In Iraq, things are going swimmingly for the Straussian neocons. “A large explosion heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq’s most famous Shiite shrines Wednesday, spawning mass protests and triggering reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques,” reports the Associated Press. “It was the third major attack against Shiite targets this week and threatened to stoke sectarian tensions. Shiite leaders called for calm, but militants attacked Sunni mosques and a gunfight broke out between Shiite militiamen and guards at the offices of a Sunni political party in Basra. About 500 soldiers were sent to Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad to prevent clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, Army Capt. Jassim al-Wahash said.”
It makes absolutely no sense for Sunnis to bomb Shia mosques; this would be akin to Baptists bombing Catholic churches. Sectarian violence, dividing Iraqi society, does not serve Iraqis, either Sunni or Shia. It does, however, serve the occupation forces and also begins to realize the plan sketched out in Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” (the balkanization of Arab and Muslim society and culture), an objective shared by Jabotinsky Likudites and Straussian neocons.
“No group claimed responsibility for the 6:55 a.m. attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, but suspicion fell on Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The shrine contains the tombs of two revered Shiite imams, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.” Of course, it stands to reason the bombing was carried out by “al-Qaida in Iraq” and the dead Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in other words it was a black op carried out by the Anglo-American occupation forces, designed specifically to create religious violence, the worst sort. Only vicious and crazed Muslims would blow up the remains of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad—or American, British, and Israeli intelligence operatives or their double agent Arab lunatics, or crazies incited by Rumsfeld’s Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), designed to “stimulate” terrorist reaction.
Recall the remarks of an anonymous senior military officer on April 22, 2004, declaring a spate of bombings in Basra had “all the hallmarks” of “al-Qaeda.” Several months later, two British “undercover soldiers” wearing “traditional Arab headscarves” were caught red-handed by Iraqi National Guard “driving a booby trapped car loaded with ammunition.”
Michel Chossudovsky: “Has the US [and Britain] created as part of a covert intelligence operation, a bogus ‘resistance movement’ made up of its own Al Qaeda sponsored ‘terrorists’? Their suicide attacks target Iraqi civilians rather than the US military. The suicide bombings tend to encourage sectarian divisions not only within Iraq, but throughout the entire Middle East. They serve Washington’s interests. They contribute to undermining the development of a broader resistance movement uniting Shia, Sunni, Kurds and Christians against the illegal occupation of the Iraqi homeland.”
Good questions, all. Of course, we shouldn’t expect the corporate media to go there.