Terrorists Playing Into Howard's Hands

Two Australian contractors appear to have been kidnapped in Iraq. A 24-hour ultimatum has been issued for PM John Howard to announce the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq.

The Australian has this information on the group claiming responsibility:

"The self-styled Horror Brigades calls itself the northern armed wing of the Secret Islamic Army, whose Holders of the Black Banners unit claimed the execution of two Pakistani hostages in late July. Earlier this month, an Egyptian, three Indian and three Kenyan truck drivers were freed six weeks after they were taken hostage by the Black Banners brigade. They were released after the kidnappers repeatedly had changed their demands and extended deadlines set for killing the seven. "

First of all, let me be clear: I abhor any such kidnapping and, furthermore, I think this case is particularly stupid. Latham has already pledged to pull Australian troops out by Christmas, but this sort of terrorist action will only make it harder for him to win the October 9th elections.

Secondly, there is no chance that Howard will announce an Australian withdrawal from Iraq. Not a chance. Unless - and again I ask readers to keep an open mind - this kidnapping is a CIA trick to give Howard a boost in the polls, in which case anything could happen, depending on the script. Again, I think that is unlikely, but it doesn't make it impossible. Our governments have lied to us repeatedly - WMDs, Children Overboard and more - so I no longer trust a word they say.

Thirdly, these people are contractors, not Australian soldiers. They went willingly into Iraq - for what? Assuming they are not part of a humanitarian mission, they were attracted either by the lure of money or the crusading rhetoric of our war-mongering governments. Either way, they had no good reason to be there.

Hopefully this story will shed some light on how many other Australians are working as private contractors and what roles they are playing in Iraq, particularly those involved in combat situations.

As I've highlighted repeatedly in this blog, the Iraq War marks a new level of privatised war-fare and there are some very murky delineations between military and private action. Iraqis insurgents view soldiers and contractors alike as a common enemy, not without reason.

The US (and it's allies in Iraq) are now losing this war and there is NO WAY that they can get out of Iraq with anything that will ever be called a victory (assuming they actually want to get out of Iraq, which I don't for a minute believe). Casualties are rising as chaos engulfs the country.

As evidence of how little control the US forces exert in Iraq, consider this Newsweek report of a recent daylight abduction:

"At about 5 in the afternoon, on a quiet side street outside the Ibn Haitham hospital, a gang armed with pistols, AK-47s and pump-action shotguns raided a small house used by three Italian aid groups. The gunmen, none of them wearing masks, took orders from a smooth-shaven man in a gray suit; they called him "sir." When they drove off, the gunmen had four hostages: two local NGO employees—one of them a woman who was dragged out of the house by her headscarf—and two 29-year-old Italians, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both members of the antiwar group A Bridge to Baghdad. The whole job took less than 10 minutes. Not a shot was fired. About 15 minutes afterward, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away—headed in the opposite direction."

Did anyone else see the footage of an Arab TV reporter being killed by a US helicopter strike on SBS News last night? A crowd was mulling around a burned-out vehicle and a US helicopter just came in and shot at them. It was a quiet news night on the commercial channels - why didn't they show this daylight murder? You can be sure Arabs across the world were watching it! US forces also targetted an ambulance yesterday, not for the first time.

There were 87 attacks a day in August, the worst tally since El Busho Loco announced "Mission Accomplished". There are growing numbers of cities where US forces simply cannot go (expect these cities to be bombed mercilessly, like Falluja, after the US elections). If the only remaining rationale for invading Iraq was to free the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator, who will now free them from us? What the hell do we think we are doing?

P.S. I am re-enabling comments.