Is US Establishing An Islamic Theocracy In Iraq?

Before the Iraqi war, Sunis ruled Iraq.

We are training Iraq's mostly Shi'a (highly theocratic) military with all of our highly efficient methods of winning wars and arming them with our highly efficient weaponry. We are also financing the buildup of the infrastructure of the cities and military bases.

My concern is that the problems we are having with Iran will be highly increased to include an empowered Iraq if these two Shi'a nations become allied and powerful.

The Shi'as, Sunis and Kurds are suppose to keep the same regions they have traditionally occupied. Since Muslim theocracies are not known to share power with minority sects, what will happen to the Kurds who, as I understand, are sitting on most of the oil?

AbE: Will the small Christian population have any more freedom than they had before in Iraq and any more than the persecuted ones in Iran?

My concern is that the problems we are having with Iran will be highly increased to include an empowered Iraq if these two Shi'a nations become allied and powerful.

jar writes:Yup, just like we did for Osama Bin Lauden, the Shah of Iran, Saddam, the Taliban...

Nuggin writes:Iran hires spy named "Curveball" to feed US/GB false information about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar' by his friends.The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball's credibility, his claims were included in the administration's case for war without caveat.According to the report, the failure of US spy agencies to scrutinise his claims are the 'primary reason' that they 'fundamentally misjudged the status of Iraq's [biological weapons] programs'. The catalogue of failures and the gullibility of US intelligence make for darkly comic reading, even by the standards of failure detailed in previous investigations. Of all the disproven pre-war weapons claims, from aluminium centrifuge tubes to yellow cake uranium from Niger, none points to greater levels of incompetence than those found within the misadventures of Curveball.The Americans never had direct access to Curveball - he was controlled by the German intelligence services who passed his reports on to the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy agency.

The Iraqis have thrown the United States another curveball. Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister.Is that why we Americans went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who would be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?Does anybody still think the path to war wasn't greased by oil?The neocons' con man had been paid millions by the United States to tell the Bushies what they wanted to hear on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. A year ago, the State Department and factions in the Pentagon turned on him after he began bashing America and using Saddam's secret files to discredit his enemies.Right after the invasion, the charlatan was escorted into Iraq by U.S. troops and cultivated an axis of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians. He got a fancy house with layers of armed guards and began helping himself to Iraqi assets. The U.S. occupation sicced the Iraqi police on his residence only after an Iraqi judge had thugs in the Chalabi posse arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, torture and theft.Newsweek revealed that the United States suspected Chalabi of leaking secret information about American war plans for Iraq to the Iranians before the invasion, and of perhaps leaking "highly classified" information to Iran that could "get people killed" if abused by the Iranians. Chalabi claimed the Iranians set him up.In August of last year, while he was at a cabin in the Iranian mountains, the Iraqis ordered him arrested on counterfeiting charges, which were later dropped for lack of evidence.

link writes:3. “Curveball” turned out to be an appropriate moniker for this individual. His story was not only disinformation, but also disinformation that may have been deliberately fed to the U.S. by Ahmed Chalabi’s group. In light of allegations that Chalabi was connected to Iranian intelligence, one must wonder if Iran may also have been deliberately feeding Curveball’s b.s. to the U.S. This would not have required a great deal of guile on the part of the Germans and/or Iranians: it would have been like setting out a pot of honey in the path of a marauding, hungry bear. “Curveball’s story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis. U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)4. Curveball appeared right on time, providing the U.S. (through his German handlers) with just what they wanted to hear. “Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army. Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed ”Winnebagos of Death’ or ”Hell on Wheels’ in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.” (Idem.)5. As it turned out, Curveball was the brother of one of Chalabi’s top aides. Again, Chalabi has been alleged to be a cat’s paw for Iranian intelligence. “Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi’s top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system. David Kay, who resigned in January as head of the CIA-led group created to find illicit weapons in Iraq, said that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, the case of Curveball was particularly troubling. ”This is the one that’s damning,’ he said. ”This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward.’’ (Idem.)6. “Kay said in an interview that the defector ”was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us.’ But Curveball turned out to be an ”out-and-out fabricator,’ he added. . . .” (Idem.)7. “. . . U.S. and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since major combat ended in Iraq that lies or distortions by Iraqi opposition groups in exile contributed to numerous misjudgments about Iraq’s suspected weapons programs. Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress is blamed most often, but the rival Iraqi National Accord and various Kurdish groups also were responsible for sending dubious defectors to Western intelligence, officials say. . .” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

link writes:a 26. Just as the U.S. was lured into the Iraqi invasion under the auspices of bad intelligence and some fundamental illusions about the nature of the Middle East, so, too it may be in the process of being lured into a friendly relationship with the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood. An ally of the Third Reich, the Brotherhood is explicitly fascist. Like a number of neo-fascist movements (including the Italian Alleanza Nationale and the German NPD) the Brotherhood is attempting to use democratic means to achieve power, where it is deemed feasible. ...................... It may be that the Bush administration’s attempts at fostering democracy in the Middle East may result in the ascension of Islamofascist governments in those countries.30. It is disturbing to note that the Brotherhood is a dominant force in the American Islamic community: “Past and present Muslim Brotherhood supporters make up the U.S. Islamic community’s most organized force. They run hundreds of mosques and dozens of businesses engaging in ventures such as real estate development and banking. They also helped set up some of the leading American Islamic organizations that defend the rights of Muslims, promote Muslim civic activism and seek to spread Islam. For years, federal agents paid little heed to the Brotherhood, but after Sept. 11, they noticed that many leads went back to the Brotherhood. ”We see some sort of nexus, direct or indirect, to the Brotherhood, in ongoing cases,’ said Dennis Lormel, until recently a top FBI counterterrorism official. The architect of the Sept. 11 strikes, Khalid Sheik Mohamed, told U.S. interrogators that he was drawn to violent jihad after joining the Brotherhood in Kuwait at age 16 and attending its desert youth camps, according to the report released in July by the national commission that investigated the attacks.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

Hassan al-Banna, the teacher who founded the group, was a Wahabbi Sunni Muslim. Wahabbism is an extremely strict form of Islam, not dissimilar to the brand pushed by the Taliban.In its early years, the Brotherhood focused on religious preaching, education and social programs. It was banned, then legalized again after the formation of Israel in 1948. Dissatisfied with Egyptian efforts against the "Zionist threat," the Brotherhood assassinated the prime minister of Egypt in late 1948, leading to the retributory killing of al-Banna in early 1949.After being banned again 1954 (due to an attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdal Nasser), the membership was dispersed into surrounding nations, including Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. As it spread throughout the Middle East, the Brotherhood became increasingly associated with acts of violence, assassination and terrorism.One of the Brotherhood's beefs with the Egyptian government was its support of the Soviet Union, which may have won the attention of the young Central Intelligence Agency. Rumors have swirled for years that the CIA may have supported the Brotherhood during the 1950s and 1960s. The allegations of an alliance have been widely reported, but not irrefutably documented. If true, the CIA has a lot to answer for.

minnemooseus writes:I don't recall what if any position you have taken here at , in regards to George W. Bush. There is a strong correlation between creationism and neo-con, but maybe you are not one of the such. Are/were you a GWB supporter? My instinct is that you are not a "rabid liberal GWB hater".Has the outcome of the war so far come as a surprise to you? You don't seem to have much disagreement (as far as my feeble memory recalls) with the replies you have received.