Iraq's mercenaries - with a licence to kill

A horrifying article from The Independent.

Excerpt:

The distinguished reporter Jeremy Scahill claims in his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, that mercenary troops in Iraq are even using "experimental ammunition" that US forces are forbidden from firing. These bullets, made of "blended metal", are designed to shatter on impact, creating "untreatable wounds". One mercenary recently bragged about the ammo's impact when he shot an Iraqi with it: "It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower-left section of his stomach... everything was torn apart."

Well, duh!

From NPR:

The White House and Pentagon are under increasing pressure from Congress and the public to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But the Pentagon is considering maintaining a core group of forces in Iraq, possibly for decades.

And with gas prices approaching an all-time record, champagne corks are popping in petro/military/industrial complex boardrooms everywhere.

For the Bush Cultists, it doesn't get any better than this.

America's Fortress Embassy

America's embassy in Baghdad. $529 million. 104 acres—the size of the Vatican. The biggest and most expensive U.S. embassy on Earth.

From The Progress Report:

The new U.S. embassy to Iraq being built inside the Green Zone in Baghdad is "destined, at $592 [million], to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September," the Guardian reports. The compound at 104 acres, an area roughly the size of the Vatican, will "include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls." In addition, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, will enjoy a 16,000 square foot "high-security home" complete with a pool and gym. Critics fear, however, "that the compound will not be large enough to house hundreds of diplomats and military personnel likely to remain in Iraq for some time" and that the embassy will "become an enormous, heavily targeted white elephant." Such fears were compounded twice in recent days as a mortar attack interrupted British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Saturday meeting with Iraqi leaders and again this morning as a mortar struck the Iraqi parliament. One former diplomat in Iraq asked, "What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it's blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?"

Biowarfare in Iraq?

This is the most disturbing story I've seen in a very long time (and that's saying a lot):

A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq -- and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe -- accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq, Wired Magazine will report in a massive expose on Monday, RAW STORY has learned.

Most definitely to be continued...

And so it begins. . . .

And so it begins. . . .

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity - and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

Bush's stay-the-course "surge" speech last night reinforced my belief that he will not leave office without engaging the U.S. in a war with Iran. It has been the plan, and they will get their new war no matter what it takes.

Here is how I believe the casus belli will be manufactured.

There will be a major incident resulting in a substantial loss of life to U.S. troops. This will coincide with a push by the U.S./U.K./Israeli bloc in the U.N. for substantial sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt its nuclear (excuse me: nucular) activities. There may even be another Powell-esque Powerpoint show, complete with satellite photos, secretive sources, and repeated use of the phrase "mushroom cloud."

Then it will happen -- the worst loss of U.S. troops yet. It will be bloody, horrific, and substantial -- probably an attack on troops in the Green Zone, killing women as well as men, and the footage of the carnage will be all over YouTube within hours. Bush will promise a "major" prime-time speech.

The smoking gun will be "indisputable" evidence of Iranian planning, material aid, and execution of the attack. I wouldn't be surprised if they discover a remarkably intact Iranian passport in the bloody, smoking rubble.

The mainstream media will do a full-court press for their masters, and the beaten-down, shocked-into-numbness populace will do what it always does best -- nothing.

I pray I am wrong.

But this morning I woke up to this:

US soldiers raided Iranian government offices in the Iraqi city of Irbil today, hours after George Bush pledged to "seek out and destroy" Iran's networks in Iraq.

The troops stormed the building at around 3am, arresting five Iranians and confiscating computers and documents, two senior local Kurdish officials said.

Irbil, 220 miles from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, is in the Kurdish controlled north of the country.

A resident living near the scene said soldiers used stun bombs in the raid, bringing down an Iranian flag on the roof of the two-storey building. As the operation went on, two helicopters flew overhead, the resident said.

The most important line -- bringing down an Iranian flag. That's the symbolic fuck you, ready-or-not-here-we-come they want to send, loud and clear, to Ahmadinejad.

Apocalypto Now, or Proper Care and Feeding of the Archons

Images of frog and demons in collage above from The Iraq Museum.

I've been thinking along the lines of Jeff Wells, whose latest blog post is synchronistic with what I've been meaning to discuss here. In short, we're witnessing a tremendous amount of high weirdness these days (see the O'Hare UFO post below, for one example), which is coinciding with a dramatic rise in bloodshed, gloom, and fear.

Years ago, I was introduced to a concept that has continued to resonate with me -- the idea of Archons, as posited by the ancient Gnostics and elaborated by Jim DeKorne in his excellent book, Psychedelic Shamanism:

"...The gnostic Archons, then, are intelligences existing in the imaginal realm in 'bodies' consisting of thought and feeling. They are able to tune into our awareness through our affinity with their wavelength, that is, our beliefs. They feed off of our allocation of energy to their dimension, and compete with other Archons on other levels in the overall hierarchy for their nourishment."

"...What may be a belief in the Christian Trinity or Islamic Jihad to humans, may be the equivalent of a T-bone steak to entities of the imaginal realm who depend upon that belief for their existence."

See my entry on the UFO/Occult nexus for more on this topic.

Now, admitting I actually believe that human pain and suffering feeds the hunger of extradimensional entities might be overstating my attraction to the metaphor (or my familiarity with one of the age-old tropes of horror and the occult). But sometimes I have to wonder:

From the Kansas City Star:

In a Najaf soccer stadium, troops from the Iraqi army, the police and other emergency units paraded for an hour before a reviewing stand filled with U.S. and Iraqi dignitaries.

Then, in what seems to have been the high point of the affair, the members of a commando unit gave a dramatic demonstration of their courage.

According to published accounts, each commando plucked a frog from his pocket, bit off its head and flung aside the twitching lower parts. Then their leader cut open a rabbit and passed it to the others to chew on its still-beating heart.

The Prize

Their fingers are inches from the shiny, brass ring. Can you blame them for wanting to ignore the bloodied bodies of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers, the growing disillusionment and opposition to the war at home, and the near-rebellion in the rank and file military?

They set out with one primary goal, and, by gosh, it looks like they're going to get it.

Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.

The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.