I found this article in my reading today...I think it helps make a case for the possibility of false-flag style operations and other means to incite
the unrest in Iraq to maintain more US presence there.

Ex-Marine Says He Committed Atrocities
By JOELLE DIDERICH
10/07/05 "AP" -- -- A former U.S. Marine in Iraq alleges that his battalion committed atrocities against Iraqi civilians during the U.S.-led
invasion in 2003, including shooting unarmed protesters.
Jimmy Massey, a staff sergeant who was in the Marines for 12 years and served three months in Iraq before being honorably discharged with
post-traumatic stress syndrome, details the allegations in his book "Kill! Kill! Kill!", written with the French journalist Natasha Saulnier and
published in France.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said Massey's complaints had already been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.
Massey said he was in charge of a platoon in the 3rd Batallion of Regimental Combat Team 7, responsible for setting up checkpoints and providing armed
cover against terrorists and insurgents.
He alleges that over a period of a month and a half in 2003, his platoon killed more than 30 civilians in Iraq.
"We in fact, I feel, escalated the violence," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

Full AP Story
To 27jd:
LOL...very ineresting read again in your reply to my reply to your reply to my....well, you get the idea.
I will answer one question that you asked me directly though: why am I here, if not to prove something, advance an agenda, etc.?
I enjoy being exposed to the differences of opinion that we have in this world. I truly fear that we may be enjoying the last instances of it,
though. Diversity, to me, appears to be an endangered species of thought. Certainly here at ATS it is flourishing!
But a proof, or to prove something, is not something that can be done in this mendium/forum, as the number and length of the threads here amply shows.
I do not expect for a microsecond that something I say here will prove or disprove anything at all, other than that I have an opinion too. So when I
spoke of tactics, it was not describing something I was up to, but rather noticing that this hallmark of a poorly conceived argument springs up alot
on online discussions, on both sides of any question.
The feeling I have is that we all have a common enemy if we love liberty, and that enemy has been at work since long before any of us were born. That
work has already stripped us of the habit of intellectual rigor, ridiculed the expression of the logical progression of ideas, and reduced so many of
us to TV-style lip artists expounding on topics in such a way as to reach more for the cheap laugh, the clever but meaningless retort, and the
rebuttal that basically restates our original undefended opinions, only louder and meaner. Argument can perhaps persuade in some matters, but the
techniques so often employed, even here, are not those of debaters, but of propagandists.
This thread is a good example of that, in that certain members are more fond of restatement of a position than defending it, and to providing
assumptions of the thought processes behind others' posts than dealing with the truly more difficult problem of sorting the wheat from the chaff of
the only evidence we have of the true nature and scope of this story, the admittedly biased and agenda-laden news reports regarding this incident.
I like discussions of issues, and I often do learn things from them that I did not know before. To me that makes ATS a very valuable experiment. My
goal is not to win arguments, but to Deny Ignorance its value in the world wide propaganda matrix that rules over education and thought here and
abroad.
Thanks for taking the time to comment my posts as you have, it was enjoyable and I look forward to reading your posts here and elsewhere on this
board!
[edited to correct punctuation]
[edit on 10/9/05 by without_prejudice]
Mod Edit: Big Quote – Please Review This Link.
Please do not copy and paste entire copyrighted material.
Please use {quote} tags instead of {code} tags.
Thanks.
[edit on 9/10/2005 by Mirthful Me]
[reviewed and edited for content, sorry about the long quote and code tags, still learning the ropes here!

]
[edit on 10/9/05 by without_prejudice]