A Reuters story published on Tuesday mentions the next false flag incident to move the war against Iran forward.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s surprise visit to Baghdad this month came after U.S. intelligence showed Iran-backed Shi’ite militias positioning rockets near bases housing U.S. forces, according to two Iraqi security sources.
He told Iraq’s top brass to keep the militias, which are expanding their power in Iraq and now form part of its security apparatus, in check, the sources said. If not, the U.S. would respond with force.
“We don’t want anyone interfering in their country (Iraq), certainly not by attacking another nation inside of Iraq,” said Pompeo’s State Department.
Left out of this is the fact the US illegally invaded Iraq and continues to have occupation troops and bases in the country.
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In December, the Iraqi parliament demanded the US take its troops and go home after Trump made a surprise visit. He didn’t talk with Iraqi officials and instead engaged in a photo op with troops.
Pompeo’s warning centers on the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella group comprised primarily of Shia militias. Groups within the PMF include the Badr Organization, the Hezbollah Brigades, the Martyrs of Sayyid Brigades, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Jund al-Imam, and others.
The US focus on the PMF groups is not because they are a threat to US occupation forces, but rather because their political influence is growing. The US left the task of reining in the PMF and merging it into Iraqi’s army to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr won the most seats during the May 2018 election.
“Al-Sadr’s alliance comprising of communists and secular Iraqis has announced it is fiercely opposed to any foreign interference in Iraq—whether Tehran’s or Washington’s,” notes GlobalSecurity.org.
Also ignored by Reuters and the rest of the corporate war propaganda media is the fact Shiite political and paramilitary groups have long demanded the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq and had previously engaged in armed resistance to the occupation.
According to The Atlantic, the PMF groups are Iranian proxies and “would be an effective tool for further escalation—and for reviving an old narrative that casts U.S. troops as an occupying force in the country.”
Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic are telling us the idea that US troops in Iraq are there illegally and this is opposed by the vast majority of Iranians, both Shia and Sunni is basically “old” and irrelevant.
Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the liberal magazine, supported the invasion of Iraq and believed the neocon lies about its illusory weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s fairy tale relationship with al-Qaeda.
Shia targeting of US bases and its embassy in Baghdad are not a recent development, as The Atlantic notes elsewhere.
Late last year the Trump administration issued a warning. “The United States will hold the regime in Tehran accountable for any attack that results in injury to our personnel or damage to United States Government facilities. America will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of American lives.”
In other words, any attempt to evict the US from the country will be considered an attack on the US by Iran.
On Tuesday it was reported a top British general, Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, deputy commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, expressed his opinion the Shia militia groups do not pose a threat.
“No—there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” Ghika said during a video briefing.
“I think it’s important to say that many of them are compliant and we have seen no change in that posture since the recent exchange between the United States and Iran,” he added.
Sec. Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton—rumored to be on the way out of the Trump administration (we can only hope)—will continue throwing out red herrings to augment their fallacious arguments in favor of killing thousands of Iranians.
The corporate propaganda media will continue reporting skewered facts in a simplistic fashion as we wend our way to a war with an unknown outcome.
The CIA long ago made sure the corporate media is a welcoming conduit for endless propaganda, lies, misleading simplification, and scary fairy tales taken in by a gullible and intellectually lazy public.
Article posted with permission from Kurt Nimmo
