Bloody furreners!
And here we were thinking that the demonisation of Iran was purely political…
‘Around 60% of all foreign militants who entered Iraq to fight over the past year came from Saudi Arabia and Libya, according to files seized by American forces at a desert camp.
The files listed the nationalities and biographical details of more than 700 fighters who crossed into Iraq from August last year, around half of whom came to the country to be suicide bombers, the New York Times reported today.
In all, 305, or 41%, of the fighters listed were from Saudi Arabia. Another 137, or 18%, came from Libya. Both countries are officially US allies in anti-terrorism efforts.
In contrast, 56 Syrians were listed and no Lebanese. Previously, US officials estimated that around a fifth of all foreign fighters in Iraq came from these two countries.
US officials have also long complained about Iranian interference in the affairs of its neighbour, accusing Tehran of shipping weapons for militants over the border. However, any assistance does not appear to extend to people, the paper said, reporting that, of around 25,000 suspected militants in US custody in Iraq, 11 were Iranian. No Iranians were listed among the fighters whose details were found.’
In other news, it appears that (surprise, surprise) the occupation is provoking more violence than it is preventing:
‘Attacks have plunged by 90 per cent in southern Iraq since Britain withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, their commander has said.
The British presence in central Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was the single largest trigger for violence, Major General Graham Binns said.
About 500 British troops moved out of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in the heart of Basra in early September, joining some 4500 at a garrison at an airport on the city’s edge.
Since then there has been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks”, General Binns said.
“The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we’re no longer patrolling the streets.”‘
Surely, then, it is time for the largest contingent of ‘foreign fighters’ in Iraq – primarily of British and American origin, operating under the banner of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ – to get back where they bloody came from.
Filed under: Iran, Iraq, News and politics, UK, US | 5 Comments
Tags: War
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Hey there James!
Check this post out:
“Bush is lying to us again”
http://towelianism.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/imran-khan-doing-a-gandhi/
it’s an article detailing the latest happenings in Pakistan: police brutality, violent oppression of journalists, etc… peaceful gandhi-like pro-democracy and free speech protests… all with pictures too… and then a recent quote from mr.bush swearing musharraf has done more for democracy than any other modern 3rd world leader! lol!
could you link to it please?
Very important post. The level of US deceit and outright lies grows and posts like this one spreads truth.
I’m a grateful reader.
cheers mirth. Thing is, facts like the ones linked to above have been reported in the mainstream press (obviously, since that’s where I got them from) in the odd article or two, but then journalists seem to simply forget about them and revert back to reporting the same old official story as usual, as if the contradicting facts they themselves reported earlier did not exist. So for example, despite the second article linked to above, which strongly suggests that the occupation provokes more violence than it prevents (this also happens to be the view of most Iraqis, as polls have repeatedly shown), media coverage of the occupation is still widely based on the (often implicit) assumption that the mission of the occupying forces is essentially a peacekeeping one. In fact, it’s nothing of the sort, as reported above, but for most mainstream journalists, it seems that facts which contradict the needs of power simply do not exist.
Jamie, you make a very important point.
Mainstream news will often make a passing reference to truth and then it’s gone and they’re back to enabling crap. In this way, when their sycophant coverage is confronted, they can respond “Oh, but we DO report all the news.”
I have seen this spotty news coverage increase as disgust about it, particularly from the Web, grows louder.
Perhaps we are making a difference.