What are we to believe about Omagh?
Friday September 19 2008
THIS week the BBC's 'Panorama' programme revealed that the intelligence services were monitoring mobile phone calls made by the bombing team who were responsible for the Omagh atrocity.
One wonders why there wasn't any action taken to prevent the bombing.
Juxtaposed with these revelations are the reports by reputable journalists in Iraq (e.g. Max Fuller and Robert Fisk), who have uncovered evidence that allied forces have been directly involved in acts of terrorism for the purposes of inciting sectarian divisions between the Iraqi people.
It was widely reported on September 19 2005, for example, that two British soldiers dressed as Iraqis were captured after opening fire on a police station in Basra.
The civilian car they were driving was packed with explosives. They obviously weren't part of an humanitarian relief effort. Apparently the Joint Services Group (JSG) or Force Research Unit (FRU) played a similar role in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Robert Fisk reports being told by an Iraqi that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman.
The man said he was given some basic training in driving and arms use. Later he was told to drive to a crowded area near a mosque.
Once there he was required to phone a certain number in order to verify his position and then, strangely, his car blew up.
He had left his car because he couldn't pick up a signal on his mobile. Thus it was only through luck that he was saved and able to tell the story ('Independent', April 28, 2006).
Robert Fisk noted that he'd heard many similar stories.
And in Iraq, as it was in Northern Ireland, we're meant to believe it is all due to historical sectarian grievances and terrorism for its own sake.
But underlying the fiction we have a murky world where states vie for control over peoples and land and where no atrocity or fabrication is too wicked to contemplate.
LOUIS SHAWCROSS
HILLSBOROUGH, CO DOWN
