People may call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think it's pretty obvious that the CIA, Mossad, or some other American or Israeli terrorist gang orchestrated this completely bogus story about a mass kidnapping and rape in Iraq.

In the latest of a long list of transparent falsehoolds reported in the Western media using unverified evidence and anonymous sources, an unnamed liar within the Iraqi puppet government's Interior Ministry claimed that a bunch of Sunni Muslims rode into Madain, Iraq in the dead of night, kidnapped up to 100 Shi'i Muslims, and threatened to kill them if the Shi'i don't leave the town. While the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and the Shi'i movement of Muqtada al-Sadr both stated flatly that the report was a lie, Knight Ridder quotes a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the largest party in Iraq's national assembly, who said that the crisis began when "Sunni insurgents burned down a Shiite mosque in Madain on Thursday."

Nobody, including the official, provided any proof of this.

Later, additional erroneous reports from both the SCIRI spokesman and unnamed sources emerged stating, again without proof, that the attackers took nine men and a woman captive on the town's outskirts, raped the woman in front of her tribesmen, and sent her to Madain with a warning for all Shiites to leave. Meanwhile, it has become clear that, in fact, none of it was true. And by reporting this fantasy as fact without any corroboration, our corporate media once again prove that they will shill any lie they're fed from an American puppet who approaches them with a story to sell.

It is quite important that this lie comes from within SCIRI. The manufactured crisis unmasks their (and Sistani's) quiet complicity and unty with the American occupation as well as their desire to foment sectarian violence and civil war in Iraq for political gain.

And while sectarianism undoubtedly enhances SCIRI's influence, it benefits the American occupation far more. In fact, the lie falls perfectly in line with the frequently articulated strategy of the American neo-cons and the reactionary Zionists in Israel to sew sectarianism and perpetuate division among Arabs. As was the case with the killing of Rafik Hafiri in Beirut two months ago, the footprint of the American and/or the Israeli intelligence in this case is both obvious and rational.

Events like this latest fiction or the killing of Hariri don't happen by accident. Someone does them, and they do them for a reason. Ask yourself cui bono - who benefits? Who stands to gain from a divided Iraq? Who stands to gain from a divided Lebanon? Who gains from a divided Palestine?

The answer is obvious. Divide and Conquer is historically Empire's strategy of choice. Why should today be any different?

It is worth noting that similar suspicious forces - probably American or Israeli spies - are trying to divide Iran with fabricated news stories, too. And as anyone who can read a map can easily see, Israel has used a relentless policy of ethnic cleansing and land confiscation to divide the Palestinians for more than 50 years.

Who has the means?
Who has the motive?
Who has the opportunity?

These are the questions that matter, and they're the questions over which both the United States and Israel will commit any crime to maintain plausible deniability.