Kick their ass and grab their Gas : How the US is installing a puppet regime in Iraq

by Avi H. Wed May 14, 2003 02:28

Pure opinion: delete it.

by James McKenna Wed May 14, 2003 08:50

The Vinnell Corporations headquarters in Riyhad was destroyed by yesterdays commando attack . Vinnell is a CIA company which trains people to guard oil wells! Like the ones they are stealing in Iraq. In Gulf War 1 they fought alongside the Saudi army.

Are our Irish ISAF troops going to do their course with Vinnell COrp for the job in Afghanistan? Well, not in Saudi Arabia anyway! An official accompanying Colin Powell (means "ass-hole" in gaeilge) said it took only thirty seconds to a minute to "knock out the security post at the compound housing the US-based Vinnell Corporation's employees". Not too well trained there Vinnell!

"From within a Ford sedan, the attackers started by killing or wounding security guards sitting in a vehicle equipped with a machine gun, then seized control of the guard post to allow a booby-trapped Dodge Ram truck through the compound's gate. "

The use of US-made cars ensured that the bombers attracted little attention as they approached the compound, the official said.

World media has carefully concealed the fact that this was not a single attack but rather bore the hallmark of an Al Qa'ida commander who likes to carry out simultaneous attacks . The "twin" blast in Chechnya was massive and the Russians say they lost around 50 soldiers but locals put the figure in the hundreds.

A double attack doesn't indicate The War Against Terrorism is going to well. Not if the prime target is still able to organise cross-continental, simultaneous attacks!

A confused Saudi citizen who has lived for decades under the US backed oppressive regime of the "Princes" asked, "What part of get out of the Holy Land of Saudi or we will kill you do they not understand"?

Attacks such as this look like increasing in frequency in Saudi, Iraq and Afghanistan as resistance to the global occupation of Muslin oil fields grows.

Safe home America ! Don't forget to say hello to the homeless, the poor the badly paid and the hungry when you get back to the land of the free. There are many people in the "Homeland/Fatherland" who could do with a few hundred of the billions and billions Bush is now stealing from their country to boulster his Corporate friends in this idiotic attempt to make "Amerika" wealthy by theft.

by Ali H. Wed May 14, 2003 09:47

So far this week we have :

+ Post repetitive dirge and denounce other posters as being opinionated
+ Defend American policy blindly
+ Discredit the Palestinian education system
+ Discredit everybody else's nuclear/WMD program
+ Discredit ISM as a Palestinian front
+ Discredit Al-Jazeera
+ Discredit the British and Irish as promoters of suicide bombing
+ Discredit the Palestinian leadership
+ Insult the Irish by arguing for re-establishment of the union with Britain and denying their right to soverignty and self-determination
+ Come up with lame excuses for the continued occupation of Palestine

The only thing we're missing is the disturbing rise in anti-semitic attacks in outer Mongolia or some other such nugget of valuable information.

Your output of dirge is phenomenal and must account for 10% of the traffic on IMC this week but it doesnt escape the fact that you obviously have nothing better to do than indulge yourself in childish games of "King of the castle".

by Walden Bello Wed May 14, 2003 10:34

Overextension refers to a mismatch between goals and means, with means referring not only to military resources but to political and ideological ones as well. Under the reigning neoconservatives, Washington's goal is to achieve overwhelming military dominance over any rival or coalition of rivals. This quest for even greater global dominance, however, inevitably generates opposition, and it is in this resistance that we see the roots of overextension. Overextension is relative--an overextended power may in fact be in a worse condition even with a significant increase in its military power if resistance to its power increases by an even greater degree.

This point may sound surreal after the massive firepower we witnessed on television night after night over the past month. But consider the following and ask whether they are not signs of overreach:

Full Article: http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc1911.html

by kokomero Wed May 14, 2003 10:54

(to the tune of the Pistol's Rock'n'Roll Swindle)

People said we had no proof
of Saddams nukes and gasses
But the only thing that really counts
Is for oil we kicked their asses

We killed them all with our motley crew
´Cos we didn´t give a toss
Filthy lucre, ain´t nothing new
But we all get cash from the chaos

Halliburton profits from it now
The greatest shock´n´awe swindle
Halliburton profits from it now

The UN said you´re out of hand
But we couldn't give a hoot
But they couldn´t block us, just like that
Without giving us the loot

Thank you kindly Tony Blair
Who backed us without question
But that ain´t bad for three weeks work
And the dead won't get a mention

Halliburton profits from it now
The greatest shock´n´awe swindle
Halliburton profits from it now

Halliburton profits from it now
The greatest shock´n´awe swindle
Halliburton profits from it now

I just wanna play with my guns
And go on a shooting spree
Hiya Shias I´m the choosen one
Until you get democracy

I´m a cowboy playing president
And I'm really want your oil
I´ll take away what's rightly yours
And irradiate your soil

Halliburton profits from it now
The greatest shock´n´awe swindle
Halliburton profits from it now

The time is right for Iraqi freedom
The Shias shout Allah Akhbar
The time is right for Iraqi freedom, now!

by 4wolfatad Wed May 14, 2003 11:04

http://www.robert-fisk.com/fisk_interview_demnow22apr2003.htm

by pat c Wed May 14, 2003 11:13

These attacks in SAudi Arabia were on legitimate military taegets

by Joe Wed May 14, 2003 16:50

"The Vinnell Corporation (a TRW company) is one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East."

More at http://www.dyncorp-sucks.com/trw.htm

by KJIFAN Wed May 14, 2003 20:12

Imperialist war
by KJIFAN Wed, May 14 2003, 12:23pm

Imperialist war in Iraq is another example of the cruelty that only capitalists are capable of. Imperialist wars only exist in capitalism because capitalism is a rotten system and we must replace it with socialism.

People often say that imperialist Soviet Union went to Afghanistan and that imperialism is possible also in socialism. That is a lie. Soviet union went to Afghanistan because working people of Afghanistan asked Soviet Union to help them get rid of those shameless gangsters who tried to prevent Afghan people building socialism. Soviet Union was not conqueror, it was benefactor.

People in Iraq are suffering. It is because capitalism has decided to steal natural resources of Iraq and turn the country into huge prison camp. People in Iraq want socialism, many of them don’t know it yet, but they do. Imperialists wont let progressive people to build a true workers state in Iraq. That is a war crime committed by those shameless imperialist forces.

add your comments
COMMENTS

Yeah Right
by Cleaver Wed, May 14 2003, 1:11pm

Hardly gripping news now is it maybe add this rant to another link rather than clogging up the newswire with it. (just a suggestion from a closet capitalist)

here goes:
by iosaf - use the teenage intellect space for some real info. Wed, May 14 2003, 1:40pm

"Iraqi Muslims will consider an occupying force as infidels on Arab
territory. This will result in violence and resistance."

that's a quote from Ayatolah Baqir Al Hakim.

He said that in
February. I reported it for you all (KMJ2fan included and Avi H. and Noone) here on IMC ireland. the little neutral state zone that is so so cool.

now when "the new leader" of the Iraqis said that back in Feb. he had juist confirmed the presence of 5000 of his loyal troops in the Iraqi state.

Does the phrase "infidel" usually come from Socialists mouths?
check the link...

related link: ireland.indymedia.org/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=47473&start=40

Not normally prone to quoting Fascists but...
by !'· Wed, May 14 2003, 2:03pm

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
-- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

ANARCHIST DIRECT ACTION IN IRELAND
by RBBFAN Wed, May 14 2003, 2:47pm

Anarchist Direct Action in Ireland is another example of the cruelty that only anarchists are capable of. Anarchism only exists because capitalism is a rotten system and we must replace it with socialism.

People often say that the SWP came to Ireland from the UK and that imperialism is possible also in socialism. That is a lie. The SWP came to Ireland because working people of Ireland asked the SWP to help them get rid of those shameless anarchists who tried to prevent Irish people building socialism. The SWP was not conqueror, it was benefactor.

People in Ireland are suffering. It is because anarchists have decided to organise elitist Direct Action in Ireland and turn the country into huge battle ground. People in Ireland want socialism, many of them don’t know it yet, but they do. Anarchists wont let progressive people to build a true workers state in Ireland. That is a anarchist crime committed by those shameless GNAW elitists.

after careful deconstructionalist analysis
by iosaf Wed, May 14 2003, 2:54pm

i have found that the style of this article, the vocabulary and many toher signs show it to be the work (?¿?¿?lol) of one nasty little Fascist who comes here everyday. I recommend eleting it, but it strikes me as odd, that when the little shit disguises himself, he chooses to do so in memory of STalinist dictators, hmmm, aint that odd.
within he fights between the "superman" who is run off UCD campus and the "joe stalin" pipe smoking dictator. this is interesting but not really worth space.
do you suppose he pays his own Eircom bill or is that the mammy?

General Tommy Franks accused of War Crimes
by Mark - Should keep the crusties happy... Wed, May 14 2003, 5:06pm

by Mark Wed, May 14 2003, 3:02pm

[Moved by R Isible to become comment]

A lawsuit accusing the commander of US troops in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, of war crimes was filed in a Belgian court today.

A lawsuit accusing the commander of US troops in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, of war crimes was filed in a Belgian court today.

The 19 plaintiffs filed the suit under Belgium's controversial "universal competence" law, which allows charges to be brought regardless of where the alleged crimes took place.

Their suit relates to about 20 alleged crimes during the Iraq war, including three cases in which US troops are accused of firing on ambulances, according to lawyer Ms Jan Fermon.

"General Franks is responsible as commander in chief for the way some of his men acted on the ground: for instant the use of cluster bombs on civilian areas is a war crime," he told reporters.

The plaintiffs comprise 17 Iraqis and two Jordanians - the widow and father of Mr Tareq Ayub, a Jordanian correspondent for Arabic satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera, who was killed on April 8th when a US tank shell hit a Baghdad hotel.

The suit also names Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Brian MacCoy, who is accused of categorising the ambulances as "legitimate targets" because he suspected them of harbouring gunmen.

The "universal competence" law, in force since 1993, allows Belgian courts to rule on alleged crimes under international law, regardless of where they were committed, the nationality of the accused or the victims. It has drawn strong criticism from the United States, which has warned that Belgium's standing as an international hub is at risk.

Some 30 current or former political leaders are facing legal action under the law, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat, former US president Mr George Bush Snr and US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell.

(Source: Irish Times)

add your comments
COMMENTS

The Ballad of Tommy Franks
by kokomero Wed, May 14 2003, 4:21pm

My name is General Tommy Franks
The father of "Shock-n-Awe"
When GB wants his oil cut-price
He sends out to war

Without so much as a by-your-leave
We pass the UN by
And its over Erin to Iraq
Where we'll MOAB them from the sky

With my trusty poodle by my side
I slaughter all asunder
But when the Belgians lock me up
I say it was no blunder

Those people in Falluja town
They shot first not we
Of course you know it must be true
Didn't they say it on TV

Them others slaughtered on the bridge
As they were driving by
Sure didn't they flash their lights at us
So we blasted them from on high

Wont we have a great excuse
We were looking for Saddams WMD
Now its over the border to Syria
Their next on the list you see

And then its on to Saudi
Where we're propping up the prince
We're teaching them to torture
By God we'll make them wince

And when it all is over
And there's no more an Arab to see
Sure I'll fly on down to Tel Aviv
And we'll give the Israelis the key

etc.

Other verses welcome

Post moved by R Isible to become comment
by Michael Birmingham Wed, May 14 2003, 7:08pm
[email protected]

A new chapter in Republican administration’s brutalizing of Iraqi people.

Murder, Kidnapping and the rule of the gun are part of the immediate outcome of war in Iraq. There are so many horrific stories and no means of reporting them, you simply come accross these stories by accident whereever you go in Bagdhad. This reality today stems from the people close to Bush who have for decades relentlessly pursued policies towards Iraq that callously disregarded Iraqi life.

A new chapter in Republican administration’s brutalizing of Iraqi people.
By Michael Birmingham.

“This dinner is pre-cooked.” Ahmed, an Iraqi engineer volunteered his view on what level of involvement Iraqis would be given by the U.S. in determining their future. He likened the choice to the one his mother used to give him on his returning from school. He would be asked what he wanted for dinner, but the finished product was already cooked in the kitchen. Ahmed believes that whatever Iraqis want and are asked, their future government has been pre-cooked by George Bush. He now only wants to get enough money and an opportunity to bring his family out of Iraq, before things get much worse as he believes they will.

Things are bad enough right now. Stories are coming with increasing regularity of the terrible price being paid by Iraqis for the complete lawlessness which pertains in the country. There are many stories of women being dragged away in cars at gunpoint. One while with her husband in a car in central Baghdad, another woman from a tight-knit village. A young woman in broad daylight from one of Baghdad’s busier squares, and two young women from their homes. These are only the stories that I have personally been told. On more than one occasion when I ask had these incidents been covered by media, I was told there are stories everywhere, who’d cover them all?

People are afraid to send their children to school. Afraid, that even if they drive them, they cannot be sure to be able to protect them in the car. Afraid that there will not be adequate security in the schools.

One friend told me that in his daughter’s school parents had organized amongst themselves to protect it while the children are there. They had been assured that the U.S. army would be driving past all schools in the zone during school hours. Of course, most telephones aren’t working and even if one lives in those areas where you can ring locally, there is no emergency number to call. Alternatively, if the soldiers just happened to be passing at the moment some terrible incident was happening they have neither Arabic nor interpreter. Would they go with someone who approached speaking excitedly to them in Arabic. Of course not. Various soldiers have anyway regularly told me that they are under orders not to intervene “to let Iraqis sort things out themselves.”

Up until the day the U.S. came and liberated the journalists in the Palestine Hotel, the Iraqi police force was to be seen on street corners all over the city. They vanished in a instant and the intervening month has seen complete lawlessness. For a city with five million people, suddenly to have no police at all – it already had all of its prisons emptied by the government last October – the violent chaos can be no surprise.

The media reports that there are now some police back on the streets. Indeed, a few are to be seen occasionally standing in clusters, pretty well the only people in Iraq that cannot carry guns. Last week, in Mahmoudiya, just outside Baghdad, I stopped at a small market as a friend bought cigarettes. A twelve year old boy was wandering by with a pistol stuck down the front of his shorts. He said he was selling it, and hoped that it would only be used by the new owner as a decoration.

A jaunt around Baghdad in the evenings, in itself a perilous activity, and you can easily find people selling Kalasnikovs on the pavement. They are cheaper than the handguns, which people often prefer as they can be more easily concealed. Some women say that they will not go to the supermarket without a handgun in their purse. Businesses open only on the basis of having a Kalasnikov close to hand. A friend driving home from work a couple of days ago watched as a man was dragged from his car and murdered on the ground in one of Baghdad’s main streets during daylight. Others I know have seen their neighbours murdered and have no idea what was the reason.

It’s a safe bet, that in this environment the unarmed and uncoordinated Iraqi police will refrain from intervening in anything. Ahmed is of a mind that all of this is part of the pre-cooked Bush plan for Iraq. Have a strong and well educated people weakened and damaged anyway possible.

Its hard to argue with the idea that the disorder was well planned for, and something that the U.S. government is more than happy with. Were they not happy, we would surely have seen efforts to intervene. Just as tellingly, it is exactly the kind of policy that many in this administration have prescribed for Iraq for years.

During the 1980’s, the current Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was in Baghdad doing business with Saddam. He was not there talking about human rights, but as a Presidential envoy, signifying that Saddam was our man. From then until now, nothing has been done to promote human rights within Saddam’s Iraq. The Reagan government was officially committed to a policy that kept the Iran-Iraq war going for the entire eight year duration that Reagan was in power - Vice President Dick Cheney was at the time a Republican Senator with considerable foreign policy power.

The new U.S. head for Iraq Paul Bremer, was the roving ambassador for counter terrorism between 1986 and ‘89. (Just the right time to be around for some of the most heinous crimes committed in Latin America as part of the U.S. government’s counter terrorism policy.) His former boss, and close colleague Henry Kissinger was the one who summed up the then Iran-Iraq policy most clearly: “I hope they kill each other.” One million people did die.

The Gulf War with its deliberate devastation of Iraqi society’s life sustaining infrastructure, was undertaken by Bush’s dad, with Cheney by then Defence Secretary. To this day, Iraqi children die in large numbers as a result of the ’91 targeting of the population’s water supply. The sanctions policy, brought in also by Bush the elder, was used for over 12 years punishing ordinary Iraqis, while it left the regime unscathed. The sanctions policy on Iraq might well meet the legal definition of genocide were we to live in a world where the U.S. President was subject to international law.

Then there was the treacherous decision to turn a blind eye to the mass murder of those Iraqis who rebelled against Saddam in 1991. This policy was justified by Richard Haas, a senior middle east Republican policy advisor at the time, on the basis that they wanted a change of leadership not regime. This desire to keep the repressive Ba’ath regime in power, while replacing the no-longer presentable Saddam was the driving policy until the “Shock and Awe” missiles started dropping on the 21st of March. The last communication to the Iraqi regime: if Saddam and his sons leave, we won’t attack.

Would the self-same individuals who have never flinched at the barbarity which their policies brought to Iraq, be capable of deliberately ensuring terrifyingly violent lawlessness? It can’t be but a rhetorical question.

The Iran-Iraq war seemed to many of these same Republicans a good vehicle to support. Eight years is a lot of time to be hearing stories of incredible bloodshed. A lot of time in which it was decided to continue to support neither Iran nor Iraq, just the continuation of the war. We know that throughout the 12 years of sanctions, reports of massive death amongst children under five left these people unmoved in their enthusiasm for the policy.

How many reports of murder, kidnapping, and a society ever more terrorized and traumatized could these people sit through? How many reports about the humanitarian catastrophe that their war is setting in train will they be able to stomach? As many as it takes to meet whatever self-interested agenda they are following.

The issue for the other five billion of us is how much longer are we going to sit back and watch. If we continue to fail to do what we can to stop the U.S. government from slaughtering Iraqis, and trampling on their rights we are also responsible. What pathetic excuse is it for us to say now, we are just hoping that this time it will be different. Lets go out on a limb. It won’t be. The U.S. administration cares nothing for the lives of Iraqi people.

Human rights and justice do not come through naivety or passivity. They must be fought for. If we want a world that is not governed by the callous violence of the most powerful this is a time and an issue to wage that struggle.

by .,Lance Thu May 15, 2003 09:04

'Avi'(the anti-semite & holocaust denial card man)says:

"Not news
by Avi H. Wed, May 14 2003, 1:28am

Pure opinion: delete it."

If blatant demogoguery and meretricious OpEd were always deleted as 'Not news', Avi; we would have never seen you on this posting board.

However we know that you don't mean your deletion rule to be applied to yourself.