“The Rev Alan Betteridge, from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which Mr. Kember is a member, said he was a ‘genuine peace activist’… Mr. Kember, who campaigned against the war in Iraq, was seized on Saturday from a mosque he was visiting in a Sunni area of western Baghdad with the three other hostages. It has been reported that they were talking to Muslim clerics about the abuse of Sunni detainees,” more than enough reason for Kember to be abducted by black op “insurgents” who ” just grabbed” the name Swords of Righteousness “out of the air, a tactic which goes back to Beirut,” according to the Guardian. It should be remembered that the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was also kidnapped as she prepared to interview survivors of Fallujah, now admitted to have been attacked with chemical weapons and a napalm derivative.

One look at the CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) in Iraq website and it becomes obvious who abducted Kember and his associates and why. CPT has worked as “an alternative voice to the reporters ‘embedded’ with Coalition forces,” have used “their bodies to protect critical civilian infra-structure such as water treatment facilities, electrical plants, and hospitals,” have documented “abuse of detainees by Coalition forces,” and “have ventured forth in response to urging from Iraqi human rights workers in Karbala.” No doubt all of this Christian activity sincerely upsets the Pentagon and the Bushcons.

In December, 2004, CPT was “compelled” to “severely curtail its size and visibility” due to kidnappings of foreign aid workers. It appears the Swords of Righteousness brigade, unheard of before Kember and the three other CPT members were snatched, was created in order to deliver a coup de grâce to CPT, a sincerely Christian organization initiated “by Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers with broad ecumenical participation.”

CPT’s ministry is a “Biblically-based and spiritually-centered peacemaking” effort that “emphasizes creative public witness, nonviolent direct action and protection of human rights,” that it to say it is diametrically opposed to the Bushian version of Christianity—a Manichean, Christian Zionist, Islamophobic, misanthropic, and paranoid non-religion designed to punish Arabs and Muslims the same way Likudite Zionists have punished (and methodically continue to commit slow genocide) against the Palestinians and other Arabs considered to be sub-human and thus expendable. In fact, the Bushian Christian Zionists have embraced Zionist brutality in their quest (or rather modern-day Crusade) to support their idealized version of Israel as portrayed in their take on the Bible and the Second Coming of Christ (in the Christian Zionist political-religious take on the Second Coming and premillennialism, the Jews of Israel either accept Jesus as their savior or burn in the fires of Hell with the rest of us—of course, the Israeli Zionists rightly believe the dominionist Christian Zionists are bonkers, but being opportunists can’t help themselves). Of course, the Bush neocons, primarily Straussian and Zionist, don’t actually believe in God or anything else except taking over the world and making sure a couple million Israelis rule over 187,258,006 (as of 2005) Arabs and Middle Eastern Muslims.

It makes absolutely no sense for the Iraqi resistance to kidnap Kember and his associates. Kember worked directly with the Iraqi people and chances are slim to none he had any significant contact with the legitimate Iraqi resistance. It is absurd to think the Iraqi resistance—a movement drawing operational strength from its decentralized and secretive “cell” structure—would compromise itself by dealing with CPT or any other organization and thus possibly falling victim to spying. On the other hand, it is safe to assume there were indeed spies in CPT—military intelligence spies working for the Pentagon or Iraqi intelligence (the two are interdependent and mutually inclusive).

Unfortunately, it does not look good for Kember and his hapless associates. Lately the Pentagon has suffered from devastating public relations—from revelations concerning the weapons of mass destruction attacks on Fallujah to emerging details about Bush’s airborne “frequent flier miles” rape and torture gulag to the commonly held belief the traitorous neocons lied the United States into a disastrous invasion and occupation—and in order to set things right “on the ground” in Iraq (in preparation for a new round of Vietnam-styled “rolling thunder” bombing campaigns and black op terror and assassination programs), do-gooders such as Kember and the CPT have to be run out of Iraq.