British Undercover Operatives in Iraq and Ireland The WE News Archives

State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

Deep inside the heart of the Green Zone in Iraq, the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq.

It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG).

The members of the JSG are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level.

Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents.

They have been working alongside the Special Air Service [SAS] and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black

Photo: globalresearch.ca

by Andrew G. Marshall

Global Research, June 25, 2008

What’s The Difference Between Lehman Shining Light on the "Black World"

In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA Director George Tenet titled, "Worldwide Attack Matrix," which was "outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world.

What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history."

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A medic in a hospital cares for a father and his son, both wounded, after a car bomb blast in Karrada neighborhood, central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, June 25, 2008.

The blast killed 3 people and wounding seven other people.

Unknown if the car bomb blast was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP/Mahmoud al-Badri
Image inserted by TheWE.name

The plan entailed CIA and Special Forces:

"Covert operations across the globe."

And at:

"The heart of the proposal was a recommendation that the president give the CIA what Tenet labeled "exceptional authorities" to attack and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the rest of the world."

Tenet cited the need for such authority:

"To allow the agency to operate without restraint — and he wanted encouragement from the president to take risks."

Among the many authorities recommended was the use of "deadly force."

Further:

"Another proposal was that the CIA increase liaison work with key foreign intelligence services."

As:

"Using such intelligence services as surrogates could triple or quadruple the CIA's effectiveness."

Western Governments Worldwide Matrix

The Worldwide Attack Matrix:

"Described covert operations in 80 countries that were either underway or that he was now recommending.

The actions ranged from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks."

as well as:

"In some countries, CIA teams would break into facilities to obtain information." [1]

Washington to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people — your family, your friends, your lovers, you — in order to further their geopolitical ambitions

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

Iraq people inspect damaged cars after a car bomb blast in Karrada neighborhood, central Baghdad, Iraq, on Wednesday, June 25, 2008.

The blast killed 3 people and wounding seven other people.

Unknown if the car bomb blast was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP/Loay Hameed
Image inserted by TheWE.name

In 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a:

"Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism."

Portions of which were leaked to the Federation of American Scientists.

According to the document, the "War on Terror" constitutes a:

"Committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach."

Which will require the US to engage in a:

"Long, at times violent, and borderless war."

As the Asia Times described it, this document lays out a blueprint for the US to "fight fire with fire."

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A Shia cleric and other mourners pray over the coffin of a bomb attack victim during a funeral in Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, June 18, 2008.

The death toll from a devastating truck bombing in Baghdad rose to 63 on Wednesday and U.S. forces blamed a rogue Shi'ite militia for the attack.

Unknown if the truck bombing was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: REUTERS/Ali Abu Shish
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Many of the "proposals appear to push the military into territory that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed on CIA activities."

According to the Chairman of the DSB:

"The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets."

Specifically, the plan:

"Recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.

For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities."

The purpose of P2OG would be in:

"‘Stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces." [2]

In other words, commit terror to incite terror, in order to react to terror.

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A man who was wounded in a bomb attack and other residents attend a funeral for a civilian killed in the same bomb attack in Baghdad's Hurriya district June 18, 2008.

Unknown if the bomb attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters
Image inserted by TheWE.name

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2002 that:

"The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities.

New organizations are being created.

The missions of existing units are being revised."

And quoted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying:

"Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against terrorism."[3]

Chris Floyd bluntly described P2OG in CounterPunch, saying:

"The United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people.

Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people — your family, your friends, your lovers, you — in order to further their geopolitical ambitions."[4]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

An Iraq mother weeps for her child as she is treated in a Baghdad hospital, after a car bombing, Wednesday, June 18, 2008, Baghdad, Iraq.

The bomb ripped through a busy commercial street in a Shia area of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 51 people and wounding many more.

Unknown if the bomb attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP/Mahmoud al-Badri
Image inserted by TheWE.name

British working alongside Special Air Service [SAS] and American Delta Force responsible for terror

On February 5, 2007, the Telegraph reported that:

"Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone" [in Iraq], the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq.

It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG)."

The members of the JSG:

"Are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level.

Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents."

They have been:

"[W]orking alongside the Special Air Service [SAS] and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black."

It was reported that:

"During the Troubles [in Northern Ireland], the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA.

By targeting and then "turning" members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety of "inducements" ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA."

Further:

"The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to work exclusively in Northern Ireland." [5]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A woman kisses the body of a loved one, one of eleven people in the same family killed in a suicide truck bombing in the Shia holy city of Najaf, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, June 18, 2008.

The U.S. military blamed a Shia group Wednesday for a deadly truck bombing..

Unknown if the truck bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP/Alaa al-Marjani
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland

Considering that this group had been renamed after revelations of collusion with terrorists, perhaps it is important to take a look at what exactly this "collusion" consisted of.

The Stevens Inquiry’s report:

"Contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s."

It was:

"A state policy sanctioned at the highest level."

The Inquiry:

"Highlighted collusion, the willful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder."

And acknowledged:

"That innocent people had died because of the collusion."

These particular:

"Charges relate to activities of a British Army intelligence outfit known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) and former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers." [6]

In 2002, the Sunday Herald reported on the allegations made by a former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who stated that:

"He was told by his military handlers that his collusion with paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself."

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A man who was wounded in a bomb attack lies in a hospital in Baghdad's Hurriya district June 18, 2008.

Eleven people in the same family were killed in a truck bombing in the Shia holy city of Najaf, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, June 18, 2008.

The U.S. military blamed a Shia group Wednesday for a deadly truck bombing.

Unknown if the truck bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Fulton worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), and had infiltrated the IRA, always while on the pay roll of the military.

Fulton tells of how in 1992, he told his FRU and MI5 intelligence handlers that his IRA superior was planning to launch a mortar attack on the police, yet his handlers did nothing and the attack went forward, killing a policewoman.

Fulton stated:

"I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that.

They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it.

If everything I touched turned to shit then I would have been dead.

The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy." [7]

Worst single terrorist atrocity one of the terrorists was a British agent

In 1998, Northern Ireland experienced its:

"Worst single terrorist atrocity."

As described by the BBC, in which a car bomb went off, killing 29 people and injuring 300. [8]

According to a Sunday Herald piece in 2001:

"Security forces didn't intercept the Real IRA's Omagh bombing team because one of the terrorists was a British double-agent whose cover would have been blown as an informer if the operation was uncovered."

Kevin Fulton had even:

"Phoned a warning to his RUC handlers 48 hours before the Omagh bombing that the Real IRA was planning an attack and gave details of one of the bombing team and his car registration."

Further:

"The man thought to be the agent is a senior member of the [IRA] organization." [9]

In 2002, it was revealed that:

"One of the most feared men inside the Provisional IRA," John Joe Magee, head of the IRA’s "internal security unit," commonly known as the IRA’s "torturer- in-chief," was actually "one of the UK's most elite soldiers," who "was trained as a member of Britain's special forces."

The Sunday Herald stated that:

"Magee led the IRA's internal security unit for more than a decade up to the mid-90s — most of those he investigated were usually executed."

And that:

"Magee's unit was tasked to hunt down, interrogate and execute suspected British agents within the IRA." [10]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

An Iraq woman reacts at the scene were a female suicide bomber detonated explosives in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, June 22, 2008.

A female suicide bomber struck near a government compound northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40 people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Two British agents central to bombings of three army border installations in 1990

In 2006, the Guardian reported that:

"Two British agents were central to the bombings of three army border installations in 1990."

The claims included tactics known as the ‘human bomb’, which:

"Involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints."

This tactic:

"Was the brainchild of British intelligence." [11]

In 2006, it was also revealed that:

"A former British Army mole in the IRA has claimed that MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers."

And:

"British intelligence co-operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown."

Further:

"The technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops." [12]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

An Iraq woman reacts as she views a man on the street and fires burning in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, June 22, 2008.

A female suicide bomber struck near a government compound northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40 people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Considering all these revelations of British collusion with IRA terrorists and complicity in terrorist acts in Northern Ireland through the FRU, what evidence is there that these same tactics are not being deployed in Iraq under the renamed Joint Support Group (JSG)?

The recruits to the JSG in Iraq are trained extensively and those:

"Who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan." [13]

P2OG in Action — Iraq’s most sacred Shiite mosque blown up

In September of 2003, months after the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraq’s most sacred Shiite mosque was blown up, killing between 80 and 120 people, including a popular Shiite cleric, and the event was blamed by Iraqis on the American forces. [14]

On April 20, 2004, American journalist in Iraq, Dahr Jamail, reported in the New Standard that:

"The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them."

Jamail interviewed a doctor who stated that:

"The U.S. induces aggression.

If you don't attack me, I will never attack you.

The U.S. is stimulating the aggression of the Iraqi people!"

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

Bodies wait to be identified by relatives outside a hospital mortuary in Baquba, June 22, 2008.

A female suicide bomber struck near a government compound northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40 people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AFP/Str
Image inserted by TheWE.name

This description goes very much in line with the aims outlined in the Pentagon’s P2OG document about "inciting terror," or "preempting terror attacks." [15]

Weeks after the initial incident involving the British SAS soldiers in Basra, in October of 2005, it was reported that Americans were:

"Captured in the act of setting off a car bomb in Baghdad."

As:

"A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday...

Residents of western Baghdad's al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon.

Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away.

That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the... police."

However:

"The Iraq police arrived at approximately the same time as allied military forces — and the two men were removed from Iraq custody and whisked away before any questioning could take place." [16]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

Men grieve over the body of their brother who killed in a suicide bomb attack, outside a hospital morgue in Baquba, about 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, June 22, 2008.

A female suicide bomber struck near a government compound northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40 people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Image inserted by TheWE.name

It was reported that in May of 2005, an Iraqi man was arrested after witnessing a car bombing that took place in front of his home, as it was said he shot an Iraqi National Guardsman.

However:

"People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb.

Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion.

Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued.

He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it.

He was promptly taken away."

100 kilograms of explosives booby trapped by the Americans and intended for al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad

Further, another story was reported in the same month that took place in Baghdad when an Iraqi driver had his license and car confiscated at a checkpoint, after which he was instructed:

"To report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license."

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A man attends to a boy, who was wounded in a bomb attack in Anbar's town of Garma, as he lies in a hospital in Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, June 26, 2008.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a tribal council meeting in Iraq's Anbar province on Thursday, killing 20 people, days before U.S. forces are due to hand the province over to Iraq control.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Image inserted by TheWE.name

After being questioned for a short while, he was told to drive his car to an Iraqi police station, where his license had been forwarded, and that he should go quickly.

"The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him.

He stopped the car and inspected it carefully.

He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.

The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad.

The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements." [17]

On October 4, 2005, it was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that:

"The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials."

Further:

"The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a Falluja bomb factory last November and found a Texas-registered four-wheel-drive being prepared for a bombing mission.

Investigators said there were several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the US wound up in Syria or other Middle Eastern countries and ultimately in the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq." [18]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A worker checks out the body of the Deputy Chief of the local council of Karmah, Mizhin al-Joumaili, in a hospital in Fallujah, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, on Thursday, June 26, 2008.

Al- Joumaili is one of the twenty people who were killed.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a tribal council meeting in Iraq's Anbar province on Thursday, killing 20 people, days before U.S. forces are due to hand the province over to Iraq control.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP
Image inserted by TheWE.name

In 2006, the Al-Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra was bombed and destroyed.

It was built in 944, was over 1,000 years old, and was one of the most important Shi’ite mosques in the world.

The great golden dome that covered it, which was built in 1904, was destroyed in the 2006 bombing, which was set off by men dressed as Iraqi Special Forces. [19]

Former 27-year CIA analyst who gave several presidents their daily CIA briefings, Ray McGovern, stated that he:

"Does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing."

He was quoted as saying:

"The main question is Qui Bono?

Who benefits from this kind of thing?

You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis.

You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on." [20]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A girl who was wounded in a bomb attack lies in a hospital in Baghdad June 18, 2008.

A powerful car bomb exploded in a crowded market area of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 51 people and wounding 75 people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Death Squads for "Freedom"

In January of 2005, Newsweek reported on a Pentagon program termed the "Salvador Option" being discussed to be deployed in Iraq.

This strategy:

"Dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.

Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers."

Updating the strategy to Iraq:

"One Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions." [21]

The Times reported that:

"The Pentagon is considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.

Under the so-called ‘El Salvador option’, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders."

It further stated:

"Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret."

As:

"The experience of the so-called "death squads" in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region."

Further:

"John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85." [22]

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A man kisses his two-year-old son, Akeel Faisal Ghazi, killed by a car bombing in Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, June 18, 2008.

A powerful car bomb exploded in a crowded market area of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 51 people and wounding 75 people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: AP/Karim Kadim
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Mass killings are when Police Commandos active

By June of 2005, mass executions were taking place in Iraq in the six months since January, and:

"What is particularly striking is that many of those killings have taken place since the Police Commandos became operationally active and often correspond with areas where they have been deployed." [23]

In May of 2007, an Iraqi who formerly collaborated with US forces in Iraq for two and a half years stated that:

"I was a soldier in the Iraqi army in the war of 1991 and during the withdrawal from Kuwait I decided to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia along with dozens of others like me.

That was how began the process whereby I was recruited into the American forces, for there were US military committees that chose a number of Iraqis who were willing to volunteer to join them and be transported to America.

I was one of those."

He spoke out about how after the 2003 invasion, he was returned to Iraq to:

"Carry out specific tasks assigned him by the US agencies."

Among those tasks, he was put:

"In charge of a group of a unit that carried out assassinations in the streets of Baghdad."

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

A man grieves between the bodies of his relatives, who were killed in a bomb attack in Buhriz, outside a hospital morgue in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, June 16, 2008.

Two men were killed and three others were wounded in a roadside bomb attack that targeted their checkpoint in Buhriz.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Some job units of American government and other foreigner governments specialize in planting bombs and car bombs in neighborhoods and markets

He was quoted as saying:

"Our task was to carry out assassinations of individuals.

The US occupation army would supply us with their names, pictures, and maps of their daily movements to and from their place of residence and we were supposed to kill the Shi'i, for example, in the al-A'zamiyah, and kill the Sunni in the of 'Madinat as-Sadr’, and so on."

Further:

"Anyone in the unit who made a mistake was killed.

Three members of my team were killed by US occupation forces after they failed to assassinate Sunni political figures in Baghdad."

He revealed that this "dirty jobs" unit of Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners:

"Doesn’t only carry out assassinations, but some of them specialize in planting bombs and car bombs in neighborhoods and markets."

British Undercover Operations in Iraq and Ireland.

This video frame grab image shows a boy walking among debris after a car bomb tore through a market area in the northwestern Hurriyah neighbourhood of Baghdad, Tuesday, June 17, 2008.

The bombing killed more than 50 people and wounded many more people.

Unknown if the bombing attack was paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

Photo: APTN, Pool
Image inserted by TheWE.name

Best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints

He elaborated in saying that:

"Operations of planting car bombs and blowing up explosives in markets are carried out in various ways, the best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints.

Another way is to put bombs in the cars during interrogations.

After the desired person is summoned to one of the US bases, a bomb is place in his car and he is asked to drive to a police station or a market for some purpose and there his car blows up." [24]

Divide and Conquer?

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in October of 2006, that:

"The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling.

Historically of course this is nothing new — divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time.

Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago.

However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London." [25]

Click here for notes

Iraq
Almost a million dead
4 million displaced, scattered into other countries
Untold injured
Horror of US UK invasion continuing

Sadriya market, Baghdad, Iraq.

Unknown if any of the explosions were paid and setup by US government and British government special black budget secret cell operations.

A man covers a toddler killed by a U.S. military attack

A man weeps for Saad Mozan, 42, killed in an overnight raid by U.S. troops

Body of Wisam Khalil, 35, killed in an attack in Baghdad by U.S. troops

Basra, Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul...

US created Iraq — devastated cities

They are such liars

		Caught red-handed Nafeez Ahmed BRITISH UNDERCOVER OPERATIVES IN IRAQ Zarqawi Eat Your Heart Out Basra is relatively stable compared to central Iraq where violence involving insurgents, civilians and coalition forces is a daily routine. The city has rarely been a site of clashes between insurgents and coalition troops, nor is it a victim of regular terrorist attacks. This week, however, things changed, but not thanks to Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda ilk. On Monday, two British soldiers were arrested and detained by Iraqi police in Basra. Within a matter of hours, the British military responded with overwhelming force, despite subsequent denials by the Ministry of Defence, which insisted that the two men had been retrieved solely through "negotiations." British military officials, including Brigadier John Lorimer, told BBC News (9/20/05) that the British Army had stormed an Iraqi police station to locate the detainees. Ministry of Defence sources confirmed that "British vehicles" had attempted to "maintain a cordon" outside the police station. After British Army tanks "flattened the wall" of the station, UK troops "broke into the police station to confirm the men were not there" and then "staged a rescue from a house in Basra", according a commanding officer familiar with the operation. Both men, British defence sources told the BBC's Richard Galpin in Baghdad, were "members of the SAS elite special forces." After their arrest, the soldiers were over to the local militia. What had prompted this bizarre turn of events? Why had the Iraqi police forces, which normally work in close cooperation with coalition military forces, arrested two British SAS soldiers, and then handed them over to the local militia? A review of the initial on-the-ground reports leads to a clearer picture. Fancy Dress and Big Guns Don't Mix According to the BBC's Galpin, reporting for BBC Radio 4 (9/20/05, 18 hrs news script), Iraqi police sources in Basra told the BBC the "two British men were arrested after failing to stop at a checkpoint. There was an exchange of gunfire. The men were wearing traditional Arab clothing, and when the police eventually stopped them, they said they found explosives and weapons in their car…It's widely believed the two British servicemen were operating undercover." Undercover? Dressed as Arabs? What were they trying to do that had caught the attention of their colleagues, the Iraqi police? According to the Washington Post (9/20/05), "Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives." Reuters (9/19/05) cited police, local officials and other witnesses who confirmed that "the two undercover soldiers were arrested after opening fire on Iraqi police who approached them." Officials said that "the men were wearing traditional Arab headscarves and sitting in an unmarked car." According to Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, “A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them.” Booby-trapped Brits? In an interview with Al Jazeerah TV, the popular Iraqi leader Fattah al-Sheikh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and deputy official in the Basra governorate, said that police had "caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market." Contrary to British authorities' claims that the soldiers had been immediately handed to local militia, al-Sheikh confirmed that they were "at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime." Booby-trapped Brits? British defence sources told the Scotsman (9/20/05) that the soldiers were part of an "undercover special forces detachment" set up this year to "bridge the intelligence void” in Basra, drawing on 'special forces' experience in Northern Ireland and Aden, where British troops went 'deep' undercover in local communities to try to break the code of silence against foreign forces." These elite forces operate under the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and were formed last year by then defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, "to gather human intelligence during counter-terrorist missions." v The question, of course, is how does firing at Iraqi police while dressed as Arabs and carrying explosives constitute "countering terrorism" or even gathering "intelligence"? The admission by British defence officials is revealing. A glance at the Special Reconnaissance Regiment gives a more concrete idea of the sort of operations these two British soldiers were involved in. The Regiment, formed recently, is "modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland" according to Whitehall sources. The Regiment had "absorbed the 14th Intelligence Company, known as '14 Int,' a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS." This is the same Regiment that was involved in the unlawful July 22 execution - multiple head-shots - of the innocent Brazilian, Mr. Jean Charles de Menezes, after he boarded a tube train in Stockwell Underground station. According to Detective Sergeant Nicholas Benwell, member of the Scotland Yard team that had been investigating the activities of an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence, the Force Research Unit (FRU), the team found that "military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called 'legitimate targets' such as active republicans... many of the victims of these government-backed hit squads were innocent civilians." Benwell's revelations were corroborated in detail by British double agent Kevin Fulton, who was recruited to the FRU in 1981, when he began to infiltrate the ranks of IRA. In his role as a British FRU agent inside the IRA, he was told by his military intelligence handlers to "do anything" to win the confidence of the terrorist group. "I mixed explosive and I helped develop new types of bombs," he told Scotland's Sunday Herald (6/23/02). "I moved weapons… if you ask me if the materials I handled killed anyone, then I will have to say that some of the things I helped develop did kill… my handlers knew everything I did. I was never told not to do something that was discussed. How can you pretend to be a terrorist and not act like one? You can't. You’ve got to do what they do… They did a lot of murders… I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it… The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy." Most startlingly, Fulton said that his handlers told him his operations were "sanctioned right at the top… this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing." Zarqawi, Ba'athists and the Seeds of Discord So, based on the methodology of their Regiment, the two British SAS operatives were in Iraq to "penetrate the enemy and be the enemy," in order of course to "beat the enemy." Instead of beating the enemy, however, they ended up fomenting massive chaos and killing innocent people, a familiar pattern for critical students of the British role in the Northern Ireland conflict. In November 2004, a joint statement was released on several Islamist websites on behalf of al-Qaeda's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Saddam Hussein's old Ba'ath Party loyalists. Zarqawi’s network had "joined other extremist Islamists and Saddam Hussein's old Baath party to threaten increased attacks on US-led forces." Zarqawi's group said they signed "the statement written by the Iraqi Baath party, not because we support the party or Saddam, but because it expresses the demands of resistance groups in Iraq." The statement formalized what had been known for a year already – that, as post-Saddam Iraqi intelligence and US military officials told the London Times (8/9/2003), "Al Qaeda terrorists who have infiltrated Iraq from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have formed an alliance with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein to fight their common enemy, the American forces." Al Qaeda leaders "recruit from the pool" of Saddam's former "security and intelligence officers who are unemployed and embittered by their loss of status." After vetting, "they begin Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make remote-controlled bombs." Yet Pakistani military sources revealed in February 2005 that the US has "resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population," consisting of "former members of the Ba'ath Party" – the same people already teamed up with Zarqawi's al-Qaeda network. In a highly clandestine operation, the US procured “Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry.” A Pakistani military analyst noted that the “arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them.” Rather, the US is playing a double-game to “head off” the threat of a “Shi’ite clergy-driven religious movement” – in other words, to exacerbate the deterioration of security by penetrating, manipulating and arming the terrorist insurgency. What could be the end-game of such a covert strategy? The view on-the-ground in Iraq, among both Sunnis and Shi'ites, is worth noting. Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the Shi'ite Imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told Le Monde: "I don’t think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people." Iraq’s most powerful Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, concurs, condemning the call to arms against Shi’ites as a “very dangerous” phenomenon that “plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war.” In colonial terms, the strategy is known as “divide and rule.” Whether or not Zarqawi can be said to exist, it is indeed difficult to avoid the conclusion that this interpretation is plausible. It seems the only ones who don’t understand the clandestine dynamics of Anglo-American covert strategy in Iraq are we, the people, in the west. It’s high time we got informed. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, London. He teaches courses in political theory, international relations and contemporary history at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton.

Scottish news direct from Scotland

Tues 20 Sept 2005

Rioters attack British troops in a row that threatens to undermine bids to gain the trust of Iraq's people and security forces.
Picture: Essam Al-Sudani/AFP/Getty Images

British tanks in 'smash and grab raid'

COLIN FREEMAN

"A British force of more than ten tanks backed by helicopters attacked the central jail and destroyed it.
This is an irresponsible act."

Province governor Mohammed al-Waili

BRITISH soldiers freed two comrades in a dramatic operation last night just hours after the men, believed to be with an undercover special forces unit, were arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.

Witnesses and Iraqi officials claimed British troops backed by up to ten tanks smashed down the walls of the central jail in the southern city of Basra and freed the two men.

An Iraqi television cameraman who lives across the street from the jail said about 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled as British troops stormed inside and rescued their comrades.

Mohammed al-Waili, the governor of the province, described the British raid as "barbaric, savage and irresponsible".

"A British force of more than ten tanks backed by helicopters attacked the central jail and destroyed it. This is an irresponsible act," Mr al-Waili said, adding that the British force had spirited the prisoners away to an unknown location.

The Ministry of Defence was last night insisting that the release of the two soldiers had been secured through negotiation and not by force, although reports suggested damage had been caused to the jail. An MoD official said a wall had been demolished "by accident".

The dramatic events followed a day of violence in the city.

Tensions had soared earlier as demonstrators hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at British tanks. At least four people were killed.

The fighting erupted after British armour encircled the jail where the two Britons were being held. One soldier was seen scrambling from a stricken, burning tank to escape the rock-throwing mob. The soldier was engulfed in flames as he escaped from his burning vehicle.

The rioting was triggered by the arrest of the two soldiers who allegedly shot at an Iraqi police patrol that challenged them as they drove through the city. The Iraqis claim the soldiers, who were said to be dressed in Arab robes, killed one police officer and wounded another during the firefight.

Television footage showed the captured soldiers slouched against what appeared to be the wall of a prison cell, with their hands behind their backs. One had his head swathed in bandages and appeared to have bloodstains on his top, while the other had plasters on his head and was wearing what looked like blood-smeared trousers. The Ministry of Defence said three British soldiers were hurt during the earlier violence, but none of their injuries was life-threatening.

Officials denied the reports that its troops made a smash and grab raid to free their captured colleagues.

"We've heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison," an MoD spokesman said. "We understand there were negotiations."

In Britain, the earlier clashes had been seized on by those demanding clarity on when British troops will withdraw from the south of Iraq, where they have increasingly come under attack from insurgents. The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, said the events "underlined the need for a coherent exit strategy of British forces".

Reacting to the later reports that British forces had stormed the prison, Sir Menzies said: "It is hard to see how relations between the British military and the civilian Iraqi authorities in Basra will ever be the same again.

"This is bound to be seen as a humiliation by many Iraqis — something the insurgents will use to their advantage. An operation of this kind must have gone to the highest level. I would be surprised if the Prime Minister had not been consulted."

The MoD had earlier declined to comment on the day's events, beyond confirming that "two British military personnel were detained by Iraqi authorities".

But Iraqi officials, who had dispatched a senior judge to question the pair, were insisting that the British military in Basra had confirmed that they were on an undercover mission. Mohammed al-Abadi, an official of the Basra authorities, said their cover had been blown after local police became suspicious and approached them. "A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them," he said. "They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and [suggested] to ask their commander about their mission."

Defence sources have told The Scotsman that the soldiers were part of an undercover special forces detachment set up this year to try to "bridge the intelligence void" in Basra. The detachment draws on special forces' experience in Northern Ireland and Aden, where British troops went "deep" undercover in local communities to try to break the code of silence against foreign forces.

The troops are under the jurisdiction of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment that was formed last year by the then defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, to gather so-called human intelligence during counter-terrorist missions.

The day of dramatic incident comes amid an increasingly volatile security picture in Basra, which until earlier this summer enjoyed a reputation as one of the most-trouble free cities in Iraq. Earlier this month, three British soldiers were killed in two separate roadside bomb attacks, thought to be the work of a newly-arrived insurgent unit that specialises in targeting coalition personnel.

There have also been increased tensions following the arrest of the local leader of the al-Mahdi army, a heavily armed street gang loyal to the outlawed Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Members of al-Mahdi are thought to have been behind the violent protests that took place outside the city's main Felony Crimes Department, where a crowd of around 200 people gathered when news spread that the soldiers were being held inside.

Not long after British troops arrived on the scene, an armoured vehicle accompanying them came under attack from petrol bombs. Television footage showed it reversing back and forth among the crowd as a fire erupted on its roof.

As it did so, a soldier climbed out of the vehicle's hatch and jumped clear of it, as the crowd pelted him with stones. Two Iraqis were reported to have been killed in the riot. Photographs of the disturbances showed a soldier in flames as he tumbled from a personnel carrier. Reports also said that people were driving through the streets of Basra with loudhailers demanding that the arrested Britons remain in detention and be sent to jail.

At the weekend it was reported that Britain has shelved plans to begin a staged withdrawal of the 9,000 British troops from Iraq by next year. The apparent change in policy has confirmed fears that Iraq is a long way off from being stable enough to be policed by its own forces alone.

John Pilger blames Basra on the British
John Pilger
Monday 3rd October 2005

Is there to be no honest accounting for the events in Basra? Do we simply accept John Reid's customary arrogance? By John Pilger

Here are questions that are not being asked. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS men "rescued" from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British army put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

According to the head of Basra's governing council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event? Do we simply accept the customary arrogance of the Defence Secretary, John Reid? "Iraqi law is very clear," he said. "British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process." He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq's occupiers.

Watching "embedded" journalists in Iraq and London attempting to protect the British line was like watching a satire of the whole atrocity in Iraq. First, there was feigned shock that the Iraqi regime's "writ" did not run outside its American fortifications in Baghdad and that the "British-trained" police in Basra might be "infiltrated". Jeremy Paxman wanted to know how two British soldiers — in fact, highly suspicious foreigners dressed as Arabs and carrying a small armoury — could possibly be arrested by Iraqi police. "Aren't they supposed to be on our side?" he demanded.

Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men's unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. Instead, the story was the danger the men faced if they were handed over to the militia run by the "radical" cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Radical" is a gratuitous embedded term; al-Sadr has actually co-operated with the British. What did he have to say about the "rescue"? Quite a lot, none of which was reported in this country. His spokesman Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani said the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr's followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival.

"When the police tried to stop them," he said, "[they] opened fire on the police and passers-by. After a car chase, they were arrested. What our police found in the car was very disturbing — weapons, explosives and a remote-control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists."

The episode illuminates the most enduring lie of the Anglo-American adventure. This says the "coalition" is not to blame for the bloodbath in Iraq — which it is, overwhelmingly — and that foreign terrorists orchestrated by al-Qaeda are the real culprits. The conductor of the orchestra, goes this line, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. The demonry of al-Zarqawi is central to the Pentagon's "Strategic Information" programme, set up to shape news coverage of the occupation. It has been the Americans' single unqualified success. Turn on any news in the US and Britain, and the embedded reporter standing inside an American (or British) fortress will repeat unsubstantiated claims about al-Zarqawi.

Two impressions are the result: that Iraqis' right to resist an illegal invasion — a right enshrined in international law — has been usurped and de-legitimised by callous foreign terrorists, and that a civil war is under way between the Shias and the Sunnis. A member of the Iraqi National Assembly, Fatah al-Sheikh, said last month: "There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupiers to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people and spread rumours in order to scare the one from the other. The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will try to start an internal Shia incitement."

The Anglo-American goal of "federalism" for Iraq is part of an imperial strategy of provoking divisions in a country where the communities have long overlapped, even intermarried. The Osama-like promotion of al-Zarqawi is integral to this. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he is everywhere but nowhere. When the Americans crushed the city of Fallujah last year, the justification for their atrocious behaviour was "getting those guys loyal to al-Zarqawi". But the city's civil and religious authorities denied he was ever there or had anything to do with the resistance.

"He is simply an invention," said the imam of al-Kazimeya Mosque in Baghdad. "Al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north. His family even held a ceremony after his death." Whether or not this is true, al-Zarqawi's "foreign invasion" serves as Bush's and Blair's last veil for their "war on terror" and botched attempt to control the world's second-biggest source of oil.

On 23 September, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, an establishment body, published a report that accused the United States of "feeding the myth" of foreign fighters in Iraqi, who account for less than 10 per cent of a resistance estimated at 30,000. Of the eight comprehensive studies into the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the "coalition", four put the figure at more than 100,000. Until the British army is withdrawn from where it has no right to be, and those responsible for this monumental act of terrorism are indicted by the International Criminal Court, this country is stained.

Iraq: our fatal blunder

British forces in the south of Iraq have ceded power to Islamic radical militias. The police recruits they have armed and trained are now their enemies. By Stephen Grey

It was at about 3am when they came to Muhammed's home in the poor Khalija el-Arabi district of Basra and took him away. "There were about 20 men who burst through the door," said his brother Faisal. "Some of them were wearing police uniform. Others were in commando jackets and others wore civilian clothes," he said. That was New Year's Eve 2003; Muhammed has not been seen since. His crime had been to be a junior member of the Ba'ath Party, even though his family members were no friends of Saddam Hussein's regime. For this, like many others before him in Basra, he paid with his life.

Faisal was able to track Muhammed's movements as far as the headquarters of what the Iraqi police were then calling their intelligence department, though their British "mentors" referred to it more discreetly as the Special Operations Department.

When I visited the intelligence department at Jamiat Police Station, I found prisoners stiff with fear, bound and gagged, their heads resting on a concrete wall. On that wall was a poster of the former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

More than 18 months after that visit, that same police station was in the news worldwide, for it was there that two SAS soldiers were bound and gagged, and British armoured vehicles broke down a wall during a rescue operation. According to some reports, the SAS men were engaged in an undercover operation to track Iranian agents operating in the city, and after their capture they were handed by Iraqi police directly into the hands of extremist militias.

Violence in Basra comes in waves, so it is hard to see the long-term trends, but it seems clear now that the city — which in April 2003 welcomed the British army with open arms — is becoming more dangerous both for coalition troops and for any westerners. In the past two months two journalists who investigated police corruption have been killed, while insurgents have developed more powerful roadside bombs to use against British patrols.

For politicians in Westminster, the idea that Basra's new British-trained police force might be, to some degree, in league with Britain's enemies seems to have come as a surprise, prompting some to demand a hastened withdrawal. Yet most insiders have known it all along; the religious militias that now threaten British forces have been the hidden hand. They have largely controlled the city since its liberation from Saddam Hussein. The dilemma for the British was always whether to confront or tolerate these forces. One British officer summed it up: "It's not that the extremists have infiltrated Basra's police. They run it."

Since taking over Basra, the British army has been forced to play a dangerous game. Though the level of insurgency it has faced has been lower than that faced by the Americans in northern Iraq, the British forces' potential armed opponents have acquired critical jobs all around them, in the civil administration and the police.

At one police station where British soldiers were conducting basic training in the safe use of AK-47s, an Iraqi recruit noted: "They [the British] are really only giving us the most simple training and weapons, because they know that one day we might be fighting them." At Jamiat last January, the deputy commander, Abbas Abdel Ali, was equally open when I asked him how the station acquired recruits. "From the Badr and Sadr forces," he said. These are the main Shia militias: the Badr Brigade (armed wing of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri) and the Sadr army, the more radical of the two groups, which fought a brief war with the coalition forces in April 2004 and is led by Moqtada al-Sadr.

The British soon learned what this meant. They tried to close down the intelligence unit, to remove extremists and train the police in interrogation techniques that did not involve torture — but this drove the worst abuses underground. They discovered a new torture centre hidden in an abandoned nightclub next to a police station. Some men were prosecuted — but not the senior officers who probably ordered these activities. Night after night, meanwhile, the bodies of former Ba'athists, or Christians involved in the alcohol trade, were found dumped on the streets. Witnesses reported that the gangs responsible sometimes wore police uniform.

The parties and the militias differ from one another in a number of ways, including their attitude to the British. The Badr Brigade and its Sciri party, though backed by Iran and keen to establish a new religious state in Iraq, have tended to be reluctant to confront the British. For this reason they have been tolerated as a bulwark against even more extreme elements.

In May, when the uprising by the Sadr militia spread to Basra, I watched from the roof of the Diafa Hotel as the British army fought gun battles with Sadr militias. In broad daylight, Warrior armoured vehicles fired cannon across the Shatt al-Arab River. Though a few of the Iraqi policemen held firm, most melted away at the first sign of trouble. Their AK-47s would have been no match for the rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns of the militiamen, it is true, but the truth, known to all, was that many of the militia were drawn from the police itself.

On the night of that uprising, the British commander and the governor of Basra held a press conference to announce that the trouble was over and the threat from the Sadr forces had been exaggerated. The officials had arrived by a secure back door, so they did not see what journalists saw: a large poster of Moqtada al-Sadr. This, in the main government building in Basra. There have been other signs. In August last year, a freelance journalist, James Brandon, was kidnapped from the same Diafa Hotel by abductors wearing police uniform. It would be easy to buy or fake the costumes, but the sense that the Iraqi police were indeed complicit was underlined when Brandon escaped and fled to a police station — only to be handed back to the kidnappers.

I was always intrigued, when in Basra, that there was never a general insurrection against the British, who are heavily outnumbered. Certainly there were deadly attacks and at one stage the threat was so great that Challenger battle tanks were needed to escort trucks resupplying the general hospital, yet there was no conflagration. I once asked a British officer whether this was because the extremists did not have so complete a grip on the city's police and government as was generally supposed. "No, you're being too simplistic," he replied, explaining that the religious parties and the Badr Brigade did not want a revolt at that time and were keeping the Sadr forces under control. "They have no reason to fight the British; they know they have the majority," he said. "They will take over without a fight."

By the end of last year British intelligence was hearing about a new police squad, known as Internal Affairs, that was sending a chill through the town. It was responsible for capturing and torturing not only alleged criminals but also uniformed members of the Iraqi police who were resisting the political parties.

Should the British have intervened? Should they have tried to purge Basra and its surrounding region of extremists? One difficulty is that, for many people in the city, the Badr Brigade and their ilk are heroes — many of them fought Saddam for years, defeating his fedayeen forces during the 2003 invasion and curbing the looting afterwards. The Sciri party, Badr's political master, now forms part of the elected government of Iraq.

Another difficulty is that though Basra once had a strong educated, secular community, its ranks are severely depleted by years of economic decline and Ba'athist repression. Secularism has grown weak. Most of the population hold strong religious views and many of them see nothing wrong, for example, with the punishment and even execution of alcohol sellers.

British soldiers and officials in Iraq say their political masters ordered them to install democracy. This means that although they have at times intervened, sometimes ruthlessly, to combat extremism, if the extremists carry majority support there is a limit to what can be done. They insist that more heavy-handed intervention would have been counter-productive. As one officer put it: "If we start throwing our weight around, then we would become very quickly the enemy, and we can't afford that." At times this has meant extreme restraint. In al-Amarah, north of Basra, the British had to tolerate the appointment of a governor who, their intelligence indicated, was linked to those responsible for the killing of six members of the Royal Military Police.

No matter what is said in Whitehall, everything is geared towards an exit strategy. If Britain is to withdraw it has to allow the Iraqi security forces, however imperfect, to stand on their own feet. But there is a price to be paid. While Iraq may yet become free and independent, it may become not only a place that rejects western ideas, but one where all outsiders are in danger.

New special forces unit tailed Brazilian

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday August 4, 2005

A new army special forces regiment was involved in the operation that led to the killing of an innocent man at Stockwell tube station in south London last week, the Guardian can reveal.

The Special Reconnaissance Regiment, set up in April to help combat international terrorism, was deployed in the surveillance operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, on July 22, according to Whitehall sources.

The revelation came as Scotland Yard announced the first charges in connection with the terror attacks in London.

Ismael Abdurahman of Kennington, south-east London, will appear before Bow Street magistrates today. He will be charged with having information he knew or believed may be of material assistance in securing the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of another person in the UK for an offence involving the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.

Yesterday Whitehall sources told the Guardian that soldiers of the Special Reconnaisance Regiment, modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland, was engaged in "low-level intelligence behind the scenes" when the Brazilian was shot. There was "no direct military involvement in the shooting", the sources said.

It is believed to be the first time the new regiment was engaged in an operation.

The regiment absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, known as "14 Int", a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS.

Geoff Hoon, the then defence secretary, said the unit had been formed to meet a worldwide demand for "special reconnaissance capability".

Mr De Menezes was targeted because he was seen coming out of a three-storey block of nine flats, Corfe House in Tulse Hill, south London, identified as a building linked to the failed July 21 bombers.

He lived on the first floor with his two cousins, Vivian and Patricia.

Mr De Menezes was followed and seen boarding a No 2 bus, heading north towards Stockwell. Boarding with him, it is understood, were several plainclothes officers. Defence sources refuse to comment on suggestions that they may have been members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

Other officers followed the bus in vehicles. When it became clear that Stockwell tube was his possible destination, a team of armed police officers in plain clothes were alerted. They fired eight shots at Mr De Menezes at close range after the 27-year-old Brazilian ran on to a tube train.

A senior police officer was running the operation from Scotland Yard's "Gold Command".

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is conducting an inquiry into the shooting. It is certain to include the role of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, and also issues relating to the false identification of the victim, and whether CCTV pictures of the failed bombers were available at the time.

Another question is why the Brazilian — a suspected suicide bomber — was allowed to get on to a London bus when two buses had already been targeted.

UK Police State Systemic killing - MURDERING US
For extra details on Brazilian killing by UK Police:

They are killing us brother, here, not just in Irak

Iraqi MP accuses British Forces in Basra of "Terrorism"

September 20, 2005
Al Jazeera

Text of interview with Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the Iraqi National Assembly representing Basra area, from Baghdad, by Ali al-Zufayri, Al-Jazeera presenter in the Doha studio, broadcast live by Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite TV on 20 September

[Al-Zufayri] Mr Fattah al-Shaykh, how do you assess this raid operation, which might be the first of its kind, to liberate British soldiers from a police centre?

[Al-Shaykh] In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. In fact, we, all the Iraqi people and the government, were pleased when we heard yesterday that the sons of the Iraqi people in the steadfast and mujahid city of Basra were alert and tried to detain two American [as heard] soldiers yesterday who wanted to forment sedition, stir up disturbances and sow the seeds of terrorism in Basra. Those soldiers were disappointed. The Iraqi people captured them and handed them over to the Iraqi government. This shows that —

[Al-Zufari, correcting him] Mr Fattah, they were two Britons.

[Al-Shaykh] Excuse me, yes, they were two Britons. This shows that the sons of the Iraqi people are completely committed to protecting their country, whether in Basra, Al-Najaf, Al-Sadr City, Samarra or anywhere else.

Apart from what the UK forces are doing, this was frankly considered a violation. They claim that they are forces that enjoy international cover and that they can do what they want and can ravage Iraq.

As for how the UK forces acted, they encircled the Major Crimes building and opened fire on citizens.

This is a flagrant violation of human rights and this per se is terrorism, whether conducted by the UK forces, the US forces or all the foreign occupation forces.

These forces that claim that they came to liberate Iraq have to respect Iraq and the Iraqi people.

Regardless of the UK forces' actions carried out against the sons of our people in Basra, I reiterate that this is a flagrant violation against the sons of the Iraqi people.

[Al-Zufari] We would like to get a clearer understanding of the issue. What do you think the UK soldiers were doing wearing civilian cloths? The UK forces did not comment on their presence in that place?

[Al-Shaykh] What would they say? Do you expect them to say that they are terrorists, British intelligence members working to stir up disturbances in Basra?

Basra has been volatile for four days. I, personally, was a guest in Basra two days ago. I could see that the UK forces were always provoking the Iraqi people in Basra.

There are indiscriminate arrests and pressure. Shaykh Ahmad al-Fartusi [a leader of the Al-Mahdi Army in Basra ] and his aides were arrested as a result.

Moreover, they began giving excuses about him and said that there were charges levelled against al-Fartusi.

Yesterday, when we — five members, including the spokesman, of the Independent National Bloc — met Patrick (Toppin), representative of the British embassy in Baghdad, he said that he asked us to be patient and not to stir up disturbances.

While we were at the Conference Palace, a telephone call was received from Basra on that two UK soldiers were trying to stir up disturbances.

Explosive materials were found in their car and they opened fire on one of the citizens, breaking his legs.

Moreover, the Iraqi police began assuming their role in the right manner [to contain the situation], but the British forces this time are trying to violate even the Iraqi law and mistreat the Iraqi police who defused this sedition.

[Al-Zufari] Mr Fattah, there is an important point here related to the extent of the relation and the coordination between the Iraqi police, the Iraqi forces and the UK forces. The incident probably indicates that they failed to coordinate and exchange information. The UK forces maybe filed a request [for the soldiers' release]. What kind of argument do you think this incident would raise with regard to the relation between the Iraqi and UK forces, specifically in Basra?

[Al-Shaykh] The Iraqi forces always receive orders from the Iraqi officials and this is their duty as policemen or National Guard members, may God reward them well for carrying out their duties perfectly.

However, what the UK forces are doing is not necessarily known by the Iraqi forces or coordinated with them through exchange of information.

There are occupation forces, armoured vehicles, tanks and military aircraft in Basra.

Moreover, there are members of the British intelligence present in Basra especially, since Basra is currently a sensitive and important area in Iraq.

There are members of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] and Mossad [word indistinct], as well as many institutions in this city.

What happened is not due to the lack of coordination, but a scandal took place when the anniversary of the birth of the expected Imam Al-Mahdi, may God hasten his honourable appearance, is commemorated.

Almighty God exposed the true image of the occupier.

In Karbala, a foreign member was trying to detonate his car among visitors yesterday.

This shows a great deal of grudge they harbour.

I say that if the situation continues as is, I expect that the 1920 Revolution will erupt again against the Britons in the south.

[Al-Zufari] Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the Iraqi National Assembly representing Basra area, from Baghdad, thank you very much.

Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, in Arabic, 20 Sep 05

Copyright Al Jazeera and BBC Monitoring 2005

The army asked me to make bombs for the IRA, told me I had the Prime Minister's blessing ... then tried to kill me

Exclusive: confessions of a secret agent turned terrorist

Neil Mackay investigates

KEVIN Fulton is very clear about where the orders were coming from. 'I was told that this was sanctioned right at the top,' he says, sipping a Pepsi in the bar of a Glasgow hotel. 'I was told 'there'll be no medals for this, and no recognition, but this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing.'

This was 1980, and if Margaret Thatcher knew about the activities of military intelligence agents such as Fulton, then she was also aware her own military officers were planning to infiltrate British soldiers as 'moles' into the IRA. These moles were ordered by their handlers to carry out terrorist crimes in order to keep their cover within the Provos so they could feed information on other leading republicans back to security forces.

For almost two years the Sunday Herald has been investigating the activities of the FRU — the Force Research Unit, an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence. Fulton worked for the FRU for much of his career as an IRA mole. This unit, which has been under investigation by Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens for more than a decade, was involved in the murder of civilians in Northern Ireland.

Nicholas Benwell, a detective sergeant formerly attached to the Stevens Inquiry, says the Scotland Yard team came to one conclusion: that military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called 'legitimate targets' such as active republicans. FRU handlers passed documents and photographs to their agents operating within paramilitary groups detailing targets' movements and the whereabouts of their homes. Pictures were also handed over to help gunmen identify their victims. But there was a problem. The targeting was far from professional and many of the victims of these government-backed hit squads were innocent civilians.

In 1989 the FRU passed information to the UDA which the loyalist gang used to murder the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, who was shot dead in front of his wife and children. Last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged that the Government was determined to uncover the truth about Finucane's murder. The Canadian judge Peter Cory who was called in by the government to investigate the case is expected to recommend a public inquiry. The Irish government is also pressing for an inquiry of its own.

So who was the overall controller of the FRU with its 'licence to kill' republicans? Until now it seemed that responsibility for the activities of the FRU rested on the shoulders of one man — Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the Scottish officer who led the unit and is now the British military attachژ to Beijing. A two-part BBC Panorama programme, concluding tonight, much of it based on the Sunday Herald's previous investigations, puts Kerr squarely in the frame.

But if Fulton's claims are correct, then Kerr, soon to be questioned by the Stevens team, was just one link in a chain of command which went all the way to the cabinet and the Prime Minister. As Fulton says: 'Kerr was just following orders. Soldiers don't make up the rules, they just do as they're told.'

Fulton's story begins in 1979. He was 19, and had just enlisted in the First Battalion Royal Irish Rangers. Kevin Fulton isn't his real name, but a pseudonym used to protect his identity since turning whistle-blower on the activities of the British military, the RUC and the security services in Ulster's 'dirty war'. His work for military intelligence has been confirmed by FRU sources.

Fulton's military file quickly found its way onto the desks of the Intelligence Corps, the regiment which includes the FRU. It made interesting reading. Here was a Catholic from Newry, in the heart of a republican strong-hold, who seemed a loyal servant of the Crown. After only a few weeks in the army, Fulton's staff sergeant approached him. 'I was told that some guys from military intelligence wanted to speak to me,' Fulton says. 'They asked me if I'd like to work for them and I said 'no' as I wanted to remain in uniform. They told me to think about the offer. They added that I shouldn't tell anyone about the visit and that if I was asked I should say they were from a military welfare group. The next time we met they asked me if I'd go to Newry with them. We looked through pictures of local characters and I put names to faces, saying if they had a republican background or not.'

The two FRU officers, one of whom was Scottish, continued to try and persuade him to work with them. 'They confessed they needed guys like me — Catholics from that part of Northern Ireland — in order to get inside the Provos,' he says.

Fulton was still unsure, so the FRU asked him if he could help recruit a Catholic civilian in Newry who might be willing to go inside the IRA. He did. It was an old friend, who he refers to as Agent Washington. He and Fulton accompanied FRU members to the army training camp at Ballykinlar in County Down. 'He was given weapons training. They taught him how to fire an M16, AK-47s, Remington wingmaster shotguns, Sterling sub-machine guns and a Browning 9mm,' says Fulton. 'Remember that this was a civilian going inside the IRA.'

Fulton finally decided he'd work with military intelligence. In 1981, he was officially given a compassionate discharge from his regiment on the fictitious grounds that his father was seriously ill. He also received papers claiming he'd been thrown out for republican sympathies — a great document to present to the IRA men he would soon befriend.

From then until 1995, Fulton remained on full army pay as he worked his way through the ranks of the IRA. He began drinking in republican bars in Dundalk and socialising with senior IRA officers, including Patrick Joseph Blair, who the Sunday Herald named this year as one of the men behind the Omagh bombing. Blair later went on to became Fulton's 'mentor'.

Not long after his discharge, he told one prominent IRA man that he wanted to join the organisation. He was taken to a room above a bar and confronted by a number of men in balaclavas. 'I'd told them that I'd been kicked out of the army and they started shouting at me saying 'So you're telling us you'd shoot your f***ing comrades if you saw them in Crossmaglen?' I said 'Yes, of course'.

'They started calling me a tout (republican slang for an informer) and saying they were going to shoot me. Eventually, they dragged me outside. They told me to kneel and say the Act of Contrition. I heard a huge bang behind me. It was them banging a big bit of wood on the ground to pretend to be a gunshot. They were testing me. They told me to come back when I was ready.

'My handlers thought this was great. I offered my services to the IRA saying I'd help carry out robberies to fund them. This was all with the knowledge of my handlers in the FRU. I made pals with a prominent Sinn Fein councillor in Newry who suggested I hijack a lorry carrying TVs. I knew that this would give me credibility, so that's what I did. I took a lorry in Belfast with about £100,000 of TVs inside.'

Fulton was later arrested for the robbery and served a year in the Crumlin Road prison in Belfast. Because of his republican connections he was denied the usual privileges of an ODC — an ordinary decent criminal. This also gave him additional credibility with the IRA.

Fulton was released in 1986 and inducted straight into the IRA. 'My handlers told me to do anything to win their confidence. That's what I did. My brief was that if I got into a situation where I couldn't get to my handlers but I had to break the law, I was to try not to take a life. I was to shoot high or blow up a bomb prematurely. But that isn't always possible. If I f***ed up all the time, then the IRA would shoot me. Don't forget I also ran the risk of getting shot by the army and the police. I mixed explosive and I helped develop new types of bombs. I moved weapons. If you ask me, 'Did I kill anyone?' then I will say 'no'. But if you ask me if the materials I handled killed anyone, then I will have to say that some of the things I helped develop did kill.

'I reiterate, my handlers knew everything I did. I was never told not to do something that was discussed. How can you pretend to be a terrorist and not act like one? You can't. You've got to do what they do. The people I was with were hard-hitters. They did a lot of murders. If I couldn't be any good to them, then I was no use to the army either. I had to do what the man standing next to me did.'

This took an especially dark turn when Fulton became a member of the IRA's 'internal security squad' — also know as the 'torture unit' — which interrogated and executed suspected informers. 'I remember once when a guy had been questioned for three days in a safe-house in the Republic,' says Fulton. 'They eventually rolled out a sheet of plastic and decided we were going to 'nut' him. We drew straws to decide on who would do the shooting. Luckily, I didn't draw the short straw.'

In 1992, Fulton told his handlers — this time in both the FRU and MI5, that his IRA mentor Blair was planning to use a horizontally-fired mortar for an attack on the police. His handlers did nothing. Within days, Blair fired the device at an armoured RUC Land Rover in Newry, in the process killing policewoman Colleen McMurray. Another RUC officer lost both his legs.

Fulton then travelled to the US and helped develop light-sensitive bombs, activated by photographic flashes, to overcome the problem of IRA remote-control devices having their detonation signal jammed by army radio units.

'I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it. If everything I touched turned to shit then I would have been dead. The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy. At the time I'd no problem with this way of thinking.'

The claim that the cabinet and Thatcher knew of these types of operations is startling. Thatcher's office has refused to comment on Fulton's claims. It is known, though, that intelligence supplied by other British army moles inside the republican movement was being read at cabinet level. One such mole, Willie Carlin, was flown out of Northern Ireland in Thatcher's Prime Ministerial jet in 1985 after his cover was blown. As chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which met weekly at Number 10, Thatcher was kept informed of FRU activities. Whether this ran to the day-to-day details of agent-handling is not known. Thatcher did grant the FRU extra funding to recruit agents in the wake of the IRA's Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen.

Fulton split with both the IRA and military intelligence in the mid-1990s after a number of terrorist operations went disastrously wrong. Once his handlers told him to get a mobile phone and a car for a planned hit in 1994 on a senior RUC officer in Belfast. The IRA team was arrested on its way to carry out the murder.

Fulton believes his handlers thought he had outlived his usefulness and deliberately linked him to the operation before tipping off the police about the plan. By then, the army had secured a far more highly-placed mole within the IRA — a man still active and codenamed Stakeknife. Fulton is sure that he was compromised, so the IRA would kill him and believe they were free of informers, allowing Stakeknife to pass top-grade information to the military without risk of being detected. 'If I was dead that would have been the end of it,' he says. 'There would have been no embarrassment to the army.'

From 1995 until now Fulton has been fighting the MoD — demanding they clear his criminal record, give him a new identity, a relocation package and provide a military pension. 'If they hadn't screwed me, then I wouldn't be screwing them now,' he says. 'If the IRA ever find me I'm dead. I accept I'm a marked man, but I intend to take everyone down with me who was in on this — no matter how high up the stink goes.'

23 June 2002

Thatcher 'gave go-ahead for IRA assassinations'

Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor

MRS Thatcher gave the go-ahead for British security forces to collude with paramilitary gangs in Northern Ireland in a decade-long assassination campaign which claimed the lives of known terrorists, civilians and members of the security forces, according to a former British soldier who infiltrated the IRA for military intelligence.

Kevin Fulton says he helped carry out a series of terrorist crimes, some of which resulted in murder, and was told by his army handlers in 1980: 'There'll be no medals for this, and no recognition, but this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing.'

Kevin Fulton was 'handled' by officers from the Force Research Unit, the army's most secretive intelligence agency.

A two-part BBC Panorama programme into the FRU, which concludes tonight and is based partly on Sunday Herald investigations, has prompted a vow from Tony Blair to uncover the truth behind one of the most serious allegations against the FRU — that it conspired in the murder of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane by loyalist hitmen.

A spokesman for Thatcher said she would not comment.

A man covers a toddler killed by a U.S. military attack

A man weeps for Saad Mozan, 42, killed in an overnight raid by U.S. troops

Body of Wisam Khalil, 35, killed in an attack in Baghdad by U.S. troops

Basra, Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul...

US created Iraq — devastated cities

They are such liars

London Metropolitan Police boasting their shoot-to-kill policy

27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was shot dead by police on an underground train in London

On way to work when followed by undercover surveillance team

Shot in the head seven times

Shoot to kill policy expanded to cover great range of operation circumstances

UK Police State Systemic killing

Ludicrous Diversion - 7/7 London Bombings Documentary

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A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny

Alex Jones Terrorstorm

America — from freedom to fascism

Loved one
Killed by U.S. forces
in their homes in Fallujah

Body of loved one in Falluja.

Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004

Picture: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

Loved one
Killed by U.S. forces
in their homes in Fallujah

Body of loved one in Fallujah.

Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004

Photo: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

(left)	Body of loved one in Falluja. Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004
(right)	Body of loved one in Fallujah. Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004 Photos: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

O'Connor, a member of the Iraq Study Group, calls for her car as she leaves the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006, after taking part in another day of meetings and a teleconference with war criminal Blair of London.

Photo: AP/Ron Edmonds

Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Sheldon Drobny

Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history.

US destroyed Fallujah as it tries to destroy the rest of Iraq

Celia Merluzzo, 2, of Coventry, Conn., and her mother Laura Merluzzo protest outside the U.S.Coast Guard Academy, Wednesday May 23, 2007, in New London Conn.

Protesters of President Bush's Iraq War policies lined the street leading to the Coast Guard Academy where Bush is delivering the commencement address to the class of 2007.

Photo: AP/Jack Sauer

The lesson is clear.

Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest.

Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore.

She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring.

She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband.

Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount.

She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold.

And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause.

The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires.

The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture.

The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.

The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.

History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.

Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.

Appointment of Bush as U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court
The Path to Florida Vanity Fair October 2004

US destroyed Fallujah as it tries to destroy the rest of Iraq

A rooftop view shows smoke rising from a car bomb attack in front of the National Theater, Saturday, July 30, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq.

Photo: AP/Hadi Mizban

As Thanksgiving 2000 approached, the justices and their clerks planned their vacations and scattered, leaving a skeletal staff — generally only one of the three or four clerks assigned to each chamber — behind in case the impossible happened

There was just no way, Justice Stephen Breyer remarked over the holiday, that the Court would ever get involved

How the US Supreme court stopped the ballots in Florida from being counted

Bush v. Gore

Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court

— Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court

Unspeakable grief and horror

Two small children killed as part of the mass killings by coalition occupation for oil forces, April, 2004

Photo: aljazeera.net

النتائج الأولية للحل الأميركي الحذر للمقاومة العراقية في الفلوجة (الجزيرة)

...and the circus of deception killing continues...

Most recent 'Circus of Killing' click here

— 2010

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— 2003
Circus of Torture 2003 — now

He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"

And of course I am.

Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.

"It's all illusion," I say. "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie. The game! The game, me girl, me boy! Takes on interest, don't you know. T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"

Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here

Let's change it!

To say hello: hello[the at marker]Kewe.info

For Kewe's spiritual and metaphysical pages — click here

Mother her two babies killed by US
More than Fifteen million
US dollars given by US taxpayers to Israel each day for their military use
4 billion US dollars per year

A Palestinian mother and her two babies lay together in the drawer of the morgue fridge as workers prepare the bodies for burial in the Beit Hanun hospital.

US paid Israel military had tanks firing on homes in the northern Gaza Strip, November 2006.

18 people were killed, eight of them children.

The Israel military, including weapons: tanks, missiles, warplanes, artillery, shells, are all funded by the US taxpayer.

More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers to Israel each day for their military use.

Total funding is more than 4 billion US dollars per year.

Photo: AFP/Mahmud Hams

Nanci Pelosi — U.S. House Democratic leader — Congresswoman California, 8th District

Speaking at the AIPAC agenda May 26, 2005

There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense.

In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.

The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran.

For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology....

In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'

Pelosi