The CIA's Tough Guy Tries to Tame Iraq

Without a doubt, the most under-reported news story of the past month has been the ascension to power of the USA’s newest Puppet Who Kills (PWK), Dr Iyad Allawi, as its appointed interim Prime Minister of Iraqnam. Apparently it took a long time for them to find a man with a past as dark and vicious as needed for the job, yet one who wore a suit, instead of their previous PWK, Saddam Hussein, who often donned military outfits.

Their perfect candidate was quick to assert his power. Even before he officially issued decrees, to show what he was made of before he assumed the position, he declared he would not hesitate to close down TV, radio stations, and newspapers that “support insurgents,” seize property, impose martial law, delay elections, impose curfews, cut off telephone service, and, according to his Defense Minister, even chop off hands and heads, if necessary, to restore and enforce justice!

These are very grave proposals, and must give us pause as to what kind of a “democratic Iraq” PWK Allawi intends to first organize, and then rule over. But most disturbing of all are the persistent reports that Allawi has already demonstrated this resolve, first by personally shooting seven men, and then using an axe to chop off another’s hand.

I first heard of this story only last week, when visiting “Taking Aim”, the extremely informative and always worthwhile radio website of long-time activist and investigative reporters Ralph Schoenman and Myra Shone, at Taking Aim - with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone ( Allawi: The New Butcher of Baghdad). If you want a weekly dose of Reality that will shake all your preconceived ideas of what’s going on, tune in once a week and be surprised, if not stunned!

I tried to find original sources, and at least two or three individuals who witnessed the specific charges: that he executed seven men in one prison, in military execution style, and then, at a second site, possibly a police station, chopped off another’s hand with an axe. To date, the best accounts and most reliable witnesses I’ve found are the following.

First, at Rocinante, a website maintained by one David Peterson, who describes himself as an “archivist/researcher, (who) points out the striking, the instructive, the damning - and the inspiring.”

The articles cited as the original sources for these allegations come from a prestigious Australian reporter, Paul McGeough, under this headline:

Sydney Morning Herald, July 17, 2004 Saturday First Edition

NEWS AND FEATURES; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Iraqi leader shot inmates in cold blood, say witnesses. Americans present at executions.

EXCLUSIVE BYLINE: Paul McGeough, Chief Herald Correspondent in Baghdad

Now, Paul McGeough is no ordinary reporter. He has excellent credentials based on his journalism, and he was previously a part owner of the newspaper he now works for as an overseas correspondent, presently writing from Baghdad. And, precisely because the truth is more likely to emerge from people on the ground, we should be more inclined to trust those who are there, people such as McGeough and Robert Fisk, for they have made contact with local people and can get information that will never come from official sources, such as our military or the state.

Another good source of a more complete story is Our Media Kills a Troubling Story that the Rest of the World Saw, by Joshua Holland, on a page from Vancouver’s Indymedia.

Indymedia sites are excellent fact-checkers, and not likely to knowingly publish materially that is untrue or incorrect. In this article, Holland quotes from Scotland’s prestigious, conservative, award-winning Sunday Herald that “Australia’s Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation “because they are written by a credible journalist, [Foreign Minister Alexander] Downer's responsibility is to get the truth from the Australian embassy in Baghdad and from the Government of the United States. It's important that these matters are clarified.”

Here’s Joshua Holland’s citation from the original paper that started this chain of events:

“Here’s how Australia’s leading daily, the Sydney Morning Herald broke it on July 17th: ‘Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.’

‘They say the prisoners – handcuffed and blindfolded – were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum- security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center…. The Prime Minister’s office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the center and he did not carry a gun. But the informants told the newspaper that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister’s personal security team watched in stunned silence ... ’”

This same PWK Allawi has since announced the re-introduction of the death penalty into Iraq law, without amnesty for murderers! Now he is either psychotic, or a blissfully self-deceived lying idiot for condemning himself! And what of the four “Americans” from the PM’s personal security team, mercenaries at US $1500/per day?

A few US media, including Newsweek and the NY Times, did pick up the first reports of this, but it was quickly dropped afterward, without follow-up.

On 26 July, “Iraq’s New SOB” appeared in Newsweek, and don’t miss the related story, “We Pray the Insurgents Will Achieve Victory” when you go there.

In the NY Times it ran as “ A Tough Guy Tries to Tame Iraq” on 11 July, in a story by Dexter Philkins, and then disappeared. Once or twice the media referred to it in the week following as “allegations” or “rumours,” in spite of McGeough’s insistence on his meeting with three multiple witnesses, on separate occasions all apart from one another, who all gave credible first person accounts that agreed in details, a most telling fact.

The fact is that all the world except the US agrees these are very serious charges, in fact, they are war crimes, and must be investigated to determine if true or not. Yet little or nothing has come of attempts to look further into this. Instead, seven weeks after PWK Allawi assumed Saddam’s cloak, he’s chosen to join the assault on Najaf, and crush Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi followers.

Can civil war be far behind?