MATTHEWGOODONLINE

With help from readers I’ve been able to track down what was said by John Lehman, Senator McCain’s foreign policy advisor, to Wolf Blitzer during a recent interview on CNN with regards to Iran…

“They trained some of the 9/11 conspirators. They gave them free passage to al Qaeda.”

Rather than simply discarding this for the nonsense that it is, let’s examine two fundamental questions regarding this statement.

First, where did Lehman get his information? Obviously it’s not something that the current administration is willing to promote, which speaks to its validity given the administration’s overtly anti-Iranian agenda. One could argue that the administration won’t touch it in fear of comparisons to past falsehoods employed to justify military action, but the question still has to be satisfied – from which of the nation’s sixteen intelligence agencies did Lehman glean it? And if the US intelligence community is not the source, then who is?

Second, if Lehman has no reasonable source, and is simply spewing conjecture, then why wasn’t he called on it during the interview? Further to that, why hasn’t CNN, or any other news agency, criticized the McCain camp for the promotion of such information?

One has to seriously wonder when it became allowable to go on national television and claim the sky green and not be called on it. Even more, to tie a nation to a terrorist attack and not provide substantial evidence while those that are supposed to be vigilant with regards to factuality don’t question it.

In conclusion, John McCain’s foreign policy advisor openly claimed on national television that Iran was complicit in the attacks of September 11th and got away with it. That said; given that he did, will we hear it again? And if we do, how many more times will it take before it becomes the ‘truth’.

Recently it was discovered that the Pentagon worked to place various retired military commanders at the disposal of various news networks as ‘analysts’. Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to such individuals as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates”, their role being to reinforce administration policy. It should also noted that the majority of them represent in excess of 150 military contractors as either lobbyists, consultants, board members, or senior executives.

In a free society, the willful usurpation of the integrity of the fourth estate by the military establishment is – what? What term would you use to describe the premeditated infiltration of the fourth estate by the military establishment for the purpose of promoting a military agenda? And, given that reality, how must we then seriously examine the redefinition of freedom itself?

The truth is that such practices are authoritarian. Ironically, while the spirit of the First Amendment is being tarnished, the practice can’t be condoned as illegal being that the media allows such individuals to appear, aiding in what David Barstow of the New York Times recently referred to as - “a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks”. In layman’s terms, it’s reverse embedding.

The issue is not whether it constitutes a crime, rather that the practice constitutes a concerted effort on the part of the current administration and the military establishment to control how information is presented. There is no questioning the fact that, since 9/11, the American media has largely entered into a very dangerous game in which it has been willing to sell itself out for access to whatever table scraps the administration is willing to offer them. Cast in an economic light, journalistic impartiality and objectivity has become a secondary notion compared to revenues, which makes it all the easier of a format to exploit. Thus, it becomes less about the quality of information and more about quantity. To achieve the latter, access is required to those in a position to provide information, no matter its basis. Add to that advertisers that are looking to be associated with media outlets that do not take chances, that sidestep the complexities of issues, and ensure that they are able to appeal to a wide demographic to ensure their survival, and you have the production of a pseudo-informational stream that is easily infiltrated and corrupted.

That, like it or not, is how the roots of authoritarianism can take hold in a society that believes its liberties sacrosanct.

In a surprising move after reports that Turkey’s offensive in northern Iraq would be sustained for the foreseeable future, Turkish forces began withdrawing yesterday in force. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the withdrawal occurred just after President Bush called on the Turkish government to end the offensive and a day after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the Turkish capital to deliver Washington’s message that the incursion must not be open ended. Of course, the Turkish government and military is claiming that the withdrawal was preplanned and that it had nothing to do with US pressure, but that’s obviously transparent given the fact that the withdrawal itself began before any official Turkish statements were made regarding it.

Were I to venture a guess, I would say that behind closed doors Washington rubber stamped the Turkish invasion and then used condemnation of it to remove suspicions of complicity. And, of course, the Turks played along and got what they wanted out of it.

That would be my guess anyway.

Gaza

Here’s the back story via the BBC…

I want to state, for the record, that the use of violence by both sides in this matter is, in my opinion, unforgivable given the toll that it has taken on civilians, both at present and in years past.

That said; when one looks at this in a very hard, cold light, there are a few realities that must be addressed, though many of you might disagree.

The governing issue of Israel and Palestine as entities and the decades old arguments about how that region has found itself where it is now aside, there are a few truths that we should be willing to admit as members of a society that is primarily pro-Israeli.

The first is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, one that is supported by numerous benefactors throughout the Middle East. They fire homemade rockets into Israel from the slums of one of the world’s foremost ghettos where millions rely on international humanitarian aid to simply survive. That aid, by the way, is also one of the most outstanding examples of international blackmail in modern history.

Israel, on the other hand, is supported by the world’s foremost military super power and is the recipient of immense military aid. They possess a state of the art air force, replete with US made fighters, bombers, and attack helicopters. They possess state of the art armour and boast one of the best-trained and equipped armed forces in the world. They also possess a nuclear arsenal, a navy, and one of the world’s most feared covert intelligence outfits.

Were Palestinian militants to possess the same military capabilities as the Israelis, the need to lob homemade rockets and employ suicide bombers wouldn’t be required. In short, they would possess the same ‘honourable’ weapons of war as the Israelis and be in the position to employ them in the exact same fashion that the IDF does. That is, of course, not something that Israel, nor those that support it, would ever stand for. Thus, those who believe in the ridiculous use of violence as a measure with which to lash out against Israel wouldn’t be lobbing homemade rockets into Israel from Gaza and, in the process, endangering the lives of innocents that end up paying the price when Israeli forces retaliate – not to mention killing Israeli civilians.

That is, if you actually believe that a fair brawl between conventional forces doesn’t produce civilian deaths, which is, of course, a fallacy. In truth, they produce far more.

In this neck of the woods, the math is simple. A single Israeli life is equal to that of maybe 100 Palestinians. Let’s face it, they’re terrorists and extremists, or at least that’s what they’re painted as being by our media. The Israelis, on the other hand, are simply trying to defend themselves. Never mind the massive economic disparities between the two, never mind that Gaza is little more than a massive prison camp for all intents and purposes, which provides the sort of atmosphere in which those desperate enough are willing to focus their anger in ways that are unconscionable. If you cage an animal long enough it’s going to do one of two things. Wither away to nothing or start taking swipes through the bars at those on the other side.

Gaza is not internationally recognized as being a part of any sovereign entity, nor is it claimed by any, though it’s currency remains the Israeli Sheqel. After Hamas’ victory in Parliamentary elections in 2006, Israel, The United States, Canada, and the EU froze all funds to the Palestinian government, economically crippling it. Due to the fact that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, it is not viewed as a legitimate governing body, even within the tenuous confines of a government that never really had any international recognition beyond that required to placate those responsible for providing it economic aid. Thus, as long as Hamas remains in power, their presence will be used as an excuse to continue to punish the people as a whole, despite the fact that it was democratically elected – a process that those who refuse to recognize it claim to champion the world over (that is, as long as it conforms to their ideology).

Now, let me state for the record that I am not defending Hamas. Obviously, the recognition of Israeli’s right to exist is something that must occur. After decades of the same tired argument, the time has come to consider the welfare of the Palestinian people as a whole, which, for some, is a bitter pill to swallow. That said; there is certainly a reason why Hamas was successful in the elections in 2006.

Gaza is 41 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide; that’s 360 square kilometers. In that space there are 1.4 million people, 1 million of which are officially recognized by the United Nations as refugees. Some 18% of children in Gaza between the ages of 6 months and 5 years old suffer from chronic malnutrition. 53% of women of reproductive age and children are anemic. Given such facts, one can begin to see why support for an organization that undertakes initiatives within the community to secure popular support, not to mention striking at those they view as their oppressors, might attract the support of the suffering and the disenfranchised. In truth, it’s not a phenomenon that is, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to that area of the world. It is a phenomenon that has been quintessential in the birth of Western democracies and, if we’re going to be completely honest, Israel itself.

Now, you can rush out and get a copy of The National Post and succumb to the bias that we’re exposed to on a daily basis regarding this issue, or you can spend some time trying to look at it from the other side of the fence (literally). I’ll not condone the use of violence as a method with which to enact change, but I will also not condemn those that feel they have no way out of a situation that is, in truth, entirely comparable to an existence in prison. There are better ways to go about it, I will admit that freely, and also not hesitate to suggest that such methods be embraced, but I do not live in Gaza, nor do I have to endure its realities, so that position remains one of a lofty Western idealist.

The Iranian Laptop Nuke Data

Gareth Porter provides some valuable insight regarding this issue…

“The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear program.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by US and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.

In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce “green salt,” technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.

Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyze, but the United States had refused to do so.

The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by “an Iranian dissident group.”

A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. “I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization.,” the source said.

The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear program. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, US officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.

The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed US intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organization., the MEK was a favorite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilize Iran. The United States is known to have used intelligence from the MEK on Iranian military questions for years. It was considered a credible source of intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program. after 2002, mainly because of its identification of the facility in Natanz as a nuclear site.

The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic or not. However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very skeptical about their authenticity.

The Guardian’s Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying there is “doubt over the provenance of the computer.”

A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying, “I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt.”

Scott Ritter, the former US military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created.

The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.”

For your reading displeasure…

“A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. The White House did not immediately return a phone call for comment.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida,” according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. “In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.”

You don’t say.

Daniel Ellsberg once said, and rightly so (and yes I have mentioned this on countless occasions), that foreign policy tends to have more to do with domestic politics than anything else. With regards to the US ‘surge’ in Iraq this year, the results have proven Ellsberg’s analogy true yet again.

Violence is down, reports the administration, and therefore the surge has been successful. But, as is always the case, a myriad of realities are conveniently not presented the average American with regards to what has transpired this year in Iraq. In truth, 2007 has been one of the worst years on record.

Dahr Jamail runs through Iraq’s 2007 realties…

When you’re sitting on your couch in front of your television on a leisurely Sunday afternoon and the news regarding ‘successes’ in Iraq are presented you, these are the details that are not revealed. And because the situation in Iraq is presented the American public in the simplest of terms, the belief that real progress has been made is becoming the norm.

The truth, on the other hand, isn’t as positive, and therefore it’s best not to delve too deeply beneath the surface.

With a day left in 2007, the United States has now militarily occupied Iraq for almost five years, longer than their entire involvement in the Second World War.

When all is said and done, it will probably be impossible to know just how many Iraqis will have perished during the war. There are estimates that widely vary, ones that I am sure many of you are already familiar with, so I won’t waste time running through them. But the truth of the matter is that Iraqi deaths have been overwhelmingly significant, as has been the displacement of Iraqis, be it within Iraq itself or as refuges in other countries – the number being in the millions.

Despite a recent drop in deaths, the US death toll in Iraq this year is only three shy of 2004’s total, 850, the war’s worst year. The number of deaths is largely due to US troops operating within Iraqi communities and thus being far easier to attack, unlike previous years when deaths were largely caused during concentrated operations.

I wanted to use these realizations as preface, because if you didn’t happen to catch 60 Minutes the other night, and their report on Curveball, the Iraqi source that supplied intelligence to the Americans through the Germans prior to the 2003 invasion regarding Iraqi’s chemical and biological capabilities, then those numbers should be foremost in your mind as you read the rest of this entry.

If you have studied pre-war intelligence, then you know that the information provided by Rafid Ahmed Alwan, known as Curveball, was entirely baseless. In fact, the information that he provided the Germans, that was subsequently passed to the CIA, and which would ultimately be included in then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s report to the United Nations, was actually discounted prior to the invasion by the UN. But no one was in the mood to listen at the time…

“Prominently displayed were models of the mobile trucks Curve Ball had sketched to the Germans. The most damning evidence in the speech had come from a source no American had interviewed. Just three days later, U.N. inspectors in Iraq visited a suspected WMD location — Djerf al Nadaf, Curve Ball’s secret site. And what did they find there? A wall — the very wall that had appeared on the overhead imagery back in 2001. Curve Ball had claimed the mobile bio-weapons trucks entered through doors at one end of a warehouse.

“When the inspectors examined the facility, they found that this was an impossibility,” explains Jim Corcoran, whose job it was to relay intelligence to the inspectors in Iraq.

Corcoran learned the wall blocked any entrance to the warehouse. As for Curve Ball’s hidden doors at the other end that would allow the trucks to exit?

“Again, there was a wall there, no doors. And outside there was a stone fence that would have made it impossible for this to have occurred,” Corcoran says.

Corcoran knew Djerf al Nadaf was of great importance, so he sent inspectors back 20 days later to take samples, to see if any traces of biological agents were there. “They proved negative,” Corcoran tells Simon. “There was nothing there.”

But the inspectors’ findings in Iraq made no impact; the war began three weeks later.”

Countless Iraqi dead, over 4,000 American lives lost, and a region thrust into chaos with the United States now targeting Iran and having to walk on egg shells to try and placate the Turks who have threatened to invade Northern Iraq to confront the PKK – and that’s not even beginning to cover the damage caused within Iraq itself since 2003.

Thus, one has to ask – why was a source relied upon that had never even been interviewed by US intelligence? Why did those at the highest levels of the US intelligence community accept that information on blind faith? And why were the UN’s findings ignored?

I have written in the past about the politicization of the CIA post 9/11, just as I have written about the fact that it is common knowledge that, immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon focused a great deal of its energies on ‘the Iraq factor’. Soon after, the CIA would also be dragged into that sphere, something that caused a great deal of confusion and strife within the ranks of its senior field personnel. And yet, despite the fact that no evidence of a connection would ever be found, that lemon was sold to the American people, who, in turn, backed the government’s lust for war.

As it stands now, despite such truths, many Americans still actually labour under the misconception that the regime of Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. How many, do you think, will ever address the realities regarding Curveball and the fact that the lies of a single con artist were used as one of the primary justifications for war?

“As for the biological accident that supposedly killed 12 people at Djerf al Nadaf in 1998? It never happened. Rafid Alwan wasn’t even in Iraq when he said it happened. He had left the country, first traveling to Jordan, then Egypt, then Libya, before making his way to Morocco. From there, Alwan’s trail ran cold, until he showed up in Germany and became Curve Ball. The case finally ended in Munich in March 2004, when the Germans allowed a CIA officer to interrogate Curve Ball.

“And the key thing, I think, was the wall. He showed him pictures of the wall,” Drumheller remembers.

What did Curve Ball say?

“‘You doctored these pictures.’ And he said, ‘No, we didn’t.’ He said, we didn’t doctor them,” Drumheller says.

The wall had been built in 1997. Curve Ball didn’t know it existed because he had already left Djerf al Nadaf.

“Curve Ball was caught,” Simon remarks.

“And Curve Ball said, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna say anything else,’” Drumheller says.

The CIA finally acknowledged Curve Ball was a fraud. But why did he do it?

Former CIA insider Tyler Drumheller has an idea. “It was a guy trying to get his Green Card, essentially, in Germany, playing the system for what it was worth. It just shows sort of the law of unintended consequences,” he says.

Rafid Alwan got what he wanted. He is thought to be living in Germany today, most likely under a new name, after pulling off one of the deadliest con jobs of our time.”

Ultimately, who should be held responsible? Obviously Rafid Alwan is somewhat responsible, but only to the extent that he was a convenient liar. In life we have the ability to ponder and examine what is presented us, which means that those that chose to act on his information without first employing due diligence, or even bothering to listen to those that had, are the ones truly responsible. Be it at the Pentagon, the CIA, or in the Oval Office – responsibility rests with those that the people of the United States placed their faith in to properly do their jobs, not conveniently employ false information to help bolster a radical and unprecedented foreign policy doctrine.

In the end, that is precisely what occurred. And both Iraqis and Americans have paid the price for it with their lives. Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and a host of others have not, nor will they ever, face justice for their crimes. That being the case, it’s time to start asking serious questions, such as – who is really in control of government, and what role does the citizenry really play anymore beyond that of lemmings that check boxes on a ballot after being inundated by an ever increasing politically bias media?

Things in Burma have worsened, which is to be expected given the Junta’s past actions and disregard for international scorn. In 1988 they were responsible for the deaths of thousands, and there is certainly no concrete proof that the number of deaths being reported by the Burmese government are accurate. In fact, the British and Australian Embassies in Burma believe that the number could be much higher.

Independent information coming out of the country is scarce, with the internet being downed in Rangoon and other locations throughout the country. It’s also being reported that the government has sent in ‘bus-loads of vigilantes’ to attack demonstrators, most likely to decrease criticisms of the Burmese military. There are also reports that a massive detention center has been set up at an old race course outside of Rangoon to house those arrested in recent days.

Background information from the BBC.
Amnesty International’s latest.

I don’t mean to beat this issue into the ground, but I think this article by the Independent’s Kim Sengupta is of import. (It is linked above and quoted in its entirety below).

“The real story of Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday

Six days ago, at least 28 civilians died in a shooting incident involving the US security company Blackwater. But what actually happened? Kim Sengupta reports from the scene of the massacre

The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames.

The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.

Blackwater’s security men are accused of going on an unprovoked killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad’s Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. “I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot,” said Mr Salman. “But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid.”

At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire.

Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive.

With public anger among Iraqis showing no sign of abating, the US administration has suspended all land movement by officials outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The Iraqi government has revoked Blackwater’s licence to operate but it still remains employed by the US government. The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has, however, promised a “transparent” inquiry into what happened.

Blackwater and the US State Department maintain that the guards opened fire in self-defence as they reacted to a bomb blast and then sniper fire. Amid continuing accusations and recriminations, The Independent has tried to piece together events on that day.

The reports we got from members of the public, Iraqi security personnel and government officials, as well as our own research, leads to a markedly different scenario than the American version. There was a bomb blast. But it was too far away to pose any danger to the Blackwater guards, and their State Department charges. We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire.

Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties.

Blackwater disputes most of this. In a statement the company declared that those killed were “armed insurgents and our personnel acted lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives”.

The day after the killings, Mirenbe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, said the Blackwater team had ” reacted to a car bombing”. The embassy’s information officer, Johann Schmonsees, stressed ” the car bomb was in proximity to the place where State Department personnel were meeting, and that was the reason why Blackwater responded to the incident” .

Those on the receiving end tell another story. Mr Salman said he had turned into Nisoor Square behind the Blackwater convoy when the shooting began. He recalled: “There were eight foreigners in four utility vehicles, I heard an explosion in the distance and then the foreigners started shouting and signalling for us to go back. I turned the car around and must have driven about a hundred feet when they started shooting. My car was hit with 12 bullets it turned over. Four bullets hit me in the back and another in the arm. Why they opened fire? I do not know. No one, I repeat no one, had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot.”

Muhammed Hussein, whose brother was killed in the shooting, said: “My brother was driving and we saw a black convoy ahead of us. Then I saw my brother suddenly slump in the car. I dragged him out of the car and saw he had been shot in the chest. I tried to hide us both from the firing, but then I realised he was already dead.”

Jawad Karim Ali was on his way to pick up his aunt from Yarmukh Hospital when shooting started and the windscreen exploded cutting his face. ” Then I was hit on my left shoulder by bullets, two of them another one went past my face. Now my aunt is out of hospital and I am sitting here. There was a big bang further away but no shots before the security people fired, and they just kept firing.”

Baghdad’s “Bloody Sunday” has become a test of sovereignty between the powers of the Iraqi government and the US. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said: “We will not tolerate the killing of our citizens in cold blood.” The shooting was, he said, the seventh of its kind involving Blackwater.

The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of the largest beneficiaries of the lucrative occupation dividend, holding the contract to provide security for top-level American officials.

Its reputation in Iraq is particularly controversial. It was the lynching of four of the company’s employees in 2004 which led to the bloody confrontation in Fallujah. The men’s bodies were set on fire, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Blackwater personnel are recognisable from their “uniform” of wraparound sunglasses and body armour over dark coloured sweatshirts and helmets. Employees are thought to earn about $600 (£300) per day.

Sunday’s shooting happened at Mansour, once one of the most fashionable districts of Baghdad, with roads flanked by shops selling expensive goods, restaurants and art galleries. In the height of the sectarian bloodletting between Shias and Sunnis earlier this year dead bodies would be regularly strewn in the streets. A semblance of safety has returned since, and Mansour was held up as an example of how the US military “surge” was cutting the violence.

We were in Mansour on Sunday when we heard the sound of a deafening explosion just after midday. Black plumes of smoke rose from a half-blasted National Guard (army) post near a mosque. Five or six minutes afterwards there was the sound of prolonged shooting towards the south.

Police Captain Ali Ibrahim, who was on duty near Nisoor Square, said: ” We heard the bomb go off, it was very loud, but it wasn’t at the square. The police were, in fact, trying to clear the way for the contractors when they became agitated, they opened fire. No one was shooting at them.”

Asked about the witness accounts, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, confirmed: “The traffic policemen were trying to open the road for them. It was a crowded square and one small car did not stop, it was moving very slowly. They started shooting randomly, there was a couple and their child inside the car and they were hit.”

It is often argued that we don’t know what’s occurring on the ground in Iraq and therefore can’t really comment on incidents such as that which recently transpired involving Blackwater Security. In truth, this excuse is used uniformly in many cases with regards to commentary about the war in Iraq, and there is a very dark reasoning behind it that has been inbred in many of us all our lives – xenophobia.

When I first mentioned the incident, the term ‘terrorists’ was employed in the comments almost immediately. Over the four and a half years that Iraq has been occupied, that is what the insurgency has come to represent in the West – terrorism. There is no longer any quarter given when one examines the insurgency itself. It is no longer acceptable to view it as numerous guerrilla groups fighting occupational forces in their own country. They have been lumped into a single category with a group that did not exist in Iraq prior to the invasion, one replete with foreign fighters. The actions of this group, now known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, have come to represent the goals of the insurgency as a whole, even though a majority of insurgent groups regard them as wholly detached from their goals.

Make no mistake; the media has done little to nothing to counter the Bush administration’s efforts to have the insurgency painted in such a light. In most cases they have willfully gone along with the transformation – turning the insurgency as a whole into a representation of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Thus, we no longer view the majority of the insurgency as guerrillas; we view them as a part of a terrorist organization that does not, in truth, represent their struggle.

In the hands of a white man, a rifle used to fight against those deemed occupying their country is always justifiable. In all the years that the IRA were militarily active, that they bombed the British mainland and skirmished with British forces in Northern Ireland, they were never so universally condemned as blood thirsty killers as Middle Eastern groups have been for doing the exact same thing – or, for that matter, groups in Latin America and Asia. And while, in the context of the British Isles, the Irish have always been considered the ‘lesser of peoples’, nothing compares to the blind xenophobia that has been displayed throughout the Western world with regards to people of Middle Eastern descent since 9/11. In truth, not since the 19th Century have we viewed an ethnicity and culture in such way. The last time that it occurred an entire people were either eradicated or ghettoized, those being native North Americans. In their case, there wasn’t a 9/11 to help sell the lie that they were bloodthirsty murderers; there was just land and our desire to control it. Thus, we came to view them as something that was necessary to justify our sense of civilized superiority.

One doesn’t need to be on the ground in Iraq to realize that since the insurgency began it has been painted as something wholly negative. Rarely have we examined it from the perspective that, just maybe, the Iraqi people have a legitimate right to demand an end to the occupation of their country, and that their resistance against simply conforming to Western political designs is not ludicrous, but rather their right as a people.

Whether we like it or not, most Iraqis support attacks on foreign troops, something that can not be brushed off as insignificant as if they were children that have no clue what’s good for them. Over the last four and a half years it has become abundantly clear that the West certainly possesses no advantage in knowing what is and is not. All that is keeping the occupation alive is spin doctoring, denial, and the reality that a very bloody civil war will occur when it ends. And, to be brutally honest, it will happen no matter what government is in place when it finally does. That is simply the viper’s nest that has been recklessly uncovered.

If self-determination is key in the foundation of any free society, then how can ‘self’ be taken out of the equation?

The people of Iraq are not ‘Americans in waiting’ – they’re a mixture of different ethnic groups that combine to represent a culture that has existed for millennia, one that far outdates Western culture. How are we then to lecture them on how to exist? How are we, at the end of a rifle, to make them ‘realize’ the positives of a future that has been thrust upon them by way of a military occupation? Who, in their right mind, would embrace without resistance the suggestions of those that have militarily occupied their nation? Throughout human history the only time that it has succeeded is when those that have come to occupy a foreign land absorb it, thus making it a part of their own. In the end, as history has proven out repeatedly, we all know how that ends.

At one time, the last name of my family was MacDonald. During the British Imperial foray into India, my ancestors were pressed into service and sent half way around the world to help subdue a culture far more ancient. After doing so they remained there for more than a century, until 1947 when India finally achieved her independence. Up until that time, the British argued that their governance of India was crucial because of the rift in Indian society between Hindus and Muslims. But as Gandhi would put it, the independence of India, and all the problems that would occur after the British left, would be India’s problems, not that of a foreign power. As we all know, when the British left India there was indeed strife, one that led to a massive migration of Hindus and Muslims between India and Pakistan. So too was their violence between the two groups and resentment that, in some forms, remains to this day. But the point is that it was never Britain’s place to dictate the terms of India’s existence based on ‘what ifs’. Good or ill, it was always India’s right to determine her own future, be the birth of that future fraught with turmoil or not – just as the birth of the United States was born out of turmoil and resistance.

In the end, no matter how determined the West might be, no matter how greedy we might be with regards to securing access to natural resources, those that currently occupy Iraq will eventually leave, and in doing so face the reality that Iraq’s future must be left to Iraqis. No matter the justifications employed for its continuance, such as concerns regarding the influences of others in the region, ultimately Iraqis will have to decide their own fate, and it will be a process fraught with turmoil. In the end it may very well lead to the demise of Iraq as we know it on the map, but again, that is an Iraqi matter.

We here in the land of milk and honey like to employ a saying – that freedom comes at a price. Ironically, we rarely apply that belief to those we deem unworthy of employing it. Ultimately, we must all face the dark reason as to why that is commonly the case, especially as it applies to those that don’t look or think as we do.