crossposted from OpEdNews.com
The local Sunni Iraqi leader, sheikh Sattar Abu Reesha, who has been credited as leading the fight gainst Al Qaeda and leading the recruitment of other tribal chieftans and leaders in working with the USA against Al Qaeda was killed, along with a bodyguard, in a bomb blast today.
The Sheikh, credited by General Petraeus as the key leader pulling together other Iraqi tribal chiefs and leaders in ANbar and beyond, shook hands with President Bush just ten days ago. But today, I interviewed one of the few people to actually meet with the sheikh, and the story provided to me, about him, his relationship with the USA, and with the tribal leaders is very different than the one that is widely being reported.
It appears that the Sheikh claimed to be the leader of all the tribes in Iraq, which is total nonsense.
Apparently, the Sunni tribesmen Petraeus has partnered with are former insurgents, often killers, who have decided that, for the time being, it's a good idea to work with the US, to get money and weapons.
Petraeus claimed that we have not been supplying weapons to these "partners." But my source, video journalist, Rick Rowley, who spent almost two months embedded in Iraq with US and Iraqi forces, says that they US gets around this claim, an rules forbidding giving them money for weapons, by making contracts for construction, or clearing a ditch. Rowley filmed the US forces handing over piles of cash. What a suprise to learn that Petraeus has a history of missing weapons and billions of bucks in his time in Iraq.
Rowley, recalling his interview with the sheikh in July, in Amman, told me,
"He's a figurehead. He was a story created by the Americans "a face to put on the American strategy in Anbar. He claimed in his interview that he was head of all the tribes in Iraq, which was absolutely ridiculous. Some said he was a highway man and con artist who sold himself to the Americans. Others said he was real.
"He was the face that was put on Petraeus's story. Petraeus story that the iraqi tribes had turned on Al Qaeda and forced them out."-
According to Rowley, the assassination of one of the most important Iraqi allies the US has, one who has been and promised to continue to be instrumental to the continued success of the Bush/Petraeus surge, proves the lie that Petraeus has made even Anbar safe.
Worse, this appears to be another fiction, like the "Jessica Lynch as hero" fabrication used at the beginning of the war/occupation and the travelling weapons laboratory fiction used to sell the start of the war.
Underneath the lie that we've built a real coalition is the truth, that Sunni insurgents are getting paid millions (one real, bonafide tribal leader in Anbar told Rowley that the US had paid Sheikh Reeshi $75 million for "construction projects."
What kind of genuine alliance and base can be built when the basis is payouts to con men who will happily return to escalating a religious civil war when the time is right, with the weapons and funding of an apparently duped egomaniac general who has told others he would like to run for president?