An astonishing revelation was the US's role in fomenting the sectarian bloodshed now in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396001.html

Dahr Jamail took an unusual path to his current position as one of the few US journalists in Iraq worth paying attention to. A tour guide in Alaska in the run up to the war, he made his own way to the country in 2003, emailing dispatches back to friends and a growing number of interested parties. 3 more trips and a total of 8 months on the ground later, he is in Scotland touring his book "Beyond the Green Zone".

An engaging speaker armed with a wealth of statistics and telling anecdotes he spoke for two hours at Strathclyde University on Tuesday night.

Most of what we're told about Iraq isn't true, he argued. The US troop "surge" comprises only 20,000 (not 30,000) fresh troops, the rest are extended tours of duty. Around November 2007 there was a blitz of stories about Iraqis returning home, a PR operation eagerly lapped up by embedded journalists. 30,000 people have returned according to the UNHCR, but three quarters of them did so because they were compelled by visa or money trouble. In any event, the number of Iraqi refugees is well over 5 million, a figure you'll struggle to find reported.

An astonishing revelation was the US's role in fomenting the sectarian bloodshed now in Iraq, where in pre-war days half of registered marriages were between Sunni and Shia. The upsurge in ethnic conflict began after the appointment of John "Nicaragua Death Squads" Negroponte and his deputy to oversee counter-insurgency operations. That was when you began to see death squads from one ethnic group targeting community leaders of the other. This spiral intensified with the attacks on holy sites and festivals, until we have the near-civil war of today.

[unhappycamper]

1. No surprises.

Why else would one hire Negroponte?

[mopinko]

6. xactly np

[samsingh]

7. many suspected this

[mwb970]

2. bush is spreading hate throughout the world.

All to make us "safer"! What a joke.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. And I still contend that the bombing of the Golden Mosque

was a black-ops jobs - at least the first time - meant to divide Shia and Sunni. They were beginning to cooperate on attacks on US and British forces before that happened; after, they were going at each other.

Remember the Brits caught driving around in unmarked white SUVs, out of uniform with a shitload of explosives?

[NNN0LHI]

4. Uniformed men worked through the night planting the charges according to reports I have read

This in a country we are occupying?

Don

[malaise]

10. Bingo

Truth will out.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. K&R n/t

[PerfectSage]

8. Divide & conquer. Oldest trick in the British Empire playbook

[Rex]

9. I was Napoleon's secret to success as well.

[PerfectSage]

11. Battle of central position and envelopment was Napoleon's forte.

http://www.wargamer.com/articles/maneuver.asp