"UNKNOWN AMERICANS" FOMENT IRAQ CIVIL WAR

Robert Fisk, via impeccable but unnamed Syrian contacts, brings us this Iraq exclusive:

"I swear to you that we have very good information," my source says, finger stabbing the air in front of him. "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."

Fisk uses an interesting journalistic device to convince readers the information is indeed true: he doubts the veracity of the information but, upon reflection, decides he has heard similar stories so many times there must be something to them:

Impossible, I think to myself. But then I remember how many times Iraqis in Baghdad have told me similar stories.

With the seed planted, Fisk piles on the fertilizer:

"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."

Just who these "Americans" might be, my source did not say. In the anarchic and panic-stricken world of Iraq, there are many US groups - including countless outfits supposedly working for the American military and the new Western-backed Iraqi Interior Ministry - who operate outside any laws or rules. No one can account for the murder of 191 university teachers and professors since the 2003 invasion - nor the fact that more than 50 former Iraqi fighter-bomber pilots who attacked Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war have been assassinated in their home towns in Iraq in the past three years.

Fisk contends the US is sending out these involuntary suicide bombers to create strife between Shia and Sunni groups, the ultimate aim being to start a civil war. The US thinking that if Shia and Sunni are at each others' throat they won't have time to kill US soldiers. Right. More of the same old shit from Fisk.