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National Security, Anti-Americanism, The “War on Terror” and new methods in public diplomacy
Olbermann’s blog posts the extended transcript of this brilliant piece of journalism.
In a 13 minute segment on his MSNBC program, “Countdown,” Olbermann goes through details of no less than ten specific dates in which a “terror alert” was released by DHS or the White House within days of breaking controversy or bad news from the Iraq front.
Watch it here or below.
As if it wasn’t obvious enough that it must be a joke, when FoxNews actually posted it as a downloadable .pdf on their website.
On the subject of fakes, MSNBC reports of CNN’s Allison Barber admitting that she drilled President Bush through questions before his Pentagon teleconference briefing (VIDEO – .wmv, QT .mov.
Olbermann on the photo-op (video – .wmv)Could the CIA’s new clandestine spy operation already have revealed a product of their own fraudulence?
The Shi?ite militias infiltrating the Basra police force are dominating coalition troops and the Iraqi government as they execute violent and murderous acts at will. Its still hard to forget the brutal murder of five schoolteachers last month in front of hysterical children.
A suicide car bomb outside an apartment building containing members of the Iranian backed Badr brigade killed one child on Sunday. Among those who escaped the attack were wanted Shi’ite leader Hassan al-Rashid.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred in the wake of Tony Blair’s claim last week that Iran and Lebanon?s Hezbollah are supplying high-powered roadside bombs to the Badr militia. Hezbollah issued a statement denouncing Blair’s assertions as “excuses to justify the inability of the occupation to confront the rise of resistance inside Iraq.”
Civil unrest in the area has spiraled out of control since September, when British troops were mobbed by 1,000 to 2,000 people wielding homemade bombs and grenades in a seemingly coordinated attack on the Basra streets.
“This was not a spontaneous public action,” said Maj. Andy Hadfield, a British company commander in the New York Times. “It was closely organized and closely coordinated by a series of agitators.”
The Jameat, who control the powerful internal affairs unit of the Iraqi police force, “consider themselves the No. 1 power in Basra,” according to one police commander. “They are policemen but they kill people,” Hakim, a Basra businessman told the Independent. “The British must bear much blame, they let these people into the police and then for a long time did nothing.”
Governor al-Wa’ili said Saturday that British forces continue to compromise security in the region by conducting raids and arrests on local police and militias without coordinating with Iraqi security forces. Basra citizens are now echoing his call for the removal of British troops.
Basra has only 2,500 to 3,000 police officers to augment an estimated 13,000 militiamen from the Iranian-backed Badr brigade, the SCIRI supported Fadila party and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia. There are 8,500 British troops in Iraq and 500 will be cut in November according to a statement by the British defence secretary, John Reid in Monday’s Guardian.
Recent polls show that over half of the British population would like to see the immediate withdrawal of British troops in Iraq. The rapid degression of the peaceful, British controlled Basra province into a flashpoint battleground for sectarian militias combined with the removal of troops would only open the door for continued torture and violence against civilians. “Combating the killing of innocent civilians is now the nation’s number one challenge,” Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kuba told The Independent. “This terrorism must be stopped and it is our right to protect ourselves and innocent citizens,” said Brig. John Lorimer, commander of the 12th Mechanised Brigade in southern Iraq.
Daily Telegraph reporter Adrian Blomfield has filed critical assessments of British troops in initial reports since recently becoming one of the first British reporters sent to Basra. “The Brits have done some great work but they’ve also misread the situation, which is kind of inexcusable?. We have raised our concerns [about Jameat] repeatedly and haven?t had the response we require,” said one diplomat.
Iraqi and British officials expect violence to escalatein advance of the October 15 constitutional referendum.
For intense analysis of this mess, read Gilbert Achcar’s editorial at Informed Comment.
British troops have been rendered ineffective in southern Iraq while Shi’a militant armies battle each other for control of the oil-rich region.
Violence dramtically escalated in the streets of Basra amidst anti-British sentiment following the dramatic rescue of the two British Special Air Service (SAS) agents from Shi?a custody in mid-September (see previous post – Fallout from Basra). The Britons benign reputation since the beginning of the war in 2003 was immediately put in doubt. ?We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets,? Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, spokesman for the Mehdi Army told Al-Jazeera.
A senior official from Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army stated al-Sadr’s intention to use the captured agents as barter for Sheikh Ahmed Majid Farttusi and Sayyid Sajjad, two of al-Sadr?s men that were recently detained by the British in Basra. Al-Sadr, the radical Shi?ite cleric and commander of the 10,000 troop Mahdi Army that battled coalition forces in Najaf last year, has restated his authorization for capture of two Britons according to the Sunday Times. The Mahdi army official says two British private contractors working in Baghdad have already been pinpointed.
The Shi’ites have been widely regarded as helpless people with an intense inferiority complex despite the fact that they account for the majority of Iraqi citizens, Mahan Abedin, editor of Terrorism Monitor writes in the Monday Asia Times. A ?senior? Iraqi Shi’ite political figure warned on the Baztab news site that the suddenly hostile appearance of the British troops could bring Iraqi Shi’ites to the tipping point in the ?200-year? rage against British imperialism.
Al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army is battling the 12,000-strong Badr Brigade for control of the region. The more secular Badr militia is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Iraq’s main Shi’ite political party.
Along with Iranian insurgents, members of these armies have infiltrated the British-trained Iraqi police force and security forces so as to isolate themselves from the U.S. led coalition as well as the Iraqi government in Baghdad. A “senior source in Basra” suggested to the Sunday London Telegraph that there are probably more Iranian spies than British troops in the city.
Iraq?s National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie told the BBC, ?Iraqi security forces in general, and the police in particular, in many parts of Iraq, I have to admit, have been penetrated by some of the insurgents, some of the terrorists as well.?
University professors in Basra have told journalists off the record that ?secession of the Shi’ite south is not a far-fetched scenario,? reports the October 2 Washington Times.
Forgotten but not gone are the Kurds, who currently have a prominent presence in the Iraqi “government,” though they are not likely to maintain it. “There is no Iraq,” states one editorial on the Kurdistan Regional Government’s website. While U.S. troops continue fighting Sunni fundamentalists on the Syrian border, war is spiraling out of control in the southern region, with 70 percent of Iraq’s oil reserves up for grabs.
Sarah Meyer has put together a detailed, graphic timeline of recent events in Basra (link).