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By Craig Hulet

07/31/03 (InformationClearingHouse) Every week American soldiers are being killed and wounded by the growing guerrilla resistance in Iraq, and not just in Baghdad. Rumsfeld calls them subversives and other trite names to cloud the truth: we are occupying Iraq not liberating anyone. He has even suggested that Saddam's remnants are "paying" individuals to attack US troops! Amazing! 

The topic of this article is multi-faceted regarding several main topics. On the one hand, Mr. Colin Powell has been instructed to declare to the outside world we are winning the war on terrorism; we won in Iraq; there were elections in Afghanistan and there will soon be the same in Iraq. The obedient US media parrots the propaganda unflinchingly amidst charges of fabricating everything from news stories to photographs of events that never happened. Not in America though. We, on the other hand here in America, are treated as the idiot children of a despot, not capable of entertaining the truth; the chosen term "entertain[ing]ment" objectively picked for obvious reasons. Mr. Bush is being hailed worldwide as the greatest liar to ever sit on the throne of empire while the empire itself is being debated vigorously throughout the rest of the world. I shall begin my analysis heretofore:

Beginning with the much ballyhooed report recently in the mainstream media, "Patterns of Global Terrorism" released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counter-terrorism on April 30, 2003, we shall take a closer look at what we hear and what we ought to be told in proper fashion. Beginning with the section titled, "The Year in Review":

"International terrorists conducted 199 attacks in 2002, a significant drop (44%) from the 355 attacks recorded during 2001. A total of 725 persons were killed in last year’s attacks, far fewer than the 3,295 persons killed the previous year, which included the thousands of fatalities resulting from the September 11 attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania."

Deduct the number of fatalities due to 9/11 and we actually have had an increase in typical terrorist attacks whereby persons were killed: some 300 during 2001 compared to 725 during 2002! Which is better than double the number of deaths! What this says is that while the number of "incidents" have decreased their deadliness has "increased" better than twofold.

"A total of 2,013 persons were wounded by terrorists in 2002, down from the 2,283 persons wounded the year before." Again, we are not told how many of those wounded during 2001 were from the atypical 9/11 event, and therefore there was once again an increase in wounded due to typical terrorist attacks. In other words terrorism’s deadliness increased due (in this analysts previous report "A Record of Terror") to our war in Afghanistan and preparation for war with Iraq. The Report goes on to add, "The number of anti-US attacks was 77, down 65% from the previous year’s total of 219. The main reason for the decrease was the sharp drop in oil pipeline bombings in Colombia (41 last year, compared to 178 in 2001)."

But, oil pipeline bombings yet to come will most certainly take place on a regular basis when the Afghanistan to Pakistan pipeline is completed and, as well, the proposed Iraq to Israel pipeline. The American taxpayer insures these pipelines so we will hear little about these attacks in the American press. Just as most have not heard of the many attacks on oil pipelines in Columbia. Which makes sense as the American people, dutifully mesmerized by the Middle East, have little clue as to the brutality of the American-led Drug War going on in Columbia. Another reason is that the tactic of terror is different than that of an ongoing guerrilla war; we will see an increase in attacks on Americans over these next years. Their deadliness will increase as well. But as with this 2002 Report, the numbers will obfuscate rather than delineate the reality.

In any case, separately I feel I should report the following from the State Department Report: "Thirty US citizens were killed in terrorist attacks last year:

· On 15 January, terrorists in Bayt Sahur, West Bank, attacked a vehicle carrying two persons, killing one and wounding the other. The individual killed, Avi Boaz, held dual US-Israeli citizenship. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility.
· On 23 January, Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan. On 21 February, it was learned that he had been murdered.
· On 31 January, two hikers on the slopes of the Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines were attacked by militants. One of the hikers, US citizen Brian Thomas Smith, was killed.
· On 16 February, a suicide bomber detonated a device at a pizzeria in Karnei Shomron in the West Bank, killing four persons and wounding 27 others. Two US citizens-Keren Shatsky, and Rachel Donna Thaler-were among the dead. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility.

On 14 March, two US citizens-Jaime Raul and Jorge Alberto Orjuela-were murdered in Cali, Colombia, by motorcycle-riding gunmen.

· On 17 March, grenades were thrown into a Protestant church in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing five persons including two US citizens, Barbara Green and Kristen Wormsley.
· On 27 March, a HAMAS homicide bomber entered the crowded restaurant of a hotel in Netanya, Israel, and detonated a bomb, killing 22 persons, including one US citizen, Hannah Rogen.
· On 7 June, US citizen Martin Burnham, who along with his wife, Gracia, had been held hostage for more than a year in the Philippines by the Abu Sayyaf Group, was killed as Philippine military units on a rescue mission engaged the terrorists in a firefight. Gracia Burnham was wounded.
· On 31 July, a bomb planted by HAMAS terrorists exploded at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, killing nine persons and wounding 87 others. Among the dead were five US citizens-Benjamin Blutstein, Marla Bennett, Diane Leslie Carter, Janis Ruth Coulter, and David Gritz.
· On 8 October, in Failaka Island, Kuwait, gunmen attacked US soldiers conducting a live-fire exercise killing one Marine, Lance Cpl. Antonio J. Sledd.
· The worst terrorist attack since September 11 occurred on 12 October at a resort in Bali, Indonesia, when a car bomb exploded in a busy tourist area filled with nightclubs, cafes, and bars. The attack killed over 200 persons from two-dozen nations. Seven US citizens died-Deborah Lea Snodgrass, Karri Casner, Jacob Young, Steven Webster, George "Joe" Milligan, Megan Heffernan, and Robert McCormick.
· One US citizen-Sandy Alan Booker-died in the Moscow theater attack on 23 October as Russian commandos attempted to rescue 800 hostages held for three days by Chechen terrorists.
· On 28 October, a gunman in Amman, Jordan, shot and killed Laurence Foley, a senior administrator of the US Agency for International Development, as he was leaving his home for work.
· On 21 November in Sidon, Lebanon, an office manager/nurse at a church-run health facility, US citizen Bonnie Denise Witherall, was killed by a gunman.
· Three US citizens-Kathleen Gariety, William Koehn, and Martha Myers-were murdered on 30 December by a gunman who stormed a Baptist missionary hospital in Yemen and opened fire."

Given that Mr. Bush’s wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan have actually increased the tempo of terror and its deadliness one would do well to take a closer look at Afghanistan and further deceptions. From the same report we find the following:

On Afghanistan

"In 2002, the Afghan people, supported by a US-led international Coalition, decisively defeated the brutal Taliban regime, which had provided sanctuary to terrorists and extremists from around the world-including North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The extremists had used Afghanistan as a training ground and base of operations for worldwide terrorism. Senior al-Qaida leaders, including Usama Bin Ladin-wanted by the United States for his role in the September 11 attacks as well as the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998-had been based in Afghanistan, protected by the Illegitimate Taliban regime....In July 2002, representatives from all Afghan regions, factions, and ethnic groups met in an emergency "Loya Jirga," to elect Hamid Karzai as the President of the Traditional Islamic State of Afghanistan (TISA), which replaced the Afghan Interim Administration established by the December 2001 Bonn Agreement. The new Afghan Government has pledged its support for the war on terrorism. Al-Qaida, which despite its setbacks still regards Afghanistan as a key battlefield in its war against the United States, will continue its armed opposition to the US presence, however. Al-Qaida has pockets of fighters throughout Afghanistan and probably several more in the neighboring tribal areas of Pakistan. To ensure that former Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts do not reemerge as a significant threat, the TISA must consolidate its support among the country’s rival ethnic and regional factions."

First of all let us be clear. the so-called election of Harmid Karzai was a sham: the two leaders who challenged Karzai in this election of 2002, by warlords, were told to "stand down" by our State Department and not place their names on the ballot. Only Unocal's consultant Harmid Karzai’s name was on it! He was the interim government. The Traditional Islamic State of Afghanistan (TISA) which he now heads is the very same as that, "which replaced the Afghan Interim Administration established by the December 2001 Bonn Agreement." Only the ill-informed, ignorant and Eric Hoffer’s true-believers believe what Mr. Bush and Powell are passing off on the rest of the world.

I’ll take each of the next statements one by one, (mine in parentheses) directly from the report: "Afghans have already passed several milestones on the road toward building a government in accordance with the Bonn Agreement, and the most critical steps-such as demobilizing rival militias, (This has not occurred at all as reported continuously in the foreign press and particularly the Asian Times)... "building a stable Afghan army," (There is no Afghan army and Karzi’s mere existence is due to the US mercenaries from DynCorp supplying 3,000 mercs to protect him round the clock: he cannot even travel outside of Kabul and there have three attempts on his life already)... "drafting a constitution, holding democratic elections, and creating a legal system-were underway at the end of the year." (There have been no elections and the drafting of the constitution and creating a legal system are the efforts of primarily US officials). "Afghanistan is a party to three of the 12 international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism." (That is true.)

The real story of Afghanistan is told elsewhere and depicts something less rosy. In the second of three recent pieces by the Asia Times titled "Afghanistan: Launchpad for terror," By Syed Saleem Shahzad, the report begins with Powell’s declarations from the report cited above and the attendant press conferences:

"KARACHI - Even as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared this week in Kabul that an end to military operations in Afghanistan is in sight, indications on the ground paint a somewhat different picture....On a brief visit to the capital, Rumsfeld said that the ‘bulk of the country is now secure ... we have concluded that we’re at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities.’"

However, as reported in the Asia Times Online the country can expect escalated guerrilla activity over the coming months. And further, the International Islamic Front, a grouping of Usamah bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and several other terrorist networks dedicated to jihad against America, is increasingly using Afghanistan as a base.

Asia Times Online reportedly has learned that new cells are in place in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and they will be responsible for carrying out attacks - including suicide attacks - against United States interests in a number of regions. This will be the new face of al-Qaeda, which will emerge soon with a new name and under new command.... The US State Department confirmed on Thursday that new attacks by al-Qaeda are likely, and that there is a danger that the network and its Taliban backers will re-emerge in Afghanistan.
("http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EE01Ag03.html") - May 1)

In its annual report on global terrorism, the US agency also admitted that militants were proving "resilient in the face of efforts by East Asian nations to crush them, and every al-Qaeda operations officer captured to date had been involved in some stage of preparation for a terrorist attack at the time of arrest," the department said, without giving details of where or when the attacks might occur. "These threats must be regarded with utmost seriousness. Additional attacks are likely," said the report.

In the past few months, a number of people like Khalid bin al-Atash have entered Afghanistan, including from Palestine, Lebanon and Kashmir, united in their desire to strike against American targets. The driver of this new international brigade is the Egyptian Jamaat al-Jehad, led by Dr Aiman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's right hand man. (This group merged with al-Qaeda, but it has an independent following in Egypt). In the context of the war in Iraq, Jamaat's leaders have redirected the energies of militants to concentrate purely on US targets, saying that it is the real enemy. Aiman's whereabouts are unknown, but recent reports have placed him in Yemen and Afghanistan. Wherever he is, though, he is the mastermind behind restructuring the International Islamic Front, given that al-Qaeda has been badly fractured. The emphasis will be on small operations with a nexus of local groups, and its main tool will be suicide attacks. This new face will be unveiled sooner rather later, but it will be identified more by its actions than by its name. (Source: Asia Times Online Co, Ltd., May 01, 2003)

Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman announced the arrest of Khalid bin al-Atash in Karachi, along with some Afghanis and one Pakistani. Asia Times Online has reported on Khalid's movements ("http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EE01Ag03.html" )
"showing that the one-legged al-Qaeda operations chief was very much back in business."

Despite the claims of the Interior Ministry, intelligence sources have confirmed to Asia Times Online that Khalid was in fact arrested on Tuesday near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Balochistan. Khalid was said to be in the process of hiring local men to carry out an attack on Jacobad’s Shehbaz airbase, which is used by the US Air Force. Khalid was arrested by members of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Pakistani law enforcers along with a few of his Afghani guards and a Pakistani Baloch, who was to be involved in the attack on the airport.

According to Asia Times: On Wednesday, a Khalid was then taken to Karachi, where he was revealed to the press. The reason for this was that the Kabul government had recently made renewed charges of the infiltration of terrorists into Afghanistan from the Balochistan border areas, and the Pakistanis didn't want the arrest to lend credibility to the accusations....Khalid has been connected to the Sheraton hotel bomb blast in Karachi last year in which several French engineers were killed. He had narrowly escaped arrest on several occasions, notably in Karachi and Quetta. He recently entered Afghanistan and made some border towns near Pakistan his base." (Ibid.)

Does this sound at all like the US Coalition forces have set the stage for democracy in Afghanistan? Elections and that Karzai is in control? Elsewhere the Asia Times reported Usamah bin Laden was back in Eastern Afghanistan and buying weapons from the Chinese.

Iraq:

I shall move on to Iraq due to space requirements. We are regularly told the war is over and "we" won. Never mind who this "we" is. An interesting article was sent my way titled "Female Fedayeen" By Chris Johnson. It begins with a typically leftist "statement" but the content is very important:

"BAGHDAD - The Bush administration, U.S. soldiers, and the mostly-male media have little or no knowledge of what Iraqi women think about the invasion of their country. The views of some of these modern, educated, outspoken Iraqi women may come as a big surprise. To begin with, it's hard to know what women really think since many of them are staying home amid the political chaos. They are not likely to be found anywhere near the Palestine Hotel's island of security, available to talk to journalists and soldiers. But it is unlikely that they will be overjoyed at the prospect of being liberated from their burkhas a la Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein, despite all his ills, gave these women many of their rights three decades ago, making Iraq the relatively progressive oasis of women's rights in a highly conservative and repressive region. While the views of the vast majority of Iraqi women remain a mystery, the dictator's rare generosity toward them may explain why at least some of these women are plotting to oust what they call American invaders in the name of their ‘liberator,’ Saddam Hussein. ...‘We love Saddam Hussein very much,’ says Arwa, 23, who was a senior in chemical engineering at Baghdad University before it was trashed by looters. ‘He was kind. We were safe, even when there were wars. He gave opportunities to Iraqi women. Now every dream is broken.’" (May 2, 2003)

The story goes on to report that "At their northern Baghdad home, which features a Kalashnikov rifle under a mural of Chariots of Babylon, Arwa and her female relatives, including internet-junkie Lubna, 16, proudly show off photos of them training in the desert with revolvers and machine guns to kill invading Americans. They say they are female "fedayeen" or Saddam loyalists and members of all-girl units of the Jaishil Kodus, a local branch of the Jerusalem Brigade of Islamic Jihad, a Palestine-based terrorist group wanted by the Bush administration...."..."The concept of female terrorists is hardly a matter of idle rhetoric. As Arwa''''s mother proudly notes, two female suicide bombers have already blown themselves up to kill American soldiers in Iraq, while another woman with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher destroyed an American tank in Nasiriyah. Female suicide bombers have increasingly becoming more common in Palestine and Chechnya. When about 50 Chechen terrorists stormed a Moscow theater and threatened to blow up 800 hostages last year, 18 of them were women," the report added.

The FBI is worried about Al Qaeda recruiting women, and recently issued a be-on-the-lookout bulletin for a female Pakistani neurological expert wanted for questioning in its terrorism investigation. Its analysts are examining claims made in an Arab newspaper by an Arab woman who says Usamah bin Laden asked her to establish training camps for "holy warrior sisters." While recruiting women may be a new strategy for Al-Qaeda, Arwa and her family say such training camps were the norm during Saddam’s regime. They claim thousands of female students regularly trained with army units during their summer school holidays, according to Johnson. There are female student militias outside Iraq, as well. "Kloot Saddam," an economics major living in Amman, Jordan, vows to return to join the Iraqi resistance like the estimated 7,000 Iraqis who crossed the border during the U.S.-led bombing campaign.

Johnson reported that, Originally from Basra, she first went to military training camps at age 12. ‘Many girls train like this,’ she says. ‘It’s normal in Iraq.... We don’t want the American army walking in our streets. We prefer death,’ says Arwa, ‘We must take them out of here, over our dead bodies.’... Saddam wanted us to liberate Palestinians from the Zionists, but now we must liberate ourselves from Americans, and we'll do it, god willing. Women must do a plan.’

American soldiers, who recently showed journalists a stash of alleged suicide bomber vests containing so-called ‘grape charges’ of mixed nails and explosives, say suicide bombings and ‘drive by’ shootings are their biggest threats. How great will the resistance to America is summed up by Robert Fist on May 5, 2003, "When Iraqi civilians look into the faces of American troops, President Bush famously told the world on Thursday, "they see strength and kindness and goodwill". Untrue, Mr. Bush. They see occupation."

The Hitler Saddam, at least in Mr. Bush’s rhetoric is not seen in quite the same light as many Iraqis including women, Johnson reported this significant dichotomy, "Centuries of vicious discrimination against girls and women was ended by one stroke of the modernizing dictator's pen," says Indian Parliament member, writer, and former diplomat to Iraq Mani Shankar Aiyar, in a column for United Press International. "The liberation of women has been the most dramatic achievement of Saddam’s regime." Given opportunities in schools, offices and the military unheard of in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Arwa and Lubna say their generation suspects that a post-war government of old guard Iraqi exiles backed by the United States will push women back behind the veil, like the mullahs who led Iran's Islamic Revolution. We of course heard nothing of this prior to the invasion of the country by American forces.

"America has come to control us, and control any fortune we have. I can’t go out in the street because I see American soldiers walking there. My uncles go out but we stay here all day, making food and eating," she says. The signs for women’s future in the post-Saddam Iraq are hardly encouraging thus far. ‘Iraqi women are among the most educated in the Middle East and are capable of assuming strong leadership roles,’ says Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, or UNIFEM. ‘Yet we have not seen clear evidence of a concerted effort to involve women in discussions to establish a pathway to a democratic society.’ (Source: Christopher Johnson. He is currently reporting from Baghdad.)

It is this set of growing anomalies, deceptions and what many journalists the world over are calling outright lies, that is so disturbing about Bush’s empire building. While I am hardly shocked by these counter-stories being reported, I am very disappointed that our own media has become so subservient as to become a mockery. As Robert Fisk reported recently:

Donald Rumsfeld knows (and he has been told by US intelligence) that a growing resistance movement to America’s occupation is gestating in Iraq. The Shia Muslim community, now supported by thousands of Badr Brigade Iraqis trained in Iran, believes the US is in Iraq for its oil. It is furious at America’s treatment of Iraq’s citizens; in three days last week at least 17 Sunni demonstrators were killed, two of them less than 11 years old. And it is not impressed by Washington’s attempts to cobble together an "interim" pro-American government.(Source: dailytimes.com, and The Independent, May 05, 2003)

Now comes June 15, 2003 and every week American soldiers are being killed and wounded by the growing guerrilla resistance in iraq, and not just in Baghdad. Rumsfeld calls them subversives and other trite names to cloud the truth: we are occupying Iraq not liberating anyone. He has even suggested that Saddam's remnants are "paying" individuals to attack US troops! Amazing!

We will not see the wars end in the Middle East any time soon; the guerrilla activity against American occupying forces in Iraq and Afghanistan will go on for as long as it takes for us to leave. Invade Syria, Iran, support Israel further and allow the pipeline deal from Iraq into Israel, and there will be no end in sight. Empire has its costs, ask the British, Spain and Portugal: interesting it was these three former empires who felt common cause with America’s newest empire. Each a failed empire.
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Craig B Hulet was Special Assistant to Congressman Jack Metcalf (ret.) and is the author of the new book "The Hydra of Carnage: An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire." www.artfulnuance.com Publishers, 2002 -- www.craigbhulet.com

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