Liberation Iraq And The INC
US Pro-War PR-Site And The Iraqi National Congress Site One And The Same

(C) 2003 Iowans For Peace
Author: Karen Pease
daystar_setting@myself.com
Visit http://www.IowansForPeace.org/writing/liberationiraq.html for the latest version of this file.

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(Note: This file current as of January 8, 2003. The web is subject to change at a moment's notice.)

You may remember a recent report about a group being formed that calls itself the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq". This group is basically composed of right-wing Americans who want war with Iraq, and is designed to, given its description, be a PR agency. Their web site, www.liberationiraq.org, has a nice, plain, "under construction" look to it currently. Assuredly with all of the heavy hitters on board, it will eventually be your typical slick doctored press release site.

However, playing around with the site, I noticed something interesting. A reverse DNS lookup on the site was returning the name "salam2u.com". After checking out the site, it is a site in Arabic designed for Iraqi exiles worldwide, that posts news articles. So, a PR group's site is being hosted on a site that's already providing "news"? Becoming more curious, I tried connecting to the website's IP address alone. A third site came up.

That of the Iraqi National Congress.

Do any of you remember who the Iraqi National Congress is? They're a group that the US gave almost 100 million dollars to in 1998 alone, to help overthrow Saddam Hussein, but has done little more with it than lobby to continue its own funding. They have virtually no support inside Iraq itself, as they're all long-time exiles. The head of the INC, Ahmed Chalabi, was an Iraqi banker who fled Jordan shortly before he was convicted of embezzlement there. Just last year, the US temporarily suspended all aid to the INC for "financial mismanagement".

Then, I ran into this article (halfway down). It seems that the Iraqi National Congress is being granted a new 8 million dollars in funding for "propaganda". Well, it looks like it has already begun. And seeing how liberationiraq.org is targetedat Americans (compared to the already existant Salam2u.com which is targetted at Iraqi exiles), the target of this money from our own government will be us. Of course we should expect that by now. As it's been said many times recently: They're selling War.

We're not buying.

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