Samarra bombing: Lax measures or plotting?

02/28/06 "ICH" -- -- The events of the last week have created considerable uncertainty among Iraq-watchers about what is actually taking place on the ground. It is increasingly difficult to know who is generating the violence and why. Particularly puzzling, is trying to identify the motives behind the destruction of the Golden Dome Mosque and the massive reprisals which occurred with such astonishing speed that they seemed to be pre-arranged.

And why were so many of those who were killed …“shot, knifed, garroted or suffocated by plastic bags over their heads”. (Washington Post) Many others were killed gangland-style with hands bound behind their backs and a gunshot wound to the head.
Is this the method of killing that we would normally expect from rampaging mobs, or is it more like a deliberate campaign of terror designed to spread fear throughout the community.

In Max Fuller’s seminal article, “For Iraq, ‘The Salvador-Option, becomes Reality”, Fuller points out that the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s death squads were, in fact, trained by agents from the CIA who had honed their skills in Vietnam and El Salvador. (Recently even the New York Times has admitted that these groups received American training) Fuller sees the same pattern appearing in Iraq as in other American-backed counterinsurgency operations. He says:

“In Iraq the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existing state, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phase consists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector of society.”