and ongoing” deployment of US military forces to its key ally in the Caucasus. Bush appeared in the White House Rose Garden for the second time in three days, this time flanked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and announced the military buildup, casting it as a humanitarian relief operation.

Even as he spoke of a humanitarian mission, Bush made clear the military dimensions of the measures he was announcing. He said he was directing Pentagon chief Gates to lead the mission, which would be “headed by the United States military.” He announced that a C-17 military aircraft was already on its way to Georgia and that “in the days ahead we will use US aircraft, as well as naval forces, to deliver humanitarian and medical supplies.”

This is a formula for an injection of US military and naval forces into Georgia of indeterminate scope and duration. It will certainly involve the presence of hundreds if not thousands of uniformed US military personnel on the ground, and a substantial number of warships in the region. The US is introducing this military force into a situation that remains highly unstable and combustible, raising the possibility of a direct military clash between the United States and Russia.

Bush spoke less than a day after Russia and Georgia had agreed provisionally to a cease-fire in their five-day war. The agreement had been brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, acting on behalf of the European Union.

Even as Bush spoke, Russia and Georgia were trading accusations of truce violations, and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was objecting to provisions of the agreement which, he claimed, failed to prevent the pro-Russian break-away republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from seceding from Georgia.

In his remarks, Bush issued an implicit threat against any attempt by Russia to interfere with Washington’s “humanitarian” operation. “We expect Russia to honor its commitment,” he said, “to let in all forms of humanitarian assistance. We expect Russia to ensure that all lines of communications and transport, including seaports, airports, roads and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit.”

The US will pour military resources into Georgia to strengthen its hand against Russia, and denounce any objections by Moscow as an attack on humanitarian aid and a violation of the cease-fire agreement.

Within minutes of Bush’s Rose Garden statement, Saakashvili spelled out its essential meaning in a televised address from Tbilisi. “You have heard the statement by the US president that the United States is starting a military-humanitarian operation in Georgia,” he said. “It means that Georgian ports and airports will be taken under the control of the US defense ministry…”

He went on to call Bush’s “relief” mission a “turning point,” and characterized its import as “definitely an American military presence.”

Bush also announced that Rice would immediately travel to France to meet with Sarkozy and then go to Georgia. Employing the rhetoric of the Cold War, he said Rice would meet with Saakashvili and “continue our efforts to rally the free world in defense of a free Georgia.”

He further threatened Russia with diplomatic and political sanctions, suggesting it might be excluded from the G-8 group of industrialized nations and prevented from joining the World Trade Organization.

HypocrisyBush’s remarks were drenched with hypocrisy. He reiterated Washington’s support for Georgian control of the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, invoking once again the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia.” Neither he nor any other American spokesperson has explained why Georgia’s use of murderous violence against South Ossetia in its indiscriminate shelling of the region’s capital city was a legitimate defense of “territorial integrity,” while Serbia’s use of force against Kosovan secessionists was a war crime.

The US seized on Serbia’s moves against CIA-backed separatists in Kosovo to carry out a ten-week air war, under the auspices of NATO, in 1999. While Washington decries Russia’s “disproportionate” use of force against Georgian troops which attacked South Ossetia and condemns Moscow for military action beyond the borders of the breakaway republic, the US and NATO rained bombs and missiles on virtually all parts of Serbia, demolishing bridges, water pumping stations, electricity grids, government buildings, housing developments, schools and hospitals in the capital city of Belgrade. The US and NATO killed far more civilians in its campaign to crush Serbia, a traditional ally of Russia, than have been killed by both sides in the current fighting in the Caucasus.

The US has absolutely no political or moral standing to denounce Russia or anyone else for deploying military force. Washington asserts an unlimited and unilateral right to mobilize its massive apparatus of military violence wherever and whenever it wishes, spreading death and destruction from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia and threatening even more bloody conflagrations.

In the current conflict, the US government and media have cast Russia as the aggressor. There is no progressive content to Moscow’s actions in Georgia. They are motivated by the predatory aims of the Russian ruling elite, which is intent on reasserting Russian control over territories on its border that it dominated for centuries. However, the eruption of war in the Caucasus is the outcome of a policy pursued by US imperialism since the breakup of the Soviet Union whose ultimate aim is the reduction of Russia to a semi-colonial status.

It is inconceivable that Washington was not intimately involved in the preparations for Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia. US military advisers virtually run the military of what Washington considers its key ally in the Cacausus, a strategically critical bridgehead between the oil-rich Caspian Basin and Western Europe.

Just one month ago Secretary of State Rice visited Tbilisi and reaffirmed US support for Georgia’s admission to NATO, a development which Russia considers an intolerable threat to its security. Rice’s visit was followed by a massive three-week military training exercise, in which 1,000 US troops participated.

The incendiary measures announced by Bush on Wednesday represent the response of American imperialism to the major setback it has suffered as a result of Russia’s military intervention in Georgia. There is great concern within the US ruling elite that Russia’s routing of Georgia will undermine Washington’s drive to displace Russia from Moscow’s former spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and establish American hegemony over the Eurasian land mass.

US policy makers worry that the example of Georgia will weaken US control over right-wing client regimes it has established in a whole number of countries that were either part of the Soviet Union, such as Georgia and Ukraine, or allied to the Soviet Union through the Warsaw Pact.

A pattern of provocationFrom the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 to the present, the United States has carried out a policy of militarily encircling Russia and surrounding it with hostile states dependent upon and subservient to Washington.

As the USSR was disintegrating, the United States launched its first war against Iraq, a key ally of the Soviet Union in the Middle East. During the 1990s, the US and Western Europe sponsored the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in order to isolate and weaken the Russian ally Serbia.

In 1998, the US spearheaded the incorporation into NATO, the US-dominated military alliance, of a whole number of newly independent states that had been either part of the Soviet Union or allied to it through the Warsaw Pact, including Estonia, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria.

In 1999 the US launched the air war against Serbia. At the same time, the US organized the construction of a new pipeline to transport oil from the Caspian Basin, via Baku, through Georgia to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, bypassing Russian territory.

In 2002, the US set up military bases in the former Central Asian Soviet republics of Uzbekistan (since then closed at the insistence of the Uzbek government) and Kyrgyzstan. At the end of 2003, the US engineered the “Rose Revolution” that brought Saakashvili to power in Georgia. In 2004, NATO admitted a new group of states formerly aligned with Russia—Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. One year later Washington orchestrated the “Orange Revolution” that toppled a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and replaced it with a pro-American regime.

The final chapter in this assault on the strategic position of Russia was the recognition last February of Kosova’s bid for independence from Serbia.

Until now, the US has encountered no serious resistance. The events of the past week represent a major shift. For the first time, Russia, flush with oil money and able to exploit the overextended state of the US military, with its massive commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed back.

This has evoked an apoplectic response in the American ruling elite, which has no intention of accepting a diminution of its influence in the regions formerly dominated by the Soviet Union. US imperialism will react by immensely escalating its confrontation with Russia, no matter what the cost.

There is also a domestic component to the US escalation of tensions with Russia. The Bush administration is consciously seeking to create an atmosphere of international crisis in the run-up to the November presidential election. It calculates that an election held in an environment of fear and insecurity will boost the electoral chances of the Republican candidate John McCain.

McCain has based his campaign on his military background and his supposed foreign policy experience. From early on, he has called for a more combative stance toward Russia, and has responded to the Georgia crisis by demanding Russia’s ejection from the G-8 and other punitive measures.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial on Wednesday summed up the demand of sections of the ruling elite and elements within the Bush administration for a major and permanent shift to something like a new Cold War against Russia. The newspaper wrote: “Reshaping US policy toward Russia will take longer than the months between now and January 20, when a new president takes office. But Mr. Bush can at least atone for his earlier misjudgments about Mr. Putin and steer policy in a new direction that his successor would have to deal with.”

There are, in fact, only relatively minor tactical differences between McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama on US policy toward Russia. Both continue to demand the admission of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, which would put the US-led military alliance on the very doorstep of Russia. Had Georgia already been a member of NATO, the alliance would have been legally bound to intervene militarily in its defense following Russia’s incursion into South Ossetia.

The trajectory of the imperialist drive to carve up the world, spearheaded by US imperialism’s mad drive for global hegemony, is ominously clear. The American ruling elite will drag American workers and all of humanity into a catastrophe unless it is stopped. The only social force capable of achieving this is the international working class, united in the struggle to put an end to capitalism, the source of imperialist war, on the basis of a revolutionary socialist program.

:: Article nr. 46419 sent on 14-aug-2008 19:07 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=46419

Link: www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/bush-a14.shtml