Mother Jones
by Michael T. Klare

09/20/05

The Iraqi insurgency is not monolithic, and it is not always possible to determine the intentions of its various components. Nevertheless, it is clear that oil -- that is, the association between Iraqi oil and the American occupation -- plays a central role in the insurgents' hazy ideology. 'The insurgents used this,' Iraqi-born oil consultant Falah Alijbury said of American plans to privatize the Iraqi oil industry. As he put it, the insurgents are telling fellow Iraqis, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable.' From Alijbury's perspective, this is one of the insurgency's most powerful appeals. The disparate Iraqi insurgent groups were also aware of Washington's intent to finance its war and occupation through sales of Iraqi petroleum, and so have made sabotage of Iraq's pipelines, pumping stations, and loading terminals one of their most important strategic objectives...

http://tinyurl.com/ce7wl


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

09/21/05

The unraveling of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq has been going on for some time: with the recent battle of Basra, however, it seems to have reached the point of no return. The coalition forces are no longer fighting just Sunni insurgents -- they are coming up against the elected Shi'ite authorities in the south, where the latest incident bodes ill for the occupiers. The coalition propaganda campaign has already commenced, with the Brits claiming this is all the work of the evil Iranians, who are just trying to cause trouble because they're being pressed on the nuke issue. That's what the Times of London is peddling, at any rate. Yet this explanation is cut to shreds by Occam's Razor, which suggests a simpler explanation for the outbreak of violence: local discontent with British actions, including the arrest of prominent members of the Sadrist party a few days before...

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7335


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

"Despite all the necessary stuff about taking action 'with a heavy heart' I think he feels it is part of his coming of age as a leader."

http://tinyurl.com/dej35


From Information Clearing House

Tim Collins told his troops this was a war of liberation, not conquest. Now he says that he was naive to believe it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1572844,00.html


From Information Clearing House

Foreign workers firing on civilians, US officials say
http://tinyurl.com/7dqfp


From Information Clearing House

“I went. I saw [my son] lying there, shot in his chest, his stomach, his legs, his hands…” he explained to us as the tears came, breaking his proud appearance and revealing a grieving father.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10323.htm

While the world has been falling all over itself to remember the victims of 9–11 and digging deep in its pockets to aid the wealthiest nation on the planet recovering from a natural disaster, a ferocious man-made onslaught on a town in northeast Iraq is being virtually ignored.

http://snipurl.com/hrbh



From Information Clearing House