http://www.BreakForNews.com/articles/Then-They-Came-For-Iraqi-Sunnis.htm

Then, They Came
For Iraq's Sunni
Rebels Create No-Fly-Zone as Genocide
Looms for Iraq's Sunni Muslims



BreakForNews.com, 31st Jan, 2004 07:00ET
by Fintan Dunne, Editor

The downing of at least two US/UK aircraft in recent days over Iraq --with record-setting casualties-- means a de facto no fly zone has been declared by rebels equipped with surface-to-air missiles.

The military implications are being concealed by occupation forces, who will not admit the true cause of these "crashes." Their coyness is aided by a compliant media ready to collude in hiding the truth.

	STOP PRESS 1/31 13:00ET Aljazeera has aired a video showing the military wing of the 1920 Revolution Brigades firing missiles at the British C-130 transport plane which crashed on Sunday afternoon. The video showed an explosion at a distance and what appeared to be the debris of a plane on the ground.

The latest crash occurred at around 5:25 p.m. on Sunday about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad, said a spokesman for the British Ministry of Defense. The plane was flying from Baghdad to the town of Balad. News reports say the wreckage was scattered over a large area. That would indicate a explosion of the aircraft at altitude.

A Royal Air Force spokeswoman would not confirm how many people were on board the C-130 Hercules, which is mainly used to carry up to 128 troops or freight. Soon after, Tony Blair confirmed the deaths in a televised speech, but gave no details. A British military source told Reuters up to 15 British troops were killed --Britain's biggest single loss of life of the Iraq campaign.

President Bush said both U.S. and British military personnel had lost their lives in the crash. There had been no previous mention of US deaths Reuters noted. The Daily Telegraph mentions an ominous "maximum" of 70 special forces soldiers from both countries aboard the plane.

"It was not clear why there was still doubt about the casualty toll," Kate Holton for Reuters dryly recorded --hinting at an obvious conclusion: politicians and military don't want to spoil the rosy propaganda about Iraq's "elections" by admitting high casualties.


WAS THIS STRIKE THREE?

Last Wednesday, 30 US marines and one sailor were killed when an American military helicopter "crashed" near the western Iraqi city of Rutba. Another record-breaker. This was America's highest casualty toll for a single incident since the invasion of Iraq.

The cause is still "under investigation," while mainstream media speculate robustly about sandstorms and the difficulties they create for aircraft.

But South Africa's Daily Despatch on 1-27-5 carried a Sapa-AFP news report of witnesses saying the helicopter appeared to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile and exploded on hitting the ground.

And in a commentary on Asia Times Online, Pepe Esobar said sources close to the resistance in Baghdad identified the missile as a shoulder-launched Sam 7 rocket which has a range of around two miles. Free Arab Voice reported that the helicopter wreckage "had been scattered over an approximately two kilometer area".

Two days later on January 28, 2005 a US Army OH-58 Kiowa helicopter which usually carries a two-person crew, "crashed" in southwest Baghdad. Once again, cause and casualties were uncertain.

Of these three recent downings, the two which caused large loss of life were almost certainly due to missiles. Either this was unexpectedly opportune for the resistance, or more likely, the result of calculated targeting designed to answer the American-imposed election with a commensurate tactical response.


THE CLOCK IS TICKING

Occupation forces military commanders will now be carefully considering their options. Earlier in the campaign, they incurred significant losses due to missile strikes on helicopters.

For example, in November, 2003 five US helicopters either crashed or or were shot down, killing 39 soldiers. One Sam 7 missile struck a DHL cargo plane incoming to Baghdad airport. Following the losses, military pilots began to vary routes and fly low to minimize risk. Either because of this, or for tactical reasons, rocket attacks have dwindled.

Although a US C-130 was hit by a missile late last year in the same region west of Baghdad, when the US helicopter was downed last Wednesday, it was unclear if this heralded a change in rebel tactics. Sunday's strike on the British C-130 leaves no doubt. A realistic review of air operations mean tough choices must now to be made in response.

The coincident timing with the US run-election is more than just a show of rebel firepower. During the lull in missile attacks, occupation forces have been forced to increasingly resort to airlifting troops, equipment and supplies, as the resistance relentlessly disrupted their highway supply lines with deadly and unpredictable ambushes. By targeting that dependence on airlift, the resistance can maximize a strategic US vulnerability.

In purely political terms, the US administration needs to make significant progress in Iraq over the next twelve months, to avoid electoral liabilities in the upcoming 2006 US elections. Over that timeframe, political and popular support for continued occupation will be inexorably ebbing away.

In purely military terms, shortages of equipment and fully-trained non-reserve troops will be biting hard by the end of the next 12 months. These unpalatable realities are the reason for the no-holds-barred assault on Fallujah. Time is of the essence for these warmongers.

But the US surely knew that the Sunni's would respond by boycotting the election. So why attack before the poll? Could not the Sunni have been kept aboard the political process?


THE UNREPORTED WAR

Clearly, the US/UK tactic solidified around the time that Shi'ite religious/political leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani had to visit London for medical care. That was when a deal with the Shi'ite political establishment secured their support.

The inevitable flip side of that deal is morally not very pleasant. The United States and United Kingdom are determined on a policy which amounts to genocide against the Sunnis of Iraq. That's why it mattered not that the Fallujah assault ensured a Sunni boycott. The Sunni are to be written out of Iraq's future anyway, by military actions of which Fallujah is a signal example.

Don't be surprised. It's all right out of the US counterinsurgency handbook. Use mass bombing, artillery, tank and troop attacks to ruthlessly drive the civilian population into refugee camps --thus depriving the guerillas of civilian cover. Encourage or allow the collapse of water, power and gasoline supplies. Provide these --if at all-- in the refugee camps which the resulting chaos will swell still further with civilians.

Continuing on from Fallujah (now largely destroyed and deserted), the genocide option was already unfolding even before the staged "elections." As Robert Fisk described on page 1 of South Africa's, Sunday Independent, January 30, 2005:

"The "real" story is outside Baghdad, in the tens of thousands of square kilometres outside the government's control and beyond the sight of independent journalists, especially in the four Sunni Muslim provinces which are at the heart of Iraq's insurrection."

"Right up to the election hour, US jets were continuing to bomb "terrorist targets", the latest in the city of Ramadi,... now in the hands of the insurgents as surely as Fallujah was before the Americans destroyed it."

"Every month since Allawi, the former CIA agent, was appointed premier, American air strikes on Iraq have been increasing exponentially. There are no "embedded" reporters on the giant American air base at Qatar or aboard the US carriers in the Gulf from which these ever increasing and ever more lethal sorties are being flown."

"They go unrecorded, unreported, part of the "fantasy" war which is all too real to the victims but hidden from us journalists. The reality is that much of Iraq has become a free-fire zone (for reference, see under "Vietnam") and the Americans are conducting this secret war as efficiently and as ruthlessly as they conducted their earlier bombing campaign against Iraq between 1991 and 2003, an air raid a day, or two raids, or three."

You may wonder if the Bush administration is really prepared to commit war crimes far worse than those of which Slobodan Milosevic stands accused?


A LITTLE REVEALING HISTORY

But then you remember that this is an administration which disavows the Geneva Convention. You recall that torture, illegal detention and assassination are the stock-in-trade of the low-level and high-level thugs waging war.

You see how the souring of public opinion against Arabs/Muslims is equivalent to the Nazi manipulation of public sentiment against the Jews. A vital precursor to undermine potential public sympathy.

You note that around 100,000 Iraqis are dead already, and most are Sunni.

You reflect on the grim deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children under the United Nations sanctions.

You realize that the so-called "international community" endorsed those brutal sanctions --giving the lie to their posture of outrage ahead of the US/UK invasion. No U.N. "cavalry" is about to rescue the Sunni.

You read the evidence that US used chemical weapons, napalm and nerve gas in the mass slaughter of 6,000 --mostly civilians-- in Fallujah.

And finally you understand that the Americans have learned something since Vietnam after all.

Ruthless genocide costing millions of lives is not enough. Relentless propaganda by state -controlled US media is essential to delay the development of an effective domestic antiwar movement.

To that end, a dose of 9/11-style faked state-terrorism is a useful domestic motivator to set the mood. The 3,500 US casualties are a negligible cost for empire-building sociopaths who glory in death.

Further down the line, a sham presidential election challenge by the likes of a John Kerry, might even be a nice way to harmlessly siphon off antiwar sentiment --then deflate that opposition when the challenger looses by prior arrangement.


THE ECHOES OF AUSCHWITZ

The recent increases in US troop levels in Iraq were not as claimed, to enhance security for the elections. They were part of the buildup for this decisive phase in the intended colonization of the Middle-East.

Once the presidential election was over, the gloves came off within days. Fallujah was but the opening gambit. Now you can expect to really get your war on.

This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere... -- were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees." --Rudolf Hoess,   SS commandant,   Auschwitz. source

What is planned for the Sunni will eclipse that done to the Palestinians by silent joint-venture partner Israel. In scale, this will be more akin to the genocide against another ethnic group, in another time.

Only days ago, somber politicians, officials and survivors gathered at Auschwitz to reassure each other that ethnic extermination of millions was, and would remain an abomination of the past. Back then, it was Jews in concentration camps who were so chillingly wiped out.

This time, the ones in Iraq's refugee(concentration) camps are relatively lucky. The mass slaughter is taking place in the countryside and in cities outside the enclosing razor wire. The death in the camps by malnutrition will take their toll more slowly.

The final death toll may not rival that achieved by the Nazis. Or even by the Americans in Vietnam. But history will rank this in infamy. And the new Nazis are just warming up.

So, now all you have to figure out is what you are going to do to oppose this? A modern reworking of a famous Holocaust-era expression may help focus the mind as you consider the multi-generational war the US hawks assure us will last a hundred years:

"First they came for the Serbs, but I did nothing. I wasn't a Serb.
"Then they came for the Taliban, but still I did nothing. I wasn't an Afghani.
"Then they came for Iraq's Sunni........"

Think about it. Pronto.

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