@@ West should always blame IRAN @@
Arash
September 24, 2005
Blame Iran
When nature and man conspire to expose the lies of the powerful, the truth will out
What we were actually doing in Basra was to turn a blind eye on abuse, murder and
anarchy
By Robert Fisk
"Water is your friend" was the advice regularly given to a truly good friend of mine
here in the Middle East. The speaker was a member of the
One-Thousand-Liters-a-Day-Keeps-Dehydration-at-Bay Brigade, although I have to say
that the Arabs take a different view. After generations of sword-like desert heat,
they take tea in the morning, endure an oven-like day without sustenance, and then
sip another scalding tea at dusk. The less you drink, the less you perspire, the less
you need to drink. In a land with few oases, it's a craft worth learning.
The problem is that today, water is not our "friend". It comes smashing into New
Orleans; it drowns the nursing home elderly in their baths; it assaults Galveston and
Houston; it kills millions in Bangladesh, dozens in Andhya Pradesh; it floods south
from the great ice-cold green bays of the Arctic; it carries 19th-century houses
through the centre of Prague, and it bubbles into the bars of English pubs from the
ancient, overflowing river-banks of Kent. Water has become our enemy.
There is a beautiful, delicate, inevitably cruel irony at the way in which nature and
man conspire to uncover the lies of the rich and powerful. Just as Bush's disastrous
environmental policies are now destroying the southern coast of the United
States--yes, it is global warming that causes this massacre of the innocent--America
is preparing to receive its 2000th dead soldier back from Iraq. No bodies,
please--let's not dishonor the dead of New Orleans by taking photographs of them. Nor
the American dead of Iraq by taking pictures of their coffins en route home. Death,
as usual, is what happens to other people.
But the photographs of British soldiers, cowled in fire, hurling themselves from the
top of their Warrior fighting vehicle in Basra this week, were the final iconic
images of our uniquely British folly in Iraq.
Lord Bliar of Kut al-Amara's henchmen have concocted another monstrous lie about all
this, of course. The Iraqi policemen who protested at Britain's destruction of their
prison--and the crowds who set fire to the Warrior (and its crew) -- were only a few
hundred people. Who were we to suggest they represented the millions of Shia Muslim
voters who solemnly went to the polls last January? Ho, ho, ho. Yes, and who were we
to suggest that the "few hundred" Saddam "remnants" identified as troublemakers in
mid-2003 represented a Sunni insurgency? And who were we, back in 1971, to suggest
that a few hundred stone-throwers in the Falls Road and Short Strand in Belfast
represented "the vast majority of ordinary peace- loving Catholics" in Northern
Ireland?
I speculated some weeks ago as to when the bubble will burst. With the insurgent
capture (and massacre) of a U.S. base in Iraq? With the overrunning of the Green Zone
in Baghdad? Every day now brings Vietnam-style evidence of our collapse. The
Americans batter their way into Tal Afar and kill, so they say, "142 insurgents". Get
that? U.S. forces manage to kill 142 of their enemies, not a single innocent man,
woman or child among them!
But let's go back to the Brits. Remember how we were told that our immense experience
of "peace- keeping" in Northern Ireland had allowed us to get on better with the
Iraqis in the south than our American cousins further north? I don't actually
remember us doing much "peacekeeping" in Belfast after about 1969--the rest, I
recall, was about biffing the IRA--but in any case the myth was burned out on the
uniforms of British troops this week.
Indeed, much of the war in Northern Ireland appeared to revolve around the use of
covert killings and SAS undercover operatives who blew away IRA men in ambushes.
Which does raise the question, doesn't it, as to just what our two SAS lads were
doing cruising around Basra in Arab dress with itsy-bitsy moustaches and guns? Why
did no one ask? How many SAS men are in southern Iraq? Why are they there? What are
their duties? What weapons do they carry? Whoops! No one asked.
What we were actually doing to "keep the peace" in Basra was to turn a Nelsonian
"blind eye" on the abuse, murder and anarchy of Basra since 2003 (including, it turns
out, quite a bit of abuse by our very own squaddies).
When Christian alcohol sellers were murdered, we remained silent. When ex-Ba'athists
were slaughtered in the streets--including women and their children, a civil war if
ever there was one--our British officers somehow forgot to tell the press. Anything
to keep our boys out of harm's way.
But this is what has been happening in Basra. As the locally recruited police force
(paid by the occupation authorities) sucked into its ranks the riff-raff of every
local militia--as it did in Sunni areas to the north--we ignored this. Even when an
American reporter investigating this extraordinary phenomenon was murdered--almost
certainly by these same policemen--the British remained silent. We were "controlling"
the streets. In Amara--by awful coincidence, the very same Kut al-Amara with whose
name, I'm sure, my favorite prime minister will soon be ennobled--British soldiers
now operate just one heavily armed convoy patrol a day. That is the extent of our
"control" over Amara. Now we are reducing our patrols in Basra. You bet we are.
And a familiar bleat is rising from the sheep pen. "Outside powers" are interfering
in southern Iraq. Thirty-five years ago, it was the Irish Republic that was assisting
Britain's IRA enemies.
Now it is Iran that is supposedly urging the Shia of Basra to revolt. In other words,
it's not our fault--yet again, it's the bloody foreigners what's to blame.
Alas, it is not. Iraqis do not need Iranian weapons or military expertise. Their
country is afloat with weapons and they learned how to make bombs--in their
millions--during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Half the Iraqi cabinet are linked to Iran--have the British forgotten that their
honorable DAWA (http://www.daawaparty.com) party government officials in Baghdad
worked for the very same DAWA party that blew up the U.S. and French embassies in
Kuwait, and tried to kill the emir in the late 1980s? That these same gentlemen
belong to a party which was effectively controlling the western hostages in Beirut
during this same period?
No. All this is forgotten. Blame Iran.
Later, no doubt, we'll blame those ungrateful Iraqis and then we'll declare victory
and do what Defence Secretary John Reid
(http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1388.asp) claims we won't do: cut and run.
And there again, we're in danger of forgetting the origin of such things. Faced with
the imminent destruction of his vessel, a sailing ship captain would cut his anchor
or sail ropes to allow his ship to move away from rocks or from being overwhelmed by
the waves. Cutting and running was often an eminently sensible thing to do. But not
for John Reid. We're not going to cut and run. We're going to be blown on to the
rocks.
Related:
Photo of Brigadier Gordon Kerr of (British Intelligence Corps)
http://www.sundayherald.com/fru.shtml
Big trouble for British occupation of Southern Iraq
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/ab87d77e977c22b6?hl=en
Basra judge says British terrorists must be arrested
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/41e54ed359656722?hl=en
British false-flag operations unmentioned in the corporate media
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/6cb77cc539bf8323?hl=en
Basra "black op" echoes British SAS actions in the Northern Ireland
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/146afc7425e1a310?hl=en
British terrorists exposed in Basra
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/241558c76e9b134e?hl=en
An Explosive Story
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/bb221d7f63cc9aa2?hl=en
British false-flag operation blown wide open
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/05ea09de724fda43?hl=en
JEW media shifts attention from British SAS screw-up to Iran
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/b354d27e92f4f073?hl=en
"Green Slime" Brigadier Gordon Kerr (British Intelligence Corps)
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/db9d09170484f68d?hl=en
British want to take over Iraqi police, since their terrorist plot has been exposed
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/57e7fb21a593b0f7?hl=en
Brits blame IRAN for their false-flag "black op" screw-up
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/a4ffc1140330c187?hl=en