a brief review of the war in iraq:
id like to start by apologizing for the long gap between the previous entry and the current, it was a busy year for me. i wouldnt like to give the impression that these longer-form explorations - which represent a massive improvement from say the earlier threads - take an entire
year to produce, or that such massive delays are necessary. hopefully, i will be more productive with regards to these threads in 2023. i havent finished writing this one, but i think it is time to get started anyway. i am not going to shorten any aspect of it, so bear with me.
and so - here we will review some of the events of the iraq war. i chose the word 'review' because i dont want to paint such a basic examination of the facts of the war, which were exposed even throughout the mainstream coverage of the war, as anything revelatory.
but nonetheless, i do think there is much of value in examining even the basics of this subject. i cannot speak for others, but for me this is something ive never felt like i properly understood and hopefully by the end here we will be further along on the path of understanding.
there are a handful of prerequisite subjects that must be addressed before the war itself, first of all being a basic mechanical framework for analyzing the relationship between the coalition forces and 'al qaeda'.
the central fact that this framework will be built around is still in my opinion one of the most underexplored premises of the entire 21st century - in terms of writing available in the english language - which is that al qaeda is a tool fabricated and controlled wholesale by
the west, operating in complete coordination with western interests.
the proof for this is extremely simple, that in 9/11 the towers were brought down by controlled demolition yet the attack was announced several weeks earlier by osama bin laden -
the proof for this is extremely simple, that in 9/11 the towers were brought down by controlled demolition yet the attack was announced several weeks earlier by osama bin laden -
the anthrax attacks and their "connection" to al qaeda and the hijackers further solidify this, as established in the book 'the anthrax deception', and of course this is an absolute minimum of the available evidence
but i think it is perhaps the simplest and least deniable proof of the nature of the relationship
an immediate conclusion then, is that ANY combat operation purported to be conducted against al qaeda was in fact conducted for another purpose.
an immediate conclusion then, is that ANY combat operation purported to be conducted against al qaeda was in fact conducted for another purpose.
it also completely belies any notion of anti-american ideology, and thus belying the entire premise of al qaeda, and so here as well any operation supposedly conducted against american or western interests was also in fact conducted for another purpose.
furthermore it necessarily establishes communication between aq 'leadership' and the united states - otherwise it would be impossible for osama bin laden to warn of 9/11 in late august and for the us operators to conduct the plane show and controlled demolition in early september
to be behind on this is to be behind on everything, to be behind really the entire rest of the world - its a shamefully backwards failure of thinking.
but even though the premise is obvious to many, what i have not seen is even a surface-level cohesive reanalysis of the iraq war with this in mind. so, lets review.
using these premises as a starting point, we can begin to formulate a framework for the events of the iraq war with regards to the role played by al qaeda and the coalition forces and the interactions between them
for the relationship between al qaeda and the coalition forces to function, there are three significant categories of actor within either of the twin 'antagonistic' organizations:
1: people who are aware of the relationship between the two organizations and are in direct communication with members of the other organization
2: people who are aware of the relationship but are not in direct communication
3: people who are unaware of the relationship between the two organizations
this refers to actors on the ground, physically present in iraq and active during the war
this refers to actors on the ground, physically present in iraq and active during the war
presumably, actors who are in categories 1 and 2 would be unwilling to engage in any genuine combat situations against each other where there might be the possibility of injury or death
but if category 3 does exist, it is possible these actors may have been set up to engage against each other in some kind of combat for the sake of show or for some other purpose
category 3 could comprise of both lower level direct members, but also could consist of independent actors who are for various reasons temporarily allying with one or the other organization
and it is possible that category 3 could engage with other category 3 actors, but also category 2 actors who have a significant enough advantage that they do not feel significant risk of injury or death by engaging
it is unlikely but possible that a category 1 actor would engage vs category 3, but very unlikely because category 1 would be the most insulated and most valuable group of actors
i think there is a tendency to overstate the size of category 3 actors across the board, to remove the intention from the action, and we will demonstrate that this view is often incorrect and even absurd
it is not enough to say that the actions of al qaeda in iraq were merely convenient for the coalition forces, rather they were part of one single two-pronged war fought against the nation of iraq
we will get into the specific actions, tactics, strategy, goals, and narratives to this end but first lets continue to develop a basic framework of the relationship itself so that when we get there we have something concrete to evaluate these things against.
as for these three categories of actors from both groups, consider what their composition might be and how we might try to classify actors as being part of one or the other based on information available to us -
a note before continuing, *none of this is to say that there were not attacks attributed to al qaeda but that were in fact conducted by coalition forces proper* - it is almost certain that many operations were conducted this way.
but i think another erroneous tendency may be to underestimate the existence or size of al qaeda as an organization, 'it was all the coalition',
and i find this unrealistic because it seems unlikely that coalition troops could blend in sufficiently to be fully operational at a local level
also it must be said up front that many 'suicide' bombings are classified as such on dubious authority and rather i believe these were simply bombings with materials planted ahead of time either by coalition forces or al qaeda members or collaborators of another category
so lets examine category 1, the category of direct communication between the two groups.
obviously we can put ranking military officers from the coalition, particularly from the united states, into this category.
the entire war on iraq was fought on this pincer principle of 'false' antagonistic entities, it is unrealistic that any significant commander was out of this loop because the war effort depended and even hinged on tight coordination.
whether or not the planning was done under one roof, the coalition planners and the al qaeda planners must have been frequently in contact and with a short feedback loop between the two entities. while both entities may have maintained separate headquarters, maybe or maybe not,
the bulk of contact likely occurred *on* coalition military bases or property - this is because it is hard for coalition commanders to travel freely or blend in or meet secretly or safely, and because the inconvenience of communicating only by messenger or even signal
seems to outweigh any security concerns of meeting directly on base or other property. i think secure signal communication was certainly possible, but imagine planning a complex war over the equivalent of zoom in 2004.
i think it is more likely these actors were shuttled to and from properties in "contractor" vehicles or (if necessary) uniforms, or iraqi police or military vehicles and uniforms, etc.
as for which properties, other than bases i think that so-called "prisons" probably formed the majority of coalition-maintained central headquarters for al qaeda.
the same logic that belies the authenticity of combat operations belies the authenticity of prisons with regards to these specific prisoners. these prisons were secure facilities owned and operated by the coalition, with many people and vehicles coming in and out,
strategically located near centers of operation, and particularly in the early years of the invasion there was limited access by the iraqi government forces. no doubt just as there was a legitimate resistance that the doppelganger resistance seeked to supplant,
there were genuine prisoners captured and detained by the coalition that were probably held in the same facilities. but my speculation would be that these prisons were segregated and that there were regions that actually were used as a proper hq for al qaeda.
these prisons and possible headquarter locations include camp bucca in the southeast, abu ghraib (until ~2006) camp cropper and camp taji near baghdad in the center, and camp suse in the north. very roughly speaking these are the most operative regions of the war -
and keep in mind this is all just a reflection of what ive gleaned from a very short period of research combined with my personal insight. i dont have the ability to understand the nuances of the various political forces of iraq,
and im not painting myself as a geopolitical explainer.
but i think that this subject is worth studying even by people like me who do not have a genuine connection to the region, so i hope that my analysis is respectful and useful and that i dont overstep any boundaries. if i make mistakes, please forgive me.
and so, a cursory examination of the geography and population distribution of iraq is probably necessary before going further:
the two rivers cut from the northwest to the southeast of the country, generally speaking the largest cities follow along the course of the rivers,
the two rivers cut from the northwest to the southeast of the country, generally speaking the largest cities follow along the course of the rivers,
the areas between and north/east of the rivers are more populated whereas south and west of the rivers are much sparser. here is a map with many of the major cities labeled
following the rivers south and east of baghdad are the cities of karbala, hillah, najaf, nasiriyah, amarah, and basrah for example. and near the very bottom of this region was camp bucca.
again very roughly speaking this was an area with less *open* "al qaeda activity" - al qaeda by and large was constructed as a doppelganger for resistance in the predominately sunni areas of iraq, and for various reasons i think there were limits on how open the activity could be
in this region. for one, this region is considerably denser in terms of population than the regions where al qaeda had an open and persistent presence. for another, this is an area with more shia and so the narrative construction doesn't really work.
but whatever the reasons may be, and i hesitate to speculate too much due to my lack of social familiarity, i dont think the invaders were able to achieve the same degree of societal destruction as they did elsewhere in the country.
then there is baghdad roughly in the center, if we follow the rivers back up north. baghdad is a distinct theater of the war in terms of the operations of the invader - it does not fold per se into a broader regional strategy,
but rather it seems that it was treated on its own due to the size and complexity of the city. near baghdad again were abu ghraib (until 2006), camp cropper, and camp taji. now, a note on the abandonment of abu ghraib -
"abandoned" infrastructure is a subject that has come up before, and so this is a can of worms that id prefer not to focus on at the moment but needless to say the abu ghraib "scandal" was a typical intentional "leak"
and so the closure of the prison and the shifting of the inmate population were obviously planned as well. i am not sure why they would need to repurpose this facility or what use a "dark" facility would offer that existing facilities wouldnt, but i also do not think the building
sat idle until 2009. a loose end.
then to the west of baghdad is the province of anbar, the supposed 'stronghold' of al qaeda -
then to the west of baghdad is the province of anbar, the supposed 'stronghold' of al qaeda -
the province's two largest cities are fallujah, and then ramadi, both somewhat near to baghdad. and then additional smaller cities, with the euphrates as a focal point. for perspective, both of these cities are below the top ten in terms of population.
it may also be correct to include certain cities slightly north of baghdad - samarra and tikrit for example - as part of this general operational region of the occupation.
the region farther north along the tigris includes major cities like mosul, kirkuk, and irbil. this region is where camp suse was located, for reference, and contains the kurdish region of iraq. generally speaking,
i think this also constitutes a distinct operational theater for the occupation with its own "tempo" etc.
all of this will be given context and explored further later, when we examine the timeline and the news coverage of the occupation.
all of this will be given context and explored further later, when we examine the timeline and the news coverage of the occupation.
but returning to the basic framework of operation -
we had discussed category 1 as the knowing actors who have direct communication with the other counterpart, category 2 as the knowing actors who do not have direct communication with the counterpart, and category 3 as the unknowing actors.
and we were discussing category 1 actors and who they might be and how they might operate. as for the composition of this category on the al qaeda side, it neednt necessarily include the spokesfigures but -
i think to assert that any spokesfigure is not at the very least a category 2 actor who is aware of the relationship, goals and synergy between the two organizations is laughable.
that kind of 'it just happened to work', or 'manipulation of unknowing actors' talk is pure poison and hopefully this thread will be able to bury some of this thinking and leave anyone clinging to it for ulterior motives exposed.
rather, i think that the bulk of this category, those who are in direct coordination with coalition forces, will consist of operatives *trained by (groups like) united states special forces* or that are part of *regional special forces type outfits*,
from countries allied with the coalition.
the leadership of this category, and thus the leadership of the organization in general, presumably were cut out from one or more groups that had many years if not decades of experience either officially in a regional special forces outfit (think GAFE and the zetas)
or working directly with US or other imperialist countries' special forces groups. it need not be united states special forces proper, it could be marines, navy, a dark group, etc and it could be other allied countries,
but almost certainly this would be a necessary filter for the leadership of this organization. this is in my opinion inherently logical but it is also established with the precedent of the zeta cartel and the GAFE, as well as testimony from former zetas.
as for category 2, for the upper and some of the middle ranking members i think there would be a similar background as category 1 -
proven experience in 'special force' type groups, though i do not think it matters whether on paper it be special forces proper or army or marines or navy. i think that this category would be much wider than people might think, as we will get to later with practical examination.
but on the coalition side this could include almost any unit that played a significant role in the war - such as the 101st airborne, etc etc. on the al qaeda side i would think a similar principle would apply, that any significant unit of the armed forces of regional allies
could be a recruiting pool - meaning that while al qaeda is posed as an 'unconventional' group, i think it may actually consist of army regulars who are direct detachments from the region.
i think this reframing could be useful, that for example the iraq war was not fought with 'random volunteer' dupes from non-military channels but rather that so-called al qaeda detachments were simply - for example - various gulf countries' armed forces.
as for the lower ranking members of this category, i think it would likely open up to include members of various private security organizations (either regional or from the coalition nations)
even if they did not have the same level of 'official' experience as the middle and higher ranking members of this category.
as for category 3, on either side they can most easily be identified by having been killed in the 'combat' between the two organizations or perhaps more rarely by conducting actions that are noticeably in alignment with the alleged ideology or goals,
as opposed to the genuine ideology or goals, of the organization they are part of. the pool could be really anyone in the coalition forces or al qaeda, the question then is what purpose does this category serve and what role does it play in broader actions by either organization.
this is useful not because it would absolve any blame from category 3 coalition actors but rather it helps us to try to suss out the organizational and command structure of the broader operation - it helps us to know if this or that unit or actor is is one or the other category.
whereas with al qaeda, being that the recruit pool for this category is probably largely locals it is a question that is somewhat more sympathetic depending on the specific operation in question - any forceful action taken against the invaders is noble and brave. that being said,
for operations that genuinely are in line with iraqi interests it is probably more often the case that they were conducted by the *genuine* resistance and then *falsely attributed* to al qaeda by the media, and this is one of the major functions of the entire fiction of al qaeda
leaving out analysis of the actual physical role it plays on behalf of the invaders, from a narrative perspective it fulfils a "cross up" function - it commits atrocities which are attributed to the genuine resistance and it absorbs the heroic actions of genuine resistance in the
media to try to minify perception of this resistance and its success and strength to outsiders.
as for judging actions from individuals in either organization, for al qaeda they may be judged on the spectrum of whether they are social or antisocial from the perspective of the society of iraq.
how useful they are *for* the invaders and against iraqi society, vs how useful they are *against* the invaders and *for* iraqi society.
for example, to attack a masjid or a marketplace is an action useful to the invaders, belying the ostensible ideology of being *against* the invaders and *for* iraqi society. whereas to attack coalition members or their resources directly is an action that -
if we wave aside deeper motivations, just for a moment - is *on its face* an action against the interests of the invaders. though some of these actions may be committed by genuine resistance, *some* attacks on coalition resources may be done by "the coalition" itself.
understanding this nuance is key to understanding the iraq war, and failing to be capable of understanding nuance like this means that modern warfare as a whole will be totally incomprehensible.
so, in certain cases, these may sometimes represent actions taken by a category 3 actor. we will revisit deeper motivations later in an assessment of broader goals, strategies, and tactics. for the coalition forces, it is a given that their actions are antisocial and rather the
spectrum to evaluate their actions actions against is whether or not these actions are meaningfully against al qaeda the organization or not, whether they are compatible with an anti-al qaeda orientation.
in actuality, many actions that are represented as being 'anti al qaeda' were actions taken against iraqi society - so we should scrutinize very closely any action represented as such, whereas any action resulting in say the death of an invader or destruction of invader property
can be seen at least superficially as a net good and it is hard to 'misrepresent' this action in isolation as being antisocial. this is a fundamental dissymmetry to keep in mind between the two organizations,
though they are working as 'twins' this doesnt mean that they are symmetrical in nature. at any rate, these criteria can be used to identify and differentiate actors as being part of the category 2 or category 3 of actors.
secondly -
to understand the war in iraq as a component of the "global war on terror", we must understand the historical material being *alluded to* by the war on terror, what is being *referenced* by the war on terror and what that says about the war on terror itself.
this exploration is necessarily theological as well as historical, which may present a learning curve that alienates some readers or it may not seem inherently interesting to some readers but i encourage anybody reading to bear with me and not just gloss over it.
this tangent is widely relevant to this and other subjects that have come up over the course of these threads.
the act being *referenced* by 9/11, and the broader sequence of actions being referenced by the global war on terror, are the 'false flag' burning of rome during the time of nero and more broadly the roman empire's war against the religion of Allah, at that time judaism -
characterized by the worship of Allah alone, and the refusal to take statues or human beings as lords beside Allah.
this period has great relevance even in a vacuum to any student of *modern* psychological warfare or counterinsurgency, but for many reasons it is more 'personal' than this to our current ruling class.
in the early Common Era, the province of judaea and the surrounding areas were fraught with insurrection against the roman empire. to give some context, i will uncritically copy and paste the explanation from a source that i will explain subsequently -
that does not mean you the reader need to ingest it automatically, uncritically, but it is a good starting point to understand the nature of the conflict between the roman empire and the jews.
a pause here, who are the flavians? i am not sure how many readers will already know, most of this is entirely new to me. the flavians were a roman dynasty - the second imperial dynasty - during a critical period of the first century CE, following the reign of nero
another thing to take note of is the obsession that the polytheistic empires have with desecrating the holy places of Allah, with the prototypical episode of antiochus' placing a statue of zeus in the temple mount being a worthy focal point for us -
the experience of tyrants demanding the worship of statues and human beings is of course foundational to the religion, but i think it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the motivations behind this act in this particular era.
as the image states, Antiochus wanted to *unify* the disparate religious beliefs of his kingdom under one religion. this i think gets to one of the political and organizational problems of running a polytheistic empire and ruling over polytheistic peoples -
there is no real way to achieve a deep cultural harmonization - to deeply standardize and enforce limits on human behavior - via the mechanism of religion, and also imo no way to really use religion to wield a meaningful sense of authority.
at least in terms of the greek and roman empire as far as ive observed, it just seems like a hollow 'might is right' means of taxation and a pretext for demonstrations of subservience.
though i take a lot of the above with a grain of salt, particularly regarding the 'benefits' of being under the roman empire, this demonstrates what ive found to be the general narrative regarding religious flexibility under the romans and reiterates
the difficulties posed by monotheistic faiths. the conviction of the jews in the true religion of Allah, their rejection of polytheism and idolatry, in my opinion pushed the limitations of polytheism to a breaking point.
here is an example of more accomodative ways of dealing with the problem, though i will state that the integrity of this history - the timelines and viewpoints - are problematic and i will address the problems more fully later.
and at times the romans were more provacative, triggering unrest and retaliatory killings. whether it is the "subtle" incident of the shields, or more combative actions of individual soldiers,
or the famous story of caligula and the statue the obsession amongst the polytheists with desecrating the religion of Allah led to an inevitable escalation of conflict. though only one restive province and people,
there was a special nature to the problem posed by the jews and the worship of Allah alone that produced an extreme degree of ire from the romans and necessitated an extraordinary solution.
the jews were tasked with a long and difficult history of defending the religion of Allah against polytheists - often in an insurrectionary capacity, as the weaker party against large imperial powers. but this era of this struggle, from the arrival of hellenism
until the destruction of the second temple and eventual calamity of expulsion, marks a period of darkness for the followers of the religion of Allah that lasted for centuries. so what was the roman program to achieve this?
to both solve the jewish problem and radically reshape their own relation as an empire to religion, they carried out a centuries-long project to extinguish, change, and replace the religion of Allah with a doppelganger monotheistic religion that enshrined the pagan principles,
the precise principles that the true religion of Allah rejects, and codified their contempt of and "victory" over the jewish people.
the timeline here will be somewhat murky - and i will on some level analyze why, later on. but forgive me if the following components are somewhat out of *chronological* order,
and by this i mean for example i will the fire of rome after the flavian counterinsurgency supposedly predates it. i think that the conceptual order i have chosen makes sense, but this is a complex subject and the timeline and history is deliberately obscured.
going back to the first source,
recall:
recall:
the focus now is what is mentioned in the second half of this image, the counterinsurgency of 66 CE led by vespasian (the founder of the flavian dynasty).
the intricacies of the families involved are unimportant to the casual reader, but at minimum one should understand:
-the dynamics of support for vespasian amongst the hellenized jews
-vespasian's being tasked with putting down the revolt in judaea, and his ascendence to the role of emperor
-that his son titus remained in judaea to complete the counterinsurrection, eventually succeeding his father as emperor and thus establishing the flavian dynasty
nonetheless, the conviction of those they wished to suppress and their religion that enabled such conviction remained a problem -
the imperial cult, the worship of the caesar, is really at the heart of all of this. and this is why i have bothered with a great deal of context and introduction before getting to the main thesis of the source,
a thesis which i by and large agree with and believe i can support with additional context. and the thesis of this work is:
and we are probably due for a big pause here - a lot of people throw around theories about this era, to the point where it is i think a somewhat poisoned subject.
but this, in my opinion, is a summation that - by and large - truly explains the roman response to monotheism. in islam we of course believe jesus, 'isa ibn maryam, alayhis salaam, was a real person, a real prophet, and al-masih -
so while i think atwill's *personal viewpoint* on the historicity and nature of the prophet 'isa is incorrect i do not think that this renders his broader thinking incorrect.
naturally ive read extensive amounts of commentary on this and closely related subjects and much as can be expected most of the errors are due to a lack of understanding of what has been understood by islam since the beginning.
christians reject the corruption and alteration of their religion by the romans, or they try to "read in" the truth from these corrupted texts or seek ancient fragments of the truth, non-christians fail to understand that what is being corrupted *is* authentic -
and bizarrely i have been able to find zero commentary from our body of scholars or even layfolk like myself amongst the muslims on this subject or other related subjects despite its relevance to us and the context it provides to the our understanding of
christianity and the roman empire within our tradition. i am sure that the audience here will be a mixture of all three of these categories, and so it is my sincere hope that - as with other historical subjects covered - this subject will be of benefit regardless
and we can approach it critically. and if this is "flyover country" for you then you have missed the point of this entire body of threads and need to reflect on how it relates and why you are here to begin with.
with that out of the way, i will now post from the source directly with minimal commentary -
[here we circle back in the text to the explanation of hellenism etc leading up to the campaign of 66 CE, found here
https://twitter.com/2youngBadazz/status/1615872558615912448]
here the author is belaboring the point of intertextuality in order to introduce the concept, but what i want to draw attention to is the swap between satan and the children of israel. this is the heart of the entire roman project -
the romans were not content to simply continue military dominance over the jews, or even to merely expel them from their land and defame their holy places, they wanted to 'humble them ideologically'.
i put quotes around the phrase because i dont think it conveys the full significance of what i mean - but i think by the end it will make sense what i am trying to say here.
and here i think this point is begun to be made. this was not simply a replacement of the militant messianic movement or a mere pacification, but a way to enshrine what they believed was their "ultimate" humiliation of the jews and victory over the religion of Allah -
and make *that* the basis of their false replacement. this is the idea that will be explored by this source, and i think it will be worth our time to simply read a few selections from the work to illustrate this point enough for our purposes.
what we are exploring with this source is a specifically *textual* analysis of the gospels combined with the historical work 'war of the jews' which documents the counterinsurgency campaign of vespasian and titus that ultimately led to a massive defeat and the destruction of the
second temple. *after* examining this source, we will support this analysis with more historical context, and then work our way back to the global war on terror and then further work our way back to the main subject of this thread.
as for the last paragraph of the second image, this is the kind of thinking of people who are so tied to christianity that they cannot even conceive that Allah would send another prophet, restore the religion, after the romans' trick -
even when the stunning and beautiful victory of this religion, of islam, is a matter of historical record,
staring them in the face. for any muslim readers, this should very easily square with the very common knowledge in our tradition.
staring them in the face. for any muslim readers, this should very easily square with the very common knowledge in our tradition.
even if we take a less absolute position than the author, a few things i think are clear. the historical works of josephus have a strong explanatory relationship to the early gospels. they document the campaign of vespasian and titus against the jews of 66 CE.
they were sanctioned *by* the flavians, and josephus became one of the flavians.
ok. point belabored, but i wanted to highlight that all other sources from this period have been destroyed. the other important thing to note before we get into the intertextual analysis is that, as has been alluded to but not demonstrated,
the two sources are interactive and there is a puzzle between them that requires the reading of both to intuit information encoded by the author. we will come back to this, but before moving forward i also want to introduce a point of criticism that i have with this source -
notice that atwill's thesis heavily emphasizes that this is *personal* to the flavians, and emphasizes the *personal* benefits that they and specifically titus would reap from this entire project -
this i think undersells the level of buy-in from the broader roman ruling class, and undersells the degree of longer-term planning that both extends backwards and forwards on this timeline. however dubious that timeline may be. neither of which i intend to leave hanging.
i think it is undeniable that: the romans twisted or fabricated the gospels in conjunction with the production of war of the jews in order to frame titus - astagfirullah - as the messiah. and that by extension the father-son language of the gospels,
which we in islam regard as one of the worst corruptions of the religion, refers to vespasian and titus. but i have a couple of sticking points about characterizing this as a *flavian* project -
number one is, again, the level of buy-in, the premeditatation, and the continuation of the project after the flavian dynasty to its ultimate conclusion of becoming the official roman religion.
number two is an extension of the above, but - if we know that our "historical" sources are fabrications designed to meet a non-historical objective, how can we be so certain about the *surrounding* history of the flavians, flavian intrigue, their intellectual circle etc?
here i am not saying to throw out any notion of historical documentation but simply that a level of skepticism must be preserved.
another thing i will mention, *i believe that prophet 'isa, jesus, alayhis salaam, was the messiah and performed miracles and a portion of the jews followed him*. why is my personal theological view relevant to all of you, the readers? perhaps it is not, but -
i think it profoundly colors the analysis of the operation if indeed there is a genuine historical figure being covered up. i also think this makes more sense than that they simply backdated an invented false messiah.
rather, and this will probably be a touch too far for the non-believing readers, i think that the arrival of 'isa was probably a push-come-to-shove moment for the romans that forced a broader plan into motion. the curiosity here is that - the timeline then becomes VERY obscured,
beyond what we might have perceived otherwise. we have events that "must" postdate the arrival of 'isa, alayhis salaam, such as nero's persecution and the fire.
and we have the events of the counterinsurgency in judaea which seem to happen completely independently of al-masih - *according* to a source we know is fabricated to redirect messianic belief.
why, why is this relevant to our readers? i keep fretting that people will not understand why im including this subject, maybe because ive been away for so long. it is relevant because i think no matter where you stand, this is a critical moment of counterinsurgency where:
1) a false set of historical events was created to replace the genuine history of the insurgency
2) this was done in a way where the ruling class had a 'key' to properly read between the pieces of media in question, identify the fabrications, and understand the motivations behind them
3) this 'key' was in a form of a very unusual connection between two disparate forms of media
4) a campaign of extreme violence was carried out to erase any people or documents that contradict it, while:
5) a psychological campaign across the entire empire was carried out to *replace* the true understanding with the doppelganger
and the sophistication of the roman effort, particularly with regards to the two primary pieces of media we will be focused on, is not just informative but i think reveals that many of our hunches about *modern* media, modern history, are correct:
that our deeper forays into what could be meant by various movies or even television commercials, our questioning of if they are somehow meant to 'key' into history in a way that provides an exclusive meaning for the ruling class, *are* justified
because we know that even in the first century CE this was a known practice of empire and we further know that the current empire is poignantly aware of and well-studied in this particular campaign.
i will continue with some *brief* excerpts of direct textual comparison and then we will wrap up this source and move on.
i'll try to avoid adding my own commentary but since this is introducing the concept of the substitution of jesus the messiah for titus the roman, i will say that the "son of God" concept in christianity is one of the arch corruptions from our perspective,
and this quite clearly is a fully roman concept -
and one that applies to titus specifically, as the son of vespasian
a another brief pause, muslim readers will no doubt have a special reaction to this story - one of the curious aspects of maryam, alayhas salaam, related to us in the holy quran is that she receives a special food from Allah that surprises zakariya, alayhis salaam,
and he does not know how she could receive this provision. Allah knows best but it is almost as if against this mockery, this blasphemy from the romans, that Allah is reiterating the honor of maryam
and that in fact on this specific matter of the slander she was such a person as received special provision directly from Allah Himself.
and this is mentioned not just in one story, but two - when she gave birth to prophet 'isa, alayhis salaam.
alright, that is quite a bit of text - it is not my usual practice to insert so much from any source without commentary, but this departure is well deserved by the author.
i think the 'root and branch' symbolism quite sums up the roman operation and i have very little to add at this stage, other than that i found it quite worth my time to read the entire work. the last thing from it i will address is that,
i believe that part of the goal of (including supplementary works such as josephus' autobiography) was to *obscure* the existence of the historical jesus by implying through their intertextual work that there was no single 'jesus' except for titus.
and that is all i will quote from this work. there is a very long way to go and we have not even reached the main subject of this thread. what remains however is an unsolved puzzle -
namely, the gospels and the war of the jews imply and in fact i believe form somewhat the basis of the mainstream timeline of both the period of 'isa and his prophethood and the war of the jews occurring several decades later.
i am skeptical of this timeline, amongst other reasons because i believe 'isa *is* al-masih, the messiah - though i do not have any concrete alternative interpretations at this time.
so i will cover the mainstream timeline roughly in order and simply add the caveat that i am skeptical of this and that this is a period where the historical truth was violently supressed and destroyed by the roman empire.
and, i have to add one more theological note here - 'isa, alayhis salaam, is al-masih. we believe - and i know there is some overlap going back to early christianity, so this concept may not have been lost on the romans -
that he will be coming back in order to destroy al dajjal, also known as *al masih al dajjal*. the deceiving messiah. far be it from me to honor such a pathetic figure as the roman titus as to compare him to a genuinely historically important figure such as al dajjal,
but there is something about the symbolism of what they tried to do with the false gospels and war of the jews that very interestingly relates conceptually to "al masih vs al masih al dajjal". furthermore,
i thought that if one understands the genuine situation of prophet 'isa alayhis salaam and the deeply difficult conditions of the environment of his prophethood, which will be underscored by the tales about to come, it just makes the understanding of his eventual return
and the trials of the time of al masih al dajaal that much more poignant.
moving on to a rough analysis of the timeline insofar as we can understand it, lets frame:
moving on to a rough analysis of the timeline insofar as we can understand it, lets frame:
- the main goal of the romans wrt "christianity" was to cut off judaism - having just been sent 'isa, alayhis salaam, as their last prophet, with some degree of split over acceptance of his prophethood, from history
to end its stewardship of monotheism, to graft its own fabricated religion onto the monotheistic root. therefore, separating their new religion from judaism was of the utmost priority
- the prophethood of 'isa alayhis salaam had already occurred, there were already jewish followers of 'isa and thus history as it actually occurred contradicted the history they wished to write.
to achieve their desired pruning and grafting required violent disruption and extermination of this "history", of the people who remembered it, of any written record of it, and of any social reverberations of it
- therefore, they would need to achieve a combination of: a genocide of the early "jewish christian" groups that *remembered* the authentic life and teaching of prophet 'isa alayhis salaam, the seeding of replacement cults with a replacement ideology,
the refinement of their replacement religion as a political mechanism, and a war against any contradictory historical materials and for ownership of this historical subject
- all of this would eventually lead to a time period when the genocide was complete, the pretext of state persecution of the replacement religion could be lifted, and the replacement religion - in its properly created vacuum - could be adopted officially by the state
as for the timeline, let's start with the great fire of rome:
i choose to *start* with the great fire because i believe that physical violence and disruption would necessarily precede the seeding of replacement cults, despite the official timeline indicating the reverse of this being true.
so while the corruption of the gospels is implied to have occurred earlier, i find it impossible to believe that the original disciples of 'isa could have tolerated the corruptions or would have stomached usurpers in their midst.
rather, it makes more sense that the *initial* strike would be one of physical violence to reduce the resources of the genuine companions and followers to counter such a doppelganger.
this is just my speculation, it is possible that they initially seeded replacement cults in areas with very little or zero christian presence - but i have misgivings about this for a number of reasons:
chiefly that early on there was no division with judaism, judaic law and conversion requirements, etc. and it seems hard to believe that they would be able to insert the desired corruptions to a jewish audience or spring up replacement cults that targeted the gentiles
*before* disrupting the group of jews that *followed* prophet 'isa, alayhis salaam. all of this is hard because we have no real information, reliable information, about the following of 'isa and its size and distribution.
rather, we *do* know that the romans chose this moment to try to seize hold of monotheism and would have an interest in fabricating a history that explained how their replacement cults were able to spring up and spread.
to me, the timeline of 'corruption of gospels' first, fire and persecution later, feels designed to minimize the friction - to say the least! - of what the roman inventions such as 'son of God', elevating a human being to the level of worship, etc would have caused
with the predominately (or entirely) jewish early followers. if it was not made clear by the above, the cult of the emperor - the worship of a human being - was one of the most severe incompatibilities with monotheism,
and this is why it was so important for the romans to enshrine some version of this pagan concept into their replacement religion. that is why i do not believe in any historical timeline where the followers of 'isa would have ever stomached this,
or let usurpers insert ideas like this without consequence.
so i will begin with the great fire and we can throw the flag that already we know the revealed timeline has been adulturated.
so i will begin with the great fire and we can throw the flag that already we know the revealed timeline has been adulturated.
according to the historical record, in june of 64 CE a fire broke out in rome. nominally, this is the event that led to the infamous repression of the fledgling christian sect "by" the emperor nero - the christians of rome were blamed for the fire.
this event and the sequence it belongs to serve as the symbolic basis for the global war on terror. this event inaugurated the war of the romans against what was at that time the uncorrupted religion of Allah.
the fire was spectacularly, notably horrible - an event that would have a large psychological impact on those who witnessed it, and the coverage of the event similarly maximized the degree of the horror. here the historian tacitus transcribed a detailed "eye witness" account -
note also that he records in the account the presence of mysterious gangs that would menace anybody attempting to put out the fire. a brief pause, tacitus is one of if not the main (?) historical source that directly accuses nero of having started the fire.
ah. i realized that i neglected to actually post the map when i discussed geography earlier:
etc
worth re-reading that section while looking at the map.
anyway,
note also that he records in the account the presence of mysterious gangs that would menace anybody attempting to put out the fire. a brief pause, tacitus is one of if not the main (?) historical source that directly accuses nero of having started the fire.
not only this, but he pushes a framing of that - the christians were used as *scapegoats* for the fire, that due to persistent rumors nero needed to *find someone to blame*.
this is the framing of tacitus' annals, written in (?) the early second century CE, ive seen the date 109 CE given and certainly before tacitus' death in 120 CE. so, pause -
*i* have been framing this fire as a pretext to launch the operation against judaism, especially including the followers of jesus, 'isa, alayhis salaam.
if tacitus is framing the fire of rome as having been deliberately started by nero, but that he "needed" a scapegoat in the form of the christians, what then was the motivation suggested by tacitus et al for nero's starting of the fire? what would have led to the rumors?
the answer is that allegedly, nero had very recently proposed to the senate to tear down a large portion of rome in order to build a series of palaces called neropolis. so the story goes,
nero raged against the government and then miraculously the fire began and thus was the ground cleared for the 'domus aurea' -
on the subject of nero - note how much inspiration the character of donald trump takes from emperor nero. egotheistic tantrums, famously debaucherous, an obsession with monuments-to-self, rage against the "sober" political establishment, and on and on.
it is a kind of baseline political knowledge that the president of the united states is an empty figurehead, existing to promote a certain kind of superficial drama that obscures the genuine power structure and decision-making apparatus and its motivations.
so it is very easy to say, 'donald trump was written as a character modelled off of emperor nero'. just as, in this body of work, we assert that the 'richest people in the world' are also fictitious, created to smokescreen genuine wealth and power structure.
this theatrical obfuscation is the modern mode of politics - but i am starting to understand that this is also the roman mode of politics. i dont think nero is merely a genuine personality that served as inspiration for a fake personality,
i think that he is a fake personality that served as inspiration for a fake personality. nero's personality isn't just a blueprint for donald trump's personality -
nero's political actions using this personality as a smokescreen aren't just a blueprint for donald trump's political actions using this personality as a smokescreen.
the roman mode of politics cant be merely described as obfuscating central decision-making via colorful characters and their coverage by the media and historians. the *roman mode of politics was to embed in every facet of itself a blueprint for itself*.
their history is not written as non-fiction - it is not even merely written as a politically useful fiction for its time period. it appears to be written as a fiction that *reveals* and embeds their secrets, their political methodologies, their methods.
here we are building on the conclusion and analysis of 'caesar's messiah' - the intertextual relationship between the corrupted gospels and the war of the jews was designed to *reveal and explain* the psychological operation.
but i think this is actually a small facet of a much broader mode of politics, of society. the roman mode of politics is not just a system of class rule, but one that embeds the lessons and methodologies of class rule into its "history" -
both as-written, and as it was physically acted out, through puzzles and performance, as if it is just part of its "being". and it is this teaching that the modern ruling class have modelled "themselves" upon.
so - that's a lot of, my opinion. lets return to tacitus. tacitus argues, more or less, nero wanted to build "neropolis", and responded to opposition in the senate by starting the fire. then, when the pressure heated up - he found a convenient group to blame.
rather i think that this is an obfuscation of the *long-term planning* of the romans with regards to judaism and their long-term aspirations to usurp monotheism. the war of the jews was launched two years later in 66 CE - still within the reign of emperor nero.
josephus' text was written roughly ten years after that, with the symbolism of the operation very clearly spelled out. according to the 'official timeline' the corruption of the gospels had already begun, although again i have misgivings about that.
at any rate, evidently the long term plan already existed at this point. therefore, i believe that the fire was a means to launch the initial violence required to begin the disruption of the *existing* followers of jesus and begin the replacement with the corrupted ideology.
on some level it is almost certain that violence against the true followers never ended, during and after the life of 'isa alayhis salaam. but at any rate, the fire is a marker of the beginning of an *era* or *phase* of the broader operation.
tacitus was written at a time before the roman usurpation of judaism was complete. therefore, it "had" to reframe the actions of nero.
but if one was familiar with the works of josephus, which were decades old, one would see that the fire makes more sense as part of the plan to prune and graft. in this sense, one must be familiar with an even broader body of roman works in order to read between the lines.
for the ruling class of the time, presumably this would have been easy - much like how the author of caesar' messiah describes how this class would be familiar with the military details that reveal the corrupted gospels to be satirically interplaying with war of the jews.
the point is that there is both a level of conceal *and* reveal in the body of roman history, of a certain degree of contradiction that embeds some explanation of the underlying operation into the body of history.
and so while superficially tacitus reads as a coverup, a redirect, belying the roman intention to abandon polytheism, i think more deeply it also contains deliberate contradiction that -
to what audience i'm not sure, because i am not familiar with the complexities of roman society and im not sure if this was all simply directed at 'posterity' - indicate this intention before its "public" reveal with the edict of thessalonica.
for comparison, consider the often-mentioned PNAC documents or the donald rumsfeld speech linked early on in this thread
as for the resulting persecution of the followers of 'isa, we can examine some general summaries of their composition, ideas, and presence in rome:
note that the third image introduces the character of paul, who rightly so is painted as a corrupter of the message of 'isa, alayhis salaam. and we will get to that.
but what we also see is that according to the author, there was already an aggressive contingent of "jewish christians" for lack of a better term (when i say this, in reality i just mean followers of 'isa) in rome.
as for the location of the start of the fire,
as for the location of the start of the fire,
it appears to have been started in an area where the jewish population of rome would be highly impacted, ie it was itself an attack against the jews more broadly and more specifically the followers of 'isa among them.
this also would bely tacitus' premise of the 'convenient scapegoat' rather than a targeted attack.
as for tacitus' description of the persecution itself, this much i believe is accurate. this is the sort of persecution that i think would be necessary across the roman empire to disrupt the followers of 'isa and discourage this following from growing.
this is the sort of violence that i believe *would* create the necessary gap, the lack of defenses, against a replacement cult or a series of replacement cults.
and i believe that the entire roman strategy of removal and replacement of the religion for the next few centuries would follow this model - violent suppression of any authentic groups, and the formation of and encouragement of imposter groups.
and the chief character with which the replacement cults can be associated is of course paul.
paul of course was not an authentic disciple, in fact he was an ex-persecutor of the christians, on behalf of the roman government, who then had a 'miraculous' change of heart and went on to try to "join" the christians and inject beliefs that served the aims of the roman empire.
and again this is where i think the timeline is a little "funny" - that paul's conversion, etc supposedly came *before* nero's persecution began.
here is a brief introduction to the figure of paul, again i am not sure how widely he will be known to any readers who are not or were never christians. these excerpts are from a book called 'operation messiah' - the previous book highlighted was called caesar's messiah.
the full-form book is not available on libgen, however it was also published as a briefer paper at DOI: 10.1080/09592310500079940
scans are my own, thus the very low quality. i actually recommend this book for anyone interested in the period, though i do think once you already agree with the main thesis it is less necessary to read through the author's interpretation of some of the details.
but at any rate, the author suggests that paul - formerly one of the arch-persecutors of the christians - faked a very elaborate conversion story in order to get in with the christians (and i am using this term simply to mean, the jews who followed jesus, alayhis salaam).
as the book mentions, paul was regarded as an apostate by many and his ideas were in my opinion such as that the genuine followers would have never ever compromised or allowed this person to gain influence willingly.
(these, now, from the shorter form paper which is available via sci hub as usual)
so paul was really the one said to be responsible for transforming christianity from being an exclusively jewish religion, adherent to jewish law, to something easily accessible for the gentiles.
note: *gentiles could convert to judaism, could follow the message of jesus*. but according to paul, and according to what i believe is a fabricated event or outcome of an event, the council of jerusalem, the requirement of circumcision was too difficult for them.
without getting too deep - and we are already pretty deep - i have very serious reservations about the historicity of paul *as described*. but he is the one, on paper, responsible for the replacement cults and replacement ideology.
this subject is fairly accessible and the source i mentioned, operation messiah the shorter paper, is a good starting place
what should be clear however is that, in keeping with the "root and branch" symbolism analyzed intertextually between the gospels and the war of the jews, in keeping with the concept of pruning and then grafting a false roman religion onto the "root" of monotheism,
and in keeping with what i believe was a very long-term plan to test, refine, and ultimately adopt monotheism as the roman state religion,
1) separating this religion from the jews was an absolute imperative
2) making it accessible for gentiles was not only necessary from this political perspective but would *further* the goal of separation from judaism automatically
3) the message of paul and his influence on the religion are the earliest recorded beginnings of this effort
the final effort to expel the jews from their land -
and this, all of this really exposes just how absolutely diabolical, how insane, but also how intentionally humiliating "zionism" is designed to be towards the jewish religion. after all of this, they "made" a deal with the inheritors of rome.
- occurred early in the second century, there was yet another revolt in judaea.
note that one of the main historical sources is eusebius, i will address the role of eusebius and other "church fathers" in this entire operation and then we are mostly finished with this subject.
but - tragically, the outcome of this revolt was a massive genocide, complete explusion from judaea, and the further blaspheming of their holy land with pagan idols.
such was the final military blow against judaism, though the transition to roman monotheism was still far from complete.
presumably this folded in with a persecution of authentic christian groups that is, either lost to history or that i was unable to turn up in great detail. this era is shrouded in mystery.
at any rate, the initial ground was cleared for the romans to further distance its doppelganger religion from and to defame judaism, to make anti-judaism a *part* of their religion.
and of all places, we will now turn to the jerusalem post's analysis of the anti judaism of the early "church fathers":
so - clear to see what is happening here after all of what has led up to it!
with enough jews and authentic christians killed, removed, silenced, erased, the "church fathers" were able to radically increase the anti-judaic rhetoric of "christianity" - despite the obvious truth that *it was in fact the romans who were the enemies of the true christians*
if we return to the symbolicism of josephus, i believe one idea amongst all of the anti-judaic poison is the most poignant, the most 'obvious' intentional twist of the knife:
to charge the jews with "killing God", as if to say - by their defeat, they allowed the true religion to be destroyed, the real and true God to be usurped by this roman phantasm. this in my opinion is the worst and most poignant attempt to mock the jews eternally for their defeat
predictably, the persecution of "christians" ebbed and flowed until the time of transition was ready. 
and for a few centuries, the religion of Allah was in chaos - the jews scattered, the authentic christian groups scattered, presumably hounded and eliminated by the romans. but -
and this much we see in our (islamic) sources, most notably in the incredible life story of salman al farsi, radi allahu anhu.
Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, sent another messenger to somewhere the romans did not expect. and the rest, of course, is history.
but this, all of this, is what is being referred to by 9/11 and the "global war on terror".
it is a symbolic nod to this roman campaign against the religion of Allah, by the inheritors of the false roman religion as they begun their campaign against the true and surviving religion of Allah, the religion of islam.
and to be honest there is an element of this which is pathetic to me. because it is so obvious that, this "war against islam" is not a shred of a fragment of the roman effort. this to me is a mere allusion, almost a cheap joke.
the history and tradition of islam is too well-preserved, its scholarship too well-rooted and its followers too many. inshaAllah. but i thought that it was worth qualifying that - this is the true intention of the "global war on terror", and its true meaning.
and with that, we are almost ready to begin the coverage of the war in iraq itself.
ah, one more note about the roman empire that got lost in the shuffle. we discussed the emperor nero, and implied the transition to the flavian dynasty - but we glossed over something i wanted to address.
i believe i have sufficiently illustrated the long-term nature of the roman transition to monotheism, spanning at *least* back to nero and then for several centuries onward. this implies a strong degree of political cohesion at least on this particular issue.
but if you were to read the history of the roman empire, you will imagine it is in constant chaos and upheaval -
we are not criticizing any specific source but rather the general narrative, so wikipedia will be just fine here. note several things described in this image:
the sense of constant power struggle, even within his own family.
nero's "theatrical" nature, his love of acting and entertainment.
his eventual suicide amidst political chaos and usurpation, spawning a civil war known as the "year of the four emperors".
during this chaos, vespasian was already dispatched to judaea and fighting the counterinsurgency against the jews
first we have galba, who eventually was assassinated by the praetorian guard
otho, who committed suicide after three months
vitellius, who undertook a series of purges only to eventually be killed and captured by vespasian
and vespasian, the "father" in the corrupted gospels, finally stabilized the empire and founded a dynasty that lasted for three rulers
domitian, the last of the flavians -
so remember, vespasian ("father" in corrupted gospels) -> titus ("son" in the corrupted gospels) -> domitian
also was assassinated in yet another 'palace conspiracy' by the praetorian guard, leading to the next dynasty
so remember, vespasian ("father" in corrupted gospels) -> titus ("son" in the corrupted gospels) -> domitian
also was assassinated in yet another 'palace conspiracy' by the praetorian guard, leading to the next dynasty
this was followed by a conflict known as the "year of the five emperors", followed by the severan dynasty, followed by more chaos and the "year of six emperors".
what am i getting at - if nero's personality and character was a form of political theater designed to obscure a deeper and longer-term design, and modern political drama and rivalries are similarly theatrical,
why not extend this to the suicides, assassinations, and intrigue as well? why not see this as simply another feature of the roman mode of politics
if nero's personality and character was a political subterfuge, if the modern bickering between politicians is a political subterfuge, why not the intrigue, and drama, and assassinations and suicides?
and here no doubt the 'serious history understanders' will turn up their nose, as if im implying that literally every aspect of existence is scripted when it should be very obvious that i am referring to the aspects which are the equivalent of modern-day television
as if all of these details from an ancient assassination could be captured so clearly
this particular assassination, that of julius caesar in the theater of pompey, marked the beginning of the roman empire - it was an empire born under assassination and intrigue.
that it occurred in the theater no doubt is "interesting", and brings to mind some of the more abstract or symbolic material of the analysis of josephus - and the degree of sophistication of that effort i think should put "jokes" like this well within the realm of possibility
"but it actually occurred in the area of the theater where they held political meetings", yes, they held their political meetings in the same place as the theater.
the example of augustus is almost too on the nose:
caligula, also assassinated in the theater. "a character that belongs more to theatre than history"
and here i will digress, this is a curiosity not our main point of investigation. but the sophistication of all that we have seen with the roman empire i think very much validates the approach to modern history and politics taken throughout this body of work.
at any rate - see how well the ruling class have studied and understand history.
for a more modern precursor of the strategy deployed in the global war on terror, both domestically and in operations like the war in iraq, we may learn something from the french OAS during the time of the algerian war of independence -
and on this subject i will not get into much detail other than to say that, it was similar in the sense of it being:
a false insurgency, designed to give the french the ability to wage war as two distinct 'persons' with two different rulesets and personalities,
in other words being able to wage war in two states simultaneously - for example to demand ceasefire and simultaneously violate it
carrying out attacks on civilians both in france and algeria, including real or fake 'friendly fire' purge-style attacks on french officials and organs of force
and possibly, though i am not sure, serve as pretext for a prolonged occupation by 'official' france.
i found it difficult to find much information on this subject - interested readers can investigate more thoroughly and make comparisons themselves.
what is one of the obvious and key differences is that, though it was a false insurgency, it was not a *doppelganger* of a genuine algerian insurgency. it is possible the machinery for such a strategy was not yet in place, machinery which was built up over the following decades -
but also i believe the goal at this time from the perspective of the west was much more limited, their global position much weaker than in the decades to come.
perhaps this is "naive", and certainly this comment deserves some exploration -
and what i mean by naive is that, it is perhaps not as simple as just saying the west is more powerful and capable of doing broader damage now.
rather i think it is worth calling out that in some senses the west was never able to achieve the degree of damage they caused during for example earlier phases of colonialization ever again.
while in terms of the OAS gambit *specifically*:
it was a retreating move, made once france had publicly admitted it had to exit algeria, it was never a strategy of long-term occupation. in this sense, the OAS is a *weaker* iteration of the "false insurgency" strategy displayed in iraq.
but, and i know we are comparing two different countries entirely but there is i think a point to doing so, by various estimates that we need not investigate at this time the war of independence in algeria resulted in the deaths of over 10% of algerians
whereas - and i do not believe any of the official estimates - the ongoing occupation in iraq resulted in less than this despite the advanced position of the west, their additional technology and firepower, etc.
and whereas again the *initial* french invasion of algeria, according to what should quite clearly be considered *uninterrogated* statistics to the reader, resulted in something more like a 33% less of population.
where i'm going with this is that, on some level i think there is a reduction in the sheer death toll the west is able to achieve. and so to simply say that their position is more powerful, their goals - again, as i framed, a war against the entire islamic world - broader,
i think this would be misguided.
and i think that in some senses theyve been up against this problem of, they simply cant eliminate enough of the human population, cannot *persistently* destroy human societies, for a long time.
i think this year hopefully will include analysis of class rule over a longer view of time to clarify the current goals and also obstacles that we have been covering - simply by necessity, as it is a novel subject for me - in a modern vacuum.
and so while i have dedicated much attention to a *modern* depopulation plan, a *total and global and final* solution, which can only be achieved with modern technology -
i think for me it has become quite clear that this is not a modern *goal*. it was just simply never achieved. and the headaches from the ruling class perspective, their successes and failures, over the longer view of history - these are due for analysis in these threads.
but that is not the subject at hand today -
and we are finally coming up on that subject. the only other preliminary item i would like to address is that of, the role of "biometrics" in the iraq war -
what is a biometrics, try to imagine how much i hate this term. it is so meaningless. so, what do i mean by using it then? i actually mean, identification technology as well as censuses and the storage of identification, biographic and 'demographic' information.
to put it very briefly - i will not rerun the sort of basic coverage of the census efforts commonly termed as a 'biometrics database', nor bother with tracing the technologies involved or anything like this. thats not the point -
nor is the point that, the iraq war served as an incubator for these types of technologies. all this is covered elsewhere.
the point here is that, this identification information was collected and identification technology developed in order to conduct a higher-precision genocide. as will become clear, the war in iraq by and large was a war against the fabric of society -
the goal was not to simply replace one "regime" with another "regime", an "enemy" with a "friendly". in fact the goal was not simply "one thing" at all, it is not a war that was designed to end, it had no conceived ending point or discrete goal.
rather it was designed as a continuous process of the destruction of bonds and cohesion and productivity of iraqi society.
in order to most accurately attack the social fabric, the identification databasing enabled the attackers to target *specific* civilians, keep track of *specific* victims, and measure and come to conclusions about the specific social impacts of their attacks.
this i believe is the most targeted, most precise, genocide then - the war on terror - in history.
and this point should be kept in mind for more or less the remainder of the thread, as we begin to cover the events specifically - so that i do not need to remake this point again and again. this is the deeper meaning of 'biometrics databasing' in the war on terror.
this is not a 'far away' concern of the future, this refinement of highly targeted murder, as a tool to demoralize a society and destroy its stores of well-being and productivity, principally characterizes the war in iraq and the global war on terror.
we will begin our examination of the war timeline with the final prerequisite concept, and we can introduce ourselves to it by examining one of the very first "events" of the war.
this event, which will be our starting marker, is the looting of ammunition and explosive stores in 2003.
why do i start with this instead of the beginning of the invasion proper:
this is not a play-by-play military history of the war in iraq. it is limited by what i am capable of understanding and examining, and in many senses this is just a coverage of the coverage of the war. it will not be complete,
nor do i understand many of the more conventional military concerns.
lets introduce the subject:
lets introduce the subject:
a note here, the figure of 20 pounds of high explosive is either artificially high or they chose to focus on an exceptional vehicle to elide that it would actually take far less to destroy almost anything - at least according to other coverage of this phenomenon.
is an aircraft carrier a vehicle? are we saying 20 pounds could destroy an aircraft carrier, or what? you can see how this sort of writing is actually very confusing or unclear if you look beneath the surface.
elsewhere we will see a figure of one pound - though not per se for the same criteria of 'any vehicle'. why downplay the amounts here, and increase the base amount being discussed? some people will get off of the train for a moment, and just write it off as lazy writing -
here we do not do this. by default, i will always take the position that media production is highly controlled and deliberate. if there are discrepancies or seeming errors, there is some purpose behind them.
here, we have a total given of tens of thousands of tons and 20 pounds as the base unit. if we go with 20,000 tons and assume - due to the phrasing of the article - that this is all high explosives, that indicates the capability to destroy 2 million of 'any army vehicle'.
if we had gone with a 1 pound base unit, as we will see in other articles, that would be a 40 million vehicle figure. i think that perhaps the judgment - here and elsewhere - is that a figure of 40 million was not as comprehensible as the lower figure.
now - this is a 2007 article, rerunning a story that "broke"(?) in 2004. why? the looting of the ammunition stores is the narrative reason given for the specter of ieds, and the specter of ieds had to be constantly rewashed into the brains of invader sympathizers.
and ieds, the looting of the ammunition stores, and the coverage produced regarding these phenomena, can teach what i would highlight as a 'prerequisite' to understanding the rest of the war.
this is the idea of splitting reality into multiple and irreconcilliable fragments, contradictory narratives, as if through a prism.
ill share an additional thought on this phenomenon more generally:
in the past i have said that i believe that "project monarch" is not a code name for a relatively small project of psychological study but rather the true codename for the "big" project but applied to a false object -
as if the names of the various programs have been shuffled.
and then if we re-examine some observations about the movie the shining, which keep coming up because they keep being relevant:
and by the way i also find these observations to be extremely vindicated in light of the analysis of the roman adulturation of the bible presented earlier in this thread
what i am getting at is that, just as project monarch is a misnomer, a true name applied to a false object as if the names and their referents have been shuffled,
i think that the true name for both the program of splitting personalities and of splitting any sort of reality into incompatible fragments is probably project prism.
the limited hangout, the one attributed to the nsa, called "project prism" has nothing to do with anything prism-like, in fact it is almost the opposite - it is a gathering as opposed to a refracting.
and furthermore - there is ever the touch of irony from the ruling class, as the revealed "project prism" and the so-called snowden leaks are prototypical examples of actual "prism", splitting the truth into fragments and mixing them with falsehood. this is a sidepoint -
you can take or leave it, maybe it will be food for thought. but i do think that the shuffling of names and their referents is a phenomenon that will be observed by anybody digging deeply into the corrupted, refracted history of the current ruling class.
back to the idea at hand, this 'fragmenting' for lack of a better word can be observed at multiple levels -
it characterizes the primary narrative for the occupation itself, it characterizes the specific phenomenon of ieds, and it characterizes the single episode of the looted ammunition. at the primary level, there is the phenomenon of the real vs fake insurgency in iraq.
there was a genuine insurgency, obviously, across the entire country of iraq. there was the 'false' insurgency of al qaeda. one narrative fragment is that of the false insurgency committing acts of genuine insurgency against the coalition.
another is the narrative fragment of the false insurgency committing acts of violence against the people of iraq. these two fragments are incompatible, there is no way to make it make sense.
as soon as one tries to believe in one of them, the other one will come up as a nagging contradiction.
at the level of ied warfare, a few of these contradictions are:
-obviously it expresses the 'real vs fake' insurgency aspect expressed in ied attacks 1) vs the coalition 2) vs iraqi society
-i think the 'suicide bombing' narrative is inherently contradictory. i dont think its really easy for people to believe, as brainwashed as they are, that people would carry out this act either vs the coalition or even less believably against their own society.
in iraqi news coverage but occasionally in western coverage, sometimes they will air quotes of people saying things like that people are doing hits for AQ because theyre paid to do so or that they're "selling their soul and religion for money"
and so its pretty obvious that this contradicts the "ideological" narrative.
-and honestly being fed the ied narrative that exclusively focuses on the troops while simultaneously being fed the narrative that 80% (as an example figure given) of ied victims are iraqi, i think that introduces an unsettling contradictory feeling,
even in the typical brainwashed western reader. they know that this framing is twisted, and i think they have to turn off part of their brain in order to get through coverage of ieds that paints americans or the coalition as big victims.
there is a little bit of conceptual play here - the "biggest killer" of coalition troops, so they say, are ieds. but the "biggest group" killed by ieds are not the coalition troops.
and this i point out just to highlight how they deliberately induce this kind of experience. they are not trying to minimize the second narrative, in fact theyre trying to highlight it by the 'hint phrase', so that your brain goes through the exercise of:
"i will make a pie chart and i know the biggest slice of casualties of coalition troops is the ied slice", and then i think a fairly natural extension of this thinking is to make the mental pie chart of the total victims from the perspective of ieds and then realize -
even subconsciously, that this slice, the coalition slice, is very small. now, there is another interesting conceptual play here that is not about implanting contradiction per se - a "more traditional" elision by framing.
and this is that the framing of all of the above is in terms of, "the victims of ieds". but thats not a very useful framing - who emplaced the ied? thats what is the goal of this elision,
and that leads back to the original contradiction which is that the actions attributed to the fake insurgency are actually committed by completely separate groups and that is the only way to resolve that contradiction.
this is a hard concept to pin down, so i will link to a few more general descriptions of this phenomenon and we will move on -
anyway - keep this sort of thinking in mind as we move forward because this sort of device underpins a lot of the material we will review.
as for the specific episode at hand, what we are really concerned with, to start our examination of the timeline, is the episode of the looted ammo dumps as told through the lens of a specific ammo dump -
the site called 'al qaqaa'. this includes the initial action itself, the initial large scale revelation, and repetitive "teachings" of the narrative like highlighted previously.
lets finally return to actual coverage -
lets finally return to actual coverage -
here is one of if not the first major article about the "incident" - and as far as i can tell the introduction of this concept to the public consciousness in general - in october of 2004.
note here that this is the figure i referred to earlier - *one* pound or less, often its mentioned as a half pound, and here the object of destruction is a plane. while a plane is a fairly delicate vehicle,
and i think that this is used as allusion to 9/11 rather than a particularly valuable general object to compare against.
furthermore, if the reader is imagining that 'one pound can destroy one flight' then i feel like there is a sense imparted that this could totally destroy the airline industry. and even this is riddled with contradictions -
the great size of material does not really change an equation limited by 1) willing participants and 2) the number of participants who "make it through".
but, interestingly, neither airline flights nor 'major bombing operations' really describe the end result of the narrative here.
eventually this narrative will become a very linear path from 'looting' to 'ied'. also in this first image, we are given one fragment of the narrative of "how" the looting occurred - the coalition was simply shortstaffed against the amount of explosive/ammunition caches.
i highlight this clipping from the same article because mars and moon references are i think a fairly typical 'tell' if you will, a kind of wink. this has come up ad nauseum but perhaps the examples from the nuclear study are the most relevant -
personally i think its a bit of a stretch to call 'abandoned bunker' mars like. the other thing ill note about this clipping, though again this is low hanging fruit - its called part of a "secret military complex" yet it has been known and inspected by the IAEA since the 1990s.
here we see more time spent on the nuclear aspect of the missing explosive material, even by emphasizing 'nuclear or non nuclear uses'. we are also given a timestamp for the initial "looting" - april 2003. as well, we have the introduction of the idea that this template -
what happened at qaqaa - could be multiplied by a figure that caps out at around 500. i note this just to get a sense of the mental math being imparted on the reader.
if we just rough it out - like anyone's subconscious would do - its, roughly a million pounds gone from this specific installation times lets call it 250 (500 total, but even higher priority installations were not secured).
250 million 'flight destroying' units. at the very least you could imagine 20 million, if 20 similarly sized sites were not secured. that is the point of mentioning that 'higher priority' sites were not secured - to make you feel like this may represent the average.
i am not saying this so that we can try to determine reality - i am saying this so we can see the reality they are trying to impart.
here we have the introduction of the narrative device of the IAEA seal. according to *this* narrative, troops examined the bunkers (at qaqaa? it is unclear) and did not see any material under seal.
10 bunkers of HMX were supposedly destroyed, but what is the point of mentioning this? this is not factored into the estimate of missing explosives given earlier in october.
now, note in the fourth paragraph - *if* the explosives were moved before the invasion, the IAEA seals on bunker doors would be broken. so one strand is, 'early removal, pre-invasion, broken seals, stashed more or less openly in nearby fields and thus easily stolen'.
here we see a reiteration of the idea that this stockpile was 'special' because of its nuclear nature and that it represents one of many sites where this may have occurred. also noteworthy - supposedly HMX and RDX are very safe to transport and store, requiring a detonator.
and finally, at the end of this image, we see the idea that these can be used by insurgents in small devices. so to summarize the view so far of the missing explosives themselves:
a fraction of a pound could blow up a normal vehicle, presumably the volume of this amount of material is very small. before analyzing the practical implications of this, lets clarify that:
we are studying the coverage of the "missing stockpiles", and the contradictory strands of narrative and the manufactured facts and evidence behind them, not in order to determine the truth by resolving the various contradictions. that is not the point of this exercise.
it's not possible - there is no "hidden reality" buried in the tangles, and if we untangle all the tangles we will not find the truth. rather we are studying the *production of psychological operations* -
how reality is *deliberately* broken down into these multiple conflicting strands, how it is then delivered to the target audience by various instruments, who the instruments are and how they work together -
so that we can understand the process they use in order to more effectively engage with it. im spending a very large amount of time discussing this - is this because i think its important how westerners perceive the war? i dont and its not.
i am spending time on it because it is important in general to understand these processes and because misunderstanding, simplifying, underestimating the complexities of these processes leads to an incorrect and broken worldview.
most of the discourse i see, on this exact website, by people who represent themselves as 'specialists' in understanding this 'deeper' dimension of politics and media, is incorrect and broken. it handwaves all of this nuance.
it wont acknowledge that all of these entities - the 'fact producer' entities like military spokespeople, political figures, the IAEA, "soldiers on the ground", the large and small newspapers, precisely coordinate multiple streams of contradicting information
rather it sees that they are independent actors motivated by self interest. they will say, the democrats were trying to gain a political advantage, the republicans were trying to cover up their incompetence. we will get to that part and you will see what i mean.
try to ask yourself, what is your instinct when reading the coverage *before* i analyze it? if you find yourself justifying the character roles of whoever you are reading, your worldview is incorrect and broken.
back to the explosives - a very small amount, this much is a believable fact in my opinion, can cause a great deal of destruction. we will very shortly return to *practical* coverage of the occupation. this sort of narrative analysis will become secondary to the physical history
and themes of the occupation. but here we do come across important information with regards to the actual physical reality of the occupation. a very small amount of material means that explosives could be hidden in almost anything.
i am not an expert on this subject but regardless of the attendant casing and electronics and detonating material etc you can imagine that the size could be very small. this extremely undermines the premise of 'suicide' bombing - if it could be that small, why a showy vest?
why a vest at all? rather, it would be easy to find ways to hide the device in a left behind object or plant it in almost anything in a very small amount of time.
the premise of SB is already unbelievable but this i think gives a material confirmation of the alternative - pre-planted devices by the coalition or their allies.
ok, that concludes the initial new york times article. as an 'opener' should, it leaves much up in the air - what exactly happened, how did it happen, what could have been done to prevent it, what are the consequences.
in tandem more or less with the nyt article, john kerry "made" the missing explosives a "campaign issue" -
i understand that there was a lot of analysis up front, but this is where the real 'splitting' of the narrative begins. a fact - that explosives are missing - has begun to be fragmented into strands with additional and incorrect sentiments and assertions and evidences attached,
gradually taking the audience further and further away from the actual reality.
once again they use the 'nuclear' angle, though i dont personally understand what this means and i suspect most average readers will be with me on this. 'strong enough to detonate a nuclear bomb' - what does that really mean? unless its detonating a nuclear bomb, should i.. care?
im honestly not sure.
but paragraph three introduces the primary split - the camp of john f kerry and the camp of george w bush. the election is used as a splitting *mechanism*.
that being said, there is another primary motivation with regards to the timing, the use of a late-election-season controversy, and this is that: the story *gains more mindspace* by virtue of being presented as a controversy.
the story itself, as will be evidenced by the repeated emphasis on ieds and the "missing" explosives' presence *in* ieds and thus the repetition of this individual story, this was something they wanted to lodge in the american mind firmly.
by revealing this as a late-stage election controversy, the initial "splash" would be bigger and likely the overall retention would also be improved.
once again, in the face of the narrative of two conflicting or even simply uncoordinated political parties, i think this very basic exploration of motives and methods renders this worldview laughable.
for the sake of completeness, ill highlight in paragraph four and five the strand of "keeping the country safe". this goes back to the point i mentioned awhile ago about ieds in general.
surely this leaves unsettled thoughts in the brains of even the most washed invader sympathizers. very obviously that the sheer volume of missing material doesn't *particularly* represent a threat to the "homeland" of america.
it might represent a threat to the invader troops - but that's not exactly how it is presented per se either.
for the reasons mentioned earlier, an increase of available material doesnt necessarily increase the threat to say commercial flights even if you indulge in the fantasy that these attacks are not planned by the west etc.
and the last three paragraphs finally introduce the second strand of narrative - that the material was gone before the coalition forces arrived in april 2003. this is where we truly have the contradiction forced upon us and we know that one of the two narratives has to be a lie.
either the "removal" occurred before the troops arrived, or after. if it is after, kerry's claim of "negligence" is "valid" - see how silly this gets trying to indulge these things, but its a useful exercise.
but where it gets *really* absurd is the final paragraph - so, 'doubt is cast' on the claim that the weapons were removed prior to the invasion because it is a large cache and it would have been detected by US spy satellites which were monitoring these weapons caches.
but - why would it be any *less likely* to have been detected after the invasion? is the implication that - it *would still* be detected after invasion but they are deliberately hiding it?
thats the only way i could make this part make sense but thats not how this idea is presented here or elsewhere.
at any rate - here, the "pentagon" says the materials disappeared before US troops arrived and the IAEA says they disappeared after US troops arrived. we cannot reconcile these two statements, and simply have to believe one.
but remember this assertion specifically - that it would have been difficult to detect *before* the invasion because satellites were monitoring the sites. *before* the invasion.
finally later in this article we see them explicitly connect the dots between the missing explosives and the insurgency. this is the big idea that they are trying to seed with this entire scandal, one of the pillars of their false narrative of the war.
we see the repetition of the half pound figure, the lockerbie reference -
midway through this section of the article you see a strange error, saying that the canonical nyt article we examined "accelerated" the IAEA's disclosures. that, does not seem to be a phrase that means something.
they, amplified the effect of its disclosures? accelerated the public response? but they didnt accelerate the disclosures, they followed and reported on the disclosures.
and towards the end we see an important device to be aware of - now, the pentagon *correctly* asserts that the missing explosives are not a nuclear threat. that is true.
they could be used as a detonator to a nuclear device, but no nuclear material was stolen. the "a", had already taken a stance that directly contradicts the IAEA by asserting the weapons went missing before the arrival of US troops in april of 2003.
disregarding certain biases readers may have, i think this would produce a measure of skepticism in just about anybody - it directly contradicts the "first word", the IAEA statement got there "first" in the minds of readers and so there is a measure of "free" credibility there.
but to any rational reader, they will admit that the "administration" here makes some points - its *not* a nuclear risk, and it *would* be "impossible" to provide 100% security for 100% of sites. so here the administration builds back some credibility.
but we will see that later there is a deliberate move to *discredit* the pentagon and the administration by explicitly falsifying their earlier narrative, and this kind of shuffling between saying rational and irrational things is the same sort of contradiction -
observed at a more macroscopic level with the narrative -
applied to an individual actor in the overall episode. so that - no matter who you support - if you as a reader are invested in any of these narratives, you are attaching yourself to a sandcastle that will be washed away into nothingness.
more of that credibility building occurs here:
but it is carried out in the reverse. it discredits the IAEA sympathizers. right after the "pentagon" makes the argument that there are 1) too many sites, 2) its not a nuclear proliferation risk,
and in the nyt article we had also seen the point that this site is just one among many and that from a conventional explosives standpoint it does not represent anything special, we see a quote saying:
"this isn't some stash no one knew about, they knew about it and warned the administration". but - who cares? if they had secured this site, which was known because of its *nuclear proliferation risk*, other sites that were *untracked and unknown* would not be immune.
this quote specializes the al qaqaa site right after the "military" makes a strong argument against this. *this* undermines the credibility of the pro-IAEA standpoint. and then finally, we see the same narrative from kerry -
that the risk is to the troops planes and buildings, that george w bush is responsible for the failure, and on and on.
this is silly and hyperbolic in the usual way of partisan theater, but we note here simply because we are diving into how each strand of the narrative undermines itself so that readers who embrace or ingest it wind up with nothing concrete or meaningful in the end.
okay, so a lot of narratives and speculation is emerging - how about some facts? this article introduces some of the "facts" revealed after the initial narrative release:
interestingly - this is dated as october 24th 2004, that is impossible i think. i had to double check that the nyt article really was the initial revelation, and yes as far as i can tell there is no way the date here is accurate.
it has to be at least a few days later as far as i can tell based on the reference in this article to john kerry's campaign statements. at any rate, here we have a very interesting set of "facts" revealed:
the army *did* remove 250 tons of material from al qaqaa in april and destroyed it, and *some of* it was of the same type as [one of] the materials listed as missing. but - the 250 tons were not under the seal of the IAEA, which the explosives considered "missing" had been.
so... this means absolutely nothing.
it explains nothing about the missing material, it *cannot be* the missing material because the missing material was the material under seal. so this is a contradiction condensed into a single paragraph and just rudely slapped straight into the mind of the reader.
they have the nerve to say, a defense spokesman "could not definitely say" whether they were part of the missing material. the poor people who want to believe any of this must be on the verge of tears at this point because of how baldly it is trying to break them down.
the missing explosives were under seal. these were not. therefore, they are not part of the missing explosives. to slightly walk this back, another military actor says that they did not "see" any seals because they were not looking for them.
this psychic whiplash on the reader is the intent of the construction of this entire saga. this new statement now creates maybe just a fragment of doubt enough to go back to the original statement in the first two paragraphs and try to make it work -
"they werent located under seal, maybe they used to be under seal? maybe they didnt notice?" again you can almost hear the hum of the minds of the people who dont want to admit what is going on here.
and then more whiplash, di rita says the comments are evidence that "some RDX" "might have been removed", but that he "can't say the missing RDX is what was pulled out", but that "some of the things pulled out were RDX". further study needed, indeed.
the next part frames the timeline as critical - the timeline of the removal of the explosives from this one particular site. but by the third paragraph, this is deliberately undermined -
it is reiterated that actually NONE OF THIS MATTERS because the site is not unique. it is a drop in a bucket. and then it continues to go on as if it does, somehow, matter. straight back into detailed timeline analysis and presentation of evidence.
whats more now the timeline is presented as - there was a window between march 15th and late may. lets indulge the stream of facts presented -
fresh seals were placed in january 2003. by march 15th the seals were not broken - but hold on to this, because this is misleading. next, a supposed photograph shows two vehicles near the site, but not near the bunkers accounted for in the IAEA statement.
from april 3rd to 6th, the site was in the hands of the coalition. now - notice the donald rumsfeld quote. he says, the looting would have had to occur *before* the arrival of US troops because a large scale theft would have been *detected*.
but remember earlier - earlier, i said to note that the narrative presented in the LA times article was that a large-scale theft would be unlikely to have occurred *before* the arrival because it would have likely been detected -
so the prior claim is that: us spy satellites were monitoring the site before the invasion so it would have been hard to relocate the material without being detected.
now the claim is: it would have had to occur prior to the invasion because *after* the invasion it would have been hard to relocate the material without being detected.
back to this current article -
back to this current article -
four days later, around april 10th, the 101st airborne - who are certainly one of the 'main characters' of the united states coalition, as we will see as the invasion progresses - shows up and 'did not search al qaqaa'. then the 250 tons were removed and destroyed.
on april 18th, a minnesota tv crew embedded with the 101st *video taped* the troops opening the bunkers at al qaqaa.
what is not explicitly stated in this article but what we will see in other articles is, this means: they opened the bunkers and *broke* the IAEA seals which were still present. so this means definitively that IAEA seals were not broken until april 18th.
this seems to completely render the interpretations of a pre-invasion removal incorrect. and again, the 250 tons that were removed and destroyed are also irrelevant.
finally the 'end' of the timeline seems to be that by may a thorough search was conducted and the material was already missing. thats how i interpret the final 'fact' here.
a couple of things -
for one, the 101st airborne division is frequently at the center of the very significant 'controversies' or operations like this one -
possibly because the actual division (a very large one) is tasked with important elements of the "counterinsurgency" or possibly because there is a media-facing component of the division that serves as a lightning rod for controversies that may be committed by any other grouping.
i put "counterinsurgency" in quotes because its not the correct word for the paradigm of the war - its not a counterinsurgency. there *is* an insurgency but the iraq war is not simply an occupation-plus-counterinsurgency, it is a pre-emptive war against the social fabric of iraq.
the nature of this paradigm of war will be discussed later. also, as presented - there is really zero evidence or reason to doubt the IAEA claim thus far. as presented.
but hilariously this is undermined by the fact that arguing about this one specific site is absolutely pointless. so the whole timeline, evidence, set of facts and personalities, its all pointless.
regardless, this all helps to cement the episode in the memory, and it helps to undermine any sense of reality the audience is trying to hold onto.
lastly, it should be very obvious that - none of this is true. none of this is geared at communicating the truth.
lastly, it should be very obvious that - none of this is true. none of this is geared at communicating the truth.
this is all geared at confusing and manipulating and abusing the mind of the reader. im going through the exercise of explaining this in detail because it seems to be an analytical deficit overall, that people cant understand on a mechanical level how this type of media works.
they cant grasp that people put effort into things, or that works produced by teams of people are complex to the degree that individual analysis is actually difficult.
if you read the material so far and conclude that the pentagon, the bush administration, etc, are just trying to 'cover their mistake' and shift blame you are totally, absurdly, miserably incorrect.
if you cant see the real goal of this entire debacle, that this theater is constructed for another purpose and that *no side* is genuinely committed to its position, then you will fail to grasp anything in the modern media era.
i *will* get to concrete analysis of the war itself, but i said i wouldnt rush this - so we will not shortchange this issue at all before continuing.
now we will get deeper into the video of the 101st airborne from april 18th.
now we will get deeper into the video of the 101st airborne from april 18th.
here we have more details about the april 18th video referenced in the timeline we had seen in the previous article. and at the time of this video, the IAEA seals on the doors of the bunker appeared to be intact.
furthermore, the video appeared to show HMX - the specific HMX in question, the HMX that was part of the 377 missing tons - present in the bunker.
but then *again* this is instantaneously undermined - its only one bunker. not only that, the cache is just a fraction. so at the end of the day, the debate is truly pointless. this is another contradictory aspect of the entire story.
we get more of the statement from donald rumsfeld here, more detail on the same statement that was the "flip" from the beginning argument. he asserts that after the invasion they had total air control and would have seen it. he's presented as so innocent here!
the very unspoken aspect of this is that, air control or not - the "pentagon" could just be lying that they didnt see it occur after. that this is unstated but so intuitively obvious is another tiny contradiction woven in.
here the colonel who controlled the area before the 101st reiterates the 'unlikely to have been taken after' narrative and adds the dimension of limited roads in and out. and that the only road was **packed for weeks with US convoys supplying troops heading toward baghdad**.
here is actually an interesting fact for the discerning reader. perhaps i was wrong to say that, there is no way to read in the true narrative from these contradicting strands -
maybe they *are* trying to "reveal" to the reader that if they resolve all of the contradictions its pretty obvious that the US troops were the ones who stole and transported the explosives.
at this point that is the only logical conclusion given the facts. there is video evidence belying the premise the looting occurred before april 18th. nobody could have taken it without being seen. the only road was full of american convoys...
therefore, the americans took the explosives! but at any rate, this is a fairly normal part of this kind of mediological operation. it doesnt change the fundamental point about the method of 'splitting reality', even if it is a slightly more 'collapsible' delivery of this device
(collapsible meaning you *could* derive a single truth, or 'solve' the puzzle. oftentimes this wont be the case, its at the discretion of the operator)
back to atwill's analysis of the romans -
for the sake of completeness ill briefly mention the controversy in the final paragraphs -
whether or not the timing of the revelation of missing weapons was picked in order to 'oppose' the bush administration. the bush camp accuses the IAEA, the IAEA punts and says the report came from the iraqi government -
the reality is that it *was* designed to appear in the last weeks of the election but that the reason for this was maximum exposure of this idea that would underpin the mythology of the occupation. the partisan controversy serves as 'plausible deniability' in a sense.
it is the reason for the timing, but not because the actors involved in this mediological operation are actually at any sort of odds. *all* of these entities - the bush admin, kerry campaign, IAEA, iraqi government, the newspapers -
are in lockstep coordination to pump out this material according to a central plan. its both funny and deeply upsetting to my stomach that there is such an allergy to this kind of thinking on this website in this community.
that people bend over backwards and work exhaustingly hard to try to believe one or more of the narratives produced in these operations. its literally ridiculous how much some people on here love believing in ruling class fairytale.
to frame this operation as anything less than a coordination between all of the supposedly oppositional actors is to embrace one of the lurking contradictions and undermine your own ability to collapse to a single reality.
this is really the key to interfacing with any sort of similar material - you have to be willing to sidestep the web of contradictions and reject conclusions that violate the principles of reality you know to be true.
but they were not content to stop there, no -
yes! did you happen to catch that?
read it! this is it. that's a real quote. this story ran in multiple outlets, it's not a typographical error. they "obtained the explosives", with the "help of officers of american intelligence", in order to "use them against the occupation forces".
go ahead - try to rationalize that one. ive seen this quote in who knows how many articles and yet it is completely uninterrogated in any of them. i tried to find literally any commentary on this and found precisely one on an old web forum -
that this user is intending sarcasm in dismissing a prolonged occupation, in 2004, i think precisely highlights the brain damage intended by this quote and the broader operation.
again, being that i want to provide a fairly complete view of this operation ill add that they eventually expanded the narrative to other sites -
this is the sort of "rational" fallback that people with infected brains love to latch onto - that there simply werent enough troops to do the guarding. their beloved invaders tried so hard, but it wasnt their fault.
that's "rational" - that's more rational, to them, than that the explosives were taken by the invaders and used against the iraqi society.
over time as we continue with coverage and analysis of the invasion, the case of the invader lovers will grow increasingly desperate and absurd and their brains will be forced to swallow ever greater punishment in order to justify their broken vision of reality.
this is more of a curiosity but is again one of those "are you paying attention?" tests for the reader -
as the nyt engages in a character building exercise, we the reader are supposed to believe that the fearsome enemy of the occupation is spending their time jealously guarding... an empty weapons site. setting up checkpoints, conducting surveillance, of... nothing.
of a "moonscape"! a year and a half later they're harvesting *rebar* under armed guard? what on earth is any rational person supposed to think about this?
the last paragraph is another reminder of how hard they are trying to remind the reader of the contradictions - "the mujahedeen never said why al qaqaa was still so important to them". what were they cooking with this one? i cant figure it out, to be completely honest.
as the narrative progressed, "interviews" with soldiers in the area "confirmed" the reports of looting -
here we find a "confirmation" of one narrative strand, but also violations of others - we can ignore the scooby doo imagery, but how are we supposed to believe that the missing material that supposedly would have taken a fleet of large trucks was smuggled out by toyota pickups?
and how can we reconcile that with the limited road access? and this is par for the course but -
in a single paragraph,
"the soldiers could not confirm hmx was among the looted". in the absolute subsequent paragraph, "one soldier said they watched as bags labelled hexamine, which they later found out was hmx, was being driven away by looters". fool me once indeed.
i think this is enough of enough, so to conclude i will simply add the 'payoff' -
this is the main purpose of the operation we have examined.
to drive home the narrative that this is the source of the material used to build ieds that target the coalition. the nature of actual ied usage, etc, will require additional analysis and examination as the timeline progresses.
but this narrative is one of the pillars of the invasion, and the method of its revelation and delivery to the reader is indicative of the broader paradigm of the entire war on terror - a destruction of reality, the revelation of facts and subnarratives and "pieces of evidence" -
only for the sake of their immediate undermining and contradiction by others, so that nothing remains of fact to grasp hold of.
i will not spend so much time on any single operation, probably, as this - but i did so because it illustrates several important operational methods and axioms of the invaders.
from here on out, we will focus more on moving forward in time rather than branching out in a single moment because otherwise we will never finish. i understand people may be losing patience to move forward, and i will try to keep things more brief and practical.
if we were to condense this genre of operation to a single phrase, i would call it a 'forbidden truth' operation - it begins with the truth: that the americans confiscated the explosives in order to wage war against iraqi society with them.
then this is passed through a kaleidoscope until it becomes a 'logical puzzle' for the readers which can only be resolved at by arriving at this truth - just like in the atwill screenshots!
but to accept the truth means to violate their commitment to the orthodoxy of supporting the invaders and believing in their goodness. therefore, they will invest in the various contradictory alternatives even if it means undermining their own sense of logic and reality.
as i alluded to, this all takes heavy influence from the roman operation described earlier in this thread and this is not in any sense an accident. that itself is one of the key takeaways here - that there is indeed a history and a historical understanding at play here.
with this out of the way, we will finally move on and begin examining the invasion and what its true intents and methods were revealed to be in the absence of the alleged 'enemy' of saddam hussein.
alright, lets resume. as we move into the war proper i will reiterate that this is not a "history of the war" - rather i think a safer goal is to try to characterize it, observe the patterns with which it was executed, identify recurring themes.
and in the process eradicate some of the common mischaracterizations and misunderstandings. so that by the end of this thread,
i think readers will be able to stand on firm ground in their understanding of the nature of the conflict and be able to take and apply that understanding elsewhere.
as such this will not be a linear or particularly structured analysis, there wont be much effort to maintain any sense of progression or impart readers with the ability to put things into order or understand the broader impact of whatever is covered.
sometimes i will be able to focus on and dig into a particular episode and a lot of times i think we will just be reviewing news coverage with minimal analysis.
i think that there is a lot to learn from this approach and i think for average people accurate 'characterization' is mostly what we do in conversation and in our own learning.
and the first event we will cover will illustrate a number of recurring themes. and this 'event', really two events, is a pair of assassinations conducted in spring/summer of 2003.
ill repeat an important caveat - any individual who is not a member of the coalition, by and large, i am not passing any judgment on. it sounds absurd even saying this. im covering the war as prosecuted by the coalition -
absolutely zero of that involves analyzing the politics and social figures of iraq. i cannot and do not understand these things. any and all news narrative about any of these figures or political matters i am assuming to be poisoned,
that is to say i cannot verify how true it is or is not. and that condition applies to possibly 100% of people reading this. none of that needs to be an obstacle to analysis.
the first of these assassinations was the assassination of abdul majid al khoei on april 10th in 2003.
khoei was an exiled figure who had familial ties to people opposing saddam hussein, this much is probably accurate. this man was murdered inside of the shrine of ali radiAllahu anhu. according to the western press he was killed by a "mob" of people,
with some kind of "factionalism" narrative. i dont believe this to be the case, rather i think it is probable he was killed by the coalition forces. my guess may or may not be true - if its wrong it doesn't matter.
whatever happened that was done by the coalition is indictable, whatever was done by organic groups of people is out of scope.
allegedly, according to the western press, khoei was a CIA asset. the story here is beyond absurd, implying that american currency was "flying around" during the murder - this makes zero sense. such is the nature of much of the western reporting we will cover.
however, is this detail simply absurd fiction attached to the story? i would argue here is a deliberate use of symbolism, almost cartoonish, where the storytelling in the fictional sense was deliberately constructed as some form of embedding symbolic content.
i won't dwell or analyze further but keep this kind of construct in mind throughout all of the coverage, this is one of the more on-the-nose examples of it.
allegedly khoei was vocally sympathetic to the coalition, i cannot verify this. i think it may be probable that he was vocally allied with the coalition, with the invasion, and for reasons that if are not clear already will certainly become clear over the course of this thread,
i find this unindictable and i make no indictment on anyone taking such a public posture or taking such funds. let's assume that it is true, that he is vocally an ally, that he would be willing to work with the coalition -
why would the coalition attack him? why would they destroy an "asset"?
here we see one very obvious reason - the western goal of "unleashing a wave of sectarian disputes". this is certainly a core theme of the iraq war, and the quotes here are not simply quoting the article but are also meant to imply that: this goal is not a true goal as such,
it is a fabricated goal. causing western audiences to believe that there *was* sectarian violence in iraq is one of the main themes of coverage and we will dig much deeper into and belie this premise as the war progresses.
layer one of the media operation is to inculcate the idea that there was a "natural" sectarian conflict in iraq. layer two is to give the impression that there was a sectarian conflict *curated by* the coalition,
this is a variant of the "al qaeda was an unwitting or semi-witting asset used by the coalition to create genuine sectarian violence and chaos that allowed them to stay".
rather i think here and throughout the case is that the goal was simply to create a *notion* of sectarian conflict as a cover to directly conduct violence against the iraqi society by the coalition, that there was no sectarian violence,
that this fiction was deployed as a mask over *direct* coalition violence inclusive of the violence branded with and possibly conducted by al qaeda in tandem with the coalition. and this should be kept in mind during this first iteration of this narrative
if you'll go back to the first image -
"a faction loyal to mohammad braga al saddar"
who is this person? if you search this name the only results that come up are articles related to this assassination.
back to the third image -
who is this person? if you search this name the only results that come up are articles related to this assassination.
back to the third image -
"mohammad baqer al sadr". this person died in 1980
what are they getting at with this, what are they trying to say with this? this is a little bit on the "symbolism" side, meaning simply an "error" or unbelievable content that is deliberately false in order to embed some kind of message.
finally, here, we see the genuine narrative emerge. the one they are trying to blame is in fact muqtada al sadr, it is his "faction" that the western press is asserting is responsible. why the earlier naming "confusion"?
personally i don't believe this was in error but rather again some kind of messaging for whatever reason. try to think of your own reasons why this may or may not be. also note that in the final paragraph we see the premise, albeit in yet another western propaganda article,
belied that khoei was even truly "pro american". so imagine that whatever the reality was is truly indiscernable to those of us that are bystanders. and note too that muqtada sadr denies the charges, and though it should not be necessary to even state this.
just try to use your brain and evaluate the premise of whether or not murder and factionalism would be wise for any iraqi opposing the occupation - why would the first target be mere "collaborators" rather than the coalition itself?
hold onto this thought, the question of why would the coalition attack its own "assets" - this idea will not only be explored more right here but also throughout the coverage.
going back to the third image -
note that this image claims "there were no soldiers near the mosque" and that the investigation - what a concept - was conducted by the special forces from the US 101st airborne division which "controlled najaf". so 101st spec ops were already set up in this area.
the religious context of najaf can be investigated by readers on their own time, the significance of this location can be investigated by readers on their own time, for most muslims it is quite readily apparent what these things mean and why they are dear to us.
iraq is a place where the companions of rasulAllah sallalahu alayhi wasalam lived and died, the real and true companions of our prophet, true historical figures who are known to us, who are the pillars of our entire ummah.
the romans were unable to extinguish islam as they attempted to extinguish christianity and the true followers of isa alayhis salaam. so of course iraq and its history are unspeakably valuable targets in this modern war, by the inheritors of the romans,
against the true religion of Allah. i am not grasping at straws, this is not an 'obscure conspiratorial idea',
i have outlined the explicit and intentional connectivity between these two campaigns in extensive detail so that we do not need to constantly retread this point from here on out.
the second assassination we are examining in tandem is the assassination - an incorrect term for this attack, really, it was a bombing attack that killed over 90 people - of muhammad bakr al hakim in august of 2003 and also at the shrine of ali, radiAllahu anhu.
and in this aspect, the mass casualty count of this attack, we see one side of a two-sided "intentional contradiction" along the lines explored previously in this thread that will be built by the western press.
but again, this is not just as an attack on hakim but on the shrine of ali, radiAllahu anhu, on the muslims themselves. an escalation from the assassination of khoei to a mass casualty bombing -
assuming, as i do, that these attacks involved the same perpetrator which was the coalition.
there is a lot to examine here. starting with the first paragraph, the new york times frames hakim as "the most prominent cleric cooperating with the united states forces in iraq". one, this is not an accurate characterization.
two, this does however set up a conceptual parallel with khoei even though *neither* necessarily was willing to cooperate or endorse the coalition forces.
but the narrative we are examining, produced by the western press, fictional as it may be, is drawing the parallel and this is thematically relevant to the rest of the analysis of the war. he is portrayed as an "ally", his death a "setback".
this much is character assassination, feebly executed, for the sake of the desired narrative of a 'schism' where the 'ally' was attacked by a faction in the 'schism'.
as for paragraph two, this is an example of a linguistic attack on the victims - and i hesitate to use the phrase 'victim' for the brave and strong people of iraq, so i will be very clear that what i mean is simply that they were the recipients of the injustice.
the injustice was done to them. the new york times in this second paragraph tries to *reinflict* damage and linguistically attack them by calling them afraid and also i am certain quite deliberately using the phrase 'disbelief' to describe these faithful people.
this is a pun on the part of the nyt, explicitly connecting the attack on hakim and on the shrine and on the faithful to the broader assault on their *belief*, their religious belief, their religion. arrogantly claiming that this attack caused them 'disbelief',
and this is a miniaturized metaphorical encapsulation of the broader western goal of trying to attack the religion of islam with violence - to try to inflict disbelief via extreme violence.
paragraph three introduces the idea that this was a "blow to american efforts", and slanders hakim by saying he was keeping shiites behind the united states effort.
the degree to which hakim may or may not have been considered an "ally" or "useful" or anything like this to the coalition - with zero implication of fault, as i have stated and dont mind restating - this will be examined after the coverage, along with khoei,
and this is where we will at length introduce this core theme of "attacking allies".
paragraph four introduces the idea that this was carried out by "former regime elements" (FREs). again, as the blame is shifted away from the coalition, ask yourself why would "former regime elements" do this? what do they gain from this?
and look at the elaboration afterwards in paragraph five, "to set iraqi against iraqi" - how does this attack actually do that? this is another "slip", another "error", that i think is meant to receive similar "symbolic" treatment.
because this *attack* does not in any obvious way "set iraqi against iraqi" - *unless* you buy into the subsequent premise that it was done by a "rival shiite group". the ideas here are twisted around so that the structure and presentation of them does not make sense.
1. the premise of the nyt is that people believe the former regime is responsible. the pentagon is ""sympathetic"" to this viewpoint.
2. the former regime would do this to "set iraqi against iraqi" - how? this would in fact unite all iraqis against the attacker.
3. the idea of this actually being done by a "rival group" is then examined afterward, and only this actually clarifies the purported motive of the FRE narrative.
and immediately after introducing this motive for the FRE, the article actually embraces the idea that this *was* conducted by a "rival group" and that there *is* a splinter.
rather this confused construction i think is meant to induce a "swap" of FRE with the coalition. it is a little rougher than the crystal clear examples of similar technique in "caesars messiah", and even in the previous saga of "looted explosives",
but i think it is an intentional construction or "logical puzzle" where the solution is that you must swap FRE with coalition. and the "solution" is revealed by:
1. after describing an implausible motive of "setting iraqi against iraqi", one wonders "why would this do that?"
2. nyt answers "it would do that if people believed that an internal party, a rival group of iraqis, was responsible".
3. so now we have a motive for the attacker, to make it *seem* as if another party was responsible.
4. THEN, the nyt actually *does the work of accusing the rival party*. THE NYT ITSELF makes it seem as if another party was responsible.
thus one concludes that the nyt, the pentagon, the west, were the actual attackers and one can substitute them in place of the FRE.
i hope this is useful for people, not every part of this thread will involve such in depth analysis but this kind of deeper analysis is a rarity and i think it is useful. i will repeat the image since we have digressed for a time:
continuing, we receive alleged details about the attack and i want to highlight something here. while it is *possible* that a single-car source could be visibly observed by a bystander - although we should assume witness quotations in the western press are fabricated by default -
i do not think it is possible that it could be identified 1) in an attack of this scale and 2) if it was *next to* other possible sources, car or otherwise.
which is to say that, this witness statement - which by default i would think is fabricated anyway - is not even believable if one actually thinks about it.
we will see many such dubious witness statements as we progress through the course of the war, usually attributing an attack to a specific car or person.
sometimes in the case of a car, this may be possible if the scale is small and there is no other vehicle around. sure. i dont have an objection to this concept outright, being that a car is a convenient way to place things and is inherently somewhat protected.
without countersurveillance by the iraqi people, the coalition could probably get away with subtely moving cars around to achieve this objective. a point against it is that it does i think provide somewhat of a muting effect on the blast.
but it is possible that in some cases, even this case, the coalition did use cars as a delivery mechanism. as for the case of a person, it is probably impossible a witness could identify a single human source and the narrative around this concept to be completely unbelievable.
and so as we examine attacks that occur in places a car cannot reach,
i believe we have to assume that materials were placed in advance of the attack by agents of the coalition and there is some confusion for me about how this might be done given that i cannot honestly estimate the size of the finished device.
if it was baseball sized, one group of possibilities emerges. golfball sized, another. shoebox sized, another. i just dont know. but i assume pre-placement in all cases and i do not think any materials were detonated by individuals who would stand to be destroyed in the attack.
and at this point i will briefly remind of the previous examination of the now-captured explosives in the hands of the coalition -
so keep in mind the scale of effect ("1 lb per plane"), amount seized, etc, now being put to use and we will see that this is a primary mode of attack throughout the entire war.
moving on we see that allegedly four arrests were made, we have a statement from an alleged captain of the najaf police force. here we are forced to make another judgment - is the quotation fabricated, is the scenario fabricated, is the entire person fabricated?
it is more than safe to assume 'yes' to all of the above, however some level of collaboration with the coalition in attacks like this at the police level is an idea that we must consider.
and though sometimes this language sounds loaded, when i say 'we must consider' i am speaking literally and with a neutral inflection rather than trying to impart a sense of suspicion.
*could* there be collaborators within the police is a question we should ask even though it does not impact whether or not this quotation was fabricated. we can come back to this later, here i think it is of no relevance and i generally assume this entire aspect is fabricated.
but note - the alleged arrests were FRE (former regime elements, to use their language). and they had been seen "running from the site".
as to the believability of this paragraph, the scale of casualties of this single-detonation attack implies a very large crowd and probably dozens if not hundreds of people were running from the site.
how, in such a crowd, could FRE be identified and how could they be singled out from everyone else running away? remember they arrested four people. so four people out of a crowd of unknown size but presumably in the multiple hundreds based on the scale of casualty.
a note here: i use this phrase 'scale of casualty' specifically to avoid the deep human pain associated with this and other events. in many cases it is unavoidable.
but i think we can separate our dua for these martyrs and our emotions for them from this analysis and i do not want to disrespect them in any way and i especially do not want to violate their privacies in any way,
and that is why i use these very vague sounding phrases. as a means of trying to provide privacy to those involved while still examining the event.
so - four FRE arrested and under suspicion. we will get to this, this attack was actually claimed AQ and this claim was endorsed by the iraqi government and western press altogether. this will be examined briefly later but keep that in mind as we move forward.
so, either these FRE were innocent or working with AQ or this entire line was a bizarre fiction. here *again* we have a bizarre detail that makes zero sense and actively contradicts what will become the main narrative thrust of the article -
that, despite a complete lack of evidence, "maybe" muqtada sadr is responsible for this attack as well. in fact almost as many paragraphs are spent on this effort as on describing the actual event.
so after some formalities are dispensed with, the article gets to its point which is to make this accusation. "a bloody schism", "senior established clergy vs younger militant faction",
this is the kind of absolute inanity that sounds intriguing or believable to people who have never in their life considered that anything is written with any kind of agenda. they believe in drama by default.
at any rate, my point is simply to highlight that the agenda of the western press is to fabricate a schism and blame their attack on others.
we can move on, the last detail i will highlight is that the brother of the martyred hakim sits on the iraqi governing council. this is a pattern that we will examine in detail later, but it is brought up here so i will highlight it and ask you to hold onto it for now.
here, we see the sadr-blaming agenda has taken a primary role in this guardian hitpiece that they depravedly call an 'obituary'. if this is an obituary, why is almost no time spent on the life and times of this person but rather on "investigating" and accusing?
another note actually, we have to also remain thoughtful at least about any casualty statistics and i dont mean to imply that i uncritically believe what is being reported in terms of the scale. but this is not the time, yet, to delve more deeply into this aspect.
anyway - back to sadr, this author goes farther than the previous article and 'knowingly' implies that it should be 'obvious' that hakim was at risk of an attack from 'sadr supporters'.
we dont need to spend as much time on this article, i'm just trying to emphasize this genre of western propaganda. going along with our theme of "contradiction", of hyperfictionalizing the propaganda narrative,
here we are to believe a major religious/political figure who is against the occupation and very popular would actually conduct a mass-casualty attack in such a religiously significant location. it is deliberately unbelievable.
this much is even acknowledged in the final paragraph of this dreck - just how unbelievable this premise is. sadr will remain one of the key figures we will see throughout the thread,
and the efforts of the occupiers against him or groups that hold him in regard will continue to be examined. we see now that as early as spring/summer of 2003 his existence is being signalled to western audiences. and we will give him his say in this attack as well, shortly.
here we unravel a little bit of the 'ally' narrative - hakim himself stated and this article admits that his principal opponents were the occupiers. the gall with which the western press reinvents and unreinvents people for its stories is something truly astonishing.
this article is for lack of a better word almost mortally cringe, with the doubled use of "superpower america" - phrased as if its a proper name like "doctor mario" - sounding so bizarre that it comes off as a hypnotic cue.
im assuming this was a translation from german and subsequent repost but i dont think sloppiness is a sufficient explanation because the final paragraph is most definitely a deliberate sarcasm constructed to mock the martyr hakim.
as if to say, "hakim wanted the withdrawal of us forces from najaf? well, look what happened". such is the ire of the west, and this no doubt resonates with the kind of readers that would enjoy the rest of this article.
here we are given more context about sadr - keeping in mind that by default these details can be considered completely fabricated, we do see what reads to me as a very sympathetic profile of one of his followers.
the writing quality here is very very low, "his followers" believe? etc. but despite the mocking tone i felt like the article comes off as a little desperate and this is interesting insofar as the article could have been written/translated otherwise.
in the last paragraph here, and maybe this is the reason for the deliberately sloppy and confusing writing, out of nowhere comes the reassertion that this is a "bitter factional dispute". in fact this is probably the reason for the slop,
you need to introduce a lot of weird sentiment in the reader in order to just out of nowhere make this kind of accusation as if it is an established fact.
*i* can safely say that any mention of schism or faction or internal strife that we have examined is obviously and totally fabricated. the coalition executed this attack in order to fabricate this narrative. thats the only logical conclusion, *from reading the western sources*.
but if you are a reader who really cannot bring yourself to stop pathetically clinging to these narratives, who cannot bring yourself to believe that the invading party is actually criminal here, dont worry -
we will also go over the iraqi and regional response and your obsessive love for the invading party will be fully exposed. i add this because i *see* in discussions and analysis that people here love to cling to western narratives until the very end, believe them by default.
so we will contrast the two here, having already and excessively undermined the former, and hopefully this will aid people who do *not* believe the western narrative by default but are still emboldened by a deeper analysis and an explicit contrast.
more profile of sadr and his followers that reads very sympathetically to me. no doubt this would be understood by the publisher, so one has to ask "why". the schism seeding feels absolutely forced and the brain should be rejecting the resolution of,
"this person is very popular, a devout religious figure" with "this person conducted a mass casualty event at a place of religious significance".
once again they try to tie this event to khoei, and we ourselves can remember that in this previous case as well presumably the coalition was responsible. why attack an alleged ally? again we will get to this point and it will come up repeatedly.
🙃
enough is more than enough of this toxic dreck but i have to include it to give a sense of what went along with the invasion. the "takiya" passage, the outrage that any society would not tolerate bars and pornography, and on and on. enough, but this is the west letting it all out
and we can examine it at least this once, in this thread. though do note the accusation of FRE trying to "instigate" a shiite revolt. this narrative exists as a stopgap until it can be transformed into AQ is trying to "instigate" a "civil war",
and we will track this transformation. but by recognizing it as a fabrication that occurred and was produced by the invaders as early as as spring/summer/fall of 2003 it will be forensically obvious that the coalition is the guilty party,
as we observe this transformation, ie what will ultimately become the "civil war" narrative, and this pre-examination will allow us to very easily write off the accusations made by the west *later* and try to come up with our own understanding of events.
moving on, we will briefly examine various contrasting views on this event.
SCIRI itself unequivocally denies the "schism" narrative. interestingly it accuses FRE, and yet if you examine the final paragraph - that for "hundreds of years" there is no precedent of this violence in najaf - this i think undermines this accusation.
so this sort of attack is brand new, is it not obvious then that it was perpetrated by the "brand new" element in this equation, the occupiers?
keep in mind that SCIRI, hakim, certainly oppose the occupation but may be placed in a situation where it is difficult for them to accuse them of this kind of attack openly. but unequivocally they deny a "schism", "factionalism".
and here we finally have the correct and coherent attribution made outright - and it is beyond obvious, but i present this to illustrate how stark the contrast is between coherency and incoherency. and ive said it before, i am suspicious some readers may tend towards incoherency.
the accused sadr himself organized a strike to condemn the action,
and here is perhaps the most clear and detailed statement and accusation of the invaders. i have nothing to add to it. if you deny this and affirm the invaders, either out loud or in your heart, you are a fraud or worse.
we will see how the false narrative around this single attack will be transformed to cover a much wider attack on iraqi society.
the final point of interest i will add is that by 2007, AQ took responsibility and the iraqi government was content in blaming them for this attack. as if none of the previous discourse, the alleged arrest of FRE, the accusations against sadr, had even happened.
by then there was a pivot to framing AQ as "deliberately provoking sectarian conflict". NOTE AS WELL that AQ is taking responsibility for the assassination of the president of the governing council *appointed by america* -
i told you, there will be a consistent theme of attacks against people who at the very least on paper are affirmed collaborators with the invasion.
but we know that anything conducted by AQ is actually conducted by the coalition - why would they attack their own propped-up governmental bodies?
even more shockingly, the narrative given for this bombing - which having just covered the initial press in detail, we should all be able to immediately react to this new characterization - is that it was a *suicide attack*.
what happened to the SUV, where the driver left? what happened to the FRE running away from the scene? where is the apology to sadr? forgotten, and apparently, this was a "suicide" attack conducted by an ambulence. reinvention, unreinvention.
as for the theme of "attacking allies", i will start by saying it is in some ways debatable whether or not khoei himself was even an ally and it is deniable outright that hakim was an ally.
granted, hakim may have been more willing to conduct dialogue with the invaders. but he was never an "ally", no doubt about that. so why do i keep using this phrase, why do i keep drawing attention to this concept?
i do so because this is one of the first examples of this "theme", which is a core pillar of the war. ostensible allies will continue to be attacked, their families attacked, throughout the entire course of the war - BY the coalition.
this is one of the central actions taken by the coalition again and again. so we can begin by analyzing this slightly more complicated instance of the double assassination.
first of all, in the case of hakim and khoei it is obvious that there was a motive to produce a narrative that sadr was responsible. that is *one* reason to conduct the double assassination and also to characterize the two as allies -
it is easier to deflect the blame from yourself if the recipient is your ally. i dont think this was the *main* reason, least of all because it is so obvious that iraqis *do not* believe the accusation against sadr. this was not an operation to convince *iraqis* of sadrs guilt -
therefore, i see the western sadr narrative as capitalizing on the actions which were taken for other primary reasons. what were the reasons?
in the case of khoei, lets assume for the sake of intellectual exercise that he was a full and committed ally of the occupation, not acting under duress - and we do so with no disrespect to this individual,
i think anyone can understand that the societal stability and lack of bloodshed of collaboration could easily have been thought to be worth the price.
if you cannot understand this, i think you should reflect on the sanctity of human life and the position of anyone trying to save it, protect it. we are simply exploring the concept and not actually accusing. why prefer to kill him?
simply put, the invaders were not interested in *any* measure of stability in iraqi society. the following years represent not so much an occupation but an outright war against every facet of the fabric of iraqi society.
any stability any coherence any structure represents a target for the invaders.
khoei was a very influential figure, son of a very influential figure, and as such a person of great significance to iraqi society. even someone who may have been *hated* - think of a corrupt but well known politician, a greedy businessman -
they represent some measure of stability. their outright chaotic elimination would lead to instability, lack of social cohesion, if there was not an appropriate level of mass organization to replace the social stability these hypothetical hated figures offered.
i cannot speak to the degree to which iraqi society loved khoei. but no doubt he was of significance, a stabilizer, and this is why his elimination is preferable *no matter what degree of cooperation* to the invaders.
the greater degree of love held by iraqi society for him, the greater the motivation. the coalition was not looking for allies, was not looking to stably "occupy" iraq.
it was looking to destroy iraq, and not just with one strike but by engaging in years which have become decades of continuous attack against any social cohesion.
therefore, the attack even of *true* allies and collaborators - not like khoei, but genuine and committed collaborators who would betray their society for the sake of material gain - would be desirable to the invaders.
their lives, the lives of such 'true collaborators', would be meaningless to the invaders provided they could find a convenient enough replacement. what we will see throughout the war is a continued strategy of eliminating such allies.
and as per many societies it is not individuals alone who are influential but entire families. in the case of hakim, his brother was on the interim governing council.
what do you think would be the response of someone in such a position, after witnessing their family member eliminated?
this is again one of the core pillars or themes we will examine throughout the war.
we will not always be able to afford such a detailed coverage of events, but for this very very early pair of actions by the coalition i think it was worth the extra time. moving on,
we will examine a few more events of 2003 and then continue to slightly denser coverage of events as we progress through 2004.
lets examine the changing character of the war over the course of 2003 into early 2004. for those who may have wondered if i ever had the intention to cover the actual war at large, this is where it will start so if you have stopped paying attention it is time to start again.
we can use april as a rough starting point -
april of 2003 marks the declaration that the invaders have 'triumphed' over the previous government of iraq. we are not forced to swallow this claim wholesale, but the nuance is out of scope here.
what is significant is that this *marker* represents a point in time, roughly speaking, where the previous societal defense mechanism against outsiders - at any rate its backbone, the military - had been eliminated.
this meant that the coalition could entrench and begin its longer-term war against iraqi society.
immediately after neutralizing the military, or at least significantly disrupting its ability to defend against the coalition, the next phase involved destroying policing capability.
this will be a theme throughout the war and one we will examine continuously. but in this early second phase of the war, this consisted of looting and dismantling police stations -
from the last paragraph - most police stations were 'abandoned' to the 'pillagers', who stripped them of weapons and locks etc.
the 'looting' discussed here and in many other stories focusing on baghdad in the early aftermath of april, may, june and so on in 2003 is a cover for the broader actions of this second phase. the coalition and more likely their agents -
the force that makes up 'AQ', discussed earlier, likely spec ops trained foreign troops -
looted the entire city, broadly speaking, to maximize the damage and exacerbate the situation of its people and also to provide a pretext for their presence.
but specifically with regards to police stations this was a disarmament effort against the 'second line' if you will of societal defense, the police apparatus.
the second paragraph describes that the police station was not only looted but also 'burned', which is not really an understandable action for iraqis to take unless you believe wholesale the 'organized criminal elements with rpgs' narrative.
perhaps the more invader-sympathetic readers will find themselves identifying with this narrative, finding it believable. over time this premise will be completely unravelled in the exact same manner as the premises of the previously mentioned assassinations of hakim and khoei.
after years and years of exhausting attacks against the police, it is undeniable that this is a coalition initiative. the typical cover given here is that these actions are 'exceptional', being that they are a part of 'looting',
an action temporally scoped to the early aftermath of the invasion and dismantling of the previous government. but they are in fact the exact same actions that will continue to take place as time goes on.
what i mean by comparing this to the stories of hakim and khoei is that these actions are presented first as 'former regime elements', also as 'sadr', but over time this narrative is dropped and blends seamlessly into a general narrative of 'al qaeda'.
these initial attacks against police infrastructure are presented as temporally exceptional, 'looting', etc, but the attacks against police infrastructure will continue for years and blend seamlessly into the general narrative of 'al qaeda' attacks against police infrastructure.
so my assertion that these early actions are a coalition initiative are not baseless, and this should be obvious to most readers, but even the most invader-stuck readers will be unable to cling to their doubt as time goes on.
this theme of disarmament, mentioned in the earlier paragraphs of the image, in the face of a simultaneous 'attack' by AQ/criminal elements/whatever specter conjured by the invaders will also continue to be established to such a degree...
that you have to deny the entire pattern outright to deny that these actions are a coalition initiative. this is the 'two pronged strategy' of coalition 'vs' false insurgency that is a pillar of the entire war.
this, very exceptionally for this thread, is a much later article - in fact written in march of 2023 -
but it describes the scale of police station burning with a level of precision that i did not find in the contemporary coverage of the immediate aftermath of the initial 'invasion'.
the figure given here is that *90 police stations were burnt across baghdad*, as well as the ministry of interior, as well as an additional '17 out of 20 ministry buildings'. also hundreds of state owned industrial sites, also power stations, also museums and libraries.
this *is* the immediate second phase of the war on iraq. also, by summer the morgue was reporting a 'surge in fatal gun crime'. none of this is simply 'organic violence' in a 'power vacuum' - this is invader talk.
now - this article embraces the false narrative of a 'civil conflict', 'civil war'. this is also invader talk, there was no civil war, and we will expose this premise over time.
this is a later and upcoming phase of the war, and although some of the attacks and general violence against society in this early phase *resembles* it, it is not really the same in character.
i think the best way to characterize this phase is that it is the dismantlement of the secondary lines of defense of society - the police, the non-military governmental apparatuses, etc - as well as an initial blow against the stored-up resources of society -
infrastructure and industrial plants, historical heritage in the form of objects, attacks against small and medium businesses, random violence against families, etc. the key idea of small-class rule, truly, is to *deplete* the stored-up productive wealth of societies.
to *destroy* value. value is relatively easy for any productive human society to build up, it is the natural course of humans living together, and the only way to maintain rulership over a class that outnumbers your own is to be *at war* with this basic productive tendency.
this article also mentions 'political assassinations' - we have covered two so far. the assassinations of khoei and hakim were part of this 'immediate aftermath', the second phase being described here.
i covered them first because i thought that would be a better way to structure things.
but if you are attempting to build a framework for understanding the war, remember that they occurred in april and august of this year, 2003, and so they belong in the phase that we are covering now.
as mentioned, the baghdad library was also 'looted', burned -
this article asserts that thieves 'stole or *smashed*' treasures, why would thieves smash treasures? note that even this article does not attempt to deny that baghdadis correctly accuse *US-inspired* non iraqis as being the 'looters', stripping the city of 'everything of value'.
so again, another "soft theme" of this entire thread, if you believe the coalition narrative you disbelieve the narrative of iraqis *even insofar as their views are covered by english-language press*.
by the end of this thread inshaAllah there will be nobody reading who can with intellectual honesty maintain their denial of these accusations against the coalition.
i dont want to dignify the smug smirking and winking ending quote with any time other than to illustrate that they periodically insert these things into their coverage, just as they did in the coverage of khoei and hakim.
here the reason behind the 'looting' is laid bare -
this should be very obvious but i genuinely think many readers wont get it, and that is based on the discourse i see *generally* on this website, *in* this supposedly skeptical community even amongst those in it who claim to be marxists or communists or politically advanced.
the 'looting' is an attack on the population, done in the absence of the primary defense mechanism and secondary defense mechanism. although aid agencies were 'poised' to launch 'one of the largest humanitarian relief operations in history' - and what does this mean?
this means that funds were earmarked, taken for this effort. but when you know that the effort is impossible, you dont actually need to buy the goods. you simply transfer the amount earmarked for the effort, knowing that you have an excuse not to deliver.
this is a common con, hardly 'advanced' enough to note, but worth understanding. this is the same sort of thing as 'hackers stealing covid unemployment relief money', or 'spoiled covid tests' -
there were never covid tests to begin with, it was known they would be revealed to be 'spoiled' and therefore there was no need to actually manufacture or even pretend to manufacture such tests.
also mentioned is that 'already one worker for the ICRC has been killed' - this is on april 16th 2003, just after the initial 'triumph'.
a note also, this is something we will return to later -
note that the NYPD police commissioner hired to be the top 'law-enforcement' figure in iraq had a history of working on 'policing efforts' in mexico city. we will return to this connection between the war on iraq and simultaneous happenings in mexico later as the war progresses.
but note the overlap now and keep it in your mind for later. i dont mean to imply these public figureheads actually do meaningful work, i dont think they do, i think these names are probably fictional and the figures fictional.
but the connection is being drawn. the *actions* undertaken both in iraq and mexico are what illustrate the connection, the pattern that we will observe. but this is a symbolic nod to it by the invaders.
this is just more details about this phase of the war, and due to time limitations all of what i am presenting so far is focused on baghdad. i just dont have time to go further and this is not a true history, it is a 'review'.
i am just trying to *illustrate* to interested readers what *characterizes* the war, it is not presented as the *complete description* and full scope of the invaders efforts.
but this is the same basic con as before, and its a timeless one, that plants were destroyed in the war to provide a pretext for contracts and orders for things like "demineralizers" and infrastructural work by firms like bechtel.
this is a concept that really deserves greater development but this isnt precisely the place. the dimension of the war that is a war against the societal *heritage* of iraq specifically is one that will continue to be observed and developed throughout the course of this thread.
regarding 'political assassinations' -
here we have another instance of the 'attacking allies' theme. the mayor of haditha is being claimed here to be a 'proud' US ally, a collaborator, someone working directly with the invasion.
now, the very first paragraph is itself an instance of the 'intentional contradiction or error' meta-theme of coverage - jurayfi used to brag that *his* toyota avalon belonged to senior baath party officials - until *he* confiscated it on orders from the americans.
what is the intended reading here? if he seized it on orders from the americans, this would occur temporally *before* the bragging. its framed as first: bragging, second: seizure. this is mind-eroding text. its impossible to make it make sense.
there will be more of this actually as the article progresses, but at any rate, this is a supposed 'ally'. and i dont take their word for it but it is possible he was a genuine ally. this is i think a good point to address explicitly the question of:
what about the possibility that the elimination of genuine coalition allies could be done by a genuine *resistance*?
as i phrased it earlier, one of the 'big tricks' of the iraq war is to use a 'false resistance' to "commit atrocities which are attributed to the genuine resistance and absorb the heroic actions of genuine resistance in the media
to try to minify perception of this resistance and its success and strength to outsiders."
but this is a somewhat limited framing for obvious reasons, it views this gambit through the lens of 'the perception of western news audience'. and as i said earlier, how important is this audience really? not that important.
so, what about the atrocities - what is their *primary* purpose? at a *most* significant estimation, smearing the resistance would be a secondary or tertiary outcome of any AQ/etc action.
this will all be explored, this is just a disclaimer so that i do not give the wrong impression to readers that western perception is being centered - it is important that we explore and examine it regardless and this is one of the things we are best equipped to do.
but its not the driver of strategy or influencing the shape of the actions taken by the invaders.
back to the question at hand: what about the possibility that the elimination of genuine coalition allies could be done by a genuine *resistance*?
is it not possible that a genuine resistance would eliminate certain collaborators working with the invaders? yes, of course this is possible. lets explore possible motivations and disincentives for a resistance to do this.
by going through this logic here and early, we will not have to do this every single time i ascribe an action to the invaders.
i think the most obvious motivation to eliminate a collaborator would be that the collaborator poses an active threat to such a resistance.
i think the most obvious motivation to eliminate a collaborator would be that the collaborator poses an active threat to such a resistance.
either that they are a spy embedded in the resistance, or a genuine organizer of anti-resistance activity, or providing crucial assistance to the invaders that would be affected by their elimination.
i tend to think that this does not apply much if at all to these 'political' targets like the mayor of a town etc and particularly at this early stage.
keep in mind also we've already seen those touted as allies by the western press be admitted to be much less than clearcut allies, let alone on any sort of active threat level to a resistance organization.
things we cannot know include actions such as passing lists of names to the coalition - not 'embedded spy' work as such, but an active intelligence threat. this is certainly possible and in the scope of actions that could produce motivation for elimination by a genuine resistance
all this being said, i dont really think especially in this early stage of things that there was per se even an organized and formalized resistance that could be threatened by this mayor. what would he do - give the names of every anti-american iraqi in haditha? i mean, lol.
so what could really even be the motivation in this case, what threat could the mayor of haditha present, and to who? i personally do not believe this motivation to be applicable here.
for one, 'creating a power vacuum' -
lets preface very strongly that i am not historically literate in this subject. but i dont like or agree with the idea that this means we cannot engage with something logically.
i imagine that it would make more sense to try to eliminate a native collaborator in a more firmly established colonial situation where *order* prevailed and the colonial apparatus was clear-cut, well-organized, and reliant on such local collaborators.
that situation does not seem to apply here. there isnt per se a firmly established 'colonial apparatus', by which i just mean that to dislodge a collaborator doesnt really seem to have much immediate impact other than 'sending a message',
or maybe slightly disrupting what is still a very early and formative part of the process of establishing the 'occupation'.
as for 'sending a message', there is some value here. i can see it. but i dont think any genuine resistance would take the matter lightly and eliminate a person unless it was truly popular to do so.
im not trying to defang the resistance by saying that 'killing is immoral' or something crazy like this. but i dont think its something taken lightly by mass-supported organizations,
and again this is an extremely 'chaotic' period of time and these political assassinations seem to be of low return value to me personally. also - allegedly this person was an 'influential tribal leader'. this is a town of probably under 50 thousand people -
maybe this man and his son were hated, but the idea that they would be worth outright eliminating i think seems a little extreme. there is a lot we cannot know. but especially with the previous bad-jacketing of figures like hakim - claiming them to be allies when they were not.
this is a little bit of my rationale for why i dont really see a strong motivating factor for a genuine resistance to have conducted this attack.
lets repeat the image after so much time away from it:
lets repeat the image after so much time away from it:
lets think from the invader side now.
why would the invaders eliminate such a figure?
i will be a little cryptic and say that there is a reason that is perhaps even more primary than destroying organization cohesion, creating a 'power vacuum' so to speak, but i will wait to discuss this later as the pattern around this reason emerges more clearly. inshaAllah.
and when i establish this reason, i will give examples from this same time period but in theaters well-removed from iraq so that it becomes unchallengingly clear that this is a pattern used specifically by the west,
and thus leave no doubt that this phenomenon of 'political assassination' is owned by the invaders. but the 'power vacuum' aspect, destroying societal cohesion, is more relevant at this particular phase.
for one, 'power vacuum' obviously and inherently benefits the invaders. as stated, it is not just one of the primary goals of this particular war to destroy the cohesion of the society and destroy its stored up value but in fact this is the primary method of all small-class rule.
by restricting the natural productive output of a human society, those within it can be controlled. this is *why* communism centers around control of production, of wresting it from the small class.
a 'power vacuum', the elimination of stability points such as mayors or tribal leaders, allows the invaders to move without organized opposition.
the goal here is not to simply enact an organization that assists with the extraction of wealth from the lands of iraq but to destroy the wealth that could be used to build up a stable society that might challenge the invader.
as for 'sending a message' from the invader perspective, the message is that nobody and nothing is safe. violence is everywhere. ally or not, collaborator or not, nobody is safe from death. that is the message sent.
while this may not be crystal clear yet, we will see the exact same pattern as before where initially these actions are chalked up to a vague 'resistance' or other figures but eventually these patterns become explicitly claimed by AQ and the related forces.
and - continuing with the theme of multiple conflicting realities - of course there is the two-sided "choice" one needs to make of deciding that either these actions are conducted by a genuine resistance and falsely claimed by AQ or that they are in fact invader actions
that are done under the AQ banner to provide an alternative line of reasoning into their motivation.
examining the image again -
other deaths here are also presented as occurring in this timeframe, including: civilian reconstruction specialists, police officers and new police graduates, the director of electricity distribution for western baghdad, etc.
do *these* assassinations serve a resistance, or the invader? presumably access to electricity and water would serve the *base* of any popular resistance, restoring this access benefits this base, and attacking it serves the invaders against this base of the general population.
so the question, discussed earlier, emerges - are *some* of these deaths genuine resistance attacks against collaborators, or are *all* of them or *most* of them simply invader actions to create the chaos and instability that serves them?
i lean towards the latter for the reasons described above.
as for the second 'explicit contradiction' - why would a car bomb prematurely detonated *decapitate* an assailant? this is a very very strange piece of text. is the bomb in a car? where in the car?
was it.. being carried by an 'assailant' to be placed in a car when the detonation occurred? this makes no sense. why would a bomb cause decapitation? this is one of those 'symbolic contradictory elements' that we have seen with past coverage.
as for the leaflet group - we have seen what can be assumed to be false leaflets in the case of hakim/khoei with regards to sadr. so this is presumably an active invader program, the creation of false leaflets.
as for the group described, i find zero other references to this group afterward.
here in july of 2003 we see the police force of fallujah protesting the involvement of american forces -
note that americans seem to be the common element - when they show up, the attacks begin. is this because there is a genuine 'resistance' targeting collaborators or because the americans themselves are the organizing element and delivery mechanism of the attacks?
i believe it is quite obviously the latter.
no new information here, but more 'looting' talk - if people do not have water to drink, 'grabbing bottled water' is not looting.
but i show this image to suggest that basic goods like bottled water were likely among the items targeted by the coalition and their allies, strategic removal in order to amplify the effect of ongoing denial of infrastructure here narrated as 'looting'.
keep in mind that throughout the iraq war there is almost no event that doesnt exist, as covered, as a set of multiple conflicting possibilities - either residents took water legitimately to survive, or the coalition seized/destroyed the water to deny it.
in july, the aforementioned moqtada sadr here calls for an independent islamic army to counterbalance the occupation forces and their sham political structure.
as i said, i will not be weighing in on the social figures of iraq other than to say that this of course is a logical and correct objective against the coalition.
i add this statement here as context because the coalition response to sadr and the groups of people associated with him will be one of the longer-running arcs lasting through until more or less the end of this thread,
the dynamic between these two groups is very important to at least understand as best as outside observers can.
moving onto the month of august, so roughly four months into this second phase of the war -
the UN headquarters in baghdad was attacked allegedly by a 'vehicle bomb', allegedly by a 'yellow cement mixer that crashed into the building and exploded'. implied obviously is that this was a 'suic*de' attack.
let it be also obvious that i have no sympathy for the UN or their offices or staff in iraq. this is one of those interesting 'ambiguous' actions where - if it was done by a legitimate resistance, this wouldnt be the strangest target selection.
it is not perhaps the most directly useful, and not perhaps the most optimized in terms of reducing collateral damage.
but i personally lean towards that this is a very-nominally "self targeting action", with quotes to imply that no damage would be done to anyone deemed important to the coalition.
"insiders", category 1 and 2 and useful category 3 actors would likely have been extracted before the action. and i think certain ambigous actions like this may have been undertaken for the following reasons -
for one, there is a narrative to build about "shifting targets by the resistance" that serves as cover for the changing nature of invader actions.
what i mean by this is that, these "self-targeting" actions help to cement the narrative that "innocent or gray-area civilians and civil organizations are attacked by the iraqi resistance",
when in fact the *real* shift to track is that the coalition itself is beginning the phase of outright war against the civilians of iraq.
this target has sentiment value in that regard. another reason is that they may have been done to try to garner sympathy from iraqis for fake resistance groups before these groups showed their true faces.
it can be imagined that from the iraqi perspective, there may have been many clandestine resistance groups and *until* certain groups fully lifted the mask it may have been valuable to generate sympathy, to find low-level assistance from iraqis,
to gather intelligence on resistance-inclined iraqis through these fake resistance groups. what is meant by 'lifting the mask' will become very clear over time as the war progresses,
but in this fairly early phase many people may have been operating without the knowledge that there *were* fake resistance groups conducting what could be *perceived as* authentic actions against the coalition.
maybe im not making this point clearly - i think over time it will make more sense, with additional examples and context.
keep in mind that throughout the iraq war there is almost no event that doesnt exist, as covered, as a set of multiple conflicting possibilities - either a legitimate resistance attacked the un, or it was a false attack by the 'false' resistance.
also in august - keep in mind this is *after* the alleged "looting" of water bottles - "rebels" blew up a water main in northen baghdad cutting off water to the city. "insurgents", aiming to "slow recovery". here we see the claim of looting walked back somewhat -
residents scrambled to "buy" tap water but "many stores ran out". the quote, which i think can as always be considered dubious, nonetheless frames the resistance as not (only) a reaction to "provocations" or "shortage of services" but a matter of principle.
but what this seems to encapsulate is the accusation that the shortage of services is part and parcel of the occupation. its all the same thing, the violence and attacking of services and the occupation, but the point being this quote makes this accusation
and being that it is supposed to resonate with the average person resisting occupation this is yet another instance of how obvious this was to such average people.
again i have mixed feelings even going through the motions here but since i am taking my time i think it is fine to overemphasize that:
the western news narrative of "insurgents" is unendingly contradicted by the people of iraq or even potentially false resistance groups attempting to resonate with them.
also included, though i dont have time or interest in exploring these things, is the "suicide" of david kelly - just an example of how brazen things were at this time with regards to "eliminating loose ends" or more likely in my opinion staging the elimination of loose ends.
i say this because in the case of these 'high profile' political 'assassinations' i dont think there are genuine loose ends or genuine opposition or genuine leaks. the staging of dissidence is just fake conflict in the line of what was examined in the sdi thread -
whereas in the case of lower-profile targets such as coalition soldiers, i think these have a higher chance of being genuine eliminations for a variety of reasons. such as legitimate antipathy towards occupation tactics, possible intelligence leaks to genuine iraqi resistance etc
as for the oil pipelines being attacked, we will address this later - but the principle point here is that this is economic warfare against the state of iraq, a deliberate shut-down of oil flow to restrict income into the country.
it is not and never has been as simple as it is often presented - an "occupation" to "exploit" the resources of iraq including oil resources.
rather sometimes the goal is to extract wealth from these resources, sometimes the goal is to deliberately shut down production for the sake of limiting or destroying productivity as its own end. this same pattern applies to political machinery, industrial productivity, etc.
here the oxfam charity pulls out workers in late august, an indication of the completion of the sequence of: fake aid budget, no actual aid materials purchased just money changing hands, and then the 'pull away' of the resources that were "intended" to deliver the aid.
we see the mention of "terrorist activities" alongside "criminal actions", again marking a shift in the langauge used for what is nonetheless a singular thrust of the coalition and their allies. we see confirmation that the UN envoy has "died",
and again we see the "su ici*de" narrative for this particular bombing which again can be read as *either*: it was a legitimate resistance action (though this is imo unlikely) that was *not* an "SB", or it was a fake resistance action
that can be attributed to groups like AQ by means of the SB labelling. ...throughout the iraq war there is almost no event that doesnt exist, as covered, as a set of multiple conflicting possibilities, etc. in the face of "there is almost no event that doesnt exist, as covered,
as a set of multiple conflicting possibilities", some *overreact* - understandably - and go too far into saying "it is all staged" when this is not really logical. however the other extreme, "none of it is staged", is way too entrenched in this community of readers
and i see far too much of this liberal thinking that believes in obviously scripted events as if they are organic.
please try to understand that this fragmentation of reality is the *default* mode, that one *has to* develop such frameworks of evaluation in order to pierce through media coverage *at all*.
back to the specifics, we see the claimed killings of aid workers including with grenades and the theft of cars.
this sort of behavior i find unlikely to be genuine resistance, although there are times when resistance groups can intelligently identify false aid groups as legitimate targets.
i think rather in this case it is much more about 1) creating such a narrative and feeling amongst legitimate aid groups so that they feel forced to leave and 2) providing a pretext to not deliver paid-for fake aid that was never actually purchased.
here we see sadr again openly dismissing the interim government, and we see the early seeding of the "civil war" narrative - "communal violence", "civil war", etc.
this will be developed into a key narrative used to cover coalition violence and is one of the principle lies of the iraq war.
as we will see, "communal violence", 'organic violence', this whole idea is used all over the world including in the united states to mask military actions such as 'mass shootings' - and here as elsewhere including the united states this is a falsehood.
this will be observable beyond doubt when comparing the specific form of actions, and this will provide a framework for designating certain actions as 'military' actions rather than 'organic'.
moving into october of 2003,
*now*, after the summer has waned, did the coalition begin attacking in earnest the "foreign aid" apparatus in iraq. presumably some foreign aid is simply fictitious, but presumably other foreign aid is genuine. my assertion is not that *any and all aid* is somehow fictitious,
this is the kind of extremism that i think leads to matrix-brain where one cannot differentiate real and false actions because of want of a framework for evaluating things with more nuance.
here these actions were taken further, with allegedly 18 dead in an attack on the international red cross in baghdad as well as - of course - two police stations. the claim is that 'an ambulance packed with explosives' rammed the barriers to the office.
as usual this is simply not believable in my opinion, i think this is probably entirely fictitious. the only alternative to me is that they are using remote control cars and i think this is just too absurd. the other possibilities are even less likely than this absurd one to me -
that there is either fake resistance or real resistance using self-destructive acts on these low-value targets. i dont believe that there was a group of 'brainwashed' category 3 AQ actors who would terminate themselves in this regard.
nor do i believe that genuine resistance would find this to be a worthwhile expenditure.
imo the entire concept of car-borne SB attacks is a fiction. more likely - remote-controlled devices planted on the ground (refer to prior discussion, '1lb per plane', etc) or *in* unwitting cars.
i find the former case here to be more likely - again, a bomb of this size (casualty count presented as up to 18) i dont think you can identify a single-vehicle source.
and it would make more sense that an ambulance, if there was one at all, would simply be nearby as a matter of course. and there is the possibility here that the entire attack was designed to avoid casualties whatsoever, and simply exist to create the narrative for aid pullout.
as for the attacks on police stations - expect this to continue. police represent a core threat to the coalition as a line of defense, populated by iraqis, against the violence inflicted by the coalition.
this form will be developed into something that readers should be able to have a very firm understanding of by the end of this thread.
now - compare the western analysis to the analysis here:
this analysis more or less speaks for itself, and i present it to once again emphasize that regional press (and even the broader western press via quotations) fully articulated the view that the coalition was responsible for all of this violence and the reasons why.
this is the *default* analysis by the people of the region.
so you shouldnt have to work your brain into a frenzy to evaluate if my accusations here are valid or not - if this is what you are doing, you are again expressing that you have a tendency to believe in and embrace the narratives of the invaders over the people of the region.
now - this is a single paragraph, but what is not included here and this is not a criticism is that these attacks are not just a pretext for occupation or imposing martial law but are in fact *the* mode of attack from this initial phase onward. this is the mode of the iraq war -
attacking civilians and their defenses and their resources. thats the war. it is not a mere 'occupation' with the goal of establishing puppet political machinery to assist the extraction of wealth in a more-or-less smooth manner.
it is an occupation with the goal of entrenching and continuously waging war against the populace.
this article from december of 2003, so our coverage of this first year of the war is drawing to a close, we are confronted with an interesting disparity: a casualty count of 13, combined with the assertion that there were 'four highly organized' attacks in karbala.
a geographic point - by and large we have focused on baghdad, or near baghdad. this image highlights in the third paragraph that at least according to the news narrative a strong focus on "securing" the insecurity of baghdad and the nearest-by regions,
with the figure given here as 90% of attacks on allied forces. lets review the geography, and i am pretty sure i neglected to post the map last time. so a geographical review:
etc. readers can review the above and next few in series for the review.
returning to the image at hand -
we can reject the joke framing of 'bold assault against allied forces' - i find the entire premise of this attack, as given, rejectable. for one it appears very clear that the majority injured and affected were iraqis -
i am not saying i would never believe in any collateral damage in a genuine resistance attack. but i dont believe in these cases where the scale of 'collateral damage' significantly outweighs the damage done to the coalition.
furthermore, one of the main targets - imo this is the 'actual' target - was the university and "many of the wounded were students". this is a school shooting. the school and the students, in my opinion, were the target of this operation.
curiously, according to "mark kimmett" the attacks involved both SB vehicle attacks - a clear fiction - *and* small arms, which - if the majority of the wounded were iraqis, that would seem to imply they were *fired upon* by the attackers.
so this, if fiction, serves "against" the narrative of the invaders to blame organic "resistance" groups for this attack. perhaps more intentional contradiction, intentional revelation.
at any rate, universities and education are another obvious and permanent target of the coalition.
moving into january of 2004, we see the shift towards purely civilian targets becoming part of the narrative -
the article here makes an intentional "error", describing police stations as well-guarded and difficult to attack. we will see this premise belied. but at any rate, the narrative is being established that there will be an increase of civilian targets.
the "cover" is that other targets are "too difficult" - this is such an absurd premise that we should take this supposed quote from the chief of baghdad police as an indication that either the individual is fully compromised or is being fictionally misrepresented or doesnt exist.
"if terrorists cannot target coalition forces, they will.. aim at civilians". why. why? this is where the brain must be fully turned off.
here are more details about the attack, again a predictable emphasis on 'iraqis *and westerners*' in the crowd. the deceased were "all iraqis", and only "some" of the wounded were foreigners. more of the same absurdity,
"now that the occupation authority has retreated behind fortification, this restaurant was an inviting target to insurgents" - why? why would they target it? allegedly it was "popular with westerners"? and yet the victims were almost entirely iraqis.
note here that the deputy interior minister blames former regime elements - remember the pattern. now it is too early to simply "blame AQ", this narrative is only in a very formative stage.
so the attacks need to be attributed to "something", other than the coalition itself, and FREs serve as the most convenient source of blame. but as we saw before, this will eventually be completely erased by the AQ narrative. and the form of the attack will not change.
so we are either left assuming: an exact same form of attack, done by different attacker, or - it was always the same attacker.
on the 15th of january, again now we are in 2004, there was an attack on police headquarters that can serve as our first direct and upfront examination of these attacks.
we have read of them indirectly, but we will continue to cover them directly as this thread progresses. before we were examining karbala to the south, baqubah is slightly to the north of baghdad.
the story again of a self-destructive vehicle attack is one that i dont believe, and i will take a position of *hard contradiction* on this. thats my personal position. whatever happened, presumably the police station *was* attacked - this i do believe.
you can see how knotted this all becomes when events are described as a chain but you know one link in the chain is not just *spun* from one form to another but wholesale fabricated - it puts the whole chain in doubt. a lesson to hold onto.
not only was the police station attacked, but a school as well dealt with the fallout - surprise surprise. police stations and schools. the quote here from the school's director strikes me as fabricated -
"try to show that people are sympathetic to the concept of self-destructive attacks". but i wouldnt hold it against anyone if it was genuine obviously. the article eventually gets to its secondary payload of, "sectarian violence emerging".
it mentions a fairly major attack that i nonetheless just have not had time to find coverage of, there will be sadly no shortage of such attacks as we progress. but the idea was another "self destructive attack" against a masjid and its worshippers -
once again, i believe in the attack and i disbelieve in the methodology described. there *is* no sectarian violence emerging - the coalition is setting its sights directly on the population and their defense mechanisms such as the police.
this detail from january 20th of 2004 i throw in to make the claim right now: brigadier general drinkwine is not a real person, that is not a real name. the alleged commander of fallujah, is not a human being with the name "drinkwine".
this is some weird twisted ironic joke from the coalition, an ironic codename, something. but theres just no way. they thought it would be funny to force people to engage with a guy named drinkwine, may they be cursed. we will cover the area of fallujah later on.
last image from january, there was an alleged arrest of a 'top AQ operative' which shows 'strong proof' that the organization is 'trying to gain a foothold'. now we start to see the shift from FREs to AQ in earnest,
this is one of the signals that this shift is coming and we will eventually forget anyone other than AQ was ever accused of these actions.
here, now in february, we see a different type of attack than we have seen covered thus far. this is in irbil - recall the geography, review if necessary, this is northern iraq. the attack was a coordinated bombing against - presumably - primarily the political structure of irbil
the casualty figure here is given as at least 60, in later reporting this figure is given as roughly double this, 117. as the image states, the governor, vice governor, key ministers and politicians, as well as the political offices of the two predominant political parties,
were all eliminated in the attack. the narrative, as you can see is per usual at this point, is a self-destructive attack with explosives 'strapped' to their bodies. let me again ask - who saw this?
these attacks killed anywhere between 60 and 117 people, they destroyed the entire offices. who saw this? how close were they? did the attackers not *obscure* the explosives before entering the building? why did nobody stop them then?
forget it, this just did not happen. this wasnt a suicide attack. the bombs were then presumably planted ahead of time. this is at present my 'go to' explanation,
because in terms of resources required it simply requires that an agent was able to get in and out and leave a small device - how small i still cannot say. but what else could it be than this?
as for the 'attacking allies' theme, certainly the kurdish parties had been working with the coalition leading up to and during the initial invasion. but the narrative in the western media as a simplistic 'ally' relationship is at the very least more questionable than presented.
the initial arrival of the coalition forces, in this case special forces group 10 and cia paramilitary officers, coincided with a joint operation against "ansar al-islam", an al qaeda adjacent group. as with any such group, presumably -
as discussed in the very beginning of this thread - the group was made up of US special forces-trained soldiers probably from the militaries of nearby allied countries. are we to think that the kurdish parties were unaware of this?
how then to reconcile this operation, particularly from the perspective of the kurdish parties? perhaps they recognized that they were between the pincer but estimated that they did not have a choice.
nonetheless, this aforementioned february bombing attack seems to be not a mere pruning of certain elements but an all-out offensive strike against the leadership of the parties. if we imagine the kurdish parties to be of reasonable awareness,
they would know that both ansar al-islam and this strike were offenses led by the coalition - even putting aside a broader historical context of the US relationship to the kurdish parties, of which i do not intend to regurgitate the mainstream explanations and cannot truly and
properly examine at this time. this puts the parties in a very difficult place indeed, and this i believe spells out that there is really no such thing by and large as a true 'US ally' in this equation. all allies were subject to attack at any time, from the coalition itself.
this is yet still the beginning of this theme of the war. but without question, the 'men, women, and children' were the recipients of an attack from the coalition and this is the true nature of the iraq war.
there is a tendency to minimize the 'atrocities' of this war, focus on minor provocative incidents from coalition and contractor, rather than narrate the war *as entirely composed of* such attacks.
the war indeed was a war against civilians, they were not 'collateral damage' or attacked in isolated incidents but in fact the main recipient of coalition violence throughout and this is one of the incorrect revisions that this thread will hopefully erase.
as for the motivation of this mode of attack, attacks against 'allies', we have already discussed the element of destroying cohesion and imposing chaos by eliminating stable societal and political structures. the deeper motivation is probably becoming clear to some readers,
but we will allow the pattern to be established fuller before addressing this head-on.
another pillar of target selection by the coalition forces includes the educated and educational apparatus of iraq. the goal here is obvious and simple, that education itself is a tool and a store of societal value and societal defense that represents a threat to the coalition
and must be destroyed. the mode of assassination is not made clear, though it is placed in the context of 'car bombings'. also listed are police stations, again, and masajid ('mosques').
as per usual, attacks against masajid in particular very obviously contradict the 'insurgency' narrative - as well as, as we will see, marketplaces and other purely civilian targets.
there is no motivation for the insurgency to attack such locations, whereas there is abundant motivation for the invaders to attack such locations. the invaders have been let off the hook by the vast majority of westerners critical of the iraq war -
they focus on the handout-atrocities that the western press gave to them, contractor incidents, "isolated incidents", etc. if you are one of such who frames your criticism this way, you are in error -
you are ceding the much more important ground which is that the coalition itself was behind the organized mass attacks against civilians throughout.
if you are reading, your excuse here is no longer tenable. you either must shift your discourse accordingly or be willingly complicit in the revision.
we will, ahead of time, list a compilation of such attacks to illustrate the nature of the invaders before we specifically cover this part of the timeline:
"car bombings", "suicide bombings", marketplaces, masajid, the places of the people in their day to day lives. this is the war in iraq
in early february, the second phase of the war - the post-invasion phase being discussed - was giving way to the third phase of open and all-out warfare against the people themselves. the narrative apparatus for this is a shift to "al qaeda",
and this narrative was the signal that this phase was beginning - i dont want to say the narrative "allowed" for this transition because this would erroneously imply that it was in any sense necessary to conduct such operations,
but it did serve as a covering mechanism to western audiences even though their brains were so shut that it wouldnt truly matter much how this cover was achieved or whether it was covered at all.
here the lie of the "sectarian war" is delivered to the minds of the westerners. the so-called "zarqawi memo". "attacking the shiite majority could trigger a backlash against the sunni minority and trigger a sectarian war to rally support for al qaeda".
"this must occur before a political handoff". there was never to be a political handoff - there was never a goal of establishing a stable "puppet authority". this is belied by the continuous attacks against the puppet political apparatus by the coalition itself.
but we see here, in the coverage, the assertion slipped in that "al qaeda" = "the insurgency". what we have not been able to cover thus far is the nature of the genuine insurgency, because the genuine insurgency was not covered.
it was "drowned out" in the western press by the doppelganger, by the attacks against social and political targets. presumably such a genuine insurgency did exist, and we will see accounts of it later.
at this time it is difficult to find "verifiable" information about such attacks. at any rate, the form of such a genuine insurgency does not really need our examination -
it would consist of attacks against the coalition and their legitimate allies, which in my opinion by and large does not include the police forces.
the reason being that i think by and large the police forces represent a body of armed and organized iraqis who would be able to try to save lives against the attacks of the coalition - this is why police forces were so heavily targeted *by* the coalition forces.
in response to this "blueprint", iraqis asserted unilaterally that such a civil war was an impossible figment of the imagination. indeed. "the media play up the splits between us". "we are friends".
"there won't be a civil war, there might be a war by *sunnis and shiites against the wahhabis*". while we can reject the latter part of this quote, as either misguided or planted, what is suggested here is what should be obvious to all of you reading this thread -
that it makes no sense that the iraqi people would fight each other. despite this, the article baselessly asserts that 'tensions are rising' - whether or not there was disagreement about the nature of elections etc, we dont really need to weight into.
there are legitimate positions that could be derived for or against any sort of participation or timetable for these elections, that there was some form of debate on this is absurdly misrepresented as being contrary to the idea of "intercommunal harmony"
and it is more or less delivered as a "gotcha" supporting the premise of a civil war. this is walked back in the final paragraph, but you cant just forgive this kind of backhanded rhetoric because they slightly walk it back -
as phrased, moderate debate and disagreement over electoral timetables is being used as a "well, actually..." to support the civil war premise. but again, its made as clear as it possibly can be here: "before the americans came, there were no disputes".
just a small piece of context here, various militias were another persistent target of the coalition that remained armed to protect iraqis against attacks from the coalition, and disarming these groups represents a significant thrust of the war.
these groups, which presumably are harder to attack than police organizations due to their structural differences, represent another buffer of defense between the population and the coalition.
moving on, another very large-scale attack occurred in february - it should be becoming clear that attacks are intensifying and escalating as the war is progressing - this one in iskandariyah.
iskandariyah is south of baghdad, has a population of maybe a hundred thousand, from which we can note that major attacks were not limited to large cities or any particular geographic region of the country.
we see a slight departure from the 'self-destroying vehicle bomb' narrative, with the phrasing seemingly implying a pre-rigged parked car as the source of explosion.
predictably although this is not described in the attacks we have examined so far, us forces have surrounded the site and are not allowing access. citizens are insisting that this was the result of a US strike, allegedly mentioning US aircraft as a possible source.
so here we do have another possibility to pre-planted remote detonated explosive device. in *many cases* i find that this possibility makes sense from a technical standpoint but nonetheless presents problems -
attacking the inside of a building (rather than simply hitting the outside of it), the very obvious trail that missiles/etc would display during transit, etc. all of those things need not be insurmountable issues, and we are seeing what may be an example of this here.
at any rate, here is a police station being attacked and the citizens nearby are insisting that it was US forces. this should always be the obvious case but here we have explicit confirmation even in such an outlet as al jazeera.
moving further into the article, the bystanders "insist" there was no booby trapped car - ok, so at least we have to take this seriously, maybe this was an airstrike. certainly i see airstrike as the number two possibility as a rule after pre-emplaced bomb.
i dont want to simply cling to the pre-emplaced bomb theory but i also think that there are probably many cases it makes more sense than airstrike, maybe i am wrong and i will keep all options in mind as we continue.
at any rate, according to this coverage, at minimum the narrative given is there was no *car* bomb.
eventually the casualty figure here was given as over 150, so this is a large-scale attack. reiterated is that this was an attack by US forces.
here, seemingly after a time lag, they do try to get ahead of this narrative and assert that it was not just a 'rigged car' but a 'suicide car' and it is reiterated that the target was the police station and particularly the *line of potential recruits applying for jobs*.
the 'suicide' narrative we can write off as false, but i do believe this is an accurate assessment of the target and the motivation. this, again, is a sub-form to remember as we move forward.
note that there is a phrase here, 'at least the eighth vehicle bombing'. we dont even think this is a vehicle bombing. i highlight this because this is a fake statistic, this is not 'real' data. we will also see much of this going forward as things progress.
i am trying to draw attention to forms, patterns, themes, narratives being built or deployed even at this early stage and that will continue to be utilized throughout the war.
so, who was the unit that was present at the attack in iskandariyah?
without specifics we see in this article that the unit is from the 82nd airborne division. why do we want to know this? well, this is at minimum a group of category 2 or category 1 actors.
and while they are carrying out actions directly, the categorization refers to their knowledge of and interaction with AQ-related forces - but by carrying out this action, they are at minimum category 2 "clued in" actors aware of the relationship.
as we should expect a large portion of the coalition to be. but i highlight it here so that we can remember that framework and apply it in cases like this.
the 82nd were also on the scene after the august 2003 bombing of the embassy of jordan. a division is a very large group, ~20k, so this doesn't mean 'much' but notably this is a division that keeps coming up as 'on the scene' for similar events.
here again 'opening fire mistakenly' on iraqi police, and note that they go right ahead running the quote that says 'we are sure this is a game from the americans'.
i dont add these quotes because i think it is necessary, and in the absence of them i think it is fine to simply rely on logic -
but this is the conversation ender for people trying to rehabilitate the softpedaling of what was the methodology of the iraq war, thinking in terms of 'isolated incidents' and 'random atrocities' rather than a cohesive plan.
and here again the attackers are from the 82nd airborne. again, this division consists of around 20 thousand people. but it is one of the most frequent divisions that comes up as being 'on the scene' in these types of occurrences.
this does not necessarily mean that its *true* that the troops involved are from the 82nd - i dont think that the true structure of the coalition military necessarily corresponds to the public-facing structure.
it could be that it is a convenient catch-all to label dark operations with the 82nd brush when this is in fact not true. but i point it out as something of mild interest, not as something overly 'deep'.
by march of 2004, the AQ narrative had set in -
the abandonment of the 'FRE' narrative has become convenient, though we may note how brazenly they simply imply that AQ has "eclipsed" FREs as if the two groups would just.. happen to have identical goals and methodology.
as if they were both conducting the same types of attacks but one has simply surpassed the other in terms of scale. this is the level of cognition expected of washington post readers. but i point it out so we can be familiar with this progression.
zarqawi the fiction is becoming a more and more emphasized aspect of the narrative. there is some merging here where they justify the FRE/AQ aspect by saying AQ is *paying* FREs, as if AQ has more *money* than the FREs.
we dont need to interrogate every such nonsense but just think about, the idea that these random non-state groups would have more money than former officials IN their own country.
'the religious guys have the money'. how, were they collecting taxes and running a country? where did they get more money than former *state* actors? this is all a fiction.
here again we see colonel brian drinkwine of fallujah, justifying the AQ FRE collab narrative because they had "experience".
reaching ahead, we will see the quote of a spokesperson for muqtada sadr address the matter of zarqawi before we take a brief pause -
"the names they are using, like zarqawi and others, are only pretexts to cover this big file through which they are trying to undermine iraq's unity"
the context here is the next significant event, and one of the most serious strikes made by the invaders, and one of the clearest aligned thus far with the true intent of the war - that it is a war against islam itself.
even the governing council denounces the idea of a civil war - "we are nowhere near civil war, it will *never happen in this country*".
we will get to this event next time, inshaAllah. but this serves as a productive stopping point having covered the period between the end of the "invasion" and the early aftermath as it gave way to the next phase of the war.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
