U.S. Military Downplays Qatar Coup Rumors
By Jeff Stein | August 5, 2009
Senior American military officials Wednesday threw cold water on reports of an attempted coup d'etat in Qatar, nerve center for the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
+++++++
Arab Websites Report On Failed Coup Attempt In Qatar
Various Arab websites are reporting on the sudden firing of senior Qatari military officials after they staged a failed coup attempt.
According to the report on the liberal Saudi website Alssiyasi, Qatar's chief of staff Hamad bin Ali Al-Attiya might also have been involved in the coup attempt.
The Jordanian online daily Al-Haqiqa Al-Douliya noted that following the coup attempt, the Qatari Emir is considering reducing the powers of senior regime officials, including of the prime minister and foreign minister Hamad bin Jasem Aal Thani.
After the Qatari chief of staff's visit to Iran early last month, the Elaph website reported on disagreement among top Qatari officials on foreign policy.
Sources: Elaph.com, July 13 and 30, 2009; Alssiyasi.com, August 2, 2009; Factjo.com, August 3, 2009
+++++++Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment+++++++
This comes shortly after the reports that Prince “Bandar Bush” is under house arrest after seeking to sponsor a coup in Saudi Arabia and then disappearing for three months. The Middle East appears to be seeing the convergence of three great forces:
1. The last death rattle of “Big Stick” Western intrusiveness with black operations (funding pseudo coups that might have succeeded in the Banana Wars era but fail today) and commercial bribery that are increasingly inept and ineffective as well as publicly visible and scorned.
2. The early death rattle of dictatorships no longer able to separate the people from one another and one another as the means of public information-sharing and sense-making become pervasive.
3. The growing public awareness of the idiocy of funding Israeli genocide, other atrocities and Israeli espioonage against the government and people of the United States of America. While the Arab governments are to be scorned for failing the Palestinian people, the key obstacle to ending American support for Israeli depradation has been the ignorance of the American public. That is coming to an end.
