Shortly after 9/11 George Bush proclaimed that “The terrorists hate us because they’re jealous of our way of life”.

This “King George’s Axiom” was part of the pretext to invade and occupy Afghanistan and later, Iraq. Now it’s being applied to the kidnap/murder of Margaret Hassan, longtime aid worker and critic of the US and British policies in Iraq.

Since the imperialists have no proof that insurgents killed Hassan, they’re relying on a variation of “King George’s Axiom” to conclude that they must have killed her. It goes like this: “Since the terrorists are jealous of our (the western capitalist) way of life and since the resistance in Iraq is made up of nothing but terrorists, Margaret Hassan was therefore kidnapped and murdered by Iraqi insurgent terrorists because they were jealous of her white skin and western upbringing.”

It’s that stupid, really. It’s a monument to propaganda that so many in the US, including many who say they are against the brutal occupation, suck it all down without even challenging it.



There is no evidence or proof that the Iraqi resistance had anything to do with it. If there were the US rulers would be parading it around like a trophy.

When detectives can’t find any hard evidence for a murder they look for a motive. Here the motive is a fallacy.

The Iraqi resistance has a fairly consistent record of kidnapping and killing people who it views as spies and lackeys for the US and its proxy, Iyad Alawi. Since the majority of these kidnappings and killings are politically motivated what would the resistance have to gain politically by kidnapping and murdering Margaret Hassan? Nothing.

If anyone had a motive to kill her it was Bush & Co and the Alawi Government.

Everyone knew that the November 2004 invasion of Falluja would be an extremely bloody affair. To the US high level planners, the burning question became: “How do we pull this off without looking real bad, without turning the majority of the US public against the occupation of Iraq?”

To answer this question all we need to do is consider Bush’s record of manipulating public opinion via deception over the past four years. It becomes obvious that killing Hassan at the right moment (was it just an coincidence that she was killed right when the invasion began?) and blaming “the terrorist insurgents” was the perfect way to refocus public attention from the atrocities of the invasion of Falluja to “the atrocities of the insurgents”.

Killing Hassan and blaming it on the insurgents served to demonize them further, which in turn provided a necessary excuse for the massacre in Falluja (and other cities in Iraq).

The US imperialist strategy of demonizing a country to provide an excuse to invade it, conquer it, enslave its workers, etc has been employed many times throughout US history and it is well documented. Read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” for starts.

Consider some of the other lies that the US has been promoting about the resistance. The resistance in Falluja in particular, was supposed to be composed of mostly foreign fighters. But the truth is, after about a week of intense fighting, only about 5% of the prisoners and the dead insurgents were found to be from foreign countries.

Another US lie is that everyone the US kills in Iraq is an insurgent. This one is grand whopper. How is it possible to drop 2000-pound bombs on densely populated neighborhoods and not kill innocent people? To cloak the atrocities and war crimes that the US is committing in Iraq the US military and the Alawi government are arresting free lance journalists and shutting down newspapers that are critical of the occupation.

Margaret Hassan’s death looks like a CIA job via the US proxy Alawi’s henchmen. The US is, via the corporate media, lying to the public about what’s really going on in Falluja and across Iraq. Don’t believe the corporate media hype.