F.·.W.·. Magazine || 9/11: The Archive

The Five O'Clock Follies

"Precision operations against Anti-Coalition elements and enemies of the Iraqi people"...

What has happened to the Coalition Provisional Authority, also known as the occupying power?

Things are getting worse, much worse in Iraq. Yesterday's horrors proved that. Yet just a day earlier, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, America's deputy director of military operations, assured us that there was only an "uptick" in violence in Iraq.

Not a sudden wave of violence, mark you, not a down-to-earth increase, not even a "spike" in violence - another of the general's favourite expressions. No, just a teeny-weeny, ever-so small, innocent little "uptick". In fact, he said it was a "slight uptick".

Our hands were numb, recording all this, so swiftly did General Kimmitt take us through the little uptick.

A marine vehicle blown off the road near Fallujah, a marine killed, a second attack with small-arms fire on the same troops, an attack on an Iraqi paramilitary recruiting station on the 14th July Road, a soldier killed near Ramadi, two Britons hurt in Basra violence, a suicide bombing against the home of the Hillah police chief, an Iraqi shot at a checkpoint, US soldiers wounded in Mosul ... All this was just 17 hours before Fallujah civilians dragged the cremated remains of a Westerner through the streets of their city.

When someone asked - just a few hours before yesterday's horror - about the deteriorating security in Mosul, General Kimmitt snapped back that this was only "an assessment that you may be making".

When you go to the manicured lawns and villas of the so-called "Green Zone" in Baghdad, you get this odd, weird feeling; that here is a place so isolated, so ostentatiously secure - it is not secure of course, since mortars are regularly fired into the compound - that it has no contact with the outside world. Here the US proconsul. Paul Bremer. lives in Saddam Hussein's former palace. There are fewer than 100 days before he supposedly hands over the "sovereignty" of Iraq to America's own new hand-picked Iraqi government, which will hold elections at an unknown date. And so within the palace walls, the occupying power believes in optimism, progress and political development.

Every week, it is like this. From the hot, dangerous streets of Baghdad with their electricity cuts and gunfire - and an awful lot of "upticks" which never get recorded - we make our way through palisades of concrete drums, US Army checkpoints and searches, into a vast, air-conditioned conference centre, a cavernous Saddamite structure built in 1981 for presidential summits

Next to General Kimmitt often stands Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority who, with his frameless glasses, unsmiling demeanour and his occasional, fearful glances at the general when the latter faces a dodgy question, resembles the kind of doctor who clears his throat and quietly advises his patients to settle their affairs. He almost smiled when General Kimmitt announced his army's intention to conduct "precision operations" against "anti-Coalition elements and enemies of the Iraqi people". But wasn't this all a bit Soviet? Didn't the Red Army conduct operations against "anti-socialist elements and enemies of the Afghan people"?

But there was an interesting twist - horribly ironic in the face of yesterday's butchery - in General Kimmitt's narrative. Why, I asked him, did he refer sometimes to "terrorists" and at other times to "insurgents"? Surely if you could leap from being a terrorist to being an insurgent, then with the next little hop, skip and jump, you become a "freedom-fighter". Mr Senor gave the general one of his fearful looks. He needn't have bothered. General Kimmitt is a much smoother operator than his civilian counterpart. There were, the general explained, the Fallujah version who were insurgents, and then the al-Qa'ida version who attack mosques, hotels, religious festivals and who were terrorists.

So, it seems, there are now in Iraq good terrorists and bad terrorists, there are common-or-garden insurgents and supremely awful terrorists, the kind against which President George Bush took us to war in Iraq when there weren't any terrorists actually here, though there are now. And therein lies the problem. From inside the Green Zone on the banks of the Tigris, you can believe anything. How far can the occupying powers take war-spin before the world stops believing anything they say?

At Wednesday's Five o'Clock Follies, two armed American soldiers stood guard at both doors - watching us, not the approach to the doors - while a backdrop carried a vast shield with the words "Equality, Security, Liberty, Justice". Did I detect, among my colleagues, a quickening of our step as we headed back through the thousands of tons of concrete to the smog and fear of the streets outside? Baghdad may be dangerous. But at least it's on Planet Earth.

Robert Fisk
The Independent, U.K.
April 1, 2004

"Declassified secret service papers reveal that Ted Shackleton, deputy chief of the CIA station in Rome in the 1970's introduced the notorious Licio Gelli - head of the neo-fascist P2 masonic lodge and for years a fugitive in Argentina - to General Alexander Haig, then Nixon's chief of staff, and later, from 1974 to 79, Nato Supreme Commander. P2 was a right-wing shadow government, ready to take over Italy, that included four Cabinet Ministers, all three intelligence chiefs, 48 MPs, 160 military officers, bankers, industrialists, top diplomats and the Army Chief of Staff. After meetings between Gelli, Italian military brass and CIA men in the embassy, Gladio was given renewed blessing - and more money - by Haig and the then head of the National Security Council, Henry Kissinger. Just how those and later funds were spent is a key point in the [Casson] investigation." (William Scobie, The Observer, 18/11/90)

Four programmes on state television (RAI) allege that the CIA paid Lucio Gelli to "forment terrorist activities. "In the first programme someone described simply as "Agent Zero" described how [ex-Swedish Prime Minister Olaf] Palme had been caught in a deal between the CIA and Iran to release American hostages in Tehran. "Palme was a fly in the ointment so we got P2 to rub him out," the agent said. The second programme, which showed the gaunt silhouette of "Agent Zero One", alleged that P2 was not wound up in the mid-1980s, after the arrest of its leader Licio Gelli. "It still exists. It calls itself P7," he said. According to the agent, the lodge is till functioning with branches in Austria, Switzerland and East Germany. "Zero One" has now been revealed by the Italian press to be Dick Brenneke, allegedly a career CIA officer" (Richard Bassett, Times, 24/7/90)

Report: Perle and Feith outlined current Iraq strategy in 96' Defense Plan entitled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm'

Securing the Realm???

Take me to your Grand Master...

Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Hermann Goering

A more modern example of the potential for problems within Masonic lodges is the "P2" incident in Italy. This involved the masonic lodge Propaganda Massonica (recognised by the English Grand Lodge in 1972) and its Master, Licio Gelli. A chance discovery by police involving a financial swindle uncovered a membership of P2 which included 43 MPs (including 3 cabinet ministers), 43 generals, 8 admirals (including all the armed forces chiefs), all of the heads of the security services, and hundreds of public servants and diplomats. A subsequent Parliamentary inquiry established that the lodge was the focus of nothing less than a right wing conspiracy to take over Italy. (Martin Short, Inside the Brotherhood, London: Harper Collins, 1997)

From the early formation of P2, he [Gelli] had the active support and encouragement of the CIA operating in Italy… Excluding Italy there are still branches functioning in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal… Members are also active in Switzerland and the USA. P2 interlocks with the Mafia in Italy, Cuba and the USA. It interlocks with a number of the military regimes of Latin America, and with a variety of groups of neo-fascists. It also interlocks very closely with the CIA. (D Yallop, In Gods Name, Jonathan Cape, London, 1984, p117-8)