[TAML] Re: [TAML-WNT] Neo Culpa: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
- From: Dave Haynie <dhaynie@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: teamamiga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 01:24:45 -0500
On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:13:54 -0600, "David L. Stevens"
<davestevens@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> jammed all night, and by sunrise was heard saying:
> Don Cox wrote:
> > On 05/11/06, David L. Stevens wrote:
> >
> >
> > The Shia militias basically kill young male Sunnis in revenge for Al
> > Qaeda attacks. They are loose cannons. They are not deliberately causing
> > damage and destruction.
> >
> >
> >>Al Qaida wants the infidels out of the Middle East.
> >
> >
> > They want to take over Baghdad and rule Iraq.
>
> Where did this information come from? Their stated objectives have been
> "The infidels out of Saudi Arabia" and "The infidels out of the Middle
> East."
Actually, the "real" al Qaeda, i.e., bin Laden's group, isn't even in
Iraq... they weren't before the war, they aren't now. The local "branch
office" or whatever, called al Qaeda in Iraq, was called Jama'at al-Tawhid
wal-Jihad (JTJ) up until two years ago (September of 2004), when their
main bad boy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (killed last Spring by US forces),
decided to change the name to something more marketable to the
international press. Prior to the war, Zarqawi and his group were
aligned with Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish militant group. After the
invasion, they organized both foreign and Sunni extremists to oppose the
American occupation.
Donnie's right here: the goals have shifted over the years, but the
current stated goal of the JTJ/al Qaeda in Iraq group is clearly to oust
the USA, take down the interm government, kill lots of Shiites, and
establish a Sunni state in Iraq. While they may follow some of the stuff
that's promoted on al Qaeda aligned web sites, they've never been part
of the former centralized al Qaeda under bin Laden (as a group; it's
impossible to be sure just who was let go by the US forces in
Afghanistan and might have moved to Iraq, though only a relative handful
of orginal al Quedas escaped, according to the recently released CIA
report). They are certainly still happy to see all Western influence
gone from the Middle East, but that's not the primary goal of this one.
While there's some debate, these guys are credited with around 2,200
deaths since 2003, in Iraq and Jordan. In that same time, they've lost
at least 4,000 members (not sure if that includes those lost in the
process of killing those 2,200 folks... their primary methods have been
suicide bombings).
They apparently understood they were way, way too few to directly
influence the US occupation in Iraq. Information found after
al-Zarqawi's death indicates that their main strategy was to attempt to
get the US involved in an invasion of Iran, which would force many of
the troops out of Iraq. Of course, that same intelligence claimed that
al Queda in Iraq was "in pretty bad shape" (as of late last Spring),
having lost most of their members in various operations. Another 200 or
so were caught or killed since then, according to Iraqi officials.
Remaining "al Qaeda" in Iraq are likely as not to be unassociated with
the original JTJ core group, but rather acting alone, as most are these
days.
> >>He was never a threat to the
> >>U.S. or to the U.K. for that matter.
The big threat to the USA was that Iraq was close to being absolved of
any and all actual WMD activity by the UN -- the inspectors had turned
up nothing, nor would they, as nothing was there. This would ultimately
have led to some of the sanctions being lifted: they were put in place
based on Hussein being an aggressor, not due his status as a former US
puppet or a really, really bad guy to most of his own people.
This was a threat because Iraq was almost certain to, counter to OPEC,
sell his oil tied to another currency than the dollar; maybe Euros. This
wouldn't have hurt the UK in the least, but it could very easily cripple
the petrodollar economy that's the basis of "why does ANYONE loan the
USA money when they're spending it like a drunken sailor at a hooker
convention". If Iran were successful in this, others might well follow,
and there goes the "Don't tax but spend" policies of the Bush
Administration, with a possible collapse of the dollar not far behind,
worst-case anyway.
And of course, it was the plan all along to invade Iraq if possible;
that's right there, plain as day, in the PNAC documents from 1999 and
before. This was deemed the most likely first success, due their bad-guy
status and their history from the first Gulf War. This would deliver to
the US the necessary military staging area for subsequent invasions, er,
liberations, of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Hey... I didn't make this stuff
up, I'm not hardly that crazy.
--
Dave Haynie | dhaynie@xxxxxxxxxx | High Definition EVERYTHING!
Chief Toady | Frog Pond Media | Audio/Video/Hardware/Software Consulting
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