The Irony Party of Australia
Encephalatronicalogical Pamphlet
Feb 26th 2006
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MI6, CIA Put Out by Timely Shrine Attack
After at least 1300 deaths resulting from retaliatory violence in the days since the bombing, foreign leaders and military commanders are clearly angry at the perpetrators, not least because the timely bombing has disrupted CIA, Mossad, and MI6 nation-building plans for Iraq that included an identical explosion in Samarra aimed at diverting attention from the Coalition's role in the recent misfortunes of the long-suffering nation.
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Reports suggest men entered the Shrine dressed as Iraqi policemen, following the old device of taking as a disguise a costume identical to that worn by a new, unfamiliar, and authoritative security force. They detonated two devices inside the Samara Shrine and the resulting explosions destroyed the century old Golden Dome atop the holy site, and damaged ancient tombs within. Beyond this material destruction, though, the attack has created further ruptures in Iraqi society, and across the Islamic world.
Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani announced 10 days of mourning in the wake of the crime, and called for calm and non-violent protest. But reprisals began within hours as the streets filled with grieving men and women. Today it is estimated as many as 50 mosques have been desecrated in an effort to punish Sunnis for the Samarra bombing. In the worst of violent attacks on Sunnis north of Baghdad overnight 46 men were pulled from buses and shot dead, their bodies found in the light of morning after sunrise.
Atwar Bahjat, al-Arabiya journalist
In another incident a journalist and two cameramen who had been covering the explosion in Samarra were kidnapped, a fourth media representative escaping capture. The three, among them well known Atwar Bahjat who grew up in Samarra and was a prominent reporter for the conservative and pro-Western al-Arabiya television network ,were killed, and their bodies dumped. In the past day-and-a-half as many as 1300 people, mostly members of Iraq's Sunni minority, have died in violent attacks.
A curfew usually in place in Baghdad from midnight and ignored by resistance fighters, militants, and criminals, has been extended in an effort to prevent massive unrest and will now be ignored by miscreants and Mujehadin throughout the day.
It seems almost inconceivable that this act of callous destruction could be the work of Moslems. Although some have pointed the finger at Ba'athists, few inside Iraq suggest the bombing was carried out by national compatriots of any religious tradition. The Shrine is the site of the disappearance of the 12th Imam of the Shia tradition, called the Mahdi, and is as well the resting place of the 10th and 11th Imams of Shia tradition, Imam Hadi and Imam Hassan Askari. In the Ninth Century CE, or the of the Islamic era, Abdullah Mahdi went into seclusion in Samarra while still a young man and while in hiding disappeared inextricably and without trace. He left a note, however, saying he would return in the end time, before Armageddeon. Many Shi'ite Moslems who understand that the Madhi will one day return have made the pilgrimage to the Shrine.
Nonetheless, many commentators in the West as well as many Iraqis have blamed the extremist Islamic organisation Al Qae'da for the literal and political explosion,or more generally the foreign fighters considered responsible for the worst deeds of violence of the multilateral resistance against US occupation. Some have pointed the finger directly at al Zarkawy, al Qa'eda's Iraqi commander. The cold blooded murders of innocents attributed to al Zarkawy and his terrorist organisation go far beyond the activities of local Iraqi militias and Mujehadin, who are working in a defensive capacity to stave off the worst offences of the barbarian invader.
There is motivation for an attack by Zarkawy and his fanatical al Qa'eda troops. Ten days ago there were clandestine meetings between insurgent leaders and commanders of the occupying Coalition that reportedly showed some promise of reducing the violence that plagues the occupied country. There have been rumours of a significant coming act of destruction in Iraq since early February, concurrent with the The idea of peace is anathema to Zarkawy, who is interested in promoting war between East and West, and providing a training ground for al Qa'eda operatives in an arena in which they have the opportunity to fight the American adversary directly.
But how the different motivations of various powers at play in Iraq, both internal and foreign, have contribted to this sacreligious destruction is difficult to discern. As the American science fiction writer Frank Herbert observed in The Dosadi Experiment, a significant and violent upheaval in any society, although catastrophic for the commons, presents an opportunity for all those with significant power. Firstly because in it is the powerful who are best placed to direct as they resolve once again into calm. Secondly, because it allows 'a well-defined condition would develop, one which would provide clear predictions of the major consequences.' (p153, The Dosadi Experiment, Frank Herbert) A single explosive event, in a figurative or literal sense, reduces a miasma of variables and alternate possible outcomes to a manageable, calculable, few. The effect of one incident of over-riding moment is a much narrower range of limited, predictable outcomes based on radical repercussions and foreseeable reactions from all quarters.
By this logic, despite an assumption that no Moslem - and no Iraqi - could countenance, all of the powers involved in the conflict in Iraq are potentially guilty of committing the attack, including al Qa'eda, secular Ba'athists, or the Western powers. Some Iraqis have already suggested the US-led Coalition forces are responsible at least for failing to prevent the attack. In essence, though, one argument - a one-word argument - mitigates against the likelihood of CIA and MI6 involvement: competence. The bombing bears the clear hall-marks of cruel, hardened, frighteningly effective operatives who are in ideology and methodology the antithesis of the CIA. The attack was sudden, smoothly executed, and devastating in effect. It was perfectly timed to undermine any prospect of glossy pictures of happy Iraqis for American magazines that could come from any truce between the Coalition and the militias of Iraqi defenders, and maintain recruitment for all the armies being raised across the world for the Holy war against the United States.
The obvious immediate advantage flowing to the United States is the prospect of a media event significant enough to provide a substantial distraction from the growing death toll and sustained dysfunction of Coalition operations in Iraq. The Samarra attack preceded by days the release of a report that indicated the great success of six months ago - the training of three divisions of a local Iraqi Army capable - has been reversed. Now no divisions are capable of independent action, although a growing number can operate with reduced assistance from the United States military. Meanwhile, President Bush's fortunes are flagging, his popularity now at 38 per cent, according to a poll reported by CBS News, and his Administration's drain on the public purse is reaching embarrassing proportions (eighty percent of a recent $US80 billion grant from Congress for the pursuit of good Public Relations from Iraq has now been spent, and a new request probably forthcoming).
Fox news report
The disturbingly patriotic and pro-Republican US television network Fox has been quick to take a broad view in consideration of the bombing of the Golden Dome of the Shrines of the 10th and 11th Imams. Their anchors, commentators and experts have been able to look past the immediate devastation, grief, and carnage resulting from the explosion in Samara, focusing instead on what positives could flow from this latest evil terrorist freedom-hating attack.
Meanwhile, the capabilities of the fighters opposing the United States appear to be increasing, their forces entrenched, their recruitment propaganda effective, their weapons increasingly deadly to the troops of the Coalition. Snipers have gained legendary status for thinning the numbers of US marines.Around Iraq militias from bordering nations, or sprung from the civilian population, or within the new institutions and authorities of the modern Iraqi government operate in accordance with various codes and allegiances unclear to any not immersed in this difficult political milieu.
Peevish operatives at the CIA, who are irate this week after failing to notice their pet operation in Samara was being stolen from under their noses by more competent and hidden 'others' now face further irritation. They must now brace themselves for the noisings of the inevitable tragic conspiracy theorists bold enough to claim, from the safety of arm-chairs, that this inflammatory action can only have been carried out by Western operatives. It was in Western interests to bomb the Shrine, these loony fringe-dwellers will claim. The will provide a distraction from the embarrassing failures of the Coalition in Iraq, and the enormous gulf between the fantasies of the White House and the American President, and the realities for Iraqis sceptical from the first of the nation-building talents of the United States and its vassals.
Further, to the embarrassment of Western chiefs of secret police, it will be pointed out that although they may not have carried out the bombing of the shrine, British and American intelligence agencies must have considered such a course of action as a contingency. This basic deduction is hardly contentious, since the failure to exercise such a plan must be considered unacceptably negligent for those determined, at any cost, to preserve the supreme and overwhelming strength of the West.
And there is some evidence that Western intelligence agencies have previously planned similar destruction at significant religious sites, if never put into practise. When two British agents were arrested by Iraqi police in Basra, the UK Government and military made an international incident of the event by sending in a tank to rescue their operatives. The tank was itself attacked, but the British special service agents were eventually freed when more British forces arrived later in the evening to secure the area. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were coy about. Reports in September last year indicated the British troops had shot two Iraqi policemen after they were arrested while driving a car filled with explosives several days before a major (explored in this September 2005 article British Occupation Forces Suspected Behind Sectarian Terrorism in Southern Iraq ).
A hapless British soldier leaps from a burning personnel carrier
Foreign luminaries and statesmen have, naturally, condemned the bombing in public, even as they order hapless underlings to shred the documents for the thwarted Hollywood-style operation they themselves had planned for a possibly unspecified future date. White House advisor Scott McClellan piously called on Iraqis to resist the use of US -style shock and awe tactics in responding to the catastrophic demolition of the Samara Shrine.Unlike the aircraft-delivered bombs of the West which brought liberation, freedom and democracy in their wake whereas an explosion sponsored by the callous al-Qa'eda or another of the nefarious groups of warriors fighting for independence from the United States can only damage Iraq's prospects for the rapid uptake of Western style progress.
