who is behind the Baghdad chaos?

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who is behind the Baghdad chaos?

Postby darkbeforedawn » Wed Nov 01, 2006 3:25 am

go here for live links:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://earthfamilyalpha.blogspot.com/">earthfamilyalpha.blogspot.com/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Money and His Fool<br>Yesterday a tall, handsome, strong<br>young man stopped a moment to look<br>at our Icon Wheel, picked up an Afghan coin.<br><br>"I’m going to Baghdad next month," he said,<br>sunlight glinting across high dollar sun glasses.<br><br>"The writing on the coin says God is Merciful<br>and Compassionate," Jay told him.<br><br>"Why are you going to Baghdad?" I asked.<br><br>"I’m a security guard, just got back from<br>a year in Beijing.<br><br>"That was a better assignment," I said, making<br>a note to find out what Blackwater is doing<br>in China.<br><br>"This one pays more," he said and walked away.<br><br>"He's not going to come home," Jay<br>said just as I was thinking it.<br><br>We're probably wrong.<br><br>Blackwater has only lost 25 men,<br>several famously mangled on a Fallujah bridge,<br>since the US invaded Iraq. They train security<br>forces, for one thing, and are properly<br>equipped. Unlike Blackwater Guards<br>enlisted men and women do not earn<br>a base pay of $600 dollars a day.<br><br>I've been wondering who could possibly benefit<br>from scores of dead bodies, bound with Iraqi police<br>hand cuffs, heads bored through power drills,<br>battered by torture, that turn up<br>every morning in Baghdad — some reports<br>say it's a pay for kill scenario.<br><br>Even Newsweek reports the El Salvador option<br>holds sway in Baghdad.<br><br>Remember Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney fast tracking<br>training for Iraqi security guards?<br>Was that code for training death squads?<br>Blackwater was working for Bremer.<br><br>Government vehicles transport the death squads<br>in and out of Baghdad neighborhoods.<br><br>US Media wants to call it Civil War.<br><br>The thing is —<br>Sunni and Shi'a intermarry everywhere in Iraq.<br>It's a non-sectarian society so if there's a civil<br>war someone went to a great deal of trouble<br>to create it.<br><br>Better to locate oil fields.<br><br>Why did the United States build permanent military outposts<br>like Camp Balad, swimming pools, private air strips,<br>suburban neighborhoods, I-max theaters, body building<br>temples designed by Arnold Schwarzenegger —<br>instead of Iraqi schools, hospitals, water treatment plants,<br>roads, neighborhood grocery stores, government service agencies?<br><br>Why hire Halliburton for billions and not<br>Iraqi citizens to rebuild their own country?<br><br>Who benefits from jobless societies?<br><br>Who benefits from civil chaos?<br>To whose advantage is it when people live<br>in bombed out homes, are afraid to step outside,<br>and government is completely undermined?<br><br>Who will resist the multinational oil deals<br>just now being finalized, if the Iraqi government<br>is completely dysfunctional?<br><br>This tall, handsome young man who, briefly,<br>examined an Afghan coin yesterday<br>doesn't ask what you have to do to a society of people<br>who write God is Merciful and Compassionate on money,<br>to make them hate you.<br><br>He just does it, buying into the coin of<br>the Empire, nevermind it's teetering<br>on the verge of economic disaster, morally bankrupt,<br>lawless —<br><br>Afghans, when their money became worthless,<br>turned coins into jewelry.<br><br>How long before hundred dollar bills<br>turn up in Chinese Walmarts as paper finger pulls,<br>origami fish, folded paper earrings?<br><br>* Image: The Fool and His Money<br><br>©Susan Bright, 2006, <br><br>Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: who is behind the Baghdad chaos?

Postby erosoplier » Wed Nov 01, 2006 12:13 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20683899-1702,00.html">Wedding bomb toll climbs to 23</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br>From correspondents in Baghdad <br>November 01, 2006<br>THE death toll from a car bomb attack on an Iraqi wedding party has climbed to 23, including 19 children aged under 10, the manager of the hospital that received the bodies said today.<br><br>A car bomb exploded early today outside a family home hosting a wedding reception in the north Baghdad district of Ur, just as the bridegroom's party was arriving in a convoy of cars.<br><br>Qasim Modalal, director of the Imam Ali hospital, told AFP that 23 people were killed in the blast - including 19 infants - and that another 19 were wounded, many of them seriously.<br><br>Baghdad is in the grip of a vicious sectarian war between rival Sunni and Shiite extremist factions, despite a massive security operation that has 15,000 US troops and more than 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police on the streets.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><br>Unbelievable.<br><br>Did I just say that?<br><br>Like Immortal Technique says somewhere on "bin laden", if someone invades your country, you don't drop everything and start fighting <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>each other</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> - you fight the invaders. Or is white again black, and up down? I just don't see how it could be more likely that all, or even most of this sort of thing is about "sectarian violence," than it is about false-flag mass-murder. <br><br>There is such a dearth of information coming from Iraq, I'd really appreciate any help from the group, links-wise, toward getting a better idea of what's happening in Iraq. Where are all the Iraqi intellectuals (the ones who are still alive that is)? <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: who is behind the Baghdad chaos?

Postby PeterofLoneTree » Wed Nov 01, 2006 12:40 pm

"...I'd really appreciate any help from the group, links-wise, toward getting a better idea of what's happening in Iraq." -- erosoplier<br><br>"Baghdad Burning"<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/">riverbendblog.blogspot.com/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>"Dahr Jamail's Weblog" <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/">www.dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: who is behind the Baghdad chaos?

Postby erosoplier » Wed Nov 01, 2006 2:42 pm

Thanks for that. Lots to sort through there!<br><br>From Bahdad Burning, August 2003:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen. <br><br>As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.<br><br>Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.<br><br>A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to a[ foreign] company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
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