French Engineer Abducted by Fake Iraqi Terrorists

Another Day in the Empire

We are expected to believe the Iraqi resistance is not only vicious, but also uninterested in repairing the damage inflicted on its country by the neocon invasion. It runs around abducting Christian peace activists, western journalists, Sudanese and Moroccan embassy employees, and people from countries that opposed Bush’s invasion. On December 5, Bernard Planche, an engineer working for the “little known non-governmental group” AACCESS, was abducted. Planche worked at the Rusafa water treatment plant in eastern Baghdad. It should be noted that AACCESS is involved in “two small rehabilitation projects” financed by the United States Army, according to the New York Times. In short, on the surface, it would appear Planche’s abducting is legitimate, considering Planche worked indirectly for the U.S. Army and the United Nations.
Once again, however, this latest kidnapping was apparently carried out by a “previously unknown armed group,” according to the BBC, sporting yet another absurd name—Surveillance for the Sake of Iraq Brigade. It is curious how the larger, more well-know Iraqi resistance groups such as the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance, the National Front for the Liberation of Iraq, and the Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front do not engage in kidnapping but rather military operations aimed at occupation forces and their Iraqi allies (even the United Nations accepts that people under occupation have a right to resist).
If we are to believe the corporate media, at least some of these kidnappings from ostensibly ad hoc terrorist groups are related to the Iraqi High Tribunal hearing of Saddam Hussein. However, kidnapping and possibly executing foreign workers and peace activists will not sway hand-picked judges in their ultimate decision to lynch Saddam, who after all cooperated with the United States for years, that is until he fell out of favor as client dictators often do.
Obviously, kidnapping and possibly killing innocent journalists, peace activists, and water engineers has a more practical goal—to make the resistance out to be blood-thirsty savages, demented Islamic fanatics determined to kill as many people as possible, both Iraqi and Sudanese, Moroccan, French, British, and assorted others. It makes no sense for the improbably named Surveillance for the Sake of Iraq Brigade to kidnap Bernard Planche, even if he is tenuously linked to the U.S. Army. In Bushzarro world, where Pentagon black ops are conducted in the name of the Iraqi resistance, it makes perfect sense to abduct and threaten to kill an engineer who worked to bring clean water to the Iraqi people.