It would appear the life of one dental technician is more important than the lives of nearly 20 Shia worshippers. Of course, this explanation is nothing more than a flimsy excuse. In fact, the mosque was attacked and the worshippers massacred for a simple reason—it was part of a continuing effort to foment “civil war” in Iraq, as planned by the Straussian neocons. It should be noted that “U.S. officials had been quietly praising Sadr’s group in recent weeks because of its calls for calm in the wake of the bombing of a Sunni mosque in Samarra that sparked a wave of sectarian violence,” praise at odds with the plan to divide Iraq into at least three Bantustans based along ethnic and religious lines.

If the attack on the mosque accomplished anything, it increased support for Moqtada al-Sadr. “They came and killed the young people, and we want the Imam Mahdi Army to protect us, because they are from us, they are Iraqi people,” Souad Mohammad, a school director, told the Monitor. “When the Mahdi Army is here, it’s very quiet, no one is assassinated in this area, there are no car bombs, and at night there are checkpoints to protect us.” Naturally, if Iraq is to be dissolved and ethnic and religious animosity brought to the boiling point, a strong and bloody message will need be sent to the Mahdi Army and al-Sadr and this appears to be what happened earlier in the week. As expected, the corporate media characterized the victims as “insurgents” and the grisly aftermath of the attack as a scene set-up by deceitful al-Sadr loyalists.

Indeed, a message was sent to al-Sadr and the Shia majority in Iraq and the result is feeding the Shia opposition to the occupation and presence of “coalition of the killing” soldiers. As Robert Dreyfuss notes, not only has a “Shiite insurgency” emerged but “the two insurgencies [Sunni-Shia] are also battling each other, in what can only be called Iraq’s civil war” and there is “little chance that they will unite against their common foe, the United States,” as planned by the neocons. Zalmay Khalilzad, the neocon ambassador to Iraq, “declared war on the second insurgency” last week and fit the situation into the neocon game plan. “Our judgment is that training and supplying, direct or indirect, takes place, and that there is also provision of financial resources to people, to militias, and that there is presence of people associated with [Iran’s] Revolutionary Guard and with [Iran’s] MOIS [Ministry of Intelligence and Security],” said Khalilzad. “More Iraqis in Baghdad are dying—if you look at the recent period of two, three weeks—from the [Shiite] militia attacks than from the terrorist car bombings.”

Never mind that last September two SAS operatives were discovered, dressed as members of the al-Sadr’s Badr Brigade, readying a terrorist bombing in Basra and Iraqi officials have arrested in Tikrit a “security contractor working for a private company” in possession of explosives, likely for the same reason. One need look no further than Rumsfeld’s neocon infested Pentagon to find affirmation of this covert approach, as documented by Seymour Hersh. “In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities,” Hersh writes for the New Yorker. Of course, in the absence of reliable Iraqi traitors and murderous thugs, it is conceivable Special Forces, British SAS, and “security contractor” operatives would pull off such terrorism. In fact, I believe we can count on it.

As I have noted for months now—to the distress of some folks who are irritated by my redundancy—the Straussian neocon plan for the Muslim Middle East is ever-escalating violence and misery resulting in a map replete with small and malleable Bantustans ruled by brutal proxies controlled by the neoliberal banksters and their neocon allies.

“No stages,” John Pilger reported Richard Perle declaring. “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq… this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war… our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” Perle’s children may “sing great songs,” but for the rest of us the coming conflict will portend misery and sacrifice, a societal condition long dreamed of by the Straussian neocons who fancy themselves Platoian princes, the heirs to Machiavelli’s grim vision.

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U.S. raid on Shiite shrine served as a warning

By Kevin Whitelaw
U.S. News & World Report

The U.S. military was trying to send a "little reality jab" to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr when American and Iraqi troops raided a Shiite community center and shrine over the weekend, says a top U.S. military official.

The joint assault killed at least 16 people, most of them believed to be tied to Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army. U.S. officials insist the center was being used as a base for insurgent activities and was not a mosque. But many Iraqis say the complex did indeed include the Shiite equivalent of a mosque, and the raid has drawn harsh condemnation from Shiite politicians and prompted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to launch an investigation.

The mayor of Baghdad promptly cut off cooperation with the U.S. Embassy, and Shiite politicians suspended their negotiations to form a new government. The U.S. military has long contemplated taking tougher steps against Sadr and his troublesome militia but has held off in the past because it did not want to antagonize his many fervent supporters. This raid, officials say, was intended as a reminder to Sadr of the U.S. military's reach in Iraq.

U.S. officials had been quietly praising Sadr's group in recent weeks because of its calls for calm in the wake of the bombing of a Sunni mosque in Samarra that sparked a wave of sectarian violence.