If you think hurricane Katrina would cause Iraqis to breath the sight of relief, think again!
If you think that the large deployment of US troops in the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in response to Katrina’s devastation would ease the suffering of the Iraqis, think again.
It is not uncommon for oppressive regimes to use catastrophes in other countries as a cover for acts of violence, repression, and implementation of policies that otherwise the rest of the world would frown on.
We have all witnessed how after 9/11 countries jumped on the “Terrorism Bandwagon” in order to oppress legitimate descent or commit act that the rest of the world would otherwise consider genocide; Putin in Chechnya and Israel in the West Bank an Gaza are two good examples.
Prior to Katrina and still ongoing, the United States with the support of Iraqi troops, who are most likely Kurdish Peshmerga, are actively engaged in an ethnic cleansing operation in Tal-Afar, where 90% of the population is reported to have left, and the surrounding area under the guise of stopping infiltrators from Syria.
This ethnic cleansing would effectively create a wide corridor connecting the Kurdish populations of Iraq and Syria and is to be the conduit for future military operations in preparation for the next goal; regime change in Syria.
Why have very few reported on Tal-Afar and just fluff from mainstream media? The answer lies in the effective control of the media, a primary goal of the Pentagon, enforced by the occupation authorities, the interim government, and later aided by degrading security conditions, and assassination of journalists by occupation forces that prevented but the most courageous from giving us the real news.
Tal-Afar is being carried out without the benefit of Katrina’s cover but how does Katrina effect the conditions on the ground in Iraq.
We know that our forces are stretched thin between Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other long term commitments around the globe. Katrina was the last thing Rumsfeld wanted to hear about. There were reports in alternate media of mutinies among Louisiana servicemen in Iraq and the next day in mainstream media news of 300 airmen returning home to help their families.
The deployment of the military in the southern states is surely going to exhaust the already drained pool of personnel needed for the Iraq rotations. Yet, some serious goals of the occupation are on the horizon and need to be addressed.
The most important goal is the disruption of the referendum on the constitution in the Sunni Triangle. While military operations in Fallujah, carried out a month prior to the previous elections, had no effect on the insurgency as the majority of military experts predicted. Those operations did accomplish their objective of rigging the elections by causing a Sunni boycott; the Sunnis only mean of peaceful objection to the atrocities in that city.
Disrupting the upcoming referendum is more important to the occupation forces and their cohorts in the new Iraqi regime that the previous elections since the draft constitution forms the core of American policy and is being seriously threatened by a Sunni vito as they flock to register to vote.
A serious threat requires a serious response, and, even though the source of the threat is no other than the democratic process the occupier claims to be bringing to Iraq, that process needs to be disrupted again but how would it happen now that the Sunnis have learned from the bitter lesson of Fallujah? The answer, a bigger Fallujah.
Faced with the troups shortage on the ground caused by Katrina and having mainstream media too busy covering its aftermath, another Fallujah is going to take place shortly and Saddam’s upcoming trial is going to be used as the catalyst.
Demonstrations will very likely to take place in and around Saddam’s hometown Tikrit in his support prior to the trial. Those demonstrations will be dealt with swiftly and harshly and will spiral out of control. Faced with the shortages of troups, the use of heavier weapons such as fighter jets will be justified by Rumsfeld and used extensively. The harshness of the occupier’s response is very likely to incense the Sunnis and be the spark that ignites the entire Triangle and include those who, so far, have been sitting on the sideline.
We know that the Kurds and the Shiites that I usually refer to as the Sistani merchant elites would do nothing to prevent such carnage but it also has the potential of sidelining Moqtada Al-Sadr who has good ties with the Sunnis.
Politically, it would be difficult for Moqtada to support pro-Saddam Sunnis and not supporting them would sever the relationships he has been cultivating with anti-occupation Sunnis.
Tikrit as the next Fallujah will allow the constitution to pass by default, it would cast the Sunnis outside Iraqi society, and by marginalizing Moqtada Al-Sadr it will take away their life line and their last hope for a unified Iraq.
Katrina’s carnage in the southern states will make it easier for the neo-cons to inflict the same carnage in Iraq.
