Friday, October 12, 2007

General Petraeus in his labyrinth

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"General David Petraeus, media-hungry US supreme commander in Iraq doubling as Pentagon counterinsurgency messiah, will continue to be the key pawn in the current, breathless demonization-of-Iran campaign, whose target is to manufacture consent for an American attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside Iran.

Petraeus's latest is that Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, "is" a member of the elite al-Quds force of the IRGC, now upgraded by Washington to the status of "terrorist organization".

In - what else - a remix of the lead up towards war on Iraq, Petraeus even has his own Kurdish version of Ahmad Chalabi. According to Rozhnama, a credible, independent daily paper published in Sulaymaniah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, he is "a special and informed source belonging to an Iranian opposition group".....

So what we have is basically a situation of Kurdish PKK guerrillas attacking Turkey from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, and PJAK guerrillas attacking Iran also from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. As early as six months ago United Press International was reporting that "the Bush administration was actively courting PKK leaders and Iranian opposition groups based in Iraq to stir up trouble inside Iran"......

This correspondent has witnessed it live in Baghdad. What Iraqis fear most is not "ghost" al-Quds forces (bundled up in the magma known as "the Iranians") or even al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers' suicide bombers (widely referred to as "the Wahhabis"). Ultimate fear means a convoy of gleaming SUVs with tinted windows, lights frantically flashing, sirens wailing, masked, beefed up guys in khaki clothing with their high-tech weapons scanning the sidewalks. They are referred to by a universally comprehensible term, even in Arabic: "mafia"......"

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