Slaughterhouse

By Mike Whitney

04/25/06 "ICH" -- -- It is astonishing how many Americans believe that Iraq is in a civil war.

Haven’t we already proved to everyone’s satisfaction that the storyline leading up to the war was entirely false; that all of the charges and claims of WMD and connections to 9-11 were completely baseless?

And wasn’t “alleged” terrorist mastermind, Abu Musab al Zarqawi exposed last week in a Washington Post article as a fraud; a shabby invention of the fertile imaginations of Pentagon planners and their surrogates in the media?

Colonel Derek Harvey candidly admitted that the military intentionally “enlarged Zarqawi’s caricature” to create the impression that the struggle against occupation was really a fight against terrorism.

What more proof do we need?

Didn’t the Bush administration adopt a strategy produced by the right-wing think tank, Rand Corp. for exploiting the ideological and religious differences of the Iraqi people, even though Iraq has no history of sectarian violence?

So why are the American people so eager to accept the Pentagon-media analysis of the present conflict in Iraq? Every part of the narrative so far has been exposed as a lie. Are we to believe that the media has suddenly “seen the light” and decided to record the facts as objectively as possible?

Are we to believe that the Pentagon has decided to “be straight” with the public about the current state of affairs in Iraq?

Let us at least agree on the one basic axiom that underscores all corporate journalism; the media never tells the truth.

Sure, stories break that shed light on some area of government waste, fraud or abuse, but the really big stories (independent investigations of 9-11, the destruction of Falluja, the 2004 Ohio election fraud, the Downing Street memo, “Able Danger”) simply disappear behind a wall of disinformation. The truth only leaches out through its corporate spigot as a way of lending credibility to the “prevailing lie” which animates every area of the corporate information–system.

This is THEIR system, not yours or mine; and it is their narrative that appears on the front page of the New York Times or the headline story on CNN. That storyline is always skewed in favor of those who have a vested interest in persuading the public that their perspective is correct, which takes us back to our original axiom; the media never tells the truth.

The civil war storyline is intended to divert attention from the bloody subjugation of the Iraqi people by a foreign military. This is the real story of the Iraqi conflict. The current malaise in Iraq is reducible to three bullet-points; occupation, occupation, and occupation. Any departure from this essential narrative is simply false.

American Intelligence services are involved in every area of the present hostilities. Author Max Fuller (“Crying Wolf: Media disinformation and Deaths squads in Occupied Iraq”) has documented how CIA operatives have not only trained the Iraqi death squads operating in the Interior ministry, but created a high-tech facility with data banks of the names of potential targets for future attacks.

Does that sound like civil war or a pretty well-thought out scheme for plunging the country into chaos?

And how does one explain the fact that there have been three separate incidents where occupation forces have been either caught or connected to bombings in Iraq?

The first was the famous incident in Basra where two British paramilitaries were caught disguised as Arabs with a truck-full of explosives in their vehicle. Panicky British forces destroyed the Basra jail to release the two captured SAS soldiers clearly afraid that their involvement in setting off bombs would be exposed.

Another report that appeared in Reuters “American arrested with weapons in Iraq” confirmed that an American “security contractor working for a private company, possessed explosives which were found in his car.” He was arrested by Iraqi security guards.

The bombing of the Golden-domed mosque also establishes links between the sporadic bombing in Iraq and American clandestine operatives. The AFP reported that the bombing “was the work of specialists” and the “placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours”. The report continues:

“Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, “Holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance.”

Clearly the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance but highly trained saboteurs executing a precision demolition to incite sectarian violence. The blast bears all the hallmarks of a covert Intelligence agency operation. Eyewitness accounts verify that American troops and Iraqi National Guard were active in the area throughout the night and that their cars could be heard running “the whole night until next morning”. People living around the mosque were told “to stay in your shop and don’t leave the area”.

At 6:30 AM the American troops left, just 10 minutes before the bombs went off.

Since the bombing, the media has universally adopted the approach that the destruction of the mosque was the “catalyzing event” which put Iraq on the pat to civil war.

It is utter nonsense.

The story is just as bogus as the earlier fabrications about WMD or al Zarqawi. In fact, if it was the truth, we can be reasonably certain that it would not appear in the headlines, as per our original axiom that “the media never tells the truth”.

The rationale leading up to the war was a lie. The justification for the ongoing occupation as a fight against terrorism (al Zarqawi) was a lie. The fairy tale about an Iraqi civil war is a lie. And, presumably, all the future stories diverting attention from America’s bloody occupation will be lies.

Iraq is subsumed by a wave of violence which radiates directly from the White House. Don’t blame the Iraqis. The world’s most ancient civilization is being systematically obliterated to feed the insatiable greed of Washington warlords and their constituents in the corporate boardrooms across America.

Iraq is America’s slaughterhouse; the Iraqi people have no part in this crime.

Don’t call it civil war.

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