Al Qaeda or Al-CIA-duh?

Rory's Note: Whenever I hear an atrocity blamed on Al Qaeda my internal crap-detector invariably changes the phrase to Al-CIA-duh. Seems so again. I found this and thought to send it on in its original form. The English may not be perfect but it seems Pakistanis are far more alert to this kind of thing:

What Was Mysterious Activity Going on in the Marriott Hotel Islamabad by United States Marines?

Pakistan Daily, Sunday, 21 September 2008

12:18 www.daily.pk

Marriott Hotel has now become a ghost house which was yesterday the most beautiful and prestigious hotels in the Islamabad. While the condemnation of the blasts and the deaths and the loss of property is going on from all the quarters, some intriguing news is also pouring in.

After the blast, mysteriously fire was started at the fourth and fifth floors. It was said that this fire was the result of gas pipeline burst running through the hotel. The million dollar question is that was the gas pipeline not running through the other floors? Why the fire broke out from the fourth and fifth flours? That is the question which perhaps holds the key to the mystery as why the hotel was targeted yesterday, in which more than 60 people died including many foreigners.

Though it would never get confirmed but the fire on the fifth and fourth floor of the hotel broke out because those flours were housing the mysterious steel boxes under the heavy guard of United States marines and no one including the Pakistani security forces and the security men of the hotel were allowed to go near with the them. These boxes were shifted inside the hotel when the Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

It is said that one member of parliament Mumtaz Alam who belongs to the PPP, the ruling party was there eye witnessed the whole scene when the white truck of US embassy came to the gate of Marriot Hotel and US marines themselves unloaded the steel boxes from the trucks and shifted them to the fourth and fifth floors without passing through them the scanners at the entrance of the hotels. When the truck was there, all the entrance and the exit passage way to the hotels were closed.

And now this blast has occurred at the Marriott, while that mysterious activity was going on.

Thousands of Iraqis protest against the United States

NAJAF, Iraq, April 9.—Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis demonstrated in various cities in protest at the occupation of their country by the U.S. forces.

According to AFP, people who took to the streets of Najaf, south of Baghdad, shouted slogans against the United States on the fourth anniversary of the fall of the government of Saddam Hussein.

“No, no to the United States. Yes, yes to freedom!” “We will die, but we won’t give up,” were the slogans most heard, while U.S. flags were set on fire.

Many placards bore slogans against the United States and its president, George W. Bush, like “Down with Bush!” “Down with the United States!”

Footage taken from a helicopter by the public television channel showed a human tide with thousands of Iraqi flags. “In four years of occupation, our sons were murdered and our women widowed,” explained Ahmed al Mayahie, aged 39, who joined the protest from his city, Basra (550 km south of Baghdad).

“The occupiers say that Iraq was liberated. What liberty? There is only destruction. We do not want their liberation. We are asking them to leave our land,” he added.

Translated by Granma International



YouTube Link

Here is a 6 minute video of selected clips from a programme that aired in June, highlighting the difficulties western media organisations and journalists face in Iraq.

US Army Desertions on the Rise

WASHINGTON.—Desertions and other unauthorized absences of soldiers from the U.S. Army have considerably increased in the last four years, according to The New York Times.

In 2006, 3,196 soldiers left the army, a total showing an increase since 2004, when 2,357 U.S. soldiers fled from active service.

That trend in military units led to thousands of court martials during the period, involving both recent recruits and veterans from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, the daily reported, quoted by PL.

Military sources state that court martials for desertion have increased since the start of the war on Iraq in March 2003.

From 2002 to 2006, the annual average for abandoning one’s duty tripled in relation to the five years from 1997 to 2002 to reach approximately 6% of conscripts, from a 2% in previous samples.

According to Dr. Thomas Grieger, a U.S. Marines psychiatric expert, the majority of the soldiers were psychologically pressured by the hazardous course of the war in the Middle East and many of them refused to return to the battlefront.

Grieger cited the case of a rookie sergeant who chopped off his trigger finger with a hatchet to avoid his mobilization.

Translated by Granma International