Mon Dec 26, 2011 12:47AM GMT
A wave of 16 bomb explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital Baghdad on December 22, 2011, killing 72 people in the worst string of violence in the country in four months.
The United States is creating chaos in Iraq to justify its previous and possibly future presence in the already violence-scarred country, a political expert tells Press TV.
“There is a new fear emerging in Iraq that the country will plunge even more into turmoil and political disequilibrium as the US troops cased in their colors and left behind a country which they helped lay bare to waste and dereliction,” Ismail Salami, an Iranian author and Middle East expert, wrote in an opinion piece published on Press TV on Friday.
He added that the feeling of angst was aggravated, when a string of 16 bomb explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital on Thursday, leaving 72 people dead and 217 others fatally wounded, noting, “Roughly coinciding with the homecoming of the US troops, the incident was opportunistically ascribed by Western observers to the security vacuum created as a result of the withdrawal of the US forces.”
Salami pointed out that some tried to divert attention from the real cause for the acts of terrorism, pointing fingers at Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who had recently been accused by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of orchestrating assassinations and bombings in the country, an allegation he has strongly rejected.
The Iranian author argued that the claim seemed to be a remote plausibility as the Iraqi Interior Ministry had issued an arrest warrant for him on December 18 and that he did not have enough time to engineer these efficiently-organized acts of terrorism, which certainly took a lot of time to orchestrate.
However, Hashemi has, for his part, shifted the blame onto Maliki, saying that he was responsible for the rise of violence in Iraq, implicitly aggrandizing the presence of the US troops.
“Although no one has assumed responsibility for the attacks, military experts say that the level of coordination shows a well-organized planning only available to al-Qaeda in Iraq or more possibly to the US intelligence agencies as Washington has ample reason to demonize Maliki in order to inculcate the idea that the withdrawal of the US troops was a mistake and that their presence was a blessing to the Iraqis and a guarantee for their security,” Salami said.
In 2003, the US invaded Iraq under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction allegedly stockpiled by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, later it was revealed that not only did not the Iraqi regime possess the weapons, but also that the US and British leaders, who had defended the military action, previously knew about their non-existence.
The US military invasion and occupation has left around a million Iraqis killed, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
The last US military convoy left the war-torn country last Sunday.
Soon after the withdrawal of the American military forces, US House Speaker John Boehner claimed that the absence of the troops posed a risk to the Middle Eastern country's future.
Most of the Western media outlets have teamed up to insinuate that Maliki was bringing back the old days of the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the expert reminded.
The prospect of losing its political leverage in Iraq had prompted Washington to gun for “another chance to engage in a new phase of occupation and colonization,” he highlighted.
AS/HN
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