USA, the Iraqi Resistance and Terror

(By Ron Ridenour, US journalist and committee member of the Danish Committee for a Free Iraq, June 6, 2005.)

The United States Empire, and its Great Britain, Italian, Australian and Danish proconsuls, claim that if they pull their troops out of Iraq it will lead to a civil war, which would be worse for Iraqis than it is now. A civil war, says the Empire and its quisling Iraqi national council, could result in anti-democratic fundamentalists winning power and ruling Iraq. That would hardly do. So there must be a free election for democracy. The vote was tallied. The fundamentalists won. Oh! But then, these fundamentalists aren’t so bad after all, because they declare themselves democratic and they support the “liberation forces”. These Iraqi elites can, thereby, also have their fingers in the pie.

Most human beings realize, or have an inclination, that power elites master a special language—double speak. When US magnates and their proconsuls, and their public relations´ media employees, speak of peace, they mean war; when they speak of democracy, they mean their own fundamentalism or “democratic” fascism; when they speak of freedom, they mean freedom for rich property owners to operate their “free market economy” without limits, without worker influence.

The Empire has a great deal of experience in using double speak, double morality. That is why the US military, in cooperation with the FBI, and the 1946-founded CIA brought 1000 well educated, active Nazis to the United States just after the second world war. These genocidal fascists were befriended and used to develop chemical-biological warfare and drugs for “democratic” America. The US Army’s Chemical Corps MKULTRA mind control program was partly conducted by Nazi scientists and laboratory technicians. The CIA used these inhuman Nazis to develop their own drug programs for use against American opponents of the “preventative” war against the Vietnamese people.

One of the US’s greatest war makers is Dow Chemical. Following WW11, Dow made partners with Hitler’s main commercial partner, I.G. Farben, which produced the lethal gas (Zyklon B) used to eliminate the Jewish people. Dow was the only producer of napalm used by the Yankees in Southeast Asia, and is now doing the same against Iraqis. Dow was also a main producer of Agent Orange, which has killed or handicapped, with resulting cancers and other serious diseases, between three and four million Vietnamese and tens of thousands of the Yankees´ own soldiers.

In February 2005, the National Security Archives organization, based in the United States, disclosed secret documents revealing that the CIA was partly staffed from its beginning by former German Nazi secret service agents. The Yankees used 100 SS and Gestapo agents and their leader, Reinhard Gehlen to create West Germany’s new intelligence agency, Bundesnachrictendienst (BND). Many of these agents worked directly for the CIA, including five who worked closely with Adolf Eichmann.

The CIA is expert in conducting terror against persons, organizations and even nations, which it wishes to “eliminate” or control. Its daily terror-assassination “program” employed against the Vietnamese (Operation Phoenix)—and Latin Americans, especially against Cubans since 1959—is common knowledge, and even admitted by the United States congress. Its use of terror against its own European allies is less known. A new book, NATO´s Secret Armies, Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, written by Daniele Ganser of the Zürich-based National Technology Institute, exposes how the CIA got NATO to work with it to prevent post-WW11 Europe from democratically voting for a socialist political course.

The covert action and counter-intelligence Gladio network was set up in Italy, Spain and Greece. The CIA-controlled network killed hundreds of unionist and leftist opponents of capitalism. The CIA-NATO groups often launched terrorist attacks and blamed the left, especially The Red Brigade, casting aspersions against them for these murderous actions. In Italy, the CIA-NATO “pseudo-gangs”—as the CIA calls these groups they set up to “confuse, divide and undermine”—prevented the majority from electing a socialist government. In Spain, the network kept fascist Franco in power. In Greece, it overthrew a democratic government in a fascist-military coup, in 1967. In Denmark, a similar group, Absalom, kept the left-wing out of major influence.

So, it should come as no surprise that the Yankees employ terror, including systematic torture, against Iraqis and Afghans. In order to maintain the necessary facade that democracy is its goal, the Yankees put Iraqi and Afghan fundamentalists in pseudo-control of these nations. When fundamentalists acquire power, however, it is necessary to remove other peoples´ civil and human rights. This leads to splitting the nation and thereby weakens society. This is precisely what the occupying armies want so that they can rule the occupied territories and thus reap the profitable benefits, especially oil energy. Keep the natives fighting one another—divide and conquer—as the Yankees learned from the Roman Empire and modern Italy’s Machiavelli.

The CIA and FBI use the terms, “bad-jacketing” or “snitch-jacketing”, referring to the practice of creating suspicion by spreading disinformation and manufacturing evidence that their enemies are the perpetrators of terror and other crimes that the CIA-FBI themselves perform. The CIA (Operation Chaos) and FBI (COINTELPRO) did precisely that against anti-Vietnam war dissidents (including against this writer), and national liberation groups in the US, mainly against the Black Panther Party, the Student National Coordinating Committee, the Martin Luther King-led Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the American Indian Movement.

There are always disadvantages to splitting societies, even for the profiteering rulers. The rulers can be exposed for their crimes, for their lies, for casting false aspersions against truly liberationist forces, and thus the rulers risk becoming the main object of opposition. The best thing that can happen for the rulers’ propaganda, and its continued rule, is if a resistance movement is viewed as terrorist. The very best situation for the rulers is if, in fact, some of the resisters are using terror. If one or more forces in the resistance movement are torturing and murdering innocent civilians (people having no collaborationist connection to the criminal rulers) these people are actually aiding the enemy. And this is what I fear is happening in Iraq today, for example, when Iraqis are killed where they pray, or go to market or travel on busses. Decapitating people and video tapping these horrendous acts only create antipathy for those who do this. If it can be associated with the resistance movement then the movement itself loses credibility in the eyes of many Iraqis and people around the world. Unfortunately, many people who otherwise oppose wars-for-profit have become convinced that the resistance movement, or parts of it, are conducting terrorism. I know of people who have given up fighting against the Empire’s war, or who refuse to support the resistance movement, because they are convinced there is “too much” internal random violence, torture and terror. This makes it all the more necessary to communicate to people that the resistance movement is opposed to terrorism.

The most important resistance groups have publicly denounced terrorism. The Iraqi Patriotic Alliance is one of the political groups within the resistance movement. In its November 2004 declaration, the IPA denounced terrorism:

“Schools, churches, mosques and other civilian places have never been the target of the Iraqi resistance. Besides, we have to be very critical and careful about kidnapping or killing foreign workers in Iraq. The resistance has no benefit in attacking people like Margaret Hassan, the two Simonas or others. These actions are meant to discredit the legal resistance of our people.”

Precisely! There is a world of difference between a war of resistance and terrorism. I support the Iraqi resistance and oppose terrorism. And it is a fact that the occupying armies are terrorists. They have murdered over 100,000 Iraqis#. Bombed them indiscriminately, napalmed them, used chemical warfare, systematically destroyed much of their cultural heritage. Currently, around 1000 Iraqis are killed every month. This is the real terror that must be stopped. It is principally the Iraqi resistance movement as a whole that can assure that that occurs by forcing the occupying armies out of Iraq. This victory can happen quicker with the assistance of the solidarity movements, especially by us who live in the occupying nations. The victory of the Iraqi people will also be a victory for us conscientious people in the “first world” countries. It will be even a greater victory for the peoples of the “third world” countries, especially those targeted for the next terrorist attacks by the Empire.

So, we must confront that part of the anti-war movement and those leftists who are passive concerning the Iraqi resistance movement, and even more passive regarding the Afghanistan people’s oppression under the occupying forces. We must show these doubters that we solidarity activists support all resistance movements against the Empire and that we do so without supporting terrorism, regardless of who performs terror or for what reason. We must act ethically!

#Lancet medical journal reported, on October 12, 2006, that 655,000 Iraqis had been killed or died as a result of the US-UK-Danish coalition’s war.