As I Prophecied: US Arming The "Insurgents"

[Brassmask]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Documentary_filmmaker_says_Iraq_troops_training_0206.html

In an interview at Salon today, the maker of a forthcoming PBS documentary warns that America's efforts to "stand up" an Iraqi armed forces may be arming and training the very groups contributing to the country's instability.

Mark Smith, an award-winning television journalist, was interviewed by Salon's Alex Koppelman. His forthcoming documentary is called Gangs of Iraq and will air on PBS as part of its America at a Crossroads series. In the interview, Smith warned that the Mahdi Army, the Shi'a militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, may be a primary beneficiary of the American effort to build a viable Iraqi security force.

"We're not training the Mahdi Army by intent, but we're providing training for people who may take our training program and then go join the militias," Smith told Koppelman. He added, "As early as August '04, there are photographs of uniformed Iraqi police celebrating with the Mahdi Army after a battle in Najaf."

In the months and months of "insurgency", I have contended several times that the US is knowingly arming the insurgents in order to keep Iraq a bloody mess and allow the corporations to continue to make that fat dollar.

Now comes a documentary that says that we are unintentionally doing it but how is it that the supposed greatest nation on earth, the most wise and powerful nation on earth can't keep up with who they train and where their own weapons go.

Note:  These are NOT stolen weapons that the "insurgents" are using as some have stated in the past when comparing the weapons used by them allegedly from Iran.  I would interested, on a side note, in finding out if the US has ever purchased weapons from IRAN.  How easy would that be for them to do so and then give those weapons to the Iraqis that are being "trained" and then claim that Iran was arming the "insurgents". 

But here we have an Occam's razor situation.  What's the simplest explanation?  Wouldn't it just make simple sense that the US just hired their own insurgents and armed them with Iranian arms?  I think so.

[Michael Tee]

<< I would interested, on a side note, in finding out if the US has ever purchased weapons from IRAN.  >>

Well, they sure as hell wouldn't let anyone know about it if they did.

This is an interesting article.  For the last couple of days I've been thinking, who are these "insurgents" planting bombs in markets, blowing up Shi'ites, prompting retaliation in the form of kidnap torture-murders?  They seem to get around everywhere, but you never see them on trial.  Apart from the actual explosions, you never hear from them.

One thing's for sure, as long as these guys are active, the War Republocrats can make their case to the American people:  Pull out now?  BLOODBATH.  (as if there weren't already one)

This guy says the U.S. is sponsoring them unwittingly.  I'm wondering just how unwitting it all is, and does the role ever go beyond sponsorship into participant?  And how does it fit into the plan to invade Iran?

[Brassmask]

It looks and sounds like CIA operations in Cuba and Operation Northwood and the Gulf of Tonkin lie all together.

[Brassmask]

Still more confirmation that the US is now akin to the Mob.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/02/06/bremer-paid-ghost-employ_n_40595.html

Paul Bremer told members of Congress today that he was aware that nonexistent "ghost employees" were on America's payroll when he was administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

But because the real employees - who provided security for Iraqi ministries - were "74,000 armed men, it seemed a lesser risk to continue paying" everyone while trying to figure out who was actually showing up for work.

"On the streets, you'd call that protection money," remarked Congressman Danny Davis, an Illinois Democrat. When Davis asked whether any of that money had wound up in the hands of insurgents, Bremer said he didn't know. But "if we stopped paying them, my judgment was we could have real trouble."

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, also testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today, and told the panel that the problem of ghost employees was not a major reason that $8.8 billion distributed to Iraqi ministries is unaccounted for.

The real problem, Bowen said, was a general lack of transparency: the only accounting Americans asked for was assurance from the various ministries that the money was indeed being spent. The Coalition also failed to follow its own rules on securing money sent to Iraq; in one case, Bowen said auditors found the key to a safe containing a huge amount of cash left in a duffel bag left in plain view in the Coalition comptroller's office.

But Bremer argued that a number of the accounting problems were actually due to the fact that "we had no idea" how hobbled the economy and infrastructure had been in Saddam's Iraq. "It's a fair question to ask why we didn't know more about how run-down the economy was. They were focused on the WMDs, though we didn't get that right, either."

He also faulted pre-war planning, and said he did not have anywhere near enough staff to do the job: "If we'd been focused on the basis of a plan, we would have been more in touch with reality" from the first.

But Bremer has backed the Bush administration's proposal to send more troops to Iraq.

When auditors first confirmed that there were ghost employees in a couple of ministries, "we asked what they had done about it," Bowen said, "and they said they had made the decision to keep paying it, to keep the peace." In one ministry, about 25 percent of the total 8,200 could not be "validated," - matched with a person, Bowen said. In another, "just a fraction" of the 1,400 employees could be located.

After the committee chairman, California Democrat Henry Waxman, said that continuing to pay ghost employees struck him as reckless, Bremer responded that the only alternative, as he saw it, was "74,000 armed men who are angry at us," if payments were held up for any reason. "I would certainly do it again today."

Waxman also questioned the wisdom of sending billions in cash to Baghdad - 363 tons of bills, sent in enormous pallets via military planes and passed out from the back of pickup trucks.

But Bremer, unruffled throughout the hearing, said he was responding to an urgent request from the Iraqi minister of finance, who wanted the cash delivered ahead of the planned handoff to his own government.

"He said, "I am concerned that I will not have the money to support the Iraqi government expenses for the first couple of months after we are sovereign. We won't have the mechanisms in place. I won't know how to get the money here.'"

Republicans on the committee repeatedly defended Bremer's decisions: "Maybe even billions were not spent the way it should have been spent," said Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican. "And I'm not happy about that, but tell me how he could've gotten that money out" where it was needed otherwise. "The Iraqis spent the money badly, right?"

Democrats on the committee also wondered why the president was asking American taxpayers for $1.7 billion more for reconstruction in Iraq when Iraq has not spent $12 billion it has already been sent for that purpose." "Perhaps," Waxman suggested, "That's to pay for ghost employees."