And what next? Iraq is a country of many different groups but the majority are Shia Muslims. A simple majority vote in this country would produce a Shia leadership, something the U.S. is unlikely to accept. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) is the body of exiles which is primed to become the new leadership: a "murderous bunch of thugs" including the General who led the Anfal campaign against the Kurds and the massacre of 5,000 at Halabja. The U,S, and U,K, are aiming to remove from power someone who "kills his own people" by killing a vast number of his own people, in order to install other men who kill their own people.

I met a Canadian journalist a couple of days ago who had just come from Hungary, where a secretive training camp has been set up to train Iraqi exiles for an overthrow force. Many of these are INC members, trained, funded and equipped by the CIA. The U.S. has repeatedly lied about the function of this force, saying for example that they were to be translators or to perform civil administration duties - in which case it is unclear why they needed to have prior military experience. Mustafa Ziya, the leader of the Turkmen Front, said he had been told "to recruit soldiers."

Each "volunteer" is paid a $3,000 signing "bonus" and no background checks have been made because the U.S. is in a hurry. The training is in Hungary, in an interim staging base for Bosnia, because the U.S. didn't want to admit the trainees within its own borders.