Do you agree with the solutions to the public school problem in the last paragraph of this letter from a teach?

–teacher who quit?

David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first—the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel "learning disabled" and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, "special education" fodder. She’ll be locked in her place forever.

In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.

That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation. There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen—that probably guarantees it won’t.

How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn or deliberate indifference to it. I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm

Yes. That and the fact that there is such a lack of parental responsibility. How many are now dependent on schools to literally feed and raise their kids.

Thank you single mothers! (I don’t mean all of them, but do see this as a major problem).

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I watched this film as a child but I cannot remember the name. This is all I can remember:
- It seemed to be another take on the 1001 Arabian Nights (or at least I think it was because I recall it being very similar to Aladdin)
- The main character was a boy, late teens perhaps?
- There was an underground place the main character had to go to, much like a cave, and there was a tree on the outside that I believe was the entrance. The way to get in had something to do with seeds or beads or something small I think.
- I recall a market scene in the beginning of the film with a rather eerie woman with a creepy voice who may or may not have been the reason the main character knew where the secret “cave” was.
- I believe the “cave” was near the main characters house, perhaps the tree was even in his backyard, but this could be wrong. I think he had a mother too but again I’m not so sure about this one.

- Most the characters voices were a little unnerving, perhaps even scary for a younger child.
- The villain was like Jafar as he had the main character go in the cave to retrieve something (which was probably a lamp.)

I realize these descriptions are very vague, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen it that I cannot remember it well at all. So if you know any animated movies with the same generally idea as Aladdin or 1001 Arabian Nights, please list them!

The story you’re describing sounds a lot like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves from 1001 Arabian Nights. I tried searching but I still don’t know of any animated movie that was based on that story except Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1995). It was the third in that series of movies and went straight to video. Kind of a coincidence and I hope it’s what you’re looking for, although probably not, judging by your description.

Zarqawi Eat Your Heart Out

Basra is relatively stable compared to central Iraq where violence involving insurgents, civilians and coalition forces is a daily routine. The city has rarely been a site of clashes between insurgents and coalition troops, nor is it a victim of regular terrorist attacks. This week, however, things changed. But not thanks to Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda ilk.

On Monday, two British soldiers were arrested and detained by Iraqi police in Basra. Within a matter of hours, the British military responded with overwhelming force. Despite subsequent Ministry of Defence denials, insisting that the two men had been retrieved solely through “negotiations”, British military officials, including Brigadier John Lorimer, told BBC News (20/9/05) [1] that the British Army had stormed an Iraqi police station to locate the detainees. Ministry of Defence sources confirmed that “British vehicles” had attempted to “maintain a cordon” outside the police station. After British Army tanks “flattened the wall” of the station, UK troops “broke into the police station to confirm the men were not there” and then “staged a rescue from a house in Basra”, according a commanding officer familiar with the operation. Both men, British defence sources told the BBC’s Richard Galpin in Baghdad, were “members of the SAS elite special forces.” After arrest, they had been handed over to local militia.

What had prompted this bizarre turn of events? Why had the Iraqi police forces, which normally work in close cooperation with coalition military forces, arrested two British SAS soldiers, and then handed them over to militia? A review of the initial on-the-ground reports leads to a clearer picture.

Fancy Dress and Big Guns Don’t Mix

According to the BBC’s Galpin, reporting for BBC Radio 4 (19/9/05, 18 hrs news script), Iraqi police sources in Basra “told the BBC the two British men were arrested after failing to stop at a checkpoint. There was an exchange of gunfire. The men were wearing traditional Arab clothing, and when the police eventually stopped them, they said they found explosives and weapons in their car… It’s widely believed the two British servicemen were operating undercover.” Undercover? Dressed as Arabs? What were they trying to do that had caught the attention of their colleagues, the Iraqi police?

According to the Washington Post (20/9/05) [2], “Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives.” Reuters (19/9/05) [3] cited police, local officials and other witnesses who confirmed that “the two undercover soldiers were arrested after opening fire on Iraqi police who approached them.” Officials said that “the men were wearing traditional Arab headscarves and sitting in an unmarked car.” According to Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, “A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them.”

Boobytrapped Brits?

In an interview with Al Jazeerah TV [4], the popular Iraqi leader Fattah al-Sheikh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and deputy official in the Basra governorate, said that police had “caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market.” Contrary to British authorities’ claims that the soldiers had been immediately handed to local militia, al-Sheikh confirmed that they were “at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime.”

No wonder the Iraqi authorities were annoyed. Two British SAS soldiers had been caught undercover dressed as Arabs, loaded with explosives and anti-tank weaponry [5], acting uncooperatively at a routine checkpoint, and opening fire on police when approached. This is hardly a mistaken case of ‘friendly fire.’ The undercover operatives had conducted themselves suspiciously and aggressively. When it became clear that the British Army was about to use overwhelming force to rescue the operatives, it is hardly surprising that Iraqi police were reluctant to give them up, preferring to interrogate them to find out precisely what they had been doing.

The Special Reconnaissance Regiment and British Covert Operations

British defence sources told the Scotsman (20/9/05) [6] that the soldiers were part of an “undercover special forces detachment” set up this year to “bridge the intelligence void” in Basra, drawing on “special forces’ experience in Northern Ireland and Aden, where British troops went ‘deep’ undercover in local communities to try to break the code of silence against foreign forces.” These elite forces operate under the Special Reconnaissance Regiment formed last year by then defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, “to gather so-called human intelligence during counter-terrorist missions.” The question, of course, is how does firing at Iraqi police while dressed as Arabs and carrying explosives constitute “countering terrorism” or even gathering “intelligence”?

The admission by British defence officials is revealing. A glance at the Special Reconnaissance Regiment gives a more concrete idea of the sort of operations these two British soldiers were involved in. The Regiment, formed recently, is “modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland” according to Whitehall sources.[7] The Regiment had “absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, known as ‘14 Int’, a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS.” This is the same Regiment that was involved in the unlawful 22nd July execution – by multiple head-shots – of the innocent Brazilian, Mr Jean Charles de Menezes, after he boarded a tube train in Stockwell Underground station.

According to Detective Sergeant Nicholas Benwell, member of the Scotland Yard team that had been investigating the activities of an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence, the Force Research Unit (FRU), the team found that “military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called ‘legitimate targets’ such as active republicans… many of the victims of these government-backed hit squads were innocent civilians.” Benwell’s revelations were corroborated in detail by British double agent Kevin Fulton, who was recruited to the FRU in 1981, when he began to infiltrate the ranks of IRA. In his role as a British FRU agent inside the IRA, he was told by his military intelligence handlers to “do anything” to win the confidence of the terrorist group.

“I mixed explosive and I helped develop new types of bombs”, he told Scotland’s Sunday Herald (23/6/02) [8]. “I moved weapons… if you ask me if the materials I handled killed anyone, then I will have to say that some of the things I helped develop did kill… my handlers knew everything I did. I was never told not to do something that was discussed. How can you pretend to be a terrorist and not act like one? You can’t. You’ve got to do what they do… They did a lot of murders… I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it… The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy.” Most startlingly, Fulton said that his handlers told him his operations were “sanctioned right at the top… this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing.”

Zarqawi, Ba’athists and the Seeds of Discord

So, based on the methodology of their Regiment, the two British SAS operatives were in Iraq to “penetrate the enemy and be the enemy,” in order of course to “beat the enemy.” Instead of beating the enemy, however, they ended up fomenting massive chaos and killing innocent people, a familiar pattern for critical students of the British role in the Northern Ireland conflict.

In November 2004 [9], a joint statement was released on several Islamist websites on behalf of al-Qaeda’s man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Saddam Hussein’s old Ba’ath Party loyalists. Zarqawi’s network had “joined other extremist Islamists and Saddam Hussein’s old Baath party to threaten increased attacks on US-led forces.” Zarqawi’s group said they signed “the statement written by the Iraqi Baath party, not because we support the party or Saddam, but because it expresses the demands of resistance groups in Iraq.” The statement formalized what had been known for a year already – that, as post-Saddam Iraqi intelligence and US military officials told the London Times (9/8/2003) [10], “Al Qaeda terrorists who have infiltrated Iraq from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have formed an alliance with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein to fight their common enemy, the American forces.” Al Qaeda leaders “recruit from the pool” of Saddam’s former “security and intelligence officers who are unemployed and embittered by their loss of status.” After vetting, “they begin Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make remote-controlled bombs.”

Yet Pakistani military sources [11] revealed in February 2005 that the US has “resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population”, consisting of “former members of the Ba’ath Party” – the same people already teamed up with Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda network. In a highly clandestine operation, the US procured “Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry.” A Pakistani military analyst noted that the “arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them.” Rather, the US is playing a double-game to “head off” the threat of a “Shi’ite clergy-driven religious movement” – in other words, to exacerbate the deterioration of security by penetrating, manipulating and arming the terrorist insurgency.

What could be the end-game of such a covert strategy? The view on-the-ground [12] in Iraq, among both Sunnis and Shi’ites, is worth noting. Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the Shi’ite Imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told Le Monde: “I don’t think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people.” Iraq’s most powerful Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, concurs, condemning the call to arms against Shi’ites as a “very dangerous” phenomenon that “plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war.” In colonial terms, the strategy is known as “divide and rule.”

Regardless of doubts about Zarqawi’s existence, it is indeed difficult to avoid the conclusion that this overall interpretation is plausible. It seems the only ones who don’t understand the clandestine dynamics of Anglo-American covert strategy in Iraq are we, the people, in the west. It’s high time we got informed.

Notes:

[1]. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm

[2]. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900572.html?nav=rss_world

[3]. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?
type=worldNews&storyID=2005-09-19T210030Z
_01_SPI946735_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BRITONS.xml%20

[4]. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=
viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=983

[5]. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm

[6]. http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1964592005%20

[7]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,
1542080,00.html

[8]. http://www.sundayherald.com/25646

[9]. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/
story_page/0,5744,11488568%255E1702,00.html

[10]. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/961268/posts

[11]. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html

[12]. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/73570F02-
EA07-492F-9E04-C080950DF180.htm

No. The issue with Basra is simply that the British followed a bone-headed policy towards Al Sadr.

If the British had kept Sard under control then they would not have had that problem.

Book Report Two:
The Journey to the Centre of the Earth
By: Jules Verne

By: Cody Freeman
English 9up
Period 4
2/20/2008
The Journey to the Centre of the Earth is one of the greatest works ever written. The storyline is great because of the development of the setting. The characters are so well defined that the story could radiate just off of a few items that are discussed by various people. The storyline is great because of the development of the setting. This is especially cited through the description of even one small lake inside the underground cavern. The theme is definitive because it is part of the things that people should live by although I can not list them all. These elements all combine to make a very descriptive, in-depth story.
There are many characters in this story. First is Axel, then there is Professor Lidenbrock, Grauben, Hans, the mayor of Reykjavik, and finally the sailors aboard the various ships that are used to travel. Axel is training to be a mineralologist, although he is not very learned in this profession he tries to learn everything he can from his uncle along the way, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. Professor Lidenbrock is a mineralologist, and is one of the leading men in his field. He is a professor but has a thirst for knowledge, action, and adventure. There is also Grauben who plans to get married to Axel as soon as he returns from the upcoming adventure. There is also the mayor of Reykjavik, he is rich, smart, and respectable. He helps Lidenbrock and Axel by providing them with help while they are in his city because he hopes that this event can help the scientific community. Hans is another character in this great story, he is a hunter and a tracker from a local village near Reykjavik. Hans is one of the main characters, because he ultimately saves Professor Lidenbrock and Axel as they travel throughout the bottom caverns of the volcano. Then there are the sailors who names are not mentioned but the are still a key part because they provided most of the travel means for the other characters.
Now for the settings of which there are three. The first is the house and study of the great Professor Lidenbrock which is in the city of Hamburg, Germany. He studies minerals in his study, this environment maintains a great interest because it sounds so dramatic. But in the same way this house is full of tension as the two adventurers try to find the secret message that is found in a book. They also visit Reykjavik, Iceland. This is a big city and the capitol of Iceland. There are a couple different areas which are visited. The first is a market district kind of area where all of the stores are located. The second area in the city is a mansion which is owned by the mayor of the city. Lastly, they visit the house of the ruling body I am not sure who this is because it is not clearly defined.
The last setting is the caverns located under the volcano. The volcano is inactive so it is accessible. But there is a part with a gigantic underground pond or a stream. In this area the characters get lost. So it is supposed to be gloomy and sad, the writing is so great it is almost real. Lastly is the area after the people get out of the caves. This was in a country side, it is described with great excellence as a farmland that contains grapes, olives, and water. This is a blessing to the characters because of their condition at this time. This area somehow conveys a thought that is symbolic with part of the theme of this book. It is interesting to learn from the different settings how poetically and dramatically Jules Verne writes.
Of the themes there are a few that really stand out as a life lesson. The first as I commented early is that when they exit the caves of the volcano the area around them almost seems perfect. I think this symbolizes that in even the worst of times good things can happen and you will be glad of them. The next is “coming of age” because when this story begins Axel is an innocent self reserved person, but throughout the story he becomes older mentally. He looses his innocence through the struggles and hurdles that he encounters. Next is that success will only come from hard work and determination. Because if you do not have that you will always fail no matter which precautions you take. And the last theme goes along with the first. It is if something goes wrong you should not stop fighting to get to the end, or for what you believe. This is represented by the professor and Axel keep on going when ever some stuff seems bad, and they come back rewarded because they fought for what they believed.
All of the elements of the story are key in the plot. The characters bring so much that this makes the story so vibrant in the way that the characters flow and they clash. The settings radiate with color as they are read because Jules Verne writes so descriptively. The themes of this book are numerous so they are hard to find and they help with the grand scheme of the story. Every collection should have this great book for both the story and the literary elements.

very good had a few puntuation corrections but veryyyyyy good

Zarqawi Eat Your Heart Out

Basra is relatively stable compared to central Iraq where violence involving insurgents, civilians and coalition forces is a daily routine. The city has rarely been a site of clashes between insurgents and coalition troops, nor is it a victim of regular terrorist attacks. This week, however, things changed. But not thanks to Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda ilk.

On Monday, two British soldiers were arrested and detained by Iraqi police in Basra. Within a matter of hours, the British military responded with overwhelming force. Despite subsequent Ministry of Defence denials, insisting that the two men had been retrieved solely through “negotiations”, British military officials, including Brigadier John Lorimer, told BBC News (20/9/05) [1] that the British Army had stormed an Iraqi police station to locate the detainees. Ministry of Defence sources confirmed that “British vehicles” had attempted to “maintain a cordon” outside the police station. After British Army tanks “flattened the wall” of the station, UK troops “broke into the police station to confirm the men were not there” and then “staged a rescue from a house in Basra”, according a commanding officer familiar with the operation. Both men, British defence sources told the BBC’s Richard Galpin in Baghdad, were “members of the SAS elite special forces.” After arrest, they had been handed over to local militia.

What had prompted this bizarre turn of events? Why had the Iraqi police forces, which normally work in close cooperation with coalition military forces, arrested two British SAS soldiers, and then handed them over to militia? A review of the initial on-the-ground reports leads to a clearer picture.

Fancy Dress and Big Guns Don’t Mix

According to the BBC’s Galpin, reporting for BBC Radio 4 (19/9/05, 18 hrs news script), Iraqi police sources in Basra “told the BBC the two British men were arrested after failing to stop at a checkpoint. There was an exchange of gunfire. The men were wearing traditional Arab clothing, and when the police eventually stopped them, they said they found explosives and weapons in their car… It’s widely believed the two British servicemen were operating undercover.” Undercover? Dressed as Arabs? What were they trying to do that had caught the attention of their colleagues, the Iraqi police?

According to the Washington Post (20/9/05) [2], “Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives.” Reuters (19/9/05) [3] cited police, local officials and other witnesses who confirmed that “the two undercover soldiers were arrested after opening fire on Iraqi police who approached them.” Officials said that “the men were wearing traditional Arab headscarves and sitting in an unmarked car.” According to Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, “A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them.”

Boobytrapped Brits?

In an interview with Al Jazeerah TV [4], the popular Iraqi leader Fattah al-Sheikh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and deputy official in the Basra governorate, said that police had “caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market.” Contrary to British authorities’ claims that the soldiers had been immediately handed to local militia, al-Sheikh confirmed that they were “at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime.”

No wonder the Iraqi authorities were annoyed. Two British SAS soldiers had been caught undercover dressed as Arabs, loaded with explosives and anti-tank weaponry [5], acting uncooperatively at a routine checkpoint, and opening fire on police when approached. This is hardly a mistaken case of ‘friendly fire.’ The undercover operatives had conducted themselves suspiciously and aggressively. When it became clear that the British Army was about to use overwhelming force to rescue the operatives, it is hardly surprising that Iraqi police were reluctant to give them up, preferring to interrogate them to find out precisely what they had been doing.

The Special Reconnaissance Regiment and British Covert Operations

British defence sources told the Scotsman (20/9/05) [6] that the soldiers were part of an “undercover special forces detachment” set up this year to “bridge the intelligence void” in Basra, drawing on “special forces’ experience in Northern Ireland and Aden, where British troops went ‘deep’ undercover in local communities to try to break the code of silence against foreign forces.” These elite forces operate under the Special Reconnaissance Regiment formed last year by then defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, “to gather so-called human intelligence during counter-terrorist missions.” The question, of course, is how does firing at Iraqi police while dressed as Arabs and carrying explosives constitute “countering terrorism” or even gathering “intelligence”?

The admission by British defence officials is revealing. A glance at the Special Reconnaissance Regiment gives a more concrete idea of the sort of operations these two British soldiers were involved in. The Regiment, formed recently, is “modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland” according to Whitehall sources.[7] The Regiment had “absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, known as ‘14 Int’, a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS.” This is the same Regiment that was involved in the unlawful 22nd July execution – by multiple head-shots – of the innocent Brazilian, Mr Jean Charles de Menezes, after he boarded a tube train in Stockwell Underground station.

According to Detective Sergeant Nicholas Benwell, member of the Scotland Yard team that had been investigating the activities of an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence, the Force Research Unit (FRU), the team found that “military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called ‘legitimate targets’ such as active republicans… many of the victims of these government-backed hit squads were innocent civilians.” Benwell’s revelations were corroborated in detail by British double agent Kevin Fulton, who was recruited to the FRU in 1981, when he began to infiltrate the ranks of IRA. In his role as a British FRU agent inside the IRA, he was told by his military intelligence handlers to “do anything” to win the confidence of the terrorist group.

“I mixed explosive and I helped develop new types of bombs”, he told Scotland’s Sunday Herald (23/6/02) [8]. “I moved weapons… if you ask me if the materials I handled killed anyone, then I will have to say that some of the things I helped develop did kill… my handlers knew everything I did. I was never told not to do something that was discussed. How can you pretend to be a terrorist and not act like one? You can’t. You’ve got to do what they do… They did a lot of murders… I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it… The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy.” Most startlingly, Fulton said that his handlers told him his operations were “sanctioned right at the top… this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing.”

Zarqawi, Ba’athists and the Seeds of Discord

So, based on the methodology of their Regiment, the two British SAS operatives were in Iraq to “penetrate the enemy and be the enemy,” in order of course to “beat the enemy.” Instead of beating the enemy, however, they ended up fomenting massive chaos and killing innocent people, a familiar pattern for critical students of the British role in the Northern Ireland conflict.

In November 2004 [9], a joint statement was released on several Islamist websites on behalf of al-Qaeda’s man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Saddam Hussein’s old Ba’ath Party loyalists. Zarqawi’s network had “joined other extremist Islamists and Saddam Hussein’s old Baath party to threaten increased attacks on US-led forces.” Zarqawi’s group said they signed “the statement written by the Iraqi Baath party, not because we support the party or Saddam, but because it expresses the demands of resistance groups in Iraq.” The statement formalized what had been known for a year already – that, as post-Saddam Iraqi intelligence and US military officials told the London Times (9/8/2003) [10], “Al Qaeda terrorists who have infiltrated Iraq from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have formed an alliance with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein to fight their common enemy, the American forces.” Al Qaeda leaders “recruit from the pool” of Saddam’s former “security and intelligence officers who are unemployed and embittered by their loss of status.” After vetting, “they begin Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make remote-controlled bombs.”

Yet Pakistani military sources [11] revealed in February 2005 that the US has “resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population”, consisting of “former members of the Ba’ath Party” – the same people already teamed up with Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda network. In a highly clandestine operation, the US procured “Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry.” A Pakistani military analyst noted that the “arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them.” Rather, the US is playing a double-game to “head off” the threat of a “Shi’ite clergy-driven religious movement” – in other words, to exacerbate the deterioration of security by penetrating, manipulating and arming the terrorist insurgency.

What could be the end-game of such a covert strategy? The view on-the-ground [12] in Iraq, among both Sunnis and Shi’ites, is worth noting. Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the Shi’ite Imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told Le Monde: “I don’t think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people.” Iraq’s most powerful Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, concurs, condemning the call to arms against Shi’ites as a “very dangerous” phenomenon that “plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war.” In colonial terms, the strategy is known as “divide and rule.”

Regardless of doubts about Zarqawi’s existence, it is indeed difficult to avoid the conclusion that this overall interpretation is plausible. It seems the only ones who don’t understand the clandestine dynamics of Anglo-American covert strategy in Iraq are we, the people, in the west. It’s high time we got informed.

Notes:

[1]. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm

[2]. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900572.html?nav=rss_world

[3]. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?
type=worldNews&storyID=2005-09-19T210030Z
_01_SPI946735_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BRITONS.xml%20

[4]. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=
viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=983

[5]. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm

[6]. http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1964592005%20

[7]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,
1542080,00.html

[8]. http://www.sundayherald.com/25646

[9]. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/
story_page/0,5744,11488568%255E1702,00.html

[10]. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/961268/posts

[11]. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html

[12]. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/73570F02-
EA07-492F-9E04-C080950DF180.htm

u no ur stuff! yea maybe that has made me think now thanks dude