Remember this guy? He’s Back.
BELLACIAO – Robert Fisk: Who Benefits from a Civil War in Iraq – Lateline Australia – Collective Bellaciao — Readers should go read this interview in its entirety. Fascinating.
But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war?
The Sunnis are not fighting the Americans because they don’t have power and they’re not fighting the Americans just to get them out – and they will get them out eventually. They are fighting the Americans so that they will say, “We have a right to power because we fought the occupying forces and you, the Shiites, did not,” which is why it’s very important to discover now that Moqtada al-Sadr, who has an ever-increasing power base among the Shiite community, is himself threatening to fight the British and Americans. Now, if the Shiites and Sunnies come together, as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the British, then we are finished in Iraq. And that will mean that Iraq actually will be united.
The Shiites and Sunnies will keep fighting each other, nothing or no one is gonna stop that.
As for who benefits, thats simple, terrorist. They simply give weapons to both sides, tell both sides some lies to get them to attack US forces more. And before you know it we’er out of Iraq and the terrorist are in prime position to put in another Saddam Hussan.
How do we stop it? We gota support the total completion of the Iraqi regim change, if we start preasuring the government to pull out early like we did in the Gulf War, it will lead to the same result. Ten years from now Iraq will have more idiots in power who torture and kill half their population.
Expect there IS NO CIVIL WAR. Stop looking to pundits and press and start talking to military men and women serving in Iraq. The civil war the American press keeps harping on simply is not happening. They’ve blown a couple of incidents completely out of proportion.
Here’s a journalist who actually left his hotel room to look for the civil war:
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/64677.htm
” I’M trying. I’ve been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I’m looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can’t find it.
Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view’s clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn’t give me the right skills.
And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn’t stoop in such an hour of crisis.
Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the “instant Infantry” gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.
All day – and it was a long day – we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.
And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome. ”
Interesting what happens when a reporter actually does the job of going out and gathering information for a story.
>>The civil war the American press keeps harping on simply is not
>>happening.
Hoo boy. If it says so in a Murdoch rag, it’s got to be so, huh? On the other hand, the cynic might point out that if the author actually reported finding a civil war, he’d be looking for a new job so fast it would make his head spin.
The only way a case can be made for saying there is not civil war in Iraq is by quibbling over the definition of what “is” is. Is every square mile of the entire country consumed in a non-stop bloodbath? No. Is there escalating “sectarian violence” that kills many thousands every year, and precludes the reasonable likelihood of any kind of lasting peace? Of course there is. Is Iraq in worse shape today than at any point since the US invasion in 2003? You betcha.
Anyone who calls this bloodbath, caused in large part by Dumbya’s ill-advised unilateral invasion of Iraq, a “couple of incidents” must be smoking the same stuff the Murdoch family smokes.
Of course that’s your answer, Mustard. You couldn’t possibly accept the fact that a reporter who is in Baghdad on the ground and not staying in his hotel room or sitting back in NYC knows more than you, right? What a smug little sheep you are. Drop some more DNC talking points on us.
“Is Iraq in worse shape today than at any point since the US invasion in 2003? You betcha.”
The Iraqi people disagree. You’d know that if you talked to and read writing by people *in* Iraq, both coalition and native, and not surrounded yourself with the echo chamber of press back here working a political agenda. But then, you don’t give a shit about the truth, you only care about making cute quips like “Dumbya.” You don’t give a rats ass for the Iraqi people or the troops or anything but yruo own sad sense of self-importance.
So this stuff never happend or… Read HERE
Linktv.org has related pieces with Fisk and others- very compelling and thought provoking. The Link satellite channel is airing vids/interviews in heavy rotation during a fund raising drive- including some very good Chomsky material.
“Ten years from now Iraq will have more idiots in power who torture and kill half their population.”
Well, seeing as how the US government were the ones who installed Saddam Hussein in the first place, I don’t think they have much credibility on the point of who should be leading the country into peace.
“Of course that’s your answer, Mustard. You couldn’t possibly accept the fact that a reporter who is in Baghdad on the ground and not staying in his hotel room or sitting back in NYC knows more than you, right? What a smug little sheep you are. Drop some more DNC talking points on us.”
Says the guy who bases his argument on a newspaper operated by the same right-wing extremist that owns the “fair and balanced” Fox News. If you want us to believe someone’s “true” coverage of Iraq, come back with a newspaper that’s on the level and not based on partisan sensationalism. Also, saying that the New York Post is one of the only papers who had a reporter not just sitting in his hotel room is just as smug as you accused Mustard of being. And before you call be a bleeding heart liberal like right-wing extremists always do to people who disagree with them, I don’t think the New York Times is a reliable source of proper journalism either.
I present you with the Law of Armed Conflict.
http://www.afrc.af.mil/440AW/JudgeAdvocate/ja_LOAC_home.htm
Military Officers must comply with LOAC. If they don’t its an illeagal act and they can face criminal punishment for failure to comply.
>>Of course that’s your answer, Mustard.
That’s MISTER Mustard to you.
Your assumption that Murdoch lackey Ralph Peters is the only journalist writing about Iraq who is not quivering in his hotel room or hiding out in Manhattan or LA is so ludicrous as to not even merit a reply.
The overall concensus (putting together the Left-Wing Commie Pinkos like the NYT, the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, etc, the Right-Wing Nut Jobs like Murdochs rags and Fox “news”, World Hate Review, etc, with any truly “fair and balanced” reporting) is that the situation is going from bad to worse in Iraq, and FAST.
Even spokesmodels for Dumbya (like Rummy) have changed their tune from “isolated incidents” to “limited insurgency” to “insurgency”; now they’re trying to hold firm in not calling it a CIVIL WAR.
And in spite of all the bashing the “left-leaning liberal press” has taken from Right Wing Nut Jobs, more and more articles are appearing showing that the left-leaners are actually STRONGLY influenced by the wishes of Dumbya’s regime…from nixing mention of “civil war” in Iraq to calling SS privatization “personal accounts” right on down the line. That’s the problem the lefties have….they actually DO try to be fair and balanced, while the Right-Wing Nut Jobs let fly with the lies, showing no remorse.
Face it, dude. It’s a fricking CIVIL WAR. We took a bad situation, and made in immeasurably worse. A tinhorn dictator who was mean to his people (like there aren’t hundreds of them around the world) was toppled, and now we have the best training ground for Al Qaeda terrorists the world has ever known, and a country that has no reasonable chance of peaceful democracy during our lifetimes.
Gosh, maybe we should amend the Constitution and re-elect Dumbya yet again. Maybe he could destroy the entire world.
>>You couldn’t possibly accept the fact that a reporter who is in Baghdad
>>on the ground and not staying in his hotel room or sitting back in NYC
>>knows more than you, right?
And I hope you see the irony in the fact that virtually all of the right-wing, “fair and balanced” news sources are generally recognized as sensationalist tabloid rags, journalistic jokes, while the respected newspapers (NYT, LA TImes, Washington Post, etc.) get a never-ending bashing from the right wing. You may not agree with their editorial views, but at least they don’t have titty pictures inside and appeal largely to minimum-wage workers, like the Murdoch papers.
The media’s been talking about civil war years. That’s what they want to see happening, no matter what the IRaqis think.
>>The media’s been talking about civil war years. That’s what they
>>want to see happening, no matter what the IRaqis think.
I guess “the media” got their wish then. Iraquis are killing each other faster than Saddam ever did, and those who aren’t killing each other are plotting to kill us.
Way to go, Dumbay. Mission Accomplished.
There are 18 provence’s in Iraq….14 of them are going about their daily business pretty much unharmed. The other 4….2 sunni majority, 1 shia majority, and 1 Kurd majority are where all the fun is. The Kurds are fighting the Sunni’s in their area as well as for the return of Kirkuk(home of the big oil) from sunni control. The shia have our friend Muqtar raising hell with his militias mainly against the sunni minority and the British troops. The sunni are mostly backing the insurgancy in the 2 they are the majority in, and clamoring for American withdrawal, and we have our friend Muqtar here as well with his militia, killing sunni’s anywhere his death squads can find them.
But, is this civil war? I don’t think so, I think it’s just everyone jockying for position for when we leave.
The sunni’s don’t want a divided Iraq, because they lose then, all the oil is in the shia and Kurdish areas. The shia would form it’s own state backed by Iran(which is shia), the Kurds would form a strong state and harrass the Turks and the sunni’s would be left with Baghdad and a lot of sand.
The only ones who want civil war are the outside terrorists running the insurgancy and our friend Muqtar, who hopes to be the next Ayatollah Komani.