MOSQUE VERSUS F-18 (rocket splits minaret at the base and it collapses in a lot of dust.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=311_1179355691
U.S. official: Samarra attack may have been inside job
CNN Downplays Second-False Flag Bombing of Golden Mosque in Follow-up Story-- the Update Obscures the Previous 'Inside Job' Report by Replacing the Link & Killing the Story
CNN | June 13, 2007
COMMENT: Now CNN has changed the damning 'inside job' headline (see SCREEN SHOT) to a more disguised story that downplays significance. CNN replaced the link and effectively killed the story that this is the 2nd FALSE-FLAG bombing of the Golden mosque (see Feb 2006)-- one of Iraq's most holy places. Both were believed to have been carried out in part by Iraqi forces and directed by Western intelligence. Such self-inflicted violence is only used as a tool to enrage the opposition and further perpetuate the Iraq War. Of course, it just came out that the U.S. is arming Sunni insurgents 'to fight al-Qaeda'-- further evidence that the West seeks to extend the war. Naturally, the bombing has already led to retaliation-- a desired and planned response.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Authorities have evidence that Wednesday's bombing of Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra was an inside job, and 15 members of the Iraqi security forces have been arrested, a U.S. military official said.
The attack Wednesday destroyed two towers, referred to as minarets, at the revered Shiite shrine, police said. It was a repeat of the 2006 bombing that sparked Iraq's current wave of deadly sectarian violence.
There was no immediate word on casualties in the city north of Baghdad.
The U.S. military official, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, told CNN's Karl Penhaul that he believes members of the Iraqi security forces who were guarding the site either assisted or directly took part in helping al Qaeda insurgents place and detonate explosives at the mosque's minarets.
"He told me there was no evidence at all that this was an attack using mortars or anything of the like and said, in his words, that this was an inside job," Penhaul told CNN's "American Morning."
Mixon said an additional Iraqi army brigade will be sent to Samarra. So far, there have been no reports of sectarian clashes in the city.
Within hours of the attacks, Iraqi state television announced that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had imposed a curfew for Baghdad until further notice.
A U.S. military official in northern Iraq told The Associated Press that Samarra appeared calm by Wednesday afternoon.
The US military said the "minarets at the golden mosque compound were destroyed around 9:00 am (0500 GMT) Wednesday."
"The cause of the explosions is being investigated by the Iraqi police at the scene. No casualties have been reported."
Sheikh Saleh al-Haidiri, head of the Shiite endowment administrative body responsible for Shiite shrines in Iraq, said the minarets, which had towered more than 30 metres (100 feet) over Samarra, were blown up by "terrorists."
"It is a terrorist attack ... the second one against the shrine," Haidiri said in Baghdad. "It is a terrorist attack aimed at sparking sectarian violence."
On Wednesday, a witness said the two minarets fell within minutes of each other.
"I was near the shrine when I heard big explosions that sent a thick cloud of dust in the sky covering the entire area," he told AFP on condition of anonymity. "I quickly ran to the street from where I could see the shrine clearly. I saw one of the minarets was down. Seven minutes later as I was watching the shrine, another explosion occurred and the second minaret came crumbling down."
The area had been heavily fortified since last year's attack, but according to the witness there had been a row between the security forces on Tuesday. "Yesterday, a new batch of security forces came from Baghdad to take over shrine security from the previous force and there was a row between the two groups which saw some exchanges of fire too," he said, adding that the new force had eventually taken over security. Sadr blamed the US-led "occupation" for the attack.
"Let the Iraqi people be aware that no Sunni has attacked the shrine, but it is the occupation's hidden hand which wants bad things to happen to us," Sadr said in a statement issued by his Najaf office.
Let’s try using some simple logic here shall we? Sadr would know if it was Sunni-sponsored or not. If Sunnis had actually blown up Al-Askari minarets, then the Shiite leader would know about it and certainly direct his anger toward them. But since that was not the case, he is pointing the finger at “the occupation’s hidden hand” referring to US black ops which may or may not have used Sunnis to plant the bombs.
“The explosions that led to the collapse of the two minarets were due to bombs planted at their bases,” said Lieutenant Omar Ghalib from Samarra police.
18 June 2007
A procession of top-ranking US political and military figures have flown into Iraq over the past week to pressure Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to meet the so-called benchmarks that Washington has set for the puppet government in Baghdad. Defence Secretary Robert Gates made an unannounced visit last Friday, following meetings with Maliki by Admiral William Fallon, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who served as US ambassador in Iraq from 2004 to 2005.
Gates arrived just days after the Al-Askariya mosque, one of most revered Shiite shrines, was severely damaged by alleged Sunni Muslim extremists linked to Al Qaeda. A previous bombing of the mosque in February 2006 triggered a frenzy of violence between rival Shiite and Sunni militias, which had been fermenting since the US invasion in 2003 ousted the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein. Thousands of Iraqis have been killed over the past year and close to two million have been forced from their homes in the greatest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.
Alongside the anti-occupation insurgency, the sectarian civil war raging in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq has prevented the Bush administration from securing its domination over the country. Despite the deployment of close to 30,000 additional troops over the past four months, attacks on American forces have not decreased and at least 100 Iraqi civilians lose their lives every day. US commanders have admitted they control just 40 percent of Baghdad. The Iraq invasion has become a quagmire, stretching the US military to breaking point, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and generating widespread opposition in the US.
The message that Gates brought to Maliki was that the Bush administration wants successes that it can present to an increasingly hostile American population. He told a press conference: “Frankly, we’re disappointed with the progress so far and we hope that this most recent bombing by Al Qaeda won’t further disrupt or delay the process.”
One sign that an orchestrated campaign is underway are the comments last Friday of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of the few remaining staunch defenders of the Iraq war. “I’m still quite unhappy with the reconciliation process inside Iraq,” Howard declared. “The Maliki government should be doing more on that. They should be doing a lot more... I made that clear when I saw him three months ago, and Bush makes that clear to him every week.”
Washington is insisting that Maliki’s government, which is dominated by Shiite fundamentalist and Kurdish nationalist parties, pursue a policy of “reconciliation” with the predominantly Sunni supporters of the former Baathist regime. Ex-Baathists play a major role in the guerilla war being fought against US forces. The hope in the White House and Pentagon is that a range of political and economic overtures to the Sunni elites will effectively end the insurgency.
“Reconciliation” has several components. Firstly, the Bush administration wants the parliament to repeal the “de-Baathification” laws it imposed on Iraq in 2003, which prevent thousands of leading Baathists from holding positions in the state apparatus or the new armed forces. Secondly, it wants provincial elections that would enable the rehabilitated Baathist elite to gain power in majority Sunni provinces. Finally, it wants legislation to guarantee Sunni provinces a substantial share of the revenues that will be derived from the exploitation of Iraq’s vast oil reserves.
The bulk of Iraq’s untapped oil fields are located in either the predominantly Shiite south or the northern provinces controlled by the Kurdish nationalists. The Iraqi constitution, which was essentially composed by the US embassy to reward the Shiite and Kurdish parties for their support, gave control over new oil production to regional or provincial authorities. A Kurdish “region” already exists in the north and is claiming the right to negotiate contracts with oil corporations independently of Baghdad. Shiite parties are agitating for the formation of a southern region that would do the same. As part of its efforts to convince the Sunni establishment that they will also benefit from collaborating with the US occupation, Washington wants the constitution rewritten to give control over oil revenues to the central government.
The US has effectively given Maliki until September to meet its benchmarks. At that time, the Bush administration has stated it will provide Congress with an assessment of the success of the “surge” policy announced in January. The increase in US troop numbers in Iraq was justified with the claim it would provide the Iraqi government with enough time to achieve reconciliation.
Maliki has been unable to secure agreement from the various factions in the Iraqi parliament on any of the key US demands. Essentially, the US is demanding that Shiite and Kurdish parties agree to the erosion of their recently acquired power and privileges. Thus far, they have shown no signs of doing so. No legislation that meets the US benchmarks is even under consideration.
Shiite fundamentalists, including members of Maliki’s own Da’wa Party and the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, Ali Al-Sistani, are opposing any steps to rehabilitate the Baathists. The Shiite parties were brutally repressed under the previous regime and viewed the US overthrow of Hussein as their long-awaited opportunity to supplant the Sunni-dominated Iraqi state.
For their part, the Kurdish parties, having established a de-facto state in northern Iraq, are vehemently opposed to any constitutional changes that take away their regional control of oil production. They have also rejected demands to delay holding a referendum to decide if the oil-rich city of Kirkuk should be incorporated into the Kurdish Regional Government.
Further complicating Maliki’s ability to meet the US demands, 32 Shiite legislators loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr began a boycott of the Iraqi parliament last week in protest over the government’s failure to protect the Al-Askariya mosque. For any valid vote, a quorum of at least half the 275 members of parliament must be present. The Sadrist bloc was one of the few that regularly attended sessions and made up the necessary numbers. Dozens of legislators spend most of the year outside Iraq due to security concerns. Others have been killed or have fled the country due to corruption charges.
The intransigence of Shiite and Kurdish opposition to the US demands is fueling a pervasive sense of crisis within both the Bush administration and the US military. In order to curb the insurgency, US commanders have been given the go ahead to negotiate truces with Sunni insurgents behind the back of Maliki’s government. Sunni tribal heads have been given control of the western province of Anbar in exchange for calling off armed resistance. Efforts are underway to convince insurgents in the largely Sunni provinces of Salah Ad Din and Diyala to accept a similar arrangement.
Shiite politicians are objecting to a US policy that effectively places entire swathes of the country into the hands of their bitter enemies. An unnamed official of Maliki’s government told the Washington Post: “They are forcing the Iraqi government and the Shia and the Kurds to reconcile with the Saddamists.” Maliki has reportedly ordered the Iraqi military to treat the Sunni militia, with which US troops are arming and conducting joint patrols, as “outlaws”.
For the Bush administration, the situation is becoming untenable. It cannot achieve what it wants through the Maliki government, but there is no political alternative within the Iraqi parliament. Efforts to develop a rival bloc around former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi have thus far come to very little. In such conditions, the US may well consider some form of coup.
See Also:
US commander warns Iraq war will go on for a decade
[18 June 2007]
Pentagon admits US “surge” in Iraq has yielded only more carnage
[15 June 2007]
Iraq on edge following second bombing of Shiite Al-Askariya mosque
[14 June 2007]
According to an informed source John Negroponte plotted the attack during an unannounced trip to Iraq on June 12 in order to fuel insecurity and sectarian violence in the country.
Negroponte's motive was to overthrow Iraq's legitimate government, the same source added.
Negroponte, who was a staunch supporter of right-wing death squads in Central America during the 1980s, held several informal meetings with Iraqi officials prior to the June 13 terrorist attack on the revered Shia shrines in Samarra, the source said.
During his meetings, Negroponte reportedly strongly cautioned that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must change.
Negroponte also asked several Iraqi officials, including Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, to resign- a move the source said was aimed at paving the way for al-Maliki's government to eventually 'topple'.
The source said Negroponte made “empty promises” to the Iraqi officials, saying they would be appointed to key governmental posts.
But the US still wants to return the Baathists, the loyalists of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, to power.
The blast in Samarra which destroyed the minarets of the sacred shrines of the Shia Imams was performed with the assistance of the former Saddam regime's security agents, the source added.
As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and in shoring up the brutal military dictatorship of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez in Honduras.
During his term as ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like 'Norway than Argentina.'
However, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military.
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Iranian leaders say that the recent attacks on Shia Muslims in Samarra is not the act by Sunni Muslims, but the work of US and British intelligence.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution has said the bombing of the holy Shia shrines in Samarra is aimed at provoking sectarian violence.
In a message on the recent bombing of the shrines of the two revered Shia Imams in the Iraqi town of Samarra, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei blamed the intelligence services of the Zionist regime and the occupation forces in Iraq for the bombing, saying such terrorist acts are meant to intensify sectarian violence in the Muslim world.
The Leader urged the Muslims particularly the Iraqi people to remain vigilant in the face of the plots hatched to create sectarian strife between Shias and Sunnis.
He noted the holy shrines of the two revered Shia Imams in the Sunni town of Samarra, had been respected throughout history, whereas the recent event marks the second desecration of these holy sites since the invasion of Iraq by foreign troops.
He emphasized that the occupying forces are instigating insecurity in Iraq and leaving enough space for terrorist movements in order to justify the ongoing illegitimate occupation of the country and to debilitate the government of Iraq.
Calling for Sunni scholars to condemn the sacrilege of the holy sites and Shias to remain calm, Ayatollah Khamenei said our Shia and Sunni brothers in Iraq should beware of the conspiracy against the Muslim unity.
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