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The Iraqis Don't
Really Want Us
By William Blum
14/01/08 "ICH"
-- -- Did you miss this? It should have been the lead story
in every newspaper and radio and TV program in America. In the
Washington Post it was on page 14. In virtually all of the rest
of the media it was on page zero, channel zero, 0000 AM or 00.0
FM.
The US military in Iraq hired
firms to conduct focus groups amongst a cross section of the
population. A summary report of the findings was obtained by the
Post. Here are some of the highlights of the report as disclosed
by the newspaper:
Until the March 2003 US
occupation Sunnis and Shiites coexisted peacefully.
Iraqis of all sectarian and
ethnic groups believe that the US military invasion is the
primary root of the violent differences among them.
After the United States
leaves Iraq, national reconciliation will happen "naturally."
A sense of "optimistic
possibility permeated all focus groups ... and far more
commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly
diverse groups of Iraqis."
Dividing Iraq into three
states would hinder national reconciliation. (Only the Kurds did
not reject this option.)
Most would describe the
negative elements of life in Iraq as beginning with the US
occupation.
Few mentioned Saddam
Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the report described
as an important finding, implying that "the current strife in
Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances
many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which
lasted for nearly four decades -- as opposed to the current
conflict, which has lasted for five years."
The Washington Post added this
note: "Outside of the military, some of the most widespread
polling in Iraq has been done by D3 Systems, a Virginia-based
company that maintains offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Its most recent publicly released surveys, conducted in
September for several news media organizations, showed the same
widespread Iraqi belief voiced by the military's focus groups:
that a U.S. departure will make things better. A State
Department poll in September 2006 reported a similar
finding."[6]
This just in: The US has found
the perfect way to counteract such foolish attitudes of the
Iraqi people. On January 10, the Associated Press reported:
"U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of
explosives on the southern outskirts of Baghdad within 10
minutes Thursday in one of the biggest air strikes of the war,
flattening what the military called safe havens for al-Qaida in
Iraq." There was no mention of whether the planes had also
dropped pamphlets saying: "We bomb you because we care about
you."
On December 20, the legislature
of Panama declared the date to be a day of "national mourning"
in memory of the American invasion on that day in 1989. "This is
a recognition of those who fell on Dec. 20 as a result of the
cruel and unjust invasion by the most powerful army in the
world," said Rep. Cesar Pardo, of the governing Democratic
Revolutionary Party, which holds a majority in the legislature.
U.S. officials downplayed the issue. "We prefer to look to the
future," said a U.S. Embassy spokesman. "We are very satisfied
to have a friend and partner like Panama, a nation that has
managed to develop a mature democracy."[7] As with their attack
on Iraq on March 19, 2003, the United States, with no
provocation or international legality (yes, another war of
aggression), first bombed Panama, then staged a ground invasion,
killing as many as a few thousand, while offering no believable
reason for their psychopathic behavior.[8]
Will we some day see in a free
and independent Iraq the setting of March 19 as a day of
national mourning?
Some further thought re the 9/11 truth movement
When I say, as I did in last month's report, that I don't think
that 9-11 was an "inside job", it's not because I believe that
men like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, et al.
are not morally depraved enough to carry out such a monstrous
act; these men each has a piece missing, a piece that's shaped
like a social conscience; they consciously and directly
instigated the current Iraqi and Afghanistan horrors which have
already cost many more American lives than were lost on 9/11,
not to mention more than a million Iraqis and Afghans who dearly
wanted to remain amongst the living. In the Gulf War of 1991,
Cheney and other American leaders purposely destroyed
electricity-generating plants, water-pumping systems, and sewage
systems in Iraq, then imposed sanctions upon the country making
the repair of the infrastructure extremely difficult. Then,
after twelve years, when the Iraqi people had performed the
heroic task of getting these systems working fairly well again,
the US bombers came back to inflict devastating damage to them
all once more. My books and many others document one major crime
against humanity after another by our America once so dear and
cherished.
So it's not the moral question
that makes me doubt the inside-job scenario. It's the logistics
of it all -- the incredible complexity of arranging it all so
that it would work and not be wholly and transparently
unbelievable. That and the gross overkill -- they didn't need to
destroy or smash up ALL those buildings and planes and people.
One of the twin towers killing more than a thousand would
certainly have been enough to sell the War on Terror, the
Patriot Act, and Homeland Security. The American people are not
such a hard sell. They really yearn to be true believers. Look
how they scream hysterically over Hillary and Obama.
To win over people like me, the
9/11 truth people need to present a scenario that makes the
logistics reasonably plausible. They might start by trying to
answer questions like these: Did planes actually hit the towers
and the Pentagon and crash in Pennsylvania? Were these the same
four United Airline and American Airline planes that took off
from Boston and Newark? At the time of collision, were they
being piloted by people or by remote control? If people, who
were these people?
Also, why did building 7
collapse? If it was purposely demolished -- why? All the reasons
I've read so far I find not very credible. As to the films of
the towers and building 7 collapsing, which make it appear that
this had to be the result of controlled demolitions -- I agree,
it does indeed look that way. But what do I know? I'm no expert.
It's not like I've seen, in person or on film, numerous examples
of buildings collapsing due to controlled demolition and
numerous other examples of buildings collapsing due to planes
crashing into them, so I could make an intelligent distinction.
We are told by the 9/11 truth people that no building
constructed like the towers has ever collapsed due to fire. But
how about fire plus a full-size, loaded airplane smashing into
it? How many examples of that do we have?
But there's one argument those
who support the official version use against the skeptics that I
would question. It's the argument that if the government planned
the operation there would have to have been many people in on
the plot, and surely by now one of them would have talked and
the mainstream media would have reported their stories. But in
fact a number of firemen, the buildings' janitor, and others
have testified to hearing many explosions in the towers some
time after the planes crashed, supporting the theory of planted
explosives. But scarce little of this has made it to the media.
Likewise, following the JFK assassination at least two men came
forward afterward and identified themselves as being one of the
three "tramps" on the grassy knoll in Dallas. So what happened?
The mainstream media ignored them both. I know of them only
because the tabloid press ran their stories. One of the men was
the father of actor Woody Harrelson.
NOTES
[1] San Francisco Chronicle, October 24, 1980, p.7
[2] United Press International
(UPI) dispatch from Saigon, October 31, 1967
[3] See interview with Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser -- http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm
[4] http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile5.html
[5] Victor Marchetti and John
Marks, "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" (1975), p.307;
Peter Wyden, "Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story" (1979), p.142-3
[6] Washington Post, December
19, 2007, article plus accompanying sidebar; see also the
Anti-Empire Report of August 18, 2006, last item, for another
Post article demonstrating the belief of the Iraqi people, as
well as American military personnel, that things would be better
if the US left the country.
[7] Associated Press, December
20, 2007
[8] For the full details, see
William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 50.
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