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On the Verge of a Great Defeat? Blowback in Iraq By TOM TURNIPSEED August 14, 2003 Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/turnipseed08142003.html The Bush/Cheney administration's military invasion of Iraq could become the greatest military defeat in United States' history. U.S. troops are being attacked daily by increasingly diverse forces in a chaotic guerrilla war. Since the U.S. and Britain did a preemptive invasion of Iraq against the advice and vocal opposition of most of the nations and peoples of the world, it presents a tremendous problem in getting any help from those who "told us so". The desperation of the U.S. military plight in Iraq was very clear when General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, commented on the daily casualties of U.S. soldiers in the guerrilla war. General Sanchez said, "Every American needs to believe this: that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America." Fighting in "the streets of America " is typical Bush/Cheney fear-mongering hyperbole. It echoes the top down use of the fear factor by the Bushies. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq recently said, "I would rather be fighting them here than fighting them in New York". Such scare tactics are reminiscent of Bush's false admonitions of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and his justification of attacking Iraq to "prevent another 9/11". Ironically, although no "ties to Al Qaeda" have ever been proven regarding Saddam Hussein's regime as alleged by the Bush/Cheney regime, the bumbling U.S. war machine has managed to unite the opposite extremes of Islam against the U.S. in Iraq. Fundamentalist Islamic factions are slipping into Iraq and joining with Saddam's secularists in a serious and tactically feasible efforts to drive out the U.S. occupiers. U.S. war policy has been led by a cabal of self-absorbed neo-Zionist and/or neo-cons, and that further reinforces the resolve of Zionist hating, Islamic militant leaders who sense they now have the mightiest military force in world history trapped, just where they want them, in the kind of a war they just might win in Iraq. On August 13, Neil MacFarquhar of the NY Times reported that the American occupation of Iraq is causing a "rising tide of Muslim militants " to come into Iraq to drive out the infidels in the same way the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims. Surrounded by Islamic states, including Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the Muslim militants are able to come across the borders into Iraq quite easily because there is no way for them to be policed. The Times report said that a fundamentalist group with links to Al Qaeda known as Ansar al-Islam is the backbone of a underground network that brings fundamentalist fighters into Iraq and moves them into position to attack American soldiers as well as Iraqis they believe to be working with Americans. Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, who is considered the spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam told the Lebanese satellite channel, LBC, that the fight in Iraq against the U.S. occupation would be the culmination of all Muslim efforts since the demise of the Ottoman Empire when the Islamic caliphate collapsed in the early twentieth century. Mullah Kreikar said, "There is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979". It appears the chickens are now coming home roost because it was the United States' CIA that led the efforts in recruiting Muslim militants, including a young citizen of Saudi Arabia named Osama Bin Laden, to go to Afghanistan and drive out the Soviet occupation forces. We have convenient memories when it comes to our long term relationship with Iraq and the Islamic peoples who are uniting to drive our occupying forces out of Iraq. The people of the United States are caught up in a live-for-the-moment, let's-all-get-rich-quick culture where politics is controlled by sound bites and measured by overnight polling. We do not want to face up to the stark reality of our long-term use of Machiavellian tactics and betrayals to manipulate Iraq and other nations in the area to control their governments and gain access to their oil reserves. The everyday people of Iraq may not want Saddam Hussein to be their leader anymore, but they are even more united and passionate about not wanting the United States to control and occupy their country for its oil. The majority of the Iraqi people know that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein and helped furnish all kinds of terrible chemical and biological weapons to his regime in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. The Iraqi people know that in the first Gulf War the U.S. engaged in the devastating destruction of the life-sustaining infrastructure of Iraq, including the bombing of multi-purpose dams and sanitation facilities that resulted in the deaths of many thousands of Iraqis. Iraqis know we dropped depleted uranium warheads on Iraq in that war and also in the most recent war this year which has contaminated their land and caused thousands of deaths from cancer. Iraqis are also a bit unhappy with Americans because they realize that U.S. instigated economic sanctions that probably caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi people. More than anything, the American people need to know why we are on the brink of suffering the greatest military defeat in U.S. history.. Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer, and radio talk show host in Columbia, South Carolina tturnipseed@turnipseed.net www.turnipseed.net http://www.seedshow.com . _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk