Chris Floyd: Operation Permanent Presence: The Civil War "Surge" in Iraq

[babylonsister]

Operation Permanent Presence: The Civil War "Surge" in Iraq
by Chris Floyd




The current esclation of the Iraqi civil war — first in Basra and now all across the occupied land — seems to be a perfect dovetailing of the complementary but not identical strategic needs of the Bush Administration and its client government in Baghdad. The regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hoping to destroy or cripple — or outlaw — its principal political rival in the south before elections later this year. The Bush regime — which is intimately involved in every step of the Basra operations, despite its rote denials — is trying to keep the war boiling on a high simmer. This is the only option it has left to achieve its primary war aim: a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Bush (and the ever-compliant press) portray the operation as an attempt to show that the Iraqis can handle their own security problems. A successful demonstration of this in Basra would then hasten the withdrawal of (some) U.S. troops — so the story goes. But in fact, the operation seems expressly designed to prove the opposite point: that the Iraqi government can't possibly control its own country, and thus a major U.S. presence is still needed.

This is why the White House has backed al-Maliki's assault on the strongholds of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra. But to say that Bush has "backed" or assisted this major escalation of the Iraqi civil war is probably putting it too mildly. As the operation unravels into the inevitable blood-drenched fiasco — exposing the Iraqi "government" as the weak, corrupt, ineffectual, infiltrated puppet show that it has always been — it becomes more and more likely that al-Maliki was ordered to launch the attack by his masters in Washington — or at the very least was "marshall'd in the way he was going" by the Americans, with Bush playing Lady Macbeth to the power-hungry but uncertain al-Maliki.

Instead of being a show of strength, the government's stalled assault is demonstrating its shaky authority over much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. As the situation spins out of Mr Maliki's control, saboteurs blew up one of the two main oil export pipelines near Basra, cutting by a third crude exports from the oilfields around the city....

In Baghdad, tens of thousands of supporters of Mr Sadr, whose base of support is the Shia poor, marched through the streets shouting slogans demanding that Mr Maliki's government be overthrown. "We demand the downfall of the Maliki government," said one of the marchers, Hussein Abu Ali. "It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney."

The main bastion of the Sadrist movement is impoverished Sadr City, which has a population of two million and is almost a twin city to Baghdad. The densely packed slum has been sealed off by US troops. "We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday," said a resident called Mohammed. "We can't bathe our children or wash our clothes."

more...

http://atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/3632/81/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[seemslikeadream]

2. This is the house bush should have to live in for the rest of his life

[babylonsister]

3. Wow. That should be its own thread. nt

[seemslikeadream]

4. I did start a thread awhile back on Art and War

I'm going to go and see if it's achieved yet

The Art of War (warning may contain reality)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3037444

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. K&R n/t

[seemslikeadream]

6. Art on Iraq war: Jean-Christian Bourcart, “Collateral”

http://dearkitty.blogsome.com/2007/01/06/artist-bourcart-protests-against-iraq-war

A place where they would rest in peace and at the same time
haunt those who pretend not to know what was going on.