IRAQ. Cometh the Man...

In an article in Investigating Imperialism 4th December 2004 there was a discussion of the likelihood of the installation of a new military strongman in Iraq.

The time is drawing near , fast and furiously, as the pressures on the remaining inchoate mass of military and Government coagulate in the Green Zone for this last option to be re-examined.

The New York Times said last week in an article, "Bombs Aimed at GIs in Iraq Are Increasing”, describing the styeadily worsening position of the US military in Iraq ..

"Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq's democratically elected government might not survive.

"'Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,' said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

"'Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,' the expert said, 'but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.'"
White House spokesman Tony Snow was forced to deny this at a press briefing the next day.

Cometh the Hour Cometh the Man

General Al-Khazraji was the field commander who led the 48-hour chemical weapons attack, which poisoned and burned 5000 Kurdish civilians in the northern town of Halabja in March 1988.

The most senior military officer to defect since 1990, al-Khazraji was Saddam’s chief of staff from 1980 until 1991, leading the army through the eight-year Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. he was responsible for attacks upon the Kurds from Feb 23rd-Sept 6th in 1988 under the “Anfal” (Koranic section covering the spoils of war) in which 100,000 Kurds were made homeless and 10,000 are said to have died.
He left Iraq in 1996 and was granted political asylum first in Spain and then in Denmark, where he lived in Soroe, a quiet suburb of Copenhagen. There are claims he was reluctant to leave Iraq, but that the CIA tempted him with promises of a major political role after the overthrow of Saddam.

It is claimed he is close to Wafiq-al-Samara’I ex head of Military Intelligence who defected and who lived in London. They are both said to have strong Saudi contacts. Brigadier-General Najib Al-Salihi a “rapidly rising star” was another ex army pal. He had meetings with the UK Foreign Office in March 2002 . Al-Salahi was Commander of an armoured division of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard in the Gulf war, and played a major military role in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He was major force in putting down the Shia uprising against Saddam ‘s rule after defeat at the hands of the US-led forces. This repressive way in which this particular episode was handled caused 1.5 million people to flee their homes, the number slaughtered is unknown. Salihi went on to write a book about his crushing of the popular uprising, entitled Al-Zilzal, ‘The Earthquake’.

After defecting in 1995, Salihi defected to the side of his former enemies and began to co-operate with the US, where he recently lived. He headed the CIA- sponsored (and heavily funded) Iraqi Free Officers Movement.

With remarkable foresight Julie Flint wrote on 6th May 2000 …

“The concern now is that Khazraji may emerge, sooner or later, as a player in the new, US-controlled Iraq. Since a first contact with the US State Department late in 2001, he has been backed both by the State Department and the CIA to serve as a post-Saddam leader in Iraq.”

Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker in March 2002, said: “The CIA’s brightest prospect, officials told me, is Nizar Khazraji.”

Amid Tahiri in the Arab News 30th October 2004
“The interim government cites the fact that the Iraqi Army refused to fight in last year‚s war as evidence that most officers had broken with Saddam. Several former generals of Saddam‚s army are already back.

They include Amer Al-Hashemi, a Sunni, as chief of staff and a Shiite, Lt-Gen. Daham al-Assal, 63, as his deputy. Gen. Abu-Bakar Zibari, a Kurd, has been retained as chief military advisor. Also advising the new government are several senior officers who had broken with Saddam and joined the opposition in the 1990s. They include Gen. Nizar Al-Khazraji, Najib Al-Salhi, and Wafiq Al-Samarrai.

“Here we are working for Iraq,” says one of the returning officers. “What we experience today is a passing moment in Iraq’s long history. The occupation has officially ended, and the occupiers will go home. Iraq, however, shall remain. And Iraqis shall remain. And they shall need peace and security.”

Get ready, you are going to hear a lot more about Gen. Nizar Al-Khazraji, Najib Al-Salhi, and Wafiq Al-Samarrai… probably the only people left in Iraq who can guarantee a safe passage out of their shattered country for the Coalition of the Willing.

They will drink a glass or two to that in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem... Until a rocket lands in Tel Aviv at the same time as the Madr Brigades swarm the GZ.... at the same time the slaughter of the UK forces in their Basra base starts.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan ... NATO forces go from strength to strength...