Questions in Iraq

opinion by Joseph Sonntag

Almost daily there are reports in the media about group executions in Iraq. The explanations are either very vague ("who did it?") or else the violence is portayed as sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis. Groups of men are found with their hands tied behind their back and bullet holes in their head. Often there are signs of prior torture.

Other reports tell of non-combatant groups of Iraqis, sometimes Sunnis, sometimes Shiites, who are indiscriminately killed and wounded by car-bombs. Usually the mainstream media protrays these attacks as internecine Iraqi struggles with no apparent connection to the US "mission."

Could there be another explanation of these group assassinations and indiscriminate attacks on civilians? Could it be that these killings are a consciously developed part of the US strategy for gaining control of Iraq and its resources? There rarely if ever appears to be any US response to or even knowledge of those who are perpetrating these heinous crimes. According to the US media, it's just Iraqis killing Iraqis.

In terms of propaganda, portraying such killings as internecine strife would certainly support the agenda of foreign occupation. Perhaps the US strategy is to covertly create a killing-field among Iraqi civilians in a way that might enhance the eroding domestic support of the war and occupation. In fact, such apparent strife in Iraq might even give an excuse for continued US occupation.

It is interesting that the name of John Negroponte, the notorious US death-squad expert, does not appear more in the media's reports. Negroponte aided the brutal regime in the Honduras during the Reagan years. Now Negroponte has been appointed by George Bush to the new position of director of intellegence, in charge of counterterrorism. As Chomsky puts it in his recent book Failed States, "There was virtually no reaction to the appointment of a leading international terrorist to the top counterterrorism position in the world."

Most of us in the anti-war movement have come to understand by now that this is not a war against "terrorism," focusing on military targets and armed "insurgents." It is a campaign of terrorizing a whole people with the threats of death, prison, and torture. It seems plausible, then, that covert techniques aimed at the Iraqi population could be integral parts of the US plan of attack on Iraq.

We as Amereicans are faced with the unpleasant possibility that our own government and military are involved not only in an illegal war but in atrocities that most of us would never approve of if we were fully informed.*