Aug 29

Bush Calls for the Mass Murder of Iranians

Kurt Nimmo

According to Bush, Iran is “responsible for training extremist Shia factions in [Iraq] which it supplied with arms and weapons, including sophisticated roadside bombs. He referred specifically to 240mm rockets that he said had been made in Iran this year and smuggled into Iraq by Iranian agents,” the Guardian reports from Reno, Nevada, where Bush read from a yet another neocon generated script, this time at the 89th annual American Legion convention.

“Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force are supplying extremist groups with funding and weapons, including sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs). With the assistance of Hezbollah, they have provided training for violent forces active inside Iraq,” a White House press release, released to coincide with Bush’s speech, or rather script reading, would have us believe.

Of course, all of this nonsense, a fact pointed out by McClatchy Newspapers back in February. “Sunni Muslim insurgents remain by far the biggest threat to American troops in Iraq, despite recent U.S. claims that Iran is providing Shiite Muslim militia groups with a new type of roadside bomb, a review of American casualty reports shows,” writes Drew Brown. “While U.S. military officials have held briefings to publicize their concerns about the potent bombs known as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) or penetrators, casualty reports suggest that such weapons in the hands of Shiite militias are responsible for a relatively small number of American deaths.”

U.S. officials have said that attacks with such weapons increased 150 percent in the past year. But a review of bombings by location shows that less than 10 percent of attacks that killed at least two American service members in the past 14 months were in areas where Shiite militias are dominant…. Of the 81 roadside bomb attacks that killed two or more soldiers from December 2005 through January 2007, one-quarter occurred in western Iraq, which is predominantly Sunni, and nearly two-thirds took place in Baghdad and other ethnically and religiously mixed areas, the reports show. Fewer than 10 percent were in predominantly Shiite areas.

Thus we are told Iran is not only supplying IEDs to Iraqi Shi’ites, but the Sunni insurgency as well. “The U.S. military has concluded that Sunni insurgents have acquired weapons from Iran,” the World Tribune reports. “U.S. commanders said Sunni insurgents, including operatives from Al Qaida, have received Iranian-origin weapons. The commanders said many of these weapons were believed to have been acquired through the black market,” never mind a paucity of evidence—but then neocons don’t need evidence, as fabrication and lies will suffice, especially when they are behind in their plan to reduce Iran to a smoldering ruin.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division, gave the neocons a helping hand—or more likely received orders from the neocon infested Pentagon, when he stated earlier this week that “at least 50 Iranian agents” are “operating in his area of responsibility in central and southern Iraq. He said these operatives, both Iranian and Iraqi nationals, were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

Excellent—if you’re a Muslim hating neocon, especially following up on Bush’s plan to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the “first time a foreign military body has received that label,” as the neocon Reuel Marc Gerecht notes for the American Enterprise Institute, where Bush gets his criminal minds.

“Iran’s bloody role in Iraq has yet to be widely acknowledged,” Reuel Marc Gerecht continues. “But the clerical regime is killing U.S. soldiers there. Sophisticated Iranian explosive devices wielded by Shiite insurgents are producing ever-larger numbers of U.S. casualties. The brutal Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr is probably now responsible for about half of all U.S. combat deaths. Sadr, who visits Iran regularly, has developed close ties to the mullahs. And Iranian Revolutionary Guards have started training his henchmen inside Iraq. Tehran also continues to back the Shiite Badr Brigades, the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. This is increasing internecine violence in southern Iraq, where the feeble British presence has nearly collapsed. Bloody confrontations between the Mahdi and Badr gunmen are on the upswing.”

Indeed, such confrontations are part of the neocon plan to splinter Iraq into three disparate parts based along ethnic and religious lines. Moreover, for obvious reasons, Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist, does not bother to mention that Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who runs the “Badr gunmen” out of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, is in fact a neocon stooge, so favored—despite his association with Iran—he was allowed to travel to Houston for cancer treatment. It should also be noted that SCIRI was selected to receive funding through the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Gerecht mentions none of this, of course, as the point here is to turn the blame toward Iran, the next target.

As an aside, it should be noted that Gerecht, in an essay entitled Iran: Fundamentalism and Reform, enthusiastically recommends attacking Iran, if either the United States or Israel can convincingly make a case that Iran is supporting terrorism, a process well advanced, never mind how facile. “If Washington catches the Iranians in a terrorist act,” writes the dedicated PNACer, “then the U.S. Navy should retaliate with fury … If we attack, U.S. armed forces must strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them. That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force.” In short, the U.S., if Gerecht and the neocons have their way—and it certainly appears they will—should spare no brutality against the people of Iran, same as they unleashed murderous and even genocidal fury against the people of Iraq.

Finally, in an effort to crank up the heat, U.S. soldiers entered the Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad and arrested seven Iranians working for the Iranian Electricity Ministry soon after Bush delivered his neocon generated speech. “President Bush specifically stated that he had authorized his military commanders in Iraq to confront what he called ‘Iran’s murderous activities’ in the country,” reports the BBC.

Obviously, rebuilding Iraq’s electrical grid, so effectively decimated by the U.S. in March, 2003, is considered “murderous activities” by the neocons who, of course, want nothing less than collective suffering on the part of every Iraqi, Iranian, and any other Muslim with the temerity to resist invasion and occupation.