PUPPETS' SQUABBLES SHARPEN

by our Arab Affairs Correspondent

RESISTANCE fighters are hammering US and puppet regime troops throughout occupied Iraq as the American authorities and their puppets scrabble around frantically in search of a new “legitimacy”, following the collapse of talks designed to impose a new puppet constitution on the country.

Though the puppet parliament failed to agree the draft it is still going to a referendum next month where it will undoubtedly be rejected unless the poll is rigged by the US military government.

Saddam Hussein’s show-trial has been brought forward to 19th October in a bid to rally Shia opinion behind the quislings and away from the banner of maverick Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr. American troops have handed over control of the Shia holy city of Najaf to puppet army forces loyal to top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who supports the American “federal” plan that would divide Iraq into three sectarian statelets.

But attempts to fan the flames of sectarian hatred were dampened by the admission this week that the Baghdad Bridge disaster was an accident that had nothing to do with Sunni extremist provocateurs.

Partisans drove the Americans out of the western Iraqi town of Al Qaim yet again last week and are battling to drive them out of their remaining pockets in Talafar after a week of street battles. In Talafar, a resistance stronghold, the Americans have resorted to chemical weapons, having failed to crush the resistance with their bombs, rockets, and helicopter gunships.

In Baghdad partisans killed a puppet general and a colonel in separate ambushes and rained mortar fire on the “Green Zone” US military compound in the heart of the city, sending plumes of smoke over the capital.

But the most spectacular raid of the week was a daring attack on the puppet Interior Ministry on Monday that killed two guards and wounded many more in a 15-minute action. Over 30 partisans in 10 cars carried out the dawn attack on the heavily-guarded building.

Near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, huge fires raged on a major oil pipeline after saboteurs set pools of leaking oil ablaze. It is the second major fire in a week on the pipeline, which runs from the Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Elsewhere, guerrillas bombed a pipeline carrying oil from an oil-field near Khanaqin on the Iranian border, interrupting a source of crude to Baghdad’s Dora refinery.

The quisling Iraqi regime has now confirmed that the Baghdad Bridge disaster that led to deaths of over a thousand Shia pilgrims last week was an accident. RMT condemns Hatfield trial ‘debacle’

to blame

Earlier a highly placed source in the quisling “Iraqi Interior Ministry” confirmed resistance claims that the puppet police were to blame for the fatal stampede during a million-strong march to a shrine in northern Baghdad.

Fourteen members of the “shock force” police have been arrested following witness statements that they had panicked the crowd crossing a bridge over the Tigris river by shouting that suicide bombers were about to blow themselves up.

The sectarian militias of the Kurdish feudal chiefs in the north and the Shia Badr Brigades have their own political agenda. But the bulk of the poorly-trained puppet regime’s forces are drawn from men desperate for work. Needless to say the morale of these American auxiliaries is rock bottom. Informed sources within the US-installed Iraqi regime have told the resistance media that the percentage of desertions from the puppet army in July 2005 was higher than the rate for the entire previous year.

The source – a brigadier general in the “Interior Ministry” – said that more than 800 Iraqi puppet soldiers fled or deserted while on duty in July, among them 70 officers.

US imperialism faces disaster in New Orleans and debacle in Iraq. Millions of people in America, Britain and across the world will be marching for peace of 24th September. Millions will be demanding the unconditional withdrawal of all Anglo-American forces from Iraq. The Iraqi people are fighting for freedom and independence. Let them hear it in the White House and Downing Street.

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Editorial

The American dream

THE HARROWING SCENES from Louisiana have shown the world the true face of the American capitalist system. While those who could afford it were advised to flee, those who couldn’t were left to face the wrath of Hurricane Katrina without food, medical supplies or hope of immediate rescue.

Poor whites and blacks were herded into the New Orleans Superdrome and left to fend for themselves for days. Others were left stranded in their homes scrabbling for food and water amongst the devastation.

Thousands of Americans have died and over half a million are now refugees in their own homeland. Many lives could have been saved had the authorities responded in time to the plight of the victims.

In the face of mounting anger from US unions and the black community the Bush administration has at last stepped up efforts to evacuate New Orleans and the other towns along the Gulf Coast hit by the hurricane. Washington has had to accept aid from its Nato allies and the United Nations it officially despises.

When natural disasters hit socialist countries the imperialist media doesn’t hesitate to try and score cheap propaganda points to puff up the capitalist system. Imperialist aid, the little that it is, is presented as selfless sacrifice. The plight of starving Ethiopians in the 1980s was blamed on the Mengistu government at the time. The disastrous storms and floods in Democratic Korea in the 1990s were also used to attack north Korea’s socialist system despite the fact that the DPRK’s emergency services ensured that rations and medical supplies were promptly and equitably despatched.

But the socialist countries and those President Bush calls the “axis of evil” have responded today to the plight of the American people on a principled basis. People’s China has donated $5 million, Cuba has offered over a thousand doctors and 26 tonnes of medicine. Venezuela has pledged $5 million, a million barrels of petrol and 200 relief workers and Iran is ready to send contributions via the Red Crescent.

Stung by the criticism at home, the Bush administration has been eager to divert attention away from its own incompetence and indifference by highlighting the looting and violence that inevitably followed once New Orleans was abandoned by the forces of law and order. This in turn is used to justify the order to shoot all looters on sight given to the returning police and troops whose first priority, it seems, has been to secure private property and stores, rather than seek out survivors.

Now some apologists for the Bush regime have taken to blaming the people of New Orleans for their own woes. While it is true that the city lies below sea level and is virtually surrounded by water that’s hardly the fault of its citizens, many of them descendants of the black slaves who built it in the first place.

For years warnings about the need to improve the city’s sea defences had been ignored. While billions of dollars are easily found for the war in Iraq requests for money to strengthen the dykes were ignored. No organised effort was made to evacuate the poor, the sick and infirm in the days before the hurricane struck.

We are endlessly told that capitalism works. Indeed it does. But only for the rich.

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