Dr. Frank's What's-it

The timing and circumstances surrounding the various videoed beheadings and kidnappings of neutral and sympathetic victims is, put kindly, highly suspicious.

At worst, it's an example of Coalition psychological operations at its most heinous and morally reprehensible, clearly intended to discredit the nationalist Iraqi resistance as irrational Islamists.

There is nothing wrong about rationally evaluating the likelihood that stories behind the deaths are being fabricated for propaganda purposes.

An interesting pattern, incidentally, is developing in the timing of Coalition disclosures, innocent victim propaganda, and "Zarqawi" motivational videos.

They seem to come out exactly when the Coalition is in media trouble.

Abu Gharib headlines taking over the news and making the occupation look illegitimate?

Put out the Nick Berg beheading video.

American Marine coldly shoots an injured prisoner in the head, making the occupation look illegitimate?

Find Margaret Hassan dead.

The game is about creating a "moral relativity" argument as propaganda tool to counter any instance of news adverse to the Coalition and its activities.

There's plenty more examples if this.

Anytime the Coalition is caught red-handed doing the utterly illegitimate and inexcusable, a well-timed video tape or discovery of Islamist terorists doing something worse surfaces.

Oh my God, Arya: it all fits! Sounds you and Robert Fisk were made for each other.

I'm wondering at what point you will actually provide a substantive response.

So far your primary response strategy has been to side-step criticism by mocking critical remarks with one-liners.

Once or twice, it's funny. But is that all you got?

If you have no substantive reply to the criticisms you find so objectionable, as they say in the legal business, "res ipsa loquitur."

It speaks for itself.

Here's my substantive response: you and Robert Fisk appear to think it likely that the US government kidnapped Margaret Hassan, shot her in the head, disemboweled her, and chopped off her hands and lower legs just so they could blame it on the fine and noble "resistance." I think that's nuts. I don't know how much more substantive I can get here.

Robert Fisk never said such a thing.

Neither did I.

There are plenty of other plausible explanations for her death which are still consistent with the "U.S.-is-fabricating-facts-on-the-ground" hypothesis.

Margaret Hassan could have been killed by anyone and by anything.

In fact, it doesn't even matter how she died.

What is at issue is the Pentagon concocting a relatively detailed summary of the circumstances of her death, including the identity and political motivations of her killers, out of thin air.

And then publicizing their findings, including the physical evidence of her destroyed body, at a politically opportune time.

It's not like there's no precedent for our government (or any other) lying to its own constituency and the rest of the world regarding key facts and circumstances in times of war.

What is nuts is this:

That you don't see any reason to suspect the veracity of clearly gratuitous and self-serving representations and purported disclosures by the military made at times of heightened media criticism of the military's operations in Iraq.

Well, my friend, in fact I believe that was indeed the coy implication of Fisk's article, if not of your defense of it.

"Margaret Hassan could have been killed by anyone or by anything." Old age? A meteor? Spontaneous combustion? A bad clam? The Mummy's Curse? No reason to think her death might have had something to do with those guys who kidnapped, executed, and mutilated all those other hostages? Oh, right, they were all made up, too. Plus, those guys wouldn't do such a thing to such a nice lady. They only execute and mulilate the bad guys, as I understand.

Oh, I get it.

You see the need to expose the "coy implications" of what Pulitzer Prize winning journalists like Robert Fisk have to say.

But anybody who seeks to examine and analyze the unstated "implications" of disclosures made by military intelligence bodies is "nuts."

Sounds like the same logic that buttresses your view that there must only be two rational explanations for Margaret Hassan's death:

A) Evil non-Iraqi terrorists in Iraq who just kill nice people for the sake of killing nice people, or

B) Meteors.

And, by the way, don't get me wrong.

I don't think you can dismiss, by ANY means, the notion that any country, including the U.S., and definitely including Israel, would sacrifice a few innocent lives to acheive its greater objectives.

At the very least, even if they were not complicit in the innocent individual's death, they would not think twice about fabricating the circumstances of the death for propaganda purposes.

That may or may not be the case of Margaret Hasson, but the notion is certainly not something I am prepared to write-off as crazy.

Actually, if you think its "nuts" to even think the thought, you're the one who's crazy.

All right, man: maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree on which one of us is crazier.

Cynicism about miltary intelligence methods notwithstanding, I still believe it to be far more likely that MH's murderers were some jihadi group rather than the US Army. Call me naive, or crazy, or whatever...

We'll agree to disagree.

But don't you wonder where these crazy "jihadi beheadings" were prior to the Bush administration taking office?

There certainly is no precedent whatsoever for any activity of this style in Iraq.

Saddam's Stalinist oppression, eight years of war with Iran, the Gulf War, and a decade of sanctions never produced the slightest trace of this sort of ridiculous, exaggerated Islamist activity.

But suddenly once the Bush administration starts running the show all of these characatured videos and beheadings come out?

And timed always to distract attention right when the U.S. war effort is in hot water over some scandal or other?

It's cooked up, I tell you.

Personally, I don't think it's grunts in the U.S. Army randomly shooting sympathetic figures just to discredit the Iraqis as terrorists.

I think Israeli intelligence is doing the dirty work and leaving obvious clues with winks and nods for U.S. Marines to find.

All the U.S. does is concoct and transmit the phoney story, maybe with Israel's help in developing the narrative.

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/5248

Amir Taheri?

Benador Associates?

You must be joking.

Benador Associates is a front for neo-conservative propaganda.

It was created a few weeks after 9-11 with the help of former CIA chief James Woolsey.

Other Benador "clients" include Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Alexander Haig.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/27/RV155399.DTL

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19651

Nevertheless, it does seem as though there was a whole lot of beheading going on, even before the Bush administration took office.

This is ridiculous, unacademic propaganda.

"In 680, the Prophet's favorite grandson, Hussein bin Ali, had his head chopped off in Karbala"

"In 1821, the Qajar king of Persia..."

"In 1842, the Afghans..."

Obviously Taheri did not read much about the Mongols or Tsarist Russia or the French Revolution or Nazi Germany for that matter.

Gruesome murders, including beheadings, are hardly exclusive to Muslim history.

And I suggest you fact-check Taheri's allegations of more recent beheadings.

Some of them are baldly false.

Shapour Bakhtiar, an Iranian nationalist icon (whom I respect highly), was indeed murdered for his politics, but he was stabbed in Paris, and most assuredly NOT beheaded.

This is easily verifiable and common knowledge for alleged "experts" in Iranian politics. It's like saying JFK was beheaded.

Taheri (and the rest of the Benador crowd) is not a reputable source and his facts and statements are easy to discredit.

OK, so I guess that leaves the Israelis, then.

Just to tie this back into the original topic, there is NO precedent, prior to the Bush administration taking office, of unknown Islamist terrorist organizations in Iraq or in any of its neighboring countries randomly abducting aid workers, foreigners, Iraqi civilians, and other innocents, and beheading them in front of a video cameras in this fashion.

No precedent for it whatsoever.

These well-timed videos, stories, disclosures, etc. are war-time psychological operations conducted by the Coalition to discredit the motives of Iraqi opposition..

'''OK, so I guess that leaves the Israelis, then.'''''

Not quite sure what you mean by that, but I assure you the Israelis are active in Iraq.

No, I thought you were saying that the Israelis had done the kidnappings and executions and mutilations, and had left clues for the US Army to find.

We *are* back where we started, it seems. However, I'm afraid you have failed to convince me that Margaret Hassan et al. were murdered by the Coalition.

Israeli intelligence might have a role in the operations.

Probably not without complicity of U.S. intelligence.

Anyway, I don't buy that crazed Islamists mysteriously appearing in Iraq are chopping off heads for the video camera.

Sorry.

OK Arya: I believe that you believe.

See.

Wasn't that easy?