by James Buchanan

A New York Times article reports “Armed men entered Baghdad’s municipal building during a blinding dust storm on Monday, deposed the city’s mayor and installed a member of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite militia. The deposed mayor, Alaa al-Tamimi, who was not in his offices at the time, recounted the events in a telephone interview on Tuesday and called the move a municipal coup d’état. He added that he had gone into hiding for fear of his life. ‘This is the new Iraq,’ said Mr. Tamimi, a secular engineer with no party affiliation. ‘They use force to achieve their goal.’ The group that ousted him insisted that it had the authority to assume control of Iraq’s capital city and that Mr. Tamimi was in no danger. The man the group installed, Hussein al-Tahaan, is a member of the Badr Organization, the armed militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq…”

We have just seen a preview of what will likely happen as soon as we leave Iraq. Any Iraqi who is seen as too closely associated with the Americans will be promptly removed from power and a mullah-approved Iraqi will take his place. This raises the all-too-obvious question: “What’s the point of the occupation then?” There is no point. All we are doing is appeasing Israeli paranoia by occupying their neighbors and RAISING the price of oil by disrupting the supply. Bush’s dad created a large fortune for the oil companies with the first Gulf War.

Our involvement with the Persian Gulf has been disguised with lie after lie. The real reasons will always be Israel and RAISING the price of oil. One little reported story from the previous Gulf War concerned who really set the oil fires. One website reports “the American Gulf War Veterans Association has received numerous reports from veterans [as has this website] stating that US forces were responsible for the setting of the oil well fires at the end of the Gulf War. One veteran has now stepped forward and given a detailed account of how he and others in special teams, moved forward of the front, behind enemy lines ahead of US forces, set explosive and incendiary charges on the well heads, and remained hidden until after the charges were remotely detonated and US forces advanced beyond their position. ‘We were mustered into the briefing tent at which point a gentleman whom I first had thought to be an American… but I was concerned because he was wearing a UN uniform and insignias, began to brief us on the operation… There was concern that America, the American public, might see this conflict as an unnecessary thing, and we were asked to do this… or we were ordered to do this in order to remove any… to sway any public opinion… American public opinion to remove any doubts whatsoever that Saddam Hussein and his regime were a terrible evil that had to be dealt with.’ ”

The oil fires removed Kuwait’s oil from the market for several months and created a fortune for certain American companies experienced in putting out oil fires. It also caused one of the worst ecological disasters in world history thanks to a scheming ex-CIA agent/war criminal: George H.W. Bush.

Today we have the idiot son of a war criminal as president. George W. Bush has proven even more dishonest than his father. His botched foreign policy has left us with a quagmire in Iraq. The recent coup against the mayor of Baghdad proves how quickly things will change as soon as we leave and how pointless the war and occupation has been. A secular dictator will be replaced with a religious mullah, which is what Osama bin Laden wanted to happen in Iraq. Over 1,800 US soldiers have died for nothing and 300 billion dollars has been taken out of our pockets to pay for this fiasco. The president has ZERO authority to overthrow foreign dictators. Such actions are an abuse of power and should lead to impeachment. The role of Israel, Halliburton and treasonous lying neocons in causing this war should be investigated by Congress. The people of Iraq and North Korea must solve their own problems, not the US military. If they have dictators running their countries, that’s their problem. We have our own problems to solve as our government becomes more dictatorial every year.