February 22nd : Two Plots Remembered

By Felicity Arbuthnot
Uruknet

" The real issue is why the United States makes the same identical mistakes over and over again and never learns from its errors.' Gabriel Kolko, American Foreign Policy at Point Zero. 'Brown Studies', Spokesman Books.


February 22nd., marks two shameful acts. A demolishion and a meeting. They have a commonality. Both were, seemingly, not 'conspiracy theories', but actual conspiraces.

The first was the destruction of the golden Askari Mosque in Samarra, the city that became Mesapotamia's capital in AD 836. When, on 22nd February 2006, explosions destroyed the Shrine, where the two Imams, Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari were entombed under the golden dome, sixty eight metres in circumferance, flanked by two golden minarettes, thirty six metres high (later also destroyed) the United States military, near instantly, declared it a Sunni crime against a Shi'ia Shrine. Before the invasion it would have been unthinkable to divide people into ethnic or religious entitities, Iraqis, were just that. Building divisions ethnically and geographically, was a clear strategy from hour one of the barbarians through Iraq's cultural gate.

That the Mosque had been guarded with reverence in this largely Sunni town for a thousand years, was discounted. As was the fact that the town was reportedly all but sealed off, with every vehicle having to pass through US check points. Neither were investigations made in to numerous eye witness reports that US troops and their collaboration militia had been inside the Shrine all night, surrounding areas sealed. Residents had assumed a dignitary was arriving the next day and that security and preparations were being made for the visit. But the early morning destruction, by reportedly, expertly laid explosives, lit the blue touch paper of ethnic divisions in Iraq and a wider region. Statements followed from Washington that troops could not leave until : ' Iraq was able to stand on its own feet' (as if the US had ever intended to abandon all that oil) and the cynic would say: 'Mission accomplished', a sinister ghoul, crawling from the rubble of a millenium of grace and shimmering, historic beauty.

George W. Bush does not care to much for history, historic beauty or indeed legalities. On the 22nd February 2003, he met with Spain's then Prime Minister Aznar, at his Crawford Ranch in Texas, to practice and bit of arm twisting and ditching of any pretence at adherence to international law. He was determined to invade Iraq......"