Oorlog in Irak [I]

Martian schreef op 12-04-2003 @ 00:20:
Dys hoe kom je aan al die links, ik heb meer minutie nodig op een door Amerikanen gedomineerd forum

Check dan ook eens www.thenation.com

[dystopia]

Desecrator schreef op 12-04-2003 @ 11:03:
En dan fok.nl als onbetrouwbaar bestempelen. Als jij meent dat zulke sterk politiek getinte sites betrouwbaar zijn, dan kan ik nog wel polinco.net aanraden

Fok en Telegraaf idd, omdat het nogal 'ns op sensatie is gericht. Non-news. Maar goed, ga jij fijn op polinco surfen, dan ga ik naar indymedia

[DEChengst]

dystopia schreef op 12-04-2003 @ 12:50:
Maar goed, ga jij fijn op polinco surfen

Sorry, maar zowel rechts- als linksextremistische sites trekken mij niet. Nou ja soms dan. Als ik zin heb om dubbel te liggen om het enorme loser niveau, of om me te ergeren aan het lage IQ van de mensen op dat soort sites

[dystopia]

Desecrator schreef op 12-04-2003 @ 16:37:
Als ik zin heb om dubbel te liggen om het enorme loser niveau, of om me te ergeren aan het lage IQ van de mensen op dat soort sites

Oh, gaan we denigrerend doen. Iedereen die bij de politie werkt is dom.

[dystopia]

Where now, America

Ramzi Kysia, Electronic Iraq

12 April 2003

There are no words to describe this disaster. When I close my eyes, an apocalypse rolls on in rough flashes: the as-Sheb marketplace bombing, the Karadat Miryam neighborhood bombing, Nahrawaan Farm, an-Naser marketplace, Palestine Street. Scores of human beings killed, scores more injured, a wealth of human misery deposited at al-Kindi and al-Yarmouk - Baghdad's two, major trauma hospitals. Across all of Iraq, thousands murdered, at least ten-thousands maimed.

The scenes flicker faster: Baghdad's skyline filled with collapsed buildings bellowing plumes of dirty smoke. Massive looting in Umm Qasr, in Nassirya, in Basra. The Damascus-line bus bombings. The Hilla City cluster bombing. Revenge killings. Suicide bombings. U.S. soldiers executing entire families out of fear. Al-Jazeera's offices bombed. Abu Dhabi TV's offices bombed. Reuters bombed. The Red Cross announcing that Baghdad's hospitals are overrun with more than 100 casualties arriving every hour. Over 1 million people in Basra without water for a week, then for two weeks, then...

A dog and pony show in Paradise Park briefly interrupts the panorama: flanked by American tanks and soldiers, surrounded by absolutely empty streets, in a city of five million, two or three hundred Iraqis dance and cheer as Americans pull down a statue of Saddam: Baghdad is liberated! The tanks quickly move to guard the Ministry of Oil, as all other government buildings are looted and destroyed. UN buildings are looted, Red Cross headquarters looted, stores looted, schools looted, museums looted - al-Kindi hospital stripped bare.

Liberation has a sting to it.

This is not an accident. It is not a mistake. War is a deliberate thing, carefully crafted and intentionally executed. And there is a word missing from our lexicon of liberation: Responsibility.

America, we bombed the civilian infrastructure in Iraq in 1991, and blockaded its repair for twelve long years. We forcibly impoverished an entire nation. Hundreds of thousands of human beings died as a result. We started another war on March 20th for no other reason than to further U.S. supremacy over the world. Thousands were killed. We are now occupying a devastated nation, and moving to collect the spoils that to "victors" always go. Iraq will spend a hundred years paying off odious debt incurred by Saddam Hussein and much multiplied by our sanctions. How many more will die? How much further impoverishment will we impose? As we privatize Iraq's former, spirit-crushing bureaucracy, will free public education through University be erased as well? Will the free, universal health care Iraqis formerly enjoyed be denied?

I am frustrated, I am angry, and I don't know what to do.

I was in Iraq for the first two weeks of the war before being expelled, along with 8 other members of the Iraq Peace Team. I broke a curfew, and spent too much time with journalists at the Palestine hotel. Paranoia raged. The Iraqi secret police were suspicious of everyone and everything, and the block-long walk from our hotel to the Palestine became an impassible excursion.

I think of my time in Palestine/Israel last year, and how huge a country Palestine seemed to be, with countless miles between every town. But the eight-hour journey between Ramallah and Jenin is but 50 miles on our poor maps that show only the distance laid upon the land by God, and not by men.

Today, the Palestine hotel is a "secure" facility, and our team in Baghdad are still prevented from approaching the media - this time by American soldiers, and their fears.

I think of the violence of September 11th, the loss of life, and the loss of our liberties imposed by a security-obsessed government, wielding the massive power of panic and paranoia. I think of the fear Arab- and Muslim-Americans today feel, that they will be summarily persecuted, arrested, expelled, or even killed. I think of the fear "White" America feels, wrapping their homes in ridiculous plastic sheeting against the possibility of terrorist attacks, wrapping their hearts against the misery their fears have wrecked upon Afghanistan, upon Iraq.

Where now, America?

When will realize that we are not the only real people on this planet, and that our security cannot depend on the insecurity of everyone else?

It is unsafe for our team still in Baghdad to visit our Iraqi friends, the families we've come to love. Where Iraqi government paranoia confined us during the last days of the war, street violence confines the team today. A short walk is now a death-defying expedition. People have been shot short yards from our team's hotel. Violence has strained the ties we've worked so hard to maintain. Beyond its physical misery, the loss of those you love, the destruction of community is violence's most devastating consequence.

I think of streets incredibly full of cars, during "shock and awe's" day and night bombings: marketplaces still open, soccer games still being played. It's frightening how quickly incredible levels of violence become normalized within our lives. But it's also quite beautiful - the heartfelt attempt to continue community in the middle of war.

Iraq is not a war-zone. Baghdad is not a war-zone. Baghdad is a city of shops and restaurants, homes, hospitals, museums, schools, parks and playgrounds - Iraq is a place of human devotions. War is a thing that was brought to Iraq, imposed by amoral and irresponsible governments, in our names. In our names.

Iraqis are not our enemies. Iraqis are our allies against the destruction of our common lives, the devastation of our common world. They are our common allies against the violence resident in every human heart.

This has not been a short war. It has been storming since Aug. 6th, 1990, the day we first imposed sanctions on the Iraqi people. Hundreds of thousands are already dead. Millions are already devastated.

This will not be a short war. The Six-Day War in 1967 became a 36-year war. It brought Israel military supremacy over the West Bank and Gaza, and ruined both nations, both peoples. It rages on today.

Saddam Hussein devastated Iraq. But Saddam is gone now. America devastated Iraq as well - and now we remain.

The peace movement must not constrain itself to what happens in Iraq. We must advocate for the absolute right of Iraqis to create and inculcate their own destiny, as they define it for themselves, without interference, intimidation, or control. But we must do more than talk. We must take Iraq with us, as an example, as a call. We must work as hard as the war makers do.

If there is any hope at all, then we ourselves must overcome the institutions within our own society which further violence. We must overcome our own militarism, and the materialism that drives it. We must stop paying taxes, we must risk arrest, we must shut down a government in Washington D.C. that is illegitimate and absolutely out-of-control.

And we must overcome our anger at the mass killers of the world, the Saddam Husseins and George Bushes, even as we overcome their tyrannies. That anger is playing itself out today in the streets of Iraq - further wrecking lives already crushed by violence.

Please God, we must learn how to heal ourselves of all our delusions.

Where now, America? As the jubilations over the downfall of one tyrant are replaced by bitterness toward another, as thousands of modern-day carpetbaggers - good- and ill-willed foreigners alike - descend on Iraq to impose their versions of reality, as the corporatization of Iraq maintains the impoverishment of sanctions, as U.S. occupation increasingly becomes governed by fear and resentment -- where now? Where now? Where now?


Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American peace activist and writer who has spent 7 months in Iraq over the last two years. He is currently in Amman, Jordan with expelled members of the Iraq Peace Team. Source

[dystopia]

Arab world weighs Iraq war lessons

The Arab world is teetering in the balance following the ignominious toppling by US-led forces of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, after a bloody three-week campaign.
The mood today is one of despondency and bewilderment, with people asking:


Why did the Iraqi regime - seen by many as the last Arab hope to resist American neo-colonialism - promise to fight to the death, and then suddenly allow US troops unopposed into Baghdad?


What role did Arab governments play in facilitating Saddam's downfall, against the wishes of the vast majority of their citizens?


What hope now for the development, democratisation and independence of Arab countries?

The question that we journalists, along with the political analysts, government officials and diplomats, must ask is: "How will these feelings translate themselves - into the 100 Bin Ladens feared by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, or into a new Middle East which bows to American might?"

Clinging to familiar values

For the moment, the firebrands and the moderates in the Arab world agree it is too early, and America's victory too overwhelming, for anything but stunned silence.


Stunned silence for now
Take events in the centre of Amman at the first Friday prayers since Saddam Hussein's downfall.

The Husseiniya Mosque was previously the scene of angry demonstrations, with riot police having to quell enflamed popular protests proclaiming "Victory to Saddam Hussein" and "Death to America".

This time the faithful would have left without a murmur but for the appearance of Prince Hassan, the late King Hussein's brother and ex-crown prince, and a possible candidate for a role in the new Iraq.

Instead of wandering off, people pressed around the diminutive princely figure, his round, smiling face barely visible amid the jostling crowds, who cheered and clapped him and waved as his motorcade drew away.

Hardly the whiff of revolution that one might have expected, after Arab regimes were seen to have let their people down so badly.

On the contrary, it was as though these Jordanians, at this time of deep crisis and national malaise, were rallying round the state's tried and tested institutions.

'Unconventional resistance'

April 2003 is already being seen as a pivotal moment in the Arab world.

If the Washington hawks are to be believed, it is the dawning of a new era of Middle East peace, stability and human rights.

But in the same way that few here believed America's stated war aims - to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction - few now believe the outcome will be the one envisioned in Washington.

"Yes, people feel hopeless the moment," says Amman-based political activist Khalid Ramadan. "But they will soon see that US plans benefit only Israel and America's quisling rulers, like Ahmed Chalabi."

Mr Ramadan believes that, having learnt the lessons of Iraq's failure to repel the overwhelmingly superior US forces, the Arab masses will soon take matters into their own hands to launch "unconventional" resistance to what he calls American-British-Zionist colonialism.

"Look at history and remember how the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 sparked the rise of Hezbollah, and the 1967 defeat of the Arabs marked the beginning of Palestinian resistance," he says.

"I can't predict what form the new resistance will take," he adds. "But if the Americans say they lost 100 soldiers during the invasion, wait and see how many they lose in the next phase, the occupation."

Nothing to lose

It may therefore be more a case of whether Washington has the stomach to push through its plan to rebuild the Middle East, than whether the Arabs will be receptive.

"I'm afraid there is a kind of hatred for the United States and Britain at the moment, as well as criticism for our Arab governments for their invisible support," says Adnan Hayajneh of Jordan's Hashemite University.

And Mr Hayajneh says all the ingredients exist for things to turn very hostile, with underdevelopment, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no democracy and the lack of credibility enjoyed by Arab regimes all feeding popular anger.

"The question is what might trigger an explosion," he says. "It doesn't have to be much, if someone wants to undermine stability - all they need to do is raise the price of sugar, or bread, or gasoline.

"And unfortunately we have people who have nothing to lose - and therefore everything to gain - who might carry out what are seen as acts of terrorism." Source

[DEChengst]

dystopia schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 00:35:
Oh, gaan we denigrerend doen.

Ik kan mensen die politiek dan we religieus extremisme aanhangen toch niet bepaald intelligent vinden. Als jij je aangesproken voelt dan is dat jouw probleem.

Iedereen die bij de politie werkt is dom.

Prima

[Gatara]

dystopia schreef op 11-04-2003 @ 23:13:

Hoe het 'vrolijke irakeze volk' in scene werd gezet:
1 2 3

En hoe het geweest zou moeten zijn als het echt hetzelfde was geweest als de Berlijnse muur (qua enthousiasme):

[Gatara]

dystopia schreef op 11-04-2003 @ 23:13:
Ik ken haar niet, dit is het eerste artikel dat ik van haar lees.

Noreena Hertz is een econoom en filosofe.
Ze heeft een boek geschreven dat heet:
The Silent Takeover

Ze is niet ANTI-kapitalisme waarvan ze soms beschuldigd wordt, maar pro ANDERS-kapitalisme. In Rusland, waar ze gewerkt heeft (na USSR periode, logischerwijze want zo oud is nu ook niet), heeft ze de harde kant van het kapitalisme leren kennen. Zo moest en zou het niet zijn, vond ze. En ook in het westen vond ze die harde kanten terug.
Ze is niet ANTI-globalisering, maar pro ANDERS-globalisering.
The Silent Takeover is een kritische kijk op het huidige kapitalisme.

[Gatara]

dystopia schreef op 11-04-2003 @ 18:31:

Irak: steeds armer dankzij olie

Daar staat bij:

"Na jaren van relatieve verbetering van de voedselsituatie, verhoging van de olieproductie en eerste reparaties aan de infrastructuur, kunnen alle economische kencijfers overmorgen weer anders zijn als gevolg van de oorlog. Ook de Nederlandse economie zou totaal uit zijn voegen raken door het soort ingrijpende ‘veranderingen’ die Irak te wachten staan."

Maar wat misschien erger is (dat heeft ook op teletekst gestaan onder financieel nieuws (en ik vraag me af waarom niet op 101, maar wel op 511)),......het voortbestaan van OPEC komt in geding

""There is no doubt that the military occupation of such an important oil exporting country, with a nationalist government, is creating cracks in OPEC and affecting the mid- and long-term interests of its other members, like Venezuela," says Víctor Poleo, a professor of graduate studies in oil economics at the Central University (UCV), in Caracas.

After the war "there will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production, and I wouldn't be surprised if schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC", said Humberto Calderon, a former Venezuelan minister of energy and of foreign relations, in a conversation with Inter Press Service"

[dystopia]

Gatara schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 11:15:

Ze is niet ANTI-globalisering, maar pro ANDERS-globalisering.

Thanks voor de info maarre volgens mij is een anti-globalist per definitie een anders-globalist. Tenzij je terug wilt richting middeleeuwen...

[dystopia]

jellerd schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 18:04:
[afbeelding]

treeeendy!

LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein
Privatization in Disguise

In April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer than that."

And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has got to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's a coalition responsibility."

The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction." But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business.

Some highlights: The $4.8 million management contract for the port in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services of America, and the airports are on the auction block. The US Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks. Most of these contracts are for about a year, but some have options that extend up to four. How long before they meld into long-term contracts for privatized water services, transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatization in disguise?

California Republican Congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the Defense Department to build a CDMA cell-phone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit "US patent holders." As Farhad Manjoo noted in Salon, CDMA is the system used in the United States, not Europe, and was developed by Qualcomm, one of Issa's most generous donors.

And then there's oil. The Bush Administration knows it can't talk openly about selling off Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry official. "We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the country," Chalabi says. "The only way is to partially privatize the industry."

He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles who have been advising the State Department on how to implement that privatization in such a way that it isn't seen to be coming from the United States. Helpfully, the group held a conference on April 4-5 in London, where it called on Iraq to open itself up to oil multinationals after the war. The Administration has shown its gratitude by promising there will be plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the interim government.

Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth.

It's no surprise that so many multinationals are lunging for Iraq's untapped market. It's not just that the reconstruction will be worth as much as $100 billion; it's also that "free trade" by less violent means hasn't been going that well lately. More and more developing countries are rejecting privatization, while the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Bush's top trade priority, is wildly unpopular across Latin America. World Trade Organization talks on intellectual property, agriculture and services have all bogged down amid accusations that America and Europe have yet to make good on past promises.

So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How about upgrading Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom bullying, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields of pre-emptive wars? After all, negotiations with sovereign nations can be hard. Far easier to just tear up the country, occupy it, then rebuild it the way you want. Bush hasn't abandoned free trade, as some have claimed, he just has a new doctrine: "Bomb before you buy."

It goes further than one unlucky country. Investors are openly predicting that once privatization of Iraq takes root, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be forced to compete by privatizing their oil. "In Iran, it would just catch like wildfire," S. Rob Sobhani, an energy consultant, told the Wall Street Journal. Soon, America may have bombed its way into a whole new free-trade zone.

So far, the press debate over the reconstruction of Iraq has focused on fair play: It is "exceptionally maladroit," in the words of the European Union's Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, for the United States to keep all the juicy contracts for itself. It has to learn to share: ExxonMobil should invite France's TotalFinaElf to the most lucrative oilfields; Bechtel should give Britain's Thames Water a shot at the sewer contracts.

But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling and Tony Blair may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's post-Saddam, pre-democracy liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatizing is done unilaterally by Washington or multilaterally by the United States, Europe, Russia and China?

Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might--who knows?--want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but without any real democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatization without representation.

A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country has been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their newfound "freedom"--for which so many of their loved ones perished--comes pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling.

They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.

Bron: www.thenation.com

De Amerikanen slaan een mooi slaatje uit deze oorlog, en het idee dat de neo-conservatieven al mooie plannetjes voor Irak hebben bedacht staat me totaal niet aan. Afghanistan zal nu helemaal aan haar lot worden overgelaten en Irak wordt het nieuwe speeltje van de VS.

[DJ_Max]

Die dommeriken van Irakis denken dat ze bevrijd zijn door de VS en GB maar volgens mij gaat Irak gewoon een verdoken kolonie van die twee landen worden.

[Gatara]

DJ_Max schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 22:30:
Die dommeriken van Irakis denken dat ze bevrijd zijn door de VS en GB maar volgens mij gaat Irak gewoon een verdoken kolonie van die twee landen worden.

Daarom schreeuwen velen ook:
"Saddam NEE, VS NEE, Islam JA"

(misschien was je dat nog niet opgevallen)

[Gatara]

Che Guevara schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 22:28:
LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein
Privatization in Disguise
[knip]

Er staat ook een interessant artikel van Naomi Klein in de Groene Amsterdammer van deze week.
Het gaat over het feit dat Canada en Mexico beiden een tegenstander van deze oorlog waren en dat de VS eigenlijk alleen staat op het noord Amerikaanse continent.
De vraag rijst dan: waarom doen Canada en Mexico dat? Want hun hele economie is zowat afhankelijk van de VS (meer dan 80 procent van export is voor de VS).

[dystopia]

Haha. Nou, pro-oorlog kapitalisten/egoisten hebben zichzelf in hun vingers gesneden:

Not Oil, But Dollars vs. Euros

Iraq is a European Union beachhead in that confrontation. America had a monopoly on the oil trade, with the US dollar being the fiat currency, but Iraq broke ranks in 1999, started to trade oil in the EU's euros, and profited. If America invades Iraq and takes over, it will hurl the EU and its euro back into the sea and make America's position as the dominant economic power in the world all but impregnable.

Hele artikel staat hier; het lezen waard imo.

dystopia schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 18:55:
treeeendy!

[afbeelding]

ik heb een badge met een para-symbool.

en een spetsnaz-ding.

mijn dingen > jouw badge.

[Martian]

Ik heb een soviet-shirt.

Inspecteurs betwijfelen bezit Irak verboden wapens

Uitgegeven: 14 april 2003 12:01
Laatst gewijzigd: 14 april 2003 12:50

MAINZ - Twee voormalige wapeninspecteurs van Unmovic betwijfelen of Irak massavernietigingswapens bezit. Een Noorse en een Duitse inspecteur zeiden in een interview dat het Duitse politieke radioprogramma Report Mainz maandag uitzond, dat ze de informatie van de CIA daarover niet kunnen bevestigen.

De inspecteurs zeggen dat zij tijdens hun werk in Irak in verscheidene fabrieken die volgens de Amerikaanse regering chemische wapens produceerden, geen aanwijzingen hebben gevonden voor een illegale productie.

Satellietfoto's

Ook de satellietfoto's die de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Colin Powell op 5 februari presenteerde bij de VN-Veiligheidsraad, zouden volgens de twee inspecteurs misleidend zijn. Volgens Powell ging het om speciale vrachtwagens die chemische stoffen vervoerden. De twee inspecteurs zeggen echter dat zij de voertuigen hebben gevonden en onderzocht en dat de wagens niet bedoeld waren voor speciale stoffen.

Het inspectieteam Unmovic van de Verenigde Naties was drie maanden in Irak en moest de inspecties afbreken toen de oorlog begon.

[dystopia]

Havock schreef op 14-04-2003 @ 10:33:
ik heb een badge met een para-symbool.

en een spetsnaz-ding.

mijn dingen > jouw badge.

okay dan! altijd al willen weten!

Martian schreef op 14-04-2003 @ 14:55:
Ik heb een soviet-shirt.

Offtopic: CCCP Ik een DDR-shirt en een Sovjet-sweater

dystopia schreef op 13-04-2003 @ 18:55:
treeeendy!

[afbeelding]

jah heel trendy

[Gatara]

Ik heb een USSR vlag die ik in 1986 had gekocht, terwijl mijn zus een VS vlag toen kochte

(maareh,.. wat doet dit er eigenlijk aan toe? )

[dystopia]

The Baluch Connection
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tied to Baghdad?

BY LAURIE MYLROIE
Tuesday, March 18, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, is a Pakistani Baluch. So is Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1995, together with a third Baluch, Abdul Hakam Murad, the two collaborated in an unsuccessful plot to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes. Years later, as head of al Qaeda's military committee, Mohammed reportedly planned the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

Why should the Baluch seek to kill Americans? Sunni Muslims, they live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan. The U.S. has little to do with them; there is no evident motive for this murderous obsession. The Baluch do, however, have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence, reflecting their militant opposition to the Shiite regime in Tehran. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war. According to Mr. Samarrai, Iraqi intelligence has well-established contacts with the Baluch in both Iran and Pakistan.

Mohammed, Yousef and Murad, supposedly born and raised in Kuwait, are part of a tight circle. Mohammed is said to be Yousef's maternal uncle; Murad is supposed to be Yousef's childhood friend. And U.S. authorities have identified as major al Qaeda figures three other Baluch: two brothers of Yousef and a cousin. The official position is thus that a single family is at the center of almost all the major terrorist attacks against U.S. targets since 1993. The existence of intelligence ties between Iraq and the Baluch is scarcely noted. Indeed, these Baluch terrorists began attacking the U.S. long before al Qaeda did.

Notably, this Baluch "family" is from Kuwait. Their identities are based on documents from Kuwaiti files that predate Kuwait's liberation from Iraqi occupation, and which are therefore unreliable. While in Kuwait, Iraqi intelligence could have tampered with files to create false identities (or "legends") for its agents. So, rather than one family, these terrorists are, quite plausibly, elements of Iraq's Baluch network, given legends by Iraqi intelligence.





Someone named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents on April 19, 1965. After high school in Kuwait, he enrolled at Chowan College in North Carolina in January 1984, before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he received his degree in December 1986. Is the Sept. 11 mastermind the same person as the student? He need not be. Perhaps the real Mohammed died (possibly during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait), and a terrorist assumed his identity.
Mohammed should now be just under 38, but the terrorist's arrest photo, showing graying sideburns and heavy jowls, seems to suggest an older man (admittedly, a subjective judgment). Yet this question can be pursued more reliably. Three sets of information exist regarding Mohammed: information from U.S. sources from the 1980s (INS and college documents, as well as individuals who may remember him); Kuwaiti documents; and information since the liberation of Kuwait (from his arrest, the interrogation of other al Qaeda prisoners, and the investigation into the 1995 plane-bombing plot).

The Kuwaiti documents should be scrutinized for irregularities that suggest tampering. The information about Mohammed from the '80s needs to be compared with the information that has emerged since Kuwait's liberation. The terrorist may prove to be taller (or shorter) than the student. Interrogators might ask him what he remembers of the colleges he is claimed to have attended. Acquaintances--like Gaith Faile, who taught Mohammed at Chowan and who told the Journal, "He wasn't a radical"--should be asked to provide a positive identification.

Along these lines, Kuwait's file on Yousef is telling. Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, but fled on a passport in the name of Mohammed's supposed nephew, Abdul Basit Karim. But Kuwait's file on Karim was tampered with. The file should contain copies of the front pages of his passport, including picture and signature. They are missing. Extraneous information was inserted--a notation that he and his family left Kuwait on Aug. 26, 1990, traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, entering Iran at Salamcheh on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan. But people do not provide authorities an itinerary when crossing a border. Moreover, there was no Kuwaiti government then. Iraq occupied Kuwait and would have had to put that information into the file.





Karim attended college in Britain. His teachers there strongly doubted that their student was the terrorist mastermind. Most notably, Karim was short, at most 5-foot-8; Yousef is 6 feet tall. Nevertheless, Yousef's fingerprints are in Karim's file. Probably, the fingerprint card in Karim's file was switched, the original replaced by one with Yousef's prints on it. James Fox, who headed the FBI investigation into the 1993 WTC bombing, has been quoted as affirming that Iraqi involvement was the theory "accepted by most of the veteran investigators." Pakistani investigators were likewise convinced that Yousef had close links with the MKO, an anti-Iranian terrorist group run by Iraq, and conducted a bomb attack in Mashhad, Iran, in 1994.
U.S. authorities may unravel the story very quickly if they pursue the question of Mohammed's identity, instead of assuming they know who their captive really is. As for the larger issue of these murderously anti-American Baluch, that matter may become clear soon, once U.S. forces take Baghdad--and take possession of Iraq's intelligence files.

Ms. Mylroie is the author of "The War Against America" (HarperCollins, 2001). A related editorial appears here. Source