US plans to have more forces in Iraq provocative: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian in Washington DC, about Iraq rejecting the need for the deployment of foreign forces on its soil after the US announced a plan to station a contingent of special forces there.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: So did the US commander in chief forget to coordinate with the Iraqis before announcing their intention to have another couple of 100 special ops personnel visit their country or do you think it is because Iraq has no say about its sovereignty at the moment?

Tarpley: I certainly believe that Iraq should have the final say but I think we are dealing with a kind of a planned provocation here, and the provocateur is Ashton Carter, the secretary of defense of the United States, the boss of the Pentagon. I think he is a troublemaker.

We have to remember that this government is highly factionalized and that we have warmonger cliques and we have other people who are more loyal to the constitutional chain of command. When I first heard Ashton Carter make that announcement to the House Committee, House of Representatives here in the capital, I actually wondered had he cleared that with Obama? In other words is that just Ashton Carter doing what he wanted to do because normally the president would make a statement like that?

Now as soon as Carter talked about sending more forces, Prime Minister Abadi said ‘we do not need them and you have to ask us.’ Then today we have had this Colonel Steve [Warren] who is the spokesperson for the US operation in Iraq repeating the same demands, in other words for a unilateral deployment without consultation and it looks to me like that clique is attempting to cause trouble and the clique I am referring to is General David Petraeus, General John Allen and probably Ashton Carter now, we can count him as one of these people, that they are trying to embarrass Prime Minister Abadi.

Now if I could, behind all this yesterday in the Washington Post we had a very interesting front page article that Iraqis believe that the United States is secretly allied to ISIS (Daesh) and supports ISIS and they quote some interesting people saying, ‘we have seen the US delivering water, ammunition to ISIS’ and the Washington Post of course says that nobody believes it or Steve Warren says nobody in the West buys this but they claim that it has been put out as a lie by Iran. Now I am in the West and I think the charge that the US is playing footsie with ISIS is absolutely true. It is based on facts. It is not a conspiracy. Washington Post is the only people who believe this, are Iran and Iraqis who are - they say - racist against the United States.

One commander that the Washington Post quotes says ISIS now is so weak that if the US pulled out support ISIS would collapse and I think that is actually true. We have just had another reference today in a White House briefing to the famous 98-mile Jarabulus corridor and how that needs to be closed. But I would just also offer what is possibly going on here. We know that Saudi Arabia and Turkey bribe people and I think there is some possibility that what the US is doing to support ISIS is actually people who are running a criminal operation on the side, in other words they are getting bribed either by Saudi Arabia or Turkey or both to try to keep ISIS going in some of these areas. It is kind of a Catch-22, if you have ever read that, where people who are waging war also engage in a criminal enterprise. So that is what I see.

Press TV: Well the Iraqi popular forces have pledged that they will combat any US troops deployed to their country. With Abadi’s comments today, what consequences are awaiting the American forces and then if these consequences do actually occur, is it something that is being called for?

Tarpley: I believe you mentioned there are probably 3,300 US forces already there, there are some advisers, there are special forces who work with the Kurdish forces both on the Syrian side and on the Iraqi side - well Peshmerga, PKK and YPG - with the YPG being the most effective in my estimation.

So I think what Abadi is saying is that he wants to be asked and he should be asked. I read in what he says. He is not saying ‘we never want any help from anybody’ but he is saying that he wants to be asked and I would ask him and I would do that confidentially. I would not make these announcements in the way that Ashton Carter did.

The party that I represent is the Tax Wall Street Party. We have been calling for the firing of Ashton Carter for months. He is simply a bungler, he is a kind of neo-con, Utopian, pedant. He is Dr. Strangelove and he is associated with this policy of phony war, that they pretend to wage war against ISIS and they do not really do it and that is a fact. That is not a conspiracy. So the answer would be, purge the people from the government here starting with Carter who are devoted to maintaining ISIS.

We have to remember General David Petraeus is the founder of ISIS right back in the days of Zarqawi in 2006. So Petraeus looks at that terror organization as his baby. He wants to keep it. Other governments should refuse to deal with somebody like Ashton Carter who is so compromised with that policy.  

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