September 2007 raid on al-Qaeda base reveals

SAUDI and LIBYAN JIHADISTS LEAD

INFILTRATION OF IRAQ

 

Spurred on by Saudi “clerics” and “scholars,” most of Iraq’s foreign fighters and the bulk of funding for ‘Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’ have been proved to have been provided by subjects of the Wahhabist Saudi monarchy.

 

A trove of evidence gathered after a September 2007 U.S. raid on an al-Qaeda base near the Syrian border has documented that Saudi Arabia is the major source of the more than 700 foreign jihadists who infiltrated into Iraq in the year since in August 2006:  some 50% of those imported jihadists are said to have arrived with one-way tickets as suicide bombers.  Following Saudi Arabia, which provided an estimated 41% of the foreign jihadists in Iraq during the year, were North African nations (39%) led by Libya (18%); also Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

 

The Islamist cell, operating from a tent city in the desert near Sinjar, is believed to have been responsible for some 90% of the foreign fighters smuggled into Iraq during the year, across a 200-mile stretch of Iraqi border from Qaim in Anbar Province to the Turkish border.

 

After seizure of the Sinjar cell, the number of suicide bombings in Iraq fell sharply. “We cut the head off but the tail is still left,” said one senior U.S. military official, warning of the danger of regeneration posed by the pervasive Saudi ideology of jihad and martyrdom.

PETmin Readers’ Digest, New York Times, November 22, 2007, Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S.

THE SAUDI JUGGERNAUT

empowered by a conspiracy of silence

 

Saudi oil billion$ continue to buy a conspiracy of silence in the West and to disguise the flow of holy warriors from the kingdom into the world at large as U.S. officials continue to be “sensitive” about America’s relationship with this Islamist Kingdom of Hatred.

 

 "To suggest they've done nothing to stem the flow of people into Iraq is wrong," said an anonymous U.S. intelligence official even as the royal General Turki of the Saudi Interior Ministry blames the Iraqi’s for permitting the flow of Saudi jihads into Iraq. Turki insists on the right of his citizens to travel without restriction. So, imams at Saudi mosques continue to preach jihad, or holy war, and funding continues to come from the many rich members of the Saudi royal family, owners of the nation-state. In this Wahhabist police state, everyone else is considered an infidel unbeliever and is thus subject to death, including Iranian and Iraqi Shiite Muslims.

 

On July 15, 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported on what is believed to be the first-ever declaration by a U.S. official of the extent of Saudi involvement in Iraq: nearly one-half of the foreign jihadists in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and nearly one-half of the 135 foreigners under U.S. detention in Iraq are Saudis. Furthermore, some 50% of the Saudi fighters in Iraq go there as suicide bombers, an activity shunned by most Iraqis, insufficiently trained in the glory of martyrdom for Islam. In six months prior to the July date, such suicide bombings were estimated to have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis, mostly Shiite Muslims.  

 

Saudi Arabia has long been the major source of money and manpower for Al Qaeda: 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11’01 attacks were Saudi Arabians– but 100% of them were Wahhabist Arabs, inspired by Saudi ‘religious’ teachings. The U.S. has said that ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ a.k.a the ‘Iraqi Caliphate,” which relies of foreigners for suicide operations, is the greatest short-term threat to Iraq's security but criticism is still focused almost exclusively on Syria and Iran. So, the Bush administration and U.S. officialdom remains stupidly “sensitive” to the involvement of the Saudi Kingdom in the Islamist holy war currently threatening “infidels” in the Middle East and also in many areas of the globe.

 

 

 

NEW COMMAND AND PLAN IN IRAQ

 

Ahead of the American President’s “surge” of additional U.S. troops in Iraq, in early January 2007 he selected Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus to serve as the senior American commander in Iraq. Petraeus (who replaced Gen. George W. Casey Jr.) had been in charge the recent reformation reflected in the military’s counterinsurgency manual (see Massive Reformation of U.S. Army Ongoing, Holy War News – America).

 

Under the new command, U.S. and Iraqi forces moved into city neighborhoods rather than simply initiating patrols from fortified bases around the capitol. The new command brought a new emphasis on improvements to the nation’s infrastructure to meet basic economic needs and alignment of forces for the protection of the Iraqi population from sectarian militias and insurgent attacks.

 

 

GET TO KNOW AL'QAEDA, INC.

 A MADmin Reader’s Digest – Fall06

 Democracy and Intelligence

– the Two Big Losers in War on Terror –

M U S T  K N O W

 The surge of violence was particularly intense in Ramadi. Zarqawi is reported to have issued an order to his men to kill anyone seen leaving the U.S. base or city hall." His al-Qaeda bomb attacks killed over 60 Sunni tribals when they showed up to enlist in the national army in January 2006 during the first recruitment campaign in Ramadi.

 

Civilians in the area described themselves as under siege and insurgent groups called “Promoting Virtue and Banning Vice” regiments moved against households with Internet connections and with rooftop satellite dishes turned toward European satellites.  Edicts were issued governing the most intimate daily details of life, imposing strict Islamism on the populations, e.g., requiring head scarves for women and banning shorts and jeans for men.

 

Heavily defended U.S. forces guarded a five-block area of downtown Ramadi containing local government offices from sandbagged firing positions. They were made up of a Pennsylvania National Guard brigade together with Marine units previously scheduled to rotate out in May, 2006.

 

Al-Qaeda snipers roamed freely in the streets and constantly threatened the defenders.  Repeated air and artillery strikes were called in to the area but Anbar borders on Syria, a conduit for new fithters, money and weapons (many trans-shipped from Iran) to constantly reinforce the attackers. For many weeks, the area accounted for up to one half of American combat deaths and an uncounted number of insurgent and civilian casualties.

 

Residents say the city has reverted to the 14^th century as basic services, electricity, water and schooling ended. The imported Shiite police force collapsed, and many doctors, professors and other professionals fled. Residents feared the U.S. forces might impose another Falluja solution on the city and that no distinction would be made between civilians and the al-Qaeda fighters. U.S. forces, however, had segmented the city and announced plans for targeted actions against insurgents in Ramadi, rather than fighting block to block as in the assault on Falluja in 2004.

 

The Death of the Al-Qaeda Chief

 

Al-Qaeda was dealt two significant blows with the killing of its commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on June 7, 2006 and the arrest on June 19 of his second in command Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi (a.k.a. Abu Humam or Abu Rana). Al-Saeed was reportedly in charge of those responsible for the February 22, 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Sammara which inflamed tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and triggered an ongoing series of reprisal attacks that have killed hundreds of Iraqis. In September 2005, Zarqawi had declared 'total war' on Shiites. The violence between Sunnis and Shiites and against U.S. forces continues unabated into the autumn of 2006 with many hundreds of Iraqis killed by suicide bombings and shootings together with mortar and rocket attacks.

  

PROSPECTS HAVE DIMMED IN ANBAR

 

In the ending months of 2005, U.S. forces had been able to drive many insurgents from Anbar and local tribes were encouraged to cooperate in removing remaining foreign militants. Yet it was necessary to deploy an entire brigade of some 3,500 reserve troops of the Army’s First Armored Brigade in Anbar from Kuwait in May 2006 after an upsurge in violence. Insurgents and foreign militants (al-Qaeda) were able to mount renewed raids against coalition forces there and to reassert their control in the capital of Ramadi.  The sharp rise in sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites had weakened the resolve of Anbar Sunnis to cooperate with U.S. forces against the foreign militants.

 

The Iraqi government’s monthly renewal of a continuing national state of emergency (for every area except the autonomous Kurdish region in the north) grants security forces the power to impose curfews and make arrests without warrants. It was first authorized hours before U.S. and Iraqi troops launched an offensive to drive insurgents out of Fallujah, one of the main cities in the Anbar region west of Baghdad, in November 2005. However, the weak central government has almost no presence in Anbar and has again fallen under al-Qaeda control: Falluja, surrounded with a protection trench and run as a semi-police state, has not. Pity the fate at the hands of brutal jihadists of those poor Iraqis there who chose to cooperate with "the occupation."

 

The September 11, 2006 Washington Post reported news from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) confirming the dire situation in Anbar, where the U.S. efforts to clear and hold major cities and the upper Euphrates valley are deemed to have failed. Military operations are facing a stalemate as U.S. forces are unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, all local governments have collapsed and their functions have been again co-opted by al-Qaeda.

 

The reason given for this lapse is that the area, 30 percent of Iraq's land mass and most of the Sunni Triangle, has been neglected by top commanders and the Bush administration as the focus was shifted to security in Baghdad. The U.S. ground force in Iraq is clearly undermanned. An Army unit of Stryker light armored vehicles that had been slated to replace another unit in Anbar was sent to reinforce security operations in Baghdad. Thirty-three U.S. military personnel died in Anbar in August alone -- 17 from the Marines, 13 from the Army and three from the Navy.

 

"It's hard to be optimistic right now," said one Army general, citing the situation in Anbar as well as intensifying violence from the insurgency and between Sunnis and Shiites, a lack of effective Iraqi government and a growing concern that Iraq may be falling apart.

 

President Jalal Talabani remains optimistic that Iraqi forces and a national reconciliation plan will be able to stop the fighting, but not before the end of 2007.

 

 

It mayhaps finally be said now, five years after the 911 attacks, that the U.S. administration’s lack of expertise (both an insufficient sense of strategic direction and perhaps especially the lack of the gifts of language), has deprived the nation of the necessary leadership in its dealing with the jihadists.  Or, as Burke put it in March, 1775, “a great empire and little minds go ill together”. In this war with Islam, if it is a war, the combination bodes defeat. (These are words spoken by David Selbourne, author of

The Losing Battle with Islam.)

 

OF OCCUPYING WARRIORS

and matters of distinction

 

The military problem of distinguishing the enemy from the friendly is a particularly difficult puzzle in a traditional Muslim community or city. These are the people of human settlements founded at places of water in the hot, deserted vastness of al-Anbar in Iraq's far West. The natives of these societies, whose isolated cultures fixed themselves in traditions nearly a millennium and a half years old -  all dress alike when on their home turf they must tolerate the company, be under the inspection, of occupying warriors. 

 

We only need to recall to our minds the story of the Christ who could remain so invisible to the Romans who hunted him so relentlessly. The tribal Jews of that time also were all so dressed alike, with shrouds confusing the forms of their faces, and the shapes of their heads and bodies in the eyes of the alien Romans army observing them. The Roman's army of warriors was tasked with watching out for and catching the nativist troublemakers who dare to kill, who rebel, or who seem to preach sedition.

 

We can imagine the vision seen by the observer-operative of the occupying American army. We can see his pictures of those other people of the desert lands, all dressed alike, seen moving or congregating in and about the villages of al-Anbar in Iraq. The fugitive is indistinguishable from among the settlers, the savior is unwitnessed in a crowd of fellows and you and I can magically imagine ourselves as unobservable parts of a greater whole, indeed.  The Sky View. It takes a Hawk's Eye to make the proper distinctions to chose the proper actions.

 

Some say that Osama’s been so evasive and hard to catch in Pak-Afghanistan because he often hides draped inside a woman's burka, that black uniform dress in which Afghan women are imprisoned, masked and forced to see the lights of the world through the bars of a cage of fabric. Only in her house can her mask be removed and her eyes be unhindered. Imagine how stultifying to one’s mind it must be to have all of one’s visions of the reality of one’s world so limited and distorted?

 

I like to imagine Osama in hiding, trapped in one of those burka things as he walks up and down mountains on long trips for long periods of time. sweating in agonies.  It’s one of those mean thoughts I get sometimes and I’m sorry for it. Hello! It’s me! I’m free!

 

So traditional are they, the communities in which the Islamist warriors of terror and hatred are hiding. In these communities of innocents, the Islamists who rule with death are in totalitarian control over human bodies and minds as their faith in ideology commands them, as if in an iceberg of dogma they are frozen in an afterlife without the giving, living warmth of mercy.

 

So, we can easily imagine in our mind’s eyes that boss Zakarie of al-Qaeda, Inc., Iraq, and his scoundrelly bands of guerrillas can surely enough disappear whenever they want to into a sea of sheets of various, vibrating shades and tones of white, and dare the soldiers of Satan to see them behind their fabric façades of veils and headgear all the same. The folks among whom the Islamists hide tend to become docile as sheep in their conformity to their terrorist’s instructions, ruled by fears of humiliation and death.  

 

The technique of success for the warriors of liberty is to learn the creative skill of discrimination so as to spot the AK-47s under the robes of the rascals before we cancel their votes, and to remember that we are pledged to love and protect the innocent.  War is hell when mercy is no more. We must always act as Americans and never descend to act as Romans, for that is the greatest distinction for a warrior acting in the cause of liberty.

 

Liberty is the divine gift to man, one of those magical gifts that come to us with the proviso that we must give the gift away, eternally. Only with that sharing can liberty be generated, so the sages have told us in the world's scriptures, those who know about magical processes. Only with that sharing of liberty can the dark dread of tyranny be kept a'bay and the bright pale of liberty be expanded.

 

A free thinker might ask oneself - what true believer in liberty and the Rights of Man can accept the submission to fear of other human-being Children of the Light, here and anywhere in the world?  

 

A man, who had been a subject-victim of

Communist dogma under the tyranny of Joseph Stalin in the 20^th Century,

was telling of his life in labor camps,

 standing before a small audience of FREE WITNESSES.

He completed his short discourse with these words:

 

“I have tried to tell you of my life under Stalin

but you do not understand.

 

“Only if you had lived under Stalin

could you know Stalin.

 

“If you knew Stalin,

you would still have the fear in your bones.”

 

 

 

MARCH 2006, LARGEST AIR ASSAULT SINCE 2003

“OPERATION SWARMER”

In the main al-Qaida strongholds of Anbar province and other locations of the Sunni Triangle, U.S. and Iraqi forces in mid-March 2006 mounted a large-scale air and ground assault. The attacks were particularly intended to drive out foreign forces in and around Summara, 60 miles north of Baghdad. This is one of the most volatile parts of the Sunni triangle.  These insurgent strongholds in settlements on the “jihad highways” along the two rivers in the triangle were the scene of repeated sweeps in 2005 but the insurgent’s tactic has been to flee and to regroup again after the sweeps.

The military operation, including over 1,500 American and Iraqi troops, hundreds of armored vehicles and some 50 aircraft, mostly Black Hawk, Apache and Chinook helicopters of the 101st Airborne., will last “several” weeks.  The air strikes were to be the most intense since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The revered Shiite Askariya Shrine in Sammara was destroyed on February 22 by 20 men and up to 500 pounds of remotely detonated explosives, triggering a new round of sectarian tension and conflicts between Sunni and Shiite militias. Numerous mass murders with gunshot to the head have resulted in groups of 5 to 60 bodies being found, with hands bound and wounds of torture, in various parts of the nation thus far in 2006. 

 

Secular nationalists

reported resisting al-Qaeda in Iraq

As the Sunnis have begun to participate in the democratic process, increasing resentment is reported against the largely foreign-born al-Qaeda, which insists on waging war against the Shiite majority and ignores the nation’s tribal and nationalist traditions and desires.  Al-Qaeda has continued its efforts to create chaos in Iraq, including attacks on the nation’s health care system by murder, kidnappings and other fear-producing tactics. Over 60 physicians were killed in 2005. Many physicians and other sorely needed professionals have been leaving the country.

Native Iraqi insurgent forces, such as the largely secular and nationalist Islamic Army and Muhammads’s Army, are reported to have battled Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia in Ramadi, Husayba, Yusifiya, Dhuluiya and Karmah in the final months of 2005 in attempts to expel or kill al Qaeda fighters. In addition, they were successful in coercing al-Qaeda to withhold attacks on polling places and voters in the December 15, 2005 election.

 

 A tribe in Samarra publicly machine gunned to death 3 al-Qaeda operatives in 2005 following their trial for assassinating a local sheik. Samarra has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda's fighters and the sheik had appealed to the nation’s defense ministry in Baghdad for assistance in dealing with them. The executed operatives had revealed under interrogation that they were financed by a Saudi Arabian who had also financed dozens of other murders. After the executions of the three assassins, the local warriors swept though Samarra arresting 17 additional of Osama’s patsies.

 

Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the most savage and well-financed of the militant groups, is easily able to buy the services of local militants for cash.  Revenge was taken by al-Qaeda as a foreign Arab, believed to be a subject of the Saudi kingdom, exploded his suicide belt at the assassinated sheik’s funeral. Various other attacks on al-Qaeda jihadists were reported to be taking place around the country.

 

It is believed that al Qaeda members in Iraq are from Pakistan, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan and Afghanistan with the vast majority from Saudi Arabia. In many areas of Iraq, including the city of Karagol to the south of Baghdad (fully under the control of al Qaeda) and other towns south of Baghdad, the locals remain under the control of various militant groups, much as neighborhoods are controlled by gangs in some American cities. Permission must be obtained to travel through.

DATING’S A BUST IN IRAQ

 

Under the secular rule of Saddam’s Baathist political party there was security for the people although Iraqis used to live in fear of Saddam's secret police. Baghdad was famous for its nightclubs and riverside cafes of international repute, places for young men and women to meet and greet. Today, as a process of political transformation is underway, government by fear continues as the people are tyrannized by bands of religious vigilantes who roam the streets and whose violent activities practically shut down the river city after dark. One restaurant, Nabil's, bravely kept its lights ablaze for a while but now it’s always dark. On New Years Eve 2003, Islamist enforcers blew it up to smithereens.

 

The society of young people was also much freer under the old regime: dating now is full of peril. Couples are often stopped by gangs of men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and riding around in vehicles with tinted windows. They demand to know what the couple are doing with each other and frighten the girl so that she becomes afraid to go out. With restaurants unsafe and just walking around hazardous, for many youths dating has to be fit into the afternoon lunch break.

 

Even more depressing than Baghdad is the southern Shiite city of Basra where gangs, named the Madhi army by their leader, the High Priest Sadyr, are terrorizing populations into compliance with the strict Islamist rules which will be brainwashed into the populations as their compulsory, god-ordained, codes of behaviors. One of the gangs of holier-than-thou thugs waded into a beautiful summer picnic of boys and girls while viscously swinging steel cables, sticks and automatic rifles. It was because some of the boys had been singing and dancing with each other and some girls had failed to cover their hair. Several students were hospitalized and the holy abusers videotaped the assault and sold copies in the local market as a warning. They want to establish an official code of public morality and a special police division to enforce it.

 

One thing is much better than living under the Saddamists, who strictly regulated the Internet and banned mobile phones with grievous punishments. Now electronics are embedded in the culture everywhere and so couples can get together and make plans even if being together as a couple in public is dangerous and to be avoided. The kids love text messaging, liberty and Valentine’s Day. They network and keep track of each other and just keep working on relationships, which is what love does best, never knowing what will happen next: will it be the thought and behavior police? a betrayal? a shooting? a bombing? kidnapping? … Anything can happen!

 

These innocents are the enemies of the Islamists and they are the ones who must defeat them. Only they can restore to jihad its good name. Jihad is for defense against those who may claim to be agents of the divine but who are, in fact, abusive tyrants. They have forfeited their divine Writ.

 

 

 

           His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world’s soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;

Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;

Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;

 

Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.