Folkert Jensma van de NRC 11

Woensdag 20 maart 2013 berichtte de NRC het volgende over de illegale Amerikaanse en Britse inval in Irak:

De oorlog die tien jaar geleden begon, en nog geen einde kent. 

Gisteren was het precies tien jaar geleden dat een Amerikaans-Britse troepenmacht Irak binnenviel om Saddam Hussein af te zetten. De invasie moest ruimte creëren voor een liberale democratie in het land, maar ontketende zwaar sektarisch geweld. Het was het begin van een decennium oorlog. En hoewel de buitenlandse troepen het land in 2011 verlieten, woedt de burgeroorlog voort. Dat bleek ook gisteren: meer dan zestig mensen kwamen om het leven in een reeks bomaanslagen in de hoofdstad Bagdad.

BEKIJK MEER FOTO'S OVER: BUITENLANDIRAKOORLOGVERENIGDE STATEN

HTTP://WWW.NRC.NL/INBEELD/2013/03/20/DE-OORLOG-DIE-TIEN-JAAR-GELEDEN-BEGON-EN-NOG-GEEN-EINDE-KENT/?UTM_SOURCE=EMAIL&UTM_CAMPAIGN=NIEUWSBRIEF-20130320&UTM_CONTENT=INBEELD&UTM_TERM=INBEELD

Al meteen in de eerste zin staat een propagandistische leugen: de oorlog werd zowel door president Bush als premier Blair gerechtvaardigd met de bewering dat Saddam Hoessein's regime over massavernietigingswapens beschikte.

Mr Blair told parliament that Saddam was a threat to security in the Middle East because he still had chemical and biological weapons which could be launched at 45 minutes’ notice,

zo berichtte de Britse pers. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6652310/Iraq-inquiry-Tony-Blair-told-days-before-invasion-WMD-had-been-dismantled.html

De reden waarom de NRC de waarheid tien jaar na dato verdraaid is voor de hand liggend. De zelfbenoemde 'kwaliteitskrant' gaf namelijk op de dag dat de Amerikaanse en Britse illegale inval in Irak begon, het volgende klemmende advies:

Nu de oorlog is begonnen, moeten president Bush en premier Blair worden gesteund. Die steun kan niet blijven steken in verbale vrijblijvendheid. Dat betekent dus politieke steun - en als het moet ook militaire.

En dit terwijl de redactie en de hoofdredacteur, Folkert Jensma, tegelijkertijd stelden: 

AAN DE casus belli tegen Irak twijfelen we,

namelijk dat Irak over massavernietigingswapens beschikte die in 45 minuten via raketten gelanceerd konden worden. Maar de feiten behoren nu, na alle leugens en het grootscheepse bloedbad waarin de illegale inval is geeindigd tot de categorie 'onwelgevallig nieuws' en wordt dus door de NRC verzwegen. Toen rechtvaardigde de 'kwaliteitskrant' de terreur van 'shock and awe' nog als volgt:

Het Iraakse volk heeft recht op eerbiediging van de mensenrechten en moet kunnen profiteren van de rijkdommen van het land. 

De oliebronnen dus, die inmiddels in handen zijn gevallen van westerse oliemaatschappijen. Niet voor niets werd het ministerie van Olie in Baghdad als eerste beschermd door Amerikaanse mariniers, terwijl verderop in de hoofdstad de millennia-oude onbeschermde kunstschatten van de mensheid konden worden geplunderd. 

Western oil firms remain as US exits Iraq.

The end of the US military occupation does not mean Iraqis have full control of their oil.

Baghdad, Iraq - While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/12/2011122813134071641.html

Ook de volgende zin van de NRC-redactie berust op een leugen:

De invasie moest ruimte creëren voor een liberale democratie in het land, maar ontketende zwaar sektarisch geweld. 

Niet alleen is de bewering over de oorzaak van de invasie onjuist, maar ook de suggestie dat de poging om een 'liberale democratie' te 'creëren' de reden is geweest van het 'zwaar sectarisch geweld.' Allereerst schiep het ontbinden van het Irakese leger door de Amerikanen een machtsvacuum en logischerwijs een enorme chaos en spanning in een etnisch diverse samenleving als Irak. Maar erger nog, de Amerikaanse bezetters hebben dit 'zwaar sektarisch geweld' uitgelokt. Zo berichtte de Canadese hoogleraar Michel Chossudovsky het volgende:

The Establishment of Death Squads in Iraq

US sponsored death squads were recruited in Iraq starting in 2004-2005 in an initiative launched under the helm of the US AmbassadorJohn Negroponte, [image: right] who was dispatched to Baghdad by the US State Department in June 2004.

Negroponte was the “man for the job”. As US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte played a key role in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contras based in Honduras as well as overseeing the activities of the Honduran military death squads.

“Under the rule of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Honduras’s military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was “disappearing” dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion.”

In January 2005, the Pentagon, confirmed that it was considering:

” forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency [Resistance] in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago”.

Under the so-called “El Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter. …

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret.

The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.

Then, the Reagan Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. …

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. …

In the early 1980s President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have toppled Mr Reagan.

The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, … is to follow that model …

It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and take them away for interrogation. Any mission in Syria would probably be undertaken by US Special Forces.

Nor is it clear who would take responsibility for such a programme — the Pentagon or the Central Intelligence Agency. Such covert operations have traditionally been run by the CIA at arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US officials the ability to deny knowledge of it.  (El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants – Times Online, January 10, 2005, emphasis added)

While the stated objective of the “Iraq Salvador Option” was to “take out the insurgency”, in practice the US sponsored terror brigades were involved in routine killings of civilians with a view to fomenting sectarian violence. In turn, the CIA and MI6 were overseeing “Al Qaeda in Iraq”  units involved in targeted assassinations directed against the Shiite population. Of significance, the death squads were integrated and advised by undercover US Special Forces. [...]

Negroponte also brought into the team one of his former collaborators Colonel James Steele (ret) from his Honduras heyday:

Under the “Salvador Option,” “Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980′s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiralled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq.

Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. (Dahr Jamail, Managing Escalation: Negroponte and Bush’s New Iraq Team,. Antiwar.com, January 7, 2007)

“Colonel Steele was responsible, according to Rep. Dennis Kucinich for implementing  “a plan in El Salvador under which tens of thousands Salvadorans “disappeared” or were murdered, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns.”

Upon his appointment to Baghdad, Colonel Steele was assigned to a counter-insurgency unit known as the “Special Police Commando” under the Iraqi Interior Ministry” (See ACN, Havana,  June 14, 2006) 

Reports confirm that “the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry’s special commandos” which so happened to be under supervision of  Colonel Steele:

“US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing,” while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners. The interior ministry commandos took over the public library in Samarra, and turned it into a detention centre, he said.  An interview conducted by Maass [of the New York Times] in 2005 at the improvised prison, accompanied by the Wolf Brigade’s US military adviser, Col James Steele, had been interrupted by the terrified screams of a prisoner outside, he said. Steele was reportedly previously employed as an adviser to help crush an insurgency in El Salvador.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

Another notorious figure who played a role in Iraq’s counter-insurgency program was Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik  [image: Bernie Kerik  in Baghdad Police Academy with body guards] who in 2007 was indicted in federal court on 16 felony charges.

Kerik had been appointed by the Bush administration at the outset of the occupation in 2003 to assist in the organization and training  of the Iraqi Police force. During his short stint in 2003, Bernie Kerik –who took on the position of interim Minister of the Interior– worked towards organizing terror units within the Iraqi Police force: “Dispatched to Iraq to whip Iraqi security forces into shape, Kerik dubbed himself the “interim interior minister of Iraq.”British police advisors called him the “Baghdad terminator,” (Salon, December 9, 2004, emphasis added)

Under Negroponte’s helm at the US Embassy in Baghdad, a  wave of covert civilian killings and targeted assassinations had been unleashed. Engineers, medical  doctors, scientists and intellectuals were also targeted.

Author and geopolitical analyst Max Fuller has documented in detail the atrocities committed under the US sponsored counterinsurgency program.

The appearance of death squads was first highlighted in May this year [2005], …dozens of bodies were found casually disposed … in vacant areas around Baghdad. All of the victims had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head and many of them also showed signs of having been brutally tortured.  …

The evidence was sufficiently compelling for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), a leading Sunni organisation, to issue public statements in which they accused the security forces attached to the Ministry of the Interior as well as the Badr Brigade, the former armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), of being behind the killings. They also accused the Ministry of the Interior of conducting state terrorism (Financial Times).

The Police Commandos as well as the Wolf  Brigade were overseen by the US counterinsurgency program in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior:

The Police Commandos were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units (Reuters, National Review Online).

…A key figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele, a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of that country’s civil war. …

Another US contributor was the same Steven Casteel who as the most senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as ‘rumor and innuendo’. Like Steele, Casteel gained considerable experience in Latin America, in his case participating in the hunt for the cocaine baron Pablo Escobar in Colombia’s Drugs Wars of the 1990s …

Casteel’s background is significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random, disjointed killing sprees.

Such centrally planned genocides are entirely consistent with what is taking place in Iraq today [2005] …It is also consistent with what little we know about the Special Police Commandos, which was tailored to provide the Interior Ministry with a special-forces strike capability (US Department of Defense). In keeping with such a role, the Police Commando headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the US. (Max Fuller, op cit)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-with-a-human-face-the-history-of-americas-death-squads/5317564


Kortom, de NRC is bezig met het vervalsen van de geschiedenis, en doet in dit opzicht exact hetzelfde als de propagandisten in nazi-Duitsland en de Sovjet Unie deden. Het is precies datgene waarvoor al in 1949 de Britse auteur George Orwell waarschuwde in zijn roman Nineteen Eighty-Four:

Who controls the past controls the future; Who controls the present controls the past.

Het herschrijven van de geschiedenis past naadloos in het totalitaire denken, en de NRC doet daar enthousiast aan mee. 

Zou de voormalige hoofdredacteur Folkert Jensen hier een reactie op durven geven?

Oil ministry an untouched building in ravaged Baghdad April 16 2003, 4:26 PM Since US forces rolled into central Baghdad a week ago, one of the sole public buildings untouched by looters has been Iraq's massive oil ministry, which is under round-the-clock surveillance by troops. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/16/1050172643895.html