Manning guilty; war criminals on the loose
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Al-Qaeda wins, on all fronts
The US government went no holds barred to prove that Manning had helped al-Qaeda. Reality - not spin - shows it's the US government that has actually enabled al-Qaeda.
With Shock and Awe and the invasion, occupation and destruction of the social fabric of Iraq, George W Bush, Dick Cheney and their goodfellas handed out a new base to al-Qaeda on a (bloody) plate. First it was al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the monster psychopath Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Then somebody had to fight them; thus the Petraeus surge, which consisted of suitcases full of cash for Sunni tribal sheikhs who until then were fighting the Americans. The sheikhs took the money and waited; al-Qaeda dissolved, regrouped and is back in full force.
And this is where we are now. This Monday the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - the regional al-Qaeda spin-off - killed at least 60 people in 17 bombings all across Iraq. The "carefully selected" targets were all Shi'ites. More than 4,000 people - mostly civilians - have been killed since early 2013, over 900 in July alone. The Interior Ministry in Baghdad correctly describes it as an "open war" unleashed by sectarian jihadis.
The key point is why this horror cannot possibly be the object of imperial condemnation. For Washington's purposes, a weak, bloody, sectarian-divided Iraq is as useful as a weak, bloody, sectarian-divided Syria; that opens the way to possible (double) balkanization, a not-so-secret wet dream of imperial factions since the first Bush administration.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-310713.html
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