The Ongoing War on Truth in Iraq

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows ... We are today not far from a disaster." T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia), The Sunday Times, August 1920

On Monday, April 17, my sources in Baghdad reported fierce fighting in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of the capital city, as well as fighting in the al-Dora neighborhood. One source, who lives in the predominantly Sunni area of Adhamiya, had been telling me the situation was disintegrating for days leading up to this. There had been clashes every day for four days leading up to yesterday's huge clash there, with sporadic fighting between Sunni resistance fighters and members of the two largest Shia militias. The armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Badr Organization, and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army have been launching ongoing attacks against fighters in the neighborhood.

There is a shorter version of this description.

Civil War.

This is a very good article that is worth printing if only for the quote from Lawrence of Arabia. Is there anything that he stated about the events of 1920, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, that could not be applied to the present conflict in Iraq?

Chaos reigns supreme. It seems every time we get involved in the region we are almost destined to repeat mistakes that we have previously made.

This is a theme that Robert Fisk has been very good at mining, and I would recommend that people think about reading The Great War for Civilisation to get some kind of overview of the West's continual interference in Arab affairs.

The notion that we care about the people of the Middle East, and that we are motivated by a desire to help them, really is exposed as the hypocritical nonsense that it is.

Anyway, click on the title for the TruthOut article.

Tags: Iraq, Civil war, sectarian, strife, breaks, out,