US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

guard was called upon. Now people like Adnan, a former Baathist who was sentenced to deathfor conspiring to overthrow Hussein, have been given the task of defeating the insurgency. Thenew strategy is showing signs of success, but it is a success that may carry its own costs.A couple of hours after Adnan issued his AK-47 threat, I sat with him watching TV. This wasbusiness, not pleasure. The program we were watching was Adnan’s brainchild, and in just a fewmonths it had proved to be one of the most effective psychological operations of the war. It isreality TV of sorts, a show called ‘‘Terrorism in the Grip of Justice.’’ It features detaineesconfessing to various crimes. The show was first broadcast earlier this year and has quicklybecome a nationwide hit. It is on every day in prime time on Al Iraqiya, the American-financednational TV station, and when it is on, people across the country can be found gathered aroundtheir television sets.Those being interrogated on the program do not look fearsome; these are not the faces to befound in the propaganda videos that turn up on Web sites or on Al Jazeera. The insurgents, orsuspected insurgents, on ‘‘Terrorism in the Grip of Justice’’ come off as cowardly lowlifes whokill for money rather than patriotism or Allah. They tremble on camera, stumble over their wordsand look at the ground as they confess to everything from contract murders to sodomy. Theprogram’s clear message is that there is now a force more powerful than the insurgency: the Iraqigovernment, and in particular the commandos, whose regimental flag, which shows a lion’s headon a camouflage background, is frequently displayed on a banner behind the captives.Before the show began that evening, Adnan’s office was a hive of conversation, phone calls andtea-drinking. Along with a dozen commandos, there were several American advisers in the room,including James Steele, one of the United States military’s top experts on counterinsurgency.Steele honed his tactics leading a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country’sbrutal civil war in the 1980’s. His presence was a sign not only of the commandos’ crucial role inthe American counterinsurgency strategy but also of his close relationship with Adnan. Steeleadmired the general. ‘‘He’s obviously a natural type of commander,’’ Steele told me. ‘‘Hecommands respect.’’Things quieted in the office once the episode of ‘‘Terrorism in the Grip of Justice’’ began. First,a detainee admitted to having homosexual relations in a mosque. Then several other suspectedinsurgents made their confessions; two of them had been captured by Adnan’s commandos inSamarra, and their confessions were taped, just hours before, in this very office. Adnan satsmoking Royals and watching the show like a proud producer.‘‘It has a good effect on civilians,’’ he had told me, through an interpreter. ‘‘Most civilians don’tknow who conducts the terrorist activities. Now they can see the quality of the insurgents.’’Earlier he said: ‘‘Civilians must know that these people who call themselves resisters are thievesand looters. They are dirty. In every person there is good and bad, but in these people there isonly bad.’’The episodes of the program I have seen depict an insurgency composed almost entirely ofcriminals and religious fanatics. The insurgency as understood by American intelligence officersis a more complex web of interests and fighters. Most of the insurgency is composed of Sunnis,7

and it is generally believed that Baathists hold key positions. But the commandos, who are theheroes of ‘‘Terrorism in the Grip of Justice,’’ are also led by Sunnis and have many formerBaathists in their ranks, so the Sunni-and-Baathist aspect of the insurgency is carefully obscured.Of course, propaganda need not be wholly accurate to be effective. The real problem with theprogram, according to its most vocal critics — representatives of human rights groups — is thatit violates the Geneva Conventions. The detainees shown on ‘‘Terrorism in the Grip of Justice’’have not been charged before judicial authorities, and they appear to be confessing under duress.Some detainees are cut and bruised. In one show, a former policeman with two black eyesconfessed to killing two police officers in Samarra; a few days after the broadcast, the formerpoliceman’s family told reporters, his corpse was delivered to them. The government’s humanrights minister has initiated an investigation.‘‘Terrorism in the Grip of Justice’’ is a ratings success because it humiliates the insurgency,satisfying a popular desire for vengeance against the men who spread terror and death. Yet theprogram plays rough not only with its confessing captives but also with the rules and laws thatgovern the conduct of war. As I learned in Samarra, this approach was not just for television. Itwas Adnan’s effective yet brutal way of conducting a counterinsurgency.Building a Home-Grown CounterinsurgencyMost of the Pentagon’s official statements in the past two years about the ability of Iraqis topolice their own country have been exaggerated. But now reality is beginning to catch up withrhetoric. In the months that followed the January elections in Iraq, attacks on allied forcesreportedly fell to 30 to 40 a day in February and March, from 140 just before the vote. It’s hardto tell whether this trend will continue; in April the insurgency showed signs of renewedstrength. But the successes that the counterinsurgency has enjoyed are in no small part becauseof Adnan’s commandos. With American forces in an advisory role, the commandos, as well as afew other effective units, like the Iraqi Army’s 36th Commando Battalion and its 40th Brigade inBaghdad, have inflicted more violence upon insurgents than insurgents have inflicted upon them.That is much of what fighting an insurgency amounts to. But successful counterinsurgencies, ifhistory is a guide, tend not to be pretty, especially in countries where violence has been a way oflife and rules governing warfare and human rights have been routinely ignored by those inuniform.The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, with which it has often been compared, but ElSalvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgencyin a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high — more than 70,000 people were killed,most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing andtorturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According toan Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and associatedgroups included ‘‘extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture.. . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.’’ As partof President Reagan’s policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions ofdollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special8

After the commandos set up their headquarters at a bombed-out army base at the edge of theGreen Zone, Petraeus went for a visit. He was pleasantly surprised, he told me, to see a force thatwas relatively disciplined and well motivated. He knew the commandos were officers andsoldiers who had served Saddam Hussein, he knew many of them were Sunni and he certainlyknew they were not under American control. But he also sensed that they could fight. Hechallenged some of them to a push-up contest. He was not just embracing a new militaryformation; he was embracing a new strategy. The hard men of the past would help shape thecountry’s future.Petraeus decided that the commandos would receive whatever arms, ammunition and suppliesthey required. He also assigned Steele to work with them. In addition to his experience in ElSalvador, Steele had been in charge of retraining Panama’s security forces following the oustingof Gen. Manuel Noriega. When I asked him to describe Adnan’s leadership qualities, Steeledrew on the vocabulary he learned in Latin America. Adnan, he said approvingly, was a caudillo— a military strongman.Doing It the Iraqi WayAdnan’s offensive turned Samarra into a proving ground for this new strategy, the mostcomprehensive effort to date in which United States-backed Iraqi forces sought to retake aninsurgent city. Code-named City Market, the offensive has involved weeks of raids bycommandos and their American advisers. After the first wave of raids, a new corps of policeofficers and Interior Ministry troops known as Public Order Battalions were deployed to takecommand of the streets.Samarra has a population of a quarter million, though many have fled after two years of warfare.The population is divided among seven tribes whose rivalries created fertile soil for theinsurgency to take root. Since 2003, the city has often been under the control of the insurgents. InOctober, the United States launched an offensive to retake the city, but the moment the Bradleysand Humvees departed, the insurgents returned. (Voter turnout in the election in January was lessthan 5 percent.)When I arrived in March, the part of Samarra under American and commando control — CityHall and a Green Zone around it — was a small parcel of land ringed with a phalanx of concretebarriers, barbed wire and shoot-to-kill lookouts. The main roads into the city were blocked bycheckpoints at which Iraqi soldiers searched every vehicle. American and Iraqi forces rarely leftthe Green Zone on foot, conducting their patrols in heavily armed convoys, and the Green Zonewas hit by mortars almost every day.There were just a few hundred G.I.’s in Samarra, mostly living in the Green Zone on two bases,Razor and Olsen. The conditions were spartan; soldiers were housed in cramped rooms, theyused outdoor latrines and hot dinners were served just three nights a week. At Olsen, a formercasino that is home to troops of the Wisconsin Army National Guard and the Third InfantryDivision, the soldiers I met spent most of their off-hours lifting weights, e-mailing loved onesback home or playing Halo on Xboxes, unwinding from real combat by engaging in simulatedcombat. Three teams of a dozen or so G.I.’s went out on the raids with the Iraqi commandos.11

(The other soldiers in the city performed logistical, administrative and perimeter-security duties.)One team was composed of Special Forces soldiers, another was drawn from the WisconsinArmy National Guard and the third, with which I spent most of my time on patrol, was staffed bysoldiers of the Third Infantry Division. The squad leader was Capt. Jeff Bennett, a 26-year-oldwhose father is in the Air Force.Captain Bennett was on his second tour in Iraq. During the invasion, he was among the ThirdInfantry Division troops who captured Baghdad airport against stiff resistance from RepublicanGuard forces. Bennett wears his division patch on the shoulder of his uniform, and soon after hearrived in Samarra, the patch was recognized by a few of the Iraqi commandos, who informedhim that they had been in the Republican Guard unit at the airport that fought his unit. Initially,Bennett was leery about going into combat with men he had tried to kill, and who had tried tokill him, but after their first battle together, fighting shoulder to shoulder against insurgents, hisdoubts disappeared.‘‘That’s the great equalizer,’’ Bennett said. ‘‘You get into a firefight with someone, they come toyour side, return fire, cover another person. That kind of seals the relationship.’’Many of the commando raids occurred at night. One evening, I watched as preparations began onthe street outside City Hall. A group of about 50 Iraqis strapped on their body armor, insertedbullet clips into their AK-47’s and listened to heavy metal on the stereos of their AmericansuppliedDodge pickups, which now bore coats of camouflage paint and machine guns on theirflatbeds. The commandos talked and joked loudly, exuding an alpha-male confidence. Bennett’ssquad mixed easily with the commandos, exchanging greetings in the Arabic phrases theylearned.The commandos cultivate a vaguely menacing look. They wear camouflage uniforms, but alsoirregular clothing, like black leather gloves and balaclavas — not to hide their identities but toinspire fear among the enemy. It is a look I saw among the Serbian paramilitaries who terrorizedCroatia and Bosnia during the Balkan wars in the 90’s, and it is the look of the paramilitaries thatoperated in Latin America a decade earlier.When it was time to go, the commandos moved out in their Dodges, and Bennett’s teamfollowed in three armored Humvees. Bennett was not sure of the precise destination thatevening; though the Iraqis and Americans had swapped lists of high-value targets, thecommandos generally decided which ones would be pursued. The patrol moved out with lightsoff, slipping through Samarra’s barren streets; there was a curfew in effect, and even the city’smany stray dogs seemed to have taken shelter. The patrol eventually pulled to a halt at a house afew miles from the Green Zone. A man there, apparently willing to cooperate, said he knewwhere a number of insurgents could be found, and he led the way to a nearby house. Those insidewere brought out, one by one. The man identified one as an insurgent, and he was flex-cuffed,blindfolded and thrown into the back of a truck.The patrol moved on and made many more stops. House after house was searched. Sometimesthe commandos broke down doors or shot off locks. Other times they entered with a polite knockand had friendly discussions, departing with handshakes and smiles. The commandos are far12

more skilled than American troops I’ve spent time with at knowing, intuitively, whethersomeone represents a threat. A few men were detained as the evening unfolded, and when theyoffered resistance or didn’t provide information as quickly as the commandos desired, they werepunished with a quick kick, slap or punch.A little after 2 a.m., the commandos rolled into a neighborhood where the homes weresurrounded by walls and had satellite dishes on their roofs. A man who was detained earlier inthe night pointed the commandos toward one house. They entered and soon emerged with aconfiscated computer, but whomever they hoped to find inside was not there.The officer in charge of the raid — a Major Falah — now made it clear that he believed thedetainee had led them on a wild-goose chase. The detainee was sitting at the side of a commandotruck; I was 10 feet away, beside Bennett and four G.I.’s. One of Falah’s captains began beatingthe detainee. Instead of a quick hit or slap, we now saw and heard a sustained series of blows.We heard the sound of the captain’s fists and boots on the detainee’s body, and we heard thedetainee’s pained grunts as he received his punishment without resistance. It was a dockyardmugging. Bennett turned his back to face away from the violence, joining his soldiers in staringuncomfortably at the ground in silence. The blows continued for a minute or so.Bennett had seen the likes of this before, and he had worked out his own guidelines for dealingwith such situations. ‘‘If I think they’re going to shoot somebody or cut his finger off or do anysort of permanent damage, I will immediately stop them,’’ he explained. ‘‘As Americans, wewill not let that happen. In terms of kicking a guy, they do that all the time, punches and stufflike that.’’ It was a tactical decision, Bennett explained: ‘‘You only get so many interventions,and I’ve got to save my butting in for when there is a danger it could go over the line.’’ But evenwhen he doesn’t say anything, he explained, ‘‘they can tell we’re not enjoying it. We’re just kindof like, ‘O.K., here we go again.’’’Though the commandos and their American advisers were working together in Samarra, theirapproaches were decidedly different. The American way of combat is heavily planned, withsatellite maps, G.P.S. coordinates and reconnaissance drones. The Iraqi way is improvisational,relying less on honed skills and high-tech than gut instinct and (literally) bare knuckles. It is theAmericans who are learning to adapt. In briefings that American soldiers receive, a quotationfrom T.E. Lawrence is sometimes included: ‘‘Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do itperfectly.’’Threatening to Kill a Suspect’s SonOn March 8, I went on a series of raids with the commandos, traveling in a Humvee with Maj.Robert Rooker, an artillery officer based in Tikrit who was dispatched to Samarra to serve as myescort. The leader of the American squad was Andrew Johansen, a 30-year-old lieutenant in theWisconsin Army National Guard. The commandos led the way in a half-dozen Dodges, withJohansen’s team following in three Humvees. The target was a house outside Samarra whereNajim al-Takhi, thought to be the leader of an insurgent cell, was believed to be hiding.13

The commandos reached an isolated farmhouse and detained al-Takhi’s son, who looked to be inhis early 20’s. This was an excellent catch. The son of a suspect usually knows where the suspectis hiding; if not, he can be detained and used as a bargaining chip to persuade the father tosurrender. With al-Takhi’s son flex-cuffed in the back of one of the pickups, the commandos,excited, drove to another farmhouse less than a mile away. They believed that al-Takhi might bethere, but a quick search yielded nothing. The leader of this raid was a short, chubby captain whowas enthusiastic and, as I noticed on previous raids, effective at leading his men. (When I laterasked his name, he refused to give it.) The captain was convinced that al-Takhi was nearby, butthe son was telling him he didn’t know where his father was. Was he lying?The captain’s methods were swift and extreme. He yelled at the son, who was wearing a loosetunic; in the tussle of the arrest the young man had lost one of his sandals. The captain pushedhim against a mud wall and told everyone else to move away. Standing less than 10 feet from theyoung man, the captain aimed his AK-47 at him and clicked off the safety latch. He wasthreatening to kill him. I was close enough to catch some of the dialogue on my digital recorder.‘‘Where is your father?’’ the captain shouted. ‘‘Say where your father is!’’‘‘He left early in the morning,’’ the son responded, clearly in terror. ‘‘I told my father to divorcemy mother, to not leave us in such a state.’’The son asked for mercy. ‘‘I swear, if I knew where he is, I would for sure take you to him.’’ Helooked around. ‘‘Oh, God, what should I do?’’The captain was not persuaded.‘‘Just tell us where he is, and we will release you now,’’ he shouted.‘‘I swear to you, though you did not ask me to make an oath, instead of enduring all thesebeatings I would tell you where he is if I knew.’’Major Rooker was just a few feet from the angry captain. He moved closer and nudged thecaptain’s AK-47 toward the ground.‘‘You are a professional soldier,’’ Rooker told him. ‘‘You know and I know that you need to putthe weapon down.’’The captain scowled but ended the execution drama.‘‘O.K., guys,’’ he shouted to his men, ‘‘let’s ride back.’’As the commandos pulled their prisoner away, Lieutenant Johansen conferred with Rooker.‘‘They don’t operate the way we do, that’s for damn sure,’’ Johansen said. ‘‘We have to be niceto people.’’ Especially in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, they were both aware that threatening aprisoner with death was illegal under the Geneva Conventions.14

‘‘I think it was all an act to try and get him to talk,’’ Rooker said. ‘‘But for a fraction of a secondI didn’t know that. I thought the guy was going to cap him.’’The commandos moved about 100 yards away, where they interrogated the young man again,this time without an AK-47 in his face. With an execution no longer in the offing, Rookerdecided not to irritate the captain further. ‘‘They’ll shake him up a little bit more,’’ he said to thedriver of his Humvee. ‘‘Stay back and let them do their job.’’Later, I asked Johansen about what had happened.‘‘I’m about 99 percent sure it was intimidation to put fear into the guy,’’ he told me. ‘‘I knowthey use different means of interrogation, but I didn’t expect them to raise a weapon at adetainee. I don’t think they know the value of human life Americans have. If they shootsomebody, I don’t think they would have remorse, even if they killed someone who wasinnocent.’’Inside the Detention CenterIn Samarra, the commandos established a detention center at the public library, a hundred yardsdown the road from City Hall. The library is a one-story rose-hued building surrounded by afive-foot wall. There is a Arabic inscription over its entrance: ‘‘In the name of Allah the mostgracious and merciful, Oh, Lord, please fill me with knowledge.’’These days, the knowledge sought under its roof comes not from hardback books but fromblindfolded detainees. In guerrilla wars of recent decades, detention centers have played anotorious role. From Latin America to the Balkans and the Middle East, the worst abuse hastaken place away from the eyes of bystanders or journalists. During my first few days in the city,I was told I could not visit the center; I was able only to observe, discreetly, as detainees wereled into it at all hours. But one day Jim Steele asked whether I wanted to interview a Saudi youthwho had been captured the previous day. I agreed, and he took me to the detention center.We walked through the entrance gates of the center and stood, briefly, outside the main hall.Looking through the doors, I saw about 100 detainees squatting on the floor, hands bound behindtheir backs; most were blindfolded. To my right, outside the doors, a leather-jacketed securityofficial was slapping and kicking a detainee who was sitting on the ground. We went to a roomadjacent to the main hall, and as we walked in, a detainee was led out with fresh blood aroundhis nose. The room had enough space for a couple of desks and chairs; one desk had bloodstainsrunning down its side. The 20-year-old Saudi was led into the room and sat a few feet from me.He said he had been treated well and that a bandage on his head was a result of an injury hesuffered in a car accident as he was being chased by Iraqi soldiers.A few minutes after the interview started, a man began screaming in the main hall, drowning outthe Saudi’s voice. ‘‘Allah!’’ he shouted. ‘‘Allah! Allah!’’ It was not an ecstatic cry; it waschilling, like the screams of a madman, or of someone being driven mad. ‘‘Allah!’’ he yelledagain and again. The shouts were too loud to ignore. Steele left the room to find out what washappening. By the time he returned, the shouts had ceased. But soon, through the window behind15

me, I could hear the sounds of someone vomiting, coming from an area where other detaineeswere being held, at the side of the building.Earlier I spoke briefly with an American counterintelligence soldier who works at the detentioncenter. The soldier, who goes by the name Ken — counterintelligence soldiers often use falsenames for security reasons — said that he or another American soldier was present at 90 percentof the interrogations by the commandos and that he had seen no abuse. I didn’t have anopportunity to ask him detailed questions, and I wondered, in light of the beatings that I had seensoldiers watch without intervening, what might constitute abuse during interrogation. I alsowondered what might be happening when American soldiers weren’t present.The Saudi I interviewed seemed relieved to have been captured, because his service in theinsurgency, he said, was a time of unhappy disillusion. He came to Iraq to die with Islamicheroes, he said, but instead was drafted into a cell composed of riffraff who stole cars andkidnapped for money and attacked American targets only occasionally. When I asked, throughan interpreter, whether he had planned to be a suicide bomber, he looked aghast and said hewould not do that because innocent civilians would be killed; he was willing to enter paradise bybeing shot but not by blowing himself up. He gladly gave me the names of the members of thecell. One was a Syrian who had been arrested with him.That evening, as I was eating dinner in the mess hall at Olsen base, I overheard a G.I. saying thathe had seen the Syrian at the detention center, hanging from the ceiling by his arms and legs likean animal being hauled back from a hunt. When I struck up a conversation with the soldier, herefused to say anything more. Later, I spoke with an Iraqi interpreter who works for the U.S.military and has access to the detention center; when I asked whether the Syrian, like the Saudi,was cooperating, the interpreter smiled and said, ‘‘Not yet, but he will.’’One afternoon as I was standing near City Hall, I heard a gunshot from within or behind thedetention center. In previous days, I saw or heard, on several occasions, accidental shots bycommandos — their weapons discipline was far from perfect — so I assumed it was anothernegligent discharge. But within a minute or so, there was another shot from the same place —inside or behind the detention center.It was impossible to determine what was happening at the detention center, but there wascertainly cause to worry. A State Department report released in February noted that Iraqiauthorities have been accused of ‘‘arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prisonconditions — particularly in pretrial detention facilities — and arbitrary arrest and detention.’’ Areport by Human Rights Watch in January went further, claiming that ‘‘unlawful arrest, longtermincommunicado detention, torture and other ill treatment of detainees (including children)by Iraqi authorities have become routine and commonplace.’’When I returned to the United States, I asked the American authorities responsible for Samarrafor a comment about potential human rights abuses at the detention center. They forwarded mye-mail message to a spokesperson for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, who wrote in reply: ‘‘TheMinistry of Interior does not allow any human rights abuses of prisoners that are in the hands of16

Ministry of Interior Security Forces. . . . Reports of human rights violations are deeplyinvestigated by the Ministry of Interior’s Human Rights Department.’’The Uses of FearIn El Salvador, a subpar army fought an insurgency to a standoff that eventually led to a politicalsolution. Kalev Sepp, who was a Special Forces adviser in El Salvador and is currently aprofessor at the Navy’s Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare, said he believes that thehandful of United States-trained Salvadoran strike battalions made the difference. ‘‘Those sixbattalions held back the guerrillas for years,’’ he said in a recent phone interview. ‘‘The rest ofthe army was guarding bridges and power lines.’’In Iraq, the insurgency does not fight everywhere; most attacks occur around Baghdad and in theSunni Triangle. This allows a small and agile counterinsurgency force to play adisproportionately large role, and the commandos are precisely that kind of force. As aparamilitary unit, they are not slowed down by heavy weapons, and they do not engage in theattrition warfare of lumbering army regiments with thousands of troops and tanks and artillerypieces. Instead, they go wherever there is trouble, racing up and down the highways at 90 milesan hour in their Dodge trucks (so quickly, in fact, that Humvees cannot keep up with them).When Mosul erupted in November, with local police officers fleeing their stations as insurgentstook control of the streets, several battalions of commandos sped to the city and restored order(or what passes for order in Iraq). When National Guard troops collapsed in Ramadi earlier thisyear, a battalion of commandos was rushed in. The commandos in Samarra will return to theirbase in Baghdad once their mission is completed — or they will head to the next hot spot.Intriguingly, a reputation for severity can accomplish as much as severity itself. One day atroublesome local leader, Sheik Taha, met with Adnan at Samarra’s City Hall. Lt. Col. MarkWald, who commands the Third Infantry Division troops in the city, told me that Taha supportedthe insurgency but was reconsidering his options now that Adnan had arrived with hiscommandos. I assumed that Adnan conveyed a message to the sheik that was not dissimilar tohis warning to the commando who found an arms cache — do as I say or you will lose a preciousbody part.After the meeting, I asked Adnan whether the sheik had agreed to fall in line. ‘‘It is not importantwhether he is with us or against us,’’ he growled in response. ‘‘We are the authority. We are thegovernment, and everybody must cooperate with us. He is beginning to cooperate with us.’’Adnan’s remarks were put into context for me by Wald, a graduate of the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley. He pointed at the door behind which Adnan and Taha met. ‘‘This is whatI consider an Iraqi solution,’’ he said. ‘‘The beauty of an Iraqi solution is that they know howjustice has been dealt with in the past years. They know what they are subject to. We are boundby laws. I think they are, too, but that doesn’t mean a guy like Sheik Taha doesn’t go in therefearing it’s an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’’17

No End in SightParamilitary forces have a tendency to become politicized. Whereas the mission of army troopsis national — they exist to defend against foreign threats — paramilitaries are used for internalcombat. In the Middle East and elsewhere, they often serve the interests of the regime or ofwhatever faction in the regime controls them. (It is no accident that the commandos are run outof the Interior Ministry and not the Defense Ministry.) In a country as riven as Iraq — withShiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Turkmen vying for power — a paramilitary force that is controlled byone faction can be a potent weapon against others. That is why the commandos are a conundrum— in the country’s unstable military and political landscape, it is impossible to know where theyare heading.The commandos and their leaders insist that they are loyal to the government rather than to anypolitical or religious group. ‘‘There is no Sunni or Shia,’’ Adnan told me, meaning that he doesnot pay attention to the religious origins of his men or the insurgents they hunt. ‘‘Anyone whotries to stop Iraq from moving forward, I will fight them.’’ Adnan’s statement is predictable, butis it convincing? The commando chain of command is largely Sunni — they were set up by aSunni minister (Naqib) and are led by a Sunni general (Adnan). At this point, the commandosconsist mainly of two brigades. The commander of one brigade is Rashid al-Halafi, who is Shiitebut is regarded warily by other Shiites because he held senior intelligence posts under SaddamHussein. The other brigade was founded by Gen. Muhammed Muther, a Sunni who commandeda tank regiment under Hussein.Of course, the commandos are an effective fighting force precisely because of their Sunnibackground. Sunnis occupied the top positions in Hussein’s security apparatus and are, as aresult, the country’s most experienced fighters. They are particularly well suited to fight in theSunni Triangle — they have deep ties there and can extract more intelligence than outsiders,which is what Shiites and Kurds are considered in Samarra, Baqubah, Falluja, Ramadi and otherinsurgent strongholds. The Iraqi government improves its ability to fight the insurgents bybringing veteran Sunni military men on board.Their presence is useful politically, too: it makes it hard for the insurgency to claim that thegovernment ignores Sunni interests. History has shown that the best way to end an insurgency isto bring insurgents or potential insurgents into the political system. The Salvadoran war endedwith a 1992 peace accord between the government and the F.M.L.N., the rebel movement, whichthen grew into a legitimate political party. Similarly, the conflict in Northern Ireland came to anend with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which provided for power sharing with Sinn Fein,the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.The true loyalties of the commandos remain unclear, however. It is difficult to generalize aboutthe reasons ex-Republican Guard generals and soldiers who are Sunni have joined thecommandos. Loyalty to the Shiite-dominated government is a possibility. A larger considerationamong the rank and file is a good paycheck (by Iraqi standards). Captain Bennett said that theirdesire to once again earn a living in their old line of work — fighting in a professional militaryand being paid to do it — is more important than warm feelings for the government.18

‘‘For some, there’s definitely a desire to make Iraq better, but for a lot of them, it’s just the lifethey know,’’ he said. ‘‘For most of them, the cause isn’t really that important. They’re more usedto working in this role. This is what they know, this is all they know. I think they feel a lot betterthat their actions now are against genuine threats, as opposed to threats against the regime,’’meaning Hussein’s government. ‘‘But I think for a lot of them, they couldn’t fathom doingsomething different with their lives.’’Whatever the motivations, the integration of the commandos into the security forces stanches oneflow of experienced fighters into the insurgency. Some commandos, and perhaps many of them,might have gravitated to the other side if their unemployment endured. ‘‘It’s human nature,’’said Casteel, the adviser to Naqib, the interior minister. ‘‘If you cannot feed your family, youwill find a way to feed your family.’’ Naqib, Casteel explained, sees the commandos ‘‘as a wayto re-employ people who could be on the other side but have skills that can be used.’’Yet their presence in the new security forces is not universally welcomed. Shiites and Kurdsfaced mass murder during Hussein’s regime, and they are understandably concerned aboutgiving a share of military power to Sunnis, especially those who served Hussein. They worry thata Sunni-led security force could be a Trojan horse for the return of oppression by Sunnis.Because Naqib chose Hussein-era military figures to lead the commandos and fill other topInterior Ministry positions, he made few friends among Shiites and Kurds in the interimgovernment, and he was not expected to retain his portfolio in the government of the new primeminister, Ibrahim Jafari, who is Shiite. As Haydar al-Abadi, an influential member of Jafari’sIslamic Dawa Party, told The Wall Street Journal: ‘‘The Baathists believe they are back, and thatthey can behave as before. People are afraid again.’’If Jafari purges former Baathists, the commandos may lose their leaders, including Adnan. Thatwould almost certainly test their loyalties. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, on a visitto Iraq in April, evoked those concerns, telling reporters, ‘‘It’s important that the newgovernment be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries, and that they avoidunnecessary turbulence.’’ In the worst case, a purge could prompt some commandos to join theinsurgency or evolve into a Sunni militia beyond government control. Already, Iraq has aKurdish militia, the 90,000-strong pesh merga, outside the control of the central government;there is also the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-trained wing of the Supreme Council for the IslamicRevolution in Iraq, which is Shiite; and there is the Mahdi Army, loyal to the Shiite militantMoktada al-Sadr. The last thing the country needs is another militia.It is a fraught situation — a country at war without a unified and competent national army. Anddespite the improved security forces and the reduction in attacks on coalition forces, it is hard tosee an end to the war any time soon. Just as the right political developments can tame aninsurgency, so, too, can the wrong developments give new life to it. Arriving at the correctcalibration of military force and political compromise is excruciatingly difficult. Historically,insurgencies have lasted at least 5 to 10 years; the endgame tends to begin when one or bothsides become exhausted, and that rarely occurs after only a year or two.In El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Turkey, Algeria and other crucibles of insurgency andcounterinsurgency, the battles went on and on. They were, without exception, dirty wars.19

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/gupta0505.htmlSpecial Report:Unravelling Iraq’s Secret MilitiasRuthless US Tactics are Propelling Country Toward Civil WarZ MagazineBy A.K. GuptaMay, 2005In the U.S. war against Iraq it appears that the Pentagon may be gaining the upper hand againstthe armed resistance, but it is doing so at the cost of creating the conditions for civil war. Theclearest indicator of a diminished insurgency comes from the number of U.S. casualties, whichhave declined by 75 percent since their peak of 126 combat deaths in November 2004. Part ofthat is probably due to sweeping thousands of Sunni Arab males off the street—Iraqisimprisoned under U.S. control have more than doubled since last October to 10,500.But even more ruthless methods may be having a greater effect on squeezing the insurgency.According to a report by the Wall Street Journal from February 16, numerous “pop-up militias”thousands strong are proliferating in Iraq. Not only are many of these shadowy militias linked toIraqi politicians, but the Pentagon is arming, training, and funding them for use in counterinsurgencyoperations.Most disturbing, one militia in particular—the “Special Police Commandos”—is being usedextensively and has been singled out by a U.S. general for conducting death squad strikes knownas the “Salvador option.” The Police Commandos also appear to be a reconstituted Husseinsecurity force operating under the same revived government body, the General SecurityDirectorate, that was formerly tasked with suppressing internal dissent.At the highest levels, White House officials consider the Police Commandos as the leading forceagainst the insurgency. In hearings before the Senate Appropriations Committee on February 16Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the commandos are among “forces that are going tohave the greatest leverage on suppressing and eliminating the insurgency.”Greg Jaffe, the Journal reporter, identified at least six such militias, one with “several thousandsoldiers” lavishly armed with “rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, mortar tubes and lots ofammunition.” Yet these militias owe their allegiance not to the Iraqi people or government, butto their self-appointed leaders and associated politicians, such as interim Prime Minister IyadAllawi. Even the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, admittedin testimony before Congress on March 1 that such militias are “destabilizing.”Of these militias, at least three are linked to Allawi. Jaffe writes, “First came the MuthanaBrigade, a unit formed by the order of…Allawi.” The second is the Defenders of Khadamiya,referring to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Baghdad, which appears to be “closely aligned20

with prominent Shiite cleric Hussein al Sadr.” Al Sadr ran on Allawi’s ticket in the Januaryelections.A third militia, the Special Police Commandos, is led by Gen. Adnan Thabit, who participated inthe disastrous 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein that Allawi coordinated. Thabit was jailed andsubsequently released shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion. He is also the uncle of Iraq’sinterim minister of the interior, under which the Commandos operate.Thabit told the Armed Forces Press Service last October that the Commandos are drawn from“police who have previous experience fighting terrorism and also people who received specialtraining under the former regime” of Saddam Hussein. A report from October 20, 2004, alsoquotes U.S. Army Col. James H. Coffman Jr., who specifies that Police Commandos are “formerspecial forces and [former Directorate of General Security] personnel….”Coffman reports to Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the mammoth U.S. effort to create Iraq’smyriad security forces. Petraeus calls the Police Commandos “a horse to back” and has done soby providing it with “money to fix up its base and buy vehicles, ammunition, radios and moreweapons.” In a satellite briefing to the press on February 4, Petraeus repeatedly praised theSpecial Police Commandos, calling the leadership “tremendously aggressive” in operations.Petraeus also revealed that the Commandos, the Muthana Brigade, and another militia, called theDefenders of Baghdad were used to provide security on election day.The Directorate of General Security was one of the main security services Saddam Hussein usedto maintain an iron grip on Iraq. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies describes the service’srole as “detecting dissent among the Iraqi general public” by monitoring “the day-to-day lives ofthe population, creating a pervasive local presence.”Ironically, Allawi—with U.S. encouragement—has put a network of former Baathists in chargeof various security services to fight what the U.S. claims are other Baathists who form the coreof the insurgency. They include Thavit’s nephew, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, the son of aprominent Baath official. The Minister of Defense is Hazem al-Shaalan, a former Baathist fromal-Hillah, and Brig. Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, an old-time Baath officer, now headof the Iraqi secret police, according to author and analyst Milan Rai.This policy of “re-baathification” is actively supported by the Bush administration. TheWashington Post reported on December 11, 2003 that the CIA met with Allawi and anothermember of his Iraqi National Accord party to create “an Iraqi intelligence service to spy ongroups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form anew government.” The plan was to “screen former government officials to find agents for theservice and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory.” Evidence of this role comes fromThabit who told the Armed Forces Press Service that former regime personnel in his force “wereefficiently chosen according to information about their background.”Even before he officially assumed the post of interim prime minister, Allawi announced areorganization of security forces at his first press conference on June 20, 2004. According to aHuman Rights Watch report on torture in Iraq, Allawi mentioned, “Special police units would21

also be created to be deployed ‘in the frontlines’ of the battle against terrorism and sabotage, anda new directorate for national security established.” Human Rights Watch also noted that Al-Nahdhah, an Iraqi newspaper, reported on June 21 that the Interior Ministry “appointed a newsecurity adviser to assist in the establishment of a new general security directorate modeled onthe erstwhile General Security Directorate…one of the agencies of the Saddam Husseingovernment dissolved by the CPA in May 2003.” That security advisor was “Major GeneralAdnan Thabet al-Samarra’i.”On July 15, 2004, two months before the Police Commandos became public, Allawi said thegovernment would establish “internal intelligence units called General Security Directorate(GSD) that will annihilate those terrorist groups.” Jane’s Intelligence Digest commented that theGSD, “will include former members of Saddam Hussein’s feared security services, collectivelyknown as the Mukhabarat. These former Ba’athists and Saddam loyalists will be expected tohunt down their colleagues currently organising the insurgency.”It seems former Baathist brutes may have gone from one security service under Hussein to theexact same one as under Allawi, another ex-Baathist. And the rogues apparently haven’tforgotten their old tactics.The Police Commandos have been supplying suspects who confess their crimes to the TV show,“Terrorism in the Hands of Justice.” Described as the Iraqi government’s “slick new propagandatool,” the program runs six nights a week on the Iraqiya network, which was set up by thePentagon and is now run by the Australian-based Harris Corporation (a major U.S. governmentcontractor that gave 96 percent of its political funding, more than $260,000, to Republicans in2004). According to the Boston Globe, camera crews are sent “wherever police commandosmake a lot of arrests.”The show features an unseen interrogator haranguing alleged insurgents for confessions.Virtually every press account notes that the suspects appear to have been beaten or tortured, theirfaces bruised and swollen. The London Guardian states, “Some have…robotic manners of thosebeaten and coached by police interrogators off-camera.” The Boston Globe observed, “The neatconfessions of terrorist attacks at times fit together so seamlessly as to seem implausible.” Thenthere’s the nature of the confessions. Many suspects admit to “drunkenness, gay orgies andpornography,” according to the Guardian. The Financial Times reported, “One long-beardedpreacher known as Abu Tabarek recently confessed that guerrillas had usually held orgies in hismosques.” Another preacher giving a confession said he was fired for “having sex with men inthe mosque.” The Globe account stated that suspects “frequently admit to rape and pedophilia.”The show is said to be popular, particularly among many Shiites and Kurds, which causesconcerns that depicting Sunni Arab nationalists as “thieving scumbags” could deepen communalstrife. Political and religious leaders from the Sunni Arabs have denounced the show, calling forit to be pulled off the air. The show has explicitly promoted sectarian tensions, in one case airingthe confession of a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni-based grouping, saying he drinksalcohol and doesn’t pray.22

The Police Commandos’ penchant for tall tales caused them considerable embarrassment afterthey crowed about a major operation that killed more than 80 insurgents at a training camp alongLake Tharthar in Al Anbar on March 22. Within a day many discrepancies emerged—how manyinsurgents were killed, reports of more than 20 prisoners versus none, a number of differentlocations cited, many miles apart. The story fell apart after an AFP reporter visited the camp andfound 40 to 50 insurgents camped there.But the Police Commandos are still receiving special treatment from the U.S. occupation. AState Department report to Congress from January 5 noted that at the request of the IraqiMinistry of the Interior, “billeting space” was provided for 1,500 police commandos in theBaghdad Public Safety Academy.The militias are a tacit admission that the U.S. effort to create an Iraqi military force has been acolossal failure, costing at least $5 billion to date. During the most recent large-scale militarycampaign, “Operation River Blitz,” U.S. Marines raided towns west of Baghdad along theEuphrates. The first order of business in many of these Sunni Arab towns, according to theChristian Science Monitor, was to “round up and detain police officers”—the very ones who hadbeen “trained” by the U.S. to fight the insurgency. In Tikrit in early March, the police went onstrike after U.S. troops raided the provincial police headquarters there and arrested two highrankingofficers. (About the same time in Samarra, the mayor and city council resigned after themayor’s office was raided and in protest of U.S. troops refusing to withdraw from the city asagreed.)In late March, police brandishing Kalishnikovs staged a demonstration in Hit, one of the townstargeted, demanding their jobs back. An AP account of the protest dated March 29 noted thatpolice forces have been dismissed across the province of Al Anbar, the heart of the insurgency,and “former local police officers have been protesting in several cities in recent weeks against anew plan to replace them with police from other Iraqi provinces.”A column by David Ignatius in the February 25 Washington Post notes that Thabit “commands aforce of about 10,000 men,” which would make them larger than the British military, the secondlargest foreign force in Iraq. The Commandos have been used extensively, first last October inthe assault on Samara that was called a “model” for how to retake a city from insurgents (butwhich is still roiled by regular attacks). The Commandos have also become a fixture in majorcities such as Ramadi and Mosul. In Ramadi the Stars and Stripes describes the commandos as“the Iraqi forces that might soon be responsible for security in the city.”A report in the December 25 issue of the Advisor—a Pentagon publication with the tagline“Iraq’s Official Weekly Command Information Reporter”—stated that the “Special PoliceCommandos have been deployed all over Iraq to hunt down insurgents and to help providesecurity for the upcoming Jan. 30 elections.”Jaffe notes many of the pop-up militias come “from Shiite-dominated southern Iraq.” Theyappear to be operating mainly in Sunni Arab areas. The Police Commandos in particular aretaking the lead in operations in such Sunni Arab hotspots as Samarra, Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit, andBaghdad. Last October they were assigned to Haifa Street, which had been a resistance23

stronghold on the edge of the Green Zone, the heart of the U.S. occupation. It’s a district of170,000 Sunnis and Shiites where insurgents find willing recruits among the Sunnineighborhoods. Two Iraqi battalions of more than 2,000 patrol the neighborhood, and the NewYork Times observes that one is lead by a Shiite general “commanding a unit composed mostlyof Shiites” (the units are the Iraqi 302nd and 303rd Battalions; it’s unclear if they are affiliatedwith the Police Commandos assigned there).Knight Ridder correspondent Tom Lasseter filed a report from Haifa on March 16, also noting,“Most of the Iraqi troops who patrol the area…are Shiite.” During the operations, Lasseter wrote,“When Iraqi and American soldiers detained a suspected Sunni insurgent in Haifa this week, agroup of the Shiite troops crowded around him. A sergeant kicked him in the face. Anothersoldier grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head into a wall. A third slapped him hard inthe face.” The U.S. forces’ Iraqi interpreter yelled at the detainee, “If you come with us, we willslaughter you.”The ethnic-based militias are having a trickle-down effect on Iraqi society. With no functioninggovernment, various communities are increasingly arming themselves. In another report,Lasseter spoke to a Shiite soldier who claimed, “Shiite neighborhoods on the edges of Haifa haveformed militias to enforce the sectarian boundary.” The soldier added, “That militia is secretlyfunded by a sheik at a local Shiite mosque.... what’s happening right now could be the beginningof civil war in Baghdad.” In what remains of Fallujah, “Sunni residents say anger toward Shiitetroops is reaching a boiling point.”Military analyst William Lind notes, “the rise and spread of Shiite militias devoted to fightingSunni insurgents puts ever-greater pressure on Iraq’s Sunnis to cast their lot with theinsurgency.” Add to this the use of Kurdish Peshmerga militias also against Sunni Arabs andthere is an increasing likelihood that civil war may result.As for the “hunt” for insurgents, it seems to include death squads. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing,former head of all U.S. Special Operations forces, appeared on NBC’s “Today” show on January10 to discuss a Newsweek report about the Salvador option. The reference is to the extensive useof death squads by El Salvador’s military during its war against the left in the 1980s. Downingcalled it a “very valid tactic” that has been employed “since we started the war back in March of2003.” In the account, brought to light by analyst Stephen Shalom, Downing adds, “We haveSpecial Police Commandos now of the Iraqi forces which conduct these kind of strikeoperations.”According to the March 12 London Times, the body of Qahtan Jouli was delivered to his familyin Samarra by commandos from the interior ministry. He had appeared on “Terror in the Grip ofJustice” and confessed to collaborating with insurgents in ten killings. Qahtan’s father charged,“My son was killed after he was tortured by the Interior Ministry commandos…. They killed himto cover up the lies they broadcast on the al-Iraqiya channel that my son killed many people,including Iraqi army officers.”Despite the pressure, the insurgency is still capable of conducting large-scale attacks. It’s stillmounting 50 to 60 strikes a day across Iraq. The difference is U.S. forces have become more24

effective at responding to the attacks—with more armor, more surveillance, and electroniccountermeasures. The insurgents have responded by shifting their targets to the Iraqi securityforces and intensifying economic sabotage by crippling the electrical and petroleuminfrastructure.The militias are central to many of these roundups. According to the Advisor, in Samarra, theSpecial Police Commandos detained 200 suspected insurgents in the “short time [they] havebeen operational in the area.” In one week in the Mosul area, according to a December 7 pressrelease from U.S. Task Force Olympia, the Commandos and Iraqi National Guard, backed byU.S. troops, detained 232 people. A report from the Iraqi Ministry of Defense claimed that morethan 400 suspects were seized in Baghdad in just one week in March with hundreds more takenfrom surrounding towns. Many of those arrested remain under Iraqi control—where many aretortured, according to human rights groups as well as the U.S. State Department. Thus the actualprison population in Iraq is unknown, with many more thousands probably in custody above theU.S. total (which itself is unverified).U.S. Marine units have taken the militia strategy to a new level: by creating their own. In arecent sweep through Al Anbar province, the 7th Marines Regiment brought with them the IraqiFreedom Guard, a 61-person unit set up by the Marines in January and paid $400 a month each,according to a Reuters report. During the same operation, Marines of the 23rd Regiment wereaccompanied by 20 members of a Special Forces unit called the Freedom Fighters. The ChristianScience Monitor described them as Shiites from the southern city of Basra, with “little lovebetween them and the Sunni Arab citizens of Anbar.”In the greatest irony, U.S. forces have reached a pact with elements of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army to have them hunt down insurgents. This is the same militia that U.S. forcesfought in lopsided battles last year during which U.S. massive firepower devastated much ofSadr City in Baghdad and Najaf’s old city and killed thousands of Iraqis.According to Agence France-Presse, U.S. forces are using a Shiite tribal leader to enforcevigilante justice in Baghdad’s Dura district. One U.S. officer calls the leader, Sayed Malik, “thegodfather” and notes he’s received lots of public works contracts, enough to make him amillionaire. Another Sadr official states that “people from [the] Sadr organization are publiclyhunting down the terrorists.” This apparently includes the kidnapping of a Sunni cleric.The U.S. military is “routinely freeing dangerous criminals in return for a promise to spy oninsurgents,” according to the Independent. One senior Iraqi police officer charged, “TheAmericans are allowing the breakdown of Iraqi society…. We are dealing with an epidemic ofkidnapping, extortion and violent crime, but even though we know the Americans monitor callson mobiles and satellite phones, which are often used in ransom negotiations, they will not passon any criminal intelligence to us. They only want to use the information against insurgents.”Despite the ruthless and destabilizing tactics, the insurgency is far from over. One U.S. generalrecently noted that it takes on average nine years to defeat an insurgency. Additionally, it’s theviolence of the U.S. occupation that gives the insurgency such force. Even if the rebellion is25

contained to “manageable” levels for the Pentagon, meaning a low rate of combat deaths, thatdoes not mean the resistance will end. U.S. forces long ago lost the battle for hearts and minds.Iraq’s “democracy” is in trouble, leaving many Iraqis disillusioned. With a do-nothinggovernment ensconced in the bosom of a deadly U.S. occupation, the stage is set for furtherrebellion and repression.A.K. Gupta is a staff member of the Indypendent.26

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2005/daviespr1105.htmlThe Dirty War in IraqBy Nicolas J. S. DaviesZ MagazineNovember 2005 Volume 18 Number 11On September 8, 2005 the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a human rights report, statingthat the governing institutions created by the United States in Iraq are engaged in an organizedcampaign of detention, torture, and extrajudicial execution, directed primarily at Iraqis whopractice the Sunni form of Islam.The UN report expressed the greatest concern regarding arrests by forces linked to the Ministryof the Interior: “Corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bearsigns of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions.... Serious allegations ofextrajudicial executions underline a deterioration in the situation of law and order…. Accountsconsistently point to the systematic use of torture during interrogations at police stations andwithin other premises belonging to the Ministry of the Interior.”In this report the UN has finally acknowledged what a small number of journalists have beenreporting for at least 18 months, that a brutal “dirty war” has grown out of the U.S. occupation.On March 15, 2004, the New Statesman published an article by Stephen Grey titled “Rule of theDeath Squads” regarding the murder of Professor Abdullatif al-Mayah in Baghdad on January19, 2004. It quoted a senior commander at the headquarters of the U.S.-installed Iraqi police,“Dr. Abdullatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the streethere. He made some politicians quite jealous…. You can look no further than the governingcouncil. There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They arepoliticians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list oftheir enemies. They are killing people one by one.”On January 16, 2005 USA Today reported on the work of Isam al-Rawi, a geology professorwho heads the Iraqi Association of University Lecturers. He has been cataloging assassinationsof academics in occupied Iraq and has documented 300 of them. He was unable to identify aclear pattern to the killings, except that, like al-Mayah, the victims were usually the mostrespected and popular members of their universities and their communities.On January 14, 2005 Newsweek reported on “The Salvador Option,” the proposed use of deathsquads as part of the U.S. strategy to subdue the country. It noted that some U.S. policymakersconsider this to have been effective in Central America in the 1980s. Newsweek cited InterimPrime Minister Allawi, a former agent of both the Iraqi Mukhabarat and the CIA, as a principalproponent of this policy. A U.S. military source told Newsweek, “The Sunni population ispaying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is costfree.We have to change that equation.” This source was expressing precisely the rationalebehind the dirty wars in Latin America and the worst abuses of the Vietnam War. The purpose of27

such a strategy is not to identify, detain, and kill actual resistance fighters, but rather to terrorizean entire civilian population into submission.The exile groups who began this dirty war in the early days of the occupation have come to formthe core of successive governing institutions established by the United States. Their campaign ofkilling and torture has evolved and become institutionalized and their victims now number in thethousands. The UN report does not address the possibility of a direct U.S. role in the campaign,but the interior ministry units that are most frequently implicated in these abuses were formedunder U.S. supervision and work closely with U.S. advisors. The identities of their two principaladvisors only reinforce these concerns. They are retired Colonel James Steele and former DEAofficer Steven Casteel. Both are veterans of previous dirty wars.In El Salvador, between 1984 and 1986, Colonel Steele commanded the U.S. Military AdvisorGroup, training Salvadoran forces that conducted a brutal campaign against the civilianpopulation. At other stages in his career he performed similar duties during illegal U.S. militaryoperations in Cambodia and Panama. After failing a polygraph test, he confessed to Iran-Contrainvestigators that he had also shipped weapons from El Salvador to Contra terrorists inNicaragua, leading Senator Tom Harkin to block his promotion to brigadier general. Until April2005 Steele was the principal U.S. advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s “Special PoliceCommandos,” the group most frequently linked to torture and summary executions in recentreports.Steven Casteel worked in Colombia with paramilitaries called Los Pepes that later joined forcesto form the AUC in 1997 and who have been responsible for most of the violence againstcivilians in Colombia. Casteel is now credited with founding the Special Police Commandos inhis capacity as senior advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.Assigning responsibility for atrocities to particular units or individuals is complicated by the dualnature of the Iraqi security forces, which take orders both from their nominal superiors and fromseparate chains of command in the factional militias that most of them belong to. Ultimateresponsibility for abuses is thus blurred by the fiction of the “government” and the militias asdistinct entities when the same people are really involved in both all the way to the top.Reports of torture and extrajudicial killings have followed the Special Police Commandos aroundthe country wherever they have been deployed, from Anbar province and Mosul since October2004 to Samarra in March 2005 to areas around Baghdad since May 2005. The UN reporthighlighted an incident in Badhra on August 25, in which relatives of the victims identified theabductors as Interior Ministry forces.After Special Police Commandos were deployed in Baghdad, 14 farmers were found in a shallowgrave on May 5, 2005 with their right eyeballs removed and other signs of torture after they wereseen being arrested at a vegetable market. Another incident ten days later, in which eight bodieswere found in a garbage dump, prompted Hareth al-Dhari, the secretary general of theAssociation of Muslim Scholars, to accuse the Interior Ministry directly. “This is state terrorismby the Ministry of Interior,” he claimed. The defense minister responded by blaming “terroristswearing military uniforms.”28

In another twist, the bodies of 8 men from Sadr City were found in Yussufiah, 40 kilometersfrom their homes, dressed in army uniforms even though none were soldiers. Their killersobviously wanted their deaths to appear to have been the work of resistance forces.Then there is the work and tragic death of Yasser Salihee, the Iraqi physician turned journalist,who dared to launch an investigation into abuses by the Special Police Commandos. KnightRidder posthumously published his work under the title, “Sunni men in Baghdad targeted byattackers in police uniforms” on June 27, 2005. The cautious language of the report verged onirony, but it described eyewitness accounts of numerous abductions by “large groups of mendriving white Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The men were wearing policecommando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols andusing sophisticated radios.”Knight Ridder actually interviewed Steven Casteel for their story. He predictably blamed“insurgents” impersonating commandos. As the article pointed out, this raised “troublingquestions about how insurgents are getting expensive new police equipment. The Toyotas, whichcost more than $55,000 apiece, and Glocks, at about $500 each, are hard to come by in Iraq, andthey’re rarely used by anyone other than Western contractors and Iraqi security forces.”Faik Baqr, director of the central morgue in Baghdad, said, “It is a very delicate subject forsociety when you are blaming the police officers…. It is not an easy issue. We hear that they arecaptured by the police and then the bodies are found killed…. It’s obviously in- creasing.”Yasser Salihee died on his way to get gas to drive his family to a swimming pool on his day off.He was shot by a U.S. sniper at a “checkpoint.” His editor, Steve Butler, has told me he has noreason to think Yasser’s death was connected to his work and the U.S. Army’s account of theincident describes a “random” shooting based only on rules of engagement that greatly prioritizeU.S. over Iraqi lives. However, as Italian investigators found in the case of Nicola Calipari, U.S.accounts of such incidents are not reliable and U.S. links to the forces Salihee was investigatingcast a dark shadow over his death.Finally, the Iraqi death squads appear to have violated a dirty war taboo—they’ve killed a U.S.journalist. Steven Vincent was an award-winning art critic from New York who went to Iraq as afreelance writer for National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and Harpers, and wrote a book, Inthe Red Zone, about the experiences of Iraqis in post-invasion Iraq. On July 29, 2005, he wrotein an op-ed piece in the New York Times that many of the police in Basra were also active in theShiite militias that had killed hundreds of Sunnis in the city. Four days later, he was abducted bya group of men in a brand new white Chevy pick-up with police markings. His body was foundby the side of a road outside the city with three gunshot wounds to the chest.The Associated Press has begun to track the numbers of corpses found and, as of October 7, theyhave tallied 539 since the “transitional government” took office in April. They are reporting thatthe majority are Sunnis, not Shiites or Kurds, and that “the count may be low since one or twobodies are found almost daily and are never reported.” Perhaps the UN report and the deaths,29

particularly of journalists will spur more of the media to start reporting and investigating thispattern of state terrorism.Nicolas J.S. Davies is a student of U.S. history and foreign policy. He lives in Miami, Florida.30

Subject: [oneheartpeacework] Trained for Torture by Sheila Provencher, 23 Nov 2005Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:55:11 -0000From: "monkatheart" Reply-To: oneheartpeacework-owner@yahoogroups.comTo: oneheartpeacework@yahoogroups.comTrained for TortureBy Sheila Provencher [Christian Peacemaker Team member recently in Iraq]23 November 2005I see them almost every day, roaring through the Baghdad streets -- black-masked youngmen, standing up in the backs of pick-up trucks, with their automatic weapons firing intothe air. Sometimes the insignia on the side of the truck is a wolf, sometimes a lion,sometimes a scorpion. Iraq's commando units.Iraq's new security forces are supposedly the salvation of the country, the answer to the terroristbombs and constant state of insecurity. But when I hear the gunshots approach and watch thepick-up trucks race through traffic, I feel cold and afraid . . . . I have listened too many times tothe stories of the men these security forces have detained and interrogated."They electrocuted me so much that my body was lifted up and thrown down, it was such strongelectricity" said *Isam, a young Iraqi who was picked up by the Scorpion Brigade on the streetsof Baghdad, imprisoned and tortured in several different detention centers for more than twomonths, then finally released without charge. Others have shared the fact of their torture but aretoo afraid to go into detail. Still others will never tell their story, except through the marks lefton their corpses in the pictures their families receive at the morgue.I read the other day that the Iraqi government is downplaying the recent report about torture byIraqi security forces. Like the U.S. government leaders said following the Abu Ghraib abusescandal, the message is that this is a case of a few bad apples, and it will soon be under control.Friends, this is just not true. The torture is widespread, and the only reason that the world hasnot heard more about it is that the torture survivors are terrified to speak out. I have heard toomany personal accounts to believe otherwise. In addition, large international human rightsorganizations documented this torture more than a year ago – see Human Rights Watch's reportof January 2005 at www.hrw.org/reports/2005/iraq0105/From Isam's perspective, here is the reality. I am sorry but I can only share a few excerpts of hisstory, until I have permission to share it in its entirety. The fear of repercussions runs too deep.Here is what I can share:At a Scorpion Brigade detention center: The interrogators made Isam sit on the ground and toldhim to admit to specific crimes – that he had beheaded Iraqi Police, killed Iraqi National Guardsoldiers, and raped women. He denied these charges. They clipped an electric wire to his rightwrist, and connected the other end to his left big toe. They yelled at him, threatened him that31

they would make him publicly confess on Iraqi TV, and that he would die. They whipped himwith cables on his back, and beat him with a club on his head and arms. Then they made him liedown on his stomach and beat him with plastic water pipes, while one man stepped on his head.They electrocuted him, so that "my body was lifted up and thrown down, it was such strongelectricity." When he said nothing, they kicked him on his chest, shoulders, and stomach. Atsome point during the first or second interrogation, the interrogators told him that if he did notconfess to the crimes, they would bring in his wife and rape her in front of him.At another center, the cell had no fan, no window, no water and no toilet. Isam noticed thatmany of the detainees were sick. One had heart disease, one had asthma, and some lostconsciousness. They were packed into the hot room and felt that there was no air to breathe.They had no way to perform their prayers, because they had no clean space and no water withwhich to perform their ablutions. They did not have access to the Qur'an.At yet another center, detainees were jammed together so tightly that each man's chest touchedthe back of the man in front of him. They were not allowed to lie down or sleep. If anyonenodded off, he would get beaten. Isam said that some of his fellow detainees admitted to crimesthey did not commit, because of the torture they experienced.Over time, Isam's body was getting severely damaged from the torture. He had many bruisesand sores. He believes that it was for this reason, as well as the fact that there was no evidenceagainst him, that the authorities finally brought him to be tried in court. The judge released himafter telling him not to commit any more crimes, although Isam denied having committed anycrimes at all.It is not only the Iraqi government that must bear culpability for this horror. The U.S.government, which supplies trainers and advisors for Iraqi security forces, is responsible as well.For example -- James Steele, one of the U.S. military's experts on counterinsurgency, is anadvisor to Adnan Thavit, the leader of the Special Police Commandos, known as one of the mostbrutal of Iraq's new forces.(1) In his previous life, James Steele led U.S. Special Forces in ElSalvador in the 1980s, aiding a repressive government's military that killed thousands ofpeasants, students, and activists – anyone perceived as aiding or supporting the guerillas.(2) Inaddition, Steve Casteel, a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spentyears in Latin America, is the senior U.S. adviser in the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, which hasoperational control over the commandos.(3) Funding and training for the commando groupscome from the Iraqi government, as all of them fall at least nominally under the Ministry of theInterior or the Ministry of Defense.(4) And from which country does a great deal of the fundingfor the Iraqi government come?*Name changed_______________________________________________________________1. Maass, Peter , "The Way of the Commandos," New York Times Magazine, May 1, 20052. Fuller, Max, "For Iraq, The Salvador Option Becomes a Reality," Global Research,http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html32

3. Maass, Peter, "The Way of the Commandos," New York Times Magazine, May 1, 20054. "Q&A: Iraq's Militias," New York Times, June 9, 200533

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Amr04.htmBush Surrenders Iraq to Maliki’s Death Squadsby Ahmed Amrwww.dissidentvoice.orgNovember 4, 2006When the time eventually comes to make historic documentaries about the Iraq war, there is onescene that will leave no doubt about the dark and sinister nature of George W. Bush. The timingis a week before mid-term elections. Along with his senior aides, the president is holding avideoconference with Nouri Al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq. After an extraordinary publicfeud, the two men kiss and make up in front of the cameras. But both walk away from theencounter -- which was initiated at the request of Maliki -- with the understanding that the UnitedStates will abandon efforts to tackle the death squads in Iraq.The hastily arranged meeting was the result of a little spat between the administration and theIraqi government on how best to deal with reign of terror in Iraq, largely attributed to Iraniantrained and indoctrinated Shia militants that have infiltrated Maliki’s security forces.A week earlier, the American military had attempted to arrest a notorious death squad leader bythe name of Abu Deraa. But because the Prime Minister’s political allies are also the parties andmilitias that field the death squads, Maliki intervened to prevent similar ‘violations of Iraqisovereignty’ from taking place in the future. As the Commander In Chief of the Iraqi ArmedForces, Maliki was making a power play and exercising his ‘right’ to protect his death squadallies from any interference by Bush’s troops.But Maliki didn’t stop there. He demanded more American funding and accelerated training ofthe very same Iraqi security forces that moonlight as death squads. And, of course, Bush had noother option but to comply with the absurd request to provide American tax dollars to furtherenhance the criminal capabilities of the militia-infested police and army.There is no exaggerating the extent to which Iraqi security forces -- especially the police -- havebecome auxiliary forces that owe their allegiances to the Shia militias and parties that engineeredMaliki’s rise to power. Even War Party media operatives like the Washington Post can no longerhide the fact that there is little that distinguishes the Iraqi police from the Shia death squads.“The American soldiers and civilians who train the Iraqis are constantly on guard against thepossibility that the police might turn against them. Even in the police headquarters for all ofwestern Baghdad, one of the safest police buildings in the capital, the training team will notremove their body armor or helmets. An Armed soldier is assigned to protect each trainer.”(Washington Post, 10/31/2006)An exasperated American trainer, John Moore, is quoted as saying, “We don’t know who the hellwe’re teaching: Are they police or are they militia.”34

We now have Judith Miller’s New York Times acknowledging that “much of Iraq is a placewithout rules or laws, in which armed gangs, sometimes dressed as police officers, can come intoany house and do exactly as they please.” (Sabrine Torernice, NYT, 10/29/2006).Of course, to get a clearer picture of the nature of the evil that stalks Iraq, we can’t be entirelydependent on the American media moguls who played a pivotal role in marketing this murderousventure. To measure the extent of the blank evasive space one regularly encounters in theAmerica’s mainstream media, contrast their coverage to a recent article by Kim Sengupta,“Operation Enduring Chaos: The Retreat of the Coalition and the Rise of the Militias” (TheIndependent, 10/31/2006).This is a shadowy struggle, which involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, murdervictims mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relationswho have been “disappeared.” Iraq’s savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacleto any semblance of peace returning than the insurgency. Yet, ironically, the death squads are theresult of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight,the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out“irregular missions.” The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the “Salvador Option”after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, whichled to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rights abuse.As the US and British policies in Iraq reach the last stages of unraveling, there are increasinglyfrantic calls to the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, from Washington and London to rein in thegovernment-sponsored death squads. The problem is that the militias, well armed andentrenched, are connected to political parties who know that Mr. Al Maliki is dependent on theirsupport.Just one little correction needs to be made to Sengupta’s account. It wasn’t the “US media” thatexposed the Salvador option, it was Seymour Hersh, the legendary journalist who broke the storyon the My Lai massacre and prison abuse at Abu Ghraib. For every new exposé, the mass mediamoguls reward Hersh with an extended exile to the wilderness of the alternative press.From the earliest days of the American occupation, rumors began to emerge that operativesrecruited from the ranks of the Badr Brigades were systematically infiltrating Iraqi SecurityForces. For those who haven’t being paying attention, Badr is an Iraqi Shia militia that wastrained in exile by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It is the armed wing of the SupremeCouncil for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a political creature that was established andfinanced by the theocratic regime in Tehran. Aside from SCIRI operatives, the Iraqi SecurityForces recruited militia members from Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army and militants from Maliki’sDawa party.The man responsible for masterminding the recruitment and integration of death squads into thenew Iraqi security forces was Bayan Jabr, a SCIRI leader who first appeared on the scene onEmperor Paul Bremer’s task force assigned to implement a purification program targetingBaathist military officers and bureaucrats35

In April 2005, Bayan Jabr was appointed interior minister in Iraq’s transitional government. Tenthousand miles away, Professor Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East from the University ofMichigan, had Jabar on his radar screen. He set off the alarm bells. “Bayan Jabar is clearly an oldtime revolutionary deeply committed to SCIRI’s paramilitary actions. I’d say there is likely to besome trepidation among Iraqi moderates about his now taking over Interior.” I mention JuanCole because he is exactly the kind of seasoned well informed Middle Eastern analyst whosetalents could have been deployed to chart more rational policies in Iraq. Unfortunately, he didn’thave the neo-con seal of approval to qualify as a mainstream pundit.Sure enough, within one month of his appointment, Bayan Jabr, technically Iraq’s senior policeofficer, put his death squads out on the streets of Baghdad and started a purge of Sunni officers.“In May 2005, Shiite militia groups in Iraq began depositing corpses into the dumps of Baghdad.The victims, overwhelmingly Sunni, were typically handcuffed, their corpses showing signs oftorture -- broken skulls, burn marks, electric drill holes; by that October, the death toll attributedto such groups had reached 500.” (Harper’s Magazine, 08/06/2006.)Where is Bayan Jabr today? He’s the Iraqi finance minister and a key ally of Maliki.The latest media farce is to portray Nouri Al-Maliki as a man out to curb the violence and chaosin our Mesopotamian colony. According to this fable, The Prime Minister is caught between Iraqand a hard place, forced to navigate a treacherous path between a desire to assert the Iraqi State’smonopoly of violence over ‘rogue’ elements in the security forces and the Shia parties thatengineered his ascension to power.There is only one problem with this tale of Maliki’s woes. The Prime Minister is the defactochairman of the death squads, a radical partisan leader who is out to insure Shia supremacy in thenew Iraq. Maliki, Bayan Jabr and Moqtada Sadr are cut of the same ideological cloth. They aremen who have spent a lifetime in the quest to convert Iraq into a Shia theocracy -- by any meansnecessary.The Maliki/Bush videoconference will go down as one of the single most important events thatwill shape the future of that tormented nation. It was at once a surrender ceremony and a coupd’etat. Maliki walked away with a license to continue operating his death squads and Bush wasforced to accept the burden of training more rank and file assassins.What makes the American hand so weak is Bush’s face. The president can’t very well go publicwith an announcement that Iraq’s new management is made up of the same parties and militiasthat are in command and control of the death squads. Because then he would have to explain whythe Pentagon and CIA didn’t notice that they were building and training sectarian security forces.Which in turn would lead to questions as to whether the administration gave early sanction tothis army of grim reapers in the belief that they could later be controlled after completing theirassigned ‘Salvador Option’ chores.Losing face is a huge deal for a guy like Bush. He is a media phenomenon created entirely out ofa single substance: image. So, when the day came for him to decide how to negotiate new36

arrangements with the CEO of the Iraqi death squads, his only concern was to make sure hecould walk away with his ‘Victory’ talking points intact. It’s hard to imagine that Maliki didn’tunderstand that he had Bush in a vice grip. The Prime Minister’s aides said as much.So here we sit, one week before a pivotal mid-term election that might or might not curb thepower of the pathetic monster in the White House and Dick ‘Waterboarding’ Cheney -- the vicepresident of torture. Even at this late hour, the vagaries of domestic politics allow this loser -- thescrawniest most inept commander in chief in American history -- to go about making all kinds ofrash promises about a secret plan for victory in Iraq.Will Americans ever wake up and smell the stench of the carnage in Iraq? Maybe it would help ifthe Baghdad morgue delivered a few disfigured victims of Maliki’s death squads for publicdisplay in the Rose Garden. Let Laura go down and inspect the skulls for drill holes aftermorning coffee. Imagine if George Bush had to jog around the physical evidence of last night’sIraqi death toll before making another victory speech. Would it cause the man to reflect on themayhem he has unleashed? Probably not, but it’s worth a try.A few dead samples from the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi victims might however effect thetender sensibilities of the American public -- a population that has been rendered complacent bythe media’s sanitized coverage and complicit by a collective lack of curiosity.Americans need visual and tangible evidence of the tragedy in Iraq. So far, the death squadsroaming the streets of Baghdad have failed to pass the smell test -- their odor is scentless. If thestench of mutilated Iraqi corpses could invade American nostrils, Bush would have someexplaining to do.Iraq’s victims are not real because we don’t have to step over them on the way to work. If highschool kids had to memorize the names of the hundred youngest American soldiers to die in thiswar of choice, they’d notice the other 2,700. America’s indifference to carnage in Iraq is aunique psychosis the world wouldn’t understand. It is a collective malady induced by legions ofwilling media collaborators.Bush will encounter little resistance in synchronizing his ‘victory in Iraq’ campaign with a dealto surrender Mesopotamia to Maliki’s death squads. Because very few Americans will noticeenough to care.Ahmed Amr is the editor of NileMedia.com. He can be reached at: Montraj@aol.comhttp://www.kucinich.us/floor_speeches/iq_rumsfeld_letter4may.php37

Letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)Letter to Secretary RumsfeldSubmitted by kucinich.us on March 4, 2006 - 00:00. House Floor Speeches | IraqMay 4, 2006"Mr. Speaker, [on April 5] I sent the following letter to Secretary Rumsfeld requesting recordspertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support, and train Iraqi deathsquads:"Hon. Donald Rumsfeld,Secretary of Defense,The Pentagon, Washington, DC.April 5, 2006Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:I am writing to request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. SpecialForces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams.On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report that the Pentagon had aproposal to train elite Iraqi squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has beencalled the "Salvador Option," which references the U.S. military assistance program, initiatedunder the Carter Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan Administration, thatfunded and supported "nationalist" paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebelleaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in El Salvador was highly controversialand received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians wereassassinated and "disappeared," including notable members of the Catholic Church, ArchbishopOscar Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the Newsweek report,Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because theybelieved that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful ineradicating guerrillas.Mr. Secretary, at a news conference on January 11, 2005, you publicly stated that the idea of aSalvador option was "nonsense." Yet mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. has in factfunded and trained Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams and these teams are now operatingwith horrific success across Iraq.We know that the Pentagon received funding for training Iraqi paramilitaries.About one year before the Newsweek report on the "Salvador Option," it was reported in theAmerican Prospect magazine on January 1, 2004 that part of $3 billion of the $87 billionEmergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations in Iraq, signed into law on38

November 6, 2003, was designated for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamenassociated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the Prospect article, experts predictedthat creation of this paramilitary unit would "lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only ofarmed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilianBaathists." The article further described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, disguised as anAir Force classified program, would be used to "support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, andrevenge-minded Iraqi security force." According to one of the article's sources, John Pike, anexpert of classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org. "the big money would be forstanding up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance."We know that some of the Pentagon's Iraq experts were involved in the Reagan Administration'sparamilitary program in El Salvador.Colonel James Steele, Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces, formerly ledthe U.S. Military Advisory Group in El Salvador from 1984-1986, where he developed specialoperating forces at brigade level during the height of the conflict. The role of these forces in ElSalvador was to attack "insurgent" leadership, their supporters, sources of supply, and basecamps. Currently Colonel Steele has been assigned to work with the new elite Iraqi counterinsurgencyunit known as the Special Police Commandos, operating under Iraq's InteriorMinistry.Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, was U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from June2004 to April 2005. From 1981 to 1985, he was ambassador to Honduras where he played a keyrole in coordinating U.S. covert aid to the Contras, anti-Sandinista militias who targeted civiliansin Nicaragua. Additionally, he oversaw the U.S. backing of a military death squad in Honduras,Battalion 3-16, which specialized in torture and assassination. The U.S. had similar programs ofsupporting paramilitary groups set up Nicaragua and Honduras as its program in El Salvador. Ina Democracy Now interview on January 10, 2005, Allan Nairn, who broke the story about U.S.support of death squads in El Salvador, suspected that Ambassador Negroponte would mostlikely be involved in the economic side of U.S. support to death squads in Iraq.We know that a wave of abductions and executions, in the style of the death squads of ElSalvador, and with ties to an official government sponsor, and to the U.S., has hit Iraq.News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supportedhighly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated asdeath squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis. Some news highlights:May 1, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. is providing technical and logisticalsupport to the Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades, the Interior Ministry's special commandos,according to Major General Rasheed Flayih Mohammed. Iraqi authorities plan to increasedeployment of the 12,000-strong Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades, which are composed ofwell-trained veterans who have worked closely with U.S. forces in Najaf, Fallujah and Mosuland include the Wolf, Scorpion, Tiger and Thunder brigades.39

May 16-20, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times and New York Times reveal discovery of 46 bodies, allIraqi men abducted and slain execution-style, in various locations: floating in the Tigris, dumpedin ditches and garbage-strewn lots, and buried at a poultry farm.June 15, 2005 -- Washington Post reports that U.S. forces had knowledge of secret and illegalabductions of hundreds of minority Arabs in Kirkuk. The abductions were by forces led byKurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military.June 20, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times reports that Saad Sultan, of Iraq Human Rights Ministrysaid that police and security forces attached to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, thousands of whomhave been trained by American instructors, are responsible for abusing up to 60% of estimated12,000 detainees in prison and military compounds. He says the units have used tacticsreminiscent of Saddam's secret intelligence squads.July 3, 2005 -- Reuters News reports that the government of Iraq publicly acknowledged that thenew security forces were using torture. Article further says that accounts are common of peoplebeing seized by armed men in the uniforms of the police, army or special units like Baghdad'sWolf Brigade police commandos, and then disappearing without trace or being found dead.July 28, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times reports that members of a California Army National Guardcompany, the Alpha Company, who were implicated in a detainee abuse scandal, trained andconducted joint operations with the Wolf Brigade, a commando unit criticized for human rightsabuses. In an online Alpha Company newsletter, Captain Haviland wrote, "We have assigned2nd Platoon to help them transition, and install some of our 'Killer Company' aggressive tacticalspirit in them." The article further states that despite the Wolf Brigade's controversial reputationfor human rights violations, it is regarded as the gold standard for Iraqi security forces by U.S.military officials.August 31, 2005 -- BBC reports that on the night of August 24, a large force of the VolcanoBrigade raided homes in Al-Hurriyah city in the Baghdad, kidnapping and then executing 76citizens. The victims were all shot in the head after their hands and feet had been tied up. Theysuffered the harshest forms of torture, deformation and burning.November 16, 2005 -- Reuters News reports the discovery of 173 malnourished men, some ofwhom were tortured, imprisoned in a secret jail run by Shi'ite militias tied to the InteriorMinistry.November 17, 2005 -- Newsday reports that in the past year, the U.S. military has helped buildup Iraqi commandos under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officerwho led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. The brigades built up overthe past year include the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and Volcano Brigade.February 15, 2006 -- Associated Press reports that the Interior Ministry has launched a probe intodeath squad allegations.February 19, 2006 -- BBC reveals that morgues in Baghdad receive dozens of bodies picked updaily from rivers, sewage plants, waste burial sites, farms and desert areas. Most of the bodiesare handcuffed and blindfolded civilians with a bullet or more in the forehead, indicating thatthey were executed. The handcuffs used on the victims are like those used by the Iraqi police.February 26, 2006 -- The Independent reports that outgoing United Nations' human rights chiefin Iraq, John Pace, revealed that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarilyexecuted every month in Baghdad alone by the death squads working from the Ministry ofInterior. He said that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the Baghdad mortuary showevidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.40

March 9, 2006 -- Los Angeles Times reports that Iraqi police officers who worked at the InteriorMinistry's illegal prison had received American training, and that U.S. trainers have also givenextensive support to 27 brigades of heavily armed commandos accused of a series of abuses,including the death of 14 Sunni Arabs who were locked in an airtight van last summer.March 10, 2006 -- Sidney Morning Herald reports that men wearing the uniforms of U.S.-trainedsecurity forces, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, abducted 50 people in a daylightraid on a security agency. Masked men who are driving what appear to be new governmentownedvehicles are carrying out many of the raids.March 27, 2006 -- The Independent reports that while U.S. authorities have begun criticizing theIraqi government over the "death squads," many of the paramilitary groups accused of the abuse,such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade and the Special Police Commandos were set upwith the help of the American military. Furthermore, the militiamen were provided with U.S.advisers some of whom were veterans of Latin American counter-insurgency which also had ledto allegations of death squads at the time.Mr. Secretary, in light of this evidence of U.S. support for and the existence of death squads inIraq, what is the basis for your January 11, 2005 statement, that the idea of a Salvador option inIraq is "nonsense"?I request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise,support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams. I look forward to receiving yourresponse.Sincerely,Dennis J. Kucinich,Member of Congress41

Part Two:200342

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/031215fa_fact?fact/031215fa_factWill the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?by SEYMOUR M. HERSHThe New YorkerIssue of 2003-12-15Posted 2003-12-08The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war inIraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that themain target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of theunderground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new SpecialForces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members,Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to reportby January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture orassassination.The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense DonaldRumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy ofwhat he calls “Manhunts”—a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagoncommunications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon’s leadership to get his way.“Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,” a Pentagon adviser told me,referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqiinsurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. According to American andIsraeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have beenworking closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at FortBragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israelicommandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers—again, in secret—when full-fieldoperations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one wants totalk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both governments have decided atthe highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” onIraq.) The critical issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is muchdebate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a practical—or politicallyeffective—way to bring about stability in Iraq, especially given the frequent failure of Americanforces to obtain consistent and reliable information there.Americans in the field are trying to solve that problem by developing a new source ofinformation: they plan to assemble teams drawn from the upper ranks of the old Iraqi intelligenceservices and train them to penetrate the insurgency. The idea is for the infiltrators to provideinformation about individual insurgents for the Americans to act on. A former C.I.A. stationchief described the strategy in simple terms: “U.S. shooters and Iraqi intelligence.” He added,“There are Iraqis in the intelligence business who have a better idea, and we’re tapping into43

them. We have to resuscitate Iraqi intelligence, holding our nose, and have Delta and agencyshooters break down doors and take them”—the insurgents—“out.”A former intelligence official said that getting inside the Baathist leadership could be comparedto “fighting your way into a coconut—you bang away and bang away until you find a soft spot,and then you can clean it out.” An American who has advised the civilian authority in Baghdadsaid, “The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We’re going to have to play their game.Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We’ve got to scare the Iraqis intosubmission.”In Washington, there is now widespread agreement on one point: the need for a new Americanapproach to Iraq. There is also uniform criticism of the military’s current response to the growingAmerican casualty lists. One former Pentagon official who worked extensively with the SpecialForces command, and who favors the new military initiative, said, “We’ve got this largeconventional force sitting there, and getting their ass shot off, and what we’re doing iscounterproductive. We’re sending mixed signals.” The problem with the way the U.S. has beenfighting the Baathist leadership, he said, is “(a) we’ve got no intelligence, and (b) we’re toosqueamish to operate in this part of the world.” Referring to the American retaliation against asuspected mortar site, the former official said, “Instead of destroying an empty soccer field, whynot impress me by sneaking in a sniper team and killing them while they’re setting up a mortar?We do need a more unconventional response, but it’s going to be messy.”Inside the Pentagon, it is now understood that simply bringing in or killing Saddam Hussein andhis immediate circle—those who appeared in the Bush Administration’s famed “deck ofcards”—will not stop the insurgency. The new Special Forces operation is aimed instead at thebroad middle of the Baathist underground. But many of the officials I spoke to were skeptical ofthe Administration’s plans. Many of them fear that the proposed operation—called “preëmptivemanhunting” by one Pentagon adviser—has the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program.Phoenix was the code name for a counter-insurgency program that the U.S. adopted during theVietnam War, in which Special Forces teams were sent out to capture or assassinate Vietnamesebelieved to be working with or sympathetic to the Vietcong. In choosing targets, the Americansrelied on information supplied by South Vietnamese Army officers and village chiefs. Theoperation got out of control. According to official South Vietnamese statistics, Phoenix claimednearly forty-one thousand victims between 1968 and 1972; the U.S. counted more than twentythousand in the same time span. Some of those assassinated had nothing to do with the waragainst America but were targeted because of private grievances. William E. Colby, the C.I.A.officer who took charge of the Phoenix Program in 1968 (he eventually became C.I.A. director),later acknowledged to Congress that “a lot of things were done that should not have been done.”The former Special Forces official warned that the problem with head-hunting is that you have tobe sure “you’re hunting the right heads.” Speaking of the now coöperative former Iraqiintelligence officials, he said, “These guys have their own agenda. Will we be doing hits ongrudges? When you set up host-nation elements”—units composed of Iraqis, rather thanAmericans—“it’s hard not to have them going off to do what they want to do. You have to keepthem on a short leash.”44

The former official says that the Baathist leadership apparently relies on “face-to-facecommunications” in planning terrorist attacks. This makes the insurgents less vulnerable to oneof the Army’s most secret Special Forces units, known as Grey Fox, which has particularexpertise in interception and other technical means of intelligence-gathering. “These guys are toosmart to touch cell phones or radio,” the former official said. “It’s all going to succeed or failspectacularly based on human intelligence.”A former C.I.A. official with extensive Middle East experience identified one of the key playerson the new American-Iraqi intelligence team as Farouq Hijazi, a Saddam loyalist who served formany years as the director of external operations for the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligenceservice. He has been in custody since late April. The C.I.A. man said that over the past fewmonths Hijazi “has cut a deal,” and American officials “are using him to reactivate the old Iraqiintelligence network.” He added, “My Iraqi friends say he will honor the deal—but only to theletter, and not to the spirit.” He said that although the Mukhabarat was a good security service,capable, in particular, of protecting Saddam Hussein from overthrow or assassination, it was “alousy intelligence service.”The official went on, “It’s not the way we usually play ball, but if you see a couple of your guysget blown away it changes things. We did the American things—and we’ve been the nice guy.Now we’re going to be the bad guy, and being the bad guy works.”Told of such comments, the Pentagon adviser, who is an expert on unconventional war,expressed dismay. “There are people saying all sorts of wild things about Manhunts,” he said.“But they aren’t at the policy level. It’s not a no-holds policy, and it shouldn’t be. I’m as tough asanybody, but we’re also a democratic society, and we don’t fight terror with terror. There will bea lot of close controls—do’s and don’ts and rules of engagement.” The adviser added, “Theproblem is that we’ve not penetrated the bad guys. The Baath Party is run like a cell system. It’slike penetrating the Vietcong—we never could do it.”The rising star in Rumsfeld’s Pentagon is Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense forIntelligence, who has been deeply involved in developing the new Special Forces approach.Cambone, who earned a doctorate in political science from Claremont Graduate University in1982, served as staff director for a 1998 committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned in itsreport of an emerging ballistic-missile threat to the United States and argued that intelligenceagencies should be willing to go beyond the data at hand in their analyses. Cambone, in hisconfirmation hearings, in February, told the Senate that consumers of intelligence assessmentsmust ask questions of the analysts—“how they arrived at those conclusions and what the sourcesof the information were.” This approach was championed by Rumsfeld. It came under attack,however, when the Administration’s predictions about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction andthe potential for insurgency failed to be realized, and the Pentagon civilians were widely accusedof politicizing intelligence. (A month after the fall of Baghdad, Cambone was the first seniorPentagon official to publicly claim, wrongly, as it turned out, that a captured Iraqi military truckmight be a mobile biological-weapons laboratory.)Cambone also shares Rumsfeld’s views on how to fight terrorism. They both believe that theUnited States needs to become far more proactive in combatting terrorism, searching for terrorist45

leaders around the world and eliminating them. And Cambone, like Rumsfeld, has beenfrustrated by the reluctance of the military leadership to embrace the manhunting mission. Sincehis confirmation, he has been seeking operational authority over Special Forces. “Rumsfeld’sbeen looking for somebody to have all the answers, and Steve is the guy,” a former high-levelPentagon official told me. “He has more direct access to Rummy than anyone else.”As Cambone’s influence has increased, that of Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defensefor Policy, has diminished. In September, 2001, Feith set up a special unit known as the Office ofSpecial Plans. The office, directed by civilians who, like Feith, had neoconservative views,played a major role in the intelligence and planning leading up to the March invasion of Iraq.“There is finger-pointing going on,” a prominent Republican lobbyist explained. “And theneocons are in retreat.”One of the key planners of the Special Forces offensive is Lieutenant General William (Jerry)Boykin, Cambone’s military assistant. After a meeting with Rumsfeld early last summer—theygot along “like two old warriors,” the Pentagon consultant said—Boykin postponed hisretirement, which had been planned for June, and took the Pentagon job, which brought him athird star. In that post, the Pentagon adviser told me, Boykin has been “an important piece” of theplanned escalation. In October, the Los Angeles Times reported that Boykin, while givingSunday-morning talks in uniform to church groups, had repeatedly equated the Muslim worldwith Satan. Last June, according to the paper, he told a congregation in Oregon that “Satan wantsto destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as aChristian army.” Boykin praised President Bush as a “man who prays in the Oval Office,” anddeclared that Bush was “not elected” President but “appointed by God.” The Muslim world hatesAmerica, he said, “because we are a nation of believers.”There were calls in the press and from Congress for Boykin’s dismissal, but Rumsfeld made itclear that he wanted to keep his man in the job. Initially, he responded to the Times report bypraising the General’s “outstanding record” and telling journalists that he had neither seen thetext of Boykin’s statements nor watched the videotape that had been made of one of hispresentations. “There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or in civilian life,or in the Congress, or in the executive branch that are their views,” he said. “We’re a free people.And that’s the wonderful thing about our country.” He added, with regard to the tape, “I justsimply can’t comment on what he said, because I haven’t seen it.” Four days later, Rumsfeld saidthat he had viewed the tape. “It had a lot of very difficult-to-understand words with subtitleswhich I was not able to verify,” he said at a news conference, according to the official transcript.“So I remain inexpert”—the transcript notes that he “chuckles” at that moment—“on preciselywhat he said.” Boykin’s comments are now under official review.Boykin has been involved in other controversies as well. He was the Army combat commanderin Mogadishu in 1993, when eighteen Americans were slain during the disastrous mission madefamous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.” Earlier that year, Boykin, a colonel at thetime, led an eight-man Delta Force that was assigned to help a Colombian police unit track downthe notorious drug dealer Pablo Escobar. Boykin’s team was barred by law from providing anylethal assistance without Presidential approval, but there was suspicion in the Pentagon that itwas planning to take part in the assassination of Escobar, with the support of American Embassy46

officials in Colombia. The book “Killing Pablo,” an account, also by Mark Bowden, of the huntfor Escobar, describes how senior officials in the Pentagon’s chain of command becameconvinced that Boykin, with the knowledge of his Special Forces superiors, had exceeded hisauthority and intended to violate the law. They wanted Boykin’s unit pulled out. It wasn’t.Escobar was shot dead on the roof of a barrio apartment building in Medellín. The Colombianpolice were credited with getting their man, but, Bowden wrote, “within the special opscommunity . . . Pablo’s death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has itthat its operators were in on the kill.”“That’s what those guys did,” a retired general who monitored Boykin’s operations in Colombiatold me. “I’ve seen pictures of Escobar’s body that you don’t get from a long-range telescopelens. They were taken by guys on the assault team.” (Bush Administration officials in the WhiteHouse, the State Department, and the Pentagon, including General Boykin, did not respond torequests for comment.)Morris Busby, who was the American Ambassador to Colombia in 1993 (he is now retired),vigorously defended Boykin. “I think the world of Jerry Boykin, and have the utmost respect forhim. I’ve known him for fifteen years and spent hours and hours with the guy, and never heardhim mention religion or God.” The retired general also praised Boykin as “one of those guysyou’d love to have in a war because he’s not afraid to die.” But, he added, “when you get to threestars you’ve got to think through what you’re doing.” Referring to Boykin and others involved inthe Special Forces planning, he added, “These guys are going to get a bunch of guys killed andthen give them a bunch of medals.”The American-Israeli liaison on Iraq amounts to a tutorial on how to dismantle an insurgency.One former Israeli military-intelligence officer summarized the core lesson this way: “How to dotargeted killing, which is very relevant to the success of the war, and what the United States isgoing to have to do.” He told me that the Americans were being urged to emulate the IsraeliArmy’s small commando units, known as Mist’aravim, which operate undercover inside theWest Bank and Gaza Strip. “They can approach a house and pounce,” the former officer said. Inthe Israeli view, he added, the Special Forces units must learn “how to maintain a network ofinformants.” Such a network, he said, has made it possible for Israel to penetrate the West Bankand Gaza Strip organizations controlled by groups such as Hamas, and to assassinate or capturepotential suicide bombers along with many of the people who recruit and train them.On the other hand, the former officer said, “Israel has, in many ways, been too successful, andhas killed or captured so many mid-ranking facilitators on the operational level in the West Bankthat Hamas now consists largely of isolated cells that carry out terrorist attacks against Israel ontheir own.” He went on, “There is no central control over many of the suicide bombers. We’retrying to tell the Americans that they don’t want to eliminate the center. The key is not to havefreelancers out there.”Many regional experts, Americans and others, are convinced that the Baathists are still firmly incharge of the insurgency, although they are thought to have little direct connection with SaddamHussein. An American military analyst who works with the American-led Coalition ProvisionalAuthority in Baghdad told me he has concluded that “mid-ranking Baathists who were muzzled47

y the patrimonial nature of Saddam’s system have now, with the disappearance of the highrankingmembers, risen to control the insurgency.” He added that after the American attack andseveral weeks “of being like deer in headlights,” these Baathists had become organized, and weredirecting and leading operations against Americans. During an interview in Washington, a seniorArab diplomat noted, “We do not believe that the resistance is loyal to Saddam. Yes, theBaathists have reorganized, not for political reasons but because of the terrible decisions madeby Jerry Bremer”—the director of the C.P.A. “The Iraqis really want to make you pay the price,”the diplomat said. “Killing Saddam will not end it.”Similarly, a Middle Eastern businessman who has advised senior Bush Administration officialstold me that the reorganized Baath Party is “extremely active, working underground withpermanent internal communications. And without Saddam.” Baath party leaders, he added,expect Saddam to issue a public statement of self-criticism, “telling of his mistakes and hisexcesses,” including his reliance on his sons.There is disagreement, inevitably, on the extent of Baathist control. The former Israeli militaryintelligenceofficer said, “Most of the firepower comes from the Baathists, and they know wherethe weapons are kept. But many of the shooters are ethnic and tribal. Iraq is very factionalizednow, and within the Sunni community factionalism goes deep.” He added, “Unless you settlethis, any effort at reconstruction in the center is hopeless.”The American military analyst agreed that the current emphasis on Baathist control “overlooksthe nationalist and tribal angle.” For example, he said, the anti-coalition forces in Falluja, a majorcenter of opposition, are “driven primarily by the sheikhs and mosques, Islam, clerics, andnationalism.” The region, he went on, contains “tens of thousands of unemployed former militaryofficers and enlistees who hang around the coffee shops and restaurants of their relatives; theyplot, plan, and give and receive instructions; at night they go out on their missions.”This military analyst, like many officials I spoke to, also raised questions about the military’smore conventional tactics—the aggressive program, code-named Iron Hammer, of bombings,nighttime raids, and mass arrests aimed at trouble spots in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. Theinsurgents, he told me, had already developed a response. “Their S.O.P.”—standard operatingprocedure—“now is to go further out, or even to other towns, so that American retribution doesnot fall on their locale. Instead, the Americans take it out on the city where the incidenthappened, and in the process they succeed in making more enemies.”The brazen Iraqi attacks on two separate American convoys in Samarra, on November 30th,provided further evidence of the diversity of the opposition to the occupation. Samarra has beena center of intense anti-Saddam feelings, according to Ahmed S. Hashim, an expert on terrorismwho is a professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College. In an essay published inAugust by the Middle East Institute, Hashim wrote, “Many Samarra natives—who had servedwith distinction in the Baath Party and the armed forces—were purged or executed during thecourse of the three decades of rule by Saddam and his cronies from the rival town of Tikrit.” Hewent on, “The type of U.S. force structure in Iraq—heavy armored and mechanized units—andthe psychological disposition of these forces which have been in Iraq for months is simply notconducive to the successful waging of counter-insurgency warfare.”48

The majority of the Bush Administration’s manhunting missions remain classified, but oneearlier mission, in Afghanistan, had mixed results at best. Last November, an Al Qaeda leadernamed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi was killed when an unmanned Predator reconnaissanceaircraft fired a Hellfire missile at his automobile in Yemen. Five passengers in the automobilewere also killed, and it was subsequently reported that two previous Predator missions in Yemenhad been called off at the last moment when it was learned that the occupants of suspect vehicleswere local Bedouins, and not Al Qaeda members.Since then, an adviser to the Special Forces command has told me, infighting among the varioussenior military commands has made it difficult for Special Forces teams on alert to takeimmediate advantage of time-sensitive intelligence. Rumsfeld repeatedly criticized Air ForceGeneral Charles Holland, a four-star Special Forces commander who has just retired, for hisreluctance to authorize commando raids without specific, or “actionable,” intelligence. Rumsfeldhas also made a systematic effort to appoint Special Forces advocates to the top military jobs.Another former Special Forces commander, Army General Peter Schoomaker, was brought outof retirement in July and named Army Chief of Staff. The new civilian Assistant Secretary forSpecial Operations in the Pentagon is Thomas O’Connell, an Army veteran who served in thePhoenix program in Vietnam, and who, in the early eighties, ran Grey Fox, the Army’s secretcommando unit.Early in November, the Times reported the existence of Task Force 121, and said that it wasauthorized to take action throughout the region, if necessary, in pursuit of Saddam Hussein,Osama bin Laden, and other terrorists. (The task force is commanded by Air Force BrigadierGeneral Lyle Koenig, an experienced Special Forces helicopter pilot.) At that point, the formerSpecial Forces official told me, the troops were “chasing the deck of cards. Their job was to findSaddam, period.” Other Special Forces, in Afghanistan, were targeting what is known as theA.Q.S.L., the Al Qaeda Senior Leadership List.The task force’s search for Saddam was, from the beginning, daunting. According to Scott Ritter,a former United Nations weapons inspector, it may have been fatally flawed as well. From 1994to 1998, Ritter directed a special U.N. unit that eavesdropped on many of Saddam Hussein’sprivate telephone communications. “The high-profile guys around Saddam were the murafaqin,his most loyal companions, who could stand next to him carrying a gun,” Ritter told me. “Butnow he’s gone to a different tier—the tribes. He has released the men from his most sensitiveunits and let them go back to their tribes, and we don’t know where they are. The manifests ofthose units are gone; they’ve all been destroyed.” Ritter added, “Guys like Farouq Hijazi candeliver some of the Baath Party cells, and he knows where some of the intelligence people are.But he can’t get us into the tribal hierarchy.” The task force, in any event, has shifted its focusfrom the hunt for Saddam as it is increasingly distracted by the spreading guerrilla war.In addition to the Special Forces initiative, the military is also exploring other approaches tosuppressing the insurgency. The Washington Post reported last week that the Americanauthorities in Baghdad had agreed, with some reluctance, to the formation of an Iraqi-ledcounter-terrorism militia composed of troops from the nation’s five largest political parties. Theparamilitary unit, totalling some eight hundred troops or so, would “identify and pursue49

insurgents” who had eluded arrest, the newspaper said. The group’s initial missions would bemonitored and approved by American commanders, but eventually it would operateindependently.Task Force 121’s next major problem may prove to be Iran. There is a debate going on inside theAdministration about American and Israeli intelligence that suggests that the Shiite-dominatedIranian government may be actively aiding the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq—“pulling the stringson the puppet,” as one former intelligence official put it. Many in the intelligence community areskeptical of this analysis—the Pentagon adviser compared it to “the Chalabi stuff,” referring tonow discredited prewar intelligence on W.M.D. supplied by Iraqi defectors. But I was told byseveral officials that the intelligence was considered to be highly reliable by civilians in theDefense Department. A former intelligence official said that one possible response underconsideration was for the United States to train and equip an Iraqi force capable of staging crossborderraids. The American goal, he said, would be to “make the cost of supporting the Baathistsso dear that the Iranians would back off,” adding, “If it begins to look like another Iran-Iraq war,that’s another story.”The requirement that America’s Special Forces units operate in secrecy, a former senior coalitionadviser in Baghdad told me, has provided an additional incentive for increasing their presence inIraq. The Special Forces in-country numbers are not generally included in troop totals. Bush andRumsfeld have insisted that more American troops are not needed, but that position waschallenged by many senior military officers in private conversations with me. “You need morepeople,” the former adviser, a retired admiral, said. “But you can’t add them, because Rummy’staken a position. So you invent a force that won’t be counted.”At present, there is no legislation that requires the President to notify Congress beforeauthorizing an overseas Special Forces mission. The Special Forces have been expandedenormously in the Bush Administration. The 2004 Pentagon budget provides more thansix and a half billion dollars for their activities—a thirty-four-per-cent increase over2003. A recent congressional study put the number of active and reserve Special Forcestroops at forty-seven thousand, and has suggested that the appropriate House and Senatecommittees needed to debate the “proper overall role” of Special Forces in the global waron terrorism.The former intelligence official depicted the Delta and seal teams as “force multipliers”—smallunits that can do the work of much larger ones and thereby increase the power of the operation asa whole. He also implicitly recognized that such operations would become more and morecommon; when Special Forces target the Baathists, he said, “it’s technically notassassination—it’s normal combat operations.”50

Part Three:200451

http://www.counterpunch.org/hassan06042004.htmlAmbassador to Death Squads: Who is John Negroponte?By GHALI HASSANCounterpunchJune 4, 2004The White House has appointed Mr. John Dimitris Negroponte to be United States ambassadorto Iraq. He will preside over the largest embassy in the world, and housed in the Republic Palace(misleadingly named Saddam's Palace by the U.S. occupation). He will be protected by highconcrete walls, barbed wires and more than 150,000 occupation force, including severalthousands of foreign mercenaries armed to the teeth with the most violent tools. Mr. Negroponteis Greek-American diplomat. He is currently leading the diplomatic war against the people ofIraq as the U.S. envoy at the United Nations (UN) in New York. Negroponte is Jewish. A friendin Spain expressed his deep concern to me recently: " to appoint a Jew as ambassador to the Arabcountry that has been devastated because of the will of a cabal of Jewish neocons headed byWolfowitz Bush is just an accessory -, is like trying to put off a fire using buckets ofgasoline".Mr. Negroponte has served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985; a period duringwhich the U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $5 million to nearly $100 million, and morethan $200 million in economic aid, making Honduras the largest aid recipient in the region.Honduras was the launching pad from which the Reagan administration runs its violent "war onterror" in Central American. The U.S-backed atrocities and terror were condemned by theInternational World Court in the Hague (1). Like most of his colleagues in the Bushadministration, Mr. Negroponte is a "recycled reaganites".At the time Mr. Negroponte was in Honduras, Honduras was a military dictatorship. Kidnapping,rape, torture and executions of dissidents was rampant. The military top and middle ranks wereU.S-trained at the School of the Americas (SOA), the Harvard version of the CIA, based in FortBenning, Georgia. According to Human Rights Watch, graduates of the SOA are responsible forthe worst human rights abuses and torture of dissidents in Latin America. Some of its 60,000graduates are notorious Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri andRoberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador,Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia and Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, Honduras security police chiefand later Honduran top military commander.In Honduras the army intelligence unit, Battalion 3-16, which was involved in kidnappings, rape,torture and killing of suspected dissidents. In 1995 Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson of TheBaltimore Sun unearthed massive and substantiated evidence from various sources pointing thefinger at Mr. Negroponte knowledge of the crimes. The reporters also found that hundreds ofHondurans "were kidnapped, tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army unit trained andsupported by the CIA"(2). Reliable evidence from the Inter-American Commission on HumanRights in Honduras alleged that Negroponte oversaw the expansion of U.S training camp and52

military base on Honduran territory, where US-trained Contras terrorists, and where the militarysecretly detained, tortured and executed Honduran suspected dissidents.During his years in Honduras, Negroponte acquired a reputation, justified, as an old-fashionedimperialist, and devoted to Realpolitik (3). Mr. Negroponte will bring to Iraq his version of"democracy" à la Latin America, where the people vote for one of two candidates every halfdecade, in which civilian leaders have to obey U.S-controlled militaries or face dismissal bymilitary force. Mr. Negroponte will find the Iraqi soil fertile for his version of democracy andhuman rights. The U.S. administration turn blind eye to violations of human rights by their owntroops and mercenaries. Nazi's methods of torture, sexual abuses and murder of Iraqi prisonersby the racist soldiers of the occupying forces are in use immediately after the invasion andoccupation of the Iraq.The occupying powers also ignores the criminal activities of four militia thugs, which accordingto exile Iraqis have murdered many Iraqi academics and intellectuals. The Iraqi-born novelist andartist Haifa Zangana wrote in the Guardian of London: "the peshmergas of the two Kurdishparties; the Badr brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq; AhmedChalabi's troops; and the ex-Ba'athist Mukhabarats under Iyad Alawi's national accord. Thesemilitias are run by members of the IGC and no one can touch them"(4). The occupying powershave not put an end to these violent crimes.Recently, Mr. Negroponte talked about: "real dialogue between our military commanders, thenew Iraqi government and, I think, the United States mission as well". He said: "the Americanmilitary is going to have the freedom to act in their self-defence, and they are going to be free tooperate in Iraq as they best see fit". Negroponte stint at the UN was to shield Israel crimesagainst the Palestinians, and to coerce smaller nations at the Security Council exercising thethreat of U.S. power.Negroponte diplomatic responsibilities were appalling. Democracy and human rights are not onNegroponte preferred menu. Negroponte will be serving the interests of U.S. tyranny and U.S.Corporations in Iraq. Negroponte will bring to Iraq the economic disasters inflicted on the peopleof Latin America by the U.S. and U.S-backed corporations. Negroponte is not suitable to serve inthe current political environment of Iraq.[1]. Noam Chomsky, Terror and Just Response, www.chomsky.info/articles/20020702.[2]. Gary Cohn & Ginger Thompson, Former envoy to Honduras says he did what he could, TheBaltimore Sun, December 15, 1995.[3]. Stephen Kinzer, Our Man in Honduras, The New York Review of Books, 48(14), September2001.[4]. Haifa Zangana, The Enemy within, The Guardian, 10 April 2004.Ghali Hassan is in the Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University,Perth, Western Australia. Hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au53

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/18967/Here Come the Death Squad VeteransAlternetBy Louis Nevaer, Pacific News ServicePosted on June 16, 2004If Josao Miguel Pizarro has his way, he will recruit 30,000 Chileans as mercenaries to protectAmerican companies under Pentagon contract to rebuild Iraq. And undoubtedly, within thoseranks will be former members of death squads that tortured and murdered civilians whendictatorships ruled in Latin America."There is no comparison with what they can earn in the active military or working in civilianjobs, and what we offer," José Miguel Pizarro, Chile's leading recruiter for internationalsecurity firms, says. "This is an opportunity that few in Chile can afford to pass up."Pizarro's firm, Servicios Integrales, was contracted by Blackwater USA to recruit the firstbatch of Chileans in November 2003. By May 2004 he had placed 5,200 men who, afterone week of training in Santiago, head to North Carolina for orientation with Blackwater,the private security firm that made headlines when four of its employees where killed inFalluja, their bodies mutilated and hung from a bridge. After training, Blackwater fliesthe men to Kuwait City to await their assignments in Iraq.As democratic governments were voted into office throughout Latin America in the 1990s, Latinmilitaries were downsized. Thousands of military officers lost their jobs. "This is a way ofcontinuing our military careers," Carlos Wamgnet, 30, explained in a phone interview fromKuwait while awaiting his assignment in Iraq. "In civilian life in Chile I was making $1,800 amonth. Here I can earn a year's pay in six weeks. It's worth the risks."At 30, Wamgnet is too young to have participated in any crime of the Pinochet regime. But notall the Chileans in Iraq are guiltless. Newspapers in Chile have estimated that approximately 37Chileans in Iraq are seasoned veterans of the Pinochet era. Government officials in Santiago arealarmed that men who enjoy amnesty in Chile -- provided they remain in "retirement" from theirpast military activities -- are now in Iraq.In an interview with the Santiago-based daily newspaper La Tercera, Chilean Minister ofDefense Dr. Michelle Bachelet stated that Chilean "mercenaries for American firms doingbusiness in Iraq" may be subject to "arrest or detention in third countries," a reference to recentarrests in Spain and Mexico of South Americans with war-crimes pasts. South American mediareport that Chileans have requested travel from Chile to the United States and then directly to theMiddle East, to bypass Mexico and the European Union. The thousands of Chileans in Iraq havebeen nicknamed "the penguins" by American and South African soldiers for hire, a referenceboth to Chile's proximity to the South Pole and the fact that many Chilean mercenaries are ofmixed race.54

Not everyone in Chile is opposed to the presence in Iraq of former Chilean army members. "It istrue that the majority [of Chilean recruits] see this as an opportunity to earn money," La Terceracolumnist Mauricio Aguirre wrote."But it is also an opportunity for our soldiers to provethemselves on the ground, and to put to use the skills for which they trained in the Armed Forcesover the years.""Blackwater USA has sent recruiters to Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala for onespecific reason alone," said an intelligence officer in Kuwait who requested anonymity. "Allthese countries experienced dirty warsâ€_ and they have military men well-trained in dealingwith internal subversives. They are well-versed in extracting confessions from prisoners."As the security situation in Iraq deteriorated in the spring of 2004, more "dedicated recruiting"began.Though Chile is in vigorous debate about the role of military servicemen becoming hired guns inIraq, in Argentina there is virtual silence. Several Argentine mercenaries have made their way tothe United States to meet with American security firms before heading to Iraq. "No one wants todiscuss what is becoming clear," says Mario Podestá, 51, an independent Argentine journalist."I know of seven military officers responsible for disappearing opponents of the dictatorship"who are now in Iraq. During Argentina's "dirty wars," opponents of the military regime were"disappeared" (abducted), tortured and then killed.Podesta spoke to this reporter in early April. He was in Jordan preparing to travel by road toBaghdad, along with Mariana Verà nica Cabrera, 28, an Argentine camerawoman. "I wantto find these men," he said of the Argentine 'dirty war' criminals he had identified as beingmercenaries in Iraq. It was not to be.Podesta and Cabrera were killed, along with their Iraqi driver, in an automobile accident beforereaching Baghdad.Louis Nevaer is an author and economist whose most recent book, "NAFTA'S Second Decade"(South-Western Educational Publishing, 2004), examines the political economy of internationaldevelopment and trade.© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/18967/55

Global Terror by Secret US Death Squads:Gulfstream executive jets and hooded US agentsBy Henk Ruyssenaars – FPF – the Netherlands07/10/04207.44.245.159/article7069.htm“ The two prisoners have their clothes cut from their bodies by scissors, without their hand-andfoot cuffs being loosened. The naked and chained prisoners have a suppository of unknown kindinserted into their anus, and diapers are put on them. They are forcibly dressed in dark overalls.Their hands and feet are chained to a specially designed harness. On the plane, both men areblindfolded and hooded… the plane takes off at 21.49 and sets course towards Egypt.”Amsterdam – 13-10-2004 -- Three years ago, on October 1, 2001, President Bush made areference to the arrests in foreign countries, in a speech at the headquarters of the FederalEmergency Management Agency (FEMA)* in Washington.He was quoted in the Washington Post in November 2001 – as saying “that the American peoplearen't going to see exactly what's taking place on their TV screens,” but he added that “slowly,but surely,” progress was being made.“You see, we've said to people around the world: 'This could happen to you, this could haveeasily have taken place on your soil, so you need to take threats seriously, as well,” Bush said.“We're beginning to share intelligence amongst our nations. We're finding out members of theQaeda organization, who they are, where they think they can hide. And we're slowly, but surely,bringing them to justice.”It is known that since Sept. 11, intelligence sharing and cooperation/collaboration among foreignservices worldwide has flourished. The growing number of foreign detentions, part of the“unseen” war on terror that President Bush has frequently alluded to, shows the degree ofcooperation other nations are quietly providing to the U.S. effort to crush al Qaeda.Seymour Hersh has warned in his recent talks at Berkeley about this secret US military unit(there are more / HR) The Iraq war is not winnable” Hersh said: “My government has a secretunit that has been 'disappearing' people since December 2001. Rumsfeld decided after 9/11 thathe could not wait. The president signed a secret document. There's a team of people, they fly inunmarked planes, they fly in Gulfstreams*, they have their own choppers, they don't carryAmerican passports, and they just grab people.” [end quote]56

Secret US Gulfstream jets and Swedish QuislingsAs an former correspondent covering Scandinavia, and knowing the Swedish language, one canread in swedish newspapers how this man hunt works in reality. The overwhelming inhumanity,when the government and police in this country of 'Sex, Sin and Smörgåsbord' – in a blatantcrime against their own laws and humanity – help US secret agents from Force 121* to carry outan expulsion and forces two victims aboard one a US Gulfstream on a Swedish airport, isoutrageous.In a documentary by Swedish TV 4, called “The broken promise”, on 17 May2004, it was shown that “the expulsion of two men – ordered by the Cabinet – to Egypt on 18December 2001, was carried out by hooded US agents. The plane booked by the SwedishSecurity Police – (SÄPO/Säkerhetspolisen/HR)– was canceled when another plane – N379P – a“Gulfstream” executive jet, was supplied by a firm* on the east coast of the USA, which worksexclusively for the the US Defense Department.Supposed Terrorist? Torture!The two men, Muhammed Al Zery and Ahmed Agiza, were alleged to have had connected toterrorist groups – both had been involved in islamic movements in Egypt. The SwedishMigration Board decided that both needed protection and granted them asylum.However, the Swedish Security Police (SÄPO), in the post 11 September 2001 climate, decidedto respond to a US request for their removal to Egypt where they could be questioned at will andby agencies whose reputation for using ill-treatment and torture was well established.At 11.45 am on 18 December 2001 the Swedish cabinet agreed – on the basis of SÄPO'srecommendation and “information from Egypt” – that the men should be expelled.. At 16.48Ahmed Agiza was apprehended in Karlstad, on the way home from a course in Swedish and afew minutes later Muhammed Al Zery in a shop in Stockholm.They were driven to Bromma airport [normally for inland flights / HR] in Stockholm where thespecial jet, N379P*, has landed. They are taken to a room where a group of men in plain clothesfrom the plane are waiting– “they have their faces hooded”.Then: “The two prisoners have their clothes cut from their bodies by scissors, without their handandfoot cuffs being loosened. The naked and chained prisoners have a suppository of unknownkind inserted into their anus, and diapers are put on them. They are forcibly dressed in darkoveralls. Their hands and feet are chained to a specially designed harness. On the plane, bothmen are blindfolded and hooded… the plane takes off at 21.49 and sets course towards Egypt”. [and torture/HR ]It is quite clear that all the people responsible for this kind of actions in Sweden, the US ofcourse, and all other collaborating countries – like the Netherlands* – have committed – and are57

committing – crimes against humanity, for which they soon must be made to stand trial, like inmy country where court hearings have started with Dutch war criminals.*Crimes against humanity: US Task Force 121Task Force 121 is a classic example of the United State's 'Joint Task Force' concept ofconducting Special Operations. TF121 is a multiservice force commanded by an Air ForceBrigadier General. The spearhead of the force is a forty-man team that is most likely made up ofoperators from Delta, Devgroup and the CIA's paramilitary units (many of whom are ex Deltaand Devgroup anyway).Other Special Operations contributions will include Air Force Combat Controllers and SpecialOperations aircraft*. It is also not unlikely that operators from Coalition nations [the 'so called'Coalition of the Willing/Killing- HR] (particularly the British and Australian SAS and Poland'sGROM) are involved in TF121.The team operates with the support of a much larger conventional force when required, and iscovered by the US 'Death Squad Protection Act'*US 'Death Squad Protection Act'*In the 29th of June 1995, #4 issue of the 'Intelligence Newsletter', there already was a story onthe future threat of this kind of 'United States global Gestapo': 'Covert Unit Alive and Kicking.':The U.S. military's “'Black' Special Operations Unit, once known as the Intelligence SupportActivity (ISA) is now operating across the world under a different name and could even see itsbudget and powers increase significantly as sharper emphasis is put on special operations andHUMINT in the post-Cold War period.”The unit's mission remains focussed on counter-terrorism and … it is becoming increasinglyinvolved in counter-proliferation, economic espionage and information warfare… ISA'ssuccessor is also likely to be asked to provide crucial intelligence if the Pentagon needs to backup its counter-proliferation strategy with interdiction and preemptive strikes. The unit is said tobe already providing intelligence on black markets in nuclear and bio/chemical weapons byinfiltrating agents into gangs dealing in such activity.”Shades Of VietnamIn Berkeley, a moved and angry Seymour Hersh told the auditorium: “It's shades of Vietnamagain, folks: body counts,” And he also said “My parents were immigrants, they came herebecause America meant something?the Statue of Liberty and all that stuff, because Americaalways was this bastion of morality and integrity and a place for a fresh start.And it's right in front of us, not hidden, that they've taken this away from us.”One can only agree with Hersh, that the suffering, and damage, done to so many people, in somany countries, by the United States governments and their ilk, will take generations to repair.58

If ever possible…FOOTNOTES:Seymour Hersh – Url. full story: www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1021.htmIncluding webcast: Seymour Hersh, 1 hour 22 minutes.US 'Death Squad Protection Act' Url.: tinyurl.com/6xdfwSecret Task Force 121 – Url.: tinyurl.com/6pzpoSweden-expulsion-Url.: www.statewatch.org/news/'Black' Gulfstream jet N379P : tinyurl.com/6gswg (picture)It is supposed to be owned by:PREMIERE EXECUTIVE TRANSPORT SERVICES INC 339 WASHINGTON ST STE 202,DEDHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, USAUS companies that often flies/operate the plane: Aero Contractor Ltd Johnson County Airport –Smithfield, North Carolina, USASTEVENS EXPRESS LEASING, INC. – 8130 COUNTRY VILLAGE, DRIVE S101,CORDOVA, Tennesee, USAFrench source: another 'Black Jet: tinyurl.com/7x22nDutch war criminals court hearing: tinyurl.com/662ppFEMA and Concentrationcamps: tinyurl.com/63huaMilitary Intelligence – Special Operations: Url.: tinyurl.com/5pe6gThe DIA and the military services maintain a large number of military attachés and a muchsmaller network of clandestine case officers to satisfy foreign intelligence requirements. TheDefense HUMINT Service became operational October 1, 1995, to consolidate the humanintelligence (HUMINT) capabilities of the DIA, Army, Navy, and Air Force.[tinyurl.com/5xapq]FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION tinyurl.com/3crhn Editor : Henk Ruyssenaarstinyurl.com/2ghoh The Netherlands FPF (at)Chello.nl59

The Dutch author has this far worked abroad for 4 decades for international media, as foreigncorrespondent, of which 10 years – also during Gulf War I – in the Arab World and the MiddleEast.Main Index >> Spies R US Index60

Part Four:200561

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050110-iraqi-squads.htmU.S. denies creating Iraqi 'death squads'In-Depth CoverageBy Pamela HessUPIJanuary 10, 2005A Pentagon spokesman Monday denied reports the U.S. military is training "death squads" totarget insurgents in Iraq.Newsweek magazine reported Saturday on the effort in its latest issue."The U.S. military does not take part in or train other forces to undertake illegal actions,assassinations or torture. All training and advising our Special Operations forces conduct withIraqi security forces is done in full compliance with the laws of war," said a Pentagonspokesman."The leadership of the insurgency in Iraq is a legitimate military target. U.S., Coalition and Iraqisecurity forces will continue to capture or kill the command-and-control elements of theinsurgency as a legitimate military tactic. Since 9-11, the U.S. government has made clear a goalto capture or kill those guilty of terrorist acts and we will continue to do so, governed by the lawsof war."The U.S. military's plan for Iraqi security from the start has been to create an Iraqi security forceto police the country. The experience of the last 18 months has shown it to be imperative: Thevery presence of occupation forces inflames the insurgency and public opinion. The only viableway of stopping the insurgent forces is to have Iraqi-trained forces target them, a senior U.S.military official said.Human rights organizations were quick to denounce such plans. "Experience from countries suchas Colombia, Sudan and Russia in Chechnya shows that 'death squads' and paramilitary groupscreated to combat insurgencies take on a life of their own and are often difficult to rein in,"Human Rights Watch said in the statement Monday. "Once established, it is difficult to preventthem from killing whomever they want for whatever reasons they want, opening up thepossibility that civilians will be targeted because of personal or political vendettas in violation ofthe Geneva Conventions."The statement quoted Kenneth Roth, executive director, as saying, "If this plan is real, thePentagon will rue the day it dreamed it up. They are creating a monster that could someday killthe very Iraqi democracy they say they want to build."62

The organization said U.S. and Iraqi forces have been legally arresting insurgent leaders orkilling them when they fight back. However, they noted, "deliberately targeting civilians orexecuting combatants in custody would be a war crime."One of the primary lessons U.S. forces have learned in Iraq, particularly over the last six months,is that non-local Iraqi forces are often best able to target insurgents embedded in certain areas,because they are not compromised by tribal alliances or by fear for their families' safety.Bringing Iraqi forces from one area to operate in another has paid dividends, particularly alongthe Syrian border where some of the worst violence is seen, and where smugglers and fighters --Iraqi and foreign -- cross the border.One unit of Iraq's former Special Forces, organized under an Iraqi general who offered hisservices to the 1st Marine Division, has been especially effective in lawless Husayba, accordingto a senior military official.The Newsweek report says trained Shiite and Kurdish soldiers would be used against the rebels.A senior military official said Sunni soldiers, including those in the 600-man Special Forces unit,would also be used.The officials bristled at the term "death squads," which suggests the Iraqi forces will be sentagainst innocent targets in a scorched-earth policy to rout the rebels, the senior officialcomplained. That is not the intention, he said.Another official said the new forces would be akin to the United States' secret Delta Force, ateam of Special Forces soldiers especially trained for counter-terror operations.Delta Force was created in October 1977 in direct response to worldwide terrorist incidents. Itspecializes in hostage rescue, barricade operations and reconnaissance, according toGlobalSecurity.org.Newsweek noted the presence of now Iraqi Ambassador John Negroponte who served inHonduras in the 1980s. Death squads with connections to the United States governmentoperating in Nicaragua and El Salvador sometimes used Honduras as a home base.63

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6814001/site/newsweek/Dickey: Iraq, Salvador and Death-Squad Democracy. Are there parallels between ElSalvador in the ‘80s and Iraq today? Maybe. But the ‘lessons learned’ by Washington arethe wrong onesWEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARYBy Christopher DickeyNewsweekJan 11, 2005Jan. 11 - Among the many tools used to build and defend pro-American democracies, murder isamong the trickiest. But murder—yes, let’s insist on that word—is also quite common in theannals of nation-building, at least in my experience, and sometimes it’s been very effective. Nowwe hear that some of the Bush administration’s strategists are talking about what they call “TheSalvador Option”, which seems to imply “death squads” (as the murderers were called in ElSalvador and Guatemala) or “hit teams” (as they’ve been called in Israel).Having watched the slaughter in El Salvador first hand during the early 1980s, having lost manyfriends and acquaintances to the butchers there—among them nuns, priests and an archbishopwho will someday be sainted—and having been targeted myself, I have something of a personalinterest in this notion. I’m not about to forget the bodies lying unclaimed in the streets, thefamilies of the victims too afraid to pick them up lest they become targets as well. When I heartalk of a Salvador Option, I can’t help but think about El Playón, a wasteland of volcanic rockthat was one of the killers’ favorite dumping grounds. I’ve never forgotten the sick-sweet stenchof carnal refuse there, the mutilated corpses half-devoured by mongrels and buzzards, the holloweyes of a human skull peering up through the loose-piled rocks, the hair fallen away from thebone like a gruesome halo.Still, I’m prepared to admit that building friendly democracies sometimes has to be a coldbloodedbusiness in the shadowland of moral grays that is the real world. The Reaganadministration was just doing—or, more often, allowing to be done—whatever it took to defeat alargely Communist insurgency. I’m even prepared to believe that Arena, the political partyfounded by the late death squad leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson, has long since cleaned up its act.Salvadoran voters returned Arena to power last year for the third time since 1992. Its presidentialcandidate, Tony Saca, beat former guerrilla leader Shafik Handal by a landslide. Would ElPlayón’s voters have made a difference? Well, we’ll never know.The question of the moment is not the state of play in El Salvador, however, it’s the disaster inIraq. The Bush administration has a dismal record learning the wrong lessons from the wrongparadigms when it comes to Iraq. This was not the liberation of France, nor the occupation ofGermany or Japan, and America’s war on terrorists is not the same as Israel’s war with thePalestinians. So, let’s take a real close look at what we’re talking about here when we discuss theSalvador Option.64

For starters, what’s been written about the NEWSWEEK report by Michael Hirsh and JohnBarry goes far beyond what the story says. It doesn’t suggest for a minute, as the BBC reported,that the Pentagon is looking to create “paramilitary” death squads. It’s about the possible trainingof elite units to snatch or kill very specific insurgent leaders.In fact, the policy could be a formalization of what's already taking place. “We are, of course,already targeting enemy cadres for elimination whether by capture or death in various placesincluding Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Patrick Lang, former chief of Middle East analysis for theU.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. According to Lang, so many people in the Special OperationsForces have been caught up in efforts to do just that, there’s actually a shortage of Green Beretsto do what they’re most needed for: training regular Iraqi troops. “Surely,” says Lang, “no oneexcept the Jihadis thinks that we should not be hunting enemy leaders and key personnel.”But that’s not the problem, quite. What those of us in El Salvador learned was that Americanpolicy might call for surgical action, but once the local troops are involved, they’re as likely touse a chain-saw as a scalpel. And that, too, can serve American ends. In almost any counterinsurgency,the basic message the government or the occupiers tries to get across to thepopulation is brutally simple: “We can protect you from the guerrillas, but the guerrillas can’tprotect you from us, and you’ve got to choose sides.” Sometimes you can win the population’shearts and minds; sometimes you just have to make them more frightened of you than they are ofthe insurgents.“That was part of the thinking behind Fallujah,” says a well-informed Coalition official, referringto the ferocious offensive that re-took the city in November. “We have only one of the tools sofar. That is, ‘You can’t protect your people from us.’ In Fallujah they had a little Salafi state.Well, that’s gone now.” The city remains in ruins; at least 50 American soldiers lost their lives,as well as hundreds, perhaps thousands of insurgents and civilians. It was a mighty tough lessonto teach. In terms of toe-to-toe urban combat, “that was the heaviest fighting the U.S. has beeninvolved in since 1968,” says the same official. Yet the Americans have not managed to protectthe Iraqi citizenry from terror and intimidation by the guerrillas. “That’s not something we’regood at,” says the official.His remarks were echoed by a senior U.S. embassy officer, who said the Americans just can’tbegin to out-intimidate the guerrillas. “It’s a lesson we can’t teach,” says the embassy official.“We’re not capable of that.” Grabbing here and there for analogies, this guy started talking aboutwhat the late Syrian President Hafez Assad did to Sunni fundamentalists holed up in the city ofHama in 1982. Assad flattened a large section of the town. “Short of ‘Hama rules,’” the officialasked rhetorically, “what do you do?”In Iraq, in fact, as in many other places where the United States has tried to train ethical armiesto fight dirty wars, the Iraqi troops are tacitly expected to do what American troops won’t. Afundamental purpose of the upcoming elections on January 30 is to create democratic legitimacyfor whatever extreme measures the newly organized military decides to take.Because we’re talking about the supposed Salvador Option, I figured I’d get back in touch withJoaquín Villalobos, El Salvador’s most brilliant guerrilla leader. Now at Oxford, he favored the65

Iraq war in 2003, but is dumbfounded by the direction the conflict has taken. Villalobos wasdryly analytical, as ever. “The problem of repression and its possible effectiveness correspondsto five basic elements: proportionality, the scope of the conflict, time, a context that favors amultiplier effect or not, and the ability to control what you’re doing.” If so, a helluva lot morefine tuning is needed than we’re likely to see in Iraq any time soon. “If the generals think thatwith the hatred against the United States that exists in the region, with the divisions in Iraqisociety, with Syria, Iran and others around, starting a dirty war is something that will give theman edge, they are totally and absolutely lost and desperate,” says Villalobos. “Invading Iraqwithout a post-war plan created chaos, subsequent mistakes converted the chaos into organizedresistance, and if they keep blundering ahead blindly, they’ll convert the resistance into a realcivil war.”A U.S. official in Baghdad agrees. “We’re bleeding from so many self-inflicted wounds,” he toldme the other day. The Salvador Option would be just one more.66

http://www.counterpunch.org/hersh01272005.htmlThe Military is Nowhere; the Press is Nowhere; the Congress is Nowhere...We've Been Taken Over By a CultBy SEYMOUR HERSHCounterpunchJanuary 27, 2005Editors' Note: This is a transcript of remarks by Seymour Hersh at the Stephen Wise FreeSynagogue in New York.About what's going on in terms of the President is that as virtuous as I feel, you know, at TheNew Yorker, writing an alternative history more or less of what's been going on in the last threeyears, George Bush feels just as virtuous in what he is doing. He is absolutely committed -- Idon't know whether he thinks he's doing God's will or what his father didn't do, or whether it'ssome mandate from -- you know, I just don't know, but George Bush thinks this is the rightthing. He is going to continue doing what he has been doing in Iraq. He's going to expand it, Ithink, if he can. I think that the number of body bags that come back will make no difference tohim. The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a pricehe has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. So, he's inured in a very strange wayto people like me, to the politicians, most of them who are too cowardly anyway to do much. So,the day-to-day anxiety that all of us have, and believe me, though he got 58 million votes, manyof people who voted for him weren't voting for continued warfare, but I think that's what we'regoing to have.It's hard to predict the future. And it's sort of silly to, but the question is: How do you go to him?How do you get at him? What can you do to maybe move him off the course that he sees asvirtuous and he sees as absolutely appropriate? All of us -- you have to -- I can't begin toexaggerate how frightening the position is -- we're in right now, because most of you don'tunderstand, because the press has not done a very good job. The Senate Intelligence Committee,the new bill that was just passed, provoked by the 9/11 committee actually, is a little bit of akabuki dance, I guess is what I want to say, in that what it really does is it consolidates an awfullot of power in the Pentagon -- by statute now. It gives Rumsfeld the right to do an awful lot ofthings he has been wanting to do, and that is basically manhunting and killing them before theykill us, as Peter said. "They did it to us. We've got to do it to them." That is the attitude that -- atthe very top of our government exists. And so, I'll just tell you a couple of things that drive menuts. We can -- you know, there's not much more to go on with.I think there's a way out of it, maybe. I can tell you one thing. Let's all forget this word"insurgency". It's one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had goneto Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and wethen had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting thepeople we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba'athists plus nationalists. We arefighting the very people that started -- they only choose to fight in different time spans than wewant them to, in different places. We took Baghdad easily. It wasn't because be won. We took67

Baghdad because they pulled back and let us take it and decided to fight a war that had been preplannedthat they're very actively fighting. The frightening thing about it is, we have nointelligence. Maybe it's -- it's -- it is frightening, we have no intelligence about what they'redoing. A year-and-a-half ago, we're up against two and three-man teams. We estimated the cellsoperating against us were two and three people, that we could not penetrate. As of now, we stilldon't know what's coming next. There are 10, 15-man groups. They have terrificcommunications. Somebody told me, it's -- somebody in the system, an officer -- and by the way,the good part of it is, more and more people are available to somebody like me.There's a lot of anxiety inside the -- you know, our professional military and our intelligencepeople. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here,and individual freedom. So, they do -- there's a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitivepeople. One of the ways -- one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we arebeen taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed thegovernment. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for muchlater historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome thebureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say somethingabout how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comesdown to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way. Whatthey have done is neutralize the C.I.A. because there were people there inside -- the real goal ofwhat Goss has done was not attack the operational people, but the intelligence people. Therewere people -- serious senior analysts who disagree with the White House, with Cheney,basically, that's what I mean by White House, and Rumsfeld on a lot of issues, as somebody said,the goal in the last month has been to separate the apostates from the true believers. That's what'shappening. The real target has been "diminish the agency." I'm writing about all of this soon, so Idon't want to overdo it, but there's been a tremendous sea change in the government. Aconcentration of power.On the other hand, the facts -- there are some facts. We can't win this war. We can do what he'sdoing. We can bomb them into the stone ages. Here's the other horrifying, sort of spectacular factthat we don't really appreciate. Since we installed our puppet government, this man, Allawi, whowas a member of the Mukabarat, the secret police of Saddam, long before he became a critic, andis basically Saddam-lite. Before we installed him, since we have installed him on June 28, July,August, September, October, November, every month, one thing happened: the number ofsorties, bombing raids by one plane, and the number of tonnage dropped has grownexponentially each month. We are systematically bombing that country. There are no embeddedjournalists at Doha, the Air Force base I think we're operating out of. No embedded journalists atthe aircraft carrier, Harry Truman. That's the aircraft carrier that I think is doing many of theoperational fights. There's no air defense, It's simply a turkey shoot. They come and hit what theywant. We know nothing. We don't ask. We're not told. We know nothing about the extent ofbombing. So if they're going to carry out an election and if they're going to succeed, bombing isgoing to be key to it, which means that what happened in Fallujah, essentially Iraq -- some ofyou remember Vietnam -- Iraq is being turn into a "free-fire zone" right in front of us. Hiteverything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task ofbeing an urban bombing planner, planning urban bombing, to make urban bombing be asunobtrusive as possible. I think it was three weeks ago today, three weeks ago Sunday after68

Fallujah I called him at home. I'm one of the people -- I don't call people at work. I call them athome, and he has one of those caller I.D.'s, and he picked up the phone and he said, "Welcome toStalingrad." We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us.They're not talking about it.We have a President that -- and a Secretary of State that, when a trooper -- when a reporter orjournalist asked -- actually a trooper, a soldier, asked about lack of equipment, stumbled throughan answer and the President then gets up and says, "Yes, they should all have good equipmentand we're going to do it," as if somehow he wasn't involved in the process. Words mean nothing-- nothing to George Bush. They are just utterances. They have no meaning. Bush can say againand again, "well, we don't do torture." We know what happened. We know about Abu Ghraib.We know, we see anecdotally. We all understand in some profound way because so much hascome out in the last few weeks, the I.C.R.C. The ACLU put out more papers, this is not anisolated incident what's happened with the seven kids and the horrible photographs, LynndieEngland. That's into the not the issue is. They're fall guys. Of course, they did wrong. But youknow, when we send kids to fight, one of the things that we do when we send our children to waris the officers become in loco parentis. That means their job in the military is to protect thesekids, not only from getting bullets and being blown up, but also there is nothing as stupid as a 20or 22-year-old kid with a weapon in a war zone. Protect them from themselves. The spectacle ofthese people doing those antics night after night, for three and a half months only stopped whenone of their own soldiers turned them in tells you all you need to know, how many officers knew.I can just give you a timeline that will tell you all you need to know. Abu Ghraib was reported inJanuary of 2004 this year. In May, I and CBS earlier also wrote an awful lot about what wasgoing on there. At that point, between January and May, our government did nothing. AlthoughRumsfeld later acknowledged that he was briefed by the middle of January on it and told thePresident. In those three-and-a-half months before it became public, was there any systematiceffort to do anything other than to prosecute seven "bad seeds", enlisted kids, reservists fromWest Virginia and the unit they were in, by the way, Military Police. The answer is, Ha! Theywere basically a bunch of kids who were taught on traffic control, sent to Iraq, put in charge of aprison. They knew nothing. It doesn't excuse them from doing dumb things. But there is anotherframework. We're not seeing it. They've gotten away with it.So here's the upside of the horrible story, if there is an upside. I can tell you the upside in a funnyway, in an indirect way. It comes from a Washington Post piece this week. A young boy, aMarine, 25-year-old from somewhere in Maryland died. There was a funeral in the Post, afuneral in Washington, and the Post did a little story about it. They quoted -- his name wasHodak. His father was quoted. He had written to a letter in the local newspaper in SouthernVirginia. He had said about his son, he wrote a letter just describing what it was like after his sondied. He said, "Today everything seems strange. Laundry is getting done. I walked my dog. I atebreakfast. Somehow I'm still breathing and my heart is still beating. My son lies in a casket half aworld away."There's going to be -- you know, when I did My Lai -- I tell this story a lot. When I did the MyLai story, more than a generation ago, it was 35 years ago, so almost two. When I did My Lai,one of the things that I discovered was that they had -- for some of you, most of you remember,but basically a group of American soldiers -- the analogy is so much like today. Then as now, our69

soldiers don't see enemies in a battlefield, they just walk on mines or they get shot by snipers,because it's always hidden. There's inevitable anger and rage and you dehumanize the people.We have done that with enormous success in Iraq. They're "rag-heads". They're less than human.The casualty count -- as in Sudan, equally as bad. Staggering numbers that we're killing. In anycase, you know, it's -- in this case, these -- a group of soldiers in 1968 went into a village. Theyhad been in Vietnam for three months and lost about 10% of their people, maybe 10 or 15 toaccidents, killings and bombings, and they ended up -- they thought they would meet the enemyand there were 550 women, children and old men and they executed them all. It took a day. Theystopped in the middle and they had lunch. One of the kids who had done a lot of shooting. TheBlack and Hispanic soldiers, about 40 of them, there were about 90 men in the unit -- the Blacksand Hispanics shot in the air. They wouldn't shoot into the ditch. They collected people in threeditches and just began to shoot them. The Blacks and Hispanics shot up in the air, but the mostlyWhite, lower middle class, the kids who join the Army Reserve today and National Guardlooking for extra dollars, those kind of kids did the killing. One of them was a man named PaulMedlow, who did an awful lot of shooting. The next day, there was a moment -- one of the thingsthat everybody remembered, the kids who were there, one of the mothers at the bottom of a ditchhad taken a child, a boy, about two, and got him under her stomach in such a way that he wasn'tkilled. When they were sitting having the K rations -- that's what they called them -- MRE's now-- the kid somehow crawled up through the [inaudible] screaming louder and he began -- andCalley, the famous Lieutenant Calley, the Lynndie England of that tragedy, told Medlow: Killhim, "Plug him," he said. And Medlow somehow, who had done an awful lot as I say, 200bullets, couldn't do it so Calley ran up as everybody watched, with his carbine. Officers had asmaller weapon, a rifle, and shot him in the back of the head. The next morning, Medlow steppedon a mine and he had his foot blown off. He was being medevac'd out. As he was beingmedevac'd out, he cursed and everybody remembered, one of the chilling lines, he said, "God haspunished me, and he's going to punish you, too."So a year-and-a-half later, I'm doing this story. And I hear about Medlow. I called his mother up.He lived in New Goshen, Indiana. I said, "I'm coming to see you. I don't remember where I was,I think it was Washington State. I flew over there and to get there, you had to go to - I thinkIndianapolis and then to Terre Haute, rent a car and drive down into the Southern Indiana, thislittle farm. It was a scene out of Norman Rockwell's. Some of you remember the NormanRockwell paintings. It's a chicken farm. The mother is 50, but she looks 80. Gristled, old. Wayold - hard scrabble life, no man around. I said I'm here to see your son, and she said, okay. He'sin there. He knows you're coming. Then she said, one of these great -- she said to me, "I gavethem a good boy. And they sent me back a murderer." So you go on 35 years. I'm doing in TheNew Yorker, the Abu Ghraib stories. I think I did three in three weeks. If some of you knowabout The New Yorker, that's unbelievable. But in the middle of all of this, I get a call from amother in the East coast, Northeast, working class, lower middle class, very religious, Catholicfamily. She said, I have to talk to you. I go see her. I drive somewhere, fly somewhere, and herstory is simply this. She had a daughter that was in the military police unit that was at AbuGhraib. And the whole unit had come back in March, of -- The sequence is: they get there in thefall of 2003. Their reported after doing their games in the January of 2004. In March she is senthome. Nothing is public yet. The daughter is sent home. The whole unit is sent home. She comeshome a different person. She had been married. She was young. She went into the Reserves, Ithink it was the Army Reserves to get money, not for college or for -- you know, these -- some of70

these people worked as night clerks in pizza shops in West Virginia. This not -- this is not verysophisticated. She came back and she left her husband. She just had been married before. She lefther husband, moved out of the house, moved out of the city, moved out to another home, anotherapartment in another city and began working a different job. And moved away from everybody.Then over -- as the spring went on, she would go every weekend, this daughter, and everyweekend she would go to a tattoo shop and get large black tattoos put on her, over increasingly --over her body, the back, the arms, the legs, and her mother was frantic. What's going on? ComesAbu Ghraib, and she reads the stories, and she sees it. And she says to her daughter, "Were youthere?" She goes to the apartment. The daughter slams the door. The mother then goes -- thedaughter had come home -- before she had gone to Iraq, the mother had given her a portablecomputer. One of the computers that had a DVD in it, with the idea being that when she wasthere, she could watch movies, you know, while she was overseas, sort of a -- I hadn't thoughtabout it, a great idea. Turns out a lot of people do it. She had given her a portable computer, andwhen the kid came back she had returned it, one of the things, and the mother then said I wentand looked at the computer. She knows -- she doesn't know about depression. She doesn't knowabout Freud. She just said, I was just -- I was just going to clean it up, she said. I had decided touse it again. She wouldn't say anything more why she went to look at it after Abu Ghraib. Sheopened it up, and sure enough there was a file marked "Iraq". She hit the button. Out came 100photographs. They were photographs that became -- one of them was published. We publishedone, just one in The New Yorker. It was about an Arab. This is something no mother should seeand daughter should see too. It was the Arab man leaning against bars, the prisoner naked, twodogs, two shepherds, remember, on each side of him. The New Yorker published it, a prettylarge photograph. What we didn't publish was the sequence showed the dogs did bite the man --pretty hard. A lot of blood. So she saw that and she called me, and away we go. There's anotherstory.For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of -- you know, we all deal in "macro"in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. Thecongress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, "Who isgoing to tell them we have no clothes?" Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tellRumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity,it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completelybeen taken over -- by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mountand these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kidscome home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about.That's wards -- you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about thevegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous. Asyou maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the numberof survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment andthe better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities. We're going to learnmore and I think you're going to see, it's going to -- it's -- I'm trying to be optimistic. We're goingto see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened withthe soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going tohave mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed.Maybe that will do it. Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks.You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick.71

And the third thing is Europe -- Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there isenormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collectiveaction against us. Certainly, nobody -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves asthe dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit -- our -- we're spending $2billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody isgoing to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here. Buthe could get through that. That will be another year, and the damage he's going to do betweenthen and now is enormous. We're going to have some very bad months ahead.Seymour Hersh's latest book is Chain of Command: The Road to Abu Ghraib.72

http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/147880/index.phphttp://www.indypendent.org/http://www.indypendent.org/?p=356Let A Thousand Militias Bloomby A. K. Gupta21 Apr 2005In devising a strategy to defeat Iraq's insurgents, the Pentagon may be gaining the upper hand butat the cost of pushing Iraq toward civil war. A report by the Wall Street Journal from Feb. 16revealed that "pop-up militias" are proliferating in Iraq. Not only is the U.S. aware of theseillegal militias, but the Pentagon is arming, training and funding them for use them in counterinsurgencyoperations. Most disturbing, one militia in particular - the "special policecommandos" - is being used throughout Iraq and has been singled out by a U.S. general asconducting death squad strikes known as the "Salvador option."Greg Jaffe, the Journal reporter, identified at least six such militias. Yet these militias owe theirallegiance not to the Iraqi people or state, but to their self-appointed leaders and associatedpoliticians such as interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Even the commander of U.S. forces inthe Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, admitted to Congress on March 1 that such militias are"destabilizing."Of these militias, at least three are linked to Allawi. Jaffe writes, "First came the MuthanaBrigade, a unit formed by the order of Allawi." The second is the Defenders of Khadamiya,referring to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Baghdad, which appears to be "closely aligned withprominent Shiite cleric Hussein al Sadr," who ran on Allawi's ticket in the January elections.The leader of the special police commandos, Gen. Adnan Thavit, participated in the disastrous1996 coup against Saddam Hussein that Allawi coordinated. Thavit was jailed and subsequentlyreleased shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion. He is also the uncle of Iraq's interim minister ofthe interior, under which the commandos operate.New Boss = Old BossA recent Human Rights Watch study on torture in Iraq noted that Al-Nahdhah, a Iraqinewspaper, reported on June 21 that the interior ministry "appointed a new security adviser toassist in the establishment of a new general security directorate [GSD] modeled on the erstwhileGeneral Security Directorate" one of the agencies of the Saddam Hussein government dissolvedby the CPA in May 2003." That security advisor was "Major General 'Adnan Thabet al-Samarra'i." (Like most Arabic words, Thavit's name is translated into English with variousspellings.)Jane's Intelligence Digest commented at the time that the GSD, "will include former members ofSaddam Hussein's feared security services, collectively known as the Mukhabarat. These former73

Ba'athists and Saddam loyalists will be expected to hunt down their colleagues currentlyorganizing the insurgency."Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the mammoth U.S. effort to create Iraq's myriad securityforces, called the commandos "a horse to back." And Petraeus has done so by providing it with"money to fix up its base and buy vehicles, ammunition, radios and more weapons."The special police commandos have also received special treatment from the U.S. occupation. AState Department report to Congress from Jan. 5 noted that at the request of the Iraqi Ministry ofthe Interior, "billeting space" was provided for 1,500 commandos in the Baghdad Public SafetyAcademy.Bigger than the BritishIn terms of numbers, a column by David Ignatius in the Feb. 25 Washington Post notes thatThavit "commands a force of about 10,000 men," which would make them larger than the Britishmilitary. The commandos have been used extensively, first last October in the assault on Samarathat was called a "model" for how to retake a city from insurgents (but which is stilled roiled byregular attacks). The commandos have also become a fixture in major cities such as Ramadi andMosul. In Ramadi, The Stars and Stripes describes the commandos as "the Iraqi forces that mightsoon be responsible for security in the city."A report in Dec. 25 issue of The Advisor - a Pentagon publication with the tagline "Iraq'sOfficial Weekly Command Information Reporter" - stated that the "Special Police Commandoshave been deployed all over Iraq to hunt down insurgents."This "hunt" seems to include death squad operations. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, the formerhead of all U.S. special operations forces, appeared on NBC's Today show on Jan. 10 to discuss aNewsweek report about the Salvador option. The reference is to the extensive use of deathsquads by El Salvador's military during its war against the left in the 1980s. Downing called it a"very valid tactic" that has been employed "since we started the war back in March of 2003."Downing added, "We have special police commandos now of the Iraqi forces which conductthese kind of strike operations."At the highest levels, White House officials consider the special police commandos as theleading edge against the insurgency. In hearings before the Senate on Feb. 16, Secretary ofDefense Donald Rumsfeld said the commandos are among "forces that are going to have thegreatest leverage on suppressing and eliminating the insurgency."By all accounts, the insurgency is still very active, conducting up to 60 strikes a day. But one keyindicator of its effectiveness - U.S. combat deaths - shows a marked decline since the razing ofFallujah last November. In that month, some 126 U.S. troops died in combat, more than four perday on average. By March, combat deaths had declined by more than 75 percent.Sweeping countless thousands of Sunni Arab males off the streets has had an effect. The prisonpopulation under U.S. control alone has exploded to over 10,000. The insurgents have responded74

y shifting their targets, concentrating attacks more on Iraqi security forces and they haveintensified economic sabotage, crippling the electrical and petroleum infrastructure.U.S. Marines units have taken the militia strategy to a new level: by creating their own. In arecent sweep through Al Anbar province, the heartland of the insurgency, The 7th MarinesRegiment brought with the Iraqi Freedom Guard, a 61-man unit set up in January and paid $400a month each, according to a Reuters report. During the same operation, Marines of the 23rdRegiment were accompanied by 20 members of a special forces unit called the FreedomFighters. The Christian Science Monitor described them as Shiites from the southern city ofBasra, with "little love between them and the Sunni Arab citizens of Anbar."Despite being squeezed, no one is predicting an end to the insurgency. One U.S. general recentlynoted that it takes on average nine years to defeat an insurgency. Even if the rebellion iscontained to "manageable" levels for the Pentagon, meaning a low rate of combat deaths, thatdoes not mean the resistance will end. U.S. forces long ago lost the battle for hearts and minds.75

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/21/1418219U.S. Funding Iraqi Militias Led by Baathists As Part of Counter-InsurgencyOperationDemocracy Now!Thursday, April 21st, 2005We talk to Arun Gupta of The Indypendent on the proliferation of illegal militias in Iraq. TheU.S. government is not only aware of these militias but is arming, training and funding them foruse in their counter-insurgency operations. [includes rush transcript]We are joined in our studio by Arun Gupta who has been reporting on the proliferation ofmilitias in Iraq. Arun is an editor with the New York City Independent Media Center'snewspaper, The Indypendent.He writes in his article, "Let A Thousand Militias Bloom" that the U.S. government is not onlyaware of these illegal militias but is arming, training and funding them for use in their counterinsurgencyoperations. His article will be in the May issue of Z magazine.The article begins:In devising a strategy to defeat Iraq’s insurgents, the Pentagon may be gaining the upper handbut at the cost of pushing Iraq toward civil war. A report by the Wall Street Journal from Feb. 16revealed that “pop-up militias” are proliferating in Iraq. Not only is the U.S. aware of theseillegal militias, but the Pentagon is arming, training and funding them for use them in counterinsurgencyoperations.Most disturbing, one militia in particular – the “special police commandos” – is being usedthroughout Iraq and has been singled out by a U.S. general as conducting death squad strikesknown as the “Salvador option.”Greg Jaffe, the Journal reporter, identified at least six such militias. Yet these militias owe theirallegiance not to the Iraqi people or state, but to their self-appointed leaders and associatedpoliticians such as interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Even the commander of U.S. forces inthe Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, admitted to Congress on March 1 that such militias are“destabilizing.”Of these militias, at least three are linked to Allawi. Jaffe writes, “First came the MuthanaBrigade, a unit formed by the order of… Allawi.” The second is the Defenders of Khadamiya,referring to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Baghdad, which appears to be “closely alignedwith prominent Shiite cleric Hussein al Sadr,” who ran on Allawi’s ticket in the Januaryelections.76

* Arun Gupta, former editor of The Guardian, one of the most respected independentnewspapers in recent U.S. history. He is currently an editor with the New York City IndependentMedia Center's newspaper, The Indypendent.AMY GOODMAN: Well, finally, we're joined in the studio by Arun Gupta, who has beenreporting on the proliferation of militias in Iraq. Arun is an editor with the New York CityIndependent Media Center's newspaper, The Indypendent. He writes in his article that the U.S.government is not only aware of these illegal militias, but is arming, training and funding themfor use in their counter-insurgency operations. His article will be in the May issue of Z magazine.And we welcome you to Democracy Now!ARUN GUPTA: Thank you.AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what’s happening.ARUN GUPTA: Well, these militias, which the government, the U.S. government is referring toas pop-up militias first came to prominence a couple of months ago in a report in the Wall StreetJournal. This Journal reporter Greg Jaffe noted that these militias are appearing all over Iraq.And he was interviewing various members of a General Petraeus's staff. General Petraeus is theU.S. general and head of training all security services in Iraq. And it was presented as like, gee,all these militias are starting to appear all over Baghdad, militias with names like the MuthanaBrigade, the Defenders of Khadamiya, and the special police commandos. And Petraeus's staffwas interested in funding and supporting these, but what it really appears to be turning out thatthese have been set up in secret with the U.S. government's knowledge all along and that in manyinstances these militias are actually ex-Ba'athists, many of the thugs who served under SaddamHussein in his notorious intelligence services, and they are being deployed extensivelythroughout Iraq in counter-insurgency operations. They have also been implicated in death squadoperations known as the “Salvador option,” and they also appear to be using torture extensivelythroughout Iraq, so it's a very unseemly situation. What essentially the U.S. is trying to do isprivatize, is outsource these militias and provide itself with cover, but the whole time it's actuallyfunding and creating these militias apparently.JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, your article seems to indicate also that the militias have been havingsome effect on the resistance in that the actual -- just by counting the toll of American soldiers,that there's been a reduction in recent months of the actual number of American soldiers killed.Could you talk about that?ARUN GUPTA: Yes. The peek number of U.S. soldiers killed in combat was last November,during the sacking of Fallujah. 126 U.S. soldiers died in combat. By this past March, it had fallenby 75%. So, going on that and U.S. casualties, in general, it appears that there is some success.They're using these militias extensively in the so-called Sunni Triangle area: Baghdad, Mosul,Samarra, Tikrit, Ramadi. And what it appears to be, according to Jane's Intelligence Digest isthat they're using ex-Ba'athists to hunt down their former colleagues who are directing much ofthe insurgency. So they're -- the U.S. is saying, like, well, these are a bunch of Ba'athist deadendersin the insurgency, but at the same time they're using the ex-Ba'athists themselves, whothey said they were freeing Iraq from, to hunt down insurgents. But they are also just rounding77

people up willy-nilly, and there appears, like I said, to be extensive use of torture, much of itcoming from this TV show that is now appearing on Iraq called, Terror: The Grip of Justice.There have been many accounts of this in the media, where a number of times a week on thistelevision station set up by the Pentagon, Al-Iraqiya, they parade insurgents before the TV. Andthese reports are all noting that the suspects have swollen faces, bruised, that they're very cowed.And they're also admitting to the most absurd charges, that they are participating in gay orgies,that they get drunk inside mosques, that they're pedophiles engaging in rape, that they practicebeheadings by cutting off the head of sheep. And the interesting thing is, one commentator noted,it's the exact same tactic Saddam Hussein used under his government of airing televisedconfessions.And there’s one Ba'athist in particular who is at very much the center of this. It's a GeneralAdnan Thavit, who was involved in the 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein that the formerinterim prime minister who just resigned, Iyad Allawi, headed up. And this character Thavitkeeps popping up all over the place. He is the head of the special police commandos, which aresaid to number ten to eleven thousand, which would actually make them the second largestsecurity force in Iraq, larger than the British. He was also the source for this raid a few weeksago on this insurgent camp on Lake Tharthar, that turned out to be bogus pretty much. A reporterwent there and found that there were all these insurgents still there, even though Thavit wassaying something like 85 insurgents were killed. He is also now involved in this dispute overwhat's going on in this town south of Baghdad, claiming there wasn't any kidnapping and nowthere's reports of these bodies being dragged out of the river. And the Interior Ministry a coupleof days ago even said he was assassinated, and then retracted the report the same day. He is avery shady character, and the U.S. general staff under Petraeus notes that he's very powerful, andthat if he is removed, he could take his militias with him, this huge force. And right now, there'sa power struggle going on. Donald Rumsfeld flew into Baghdad last week and warned the newgovernment not to purge these Ba'athists. This largely escaped the notice of many in the media.And Talabani, who is the new president, has said that, no, we are going to purge them, and wewant to use our militias.AMY GOODMAN: Arun Gupta, we want to thank you very much for being with us. If peoplewant to read this article, where can they go on the web?ARUN GUPTA: They can go to Z magazine. They can also go to the New York City IndyMediaCenter, nyc.indymedia.org where it will be appearing.AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much. The piece is called, “Let a Thousand Militias Bloom.”78

From Iran-Contra To IraqThe NationBy David CornMay 7, 2005The George W. Bush presidency has been one long rehab session for the Iran-contra scoundrelsof the Reagan-Bush administration. Many infamous veterans of the foreign policy connivance ofthe Reagan days have found a home in Bush II. Elliott Abrams--who pleaded guilty tomisleading Congress regarding the Reagan administration's secret support of the contra rebelsfighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua--was hired as a staffmember of George W.Bush's National Security Council and placed in charge of democracy promotion. Retired AdmiralJohn Poindexter--who was Reagan's national security adviser, who supervised Oliver Northduring the Iran-contra days, and who was convicted of several Iran-contra crimes before theconvictions were overturned on a legal technicality--was retained by the Pentagon to search forterrorists using computerized Big Brother technology. John Negroponte--who as ambassador toHonduras in the early 1980s was the on-the-ground overseer of pro-contra operations there--wasrecruited by Bush to be UN ambassador, then ambassador to Iraq, and, most recently, the firstdirector of national intelligence. Otto Reich--who mounted an arguably illegal pro-contrapropaganda effort when he was a Reagan official--was appointed by Bush to be in charge ofLatin American policy at the State Department. Now comes the news that another Iran-contraalum--a fellow who failed a polygraph test during the Iran-contra investigation--is playing acritical role in Bush's war in terrorism.James Steele was recently featured in a New York Times Magazine story as a top adviser toIraq's "most fearsome counterinsurgency force," an outfit called the Special Police Commandosthat numbers about 5000 troops. The article, by Peter Maass, noted that Steele "honed his tacticsleading a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country's brutal civil war in the1980s." And, as Maass reminded his readers, that civil war resulted in the deaths of 70,000people, mostly civilians, and "[m]ost of the killing and torturing was done by the army and rightwingdeath squads affiliated with it." The army that did all that killing in El Salvador wassupported by the United States and US military officials such as Steele, who was head of the USmilitary assistance group in El Salvador for two years in the mid-1980s. (A 1993 UN truthcommission, which examined 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war inEl Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the US-backed El Salvador military and itsdeath-squad allies.)Maass reported that the Special Forces advisers in El Salvador led by Steele "trained front-linebattalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses." But he neglected to mentionthat Steele ran afoul of the Iran-contra investigators for not being honest about his role in thecovert and illegal contra-support operation.After the Iran-contra story broke in 1986, Steele was questioned by Iran-contra investigators,who had good reason to seek information from him. The secret contra-supply network managedby Oliver North had flown weapons and supplies to the contras out of Illopongo Air Base in ElSalvador. Steele claimed that he had observed the North network in action but that he had never79

assisted it. The evidence didn't support this assertion. For one, North had given Steele a specialcoding device that allowed encrypted communications to be sent securely over telephone lines.Why did Steele need this device if he had nothing to do with the operation? And for a time Steelepassed this device to Felix Rodriguez, one of North's key operatives in El Salvador. Furthermore,Congressional investigators discovered evidence indicating that aviation fuel given to ElSalvador under a US military aid program that Steele supervised was illegally sold to the Northnetwork. (The Reagan administration refused to respond to congressional inquiries about this oildeal.) And according to the accounts of others, Steele had made sure that the North network'splanes, used to ferry weapons to the contras, could come and go from Illopongo.When questioned by the Iran-contra independent counsel, Steele maintained that he had limitedhis actions to providing humanitarian assistance to the contras--an act that would not haveviolated the prohibition passed by Congress on supplying the contras with weapons. But, asindependent counsel Lawrence Walsh later pointed out in his book, Firewall, a lie-detectorexamination indicated Steel "was not being truthful." Steele's name had also turned up in theprivate notebooks in which North kept track of his various Iran-contra operations. As Walshwrote, "Confronted with the results of the lie-detector test and North's notebook, Steele admittednot only his participation in the [clandestine] arms deliveries [to the contras] but also his earlydiscussions of these activities with Donald Gregg [the national security adviser to Vice PresidentGeorge Bush] and the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin G. Corr."Walsh's description suggested that Steele tried to lie his way past investigators as part of a largercover-up. At the time of the scandal, a significant question was how much Donald Gregg knewabout the operation in El Salvador, for Gregg's connection to the secret, law-skirting contrasupportnetwork implicated Vice President Bush, who was running for president and claiming hehad been out of the loop on the Iran-contra affair. (George H.W. Bush's own diaries--which hewithheld for several years and did not release until after he had lost his 1992 bid for reelection aspresident--prove that despite his claim of ignorance he knew about the Iran-contra affair before itbecame public.) Steele had played the good soldier--that is, he did not tell the truth and kept hismouth shut as long as he could.Steele escaped indictment and his flunking of the polygraph exam was not revealed until Walsh'sbook came out in 1997. But he did have to pay for his participation in the North's contra scheme.In 1988, the Pentagon sent to the Senate a list of 50 Army colonels who were up for promotion tobrigadier general. An a list of proposed promotions to full colonel submitted at the same timeincluded Lt. Colonel Robert Earl, a North deputy who assisted the contra supply effort andparticipated in the destruction of records after the Iran-contra scandal exploded. Usually suchpromotions fly though the Senate with no debate. But aides working for Senator Tom Harkin, aDemocrat from Iowa, noticed Steele's and Earl's names on these lists, and Harkin blocked thesetwo promotions. "There is no way any of these people is going to get a promotion" without acongressional inquiry, Harkin told The Washington Post. The Army claimed that it had foundthat Steele had committed nothing wrong. Obviously, it had not looked hard enough, for, asWalsh later determined, Steele had not told the truth.But misleading congressional and independent investigators didn't fully derail Steele's career. Heis once more advising a military unit with a questionable human rights record. Let's hope that if80

his actions this time around become of interest to government investigators he is truthful whenthey come knocking.Copyright © 2005 The Nation81

For Iraq, "The Salvador Option" Becomes Realityby Max Fullerwww.globalresearch.ca, 2 June 2005, 9 pagesThe URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.htmlAbstractThe following article examines evidence that the 'Salvador Option' for Iraq has beenongoing for some time and attempts to say what such an option will mean. It paysparticular attention to the role of the Special Police Commandos, considering both thebackground of their US liaisons and their deployment in Iraq. The article also looks at theevidence for death-squad style massacres in Iraq and draws attention to the almostcomplete absence of investigation. As such, the article represents an initial effort tocompile and examine some of these mass killings and is intended to spur others intofurther looking at the evidence. Finally, the article turns away from the notion thatsectarianism is a sufficient explanation for the violence in Iraq, locating it structurally atthe hands of the state as part of the ongoing economic subjugation of Iraq.Mounting evidence indicates that the ‘Salvador Option’ mooted for Iraq is already proceeding atfull throttle.On 8 January this year, Newsweek published an article that claimed the US government wasconsidering a ‘Salvador Option’ to combat the insurgency in Iraq(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/ ). The Salvador Option is a reference tothe military assistance programme of the 1980s, initiated under Jimmy Carter and subsequentlypursued by the Reagan administration, in which the US trained and materially supported theSalvadoran military in its counter-insurgency campaign against popularly supported FMLNguerrillas. The Newsweek article was widely cited in the mainstream media but the allegationswere rapidly dismissed by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Though the reportsmentioned human-rights violations, they generally made little of the fact that it was the veryunits that US military advisors had instructed that were frequently responsible for the mostunspeakable crimes* and that there was at times a clear correlation between fresh bouts oftraining and subsequent atrocities (see Noam Chomsky, ‘The Crucifixion ofSalvador’,http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-2-02.html ).In an earlier interview on 10 January, retired General Wayne Downing, former head of all USspecial operations forces, took a very different line, stating that US-backed special units had been‘conducting strikes’ against leaders of the so-called insurgency since March 2003 (cited in‘Phoenix Rising in Iraq’ by Stephen Shalom,http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7227 ). However, Downing was carefulto say that implementing a Salvadoran strategy would add an extra ‘type’ of unit to theoccupation’s arsenal. What neither the press, Donald Rumsfeld, nor General Downing pointedout was that the Salvador Option was already well underway in Iraq, and far more literally than82

might have been imagined.According to an article recently published in New York Times Magazine, in September 2004Counsellor to the US Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces James Steele was assigned to workwith a new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police Commandos, formedunder the operational control of Iraq’s Interior Ministry (‘The Way of the Commandos’, PeterMaass, http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/TheWay_of_the_Commandos.html ).From 1984 to 1986 then Col. Steele had led the US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador,where he was responsible for developing special operating forces at brigade level during theheight of the conflict. These forces, composed of the most brutal soldiers available, replicated thekind of small-unit operations with which Steele was familiar from his service in Vietnam. Ratherthan focusing on seizing terrain, their role was to attack ‘insurgent’ leadership, their supporters,sources of supply and base camps. In the case of the 4th Brigade, such tactics ensured that a 20-man force was able to account for 60% of the total casualties inflicted by the unit (Manwaring,El Salvador at War, 1988, p 306-8). In military circles it was the use of such tactics that madethe difference in ultimately defeating the guerrillas; for others, such as the Catholic priest DanielSantiago, the presence of people like Steele contributed to another sort of difference:People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador –– they are decapitated and then theirheads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by theSalvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoranwomen are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and usedto cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until theflesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch. (Cited by Chomsky, op cit.)The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgencyveteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in theMinistry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombia’s notorious cocaine baronPablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known asLos Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all ofColombia’s paramilitary death squads (http://cocaine.org/colombia/pablo-escobar.html ;http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/040105isac.htm ).Like Colombia’s death squads, Iraq’s Police Commandos deliberately cultivate a frighteningparamilitary image. During raids they wear balaclavas and black leather gloves and openlyintimidate and brutalize suspects, even in the presence of foreign journalists (see the report byPeter Maass’s). Significantly, many of the Commandos, including their leader, are SunniMuslims.Evidence of MassacresIn the last few weeks, with the discovery of several mass graves in and around Baghdad,evidence of multiple extra-judicial killings has started to become much more visible, but, in fact,83

even a cursory review of such archives as the one compiled by Iraq Body Count(http://www.iraqbodycount.net /) reveals that mass executions have been taking place commonlyin Iraq over at least the last six months. What is particularly striking is that many of thosekillings have taken place since the Police Commandos became operationally active and oftencorrespond with areas where they have been deployed.The clearest correlation is in Mosul, where the Police Commandos began operating in lateOctober(http://www.strykernews.com/archives/2004/10/29/special_iraqi_police_commandos_continue_operations.html ). In mid-November it was reported that insurgents were conducting an offensiveand had managed to drive most of the (regular) police from the city. There followed what wasdescribed as a joint counter-offensive by US forces and Police Commandos. The PoliceCommandos conducted raids inside the old quarter starting on 16 November in which dozens ofsuspects were arrested. During one such raid on a mosque and a tea shop, detainees, blindfoldedand with their hands tied behind their backs, were seen being taken away by commandos(http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-soldiers-found-murdered-in-Mosul/2004/11/21/1100972263000.html ). In the weeks and months that followed over 150bodies appeared (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4105009.stm ), often in batches andfrequently having obviously been executed, usually with a bullet to the head (eg.http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/iraq/?id=12147 ).The victims are repeatedly stated to have belonged mostly to the security forces, with‘insurgents’ blamed for conducting a campaign of intimidation. Yet, most of the bodies weredressed in civilian clothes with little in the way of identification. In the few instances in whichpositive identifications have been reported, these are based on flimsy evidence. For instance, inthe case of nine victims described as soldiers that had been shot in the head, a US armylieutenant simply stated that a ‘unit recently moved to one of the US bases’ had ‘some guysmissing’ (http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-soldiers-found-murdered-in-Mosul/2004/11/21/1100972263000.html ); photographs of the victims showed them wearingcivilian clothes. A blatant case of disinformation regards a group of 31 bodies ‘discovered’ bythe Police Commandos in March 2005 scattered around a cemetery in western Mosul. Thebodies, described by an Interior Ministry spokesman as belonging to civilians, police officers andarmy soldiers, were said to have been the victims of a single policeman, Shoqayer Fareed Sheet,who confessed to these and numerous other killings on a special television show conceived byfounder of the Police Commandos Adnan Thavit, called Terrorism in the Hands of Justice(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23448-2005Mar10.html ). Not only does thisprogramme break every conceivable moral and legal standard, but it is notorious for paradingobviously tortured detainees who are often forced to confess to being homosexuals orpaedophiles as well as murderers. (http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:OkQ0b9q9QbkJ:uniraq.org/documents/ArabicRegionalNews22 March2005.doc+quds+press&hl=en&client=safari)Given the extreme paucity of evidence, the lack of secure identification and the disinformation84

put out by the Interior Ministry, there is at least a strong possibility that many, if not all, of theextra-judicial killings in Mosul have been carried out by the Police Commandos.Police Commandos Directly AccusedA similar, thought less complete pattern is emerging in other areas where the Commandos havebeen operating, notably Samarra, where bodies were recently found in nearby Lake Tharthar(http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=41936 ). However, the strongest case is currentlystarting to emerge in Baghdad, where a wave of killings over the last few weeks has resulted inaccusations being made directly against the state security forces and specifically against thePolice Commandos. The accusations revolve around three distinct massacres. On 5 May ashallow mass grave was discovered in the Kasra-Wa-Atash industrial area containing 14 bodies.The victims, all young men, had been blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs and theyhad been executed with shots to the head. The bodies also revealed such torture marks as brokenskulls, burning, beatings and right eyeballs removed. In this case family members were able toidentify the bodies; the victims were Sunni farmers on their way to market. According to PhilShiner of the British-based Public Interest Lawyers, the men had been arrested when Iraqisecurity forces raided the vegetable market(http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1488096,00.html ,http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=760368 ).Less than two weeks later on 15 May, 15 more bodies were discovered at two sites in westernBaghdad. Eight of the victims were found In the Al-Shaab area, while a further seven werediscovered behind a mosque in Ore district(http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=733276 ). According to theChicago Tribune, ‘some had been blindfolded, most were found with their hands bound and allhad been shot in the head’ (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-utl ). The Association ofMuslim Scholars quickly responded to the wave of killings, accusing soldiers and InteriorMinistry commandos of having ‘arrested imams and the guardians of some mosques, torturedand killed them, then got rid of their bodies in a garbage dump in the Shaab district’(http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=238784&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ ). ‘This is state terrorism by the Ministry of Interior’ said Hareth al-Dhari,secretary general of the Association (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/47613c82-c804-11d9-9765-00000e2511c8.html ). Whilst al-Dhari also blamed the Badr brigades associated with the rulingShia coalition, the emphasis of his denunciation was quickly shifted in the mainstream press toreinforce only this aspect of the accusation and the notion of sectarian tit-for-tat violence (eghttp://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4569103.stm ). The Iraqi government’sriposte to the Association’s accusations was predictably insidious, with the new defence ministerblaming terrorists wearing military uniforms(http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-utl ). However, it shouldcome as little surprise to discover that at the beginning of May the government had announced an85

imminent counter-insurgency crackdown, which they said was likely to unleash well-trainedcommandos in Baghdad and other trouble spots(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8725.htm ).Wider Evidence of MassacresWith such accusations being made specifically against US-trained counter-insurgency forces it isworth briefly mentioning some of the other massacres that have occurred in Iraq over recentmonths. In October 2004 some 49 bodies were discovered on a remote road about 50km south ofBaquba. The victims, who wore civilian clothes, had all been shot in the head. The InteriorMinistry announced that they were off-duty soldiers. Some accounts by police said the rebelswere dressed in Iraqi military uniforms, although details were far from clear(http://sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/24/international0921EDT0440.DTL;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136419,00.html ).Similarly, in March of this year 26 bodies were discovered at Rumana, near Qaim, close to theSyrian border. According to the Interior Ministry, most of the victims were members of a rapidresponse team. The victims had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head. The bodies,which once again were dressed in civilian clothes, were found in an area where the US army hadbeen conducting Operation River Blitz, a marine-led assault on insurgents in the Euphrates Rivervalley (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136419,00.html ;http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/09/iraq.main/ ).To further muddy the waters, the bodies of eight men from Sadr City were found in Yussufiah,40km south of Baghdad, on 9 May this year. The victims, who had been tortured, then executedwith a bullet to the back of the neck, were found wearing army uniforms, but relatives identifiedthem as civilians. Army captain Ahmed Hussein suggested that the killers wanted people tobelieve they had executed soldiers (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1701988,00.html ).There are other similar cases of mass killings, as well as many more involving smaller numbersof bodies far too numerous to mention. Nonetheless, it is worth emphasising the many bodies(more than 100) gradually being dredged up from the River Tigris, especially around Suwayra,south of Baghdad. The bodies began to be noticed in late February of this year, surfacing at therate of one or two a day, but began to increase in frequency in April; some of the victims, whowere mostly men but included some women and children, were bound, others shot or beheaded.In April, president Talabani claimed the victims had been kidnapped by insurgents in the villageof Madain, but, in fact, those identified to date hailed from a wide radius and could not beaccounted for by a single episode of kidnapping. Police in Suwayra have stated that many of thevictims are likely to have been stopped at impromptu checkpoints by masked men, while someSunnis say that the victims may include people detained by the police(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-86

in/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/22/MNG45CDDBQ1.DTL ).In light of these bodies in the Tigris, it may be significant to note a strange report on the websiteJihad Unspun of US soldiers dumping body bags from helicopters in the Diali River in easternIraq during the early hours of the morning. The writer argues that the bags held the corpses ofAmerican soldiers or foreign mercenaries that the army wished to conceal from publicknowledge(http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=100552&list=/home.php& ). Thisimplausible theory leaves a very large question mark over the identity of bodies that the US armywishes to conceal and recalls the report submitted to the Brussels Tribunal, ‘Tarmiya: the SilentAgony’. This account contains first hand testimony from an agricultural worker who survived anattempted execution by a team of US special forces. He and a colleague were abducted from thefarm where they worked, then taken to a secluded grove where their throats were cut. They wereleft for dead, but miraculously, one of them survived (http://www.brusselstribunal.org /). Whilstthis account lacks corroboration and has remained anonymous to protect the identities of thoseinvolved, it remains a convincing description of the kind of long-range ‘reconnaissance’missions that people like James Steele were conducting in Vietnam.Modelling the Iraq WarWhilst much of the violence across Iraq appears chaotic, some lines are starting to emerge thatfollow the pattern and the logic of other counter-insurgency wars. In El Salvador, when the warfinally came to an end, it became clear that the majority of its victims had been participants inprogressive social movements as well as peasants who had been perceived as sympathising withor supporting the guerrillas. The object of the war was not to defeat an ideologically motivatedrebellion, it was to prevent the possibility of progressive social change and to maintain thecountry within the US economic orbit in its traditional tributary role.The same can be said of Colombia at present, where the long current phase of the internalconflict in which thousands of social activists have been murdered has butted seamlessly with thecountry’s exposure to economic liberalisation. In short, legitimate social demands are violentlysuppressed in favour of allowing foreign capital to extract super profits from Colombia’s richnatural resources and selling off its public assets for the same purpose. Much of the conflict takesplace within the realm of so-called ‘civil society’, where progressive leaders are excluded oreliminated, whilst those who are prepared to throw in their lot with predatory foreign capital arerewarded and extolled.In Iraq the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existingstate, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phaseconsists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector ofsociety. Openly, this involves applying the same sort of economic shock therapy that has done somuch damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern Europe. Covertly, it meansintimidating, kidnapping and murdering opposition voices.87

The economic assault on Iraq is well underway. Visible unemployment stands at around thecatastrophic level of 28%, large parts of the state sector have already been sold off and wageshave fallen (often to less than half of their pre-war levels), thanks in part to the introduction ofthousands of cheap workers from Pakistan, India and the Philippines. These workers are oftentricked into coming and stripped of their passports, effectively working as slaves in order toundercut accustomed Iraqi living standards. Reconstruction projects are given almost exclusivelyto foreign (mainly US) companies, who pay a flat rate of 15% tax with no limits to repatriationof profits, while Iraq’s state-owned companies are excluded(http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shumway.php?articleid=3005 ). In the countryside, Iraqi farmersare now obliged to buy a licence to grow genetically modified seed and are prohibited fromresowing the seed developed by their ancestors in the cradle of civilisation(http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html ).The covert assault has also begun. Attacks on workers and trade unionists are becomingincreasingly common (http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000200.html ) and it isinstructive that the railway workers union, in an industry that has been slated for privatisation,seems to have been particularly targeted, with US administrators on the ground threatening tobring in Indian workers (http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000117.html ). Whilst theIFTU, the dominant, state-sanctioned new trade-union umbrella organisation, may have endorsedthe occupation, the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) has not; in anycase, ordinary Iraqi workers will find themselves increasingly at odds with the puppetgovernment as they try to defend even rudimentary living standards. Industrial action is alreadywidespread in Iraq, though little reported in the mainstream press.An even more frightening picture is emerging within the sector of higher education, where, sincethe beginning of the occupation, some 200 Iraqi academics have been murdered, while controland intimidation has become systematic. Many of the victims worked in the social sciences,where overlap with progressive social movements is unavoidable(http://www.newstatesman.com/200409060018 ).Unfortunately, in Iraq it is almost impossible to securely attribute any of the host ofassassinations and extra-judicial killings, while the US-UK propaganda campaign has left manyall too willing to believe in such bugbears as Al-Zarqawi (see Michel Chossudovsky’s article‘Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405B.html ).What we do know, however, is that hundreds of Iraqis are being murdered and thatparamilitary hit squads of the proxy government organized by US trainers with a fulsomepedigree in state terrorism are increasingly being associated with them.In the context of a country where good information is extremely scarce, disinformation and blackpropaganda are endemic and independent journalists and monitors are deliberately eliminated, itis vital to be able to model the situation in order to understand it and, hopefully, be effective.There are two principle dimensions to such modelling. In the first, Iraq has frequently beencompared to Vietnam. The similarity is that the US has well over 100,000 soldiers on the ground.88

However, the analogy is misleading in that in Iraq conflict with a populous enemy state, as NorthVietnam was, ended quickly. As a model, El Salvador is not wholly accurate either. In ElSalvador US ‘advisors’ were few in number and prohibited from taking part in combat.Nevertheless, it is towards this model that the US is attempting to move, hoping to farm out thesordid business of occupation to Iraqi auxiliaries. But, in many ways it is contemporaryColombia that offers the closest analogy: not for the disposition of US forces, but because herethe same process of asset-stripping, impoverishment and conquistador-like plundering is bothdeeply entrenched and ongoing. It is here that is to be found that clearest pattern for the assaultson academics, independent trade unionists and peasant organisations that will increasinglycharacterise Iraq for those prepared to look beyond the fireworks. This is the second dimensionthat any model must address, but in essence the pattern is repeated time after time in everyimperialist so-called counter-insurgency war; for behind each and every one lurks the reality ofexploitation and class war, and, as successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line incombating the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror through theapplication of extreme violence. In Iraq, the Salvador Option may mean returning home to findyour entire family seated at table with their own severed heads served to them and a bowl ofblood for relish.*One of the worst atrocities was committed in December 1981 at the village of El Mozote in thedepartment of Moraz‡‡n by the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite counter-insurgency force trained byUS advisors and regarded as one of El Salvador’s best fighting units. Over 200 men, women andchildren (the entire village) were systematically tortured and murdered over the course of a day(http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_casesC.html )._______________________Max Fuller has worked for some years as a member of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign in theUK and has read extensively on US policy and Latin America. He is the author of several reportspublished in the Bulletin of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.***********************To become a Member of Global ResearchThe Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission tocross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, oncommunity internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must beacknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address of the original CRG article must beindicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Researcharticles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact:crgeditor@yahoo.comwww.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always beenspecifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our89

eaders under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding ofpolitical, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit tothose who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. Ifyou wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must requestpermission from the copyright owner.Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and donot necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News andDiscussion ForumFor media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com© Copyright Max Fuller Global Research 2005.90

http://nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot2_060905.html?pagewanted=printQ&A: Iraq's MilitiasNew York TimesJune 9, 2005by Lionel Beehner, staff writerWhat's the status of Iraq's various militia groups?Despite repeated U.S. requests for them to disband, Iraq's various ethnic and sectarian militiascontinue to exist, and in some cases, are on a path to being recognized as part of Iraq's securityapparatus. On June 8, for example, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani praised an Iran-trained Shiitemilitia known as the Badr Organization and the Kurdish peshmerga security force. The continuedoperation of these militias raises fears among experts that security responsibilities in Iraq willincreasingly be enforced not by a unified, U.S.-trained army, but by a diverse group ofpotentially feuding militias that could deepen the nation's sectarian divisions.What are the various militia groups in Iraq?They vary, experts say. There are a growing number of small, homegrown, paramilitary-stylebrigades being formed by local tribes, religious leaders, and political parties. Some battle Iraq'slargely Sunni insurgency alongside official Interior and Defense ministry troops; others operatewithout official assistance or sanction. The larger, more established militias, such as the BadrOrganization and peshmerga, are tied to Iraq's leading political parties, organized along sectarianlines, and enforce order in their respective regions. The relationship of these groups to theofficial U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces is variable and complex.Who are the peshmerga?They are a Kurdish liberation army whose name translates literally to "those who face death."Elements of the force, whose roots stretch back to the 1920s, fought against Saddam Husseinduring the Iran-Iraq war and provided military backup during the U.S.-led coalition's ousting ofSaddam Hussein in 2003. The peshmerga is now believed to comprise some 100,000 troops, andserves as the primary security force for the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.Iraq's Kurds have repeatedly insisted that the peshmerga remain intact as a fighting force as acondition of their remaining loyal to Baghdad instead of seeking an independent state. Kurdishofficials have also requested that Iraq's interim government security forces operate in IraqiKurdistan only with the prior permission of the Kurdistan Regional Government.What is the Badr Organization?It is the Iranian-trained wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI),the largest Shiite party in Iraq. During the U.S.-led occupation government's crackdown onmilitia groups in 2003, the 10,000-strong militia changed its name from the Badr Brigade to the91

Badr Organization of Reconstruction and Development and pledged to disarm. The group,however, has reportedly remained armed, and today operates mainly in Shiite-controlledsouthern Iraq, where a number of regional governments are dominated by SCIRI representatives.One of Badr's recent offshoots is a feared, elite commando unit linked to the Iraqi InteriorMinistry called the Wolf Brigade. Sunni leaders have recently accused the Badr Organization ofrevenge killings against Sunni clerics and unlawful kidnappings.What other Shiite militia groups are there?Among them:* The Mahdi Army.Loyal to the young, anti-U.S. cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, this group ofthousands of armed loyalists fought U.S. forces for much of last year before agreeing to anOctober 2004 ceasefire. Recent news reports suggest the militia, which controls much of SadrCity, a Baghdad slum of some 2.5 million Shiites, may be regrouping and rearming itself.Muqtada al-Sadr has refused to participate directly in the Iraqi government, though some of hisfollowers were elected to seats on the Iraqi National Assembly.* Defenders of Khadamiya. This group is comprised of roughly 120 loyalists to Hussein al-Sadr, a distant relative of Muqtada al-Sadr and a Shiite cleric who ran on former Prime MinisterAyad Allawi's ticket in the January 30 elections. The brigade was formed to guard a shrine innorthern Baghdad popular among Shiites, and is one of a number of similar local forces that haveemerged.What is the Wolf Brigade?The most feared and effective commando unit in Iraq, experts say. Formed last October by aformer three-star Shiite general and SCIRI member who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Walid,the Wolf Brigade is composed of roughly 2,000 fighters, mostly young, poor Shiites from SadrCity. Members of the group reportedly earn as much as 700,000 Iraqi dinars, or $400, per month,a large sum in Iraqi terms. They dress in garb--olive uniform and red beret--redolent of SaddamHussein's elite guard; their logo is a menacing-looking wolf.How did the Wolf Brigade earn its reputation?Last December, the Wolf Brigade--backed up by the Iraqi army and U.S. military--achievednotoriety after launching a series of counterinsurgency operations in Mosul, a Sunni strongholdnorthwest of Baghdad. Their popularity was further buoyed by the success of Terrorism in theGrip of Justice, a primetime show on U.S.-funded Al Iraqiya television that features liveinterrogations of Iraqi insurgents by commandos. In one recent show, Abu Walid questionedaround 30 shabbily dressed suspects, some clutching photos of their victims, waiting to confesstheir crimes.Is the brigade controversial?Yes. Some Iraqis accuse the Wolf Brigade of targeting Palestinian refugees in Iraq, using tortureto extract confessions from prisoners, and slaying six Sunni clerics. Walid denies the charges,92

which have raised sectarian tensions. Human-rights groups also accuse creators of thecounterterrorism television show of violating the Geneva Conventions by publicly humiliatingthe detainees. Among Shiites, however, there are patriotic songs devoted to the group. Thebrigade's fierceness has given it a mythical aura: Iraqi parents reportedly warn their childrenabout the "wolves."Are there other commando units?A growing number of counterterrorism commando units are cropping up in Iraq, experts say.Many of them are modeled after the Wolf Brigade, with names like the Tiger, Snake, or Scorpionbrigades, and operate out of makeshift quarters like a bombed-out bunker, a former girls' school,and an aircraft hangar, news reports say. It's not clear if these groups are under the aegis of theInterior Ministry.Are there any Sunni-led commando units?Yes. At least one counterinsurgency unit is headed by a former officer of Saddam Hussein'sBaath Party. The Special Police Commandos, like the Wolf Brigade, have a reputation forbrutality, but the group is also considered one of Iraq's most effective and well-disciplinedcounterinsurgency units. It was formed last September by General Adnan Thavit, a 63-year-oldSunni and former intelligence officer in the Iraqi Air Force who was thrown in prison for plottinga coup against Saddam Hussein in 1996. Armed by the Iraqi government, the brigade has heavyammunition, rocket-propelled grenades, and AK-47 assault rifles. Most of its 5,000 members arehand-selected by Thavit and are former members of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard.Experts say they have been an effective fighting force because they are well-trained, know thelay of the land, and can gather quality intelligence in places like the Sunni triangle because oftheir close ties to neighborhood clans. In a May New York Times Magazine article on theSpecial Police Commandos, Peter Maass wrote, "The integration of the commandos into thesecurity forces staunches one flow of experienced fighters into the insurgency."Are the militia sanctioned by Iraq's government?Some are, but not all. Though largely autonomous, commando units like the Wolf Brigade areused in conjunction with Iraq's army and police forces, including special-ops units like the 36thCommando Battalion and 40th Brigade. Their funding and training come from the Iraqigovernment. Nominal control of these brigades falls under the ministries of Interior and Defense.The peshmerga, on the other hand, are under Kurdish authority. The extent of officialgovernment support for the Badr Organization is unclear, but may be growing. (Iraq's InteriorMinister Bayan Jabr is himself a former high-ranking official in the Badr Brigades.) Thegovernment is not believed to support the Mahdi Army and other private militia groups thatoppose the government's authority.Why does the Iraqi government support some militias?Part of the reason, experts say, is to fill in the security gaps left by the local police and army,who have a reputation for ineffectiveness and corruption. Their use also reflects a clear strategy93

y the Iraqi government to "get tough" on insurgents, says Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle Eastanalyst for the Congressional Research Service. "[These groups] are willing to use brutalmethods and have emerged because Iraq's security forces are not coming along as expected," hesays.What is the U.S. view of the militias?In the past, the U.S. government has said it opposes the use of unsanctioned militias. But on June8, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, told reporters that the Iraqi government'sgrowing use of militias "is an Iraqi issue that they will decide and that they will deal with." Lastyear, the U.S. military fought alongside the Wolf Brigade and other commando units incounterinsurgency operations in Mosul and Samarra. Some experts credit the U.S. military withgiving assistance to commando units in the form of money, training, and equipment. "Our policy[in Iraq] is to equip those who are the most effective fighters," says Thomas X. Hammes, aformer Marine officer and counterinsurgency expert. "[These commando units] may be amarriage of convenience and ultimately may be absorbed into the army or disbanded."What risks do the militia and commando units pose?Some experts question their allegiance to the national government, because they are generallydrawn exclusively from sectarian or ethnic communities, whether Sunni, Shiite, or Kurd. In Iraq,as anywhere, increased sectarian tension can result when members of one ethnic group orcommunity are charged with policing and arresting another. "There's a concern that what they'recreating [are] armed militia[s] with no loyalty to the national government," Hammes says. "Ithink it's better to go with an organized national army, because otherwise you get militia[s], andthat's a first step toward a civil war." Some experts also predict rising tensions between Iraqiarmy officers and leaders of semi-sanctioned militia. Others fear that a Shiite-led InteriorMinistry may seek to purge its ranks of Sunnis, which could prompt them to join the insurgency.94

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F7071EFE3A5A0C778EDDAC0894DE404482New York Times ArchivesTHE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ; In Shadows, Armed Groups Propel Iraq TowardChaosBy DEXTER FILKINS; JOHN F. BURNS, QAIS MIZHER, KHALID AL-ANSARY AND ALIADEEB CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM BAGHDAD FOR THIS ARTICLE, ANDDAVID ROHDE FROM NEW YORK. (NYT); Foreign DeskMay 24, 2006DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Even in a country beset by murder and death, the 16th Brigaderepresented a new frontier. The brigade, a 1,000-man force set up by Iraq's Ministry of Defensein early 2005, was charged with guarding a stretch of oil pipeline that ran through the southernBaghdad neighborhood of Dawra. ...95

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/iraq-j01.shtmlJournalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads in IraqWorld Socialist Web SiteBy James Cogan1 July 2005Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the authorOn June 24, Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for the news agency Knight Ridder,was killed by a single bullet to the head as he approached a checkpoint that had been thrown upnear his home in western Baghdad by US and Iraqi troops. It is believed that the shot was firedby an American sniper. According to eyewitnesses, no warning shots were fired.The US military has announced it is conducting an investigation into Salihee’s killing. KnightRidder has already declared, however, that “there’s no reason to think that the shooting hadanything to do with his reporting work”. In fact, his last assignment gives reason to suspect thatit was.Over the past month, Salihee had been gathering evidence that US-backed Iraqi forces have beencarrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members and supporters of the anti-occupationresistance. His investigation followed a feature in the New York Times magazine in May,detailing how the US military had modeled the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, knownas the Wolf Brigade, on the death squads unleashed in the 1980s to crush the left-winginsurgency in El Salvador.The Wolf Brigade was recruited by US operatives and the US-installed interim governmentheaded by Iyad Allawi during 2004. A majority of its officers and personnel served in SaddamHussein’s special forces and Republican Guard—veterans of killings, torture and repression. Theunit has been used against the resistance in rebellious cities such as Mosul and Samarra, and,over the past six weeks, has played a prominent role in the massive crackdown ordered by theIraqi government in Baghdad codenamed “Operation Lightning”.On June 27, Knight Ridder published the results of its inquiry in an article jointly written bySalihee and correspondent Tom Lasseter. The journalists “found more than 30 examples in lessthan a week” of corpses turning up in Baghdad morgues of people who were last seen beingdetained by the police commandos.The men, according to the central Baghdad morgue director Faik Baqr, had “been killed in amethodical fashion”. The article reported: “Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind theirbacks, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured. In most cases, thedead men looked as if they’d been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beatenwith a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.”96

A grocer in west Baghdad told Salihee that he had been detained by police with a man namedAnwar Jassim on May 13. “When we were in detention, they put blindfolds and handcuffs on us.On the second day the soldiers were saying ‘He’s dead’. Later we found out it was Anwar.”According to the medical reports at the Yarmuk morgue where police dumped his body, Jassimhad a “bullet wound in the back of his head and cuts and bruises on his abdomen, back andneck.”Police commandos reportedly told the morgue director to leave the corpse “so that dogs could eatit, because he’s terrorist and he deserves it”.In a second case, a brigadier-general in the Iraqi interior ministry related that his brother hadbeen detained during a raid on May 14, in a working class Sunni suburb in Baghdad’s west. Hisbody was found the next day bearing signs of torture. Witnesses told the general that theabductors “came in white police Toyota Land Cruisers, wore police commando uniforms, flakvests and helmets” and were armed with 9mm Glock pistols.Glock sidearms are used by many US law enforcement agencies and have been supplied to Iraqisecurity forces by the US military.The article also cited a third case. The body of Saadi Khalif was brought to Yarmuk morgue bypolice commandos several days after he was taken from his home by police on June 10. Saadi’sbrother told Knight Ridder: “The doctor told us he was choked and tortured before they shot him.He looked like he had been dragged by a car.”An article in the British Financial Times on June 29 provided further evidence of policecommando atrocities. Mustafa Mohammed Ali, from the western Baghdad suburb of AbuGhraib, told the newspaper he was detained by the Wolf Brigade on May 22, during the build-upto Operation Lightning. He alleged that he was held for 26 days.The article reported: “He spent the first day in a barbed wire enclosure with hundreds of otherdetainees, without food, water or toilet facilities... On the fourth day, the interrogations began.Mr Ali says Wolf Brigade commandos attached electrical wires to his ear and his genitals, andgenerated a current with a hand-cranked military telephone.”According to the figures given to the Financial Times, only 22 of the 474 people seized fromtheir homes during the Wolf Brigade sweep in the Abu Ghraib area are still being held. Thosereleased allege they suffered systematic abuse. “Mass detentions and indiscriminate torture seemto be the main tools deployed to crush an insurgency that could last ‘five, six, eight, 10, 12 years’according to Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary,” the newspaper commented.In light of the evidence gathered by Salihee, significant discrepancies in the official figures forOperation Lightning in Baghdad raise further concerns about the fate of detainees. In early June,the Iraqi government reported that 1,200 had been detained. Just days later on June 6, this wasrevised downward to just 887, with no explanation. Some of the deaths referred to in the KnightRidder article coincide with this period.97

Suspicions of wholesale killingsThe revelations about the conduct of the Wolf Brigade lend credibility to the claims made byMax Fuller, in a feature headlined “For Iraq, ‘The Salvador Option’ Becomes Reality” andpublished by the Centre for Research on Globalisation.Over the past nine months, a terrifying new development in Iraq has been the discovery ofdozens of bodies dumped in rubbish heaps, rivers or abandoned buildings. In most cases, thepeople had suffered torture and mutilation before being killed by a single shot to the head. TheUS military has consistently reported that the victims were members of the Iraqi army or police.The media has universally reported the mass killings as the work of anti-occupation terrorists.Fuller noted, however: “What is particularly striking is that many of those killings have takenplace since the police commandos became operationally active and often correspond with areaswhere they have been deployed.”In Mosul, for example, dozens of men were detained by the commandos last November, as partof a US-led operation to bring the city back under occupation control. Over the following weeks,more than 150 tortured and executed bodies were found. In Samarra, dozens of bodies appearedin nearby Lake Thartar in the wake of operations by the commandos in that city.From February through to late April, more than 100 bodies were recovered from the Tigris Riversouth of Baghdad—one of the most rebellious areas of the country. The Iraqi governmentinitially claimed they were villagers who had been kidnapped by insurgents in the village ofMaidan. This has since been discredited. The victims are from a range of towns and villages,including Kut in the north and Basra in the south. Police in the area told the San FranciscoChronicle that many of the dead had been “motorists passing through the area when stopped bymasked men bearing Kalashnikov rifles at impromptu checkpoints”.Other killings have been discovered in Baquaba and the Syrian border town of Qaim in theaftermath of counter-insurgency operations by US forces and their Iraqi allies. Fuller also notedthe suspicions surrounding the assassination of well over 200 university academics, most ofwhom were opponents of the US occupation of Iraq.Dozens of bodies have been found over the past two months in Baghdad. In May, theAssociation of Muslim Scholars (AMS)—the main public Sunni organisation opposed to theoccupation—directly accused the Wolf Brigade of having “arrested imams and the guardians ofsome mosques, tortured and killed them, and then got rid of their bodies in a garbage dump inShaab district” of Baghdad. AMS secretary general Hareth al-Dhari declared at the time: “This isstate terrorism by the Minister of the Interior.”The very existence of the Wolf Brigade underscores the criminality of the US occupation and theutter fraud of the Bush administration claims to be bringing “liberation” and “democracy” toIraq. Many of the commandos would have been involved in murder and torture on behalf ofSaddam Hussein’s regime. The American military deliberately recruited them in order to make98

use of their experience in mass repression and has directly modeled their operations on those ofright-wing death squads in Central America.The main US advisor to the Wolf Brigade from the time of its formation until April 2005 wasJames Steele. Steele’s own biography, promoting him for the US lecture circuit, states that “hecommanded the US military group in El Salvador during the height of the guerilla war” and “wascredited with training and equipping what was acknowledged to be the best counter-terroristforce in the region”. In a 12-year campaign of murder and repression, the Salvadoran units,trained and advised by people like Steele, killed over 70,000 people.In his speech on June 28, George Bush declared his administration was working with the Iraqiinterior and defence ministries to “improve their capabilities to coordinate anti-terroristoperations” and “develop their command and control structures”. The evidence is beginning toemerge that this means paying and equipping former Baathist killers to terrorise, torture andmurder Iraqis who are believed to have links to the popular resistance, which an unnamed USanalyst estimated for the June 27 edition of Newsweek had “as many as 400,000 auxiliaries andsupport personnel”.The killing of journalists seeking to document or expose allegations of state-organised murderhas accompanied every dirty war against a civilian population. Since the US occupation of Iraqbegan, dozens of reporters, cameramen and other media workers have been killed by Americanledforces in suspicious circumstances that were never independently investigated.Two more Iraqi journalists have been killed in the days since Yasser Salihee’s death. On June 26,Maha Ibrahim, a news editor with a television station operated by the anti-occupation IraqiIslamic Party, was shot dead when US troops opened fire on her car as she and her husbanddrove to work. Two days later, Ahmad Wail Bakri, a program director for Iraqi al-Sharqiyatelevision was killed by American troops as he reportedly tried to drive around a traffic accidentin Baghdad.See Also:Washington in crisis over opposition to Iraq war[28 June 2005]US imprisons Iraqi journalists without charges[7 May 2005]Iraq: Reporters Without Borders condemns US report on killing of journalists[27 November 2004]99

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051118/our_monsters_in_iraq.phpOur Monsters In IraqRobert DreyfussNovember 18, 2005It is time to start waving the bloody shirt. There is no longer any doubt that the men that theUnited States has installed in power in Iraq are monsters. Not only that, but they are monstersarmed, trained and supported by George W. Bush's administration. The very same Bushadministration that defends torture of captives in the so-called War on Terrorism is using150,000 U.S. troops to support a regime in Baghdad for which torture, assassination and otherwar crimes are routine.So far, it appears that the facts are these: that Iraq's interior ministry, whose top officials, strikeforces and police commando units (including the so-called Wolf Brigade) are controlled byparamilitary units from Shiite militias, maintained a medieval torture chamber; that inside thatfacility, hundreds of mostly Sunni Arab men were bestialized, with electric drills skewering theirbones, with their skins flayed off, and more; that roving units of death-squad commandos arekilling countless other Sunni Arab men in order to terrorize the Iraqi opposition. Even theWashington Post, that last-ditch defender of America's illegal and unprovoked assault on Iraq,says:Scandal over the secret prison has forced the seven-month-old Shiite-led government to confrontgrowing charges of mass illegal detentions, torture and killings of Sunni men. Members of theSunni minority, locked in a struggle with the Shiite majority over the division of power in Iraq,say men dressed in Interior Ministry uniforms have repeatedly rounded up Sunni men fromneighborhoods and towns. Bodies of scores of them have been found dumped by roadsides or ingullies.The New York Times reports that the Iraqi interior minister isn't all that upset about the torturecenter. Bayan Jabr, "speaking of the prison in an angry sarcastic tone, said, 'There has been muchexaggeration about this issue.' And he added, "Nobody was beheaded.'" So, apparently notbeheading innocents is the standard of justice in the New Iraq. And, apparently there may bedozens, scores or hundreds of similar facilities.This is not a surprise.Nearly two years ago, writing in the American Prospect, I wrote the following: "The Prospecthas learned that part of a secret $3 billion in new funds --- tucked away in the $87 billion Iraqappropriation that Congress approved in early November --- will go toward the creation of aparamilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups...The bulk ofthe covert money will support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded, Iraqi securityforce." Except for a parallel story by Sy Hersh in the New Yorker, the story was ignored.Over the past two years, writing for TomPaine.com, I have repeatedly written about Shiite deathsquads and about abuses by the paramilitary Badr Brigade, the secret army trained and run by100

Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Iraqi Sunnis and opposition leaders, including Aiham Al Sammarae(as I wrote for TomPaine ) have charged that the Iraqi government has been runningassassination teams. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, have been killed already, including twoattorneys for those accused in the kangaroo court set up to convict Saddam Hussein and otherformer Iraqi government officials. The Post suggests that the prison uncovered in Baghdad was a"secret torture center run with the help of intelligence agents from neighboring Iran." Read thatagain: intelligence agents from Iran.Last week I had a chilling encounter with one of the monsters responsible for the Murder Inc.units run by Badr and by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). At aWashington think tank, I met Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's so-called deputy president and a SCIRIofficial. When I asked Mahdi about reports that Iraqi police and interior ministry squads werecarrying out assassinations and other illegal acts, he didn't deny it --- but, he said, such acts weremerely a reaction to the terrorism of the resistance. "There is terrorism on only one side," he said."Inappropriate acts by the other side, by the police --- this is something else. This is a reaction."As far as civilian casualties in Sunni towns, he had this to say: "You can't fight terrorism withoutattacking some popular areas."I also asked him about the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-backed paramilitary force that is the maindomestic army propping up Abdul Mahdi's Shiite coalition, he said "they are disarmed," which ispatently absurd. He added: "They participate fully in the political process."Abdul Mahdi had this to say about Fallujah, the city that was obliterated by the U.S. armedforces a year ago. "It is one of the most peaceful areas in Iraq. I don't know whether the peopleare happy or not. But it is one of the most peaceful cities."Make no mistake. The gangsters now running Iraq are our creatures.Earlier this week, I was speaking with someone who was involved in the pre-2003 war planningeffort vis-àà-vis Iraq. As I mentioned in TPM Cafe , he told me that some of his colleaguesrealized that the New Iraq would probably be taken over not by Ahmed Chalabi, but by the Shiitefundamentalists. Those radical-right parties (along with the Kurds) were the real forces that tookpart in Chalabi's INC bloc. And the United States consciously supported the toppling of Saddamknowing that radical Shiites would be the chief beneficiaries. This was not an intelligencefailure. We knew it. This was an explicit decision by the neocon-dominated cabal to replaceSaddam with Shiite crazies. Now, we see that those crazies are running Saddam-like tortureprisons where they use electric drills and flay the skin off Sunni captives.The military in Iraq is scrambling to limit the damage from the stunning revelation about the menwho are running Iraq today. We toppled Saddam --- and in his place we've installed a hundredmini-Saddams.Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped UnleashFundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writerbased in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is acontributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent101

for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached at hiswebsite: www.robertdreyfuss.com._________________________________________________102

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11180.htm"Riding with the Bad Boys": The rise of Iraqi death squadsInformation Clearing HouseBy Mike Whitney11/30/05The New York Times confirmed today that the "Iraqi (security) forces are carrying outexecutions in predominantly Sunnis neighborhoods." Hundreds of men have been takenfrom taken from their homes by men in Iraqi uniforms and either "found dead in ditchesor fields, with bullet holes to their temples, acid burns to their skin, and holes in theirbodies apparently made by electrical drills. Many have simply vanished". (Dexter Filkins,"Sunnis accuse Iraqi Military of Kidnappings and Slayings" NY Times)The Times merely reiterates what has been echoing through internet for some time now,that the Iraqi Interior Ministry is using lethal force to undercut the Sunni-led resistanceand terrorize the public. The plan was first uncovered in an article by Seymour Hersh inJanuary 2005. Hersh reported that the Pentagon was intending to trigger "The SalvadorOption"; a strategy which involves the training of "death squads" to execute a bloodysecret war against "alleged" insurgents."Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?" one official askedHersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals inany area we want."Then he added ominously, "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys."The authorization for the death squads comes straight from the Oval Office. According toChris Floyd, "Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has givenRumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into a 'global free-fire zone’’. (ChrisFloyd, Darkness Visible: The Pentagon plan to foment terrorism is now in Operation)Floyd’s observations are consistent with what we already know of Rumsfeld’sinvolvement in overseeing the development of the Iraqi security apparatus. Following thepresidential elections in Iraq, Rumsfeld paid a surprise visit on the newly-appointed al-Jaafari to discourage any changes in the Interior Ministry where American agents weretraining Iraqi goons in the fine art of torture and assassination.Commenting to BBC, Rumsfeld issued a clear "hands off" warning to al-Jaafari: "Itsimportant that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in theministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence." He said it was important for the103

security forces to continue building their strength because US forces were not going to bethere forever.The genocidal attacks reported by the New York Times are the predictable upshot of aprocess that was initiated by the Pentagon to destroy the Iraqi resistance through violencealone. As yet, there has been no effort to engage in dialogue with members of theresistance. This suggests that the Bush administration still believes that the dilemma theyface can be resolved without a political solution.There can be no political solution without direct negotiations with the Iraqi resistance.The smoke-and-mirrors phantom that the Bush administration mistakes for democracyhas nothing to do with the serious formation of a legitimate Iraqi government. Voting, initself, does not signify democracy unless there is broad acceptance among the manyfactions in the society. The massive demonstration of daily violence indicates a clearrejection of the legitimacy of the state. This can only be decided by eliminating thefactors that prop up the puppet regime (the occupation) and engaging in a politicalprocess free from outside coercion.The death squads are in fact just one part of a three-pronged strategy to crush theresistance and establish Iraq as a corporate-colony of American energy giants. The otherphase of the operation involves the systematic decimation of Sunni cities.In the last few months the US military has carried out numerous assaults on Sunni citiesto break the resistance and destroy its ability to wage war. In consecutive operations, theoccupation forces have followed the same ruthless pattern of wanton destruction andcollective punishment they perfected in their siege of Falluja. Ghali Hassan’s shockingarticle, "Iraq: A Criminal Process" (Global Research) is an invaluable resource for thosewho really want to grasp the breadth of the war crimes being perpetrated in Iraq.Hassan says:"Just before the U.S. forces attacked al Qaim last 29 August, a thriving town of 150,000people in western Iraq, they cordoned it off, cut electricity, water and food supplies. Thenthey indiscriminately and disproportionately blanketed the town, from the ground andfrom the air, with artillery shells, cluster bombs and napalm bombs with the fullknowledge that civilians, particularly women and children, would be killed.When it was all over, the U.S. Marines entered the city to fight (with air cover) those whowere still alive. Humanitarian aides and medical supplies were prevented from enteringthe town, in gross violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions. This cycleof criminal process to legitimize the colonization of Iraq is depicted by the Bush-Blairaxis as the "political process" towards "democracy."104

The slaughter and destruction in western Iraq are not simply isolated incidents that arekept from the media. They are, in fact, a pattern of willful devastation of city after cityexecuted by the Defense Dept. to break the back of the resistance by decimating thecivilian enclaves where they draw their support. The results have meant "scores ofcasualties due to 'indiscriminate bombing’ by US forces. Paralleling the atrocitiescommitted in other towns and cities, all of which savagely attacked and destroyed theentire population of Tal Afar are now 'ethnically cleansed’ refugees". (G. Hassan)The death squads and the intentional destruction of the Sunni heartland comprise the firsttwo parts of the three-pronged strategy to defeat the Iraqi resistance. The final leg on thestool is the propaganda war that is being directed against the American people to concealthe details of the military’s war crimes. The arrest or liquidation of independentjournalists reporting from the front has allowed the Pentagon’s "embedded" legions toshape a narrative of benign intervention in the name of fighting terrorism. According tothe Washington Post not one of the more then one thousand prisoners captured in TalAfar was a foreign fighter. This should put to rest the Pentagon’s spurious claim thatSunni cities are "Al Qaida strongholds."American media now functions as an annex of the War Department. The news isfashioned to meet the policy objectives of the state and its constituents. The war thatappears on TV stations across America, where US soldiers are dutifully ushering abackwards Muslim nation towards democracy and free enterprise, bears no resemblanceto the gruesome realities of the colonial war that is devastating Iraqi society.The media’s performance in Iraq has been the most successful part of the entirecampaign. It continues to embellish, obfuscate or divert attention from the clear facts ofAmerica’s criminal involvement.The media has unfailingly provided the ever-shifting rationale for the ongoing occupationand continued to mobilize public support for the most unpopular war in Americanhistory. Its embedded propagandists have been more vital to the war-effort than laserguidedtechnology, cluster-bombs or detention centers.The Bush administration’s three-pronged strategy for Iraq precludes a political solutionbecause it is designed as a model for future wars. The Washington warlords and theirboardroom constituents have no intention of negotiating the terms of global rule; that isthe exclusive duty of the White House mandarins.Negotiation and diplomacy are signs of weakness. The administration will remain faithfulto its right-wing mandate; concealing its real goals behind the smokescreen ofwithdrawal, while ruling according to its basic precepts of force and deception.Copyright Mike Whitney105

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/01/1526201Is the U.S. Training Iraqi Death Squads to Fight the Insurgency?Democracy Now!Thursday, December 1st, 2005In what the White House billed as a major policy address, President Bush outlined theadministration's Iraq war strategy. Bush again linked a withdrawal of U.S. troops toimprovements in the capability of Iraqi security forces. We speak with independent journalistArun Gupta about the presence Iraqi death squads and the U.S. training of Iraqi security forces.[includes rush transcript]President Bush sought to overcome mounting criticism of the Iraq war Wednesday in what theWhite House billed as a major address outlining the administration's strategy.In a 45-minute speech before the US Naval Academy, Bush again rejected a timetable for thewithdrawal of US troops and recounted improvements made by Iraqi security forces. The speechwas the first of a series of four Bush plans to give before the December 15th parliamentaryelections. The president yesterday reiterated that Iraqi troops will eventually take over from USforces in fighting the insurgency.President Bush, November 30"Our goals are to train enough Iraqi forces so they can carry the fight and this will take timeand patience and it is worth the time and it is worth the effort because Iraqis and Americansshare a common enemy and when that enemy is defeated in Iraq, Americans will be safer here athome. And as Iraqi security forces stand up then coalition forces can stand down and when ourmission of defeating the terrorist is complete our troops can come home to a proud nation."Bush has repeatedly linked a U.S. withdrawal to improvements in the capability of Iraqi forces.But the mainstream media has recently detailed the existence of death squads within the largelyShiite police and special commandos.Operating through or with the Iraqi security forces, these militias have abducted, tortured andexecuted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Sunnis. The New York Times reported Tuesday"Some Sunni males have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in theirtemples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills.Many have simply vanished."At a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasquestioned about the death squads.Pentagon press conference, November 29Q: Mr. Secretary, are you concerned over -- and in fact, is the United States looking intogrowing reports of uniformed death squads in Iraq perhaps assassinating and torturing hundredsof Sunnis? And if that's true, what would that say about stability in Iraq?106

SEC. RUMSFELD: I'm not going to comment on hypothetical questions. I've not seenreports that hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all. We know for a fact that it's aviolent country. We know for a fact that there have been various militias. We know that therehave been some militias that have been Iran-oriented. We also know there's been some militias inthe north that have been very helpful. The Peshmerga have been very constructive in whatthey've done. But I'm not going to get into speculation like that.Q: But, sir, that's not a hypothetical, I don't believe. The Sunnis themselves are charging thathundreds have been assassinated, people shot in the head, found in alleys.SEC. RUMSFELD: What you're talking about are unverified -- to my knowledge, at least --unverified comments. I just don't have any data from the field that I could comment on in aspecific way.While the story only recently made front-page news, it actually first appeared in the press oversix months ago. Investigative journalist Arun Gupta was one of the first to report on the presenceof death squads in Iraq back in April of this year. We interviewed him at the time, he joins usagain in our firehouse studios. Arun is an editor with New York City Independent MediaCenter's newspaper, The Indypendent.* Arun Gupta, investigative journalist who writes frequently for Z Magazine, Left Turn andthe Indypendent newspaper in New York. He is an editor at the Indypendent and a former editorat the Guardian weekly in New York.RUSH TRANSCRIPTThis transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioningfor the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...JUAN GONZALEZ: The President yesterday reiterated that Iraqi troops will eventually takeover from U.S. forces fighting the insurgency.PRESIDENT BUSH: Our goal is to train enough Iraqi forces so they can carry the fight, andthis will take time and patience. And it's worth the time. And it's worth the effort, because Iraqisand Americans share a common enemy. And when that enemy is defeated in Iraq, Americanswill be safer here at home. And as the Iraqi security forces stand up, coalition forces can standdown. And when our mission of defeating the terrorists in Iraq is complete, our troops will returnhome to a proud nation.AMY GOODMAN: President Bush repeatedly linked U.S. withdrawal to improvements in thecapability of the Iraqi forces, but the mainstream media has recently detailed the existence ofdeath squads within the largely Shiite police and special commandos operating through or withthe Iraqi security forces. These militias have abducted, tortured, and executed hundreds, perhapsthousands, of Sunnis. The New York Times reported Tuesday, quote, “Some Sunni males havebeen found dead in ditches and fields with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin,holes in their bodies, apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished,” the paper107

said. At a Pentagon news conference Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasquestioned about the death squads.REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, are you concerned over – and, in fact, is the United Stateslooking into growing reports of uniformed death squads in Iraq, perhaps assassinating andtorturing hundreds of Sunnis? And if that's true, what would that say about stability in Iraq?DONALD RUMSFELD: I’m not going to comment on hypothetical questions. I've not seenreports that hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all. We know for a fact that it’s aviolent country. We know for a fact that there have been various militias. We know that therehave been some militias that have been Iran-oriented. We also know there's been a – somemilitias in the north that have been very helpful. The Peshmurga have been very constructive inwhat they’ve done. But I'm not going to get into speculation like that.REPORTER: But sir, that’s not a hypothetical, I don't believe. The Sunnis themselves arecharging that hundreds have been assassinated, people shot in the head, found in alleys.DONALD RUMSFELD: What you're talking about are unverified -- to my knowledge, atleast -- unverified comments. I just don't have any data from the field that I can comment on in aspecific way. Do you General?GENERAL PACE: I do not, sir, although I do know that the Iraqi government has said thatthey are going to investigate those kinds of allegations.DONALD RUMSFELD: And they should. That's a good thing. Look, it's a sovereigncountry. The Iraqi government exists. There's also a political campaign taking place. And weought to be aware of that, that there are going to be a lot of charges and countercharges andallegations, and they may very well be timed -- as they are in every country in the world that hasa free political system -- they may timed in a way to seek advantage. We also will find that insome cases that there will be investigations and that they will prove to have been valid. I justdon't know. I can only talk about what I know. That’s life.AMY GOODMAN: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at his news conference on Tuesday.While the story only recently made front page news, we first reported on it six months ago.Investigative journalist Arun Gupta was one of the first to report on the presence of death squadsin Iraq back in April. We interviewed him at the time. He joins us in the studio now. Arun iseditor of the New York City Independent Media Center’s newspaper, The Indypendent.Welcome to Democracy Now!ARUN GUPTA: Thank you, Amy.AMY GOODMAN: So, lay out what you're seeing right now in Iraq.ARUN GUPTA: What you're seeing is, I think, really the fruition of U.S. strategy in Iraq. ThePentagon has spent over $10 billion to try to stand up Iraqi military forces, and it's been acomplete disaster. So what they're trying to do is they’re turning to death squads to fight the108

insurgency. The Iraqi forces, the military forces, the army, they really don't stand and fight; andeven when they do, they depend on tremendous U.S. logistical support to carry out anyoperation. So, they really can't operate on their own.But there are these militias that Donald Rumsfeld was talking about; but, of course, what hedoesn’t want to talk about is that the U.S. set up these militias. They funded them. They armedthem. They trained them. And a lot of this came out in the Pentagon's own reports, Pentagon’sgenerals talking about how great they were over a year ago, how they really took the fight to theresistance. And so, what's been going on is that the U.S. has set these up.And there's been a certain conflict. In April, when the Shiite government took control, theystarted firing a lot of the commanders who were basically ex-Baathists, and they started bringingin their own guys, especially from the Badr Brigade. And a lot of these are concentrated in what'sknown as special police commandos, and they have all sorts of various brigades, one called theWolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade, the Lion Brigade, another called the Fearless Warriors. Andthey sound like death squads. And they are death squads. They go around with masks. They'reconducting these raids, especially throughout Baghdad.And the U.S. is saying, ‘Well, you know, who knows who's doing this?’ But when twentyvehicles pull up with a hundred troops in them, and reporters are recounting -- the New YorkTimes article also recounts this -- they're showing up with sophisticated communicationsequipment. They're showing up with these expensive Glocks, nine-millimeter Glocks that weresupplied by the U.S. government. They have the insignia, the uniforms of the special policecommandos. And these -- In Baghdad there's a very strict curfew that’s in place every singlenight. Yet how can these large convoys of vehicles be going around?And so, they conduct these roundups, and in many areas it's largely Sunni Arab males. And thenthey're disappeared. They're taking them to this network of secret prisons. One of the thingsthat’s come out is that there's this absolutely vast network of prisons throughout Iraq. In a nationof 27 million, the Iraqi government has 1,100 prisons.AMY GOODMAN: Outside the U.S. prisons?ARUN GUPTA: And this is – Yes, this is in addition to the U.S. prisons. Officially, the Iraqigovernment says they only have about 12-13,000 detainees. But that really strains credibility.That's only 11 prisoners per facility, whereas the -- what really set this all off was the uncoveringof a secret detention center within an interior ministry building where they found approximately170 men. Another Iraqi male spoke extensively to Reuters where he was kept in a building with800 men. The BBC just published a report and photographs of another prison that they wereallowed to enter, which showed a room so crowded that the prisoners could barely sit down. Sonobody knows even really how many prisoners are being held by the Iraqi government.And what's been happening is that they're being -- you're finding all these men being seized,primarily it looks like Sunni Arab males who are though to form the core of the armed resistance,and then bodies are turning up weeks, months later, often two or three governances away. Sothey’re seized in Baghdad, for instance, and then these 20-30 bodies will turn up on the Iranian109

order. And that part of the area is completely controlled by Shiite militias. The Sunni resistancehas very little presence down there.JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, when you mentioned these death squads, you mentioned the BadrBrigades. Now, Moqtada al-Sadr has been an opponent of the U.S. occupation --ARUN GUPTA: Yes.JUAN GONZALEZ: And he’s been hunted at several times by U.S. forces. Are you saying thatthere’s at the same time ongoing cooperation by some of his people with --?ARUN GUPTA: Well, the Badr Brigade is linked to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolutionin Iraq which is based in -- which was based in Iran. Al-Sadr's forces are distinct: the MahdiArmy. And in the words of one high-ranking U.S. official who spoke to the L.A. Times, he saidthat the Badr Brigade has special commandos and the Mahdi Army has the police at Baghdad.And he said, quote: “Everybody's got their own death squads.” Now, this is a high-ranking U.S.military official, and this is admitted by also Iraqi officials.AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute to go, Arun. But the issue of U.S. military advisorsto these death squads?ARUN GUPTA: Yes. There are two advisors, in particular. One is named Steve Castillo. He wasa high-ranking intelligence officer with the Drug Enforcement Agency throughout LatinAmerica, and he was actually in charge of the interior ministry until the handover of sovereigntyon June 20, 2004. And the other is Jim Steele who was in charge of Special Forces, a team of 55Special Forces in El Salvador during that brutal counter-insurgency war, where they trained ElSalvadoran forces and oversaw a very brutal counterinsurgency war, where tens of thousandswere killed by death squads. And both of these are operating in the interior ministry. So the ideathat this is going on without U.S. knowledge, it's really -- it's just -- it's plausible deniability iswhat they’re trying to do.AMY GOODMAN: Arun Gupta, I want to thank you for being with us. Arun is with TheIndypendent, the newspaper of the New York IndyMedia Center. Your web site wheredocuments will be at?ARUN GUPTA: Yes, there'll be the reports over the last six month that we’ve been publishingthat are available at nyc.indymedia.org.AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, you can go to our web site at DemocracyNow.org, wherewe will link to the New York IndyMedia center.www.democracynow.org110

Part Five:2006111

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4719252.stmStory from BBC NEWSPublished: 2006/02/16 13:39:26 GMTIraq 'death squad caught in act'Iraq has launched an investigation into claims by the US military that an Iraqi interior ministry"death squad" has been targeting Sunni Arab Iraqis.The probe comes after a US general revealed the arrest of 22 policemen allegedly on a mission tokill a Sunni."We have found one of the death squads. They are part of the police force," US Maj Gen JosephPeterson said.Sunnis have long accused Iraqi forces of operating death squads - but the claims have never beensubstantiated.Iraqi deputy interior minister Maj Gen Hussein Kamal said his ministry had set up an inquiry.For a very long time we have been talking about such violations... that there are squadsthat raid houses and arrest people who are found later executed in different parts of the capitalNasser al-AniIraqi Islamic Party"The interior minister has formed an investigation committee to learn more about the Sunniperson and those 22 men, particularly whether they work for the interior ministry or claim tobelong to the ministry," he told the Associated Press news agency.Hundreds of Sunni Arab Iraqis have been found dead since the 2003 war in what appear to havebeen extra-judicial killings.On Wednesday, the bodies of four unidentified men were found in Baghdad's Shia district ofShula. They had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head.Iraqi insurgents have also often used a similar tactic against Iraqis working with internationalforces or the Iraqi government.DetainedGen Peterson, who is in charge of training the Iraqi police, told the Chicago Tribune onWednesday that US forces had stumbled across the first evidence of death squads within theinterior ministry.The 22 interior ministry traffic policemen, dressed in police commando uniforms, were arrestedin late January at an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Baghdad and asked what they were doing.112

They told soldiers they were taking a Sunni man away to be shot dead."The amazing thing is... they tell you exactly what they're going to do," Gen Peterson said.MilitiasGen Peterson said US forces were holding four of the men at the Abu Ghraib prison and that the18 other men were being detained at an Iraqi jail.The Sunni man, who was accused of murder, is also being detained.Subsequent investigations found the four men in US custody are linked to the Badr Organisation,the armed militia of one of Iraq's main Shia parties, the Supreme Council for the IslamicRevolution in Iraq.I think there are many people inside the interior ministry involved with these deaths orgiving the uniforms of colleagues to criminalsIraqi Human Rights Minister Narmin UthmanBut Gen Peterson said he was convinced Iraqi Interior Minster Bayan Jabr, a member of Sciri,had no knowledge of or involvement in the death squads."Who are these guys? That's what the minister is trying to find out," he said."They are discrediting him and his organisation. He wants to find these guys. He does notsupport them."But Gen Peterson said he believed other death squads were operating within the Iraqi securityforces."It's an issue of loyalties, of allegiance," he said. "If you're still wearing your Badr T-shirt underyour uniform, that's a problem."'Official help'Iraqi Human Rights Minister Narmin Uthman said she believed lower-level officials werehelping the death squads."These officials are helping the criminals by informing them on where targeted people are goingor where people are living," she told AP.A spokesman for the country's main Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, backed the launchof the investigation.113

"For a very long time we have been talking about such violations and we have been telling theinterior ministry officials that there are squads that raid houses and arrest people who are foundlater executed in different parts of the capital," Nasser al-Ani said.© BBC MMVI114

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-ruder240206.htmDeath-Squad “Democracy” In IraqBy Eric Ruder24 February, 2006Socialist WorkerThe U.S. invasion of Iraq was supposed to bring freedom and democracy. But a string of newrevelations have exposed the violent reality of life under U.S. occupation.In mid-February, Iraq’s Interior Ministry announced that it was launching an officialinvestigation into reports that death squads targeting Sunni Muslims are operating from within itsown police forces.Several days earlier, the release of a video of British soldiers savagely beating Iraqi youth madeheadlines around the world. So did the publication of previously unseen photographs of tortureand abuse carried out by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.The mounting evidence of atrocities suffered by Iraqis has reinforced the bitterness many feeltoward U.S. and British occupation forces. “If coalition troops are protecting Iraq from terrorism,who is protecting Iraqis from coalition troops?” wondered Firas Al-Atraqchi in Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly.The allegations about death squads are not new. Members of the Sunni minority have soundedthe alarm for months about reports of uniformed Iraqi police raiding homes and leaving withloved ones--who would turn up days or weeks later, handcuffed and shot in the head.“Interior Ministry special forces detained my brother and four cousins two weeks ago from [theSunni] al-Aqsa Mosque in northern Baghdad’s Shula neighbourhood," security guard Ayad AliMahdi told the Associated Press in mid-February. “After two days, their bodies were found in apickup truck on a highway. It was horrific. Their bodies were tortured and mutilated by drills andan oxyacetylene welder.”Previously, Iraq’s Interior Ministry dismissed allegations that Shiite militias were operatingagainst Sunni targets from within the ranks of the police. But in early February, irrefutableevidence surfaced after U.S. troops stopped a 22-member death squad at a Baghdad checkpoint,and the men freely admitted they were on their way to execute a Sunni prisoner.“The amazing thing is...they tell you exactly what they’re going to do,” said Major Gen. JosephPeterson, the U.S. officer in charge of the civilian police training teams in Iraq.Four of the men are known to be loyal to the Badr Brigade, a feared militia known for itssectarian violence against Sunnis, which has links to the Supreme Council for the IslamicRevolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the leading Shiite parties in Iraq. The head of the Interior115

Ministry is Bayan Jabr, a SCIRI party member, and few people believe that he will crack downon Badr Brigade members.Sunni leaders estimate that death squads have murdered some 1,600 Sunnis so far. This scale ofkilling by paramilitary groups couldn’t take place without tacit, if not outright official, support.That means from the U.S., too. In early 2005, Pentagon war planners around Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld talked of pursuing the “Salvador option”--outsourcing the work of crackingdown on Sunni resistance fighters to Shiite and Kurdish paramilitary forces, as the U.S. didduring its secret wars on left-wing movements in Central America. Now we have evidence thatthe “Salvador option” is in full swing.For the first couple years of the occupation, British troops enjoyed a reputation for compassion,compared to their U.S. counterparts. But anger at their presence has been growing--especiallysince a full-scale British tank assault on an Iraqi police station to free two British soldiers, whowere apprehended and detained after they were discovered disguised as resistance fighters.Now, tensions are at a breaking point following the airing of a videotape showing a sickeningassault by British troops on several Iraqi youths after a January 2004 demonstration to demandjobs.British troops killed six and injured 11 when they used live ammunition to quell the uprising inAmarah two years ago. But the tape showing the beatings just surfaced.At one point, a soldier throws one of the prisoners on the floor, while another delivers 10 savageblows with a baton. Then a third soldier binds the boy’s wrists, and another strikes him on theback with a baton--at which point the boys goes limp, and a pool of blood forms around his head.In the background, a British soldier can be heard egging on those committing the atrocities:“You’re gonna get it. Yes, naughty little boys! You little fuckers, you little fuckers. Die! Ha,ha!”Bassem Shaker is one of the boys shown on the tape. “I was one of 250 unemployed peopledemonstrating in the street in 2004,” said Shaker, who came forward after the tape was aired.“But when we reached the governor’s office, we were surprised by the presence of the Britishforces. We started throwing stones at them because we believed they were behind our misery.”After the video surfaces, more than 1,000 people marched on the British consulate in Basra in anangry demonstration. Provincial officials announced that they were severing ties with Britishauthorities and ceasing joint patrols with British troops--who number 8,500 and are based inBasra.When the first photographs of abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib made world headlines in2004, U.S. officials fought to keep hundreds of the most gruesome images hidden from view.But several of these photos and some video clips were leaked to an Australian television station,which aired them in mid-February.116

One photo showed what appeared to be cigarette burns on a man’s buttocks. A video cliprevealed a group of hooded, naked men who were forced to stand together and masturbate. Oneparticularly grisly image shows a corpse that seems to have a section torn from its head, whileanother features a man whose arms are covered in purple bruises.“The new pictures reignited the long-running pain that started with the occupation of Iraq,” Iraqiteacher Hanan Adeeb told a reporter. “It angered me deeply, stabbed me in the heart to see mypeople paying for no reasonable reason. What hurts me more is for the world to see us tortured inthis way without blinking an eye. When I see this, I understand why people think the only way toget Iraq out of this dilemma is to send the Americans away--no matter how.”At a time when U.S. officials and media pundits condemn angry protests through the Arab worldagainst anti-Muslim cartoons published in newspapers around the world, the atrocities committedby U.S. and British troops are a stark reminder of why this anger exists in the first place.117

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/iraq/3662963.htmlDeath squad probe launched in IraqBodies of a dozen more people found; 25 others die in violence across countryAssociated PressFeb. 16, 2006BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry announced an investigation todayinto claims of death squads in its ranks as police found a dozen more bodies, bringing thenumber of apparent victims of sectarian reprisal killings here to at least 30 this week.The probe was announced after U.S. military officials indicated there was evidence to supportthe allegation of death squads. The 12 men found today had been bound and shot in the headexecution-style.At least 27 other people were killed in violence across Iraq, including three tribal sheiks slain ina drive-by shooting. Three supporters of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr died in a mortarbarrage, and gunmen killed two owners of a convenience store that sold beer. Islamic extremistsoften target shops selling alcohol or DVDs deemed pornographic.Sunni Arabs have been complaining for months that kidnappings and murder by Shiite-ledcommandos operated by the Interior Ministry are driving many Sunnis into the ranks of theinsurgents. Shiites insist that they must retain control of Iraqi security forces in the nextgovernment.In the death squad case, Iraqi security officials said the Interior Ministry probe would focus on asingle incident involving 22 Iraqi policemen who U.S. authorities said were detained last monthbefore they were able to kill a Sunni Arab man north of Baghdad."They were dressed as Iraqi highway patrolmen but only four of those individuals were planningto conduct a kidnapping and subsequent murder of a Sunni individual," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynchtold reporters today.Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who commands the civilian police training teams in Iraq, gave aslightly different version to the Chicago Tribune for a story today about the death squad.Peterson said the 22 men were wearing police commando uniforms but turned out to beemployed by the Interior Ministry as highway patrol officers. He said four were believed to beringleaders while the 18 others were likely following orders. All were picked up at a checkpoint."We continue to believe that there's more of these out there," he said.But Lynch said this could have been an isolated incident."We have no indication they have done this in the past," he said. "All we know this is an isolatedincident. We are not saying it couldn't have happened (previously), but we are not aware of it."118

Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, who announced the investigation, said the four policemen identifiedby Peterson as ringleaders had been transferred to the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in westernBaghdad and the rest were held in Iraqi jails.Kamal, Iraq's deputy interior minister in charge of domestic intelligence, hinted that the scope ofthe probe could go beyond the 22 policemen arrested last month."After Iraqi authorities were informed by the Americans about the so-called commando forcesengaging in assassinations, the interior minister immediately formed an investigation committeeto uncover what has actually happened," Kamal said.The U.S. military has been fighting a tough battle to rebuild a legitimate Iraqi security force thatit hopes will eventually replace American-led coalition forces and maintain order throughout thecountry.There is no shortage of Iraqis, particularly in Baghdad, who say family members have beenkidnapped and killed by men wearing police uniforms."Interior Ministry special forces detained my brother and four cousins two weeks ago from(Sunni Arab) al-Aqsa Mosque in northern Baghdad's Shula neighborhood," 24-year-old securityguard Ayad Ali Mahdi said."After two days, their bodies were found in pickup truck on a highway. It was horrific. Theirbodies were tortured and mutilated by drills and an oxyacetylene welder," Mahdi said.The relative of another victim described how two dozen men wearing security forces uniformsbroke into his northern Baghdad home last month, pushed his pleading wife aside and draggedout his two brothers, the only men at home at the time."We contacted many police stations searching for them but couldn't find any trace. After nine or10 days, we heard 36 dead bodies were found near (the southern Iraqi city of) Kut, and I foundmy brothers among them," said Sunni Arab taxi driver Youssef Abdul-Karim, 35."They were blindfolded, handcuffed and severely tortured. One of my brothers had drill woundsin his head, while the other was shot in the head and chest."A Sunni Arab political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, welcomed the Interior Ministryinvestigation and said perpetrators should be brought to justice.Iraq's human rights minister, Nermine Othman, said Interior Ministry officials have been behindnumerous execution-like murders, either by taking part in the roundups and killings or providingpolice uniforms, information on potential victims and weapons to culprits.119

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-02-16-iraq-death-squads_x.htmIraqi cops face abuse probeBy Rick JervisUSA TODAYFebruary 17, 2006BAGHDAD — Iraq's government is taking action to root out renegade police and securityofficials who may be operating death squads and abusing detainees, the U.S. commander incharge of training Iraqi police said.Iraq's government is taking action to root out renegade police and security officials who may beoperating death squads and abusing detainees, the U.S. commander in charge of training Iraqipolice said.The investigations, however, won't slow the pace of training Iraqi police who are being groomedto assume the primary role of providing security in Iraq, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson said.Iraq's government is "not tolerating" the abuses, Peterson said. "It's occurring, but they're doingsomething about it."Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has been dogged by allegations that its security forces areabusing detainees and running death squads aimed mostly at Sunnis. Sunni Arabs dominated thegovernment for decades in Iraq and now form the backbone of the insurgency."The government is pushing hard toward a civil war," Khalaf al-Ilyan, a leading Sunni politician,told reporters this month after the bodies of 14 Sunni men were found in the back of a truck innorthern Baghdad. Al-Ilyan said the men had been seized at a Sunni mosque by uniformedgunmen.The Interior Ministry said Thursday that it is setting up a committee to investigate the recentarrests of 22 highway patrolmen who were captured last month allegedly on their way to executea prisoner. The men were in the uniforms of police commandos.Eighteen of the men are being held in an Iraqi jail. Four of them, believed to be the ringleaders,were transferred to the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib, Peterson said.Other developments include:• Iraqi police said Wednesday that they found four bodies in the Shuala district of Baghdad, theirhands cuffed behind their backs and showing signs of torture.• Last week, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr ordered an investigation into human rights abuses atthe ministry, including the discovery of bodies found at the Rustumiya sewage plant in southern120

Baghdad, the 14 Sunnis seized from their mosque and later killed and the abduction of the mayorof Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, Peterson said."We continue to believe there are more of these out there," Peterson said of death squads. "Andthe minister's focused on trying to capture them."Stamping out abuses will be a top priority for the next government, said Basam Ridha, an aide toPrime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari."We've learned from the process and are taking extra measures," Ridha said.Al-Jaafari was elected by the ruling Shiite coalition to serve another term as prime minister.Negotiations are underway to form a government following December elections.The U.S. military said it is also working to address the issue of abuses.Iraqi police cadets going through the required 10-week training course receive 32 hours ofhuman rights and rule-of-law training, Peterson said."Our perspective is we're trying to institute the rule of law," Peterson said during a recentinterview. "We're training a culture here."The U.S. military will finish training the target number of 200,000 policemen and InteriorMinistry officials by the end of the year, Peterson said. About 84,000 are trained now.The U.S. military also plans to add an extra 2,000 American military advisers to the 1,500currently supervising and assessing Iraq's police force.121

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/17875Police Tied to Death SquadsBy Solomon MooreThe Los Angeles TimesTuesday 21 February 2006US military officials say they suspect Iraq's highway patrol, staffed largely by Shiites, isdeeply involved in torture and killings.Baghdad - A 1,500-member Iraqi police force with close ties to Shiite militia groups hasemerged as a focus of investigations into suspected death squads working within the country'sInterior Ministry.Iraq's national highway patrol was established largely to stave off insurgent attacks onroadways. But U.S. military officials, interviewed over the last several days, say they suspect thepatrol of being deeply involved in illegal detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings.The officials said that in recent months the U.S. has withdrawn financial and advisory supportfrom the patrol in an effort to distance the American training effort from what they perceived tobe a renegade force."We don't train them, we don't give them equipment, we don't conduct site visits over there.They are just bad, criminal people," said a high-ranking U.S. military officer who advises theInterior Ministry. The officer was one of three who each spoke on condition of anonymity,saying they wanted to maintain relationships with Iraqi police officials and avoid retaliation byU.S. military superiors.Last month, Iraqi army soldiers stopped a 22-member squad of uniformed highway patrolofficers at a nighttime checkpoint in northern Baghdad and discovered a man in their custodywho told them the police planned to kill him. His contention was supported by confessions ofofficers in the squad, U.S. advisors said.U.S. officials have called 2006 "the year of the police" and have placed a renewed emphasison training officers. The Bush administration repeatedly has said the development of Iraq'ssecurity forces must occur before withdrawal of U.S. troops can begin.The U.S. military works closely with Iraqi army units, conducting joint operations and sharingspace on some military bases. By contrast, police forces have evolved far more independently inapproximately 11,000 stations and outposts around the nation.The result is a motley conglomeration of agencies under the Interior Ministry with overlappingjurisdictions and poorly defined functions.122

"You've got the facilities protection service, the public order brigades, the commandos, thehighway patrol, the regular police, the traffic police, patrol officers," said a second U.S. militaryofficial."Who knows who they all are? Nobody controls them but the minister," the officer said,referring to Interior Minister Bayan Jabr.Jabr, a Shiite with close ties to the Badr Brigade, a paramilitary group, has been at the centerof allegations of abuse at the hands of Iraqi security forces. The minister's notoriety rose last yearas the bodies of hundreds of men - mostly Sunni Arabs - started appearing in sewage treatmentplants, garbage dumps and desert ravines. Most of the bodies showed signs of torture andexecution-style killings. Many families of the deceased said their kin had last been seen in theback of a police vehicle.The Shiites, who constitute about 60% of the Iraqi population, were severely repressed underSaddam Hussein's regime, which favored the Sunni minority. The Shiites came to power in thewake of the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. A Sunni-led insurgency has carried out acampaign of bombings and assassinations against the government.Over the last two years, Shiite militias within Iraq's security forces have been accused ofstaging reprisals for the Sunni attacks. Leading Sunni figures have blamed the reprisals on Jabr.Sunni political parties have made his removal from office a key issue in negotiations overwhether they will take part in Iraq's Shiite-led government.In a recent interview, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who is leading the multibillion-dollareffort to train and equip Iraq's police forces, vigorously defended the minister and said he washeartened by Jabr's pledge to investigate the abuse fully."Death squads - they're a real issue," said Peterson. "I can tell you, we caught our first deathsquad," he said, referring to the unit that was apprehended last month. "The minister of Interior iselated that we caught them," he added.Peterson said U.S. and Interior Ministry officials were investigating the highway patrol squadto determine "where these guys came from and how they were organized and who was leadingthem and what was their purpose."Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman, said that the Interior Ministry wasleading the investigation into the suspected death squad.Ali Hussein Kamal, the Interior Ministry's intelligence chief, said in an interview Sunday thatinvestigators were also trying to determine whether the Iraqi general in charge of the highwaypatrol was linked to the squad."If we find that these allegations that he is involved are true, we will be taking very firmmeasures against him," Kamal said. "But generally speaking, high-ranking officers are usuallyignorant of what their lower-ranking officers are doing."123

U.S. personnel who have been training Iraqi police officers said they long had suspected thehighway patrol of conducting illegal raids and killings but had little oversight of the force.The black-garbed highway patrol officers rarely attend U.S.-financed police academies aimedat improving professionalism and sensitivity to human rights within Iraq's security forces, policetrainers said, and have refused to share information about their activities.U.S. police advisors said the highway patrol was almost entirely Shiite and included a core of400 to 800 Badr militia members who make up the patrol's 4th Company, which was created lastyear."The 4th Company is filled by people with unconventional militia ties," said the U.S. militaryofficer who advises the Interior Ministry. "Minister Jabr is very supportive of them. The generalin charge [of the highway patrol] is very supportive of them."After the suspected death squad was stopped last month, U.S. police advisors said, fourmembers of the squad confessed to several sectarian killings.The highway patrol officers were asked, " 'Who are you doing this for?' " said a third U.S.military officer who is involved in training Iraqi troops and has knowledge of the interrogationsof the suspected death squad. "And they're telling us, 'Jabr.' " The rest of the squad, said theadvisor, has been released.Sunni Arab leaders complain that an earlier investigation into alleged police abuse has yet toshow results.In November, a U.S. Army unit discovered a secret detention and torture facility run by policeofficers affiliated with the Badr militia. In all, 169 people had been detained at the secret prison,and photos showed that some inmates had been severely beaten and malnourished.Jabr pledged to investigate the origin of the detention facility and the possible existence ofother secret prisons, even as he downplayed the abuse that had taken place there."OK, there were signs of torture … but there were no killings and no beheadings, as somehave said," Jabr told reporters in November.But inmates at the bunker compiled a list of 18 detainees who they said had been tortured todeath.Two U.S. Embassy officials said Monday that Iraqi authorities were conducting visits ofInterior Ministry jails and prisons, but declined to release details about the facilities.Kamal, the ministry's intelligence chief, said of the detention probe, "we are still investigatingthis, but it is better if we do this quietly, without any media."124

Peterson, the U.S. officer in charge of Iraqi police training, said that so far, no other secretprisons had been discovered. U.S. officials were trying to help the Interior Ministry centralizeand upgrade its detention system, he said, so that it would be more transparent and acceptable byinternational standards."I've seen all the reports that say there are secret prisons out there," Peterson said. "So whereare they? We have not found them. We have gone out there and looked for them. Can they exist?Well, the bunker existed, so yeah, they can exist. Is the ministry trying to find these things? Well,yes, they are."125

http://www.agrnews.org/?section=archives&cat_id=15&article_id=338US troops arrest Iraq police death squadBy Simon FreemanAsheville Global ReportNo. 371, February 23 - March 1, 2006Feb. 16- An inquiry has been launched into the infiltration of Iraq's police by militiaforces after a 22-member death squad was caught red-handed at a checkpoint in Baghdad.Guards stopped the men — all wearing police uniforms — as they tried to cross aroadblock in the north of the capital. When questioned, they freely admitted they were ontheir way to execute a Sunni Muslim prisoner.Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who commands the civilian police training teams in Iraq, toldreporters that the men were employed by the Ministry of Interior as highway patrolofficers."The amazing thing is... they tell you exactly what they're going to do," he said.Four of the men are believed to have links to the Badr brigades — the armed wing of theSupreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), one of Iraq's main Shia parties.They are being held at the US detention facility at Abu Ghraib. The others are in an Iraqijail. The Sunni man, who is accused of murder, is also being held in Iraqi custody.Peterson said he believed that there were other sectarian death squads operating withinthe security forces. "We continue to believe that there's more of these out there," he said.He said that he was certain that Bayan Jabr, the Interior Minister who is a member ofSCIRI, had no knowledge of the death squads. "They are discrediting him and hisorganization. He wants to find these guys. He does not support them," he said.Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, Iraq's deputy interior minister, responded to the report byordering an investigation. As the inquiry was announced, police discovered the bodies ofa dozen executed men in the predominantly Shia Muslim suburb of Shula."We have been informed about this and the interior minister has formed an investigationcommittee to learn more about the Sunni person and those 22 men, particularly whetherthey work for the Interior Ministry or claim to belong to the ministry," Kamal told theAssociated Press.Allegations of death squads targeting Sunnis from within the Shia-dominated ranks of thepolice have been circulating since May last year. Bodies of Sunnis seized from their126

homes or mosques by men in uniform regularly turn up in land fills around Baghdad,bound, gagged and bearing execution-style gunshot injuries.On the other side of the sectarian divide, there is also evidence of Shia Muslims beingsystematically massacred by Sunni extremists in Baghdad, Diyala province and mixedareas to the south of the capital.Executions are also regularly reported in the southern city of Basra, where British troopspatrol. Maj. Alex Wilson, a senior British officer involved in training police in Basra,said that he believed death squads "masquerading" as police or members of the interiorministry, were responsible for more than 140 killings between November and January.He told the Associated Press that this was double the number killed in the previous sixmonths. "We are doing our best to counter the death squads. We want to take them off thestreet," he said.Nermine Othman, the human rights minister, said that she believed lower-level interiorministry officials were using criminals to kill Iraqis."I think there are many people inside the interior ministry involved with these deaths orgiving the uniforms of colleagues to criminals," she said. "These officials are helping thecriminals by informing them on where targeted people are going or where people areliving. They are helping them in different ways."The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party praised the investigation and said perpetrators should bebrought to justice."Since a very long time, we have been talking about such violations and we have beentelling the Interior Ministry officials that there are squads that raid houses and arrestpeople who are found later executed in different parts of the capital," said Nasser al-Aniof the Iraqi Islamic party.Source: Times (UK)127

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorialsU.S. Death Squads #9Baghdad bomb kills 22 - But Who Is to Blame?Signs of the TimesEditorial: Baghdad bomb kills 22 - But Who Is to Blame?By Joe Quinn21/02/2006In what has tragically become a commonplace event, today yet another car bomb exploded inBaghdad. The UK Guardian reports:Baghdad bomb kills 22 At least 22 people were killed and 28 wounded when a car bombexploded in a busy outdoor market in the Iraqi city of Baghdad today. Iraqi police said the bombexploded at 4.45pm local time in Dora, a south-west district of the city. It is believed the attackwas aimed at a police patrol but missed its target. The injured were taken to hospital where asource said the death toll could be much higher. Dora is one of the most dangerous parts ofBaghdad, with car and roadside bombings occurring daily since a Sunni-dominated insurgencybegan in the summer of 2003.Notice that a "Baghdad bomb" killed at least 22 Iraqi civilians today, and that "car and roadsidebombings occur almost daily". In reading this account, you could be forgiven for coming awaywith the impression that "Baghdad bombs" have a life of their own and need no help from anyhuman agency to wreak their bloody carnage. Perhaps that problem is that no one ever seems tobe claim responsibility for these attacks, and journalists and commentators are just as mystifiedabout which "Iraqi insurgent group" could possibly want to kill their own neighbors - the verymembers of their support base that they rely on to resist the American occupation.The fact is that these type of anonymous bombings are not new. All over the world over the pasthalf century (and longer) bombs have been exploding and killing innocent civilians, leaving theirfriends and families not only traumatised, but completely confused as to why such violence wascommitted against them. For example, in 1998, 29 civilians, including 9 children and a womanpregnant with twins, were killed when a car bomb exploded on a busy shopping area in the townof Omagh in Northern Ireland. It was the worst single atrocity in 30 years of conflict in NorthernIreland. Now one might expect that, in keeping with the lines along which the conflict had beenfought for 800 years, a very large majority, if not all, of the victims would be from one side ofthe community or the other. But the strange thing about the Omagh bombing was that the deadwere almost equally distributed between the Irish Catholic and British protestant populations.Not only that, but a warning that was telephoned to police 40 minutes before the bomb detonatedcontained apparently incorrect information about where the bomb was, and led police to'evacuate' civilians towards the bomb rather than away from it. In doing so, maximum bloodshedwas assured. The bombing came at a time when the 'peace process' was in full swing and effortswere being made by the warring parties to come to some form of final resolution. In the end, thebombing was placed at the door of a shadowy dissident Republican outfit called 'the Real IRA', a128

moniker that sounds about as unauthentic as those given to the infamous 'previously unknownIslamic groups' like 'Al-Qaeda in Iraq'. A naive patsy took the fall after a ridiculous sham of ajury-less trial and a conviction that was based on evidence from two discredited witnesses andstatements by the accused that were extracted under police pressure. Condemnation subsequentlyfell on the Irish Republican movement in general, much to the hidden glee of certain members ofthe British establishment who are secretly tasked with encouraging conflict by any means and atall costs.War = profit and control after allThe idea that Western 'Democratic' governments would actually encourage violence andbloodshed against their own populations is extremely difficult for the average person to consideras even remotely possible. Yet there sits the evidence. Getting back to today's bombing inBaghdad; such events will continue to confuse and bemuse us and ultimately force us to switchoff, or worse, switch on to government propaganda, until we finally open our minds to the realitythat is daily become more and more undeniable. John Kaminski has already detailed that reality,at least in terms of the many "car bombings" in Iraq:Sick Strategies For Senseless SlaughterThe murderous fools are not trying to end the war; they're trying to keep it going as long as theycan By John Kaminski skylax@comcast.net 5-24-05 The cat is out of the bag now. It happenedquite by accident, as most revelations do. And it is seen by most of the world as the mostrevolting of the American/Israeli atrocities in the past few years, although it's hard to prioritizethat claim because of the level and frequency of barbaric acts that are committed on a regularbasis by those affluent automatons who call themselves the good guys. Yet everyone but thecomatose American populace —— blinded by its Orwellian media and stupefied by its dementeddiet of physical and mental poisons —— can see it.So permit me to spell it out for those cowardly people who say they're living in the freest countryon Earth, but absolutely refuse in their silent ignorance to see the blood they're spilling. Nocountry that condones deliberate torture for any reason can ever be trusted. The first hint came inImad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.neton May 11. The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable newssites on the Web, www.uruknet.info, which I try to read every day, and www.globalresearch.ca,which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking and more analytical news.I consider these two sites essential to keeping up with the real news of the world, and highlyrecommend that you monitor them, too. Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clearwindow to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq. Beyond the Americanattempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond theIraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more thannumerous acts of violence that simply can't be understood by straightforward explanations. Imean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite,it makes no sense. Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship.129

Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just generalprinciples of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on oftenimaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyonebelieve that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and governmentcontinue to insist. So who’s doing all these demented deeds? As if we didn’t know ....Khadduri’s report went like this: "A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscatedthe driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdadairport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit thecamp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for aninterrogation that lasted half an hour. At the end of the session, the American interrogator toldhim: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is incharge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimiapolice station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. Atthe police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there nowquickly, before he leaves his shift work".The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as ifcarrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kepthovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He foundnearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. Theonly feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by theAmericans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter wasmonitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated "hideous attack by foreign elements".The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along withthe driver’s license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told togo to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the wayto the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully ladenwith explosives." If this were the only example of this type I heard, I might have let it pass asjust a story. But it wasn’t. There was also the sorry tale of the Iraqi man who saw Americansoldiers plant a bomb which shortly thereafter exploded, and when he said so out loud for all tohear, he was hauled away, never to be seen again. This story was reported on arguably the mostauthentic and riveting source of news from Iraq, the heart-rending "Baghdad Burning: Girl Blogfrom Iraq," which is compiled by someone known only as Riverbend or Iraqi Girl. Again,recommended reading.She recounts,"The last two weeks have been violent .... The number of explosions in Baghdadalone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations —— bodies being found hereand there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpectedplaces. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have beennourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given memore than one sleepless night.It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard. The latest corpses were those ofsome Sunni and Shia clerics —— several of them well-known. People are being patient and130

there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Alsoworrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi)and then being found dead days later —— apparently when the new Iraqi government recentlydecided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is amiddle class area located in west Baghdad. It’s a relatively calm residential area with shops thatprovide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up fortheir daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher’s shop. Immediately after, we heardthat a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because itwas said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman. I didn’t thinkmuch about the story —— nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper —— hardly ananomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the areaclaim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too muchabout the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area andpausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bombwent off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystandersthat the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. Hewas promptly taken away.The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and nearAmerican troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in themiddle of sougs.One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitablylinked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs ——they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we knowis that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they areresistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blameIran and the SCIRI militia Badir. In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the firstsound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapneland other sharp things. Then the wails begin —— the shrill mechanical wails of an occasionalambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles…… and finally thewail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris.Then there was this one. On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad,took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount.An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minuteslater, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes. HajHaidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad. A minute later, his grandsontold him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the backamong the tomato containers. The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car atthe side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point. He found a time bomb withthe clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes. He immediately recognized it, as he was an exarmysoldier. Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car. Then, realizing that131

the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear. He threwit in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war,two years ago. Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded,killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head. He thanked God for giving him thecourage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did notnotice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb. "They intended it to explodein Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or 'insurgents' or who call themselvesthe 'Resistance'. I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tellyou the story. They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint theResistance after failing to defeat it militarily. Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobodybut God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir."The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined inFrank Morales' piece on globalresearch.ca: "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi'Insurgents' —— and Global Terrorism," by Frank Morales clearly demonstrates how DonaldRumsfeld said he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did.Morales writes: Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H.Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people andcivilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would beinstigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Timesmilitary analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army,"a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and militarycovert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot ofspiraling global violence.We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others. Nor have weever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitatedone of the great slaughters in history.Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a real person or justanother bin Ladenesque boogeyman.Nor if the al-Qaeda website which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run bythe CIA.Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue toperpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion anddestruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City.The purpose of all these despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans havebeen doing all along to the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it. There is notnow nor ever was an Arab terror threat. That was all invented by Rothschild, Rockefeller,Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams andWarren Buffett. These people are all traitors to not only their countries but to humanity ingeneral, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately. And so should132

the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by their complicity or theirignorance, support them.The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understandhow the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience,thrives on war and profits from the misery of others. The neocon murder menace has been formonths ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we need to invade Iran —— which some predictwill happen in June —— and just this week, rumors of troop movements in the Caribbean andlockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur an imminent invasion of oil-producingVenezuela. The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding.By our silent complicity and cowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior inthe name of profit, we are all accessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society,not to even mention the extinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to besafe and secure in the homes of our choice. So now that you know, what are you going to doabout it? You know if you do nothing, these same things will one day happen to you.133

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1175055,00.htmlWhy Iraq's Police Are a Menace:Critics say Interior Minister has turned the U.S.-trained force into Shi'ite shock troopsTime.comBy CHRISTOPHER ALLBRITTON/BAGHDADMonday, Mar. 20, 2006The bodies began to show up early last week. On Monday, 34 corpses were found. In thedarkness of Tuesday morning, 15 more men, between the ages of 22 and 40 were found in theback of a pickup truck in the al-Khadra district of western Baghdad. They had been hanged. Bydaybreak, 40 more bodies were found around the city, most bearing signs of torture before themen were killed execution-style. The most gruesome discovery was an 18-by-24-foot mass gravein the Shi'ite slum of Kamaliyah in east Baghdad containing the bodies of 29 men, clad only intheir underwear with their hands bound and their mouths covered with tape. Local residents onlyfound it because the ground was oozing blood. In all, 87 bodies were found over two days inBaghdad.The grisly discovery was horrible enough, the latest and perhaps most chilling sign that Iraq isdescending further into butchery — and quite possibly civil war. But almost as disturbing is thegrowing evidence that the massacres and others like it are being tolerated and even abetted byIraq's Shi'ite-dominated police forces, overseen by Iraq's Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr. On hiswatch, sectarian militias have swelled the ranks of the police units and, Sunnis charge, used theirpositions to carry out revenge killings against Sunnis. While allowing an Iranian-trained militiato take over the ministry, critics say, Jabr has authorized the targeted assassination of Sunni menand stymied investigations into Interior-run death squads. Despite numerous attempts to contactthem, neither Jabr nor Interior Ministry spokesmen responded to requests for comment on thisarticle.Jabr's and his forces' growing reputation for brutality comes at a particularly inopportunemoment for the Bush Administration, which would like to hand over security responsibilities tothose same police units as quickly as possible. That has raised the distinct and disturbingpossibility that the U.S. is in fact training and arming one side in a conflict seeming to growworse by the day. "Militias are the infrastructure of civil war," U.S. ambassador ZalmayKhalilzad told TIME recently. Khalilzad has been publicly critical of Jabr and warned that thenew security ministries under the next, permanent Iraqi government should be run by competentpeople who have no ties to militias and who are "non-sectarian." Further U.S. support fortraining the police and army, he said, depends on it.But ever since Jabr was appointed Interior Minister after the January 2005 election brought areligious Sh'ite coalition to power, Sunnis allege, he began remaking the paramilitary NationalPolice into Shi'ite shock troops. A member of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for theIslamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Jabr fled to Iran in the 1970s to avoid Saddam's crackdown.Jerry Burke, a former civilian senior police advisor to the Interior Ministry, said Jabr's134

experience with Saddam's government has left him bitter and distrustful of anyone he suspectshas ties to the previous regime. That would most certainly include the former members ofSaddam Hussein's Special Forces and Republican Guards which initially made up the bulk of theNational Police when Jabr took charge.To help facilitate his transformation of the police forces, Jabr made sure to enlist the help ofSCIRI's armed wing, the Badr Organization. Members of the militia have been a growingpresence in the National Police, which now consists of nine brigades, with about 17,500members divided between the Special Police Commandos, the Public Order brigades and amechanized brigade, which will soon be transferred to the Ministry of Defense. "Leadership inthe commando positions has been turned over to Badr," said Matt Sherman, a former CPAadvisor to the Interior Ministry. "And new recruits are mostly Badr."Indeed, outside the ministry headquarters, banners proclaiming solidarity with Imam Hussein,one of Shi'ites' holiest figures, snap in the spring breeze alongside — and sometimes instead of— Iraqi flags. Most of the guards' beards are invariably cut in the close-cropped Iranian style,making them stand out in Baghdad, where beards are less common.Like so many things in Iraq right now, it wasn't supposed to be this way. As far back asDecember 2003, David Gompert, the former National Security Advisor for the CoalitionProvisional Authority, realized the dangers sectarian militias posed to Iraq's stability. And in thewaning days of the Coalition Provisional Authority, American viceroy L. Paul "Jerry" Bremerissued Order 91, which was intended to demobilize or integrate nine militias totaling about100,000 men into the Iraqi security forces. But the Kurdish pesh merga and the armed wing ofSCIRI, the Badr Organization, still exist today because the order was never completely orcompetently carried out.For that, Gompert puts the blame squarely on the Iraqi government, then under Iyad Allawi, aswell as the American embassy. With the U.S. military engaged in several major operations in2004 and the government transitioning from the CPA to a more traditional diplomatic presencewith the arrival of U.S. ambassador John Negroponte at the end of June, Gompert says, neitherAllawi nor the U.S made the reintegration program a priority. Job training programs run byAllawi's Labor Ministry were cancelled over personal feuds and pension programs and otheraspects of the program of DDR — "demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration" — werebounced around from one command to another.Making matters worse has been the fact that the police — unlike the Iraqi Army, which is stillunder U.S. command and supervision — were practically ignored almost from the beginning ofthe occupation, says Burke. And what supervision the National Police did get came from U.S.military intelligence officers, not civilian police advisors.This grave oversight, which stemmed from the military's unfamiliarity with civilian policemethods and its unwillingness to learn, has led to numerous abuses and little accountability. TheU.S. State Department, in a report released two weeks ago, documented numerous incidents in2005, dating back to early May when Jabr was first appointed Interior Minister, where Sunni135

men were killed execution-style by Interior Ministry police or Shi'ite militias. In each case, Jabrordered an investigation, and in each case the investigation had yet to report any findings.Thanks in part to the Interior Minister's "nonfeasance," said Burke, the former Interior Ministryadviser, Jabr was at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of military-age Sunnimen whose bodies have turned up at the sewage plant in southeast Baghdad since late December.Men in police uniforms and vehicles routinely travel through the city in daylight hours withbodies in the back of trucks for disposal at the sewage plant, he said. Prisoners often disappear,Burke said, because they're picked up at night and no one has an accurate account of who isarrested and where they are taken. "The Special Police Commandos," he said, using their oldname, "are most definitely out of control."So black is the reputation of the National Police, that after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariyashrine in Samarra, many Sunnis said the perpetrators were Interior Ministry troops who werelooking for a pretext to start a civil war. Their fears were further fueled in the bloody two daysafter the attack, when Iraq became a sectarian slaughterhouse. Instead of protecting citizens fromeach other, National Police units stood by as Shi'ite rioters — and rival militiamen from Moqtadaal-Sadr's Mahdi Army — stormed Sunni mosques and swarmed over Sunni neighborhoods,according to numerous reports, including some confirmed by U.S. Gen. George Casey,commander of American forces in Iraq.The American efforts to try and help stem the deadly sectarianism will likely do little good —and in some respects may well exacerbate the problem. Instead of increasing the number ofcivilian advisors to Iraq's local police forces, a spokeswoman for the Multinational SecurityTransition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) said more U.S. military police and military personnel willbe assigned to train them. The Special Police Transition Teams (SPTTs) are the model that willbe followed. "The SPTTs have been very successful in their efforts," the spokeswoman said. Nochange is planned for the oversight program on the National Police.Gompert notes, "I remember saying, 'If there is going to be a civil war, it's going to be foughtbetween Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias." And as long as Jabr is running the InteriorMinistry and its police forces, there is little doubt which of the two in such a conflict will havethe law — and American training — on its side.136

http://www.globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=6884US military trained Iraq government death squadsBy David SprattGlobal Eco20th March, 2006On February 26, Andrew Buncombe and Patrick Cockburn reported in the BritishIndependent: “Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executedevery month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior,the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed.“John Pace, who left Baghdad two weeks ago, told the Independent on Sunday that up to threequartersof the corpses stacked in the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to thehead or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Much of the killing, he said, wascarried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the Ministry of the Interior... Pace saidthe Interior Ministry was 'acting as a rogue element within the government’. It is controlled bythe main Shia party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri); the interiorminister, Bayan Jabr, is a former leader of Sciri's Badr Brigade militia, which is one of the maingroups accused of carrying out sectarian killings.“Not only counter-insurgency units such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpions and the Tigers, butthe commandos and even the highway patrol police have been accused of acting as deathsquads.”Pace's comments lifted the lid on one of the horrible secrets of Iraq today — death squadsoperating in Iraq are not, as many journalists, commentators and Iraqi officials claim, simplyprivate militias operating separately from the government but are forces directly under thecontrol of the Iraqi interior ministry, which is funded by the occupation forces and advised byUS counter-insurgency experts well-practised in the use of death squads — from the CIA'sOperation Phoenix during the Vietnam War to the US-backed and trained death squads ofHonduras and El Salvador in the 1980s.The promises of the Iraq government to “disband the militias” is a distraction because at leastsome the death squads under question are under the command of the interior ministry, notindependent of it.The Special Police Commandos (SPC) is an elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit, formed inAugust 2004 under the operational control of Iraq's interior ministry by Falah al Naqib (believedby many to have been a major CIA “asset”), then interior minister under the interim governmentof Iyad Allawi.After their formation, US Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, the US military commander incharge of training and arming the Iraqi security forces, visited the SPC training camp and137

decided that the commandos would receive whatever arms, ammunition and supplies theyrequired, and assigned Steve Casteel to work with them. Casteel is the senior US adviser toIraq’s Ministry of Interior. He is a former top official in the US Drug EnforcementAdministration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of LatinAmerica, working alongside local forces in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia.The SPC is advised by James Steele, counsellor to the US ambassador for Iraqi Security Forcesand one of the US military's top experts on counter-insurgency. Steele honed his tactics leading aUS Army Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country's brutal civil war in the1980s.The SPC, along with US advisers and elite troops, have been involved in counter-insurgencyoperations especially in the Sunni triangle towns of Samarra, Baqubah, Fallujah and Ramadi.In Mosul, the police commandos began operating in late October 2004. The police commandosconducted raids inside the city’s old quarter starting on November 16, 2004, in which dozens ofsuspects were arrested. During one such raid on a mosque and a tea shop, detainees, blindfoldedand with their hands tied behind their backs, were seen being taken away by commandos. In theweeks and months that followed over 150 bodies appeared, often in batches and frequentlyhaving obviously been executed, usually with a bullet to the head.This case, and evidence for other SPC death squad operations, especially in Baghdad, up to May2005, are documented by Max Fuller in his article “For Iraq, 'The Salvador Option’ BecomesReality”, available at .Fuller writes that the case of the 10 bricklayers suffocated in the back of a police van last July10, to his knowledge and at the time of his writing, the only case in which members of thesecurity forces have been securely identified, with a survivor who had feigned death able toprovide first-hand testimony. The unit responsible was the Wolf Brigade.This commando unit, specifically named by Pace as a death squad, is one component of theinterior ministry's Special Police Commandos. According to a June 9 US Council for ForeignRelations report, the Wolf Brigade is the “most feared and effective commando unit in Iraq,experts say. Formed last October by a former three-star Shiite general and SCIRI member whogoes by the nom de guerre Abu Walid, the Wolf Brigade is composed of roughly 2000 fighters,mostly young, poor Shiites from Sadr City.”Abu Walid is likely General Rashid Flayyih, a Shiite who held senior intelligence posts underSaddam Hussein and was in charge of the suppression of the Shia uprising in Nasiriya followingthe 1990-91 Gulf War.The Wolf Brigade is responsible for running the interior ministry detention and torture chambers,as documented by a report in the July 3 London Observer.The February 21 Los Angeles Times reported that a “1500-member Iraqi police force with closeties to Shiite militia groups has emerged as a focus of investigations into suspected death squads138

working within the country's interior ministry. Iraq's national highway patrol was establishedlargely to stave off insurgent attacks on roadways. But US military officials, interviewed over thelast several days, say they suspect the patrol of being deeply involved in illegal detentions,torture and extrajudicial killings.”But then comes the plausible deniability: “We don't train them, we don't give them equipment,we don't conduct site visits over there. They are just bad, criminal people”, the LA Timesreported a high-ranking US military officer who advises the interior ministry as saying.And then came the admission: “The officials said that in recent months the US has withdrawnfinancial and advisory support from the patrol in an effort to distance the American trainingeffort from what they perceived to be a renegade force.”At the same time, occupation and Iraqi officials were still peddling the line that the killings werebeing carried out by militias “outside” of government control, even though most of those militiasbelong to parties now in the government, such as SCIRI and Dawa.Typical of the spin-doctors was Iraqi human rights minister Nermine Othman, who said shebelieved lower-level interior ministry officials were assisting criminals involved in killing Iraqis:“I think there are many people inside the interior ministry involved with these deaths or givingthe uniforms of colleagues to criminals... These officials are helping the criminals by informingthem on where targeted people are going or where people are living. They are helping them indifferent ways.”Fuller concludes: “Clearly the purpose of stating or implying that unaccountable militias arebehind the extrajudicial executions and/or that sectarian rivalries, especially Shia control of theinterior ministry ... are to blame, is to distance the US from the almost unthinkable ongoingcrimes against humanity.“Comparable disinformation strategies have been employed in every counterinsurgency conflictwith which the US has been involved; it is known as establishing ‘plausible deniability'. Forexample, in Colombia, where the US has been deeply involved for decades, paramilitary deathsquads are invariably described in the media as a third force in the armed conflict, despite thefact that their victims are typically civilian opponents of the government, their members aredrawn directly from serving members of the armed forces and they are only able to operate withthe active complicity of the army (Human Rights Watch: The 'Sixth Division’). In reality, theyfunction as part of a shadow state, which exists to implement policies that must remainunaccountable.”source: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/661/661p14.htm139

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/middleeast/26cndiraq.html?hp&ex=1143435600&en=11f970a707b1fe09&ei=5094&partner=homepage30 Beheaded Bodies Found; Iraqi Death Squads BlamedNew York TimesMarch 27, 2006By JEFFREY GETTLEMANBAGHDAD, Iraq, March 26 — The bodies of 30 beheaded men were found on a main highwaynear Baquba this evening, providing more evidence that the death squads in Iraq are becomingout of control.Interior Ministry officials said a driver discovered the bodies heaped in a pile next to a highwaythat links Baghdad to Baquba, a volatile city northeast of the capital that has been wracked bysectarian and insurgent violence.Iraqi army troops were waiting tonight for American support before venturing into the insurgentinfestedarea to retrieve them."It's too dangerous for us to go in there alone," an Iraqi Army commander, Tassin Tawfik, said.Earlier in the day, the corpses of 10 other men, all bound, blindfolded and shot, were discoveredin Baghdad, adding to the hundreds of bodies that have recently surfaced on Baghdad's streets.The widespread suspicion is that Shiite death squads are aiming at Sunni Arab civilians in awave of sectarian revenge. The death squads are thought to be connected to Shiite militias andShiite-controlled police forces. They seem to be the response to a bombing campaign that haskilled hundreds of Shiite civilians and destroyed a number of Shiite mosques, most notably therevered golden-domed Askariya Shrine in Samarra last month.That attack lifted the lid on simmering tensions between Shiites, who make up the majority inIraq, and Sunni Arabs, who used to hold power under Saddam Hussein. Most of the big terrorattacks, including suicide bombs, are thought to be the work of Sunni Arab insurgents. Now, itseems, Sunni Arab civilians are paying the price.But it is not at all clear who killed the 30 men found beheaded this evening. The area where theywere discovered is mostly Sunni Arab and controlled by Sunni insurgents. It would be verydifficult for Shiite death squads to operate there. Interior Ministry officials said they did not haveenough information tonight to identify the victims.Elsewhere today, a Kurdish writer was sentenced to a year and a half in jail for criticizingKurdish leaders. The writer, Kamal Karim, had published articles on a Kurdish Web siteaccusing one of the most powerful men in Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, of corruption.140

Mr. Karim was originally sentenced to 30 years for defaming Mr. Barzani but he was retried. Ajudge said he was giving Mr. Karim a lenient sentence because he is an academic.Also today, a mortar shell narrowly missed the home of the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Mr. Sadr immediately blamed American forces for the shelling."Either they overlook these attacks or they do it themselves," Mr. Sadr said in a statement.The mortar wounded a child and a guard, but it did not harm Mr. Sadr.141

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0422-20.htmIraq Three Years after “Liberation”By Stephen ZunesCommonDreams.orgApril 22, 2006Three years after U.S. forces captured Baghdad, Iraqis are suffering from unprecedentedviolence and misery. Although Saddam Hussein was indeed one of the world's mostbrutal tyrants, the no-fly zones and arms embargo in place for more than a dozen yearsprior to his ouster had severely weakened his capacity to do violence against his ownpeople. Today, the level of violent deaths is not only far higher than during his final yearsin power, but the sheer randomness of the violence has left millions of Iraqis in a state ofperpetual terror. At least 30,000 Iraqi civilians have died, most of them at the hands ofU.S. forces but increasingly from terrorist groups and Iraqi government death squads.Thousands more soldiers and police have also been killed. Violent crime, includingkidnapping, rape, and armed robbery, is at record levels. There is a proliferation of smallarms, and private militias are growing rapidly. A Lebanon-type multifaceted civil war,only on a much wider and deadlier scale, grows more likely with time.Over 50,000 Iraqis have been imprisoned by U.S. forces since the invasion, but only 1.5% ofthem have been convicted of any crime. Currently, U.S. forces hold 15,000 to 18,000 Iraqiprisoners, more than were imprisoned under Saddam Hussein. Amnesty International and otherhuman rights groups have cited U.S. forces with widespread violations of internationalhumanitarian law, including torture and other abuses of prisoners.It is not just the fear of arrest and torture that have worsened since the U.S. conquest of Iraq threeyears ago. Although the destruction of the civilian infrastructure during the heavy U.S.-ledbombing campaign in 1991 combined with the subsequent economic sanctions led to enormoussuffering among ordinary Iraqis, the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program, despite the abuses,did substantially improve the quality of life in the years preceding the U.S. invasion. Now,deaths from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly among children, are again on theincrease. The supply of drinking water, reliability of electricity, and effectiveness of sewagedisposal are all worse than before the invasion.As much as half of the labor force is unemployed, and the cost of living has skyrocketed. Themedian income of Iraqis has declined by more than half. The UN's World Food Program (WFP)reports that the Iraqi people suffer from “significant countrywide shortages of rice, sugar, milk,and infant formula,” and the WFP documents approximately 400,000 Iraqi children sufferingfrom “dangerous deficiencies of protein.” Oil production, the country's chief source of revenue,is less than half of what it was before the invasion. And despite Bush administration promises toinfuse billions of dollars worth of foreign aid to rebuild the country's civilian infrastructure, onlya small fraction of these ventures have been completed, and most projects have been cancelled.142

Close to one million Iraqis, most of them from the vital, educated middle class, have left thecountry to avoid the violence and hardship brought on as a result of the U.S. invasion.Despite all this, a Harris poll at the end of December showed that a majority of Americansbelieve the Bush administration's claims that Iraqis are better off now than they were underSaddam Hussein. Most Iraqis polled say just the opposite.President Bush and his supporters still insist that Iraq is supposed to be a model for democracythat other countries in the region should try to emulate. In reality, the U.S. conquest andoccupation of Iraq have, in the eyes of many Muslims worldwide, given democracy a bad namein the same way that the Soviets gave socialism a bad name through their conquest andoccupation of Afghanistan. Democracy has become synonymous with war, chaos, domination bya foreign power, and massive human suffering. As a result, anti-American sentiment in Iraq isgrowing.Amazingly, supporters of Bush policy cannot quite understand why this is the case. For example,Bush administration adviser Daniel Pipes, a leading proponent of the invasion, expressed hisdisappointment at “the ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them” byinvading and occupying their country.The Costs to the United StatesOne of the major sources of growing anti-American sentiment has been the Pentagon's counterinsurgencyoffensives, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.Though small-unit operations have been curtailed, air strikes have been increasing. From the useof heavy weaponry and phosphorous bombs against population centers in Fallujah to massivesweeps rounding up thousands of innocent men, many of which have been subjected to torture atthe hands of U.S. forces, the United States is increasingly seen as an occupier, not a liberator. InIraq's tribal society, where the ethic of vengeance is still widespread, every civilian casualty atthe hands of U.S. soldiers potentially adds to the recruitment pool of the insurgency, whosehighly mobile cadres can easily slip away and resume operations in another locale or afterAmerican troops move on.That the war has led to a growth of anti-American extremism throughout the Arab and Islamicworld is no longer seriously questioned, as reports by U.S. intelligence agencies and the StateDepartment have confirmed. Resentment also seethes from the disruption of Iraq's economy,primarily through policies that have resulted in record unemployment, leaving nearly half thepopulation without jobs. This economic devastation is a result not only of the commercial chaosstemming from the invasion but also of Washington's decisions to eliminate tens of thousands ofIraqi government jobs, privatize public enterprises, give preference to foreign nationals forreconstruction efforts, and open Iraq to foreign multinationals against which local enterprisescannot compete.The Iraq War has already cost the United States $500 billion, which is more in current dollarsthan the entire Vietnam War. Ongoing costs are close to $10 billion per month. With the vastmajority of this money going to support the war, little is left to nurture civil society institutions,143

to train legislators, or to help build democracy. Despite this, there is still a clear bipartisanconsensus to keep robbing the treasury to support President Bush's desperate effort to controlthat oil-rich country. Not a single senator voted against the president's most recent request tokeep funding the war, and there were only 71 negative votes in the 435-member House ofRepresentatives. Democrats, like Republicans, appear determined to force American taxpayers tokeep paying for the death and destruction being wrought upon Iraq.The Nature of the Iraqi GovernmentIn recent months, Washington has begun to realize that several ruling officials retrieved fromexile by U.S. forces including Iraq's prime minister are incompetent religious fanaticsclosely allied with hard-line Iranian clerics. The Iraqi government is isolated within the U.S.-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and is so weak and divided that it can barely be consideredfunctional. Corruption is rampant.Three years after the invasion, the Pentagon acknowledges that Iraqi forces are still “largelydependent” on American combat troops for logistics, supplies, and support. Indeed, not a singleIraqi unit is yet capable of fully independent operations.Washington's goal may be reasonable, but U.S. pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a moreinclusive government and to replace Ibrahim al-Jaafari has created enormous resentment and iswidely viewed as arrogant neocolonial interference. Furthermore, there is little to suggest thatany of Jaafari's likely replacements would be any better.Human rights abuses are increasing, as hundreds of civilians, mostly Sunni Arab males, arekilled every month by government death squads. Murders from these death squads rival even theviolence perpetrated by terrorist insurgents, who have primarily targeted Shiite Arab civilians.Last month, Amnesty International reported that “not only has the Iraqi government failed toprovide minimal protection for its citizens, it has pursued a policy of rounding up and torturinginnocent men and women. Its failure to punish those who have committed torture has added tothe breakdown of the rule of law.”In the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, the ruling U.S.-backed coalition of twonationalist parties with sizable armed militias is not much better. Corruption is widespread, andopposition activists are routinely beaten, tortured, and killed. Kurdish-born Austrian lawyer andprofessor Kamal Sayid Qadir has reported that “Kurdish parties transformed Iraqi Kurdistan intoa fortress for oppression, theft of public funds, and serious abuses of human rights like murder,torture, amputation of ears and noses, and rape.” These “privileges and gains achieved since1991 by the Kurdish parties were impossible without direct American backing and support,” headded. For his efforts to alert the international community about abuses by the U.S.-backedKurdish government, he was sentence to a year and a half in prison.Given the dismal post-Saddam record of human rights abuses, it is questionable whetherAmericans should be dying to prop up either the central government in Baghdad or the Kurdishgovernment in the North. Continued U.S. training and funding of Iraqi police and military forceswill likely encourage even more anti-Americanism both in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.144

Neither Republicans nor Democrats seem bothered by the death squads and torture. For example,House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has further sullied her previous reputation as a defenderof human rights by supporting billions of dollars in additional funding for Iraqi and U.S. forces,enabling them to continue engaging in human rights abuses.Growing Questions at HomeLarge segments of the American public still embrace many of the justifications for the invasionof Iraq that have long since been proven false. For example, according to a Harris Poll at the endof December 2005, 41% of adult Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had “strong links toAl-Qaida;” 22% believe that Saddam Hussein “helped plan and support the hijackers whoattacked the United States on September 11;” 26% believe that Iraq “had weapons of massdestruction when the U.S. invaded;” and 24% believe that “several of the hijackers who attackedthe United States on September 11 were Iraqis.” Furthermore, a plurality of Americans stillaccept the contention that despite a dozen years of debilitating sanctions, a barely functionalmilitary, and the complete absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or offensivedelivery systems, “Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to the United States.”Notwithstanding these misconceptions, criticism of the Bush administration has been growing,forcing the president to finally acknowledge the widespread citizen opposition to the Iraq War.Bush says that he is willing to “listen to honest criticism” and that he has heard those whodisagree with his policies, but he continues to dismiss such critics as “defeatists” who advocatepolicies that threaten the “security of our people” and who would “give up on this fight forfreedom.”Though acknowledging that restoring order to Iraq has been “more difficult than we expected”and that “reconstruction efforts and the training of Iraqi security forces started more slowly thanwe hoped,” President Bush has blamed these failures solely on the insurgency, which hedescribes as “Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists.” In reality, the majority of the insurgencyconsists not of supporters of the former Iraqi dictator nor of foreign terrorists but of Iraqnationalists and Islamists resentful of an invasion and occupation by what they see as a Westernimperialist power intent on controlling their country's rich natural resources.Having provoked this resentment, the Bush administration now uses the insurgency to justify thecontinued U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Though the original rationale for the Iraq War wasSaddam's alleged WMD program, by redefining the U.S. incursion as a war on terrorism,Washington rationalizes an indefinite U.S. military presence and condones the ongoingAmerican dominance of Iraq's economy.Combating terrorism cannot be done by a single nation, no matter how strong a military itmaintains. For a counter-terrorism strategy to be effective, a multilateral approach is essential,but the Bush administration continues to reject this reality and insists on acting alone. Moreover,combating terrorism must employ a variety of tactics, not just military action. But once again,President Bush has failed to examine the root causes behind the violence.145

In the face of growing criticism over its Iraq policies, the current administration hasacknowledged mistakes such as inaccurate prewar claims of Saddam's military capability andinadequate policies to address post-invasion stabilization. However, these statements appearcalculated to defend the ongoing U.S.-led war rather than to admit fault. Though Bush'sacceptance of ultimate responsibility for the failures of U.S. policy is a positive step, no one hasyet been held accountable for these errors.For example, the president says he was “responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.” Yet hedefends that decision, even though the invasion was a clear violation of the United NationsCharter and was based upon false claims that Iraq already disarmed of offensive militarycapabilities by the United Nations constituted a threat to U.S. national security.Regarding his prewar contention that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons, an activenuclear program, and offensive weapons delivery capabilities, President Bush admits inaccuracybut attributes it to mistakes in intelligence gathering. He excuses his misjudgment by arguingthat members of Congress and the intelligence branches of allied governments reviewed thesame information and came to similar conclusions.In reality, prior to the U.S. invasion, foreign governments noted that Iraq had failed to properlyaccount for all proscribed weapons programs, and some countries suspected that Saddam hadresidual weapons or components banned under UN Security Council mandates, but most nationswere dubious of U.S. and British claims that Iraq still constituted a military threat. Similarly,most members of Congress simply believed the intelligence presented to them by theadministration rather than studies in scholarly journals and United Nations reports. It nowappears that errors did not come from problems within the CIA but that administration officialsdeliberately manipulated intelligence data in order to frighten Congress and the American peopleinto supporting an invasion.Acknowledging obvious problems is a positive step for a president often considered arrogant andunaware of the havoc resulting from his decision to invade and occupy Iraq. However, until thereis a serious re-evaluation of administration policies, there is little hope that suchacknowledgements will improve America's standing in the world or ease the suffering of theIraqi people. What neither the administration nor Congress has acknowledged is that the invasionof Iraq would have been wrong even if Saddam Hussein still had WMDs and even if the postinvasionsituation had been handled more responsibly.Recently, leading figures in the Democratic Party who had largely supported President Bush'sIraq policies are finally starting to voice their opposition in response to pressure from theirconstituents. However, the Democrats have yet to present much of an alternative. Their recentlyreleased defense plan entitled “Real Security” fails to renounce Bush's preventive war doctrineand simply urges Iraqis to assume “primary responsibility for securing and governing theircountry with the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces.” Democrats and their apologists claimthat a more forceful statement for withdrawal would risk their being portrayed as weak, but eventheir moderate plan was branded “a strategic retreat” by Vice President Dick Cheney. RepublicanSenator Christopher Bond was more honest. He noted essentially no difference between the146

Democratic position and that of the administration, observing, “It's taken them all this time tofigure out what we've been doing for a long time.”Dealing with the InsurgencyThere are dozens of armed groups in Iraq battling U.S. occupation forces and the U.S.-backedgovernment. This resistance includes supporters of Saddam Hussein, well-armed remnants of hisarmed forces, other Baathists, independent nationalists, various Shiite wings, tribal-basedgroupings, and several Sunni Arab offshoots. The al-Qaida-inspired jihadists and the foreignfighters upon whom the Bush administration focuses represent a minority of the insurgency.Opposition is growing and, despite many differences ideologically and tactically, the variousfactions have demonstrated an increasing ability to coordinate their operations.Beyond the many similarities between the war in Iraq and the one in Vietnam years ago, one keydifference is in the nature of the opposition. Although some anti-Vietnam War activists naivelydownplayed the autocratic tendencies of the communist-led National Liberation Front (NLF),these rebels and the North Vietnamese government eventually brought relative peace andstability to the country. Despite current repression and misguided economic policies, the SouthVietnamese have arguably suffered less in a reunified country under the communists than duringthe U.S.-led war under the corrupt and brutal Thieu regime in Saigon. Belying dire warningsfrom Washington prior to the war's end, the NLF/North Vietnamese victory has not harmed thenational security of the United States, and other than its misadventure in Cambodia to rootout the genocidal Khmer Rouge and a brief border war with China Vietnam has coexistedrelatively well with its neighbors and is now a full member of the Association of Southeast AsianNations (ASEAN).The same cannot be said of the armed opposition to the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.Unlike in Vietnam, the Iraqi resistance is not unified. As a result, toppling the current leaderswill not likely bring peace but rather continued violence and disorder. The insurgents alsoinclude some decidedly nasty elements that are genuinely fascistic in orientation. In the powerstruggle that would follow a hypothetical overthrow of Iraq's central government, it is quitepossible that the new rulers would include militant jihadists, Saddam's wing of the Ba'ath party,or other elements far worse than those currently in power or likely to be elected next month.There is also a real risk of the instability spilling over into adjacent countries.There are many scary scenarios that could result from the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.The country could plunge into full-scale civil war, it might split into three parts (accompanied byethnic cleansing), fundamentalist Islamic rule may emerge, Iranian extremists could exert undueinfluence, or this war-torn nation could become a training and logistical base for internationalterrorism. All of these possibilities should be taken seriously.Unfortunately, these scenarios may even more likely occur if U.S. forces remain than if theywithdraw. Bush's war in Iraq is creating insurgents, including terrorists, faster than the Pentagoncan kill them. The U.S. and British military presence is exacerbating ethnic and sectariandivisions, not lessening them. The overwhelming U.S. domination of the Baghdad government is147

undermining its sovereignty, weakening its standing with the Iraqi people, and compromising itsability to govern.Many observers, even among those who opposed the U.S. invasion, concede that althoughthe principle of self-determination must be respected and although Iraqis are more than capableof governing themselves once stability and basic services are restored current circumstancesin Iraq may require active leadership from the outside. The United States, however, simply doesnot have the credibility to fill that role. There are sound proposals for an internationalpeacekeeping force led by other Arab or Islamic states that should be considered, but theseoptions will not be possible as long as the United States insists on orchestrating militaryoperations.All but the most extreme jihadists in the opposition would likely be open to a negotiatedsettlement to the conflict, but only if there was a clear timetable or specific achievablebenchmarks for a complete U.S. withdrawal. With the bulk of the insurgents then allied with theBaghdad government, Iraqis could likely deal with the jihadists and other radical elementsthemselves, since the jihadists' extreme ideology and terrorist tactics have little popularfollowing in the country.The Bush administration has thus far refused to discuss withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq.The new bases under construction (under no-bid contracts with Vice President Dick Cheney'sfirm Halliburton) are elaborate, self-contained towns that appear to be intended for permanence.One being built outside Baghdad is more than 15 square miles. The new U.S. embassy underconstruction in Iraq is designed to include 21 buildings comprising residences for 1,000American officials, a school, a warehouse, and its own utilities. As long as such an overbearing,neocolonial lightning-rod presence remains, there will be armed resistance.There have also been reasonable proposals for the United States to maintain an over-the-horizonmilitary presence or to conduct more modest military operations. Such a plan, however, wouldrequire putting trust in the very same people who have proven themselves profoundly ignorantabout Iraq and totally inept at managing the postwar situation. Perhaps U.S. forces could providetactical air support to Iraqi soldiers if Jihadists seize Ramadi and start marching on the GreenZone. But absent such a crisis, the only responsible option is a withdrawal of U.S. forces as soonas possible.Americans from across the political spectrum have a kind of optimism and “can do” attitude thathas served us well on many occasions. There are some situations, however, where a series oftragic mistakes and unfortunate circumstances preclude a positive outcome. Iraq may be justsuch a case.The War at HomeThis is my third annual article analyzing the U.S. war in Iraq and its impact. Unless theAmerican people more fully mobilize to change U.S. policy, I will have to write these articles formany years to come.148

This year's Democratic primaries and the general election will be key tests of whether the U.S.citizenry will be willing to challenge the bipartisan support for the Iraq War, the doctrine ofpreventive war, and the exaggerated claims of foreign strategic threats brandished to frighten thepopulace into supporting war. Scores of U.S. representatives and senators who voted in October2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq are up for re-election this year, and most of them stillsupport funding the war. If the majority of these pro-war Republican and Democratic lawmakersare re-elected, it will signal Washington politicians that the growing grassroots opposition to thewar will not threaten their political careers. Despite the message it would send, some leaders inthe peace movement are insisting that progressives work to re-elect pro-war members ofCongress, including those who lied about Iraq still having WMDs, simply because they areDemocrats. Such a strategy will virtually guarantee many more years of death and destruction inIraq, and- as the 2004 presidential election showed us- such Democrats will probablyend up losing anyway.But a determined citizenry is the decisive factor. The anti-Vietnam War movement, the antiapartheidstruggle, the nuclear freeze campaign, and Central America solidarity effortsdemonstrated that the particular individuals or party that the American people elect are lessimportant than the choices we give them. As the old adage goes, “If the people lead, the leaderswill follow.”The United States will eventually have to leave Iraq. The question is, how many Americans andIraqis will have to die in the meantime? For the United States to pull out, Bush and his bipartisangroup of supporters would have to recognize that they cannot Americanize Iraq, establish U.S.hegemony in the Persian Gulf region, control Iraq's vast oil reserves, or intimidate other nationsby subduing an intractable insurgency. In short, the leadership of the greatest militarysuperpower the world has ever known would be forced to accept a humiliating retreat.It may be unrealistic to believe that the Bush administration would simply pull out of Iraq evenin the face of growing popular opposition. The Nixon administration was unwilling to simplypull out of Vietnam. However, the anti-war movement forced Washington to negotiate with theSouth Vietnamese resistance and their North Vietnamese allies, which eventually led to thewithdrawal of U.S. forces. Demanding negotiations that include a timetable for a total U.S.withdrawal may be the most realistic strategy that today's anti-war movement could advocate.Otherwise, President Bush will likely hold firm and leave the painful decisions to a Democraticsuccessor, who would then take the blame for not “finishing the job.” This is why it is soimportant for Democrats to stop funding the war and to insist that President Bush negotiate asettlement to withdraw U.S. forces before he leaves office, thereby accepting full responsibilityfor the consequences.Another question is, what will the United States learn from all this? Will it be just a tactical,stylistic precept that in the words of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee JohnKerry the war against Iraq was not a mistake but rather that “the way the president went towar is a mistake”? The next time the United States invades and occupies another country, shouldit be done the “right way” by a Democratic administration?149

Will our lesson be merely a strategic realization that, even if Washington had not made whatSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice called “thousands” of errors in Iraq, invading andoccupying a large Arab Muslim state with a strong history of nationalism is fraught withdisaster?Or will Americans finally embrace what we thought had been learned at the end of World WarII -with the ratification of the United Nations Charter- that invading another country isjust plain wrong?Stephen Zunes is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article firstappeared. He is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the author ofTinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).150

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12885.htmhttp://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article360624.eceSeen through a Syrian lens, 'unknown Americans' are provoking civil war in IraqBy Robert FiskApril 29, 200604/29/06 "The Independent" -- - In Syria, the world appears through a glass, darkly. As dark asthe smoked windows of the car which takes me to a building on the western side of Damascuswhere a man I have known for 15 years - we shall call him a "security source", which is the namegiven by American correspondents to their own powerful intelligence officers - waits with hisown ferocious narrative of disaster in Iraq and dangers in the Middle East.His is a fearful portrait of an America trapped in the bloody sands of Iraq, desperately trying toprovoke a civil war around Baghdad in order to reduce its own military casualties. It is a scenarioin which Saddam Hussein remains Washington's best friend, in which Syria has struck at theIraqi insurgents with a ruthlessness that the United States wilfully ignores. And in which Syria'sInterior Minister, found shot dead in his office last year, committed suicide because of his ownmental instability.The Americans, my interlocutor suspected, are trying to provoke an Iraqi civil war so that SunniMuslim insurgents spend their energies killing their Shia co-religionists rather than soldiers ofthe Western occupation forces. "I swear to you that we have very good information," my sourcesays, finger stabbing the air in front of him. "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained bythe Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to driveand 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he wentback, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque andphone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the carto where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."Impossible, I think to myself. But then I remember how many times Iraqis in Baghdad have toldme similar stories. These reports are believed even if they seem unbelievable. And I know wheremuch of the Syrian information is gleaned: from the tens of thousands of Shia Muslim pilgrimswho come to pray at the Sayda Zeinab mosque outside Damascus. These men and women comefrom the slums of Baghdad, Hillah and Iskandariyah as well as the cities of Najaf and Basra.Sunnis from Fallujah and Ramadi also visit Damascus to see friends and relatives and talk freelyof American tactics in Iraq."There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile andtold to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tellthem what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landlinephone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tellyou what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."151

Just who these "Americans" might be, my source did not say. In the anarchic and panic-strickenworld of Iraq, there are many US groups - including countless outfits supposedly working for theAmerican military and the new Western-backed Iraqi Interior Ministry - who operate outside anylaws or rules. No one can account for the murder of 191 university teachers and professors sincethe 2003 invasion - nor the fact that more than 50 former Iraqi fighter-bomber pilots whoattacked Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war have been assassinated in their home towns in Iraq inthe past three years.Amid this chaos, a colleague of my source asked me, how could Syria be expected to lessen thenumber of attacks on Americans inside Iraq? "It was never safe, our border," he said. "DuringSaddam's time, criminals and Saddam's terrorists crossed our borders to attack our government. Ibuilt a wall of earth and sand along the border at that time. But three car bombs from Saddam'sagents exploded in Damascus and Tartous- I was the one who captured the criminals responsible.But we couldn't stop them."Now, he told me, the rampart running for hundreds of miles along Syria's border with Iraq hadbeen heightened. "I have had barbed wire put on top and up to now we have caught 1,500 non-Syrian and non-Iraqi Arabs trying to cross and we have stopped 2,700 Syrians from crossing ...Our army is there - but the Iraqi army and the Americans are not there on the other side."Behind these grave suspicions in Damascus lies the memory of Saddam's long friendship withthe United States. "Our Hafez el-Assad [the former Syrian president who died in 2000] learntthat Saddam, in his early days, met with American officials 20 times in four weeks. Thisconvinced Assad that, in his words, 'Saddam is with the Americans'. Saddam was the biggesthelper of the Americans in the Middle East (when he attacked Iran in 1980) after the fall of theShah. And he still is! After all, he brought the Americans to Iraq!"So I turn to a story which is more distressing for my sources: the death by shooting of BrigadierGeneral Ghazi Kenaan, former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon - an awesomelypowerful position - and Syrian Minister of Interior when his suicide was announced by theDamascus government last year.Widespread rumours outside Syria suggested that Kenaan was suspected by UN investigators ofinvolvement in the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in a massive carbomb in Beirut last year - and that he had been "suicided" by Syrian government agents toprevent him telling the truth.Not so, insisted my original interlocutor. "General Ghazi was a man who believed he could giveorders and anything he wanted would happen. Something happened that he could not reconcile -something that made him realise he was not all-powerful. On the day of his death, he went to hisoffice at the Interior Ministry and then he left and went home for half an hour. Then he cameback with a pistol. He left a message for his wife in which he said goodbye to her and asked herto look after their children and he said that what he was going to do was 'for the good of Syria'.Then he shot himself in the mouth."152

Of Hariri's assassination, Syrian officials like to recall his relationship with the former Iraqiinterim prime minister Iyad Alawi - a self-confessed former agent for the CIA and MI6 - and analleged $20bn arms deal between the Russians and Saudi Arabia in which they claim Hariri wasinvolved.Hariri's Lebanese supporters continue to dismiss the Syrian argument on the grounds that Syriahad identified Hariri as the joint author with his friend, French President Jacques Chirac, of theUN Security Council resolution which demanded the retreat of the Syrians from Lebaneseterritory.But if the Syrians are understandably obsessed with the American occupation of Iraq, their longhatred for Saddam - something which they shared with most Iraqis - is still intact. When I askedmy first "security" source what would happen to the former Iraqi dictator, he replied, banging hisfist into his hand: "He will be killed. He will be killed. He will be killed."© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited153

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MEY20060518&articleId=2461Iraq: Security Companies and Training Campsby Sarah MeyerGlobal ResearchBRussells TribunalMay 18, 2006Private US and UK security firms are closely allied to Mr. Bremer’s ‘Facilities ProtectionService’ (FPR) programme in Iraq. Newsweek (24.04.06) suggested 146,0001 belong to this‘security’ force. The Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, associated the FPS with the endemic ‘deathsquads’ operating inside the police forces, which are hastening the disintegration of Iraq2.What is the Facilities Protection Service?The establishment of the ‘Facilities Protection Service’ was on 04.10.03, according to PaulBremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 27 (see appendix one).This document says that “The FPS may also consist of employees of private security firms3 whoare engaged to perform services for the ministries or governorates through contracts, providedsuch private security firms and employees are licensed and authorized by the Ministry of Interioras provided in Section 7 herein.”According to Global Security.org, “The Facilities Protection Service works for all ministries andgovernmental agencies, but its standards are set and enforced by the Ministry of the Interior. Itcan also be privately hired. The FPS is tasked with the fixed site protection of Ministerial,Governmental, or private buildings, facilities and personnel. The FPS includes Oil, ElectricityPolice and Port Security.The majority of the FPS staff consists of former service members and former security guards.The FPS will now secure public facilities such as hospitals, banks, and power stations withintheir district. Once trained, the guards work with US military forces protecting critical sites likeschools, hospitals and power plants.”Which private security firms are operating in Iraq?There are about 30 known private security firms working in Iraq. These include:Aegis PLCAegis is run by Lt. Col. Tim Spicer. A film recently showed Aegis members happily shootingIraqi civilians. See the film here.154

Sourcewatch information on Aegis: “Aegis Defence Services was initially awarded a $293million contract by the Pentagon in May 2004 to act as the ‘coordination and management hub’for the fifty-plus private security companies in Iraq. As of December, 2005, that contract wasworth in excess of $430 million. They also contributed seventy-five teams of eight armedcivilians each to assist and protect the Project Management Office of the United States. Theyalso provided protection for the Oil-for-Food Program inquiry.”Blackwater USA.Blackwater was the security firm hired to protect Paul Bremer in Iraq.Sourcewatch on Blackwater. “Blackwater is one of two companies which make up The PrinceGroup, the other being Prince Manufacturing. … The Prince Group bought Aviation WorldwideServies. AWS consists of STI Aviation, Inc., Air Quest, Inc., and Presidential Airways, Inc.These companies provide the logistical and air support for Blackwater operations. Blackwateritself consists of Blackwater Training Center, Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater SecurityConsulting and Blackwater Canine."Blackwater vs. FallujahThe 1st Marine Expeditionary Force took over Fallujah on 27.03.04. During a demonstration onthe 28th, the US killed 18 Fallujah civilians. The Iraqi response to this was the murder andhanging of 4 Blackwater employees on 31.03.04. War crimes committed by the United Statesfollowed. See: Fallujah, the Hidden Nightmare (Rai/ICH)Najaf was also affected. Sourcewatch says: “According to Russel Mokhiber and RobertWeissman, a few days after the Fallujah killings, "Blackwater Security Consulting engaged infull-scale battle in Najaf, with the company flying its own helicopters amidst an intense firefightto re-supply its own commandos. … The increased scrutiny of security firms led Blackwater tohire the Alexander Strategy Group (now involved in three “K Street” scandals) for crisismanagement, public and media relations.”For a shady story that gets progressively darker, see IRAQ: Blood is Thicker Than BlackwaterErinys Iraq Ltd.According to Global Security, “Erinys Iraq Ltd is the private security company hired to protectIraq’s oil pipelines under a US$40 million contract awarded in August 2003. Erinys Iraq is anaffiliate of Erinys International formed in 2001, landed the Iraq contract to supply and train6,500 armed guards charged with protecting 140 Iraqi oil wells, 7,000 kilometers of pipelinesand refineries, as well as power plants and the water supply for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. Amajority of Erinys’ workforce (15,000 Iraqi and 350 international staff) in Iraq are Kurdishpeshmerga.”Sourcewatch information on Erinys. “Erinys Iraq Ltd, which won an $80 million contract lastAugust from the Coalition Provisional Authority to provide security for the oil infrastructure inIraq, has had some powerful alliances in Iraq.155

Erinys set up a Joint Venture with Nour USA Ltd.. Nour's founder is Abul Huda Farouki, awealthy Jordanian-American who lives in northern Virginia and whose companies have doneextensive construction work for the Pentagon.Farouki's businesses established $12 million of loans from the Petra International BankingCorporation in the 1980s, which was managed at the time by Ahmed Chalabi’s nephew,Mohammed Chalabi. The Jordanian government says this was part of a massive embezzlementscheme involving Chalabi4 and a bank he owned in Jordan.A founding partner and the director of Erinys Iraq is Faisal Dhaghistani. Faisal is the son ofTamara Daghistani, who played a large role in the development of Ahmed Chalabi's IraqiNational Congress.The firm's counsel in Baghdad has been Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi.Many among the 14,000 guards recruited by Erinys to protect the oil infrastructure came directlyfrom the Iraqi Free Forces, a militia that had been loyal to Chalabi's movement.”Following is an up-to-date State Department list 5 of 27 further known security firms working inIraq:AD Consultancy (which firm?) (UK)AKE Ltd (UK)BAGHDAD FIRE AND SECURITY (IRAQ)ARMOR GROUP (in Mosul, Baghdad, Basra) (UK)CONTROL RISKS GROUP (Baghdad) (UK)CUSTER BATTLES (now being investigated) (US)DEHDARI GENERAL TRADING & CONTRACTING EST.(KUWAIT)DILIGENCE MIDDLE EAST (US)GENRIC (outside Basra) (UK)GLOBAL MIDDLE EAST RISK STRATEGIES (originally a firm based in UK, known asGlobal Risk Strategies) (Dubai,UAE)GROUP 4 FALCK A/S (INDIA)HENDERSON RISK LTD (UK)HILL AND ASSOCIATES (HONG KONG)ICP (employees are only either former British and US Special Forces or Elite Forces personnel.(UK)ISI (Baghdad Conference Palace: (“the only security company to provide 24 hour Iraqi securityguards to the CPA "Green Zone". All guards are trained by the U.S. army … ISI's seniormanagement includes experienced military personnel mostly ex-special forces from both the USand UK.”) (IRAQ)METEORIC TACTICAL SOLUTIONS (S. AFRICA)MEYER & ASSOCIATES, (TEXAS, US)OLIVE SECURITY LTD (UK)OPTIMAL SOLUTION SERVICES (AUSTRALIA)OVERSEAS SECURITY AND STRATEGIC INFORMATION, INC/SAFENET-IRAQ (US)156

RAMOPS RISK MANAGEMENT GROUP (comprised of US special operations and militaryintelligence professionals.) (US)SOG-SMG INC. (US)SUMER INTERNATIONAL SECURITY (trained by DYNCORP. INT; (IRAQ)TOR INTERNATIONAL (former SAS and Special Forces staff) (UK)TRIPLE CANOPY (more than 20 years in the most elite military Special Operations units) (US)UNITY RESOURCES GROUP (Middle East) LLC. (security professionals drawn from theSpecial Forces and Police SWAT communities of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia,New Zealand and Europe. (Dubai, UAE)WADE-BOYD & ASSOCIATES (US)Where is training for the Facilities Protection Service ("death squads"?) taking place?• Basra Palace (UK)“19/5 Battery: “Maj. A. J. Layden is responsible for the Facilities Protection Service (FPS). TheBattery oversees a wide range of activities; from working with the border guards away to the eastof Basra, to running training courses for the FPS. Sgt Duncan’s multiple (sic) is one that hasbeen tasked with this FPS training task. He and his team have already run four five-day courseswhich include foot drill, weapon handling, basic first aid and vehicle check point drills. The aimthroughout each course is to raise confidence amongst the men of the FPS in basic standards andencourage good practice. At the end of each course, the top students have been selected toreceive further instruction to educate them how to lead future courses. Sgt Duncan and his teamare now reaping the rewards of their hard work with Iraqi FPS staff leading the most recentcourse under their guidance. “ (There is no date on this communication.)• Baghdad, Al Rashid districtCol. Jon Brockman said (21.01.04) “that those achievements include recruiting, training,equipping and employing 2,900 Iraqis as Facility Protection Services guards.”• MEK Compound / FOB Mercury / Camp MercuryA photo tour of Camp Mercury can be seen here. The photo of the prisoner compound has beendeleted.Global Security says: “Forward Operating Base [FOB] Mercury is an abandoned Iraqi militarybase and a former Iranian terrorist training camp, located midway between Baghdad andFallujah.”“TF 1-504 operates out of FOB Mercury. They are responsible for several towns west ofBaghdad, including the external security of the largest prison and detention facility in Iraq. TF 1-504 recently started training Iraqi Facility Protection Service guards. This is a program to trainand equip Iraqis so they can begin guarding their own critical facilities, such as police stations,food warehouses, oil storage depots, etc. … A class of twenty-five Iraqis completed the FacilitiesProtection Force (FPS) program 11 October 2003 at Forward Operating Base Mercury. The157

group of students is the first to participate in the three-day course. Upon their graduation, theybecame an integral part of the Iraq rehabilitation process. …”“There have been allegations made that between 2003-2004 at Camp Mercury U.S. militarypersonnel engaged in routine and widespread physical punishment towards Iraqi detainees. It isalleged that enlisted men conducted beatings of prisoners prior to questioning, forced strenuousexercises to the point of unconsciousness and exposed detainees to extremes of heat and cold.These alleged methods were employed to produce greater cooperation with interrogators some ofwhom were apparently members of the CIA. As of September 2005 the U.S. Army wasconducting an investigation on what exactly happened at Camp Mercury. Some militarypersonnel also claim that these actions were also used as a form of stress relief from the war.”• An NajafAn Najaf area, two hundred one facility protection service guards graduated from securitytraining on 03 July 2003. Sixty-seven guards will work at oil and gas facilities and 134 will workat hospitals. On 29.08.03, the mosque in Najaf was bombed.The 11th MEU commander declared Nov. 30 (04) that Iraqi security forces have formallyassumed local control of An Najaf province. Col. Anthony Haslam said, "In the past threemonths, they have demonstrated their ability to keep this province and its citizens safe andsecure." As of 09.12.05, The Iraqi army had the primary responsibility for security in Najaf andKarbala, but full control had not yet been handed over.06.14.06. Car bombing. 10 people killed near Shi’ite Muslim shrine.Further Najaf security matters can be seen here.• AR RAMADI• KARBALAThere is no further detailed information about where the FPS members are being trained. Thereis, however, further information about Training Camps for Iraqis. For example, see thedescription of Camp David, where Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), emergency response,and dignitary protection, similar to functions carried out by the U.S. Secret service, take place.Black masks are ‘de rigour’ (see photo). These camps will be detailed in my research on USbases in North/South/East/West Iraq.APPENDIX ONE: PAUL BREMER’S ORDER NUMBER 27:ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FACILITIES PROTECTION SERVICE… The FPS is an organization of trained, armed, uniformed entities charged with providingsecurity for ministry and governorate offices, government infrastructure, and fixed sites underthe direction and control of governmental ministries and governorate administrations.158

Section 2: Organization of the FPS1) Governmental employees employed by the ministries or governorates are eligible to serve inthe FPS. The FPS may also consist of employees of private security firms who are engaged toperform services for the ministries or governorates through contracts, provided such privatesecurity firms and employees are licensed and authorized by the Ministry of Interior as providedin Section 7 herein. Persons who have participated in Ba`ath Party activity within the leadershiptiers described in CPA Order Number 1, De-Ba`athification of Iraqi Society (CPA/ORD/16 May2003/01) may not serve in the FPS in any capacity except by the express grant of an exception bythe Coalition Provisional Authority.2) Ministers and heads of governorate administrations shall determine the need for FPS membersat locations under their supervision. Each ministry or governorate administration is responsiblefor ensuring the FPS branch under its supervision is sufficient to protect key sites for which it isresponsible, with the additional support of police or other forces in times of emergency.3) Ministries and governorate administrations are responsible for the funding of FPS membersassigned to their agency. Ministries and governorate administrations are responsible for thesupervision and control of the FPS force assigned to their governmental agency, consistent withthe standards and regulations established by the Ministry of Interior.4) Governorates will establish Regional Operations Centers to coordinate the operations of FPSguards and to ensure their proper integration with police and other emergency services.5) The Ministry of Interior will establish standards and training for the FPS including standardsand training for private security firms performing FPS duties pursuant to contracts.Pursuant to this Order, the Ministry of Interior will issue FPSAdministrative Instructions defining the standards for dress, training, certification, anddeportment. All members of the FPS whether contracted or employed directly by thegovernmental agency are required to comply with the Administrative Instructions issued by theMinistry of Interior.6) FPS organizations may be known by different names including, for example "ElectricityPolice," "Diplomatic Protective Services," or "Oil Police" but each will have only the specificpowers and authorities granted in this Order.7) Members of the FPS may not participate in any manner in organizations or activities thatadvocate racial, gender or ethnic hatred or intolerance; advocate, create, or engage in illegaldiscrimination based on race, color, gender, religion, or regional origin; or use, or advocate theuse of, force or violence or other unlawful means to achieve internal political goals. Violationsmay result in the removal of the member from employment in the FPS or the withdrawal of theauthorization for the member to perform FPS responsibilities as a member of a private securityfirm.159

Section 3: Authority of the FPS1) Members of the FPS may, while performing their official duties, apprehend persons who (i)they witness committing or attempting to commit a criminal offense, (ii) have escaped afterbeing lawfully arrested, or (iii) otherwise interfere with their lawful activities. Personsapprehended by the FPS must be turned over to the Iraqi police or Coalition Forces within twelvehours of apprehension or be released.2) Members of the FPS may, while performing their official duties, conduct reasonable searchesfor weapons or other dangerous or prohibited items of persons entering or within thegovernmental property or offices they are securing, criminal suspects in their custody, orvehicles entering or within the governmental property or offices they are securing.3) Members of the FPS may, while performing official duties, use force against persons or thingsas is reasonable and necessary under the circumstances. However, the use of force that may belikely to cause death or serious bodily injury is not permitted unless the member reasonablybelieves that using such force is necessary to: (i) protect himself or others from the imminent useof deadly force or force likely to cause serious bodily injury, (ii) prevent the escape of a personsuspected of committing murder or assault resulting in serious bodily injury, or (iii) defendministry or governorate offices, government or state-owned infrastructure, and fixed sites underthe direction and control of governmental ministries and governorate administrations, to preventtheir destruction or incapacitation.Section 4: Jurisdiction1) Members of the FPS will be subject to Iraqi law at all times, and the courts of Iraq shall havejurisdiction over offenses alleged to have been committed by members of the FPS. TheAdministrator of the CPA may determine that offenses alleged to have been committed bymembers of the FPS while on duty may be submitted to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq inaccordance with CPA Order Number 13 (Revised), The Central Criminal Court of Iraq(CPA/ORD/13 July 2003/13).2) Members of the FPS shall enjoy immunity from civil liability for acts or omissions arisingwithin the scope of their duties and in the conduct of authorized operations to the same degree asother governmental officials under the law of Iraq.Section 5: WeaponsThe possession of weapons by members of the FPS is regulated by CPA Order Number 3,Weapons Control Order (CPA/ORD/23 May 2003/03).CPA/ORD/4 September 2003 / 27Comments160

The UK was criticized for starting the Basra turmoil in 10.05. Two SAS, part of a 24-memberteam, were discovered with explosives in the back of their car. They were dressed in Arabclothing. See Basra Shadowlands.“Majid al-Sari, an adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, describing the situation in Basra tothe daily al-Zaman, said that on average one person (in Basra) was being assassinated every hour… The governor of Basra, Mohammed Misbahal-Wa'ili, is trying to sack the city's police chief,claiming that the police have not carried out a single investigation into hundreds of recentassassinations,” according to Patrick Cockburn (17.05.06) in The IndependentOn March, 06, a security contractor in Tikrit was arrested with a “Do It Yourself Car Bomb Kit”in his BMW. What was he going to blow up? Was this going to be a “suicide bombing?” Howmany ‘suicide bombings’ are actually caused by ‘security’ mercenaries, ordered to do so by theUS/UK government?Headline (05.06). “Baghdad: American security contractors shot dead an Iraqi ambulancecrewman on Tuesday when they opened fire on his vehicle after a roadside bomb blasted theirconvoy.” Which security firm did this? According to the Geneva Convention, it is a war crime tokill ambulance crew members.Hospitals, as well as ambulances, have been bombed (also against the Geneva Convention). Theexcuse given is that they ‘harbour terrorists.’Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt defended raiding al Tabul mosque in 01.04 because, he said, “Iraqicitizens had identified it as a hub of insurgency operations.” One has to extend this excuse, andask, ‘Are mosques also bombed by security forces because they ‘harbour terrorists?’ Suchcharges have been made.The Khadamiya shrine, according to Newsweek (24.04.06) is guarded by the FPS. “Not oneministry contacted by Newsweek would accept overall responsibility for the FPS.” If Bremercreated the FPS, then isn’t the coalition is responsible for the FPS?No prosecution? Bremer’s Order 27 exempts security contractors as well as the FacilitiesProtection Service: “Members of the FPS shall enjoy immunity from civil liability for acts oromissions arising within the scope of their duties.”How many Security (sic) people are there in total? How many of these belong now, or havebelonged in the past, to the Special Forces / SAS? How many of these have put Car Bomb Kits inthe back of their car? How many have carried out assassinations? How many ‘Kill For Fun’ (likeAegis)?Are any of these ‘security’ people responsible for the 190 academic and 225 health workerassassinations? See http://www.brusselstribunal.org for details of these assassinations.Is the increase in number of security companies / FPS directly related to / causing the increase ofviolence in Iraq?161

Related Sites:Negroponte supports FPS.Wolfovitz supports FPS.Rumsfeld (22.10.03) supports the FPS.President Bush, in a 07.09.03 speech in which he talks about an Iraq “free of assassins, andtorturers, and secret police,” supports the FPS.The most important articles, with excellent links, are by Max Fuller:For Iraq, “The Salvador Option” Becomes RealityCrying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq.Video with annotated scene selection and selected links: Crying Wolf: Who is behind the deathsquads in Iraq?Footnotes[1] Throughout this article you will notice a variation of given numbers, dependent on thesource. However, these numbers are not unbearably far apart.[2] The jumping off point for this research was E. Knickmeyer's Washington Post story IraqNears Consolidation of Paramilitary Unit (11.05.06) and Iraq Begins to Rein In ParamilitaryForce (14.05.06)[3] All italics in this article are the author's.[4] Chalabi was one of the 1998 PNAC signatories to a letter to President Clinton, calling forregime change in Iraq.[5] The Embassy of the United States – Iraq also has a website for Security Companies in Iraq,with websites, emails, details.The url to Iraq: Security Companies and Training Camps is:http://www.brusselstribunal.org/SecurityCompanies.htmhttp://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2006/05/iraq-security-companies-and-training.htmlSarah Meyer is a researcher living in Sussex, UKHer email address is sarahmeyer@freedom255.com162

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2507The Washington Institute for Near East PolicyPolicyWatch #1140:The Confused Security Situation in Iraq: Some Less Publicized UnitsBy Cecile ZwiebachAugust 21, 2006While U.S. and coalition forces—and increasingly the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)—struggle todefeat the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, they are also dealing with a range of armed groups thatcomplicate the security scenario. Militias and ad hoc units with different levels of governmentsanction are growing in strength, and the training of the ISF is progressing unevenly. While it isnot possible to conduct a comprehensive survey of both independent groups and ISF units, asampling of less publicized units illustrates how diffuse military power in Iraq has become.The Problem of Shiite MilitiasThe growth of Shiite militias that exist outside of any legal security frameworks threatens to feedethnic conflict and challenges the authority of the Iraqi government. Shiite militias ranging insize from neighborhood groups to nationwide organizations are growing in strength andattacking Sunnis, either as retaliations for insurgent attacks or out of sectarian motives. This hasled the United States to see them as an increasing threat on a level of with Sunni insurgency. Atthe same time, Sunnis in mixed-sect neighborhoods are forming local militias in response toShiite militia organization, and many Sunni clerics are calling for their followers to armthemselves and fight against those who attack them.The two most prominent and influential Shiite militias compete with the Iraqi police for controlin Iraq’s largest cities, Baghdad and Basra. The Mahdi Army, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,and the Badr Brigades, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution inIraq, an influential political party with longstanding ties to Iran, are well organized and gainpopular support with their religious character and their ability to provide security and certainsocial services. Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly pledged to contain thesemilitias and others by absorbing them into the current security forces. He has also pressed GrandAyatollah Ali al-Sistani to issue a statement calling for militias to be disbanded. Sistani made apublic statement at the end of April 2006 calling for a country free of militias and sectarianviolence and for weapons to be in the hands of the security forces alone. While Sistani supportsMaliki’s push to disband militias, the effort to integrate them into the security forces wentdirectly against Sadr’s wishes. Coalition and Iraqi forces on June 14 began a campaign to ridBaghdad of militias that is still underway.In addition to directly challenging the ISF, Shiite militias pose a severe threat to stability in Iraqwith their capacity to infiltrate the Iraqi police and army and form undercover death squads. Amajor concern in Iraq is the increasing incidence of men in Interior Ministry uniforms roundingup and killing Sunni men. Beginning around May 2005, after Bayan Jabr took office as minister163

of the interior, bodies of people who seem to have been killed by the police have been appearingin places ranging from rivers to sewage treatment facilities. The violent incidents are increasing,especially after the February 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite holy site.The targets are civilians, and their bodies are usually found bound with police handcuffs and shotin the manner of an execution—and also often bearing the marks of torture. The death squadscarrying out these attacks are said to be composed of militia members who have enlisted in thepolice. While death squads are typically Shiite in composition and target Sunnis, there are alsoincidents of Sunnis targeting Shiites who have informed the police about explosives orimprovised explosive devices.Former interior minister Jabr and Shiite religious leaders maintain that these attacks are beingcarried out by outsiders who have stolen police uniforms and that the death squads are emergingfrom private security agencies, such as the Facility Protection Service, rather than from InteriorMinistry forces. However, the frequency of these murders and the fact that police are oftenrecruited from their local militias suggests that militias are working within the Interior Ministryand increasing sectarian violence.Ad Hoc UnitsA variety of government units arose in spontaneous or unplanned ways. Some of the morenotable of these units are:Desert Protectors. An informant group formed in the late summer of 2005, this unit is made up ofmembers of the Albu Mahal tribe, in western Anbar province, who were driven out of Husaybato Akashat after a competing tribe, the Salmanis, struck an allegiance with al-Qaeda. The DesertProtectors have received weapons and training from U.S. forces. Their role is to move with theAmericans and identify insurgents. In fall 2005 there were three platoons, with about onehundred men in total, and the goal is to develop nine platoons. The Desert Protectors workedwith U.S. and Iraqi forces in the November 2005 Operation Steel Curtain along the Iraqi-Syrianborder to keep al-Qaeda operatives from infiltrating the Euphrates River Valley.Iraq Freedom Guard. Originally an independent unit of about one hundred members thatperformed well in Anbar province, the Iraq Freedom Guard is being folded into the Iraqi army.While this unit did good work arresting insurgents and finding weapon caches, in March 2005 itsleaders took decisions without clearance from the Marines commanders with whom they wereworking. In particular, the Iraq Freedom Guard marched into Haqlaniyah seeking revenge for thedeath of one of its members; Marines had to intervene to prevent violence from escalating. U.S.forces subsequently dismantled the unit, folding its members into the larger New Iraqi Army.Facilities Protection Service (FPS). This unit was formed as a group of about 4,000 nightwatchmen protecting public buildings, but it has since grown into a large force—or rather, anumber of largely independent forces—of around 150,000. They are typically armed and wearpolice uniforms, though they do not wear badges. Each unit is in effect under the authority of theministry for which it works. For example, the FPS contingent attached to the Ministry ofTransportation is led by an open Sadrist, and the entire unit is loyal to the Shiite cleric. In April2006, the Interior Ministry began to take steps to provide more direction and oversight for the164

FPS, proposing to give its members identifying badges and to make FPS members liable forcrimes they commit. The Iraqi government is also talking about bringing the FPS under somecentralized command, or at least providing more structure for supervision by ministries. There isalso talk of relying more on private firms for some guard functions.Regular UnitsSome units of the ISF have been quite successful in developing the skills that U.S. and coalitionforces stress in their training efforts. These include:Tiger Battalion. Officially the 205th Iraqi Army Battalion, this unit has been praised forexhibiting the professionalism and competence that U.S. forces are trying to foster in the NewIraqi Army. Officers have been receptive to the idea of delegating responsibility to their soldiers,a departure from the traditional hierarchy of the Saddam-era military. Tiger Battalion’s membersmostly come from the area in which the unit operates, which helps them with their intelligencegathering efforts.Second Battalion, Second Brigade, Iraqi Army First Division. A five-hundred man,predominantly Shiite battalion based in the Sunni city of Falluja, this battalion has beencommended by its U.S. mentors for its progress toward standing alone. This success isparticularly meaningful given the Iraqi Army’s dispersal during fighting in Falluja in 2004.While the battalion still relies on U.S. advisors for guidance, its skills with human intelligencehas made it capable of identifying and battling insurgents.Firefighters. There are twenty-five fire stations in Baghdad, each of which has 120 firefightersand equipment including rescue trucks, command vehicles, and high-tech equipment for fire andexplosion rescue missions. These units are crucial for responding to the daily bombings inBaghdad.Problematic UnitsSome police and army units within the ISF have moved away from their original training anddeveloped independent and often problematic methods of operation. A variety of notable PoliceCommand Units, such as the Scorpion, Tiger, and Thunder Brigades, were formed by the formerinterior minister Falah al-Naqib, a Sunni, in summer 2004 without the consent of U.S.commanders. These forces originally drew praise as effective Iraqi security initiatives and fortheir success in counterterrorism operations, but their high level of independence and reputationfor brutality are causes for concern. Other problematic units include:Wolf Brigade. A particularly feared commando unit, Wolf Brigade’s members are self-selectingand mostly recruited from the former Iraqi Special Forces. They helped to maintain security inMosul after an insurgent uprising in late 2004. The Wolf Brigade is led by Maj. Gen. Abu Walid,famous for hosting a television show airing what were claimed to be legally obtained insurgentconfessions. The brigade’s members are known to drive around Baghdad wearing Saddam-erauniforms.165

Volcano Brigade. A police commando brigade, Volcano Brigade is distinct from the others bybeing made up of Shiites loyal to the Badr Brigades. In 2005, this brigade began operating as adeath squad, openly intimidating civilians and targeting Sunnis for arrest and execution. It isthought to be the unit responsibly for a massacre of thirty-six Sunni men in Baghdad’s al-Hurriyah neighborhood in August 2005 and is greatly feared in Baghdad.Punishment Committee. A police unit, the Punishment Committee is known to harass—at thevery least—civilians, particularly Sunnis, accused of flouting Islamic law or the rulings of Shiiteclerics.Maghawir Special Commando Brigades. Special commando units largely made up of veterans ofthe Saddam-era military, the Maghawir Special Commando Brigades are made up of about12,000 men in total. They have worked with U.S. forces in Najaf, Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul, andBaghdad, and are led by Maj. Gen. Flayih Muhammad. The brigades are known for both theireffectiveness and their brutality.Farook Brigade. A mostly Sunni Arab brigade that fought alongside U.S. forces in Ramadi andother places in Anbar province, this unit was disbanded when Jabr was appointed interiorminister.Secret Investigative Unit. A police unit that has been accused of bringing Badrist militiamembers into the police, the Secret Investigative Unit was housed at the bunker where U.S.forces found an Interior Ministry secret prison.ConclusionAssessing the training of the ISF or creating metrics for stability in Iraq is a difficult task becauseof the many active groups and the fluidity with which individuals move between governmentsanctionedunits and private armed groups. As army and police units increase and begin todiversify, and as the black market for weapons and uniforms flourishes, it becomes harder toregulate legitimate units within the security forces and to recognize militia members posing asIraqi soldiers and policemen. While reducing the chaos in Iraq is proving to be an immensechallenge, the future stability of the country will depend on the success of ongoing efforts on thepart of the Iraqi government and U.S. and coalition forces to maintain the integrity of the ISF andeliminate militias.Cecile Zwiebach was a research assistant at The Washington Institute in 2005–2006.166

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/683/7982IRAQ: 'Civil war' refrain hides US death-squad programBy Doug LorimerSeptember 13, 2006GreenleftOn September 3, Iraqi national security adviser Mouwafak al Rubaie told journalists that thealleged second-in-command of the tiny al Qaeda in Iraq group, Hamed Jumaa Farid al Saeedi,had been arrested a few days earlier in north-east Baghdad. Rubaie said he was the mostimportant leader of the group after Abu Ayyub al Masri, who is believed to have taken controlafter a US air strike killed Abu Musab al Zarqawi on June 7.Rubaie said Saeedi was “directly responsible” for the February 22 bombing of the Golden Domemosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad. This attack, Associated Press reported, “touched off thesectarian bloodletting between Shiite and Sunni Muslims pushing Iraq toward civil war”.The mosque was a symbol of cooperation between the two major Muslim sects in Iraq — aSunni-run mosque that housed the Shiite Askari shrine.The February 23 Washington Post reported that “witnesses said that interior ministrycommandos and Iraqi police were cordoning the shrine before the explosions took place”. Aresident who lived near the mosque told the Post: “I was leaving my house to go to work at 6am,but the [police] commandos did not allow me and said curfew is imposed. About an hour later,we heard the explosions.”Within hours, US officials in Baghdad blamed the bombing on Sunni insurgents “dressed aspolice commandos” — which is how the next day’s New York Times reported the event.Blaming the mosque bombing on “Sunni insurgents” provided a pretext for Washington’scollaborators among the Shiite political-religious establishment to whip up animosity towardIraqi Sunnis, who have been the main social base of the resistance movement’s guerrilla waragainst the occupation forces.Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, for example, issued a February 22 statementcalling for Shiite street protests. Tens of thousands of Shiites took to the streets, vowing revenge.Within a few hours, 168 Sunni mosques had been damaged.Later that day, Iraqi cleric Moqtada al Sadr, an outspoken Shiite opponent of the US-ledoccupation, read a message on Aljazeera TV denouncing attacks on Shiite and Sunni mosques.He warned that there was “a plan by the occupation to spark a sectarian war”.A week later US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia of carryingout a wave of killings of Sunnis in the mosque bombing’s wake. The March 7 Los Angeles167

Times reported that Khalilzad claimed “the US has little choice but to maintain a strong presencein Iraq — or risk a regional conflict in which Arabs side with Sunnis and Iranians back Shiites”.Since then, the mantra of a Shiite versus Sunni “sectarian civil war” has dominated Westerncorporate media reports about Iraq, despite Pentagon figures showing that 90% of “insurgentattacks” target the occupation troops and the US-controlled Iraqi security forces.The Khalilzad-initiated refrain of “sectarian civil war” has conveniently ended any seriousexamination in the corporate media of claims, made by Sunnis in the year leading up to theSamarra bombing, that the Iraqi interior ministry’s paramilitary police units, led by US“advisers”, had been carrying out a large-scale program of abduction, torture and extrajudicialexecution of suspected resistance supporters.On those rare occasions since then that the Western media has reported the activities of thesedeath squads, the role of their US trainers and “advisers” is never examined.The May 22 New York Times, for example, reported that in August 2005 a police commandobrigade is believed to have kidnapped and killed 36 Sunnis in northern Baghdad. Although awarrant for murder was issued by a judge for the unit’s commander, “the arrest warrant wasnever executed, according to court records”.A spokesperson for the Baghdad “Civilian Police Assistance Training Team” told the paper thatUS military advisers were “attached to the Volcano Brigade last August, but that they wereunaware of the allegations concerning the Huriya massacre or the outstanding arrest warrant”.The spokesperson's statement was apparently good enough for the NYT.Only a few weeks before the Samarra bombing, General William Boykin, the US deputyundersecretary of defence for intelligence, confirmed the accuracy of claims that the US isrunning a death-squad program.The February 4 NYT reported that Boykin “was asked whether the government should reestablisha program of identifying and assassinating specific adversaries, like Operation Phoenix,conducted in Vietnam by the CIA”, under which US-organised death squads killed at least26,000 Vietnamese civilians between January 1968 and August 1972.“Emphasizing that he was giving his personal opinion, General Boykin said that America’sconventional military forces and its Special Operations teams in Iraq and Afghanistan were'doing a pretty good job of that right now’.”“I think we’re doing what the Phoenix program was designed to do, without all of the secrecy”,Boykin added.Since April 2004, DynCorp International has been the principal “private military contractor”providing training to Iraq’s US-recruited police. The May 13, 2002 Chicago Tribune reportedthat “public records show that DynCorp, which hires former Special Operations military168

personnel and CIA operators and contracts them back to the government, is linked to at least 50subsidiaries and satellite companies across the US and around the world”.United Press International reported in July 2004 that through State Department and Pentagoncontracts, which account for 98% of its business, DynCorp “implements foreign policy byproxy” and its security personnel “are effectively immune from criminal sanctions”.DynCorp’s website boasts that for “more than 50 years” the corporation “has been entrusted withimportant responsibilities to keep our military personnel safe and ready, help stem the flow ofillegal narcotics to the United States, help protect American diplomats and key foreign leaders,[and] train police and military in countries that are critical to US interests”.The corporate media, however, hardly ever reports on the connection between this CIA frontcompany, the Iraqi police and the wave of extrajudicial executions that has steadily mountedsince 2004.A rare exception was the May 22 NYT, which reported that it was after DynCorp employee JonVillanova “arrived in Basra last spring to help build a police force in southern Iraq when bodiesbegan piling up. Twenty or more Iraqi civilians were dragged from their homes, shot in the headand dumped in the streets.“The evidence pointed to some of the very people he and his team of foreign police adviserswere struggling to train: a cluster of senior officers working out of a station called Jamiat.“But local officials resisted efforts to prosecute the officers. By the time officials in Baghdadintervened nine months later, the corruption in Basra had gotten so bad that the 135-memberinternal affairs unit, set up to police the police, was operating as a ring of extortionists,kidnappers and killers, American and Iraqi officials said.”From: Archives, Green Left Weekly issue #683 13 September 2006.169

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/20/10401/8655CIA-Sponsored Death Squads Rampant in IraqDaily KosBy francislhollandSeptember 20, 2006How could we have been so blind, decrying the scores of daily deaths of Iraqis without everdemanding the end of the CIA-sponsored death squads there? Many of us have been comparingthe war in Iraq to Vietnam without focusing on the more obvious parallels to the modus operandiand US personnel that Iraq shares with the previous US-sponsored conflicts in the El Salvadorand Guatemala of the 1980's. The difference is crucially important, because it is the key to thesource of the rampant "unexplained" and "unattributed" deaths of Iraqis that we read of in thepapers each day. To determine who is doing all the death-squad killing in Iraq, lets just add upwhat President has told us, factor in the post-Central America anti-insurgency team he hasappointed, and then draw the dreadfully obvious and necessary conclusions.francislholland's diary ::For five years, the President has told us that:(1) "I do think Iraq is a central front in the war on terror", [ http://www.cbsnews.com/... ] andhe has said,(2) "To win the war on terror, we must be able to detain, question and, when appropriate,prosecute terrorists captured here in America and on the battlefields around the world." [http://www.cnn.com/... ], and Bush further insists incessantly that he(3) Must use "all the tools" of anti-insurgency in Iraq. [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/... ]Meanwhile, each day even the MSM reports one or more Iraq stories to the effect that,Authorities in the capital discovered the bodies of six men who were blindfolded, handcuffedand shot in the back of the head, police said. [ http://www.americanchronicle.com/... ][G]unmen, militias, and paramilitary armies have attacked buses and minivans, killing allaboard, and they have carried out mass kidnappings of scores of Iraqis at a time.[http://www.military.com/... ]Since early 2005, gruesome finds of groups of corpses, often showing signs of execution ortorture, have been becoming increasingly common. [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/... ]170

Although Bush hasn't specifically stated (to my knowledge) that death squads are among "all ofthe tools" he is using per se, Alternet.com points out that the modus operandi of the deathsquads operating in the US's Iraq conflict is identical to the modus operandi of the USGovernment's counter-insurgency techniques in the Central America in the 1980's.Amnesty International characterized the Salvadoran death squads as "official personnel actingin civilian clothes under the direction of superior officers." A 1989 Amnesty report, El Salvador"Death Squads"-A Government Strategy, identified a "persistent pattern of gross human rightsviolations by the Salvadoran armed forces" including "arbitrary arrest, torture, disappearance andextrajudicial execution."Although human rights groups have continually linked death squad activities to the Salvadorangovernment, most U.S. media have reported on death squads as if they were a mysterious,independent force. This convenient fiction allows the U.S. government to continue providingmassive military aid to the Salvadoran government as it commits horrendous cruelties-all in thename of promoting "democracy." [ http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/... ]To deal with the skyrocketing insurgency, the Pentagon is considering creating secret deathsquads in Iraq. Now, the Pentagon's brave new solution for democracy in the Middle East is torevisit the reprehensible "Salvador Option," the clandestine operation implemented by theReagan White House in the 1980s in El Salvador. According to Newsweek, "Back then, facedwith losing a war against the Salvadoran rebels, the United States government funded"nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads which killed scores ofinnocent civilians." Today, according to an explosive new article in Newsweek, the Pentagondusted off that model and has a proposal on the table to "advise, support and possibly train"secret Iraqi squads, "most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen,to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria."It's unclear whether the current proposed policy would direct the Iraqi squads to assassinatetheir targets or "snatch" them and send them to secret facilities for interrogation. In plainlanguage: the squads would be either hit men or kidnapper/torturers. [ http://www.alternet.org/...]Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has held El Salvador up as a model for Iraq. Andduring the recent Vice Presidential debates, Vice President Dick Cheney stated, "Twenty yearsago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had a guerilla insurgency that controlledroughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections ... And today ElSalvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections." According to a 1993 U.N.-sponsored truth commission, however, up to "90 percent of the atrocities in the conflict "werecommitted by the U.S.-sponsored army and its surrogates, "with the rebels responsible for 5percent and the remaining 5 percent undetermined." These death squads "abducted members ofthe civilian population and of rebel groups. They tortured their hostages, were responsible fortheir disappearance and usually executed them." [ http://www.alternet.org/... ]171

President Bush also appointed neocon Elliot Abrams to be his senior adviser on the MiddleEast. Abrams was also a staunch supporter of the Salvador Option in the 1980s: whennewspapers "reported that a U.S.-trained military unit had massacred hundreds of villagers in thetiny Salvadoran hamlet of El Mozote, Abrams told Congress the story was nothing butcommunist propaganda." When confronted with the United Nations report that the vast majorityof "atrocities in El Salvador's civil war were committed by Reagan-assisted death squads,"Abrams's response: "The administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulousachievements." Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra in 1987 - he waspardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992. [ http://www.alternet.org/... ]The US has even hired as contractors thousands of the very same people previously responsiblefor US-sponsored extra-judicial killings and death squad activity in Latin America. [http://www.alternet.org/... ]Blackwater USA [US contractor in Iraq] has sent recruiters to Chile, Peru, Argentina,Colombia and Guatemala for one specific reason alone," said an intelligence officer in Kuwaitwho requested anonymity. "All these countries experienced dirty warsâ€_ and they have militarymen well-trained in dealing with internal subversives. They are well-versed in extractingconfessions from prisoners. [ http://www.alternet.org/... ]So, if Bush says that it is necessary to torture people in the Iraqi "central front" of the terror war,and then he moves the US death-squad personnel to Iraq, and then thousands of tortured Iraqisare found dead in the streets, just like in San Salvador [ http://www.pbs.org/... ] and GuatemalaCity, [ http://www.gwu.edu/... ] we have to draw the obvious conclusion that CIA-sponsoreddeath squads are rampant in the rampant daily killings occurring in Iraq.To my incomplete knowledge, the Administration has yet to admit that death squads are USpolicy in Iraq, but US policy in Central America was to deny the US of death squads as well.With continuing reports of atrocities and murders in El Salvador, the U.S. Congress no longeraccepted the State Department's assurance that things were getting better. Speaker of the HouseTom Foley created a special task force to monitor El Salvador's investigation of the murders.Congressman Joe Moakley of Massachusetts was selected to head up the investigation. Duringhis research and visits to El Salvador, Congressman Moakley encountered a massive cover-up,deep problems with the Salvadoran armed forces, conspiracy and lies, which led him tochallenge U.S. policy. [ http://www.pbs.org/... ]Amnesty International characterized the Salvadoran death squads as "official personnel actingin civilian clothes under the direction of superior officers." A 1989 Amnesty report, El Salvador"Death Squads"-A Government Strategy, identified a "persistent pattern of gross human rightsviolations by the Salvadoran armed forces" including "arbitrary arrest, torture, disappearance andextrajudicial execution."Although human rights groups have continually linked death squad activities to the Salvadorangovernment, most U.S. media have reported on death squads as if they were a mysterious,independent force. This convenient fiction allows the U.S. government to continue providing172

massive military aid to the Salvadoran government as it commits horrendous cruelties-all in thename of promoting "democracy." [ http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/... ]Above, I quoted Bush saying that he would "question [torture] and, when appropriate, prosecuteterrorists." But what does Bush do with those whom he deems to be suspected or potentialterrorists when he does NOT deem it "appropriate" to formally prosecute them? Does hesimply let them go or do they end up dead by the score on the streets of Iraq, "blindfolded,handcuffed and shot in the back of the head" [ http://www.americanchronicle.com/... ] "showingsigns of execution or torture"? [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/... ]History and the President's own words and deeds speak for themselves. [http://www.alternet.org/... ] The US is certainly sponsoring or directly organizing the deathsquads that are killing thousands or Iraqi, many more than are being killed in directconfrontations with US troops.I don't think the majority of the US public favors anonymous US-sponsored death squads thatkill dozens of people a day. It's time for the public and Democratic members of Congress toconduct investigations and render a full accounting of US-sponsored death-squad activity in Iraq,just as Congressman Joe Moakley of Massachusetts led such investigations in the 1980's, as partof the effort to stop it. [ http://www.serendipity.li/... ]. [ http://www.amnestyusa.org/... ] "Our"Government, which operates in our name, should not be rounding up dozens of Iraqis each dayand shooting them in the back of the head.173

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/04/iraq.main/index.html?section=cnn_topstoriesIraq police brigade suspected of aiding abuctions pulledCNN.comOctober 4, 2006BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Interior Ministry has removed a police brigade from the streetsof Baghdad because of a brazen kidnapping this week of 26 people, a ministry spokesman saidWednesday.Some Sunnis blame the abductions on Shiite death squads, which many people suspect areinfiltrating Iraqi police units.Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, said Wednesday the brigade waspatrolled the southwestern neighborhood of Amil, where the kidnapping happened on Sunday.At least 20 gunmen, several dressed like police commandos, parked in front of a meat processingplant, seized the workers and put them in three trucks before driving away.U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell announced the Iraqi police unit's recall earlier Wednesday andidentified it as the 8th Brigade, 2nd National Police.'Clear evidence of complicity'There is "clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements tomove freely when, in fact, they were supposed to have been impeding their movement; thatperhaps they did not respond as rapidly when reports were made," Caldwell said.The brigade police officers "had not put their full allegiance commitment behind the governmentof Iraq," and instead, aligned with "some other elements outside" of the national police, he said.The government lost "trust and confidence" in the unit because of "poor performances" and"alleged criminal wrongdoings," said Caldwell.The brigade will get "anti-militia, anti-sectarian violence, and national unity training, both at theunit level and at the individual level," he said.Triple bombing kills 12A triple bombing targeting Iraq's Ministry of Industry employees killed at least 12 people andwounded 70 others Wednesday in a mainly Christian neighborhood of Baghdad, police said.Two bombs targeted ministry guards and another bomb targeted a ministry convoy, according toa Baghdad emergency police official.A ministry spokesman said Industry Minister Fawzi al-Hariri was not present when the bombswent off in rapid succession as bodyguards were taking cars to a refueling site.174

The convoy was traveling in the Camp Sara neighborhood and the attack also damaged part of anearby building.Bodies lay in the street next to the smoking wreckage of burning cars, according to TheAssociated Press.Rescue workers piled corpses into an ambulance parked next to the crumbled facade of abuilding, while a policeman warned residents to leave for fear more bombs would explode, APreported.An increasingly common insurgent tactic is to detonate one bomb to draw rescue workers andonlookers, then to explode a second device to cause mass casualties.One witness, who identified himself to AP only by his first name, Hamdi, said a roadside bombwent off first and people started to gather, then the second blast went off."Then more people gathered and they were searching for their dead or missing relatives when thecar bomb exploded," he told Associated Press Television News at the scene. "Everybody knowsthis is a Christian neighborhood, they are neither Sunnis or Shiites, so why are they doing this tothem?"Meanwhile, security forces in the capital have found 22 bullet-riddled bodies in the past 24hours. Some of the bodies showed signs of torture.Other violence around the capital Wednesday included:* A suicide truck bomb went off at the Iraqi army headquarters in Ramadi, the capital ofAnbar province, a hospital official told CNN. There was no immediate word on casualties.* A car bomb in the Dora district killed an Iraqi civilian and wounded four others, a policeofficial said.* A roadside bomb apparently meant for an Iraqi police patrol exploded in central Baghdad'sKarrada neighborhood wounding a police officer and a civilian, police said.* Also, the U.S. military on Wednesday reported two troop deaths on Tuesday, one inBaghdad and the other near Kirkuk.15 U.S. troops killed in three daysThe U.S. military on Wednesday reported the two more American soldiers were killed, bringingthe number of U.S. troop fatalities in the first three days of October to 15.The latest reported death was a U.S. soldier who was killed in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday.175

The Multi-National Division Baghdad soldier died at around 3:15 p.m. "when terrorists attackedhis patrol with small-arms fire," according to the U.S. military.Also Tuesday, unknown gunfire killed a U.S. soldier serving with Task Force Lightning nearKirkuk, the military reported Wednesday.Ten of the 15 troops killed this month were attacked in Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi troopshave been cracking down on insurgents.Four of them were killed in Anbar province, where fighting has persisted between U.S. troopsand militants up and down the Euphrates River valley.Only one of the 15 -- one of the Anbar fatalities -- did not happen in combat. The deaths are partof the intensifying sectarian fighting and insurgent violence.Seventy-three U.S. troops were killed in September and 64 died in August. The highest monthlyU.S. troop death number in the Iraq war was in November 2004, at the time of the U.S.-ledoffensive against insurgents in Falluja.Since the beginning of the U.S.-led Iraq war, 2,729 U.S. military service members have beenkilled, including seven military contractors.CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast,rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.176

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2388711,00.htmlBaghdad police unit scrapped for helping death squadsTimes of LondonBy James Hider, of The Times, in BaghdadOctober 4, 2006An entire police brigade in Baghdad has been suspended and its commander placed under arreston charges of aiding sectarian death squads that have carried out mass kidnappings, it emergedtoday.The Eighth Brigade of the 2nd National Police Battalion, created to keep order in westernBaghdad, was de-mobilised a day after armed men in uniform herded off 14 shopkeepers fromcentral Baghdad, and two days after 24 workers were abducted from a meat processing plant inthe capital."The brigade’s past performance does not demonstrate the level of professionalism sought by theministry of the interior," Major General William Caldwell, of the US military, said."It was realised that removing them from Baghdad would, in fact, enhance security." The brigadehas more than 800 officers in uniform."There was clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements tomove freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement," GeneralCaldwell said."The forces in the unit have not put their full allegiance to the government of Iraq and gave theirallegiance to others," he added.Sunni leaders have for months accused police units of helping Shia death squads carry out aseries of massive kidnappings, which have included the abduction of the entire US-IraqiChamber of Commerce, several groups of factory workers and the Iraqi Olympic Committee.They have charged that the police forces are hopelessly infiltrated by members of Shia militiaswho have killed scores of innocent people.Brigadier Abdel Karim Khalaf, an interior ministry spokesman, said the lieutenant colonel incharge of the Eighth Brigade had been detained and was being questioned, while rank-and-filepolicemen were being investigated at random.The charges of complicity in the sectarian war that has crippled the capital was a furtheradmission by the Shia-led government that its own security forces are partly responsible for theincessant violence plaguing Baghdad.177

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, announced yesterday a four-point plan that includedthe establishment of neighbourhood committees who would be able to report on suspiciousactivities by the security forces and local militias.The disgraced brigade will be sent for re-training by American forces, although one US trainersaid the training programme had been scheduled months ago as part of a sweeping overhaul ofIraq’s police forces, who were hastily recruited after the 2003 invasion and which havefrequently proved inadequate to the task of eradicating violence.In late 2004, almost the entire police force in the northern city of Mosul fled their bases wheninsurgents attacked, while Shia policemen in Najaf joined rebels from the Mahdi Army militiaand gave them their weapons when they took over the shrine city earlier that year.Since those major setbacks, US forces have been re-training the Iraqi police, but the programmehas had little impact.A survivor of Monday’s mass kidnapping in a parade of computer shops near Baghdad’sTechnology University described how half a dozen vehicles, with official security forcesmarkings on them, pulled up and men in military fatigues rounded up all the Sunnis in the shops.They drove off with 14 people but stopped two shops short of his establishment, he said.The bodies of several of those abducted from a meat processing plant on Sunday later showingsigns of torture. Hundreds of Sunni residents from the area later demonstrated near the factorycarrying banners that read "Get police troops out of our area."178

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1938380.eceOperation enduring chaos: The retreat of the coalition & rise of the militiasThe IndependentPublished: 29 October 2006By Kim SenguptaIraq's savage sectarian war, with its indiscriminate torture and killings, is an even greaterobstacle to peace than the insurgency. What will happen to the country when the coalition troopseventually pull out? Kim Sengupta reportsThe message to the Baghdad morgue was simple - they could do what they liked with the plastichandcuffs, but the metal ones were expensive and needed to be returned. Such is the murderousstate of affairs in Iraq at the moment that the demand, made by a militia gunman who is alsobelieved to be a member of the Special Police Commandos, hardly caused a stir.There was a similar lack of shock when a dozen bodies were brought in with identification cardsshowing that each had the name Omar. The catch here was that Omar is a Sunni name, and thisfact was enough to seal their fate at Shia checkpoints.Baghdad is full of checkpoints. Leaving the Hamra Hotel, where the dwindling band of Britishjournalists outside the Green Zone stay, means negotiating the Badr Brigade, their Shiacompetitors the Mehdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Kurdish peshmerga. The Iraqi policeand the government paramilitaries, in the meantime, have their own barriers. And there areothers: the Shia Defenders of Khadamiya, set up by Moqtada's cousin Hussein al-Sadr, and thegovernment-backed Tiger and Scorpion brigades.They all have similar looks: balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, black leathergloves with fingers cut off, and a very lethal arsenal of weapons. When not manningcheckpoints, they hurtle through the streets in 4x4s, scattering the traffic by firing in the air. Outof sight, they stand accused of arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.This is a shadowy struggle, which involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, murdervictims mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relationswho have been "disappeared".Iraq's savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacle to any semblance of peacereturning than the insurgency, and was the main reason for the Americans recently pouring12,000 troops into the capital - an operation that, they now acknowledge, has failed.Yet, ironically, the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, withno end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shiaand Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, wascalled the "Salvador Option" after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America179

more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rightsabuse.Some of the most persistent allegations of abuse have been made against the Wolf Brigade, manyof whom were formerly in Saddam's Baathist forces. Their main US adviser until April last yearwas James Steele, who, in his own biography, states that he commanded the US military group inEl Salvador during the height of the guerrilla war and was involved in counter-insurgencytraining. The complaints against Iraqi special forces continue. At the end of last year, while inIraq, I interviewed Ahmed Sadoun who was arrested in Mosul and held for seven months beforebeing released without charge.During that time, he said, he was tortured. He showed marks on his body, which were the resultsof the beatings and burnings. Mr Sadoun, 38, did not know which paramilitary group,accompanied by American soldiers, had seized him, but the Wolf Brigade was widely involvedin suppressing disturbances in Mosul at the time.Mr Sadoun fled to Amman to escape further official attention. His family, however, had stayedbehind in Mosul, and last month his 27-year-old brother, Rashid, was arrested by paramilitaries.His body, shot in the head, was dumped on a stretch of waste ground five days later.As the US and British policies in Iraq reach the last stages of unravelling, there are increasinglyfrantic calls to the Prime Minister, Nour al-Maliki, from Washington and London to rein in thegovernment-sponsored death squads. The problem is that the militias, well armed andentrenched, are connected to political parties who know that Mr al-Maliki is dependant on theirsupport. Two violent incidents last week illustrated the extent of the grip the gunmen now haveon Iraqi society.US and Iraqi forces went into Sadr City, the vast Shia slum on the outskirts of Baghdad, tocapture, according to the military, "a top, illegal armed group commander directing widespreaddeath-squad activity".Instead of congratulating the troops, Mr al-Maliki, purportedly the commander-in-chief of Iraq'smilitary, angrily complained he was not told about the operation, adding: "We will ask forclarification of what happened in Sadr City, we will review the issue with the multinationalforces so that it will not be repeated."Mr al-Maliki, needless to say, needs the backing of Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls Sadr City.Falan Hassan Shansai, the leader of the Sadr bloc, which has 30 out of the 275 seats in theparliament, publicly warned of the consequences if such action was, indeed, repeated.In the south, 800 members of the Mehdi Army in black uniforms stormed Amarah, the capital ofMaysan province, recently vacated by the British, and took over the city. Dozens were killed inthe fighting, while around 500 British forces were put on standby in Basra but did not intervene.Moqtada's men left after blowing up three of the main police stations.180

The Mehdi Army does not always have to resort to violence to achieve its aim. In districts itcontrols, such as Hurriyah in north-west Baghdad, owners of businesses and properties aresimply told they are being taken over, and large red crosses are painted on the premises as amessage that they have a few days to leave.Sergeant Jeff Nelson, an intelligence analyst with the US army's 1st Battalion, 23rd InfantryRegiment, in Baghdad, said: "They have infiltrated every branch of public service and everypolitical office they can get their hands on. As soon as the US leaves, they will be able todominate the area with key citizens, key offices."Sgt Nelson said his battalion has investigated 40 sectarian killings and collected 57 bodies in oneweek. None had led to any arrest. He said: "Sometimes we have a feeling of completehopelessness."One reason why Mr al-Maliki's government was not told about the Sadr City raid was that thishas led in the past to the targets being warned off. Earlier this month, the Americans receivedintelligence about a Shia militia torture chamber in Baghdad. Captain Kevin Sage, whose unitwas due to raid the address, needed approval from the Iraqi authorities. This was delayed forseveral days, and, when it eventually came through, the two-storey building was found to beabandoned.Being arrested does not mean that militia members will be kept in custody. Major Hussein al-Qaisi, a battalion commander with the 6th Division of the Iraqi army, said: "Sometimes they willback them up no matter what, and we just have to let them go."The message to the Baghdad morgue was simple - they could do what they liked with the plastichandcuffs, but the metal ones were expensive and needed to be returned. Such is the murderousstate of affairs in Iraq at the moment that the demand, made by a militia gunman who is alsobelieved to be a member of the Special Police Commandos, hardly caused a stir.There was a similar lack of shock when a dozen bodies were brought in with identification cardsshowing that each had the name Omar. The catch here was that Omar is a Sunni name, and thisfact was enough to seal their fate at Shia checkpoints.Baghdad is full of checkpoints. Leaving the Hamra Hotel, where the dwindling band of Britishjournalists outside the Green Zone stay, means negotiating the Badr Brigade, their Shiacompetitors the Mehdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Kurdish peshmerga. The Iraqi policeand the government paramilitaries, in the meantime, have their own barriers. And there areothers: the Shia Defenders of Khadamiya, set up by Moqtada's cousin Hussein al-Sadr, and thegovernment-backed Tiger and Scorpion brigades.They all have similar looks: balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, black leathergloves with fingers cut off, and a very lethal arsenal of weapons. When not manningcheckpoints, they hurtle through the streets in 4x4s, scattering the traffic by firing in the air. Outof sight, they stand accused of arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.181

This is a shadowy struggle, which involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, murdervictims mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relationswho have been "disappeared".Iraq's savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacle to any semblance of peacereturning than the insurgency, and was the main reason for the Americans recently pouring12,000 troops into the capital - an operation that, they now acknowledge, has failed.Yet, ironically, the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, withno end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shiaand Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, wascalled the "Salvador Option" after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin Americamore than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rightsabuse.Some of the most persistent allegations of abuse have been made against the Wolf Brigade, manyof whom were formerly in Saddam's Baathist forces. Their main US adviser until April last yearwas James Steele, who, in his own biography, states that he commanded the US military group inEl Salvador during the height of the guerrilla war and was involved in counter-insurgencytraining. The complaints against Iraqi special forces continue. At the end of last year, while inIraq, I interviewed Ahmed Sadoun who was arrested in Mosul and held for seven months beforebeing released without charge.During that time, he said, he was tortured. He showed marks on his body, which were the resultsof the beatings and burnings. Mr Sadoun, 38, did not know which paramilitary group,accompanied by American soldiers, had seized him, but the Wolf Brigade was widely involvedin suppressing disturbances in Mosul at the time.Mr Sadoun fled to Amman to escape further official attention. His family, however, had stayedbehind in Mosul, and last month his 27-year-old brother, Rashid, was arrested by paramilitaries.His body, shot in the head, was dumped on a stretch of waste ground five days later.As the US and British policies in Iraq reach the last stages of unravelling, there are increasinglyfrantic calls to the Prime Minister, Nour al-Maliki, from Washington and London to rein in thegovernment-sponsored death squads. The problem is that the militias, well armed andentrenched, are connected to political parties who know that Mr al-Maliki is dependant on theirsupport. Two violent incidents last week illustrated the extent of the grip the gunmen now haveon Iraqi society.US and Iraqi forces went into Sadr City, the vast Shia slum on the outskirts of Baghdad, tocapture, according to the military, "a top, illegal armed group commander directing widespreaddeath-squad activity".Instead of congratulating the troops, Mr al-Maliki, purportedly the commander-in-chief of Iraq'smilitary, angrily complained he was not told about the operation, adding: "We will ask for182

clarification of what happened in Sadr City, we will review the issue with the multinationalforces so that it will not be repeated."Mr al-Maliki, needless to say, needs the backing of Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls Sadr City.Falan Hassan Shansai, the leader of the Sadr bloc, which has 30 out of the 275 seats in theparliament, publicly warned of the consequences if such action was, indeed, repeated.In the south, 800 members of the Mehdi Army in black uniforms stormed Amarah, the capital ofMaysan province, recently vacated by the British, and took over the city. Dozens were killed inthe fighting, while around 500 British forces were put on standby in Basra but did not intervene.Moqtada's men left after blowing up three of the main police stations.The Mehdi Army does not always have to resort to violence to achieve its aim. In districts itcontrols, such as Hurriyah in north-west Baghdad, owners of businesses and properties aresimply told they are being taken over, and large red crosses are painted on the premises as amessage that they have a few days to leave.Sergeant Jeff Nelson, an intelligence analyst with the US army's 1st Battalion, 23rd InfantryRegiment, in Baghdad, said: "They have infiltrated every branch of public service and everypolitical office they can get their hands on. As soon as the US leaves, they will be able todominate the area with key citizens, key offices."Sgt Nelson said his battalion has investigated 40 sectarian killings and collected 57 bodies in oneweek. None had led to any arrest. He said: "Sometimes we have a feeling of completehopelessness."One reason why Mr al-Maliki's government was not told about the Sadr City raid was that thishas led in the past to the targets being warned off. Earlier this month, the Americans receivedintelligence about a Shia militia torture chamber in Baghdad. Captain Kevin Sage, whose unitwas due to raid the address, needed approval from the Iraqi authorities. This was delayed forseveral days, and, when it eventually came through, the two-storey building was found to beabandoned.Being arrested does not mean that militia members will be kept in custody. Major Hussein al-Qaisi, a battalion commander with the 6th Division of the Iraqi army, said: "Sometimes they willback them up no matter what, and we just have to let them go."183

APPENDIX:THE CASE OF BRITISHCOVERT ACTION184

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/BritishBombers.htmThe Salvador Option exposed.Who's Blowing Up Iraq? Evidence shows that bombs are planted by occupation forces.2005Compiled by Brussels TribunalBasra Shadowlands - The British Bombers - British bombs in Basra - Fake Terrorism Is aCoalition's Best Friend - Who's Blowing Up Iraq? New evidence that bombs are being planted byBritish - British Special Forces Caught Carrying Out Staged Terror In Iraq? - Were the BritishSoldiers Engaged in Counter-Insurgency Operation in Basra? - British “Pseudo-Gang” TerroristsExposed in Basra - Carry on Killing - Middle East Press: "Suspicions occupation involved inarmed operations against civilians and places of worship" - Further on arrest of two Britishsoldiers in Basra - The day that Iraqi anger exploded in the face of the British occupiers - MoreBlatant Lies From CNN! - Five Iraqi civilians killed' in SAS rescue operation - Double Standardsin Iraq; British Agents in Local Drag Saved by Cavalry - Agents Provocateurs? - Media ShiftsAttention from SAS Screw Up to Iran - Where The Neocon Job Unraveled - What is CovertAction? - Big Trouble for British Occupation of Southern Iraq - Al-Sadr Official Says StagedBombings Aimed at Starting Ethnic War - Pictures from the Basra "incident" - Were BritishSpecial Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? - What was the British SAS doing in Basra? -Basra; another milestone in war on terror - British Terrorism in Iraq - Iraqi border guards arrestBritish national in desert - Cars stolen in US cities used in Iraqi suicide attacks - British militaryinvestigator found hung in BasraThe British BombersSploid.comSeptember 20, 2005More details emerge on the most outrageous story from the Iraq occupation since Abu Ghraib.The last remaining public justification for the U.S./U.K. occupation of Iraq is terrorism: Theforeign forces cannot leave until Iraq is somewhat peaceful and the terrorists have been defeated.That threadbare reasoning was ripped apart on Monday as the world -- other than the UnitedStates, where broadcast media avoided the story -- was shown two agents provocateurs employedby the British government. Their exact mission will never be proven. The evidence, however, isdamning.The two commandoes -- alternately identified as members of Britian's notorious SAS or a neweroffshoot, the SRR -- were driving around a demonstration in Basra when their suspiciousbehavior attracted the attention of Basra police.185

The Scotsman now reports that the men are members of the SRR, or Special ReconnaissanceRegiment. The insignia shows a Greek helmet with a sword thrust through the mouth and upthrough the back of the skull.The police attempted to stop the men, who were disguised as Arabs in local garb over their T-shirts and trousers. The men wore black-hair wigs and, according to some reports, typicalheadresses.And they also carried a whole lot of weapons, including explosives and other bomb-makingmaterials. They began firing at the police and passers-by.At least one Basra policeman was shot dead. At least one person in the crowd was shot dead. Anundetermined number of others were injured in the gunfight.The British pair was jailed. Arab television showed the beaten men with bandages on their heads,and their huge collection of weaponry. Basra -- a relatively peaceful city compared to the rest ofbloodsoaked Iraq -- had suddenly lost patience with the British occupiers, caught red-handedwith all the tools necessary to launch "suicide bombs" against the people.And then the British tanks rolled in ... and destroyed the jail, releasing 150 "terrorists" in theprocess. Whether the British commandoes were inside the jail is now disputed, as are most partsof the story, with Britian in damage-control mode and Iraq officials universally condeming the"barbaric" destruction of the jail and the suspected terrorist goals of the captured duo.The city rioted against the tanks and troops, setting fire to at least one of the tanks.U.K. media is now desperately backpedaling from the version of events reported by at least adozen independent reporters working in Iraq, after reporting the same general events as otherworld media on Monday.* * *A spokesman for rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the British commandoes were trying topass themselves off as members of Sadr's rebel militia.Sheikh Hassan told Socialist Worker that the two undercover soldiers seized by Iraqi police lastMonday were armed with explosives and a remote control detonator. The soldiers were disguisedas members of Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army.The trouble started when a senior Sadr official was arrested on Sunday. "We called a protestoutside the mayor’s office on Monday demanding the Sheikh be released," Sheikh Hassan said."This protest was peaceful.""But events in our city took a sinister turn when the police tried to stop two men dressed asmembers of the Mehdi Army driving near the protest. The men opened fire on the police andpassers-by. After a car chase they were arrested."186

"What our police found in their car was very disturbing — weapons, explosives and a remotecontrol detonator," Sheikh Hassan said. "These are the weapons of terrorists. We believe thesesoldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets, and thanks be to God theywere stopped and countless lives were saved."There are about 8,500 British troops in and around Basra. Four Iraqis died in the riots against thejailbreak mission. Also, a local reporter who wrote for the New York Times and The Guardianwas found murdered after being abducted by mysterious gunmen.Following the lead of its American partners, the British Ministry of Defense denied allwrongdoing, called the destruction of the jail "absolutely right," and blamed everything on a"civil war" developing (or Iran, depending on the mouthpiece) in southern Iraq.www.sploid.com/news/2005/09/the_british_bom.phpBritish bombs in BasraXymphoraSeptember 21, 2005I find myself increasingly becoming the old fogey of the conspiracy field. While the youngsterscontinue to come up with new and exciting conspiracies, xymphora slowly deteriorates into alousy debunking blog. Witness the latest revelations from Basra. To summarize, two Britishsoldiers, disguised as Arabs and with a car full of explosives, somehow find themselves in acontretemps with an Iraqi policeman, shoot him dead, are arrested by local authorities, refuse toexplain what they were doing, end up in detention, and finally become the subject of negotiationsbetween the British and Iraqis concerning their release, 'negotiations' apparently meaning to theBritish driving up to the prison with tanks and knocking the walls down (a fact which the Britishfinally, but grudgingly, admitted), causing a riot which results in civilian deaths and the escapeof other prisoners (and the soldiers weren't even in the prison!). Everybody has come to theobvious conclusion that this is the first documented proof of the fact that much of the sectarianviolence in Iraq is the work of coalition agents provocateurs, attempting to cause a civil war inIraq. While I have no doubt that this intentional process is going on elsewhere in Iraq (andlargely to fit the Israeli agenda, described here many times before, of breaking the country upinto small, unthreatening statelets, with the additional motive of leading to the new Israeli ally,the Shi'ite Empire, to counter the largely Sunni opposition to Israeli imperial plans), I doubt thatthe Basra case is an example of it. There seems to be another conspiracy afoot.The British have made a big deal of how much better they are than the Americans at shoulderingthe 'white man's burden' of policing their portion of Iraq. Of course, the Americans are soarrogant, culturally insensitive, and generally stupid, it is not difficult to do a better job. As well,the South is easier to police just because it is majority Shi'ite, and not interested in causingtrouble for the central government. Nevertheless, it is true that the British have done a muchbetter job than the Americans, and have some right to feel superior. And yet, just recently,everything has gone sideways. Here is the timeline:187

1. In the early Spring, British officials anticipated that British troops would soon bewithdrawing from Iraq.2. In July, plans are leaked of a British plan to withdraw almost all British troops from Iraq(sending some of them to Afghanistan). This withdrawal would have started next month. Almostimmediately, the deaths of British contractors is said to 'threaten' these plans.3. In early August, journalist Steven Vincent, who worked for the New York Times, is foundmurdered outside of Basra. He had been shot and was found with his hands bound. Days beforehis death, he "had written an Op-Ed piece for The Times in which he criticized British securityforces for failing to act against the Shiite militias' growing power in the local police force." It'sunlikely, even given the ubiquity of the internet, that local militias would be on top of veryrecently published New York Times Op-Eds (although Vincent had written previously on thematter).4. Normally quiescent Basra starts to become dangerous for British troops, and three areactually killed. While there has been a constant series of British deaths in Iraq, these most recentdeaths seem to cause a new type of overreaction. On Sunday, September 18, the British arrestlocal leaders Sheik Ahmed Majid Farttusi and Sayyid Sajjad, arrests that almost certainly willlead to more trouble (Juan Cole has the timeline).5. The British plans to withdraw are indefinitely cancelled, as conditions have worsened.6. The two British soldiers are arrested near a protest arranged against the arrest of SheikAhmed Majid Farttusi, and rescued with a completely unnecessary, show of lethal violence.7. Journalist Fakher Haider, who also worked for the New York Times, is found murdered onthe same day as the British soldiers were arrested. He also had his hands bound and was shot. Hehad been taken away for 'questioning' by people claiming to be Iraqi police, a claim backed upby the fact they arrived in a police car (!). He "had recently reported on the growing friction andviolence among Basra's rival Shiite militias, which are widely believed to have infiltrated thepolice." Now there are two murdered journalists in Basra, each of whom wrote about thegrowing power of Shi'ite militias in Basra (scuttlebutt that Steven Vincent's murder was relatedto his relationship with his Iraqi female translator seems to be disproved by the nature of thesecond murder). Local militia leaders would almost certainly have been unaware of the writingsof these journalists (and you have to wonder why they would care if they did know). Somebodywants to remove Western journalists with good local contacts from Basra.What I see here is an attempt to sabotage the British withdrawal, and the murders of bothjournalists may well be associated with this.Creating sectarian violence doesn't really make sense in Basra, as the Zionist planners intend tokeep the South whole, and part of the Shi'ite Empire. Causing trouble in Basra will only mess upthose plans. On the other hand, setting a bomb off in Basra would have continued the campaign,started right after the announcement of withdrawal was made, to ensure that the British troopscannot be withdrawn from the South. Who benefits from non-withdrawal?:1. the Americans, who would have been all alone in their battle against Islam once the Britishleft;2. elements in the British military, who so rarely get to be in a real war these days, are probablyloathe having to go back to more endless marching drills in the rain (or, at best, in Afghanistan);188

3. the international cadre of war financiers, who still derive considerable income from theBritish presence in Iraq; and4. Tony Blair, who works for the financiers and has this extremely weird relationship with theUnited States (he seems to be under the misapprehension that he is Prime Minister of the UnitedStates).I think there is a conspiracy here, but not necessarily the obvious one.xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/09/british-bombs-in-basra.htmlFake Terrorism Is a Coalition's Best FriendMatt HutaffSeptember 20, 2005Iraqi police recently caught two terrorists with a car full of explosives. Would it surprise you tolearn they were British Special Forces?The story sounds amazing, almost fantastical.A car driving through the outskirts of a besieged city opens fire on a police checkpoint, killingone. In pursuit, the police surround and detain the drivers and find the vehicle packed withexplosives – perhaps part of an insurgent's plan to destroy lives and cripple property. If that isn'tenough, when the suspects are thrown in prison their allies drive right up to the walls of the jail,break through them and brave petroleum bombs and burning clothes to rescue their comrades.150 other prisoners break free in the ensuing melee.Incredible, no? Yet this story took place in the southern Iraqi city of Basra recently. Violencecontinues to escalate in the breakout's aftermath... just not for the reasons you think.You see, the drivers of the explosive-laden car were not members of an insurgency group – theywere British Special Forces. Their rescuers? British soldiers driving British tanks.That's right – two members of the British Armed forces disguised as Arab civilians killed amember of the Iraqi police while evading capture. When the people of Basra rightfully refused toturn the murderers over to the British government, per Coalition "mandate," they sent their ownmen in and released over 100 prisoners in the process.Winning the hearts and minds, aren't we?Sadly, this story is really not all that surprising. After hearing countless accounts of using napalmand torture against innocent civilians in addition to the other daily abuses dished out byAmerican overseers, the thought of British scheming seems perfectly reasonable.So what we have here is a clear instance of a foreign power attempting to fabricate a terroristattack. Why else would the soldiers be dressed as Arabs if not to frame them? Why have a carladen with explosives if you don't plan to use them for destructive purposes? Iraq is headedtowards civil war, and this operation was meant to accelerate the process by killing people and189

laming others. Nothing more, nothing less. That the British army staged an over-the-top escapewhen it could rely on normal diplomatic channels to recover its people proves that.Such extreme methods highlight the need to keep secrets.There have been a number of insurgent bombings in Iraq recently. Who really is responsible forthe bloodshed and destruction? The only tangible benefit of the bombings is justification forCoalition forces maintaining the peace in Iraq. Who benefits from that? Certainly not the Iraqis –they already believe most suicide bombings are done by the United States to prompt religiouswar. After reading about this incident, I'm not inclined to disagree.Even though this false-flag operation was blown wide open, I'm afraid it might still be used inthe mainstream media to incite further violence in the Middle East. Judging by the coverage thathas emerged after the incident, my fears seem warranted.Several articles have already turned the story against the angry Iraqis who fought the Britishtanks as they demolished the jail wall, painting them as aggressive Shia militia attacking the doeeyed,innocent troops responding to the concern that their comrades were held by religiousfanatics. A photograph of a troop on fire comes complete with commentary that the vehicleswere under attack during a "bid to recover arrested servicemen" that were possibly undercover.All criminal elements of British treachery are downplayed, the car's explosive cache is nevermentioned and the soldiers who instigated the affair are made victims of an unstable country theyare defending.Hilariously, all of this spin has already landed Iran at the top of the blame game. Because whenthe war combine botches its own clandestine terrorist acts, what better way to recover than bypainting the soulless, freedom-hating country you'd love to invade next as the culprit? In a way, Ialmost admire the nerve of officials who are able to infer that Basra's riots have nothing to dowith fake insurgent bombing raids and everything to do with religious ties to a foreign country.It's a sheer unmitigated gall that flies in the face of logic and reason."The Iranians are careful not to be caught," a British official said as the UK threatened to referIran to the UN Security Council for sanctions. Too bad the British aren't! Maybe then they'd beable to complete their black-ops mission without looking like complete fools in the process!Make no mistake – any and all violence to erupt from Basra over this incident lands squarely onthe shoulders of the British army and its special forces. Instead of stoking the flames ofpropaganda against a nation it has no hope of ever conquering, maybe Britain should quit tryingto intimidate the Iraqis with fear and torture and start focusing on fixing its mistakes and gettingout of the Middle East.These actions are inexcusable and embarrassing; however, they should make you think. If acountry like the United Kingdom is willing to commit acts of terror, what kind of false-flagoperations do you think the United States is capable of?190

If you thought the U.S. wouldn't blow up people it claims to support in the hopes of advancingits agenda, think again. Use this incident as your first reference point.Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0961_fake_terrorism_coalition_best_friend.htmlWho's Blowing Up Iraq? New evidence that bombs are being planted by BritishMike WhitneySeptember 20, 2005"The Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused two Britons they detained of shootingat Iraqi forces or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES." Washington Post, Ellen Knickmeyer, 9-20-05; "British Smash into Jail to Free Two Detained Soldiers"In more than two years since the United States initiated hostilities against Iraq, there has neverbeen a positive identification of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.Never.That doesn't mean that he doesn't exist; it simply suggests that prudent people will challenge theofficial version until his whereabouts and significance in the conflict can be verified.At present, much of the rationale for maintaining the occupation depends on this elusive and,perhaps, illusory figure. It's odd how Al-Zarqawi appears at the precise coordinates of America'sbombing-raids, and then, miraculously vanishes unscathed from the scene of the wreckage. Thiswould be a remarkable feat for anyone, but especially for someone who only has one leg.Al-Zarqawi may simply be a fantasy dreamed up by Pentagon planners to put a threatening faceon the Iraqi resistance. The Defense Dept has been aggressive in its effort to shape informationin a way that serves the overall objectives of the occupation. The primary aim of the Pentagon's"Strategic Information" program is to distort the truth in a way that controls the storyline createdby the media. Al-Zarqawi fits perfectly within this paradigm of intentional deception.The manipulation of information factors heavily in the steady increase of Iraqi casualties, too.Although the military refuses "to do body counts"; many people take considerable interest in thedaily death toll.Last week, over 200 civilians were killed in seemingly random acts of violence purportedlycaused by al-Zarqawi. But, were they?Were these massive attacks the work of al-Zarqawi as the western media reports or some other"more shadowy" force?One member of the Iraqi National Assembly. Fatah al-Sheikh, stated, "It seems that theAmerican forces are trying to escalate the situation in order to make the Iraqi people suffer..There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupation to enter and plant hatredbetween the sons of the Iraqi people, and spread rumors in order to scare the one from the other.191

The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will tryto start an internal Shiite incitement."Al-Sheikh's feelings are shared by a great many Iraqis. They can see that everything the US hasdone, from the forming a government made up predominantly of Shi'ites and Kurds, to creating aconstitution that allows the breaking up to the country (federalism), to using the Peshmerga andBadr militia in their attacks on Sunni cities, to building an Interior Ministry entirely comprised ofShi'ites, suggests that the Pentagon's strategy is to fuel the sectarian divisions that will lead tocivil war. Al-Zarqawi is an integral facet of this broader plan. Rumsfeld has cast the Jordanian asthe agent-provocateur; the driving force behind religious partition and antagonism.But, al-Zarqawi has nothing to gain by killing innocent civilians, and everything to lose. If hedoes actually operate in Iraq, he needs logistical supporting all his movements; including helpwith safe-houses, assistants, and the assurance of invisibility in the community. ("The ocean inwhich he swims") These would disappear instantly if he recklessly killed and maimed innocentwomen and children.Last week the Imam of Baghdad's al-Kazimeya mosque, Jawad al-Kalesi said, that "al-Zarqawi isdead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged militaryoccupation. He's simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people." Al-Kalesi added thatal-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north and that "His family inJordan even held a ceremony after his death." (AFP)Most Iraqis probably agree with al-Kalesi, but that hasn't deterred the Pentagon from continuingwith the charade. This is understandable given that al-Zarqawi is the last tattered justification forthe initial invasion. It's doubtful that the Pentagon will ditch their final threadbare apology forthe war. But the reality is vastly different from the spin coming from the military. In fact, foreignfighters play a very small role in Iraq with or without al-Zarqawi. As the Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (CSIS) revealed this week in their report, "Analysts and governmentofficials in the US and Iraq overstated the size of the foreign element in the Iraqi insurgency..Iraqi fighters made up less than 10% of the armed groups' ranks, perhaps, even half of that." Thereport poignantly notes that most of the foreign fighters were not previously militants at all, butwere motivated by, "revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arabcountry."The report concludes that the invasion of Iraq has added thousands of "fresh recruits to Osamabin Laden's network;" a fact that is no longer in dispute among those who have studied the dataon the topic.The al-Zarqawi phantasm is a particularly weak-link in the Pentagon's muddled narrative. Thefacts neither support the allegations of his participation nor prove that foreigners are a majorcontributor to the ongoing violence. Instead, the information points to a Defense establishmentthat cannot be trusted in anything it says and that may be directly involved in the terroristbombingsthat have killed countless thousands of Iraqi civilians.192

Regrettably, that is prospect that can't be ignored. After all, no one else benefits from theslaughter.(Note: Since this article was written, the Washington Post has added to our suspicions. In anEllen Knickmeyer article "British Smash into Iraqi Jail to free 2 detained Soldiers" 9-20-05,Knickmeyer chronicles the fighting between British forces and Iraqi police who were detaining 2British commandos. "THE IRAQI SECURITY OFFICIALS ON MONDAY VARIOUSLYACCUSED THE TWO BRITONS THEY DETAINED OF SHOOTING AT IRAQI FORCES orTRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES."Is this why the British army was ordered to "burst through the walls of an Iraqi jail Monday inthe southern city of Basra".followed by "British armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships"ending in "hours of gun battles and rioting in Basra's streets"? (Washington Post)Reuters reported that "half a dozen armored vehicles had smashed into the jail" and theprovincial governor, Mohammed Walli, told news agencies that the British assault was "barbaric,savage and irresponsible."So, why were the British so afraid to go through the normal channels to get their men released?Could it be that the two commandos were "trying to plant explosives" as the article suggests?An interview on Syrian TV last night also alleges that the British commandos "were plantingexplosives in one of the Basra streets"."Al-Munajjid] In fact, Nidal, this incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that werelacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq.Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in somearmed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But thosewere only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the twoBritish soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves,according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sowsedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraqfor a longer period. [Zaghbur] Ziyad al-Munajjaid in Baghdad, thank you very much. CopyrightSyrian Arab TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005"And then there was this on Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, 9-19-05; Interview with Fattah al-Shayk,member of the National Assembly and deputy for Basra.."the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of theCressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode inthe centre of the city of Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the city of Basraarrested them. They [the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and killed some of them.The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held bythe National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this departmentin an attempt to absolve them of the crime."

Does this solve the al-Zarqawi mystery? Are the bombs that are killing so many Iraqi civiliansare being planted by British and American Intelligence?We'll have to see if this damning story can be corroborated by other sources.)Courtesy and Copyright © Mike Whitneywww.uruknet.info?p=15926British Special Forces Caught Carrying Out Staged Terror In Iraq?Paul Joseph WatsonSeptember 20, 2005Media blackout shadows why black op soldiers were arrestedPaul Joseph Watson | September 20 2005In another example of how the Iraqi quagmire is deliberately designed to degenerate into achaotic abyss, British SAS were caught attempting to stage a terror attack and the media havedutifully shut up about the real questions surrounding the incident.What is admitted is that two British soldiers in Arab garb and head dress drove a car towards agroup of Iraq police and began firing. According to the Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili, onepoliceman was shot dead and another was injured. Pictured below are the wigs and clothing thatthe soldiers were wearing.The Arab garb is obviously undeniable proof that the operation, whatever its ultimate intention,was staged so that any eyewitnesses would believe it had been carried out by Iraqis.This has all the indications of a frame up.This is made all the more interesting by the fact that early reports cited as originating from BBCWorld Service radio stated that the car used contained explosives. Was this another staged carbombing intended to keep tensions high? As you will discover later, the plan to keep Iraq dividedand in turmoil is an actual policy directive that spans back over two decades.The BBC reports that the car did contain, "assault rifles, a light machine gun, an anti-tankweapon, radio gear and medical kit. This is thought to be standard kit for the SAS operating insuch a theatre of operations."And are fake bushy black wigs and turbans standard kit for the SAS? What happened to the earlyreports of explosives? Why has the media relentlessly reported on the subsequent rescue effortand failed to address these key questions?The soldiers were arrested and taken to a nearby jail where they were confronted andinterrogated by an Iraqi judge.194

The initial demand from the puppet authorities that the soldiers be released was rejected by theBasra government. At that point tanks were sent in to 'rescue' the terrorists and the 'liberated'Iraqis started to riot, firebombing and pelting stones at the vehicles injuring British troops as wasdepicted in this dramatic Reuters photo.As the SAS were being rescued 150 prisoners escaped from the jail. Was this intentional or just aresult of another botched black op?From this point on media coverage was monopolized by accounts of the rescue and the giantmarauding pink elephant in the living room, namely why the soldiers were arrested in the firstplace, was routinely ignored.The only outlet to ask any serious questions was Australian TV news which according to oneviewer gave, "credibility to the 'conspiracy theorists' who have long claimed many terrorist actsin Iraq are, in fact, being initiated and carried out by US, British and Israeli forces."Iran's top military commander Brigadier General Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr pointed the fingerat the occupational government last week by publicly stating,“The Americans blame weak and feeble groups in Iraq for insecurity in this country. We do notbelieve this and we have information that the insecurity has its roots in the activities of Americanand Israeli spies,” Zolqadr said.“Insecurity in Iraq is a deeply-rooted phenomenon. The root of insecurity in Iraq lies in theoccupation of this country by foreigners”.“If Iraq is to become secure, there will be no room for the occupiers”.That explanation has a lot of currency amongst ordinary Iraqis who have been direct witnesses tothese bombings.In the past we’ve asked questions about why so-called car bombings leave giant craters, inaddition with eyewitness reports that helicopters were carrying out the attacks.Throughout history we see the tactic of divide and conquer being used to enslave populationsand swallow formerly sovereign countries by piecemeal. From the British stirring up aggressionbetween different Indian tribes in order to foment division, to modern day Yugoslavia where thecountry was rejecting the IMF and world bank takeover before the Globalists broke it up andtook the country piece by piece by arming and empowering extremists.And so to Iraq, New York Times November 25th 2003, Leslie Gelb of the Council on ForeignRelations writes,"To put most of its money and troops where they would do the most good quickly - with theKurds and Shiites. The United States could extricate most of its forces from the so-called SunniTriangle, north and west of Baghdad.... American officials could then wait for the troublesome195

and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer theconsequences."Gelb argues for allowing the rebellion to escalate in order to create a divided Iraq.And in 1982, Oded Yinon, an official from the Israeli Foreign Affairs office, wrote: "To dissolveIraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it's Iraqi power thatconstitutes the greatest threat to Israel. The Iran-Iraq war tore Iraq apart and provoked itsdownfall. All manner of inter-Arab conflict help us and accelerate our goal of breaking up Iraqinto small, diverse pieces."So if the plan is to keep the different sects at each others' throats then who benefits from thechaos created by the endless bombings? President Bush's slip of the tongue when he stated, "it'lltake time to restore chaos and order -- order out of chaos, but we will" seems less farcical in thislight.Plans for 4,000 NATO troops to replace US troops in Afghanistan will likely be mirrored in Iraqand the country will be used as a launch pad for the coming invasions of Syria and Iran.It is certain that any reports coming out of Iraq accusing occupational forces of being behind carbombings will be brutally censored.The Pentagon admitted before the war that independent journalists would be military targets andsince then we've seen more journalists killed in Iraq over two and a half years than the entireseven year stretch of US involvement in Vietnam.In many cases, such as that of Mazen Dana, an acclaimed hero who was killed after filmingsecret US mass graves, journalists are hunted down and executed because they record somethingthat the occupational government doesn't want to reach the wider world.Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena's car was fired upon and an Italian secret service agent killedafter Sgrena was told by the group that kidnapped her that a threat to kill her if Italian troopsdidn't pull out of Iraq wasn't made by them. This means that Rumsfeld's Ministry of Truth in Iraqis putting out false statements by fake Jihad groups to try and maintain the facade that theresistance is run by brutal terrorists under the direction of Al-Qaeda/Iran/Syria or whoever elsethey want to bomb next.Every high profile kidnapping brings with it eyewitness reports of white men in suits and policecarrying out the abductions.Many will find it hard to believe that ordinary soldiers would have it in them to carry out suchbrutal atrocities. The people carrying out these acts are not ordinary soldiers, they are SAS thugswho have been told that they have to be 'more evil than the terrorists' to defeat the terrorists. Thisis how they morally justify to themselves engaging in this criminal behavior.We will update this story as and when new developments take place.196

www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/200905stagedterror.htmWere the British Soldiers Engaged in Counter-Insurgency Operation in Basra?Yamin ZakariaSeptember 20, 2005For certain, the ‘free’, ‘independent’ and embedded Anglo-US mass media would have tried tospin the evidences surrounding the events in Basra to suit the interests of their governments.However, in this case it was too late, as the facts seemed to have already been reported byvarious other media outlets. Let us examine what cannot be denied, on the basis of what has beenreported and corroborated by the Iraqi police and Interior Ministry officials, who are allies of thecoalition forces.a) British undercover soldiers were on a mission wearing traditional Arab dress, driving acivilian car. What was their mission in Basra, considering that we have hearing how happy andpeaceful Shi’ite-dominated Basra is. According to the earlier embedded media reports, resistanceis almost negligible in the region.b) When the Iraqi soldiers (not the Sunni Insurgents), approached the suspicious looking car at acheck point, carrying the British soldiers in question, they were fired upon. Clearly, the BritishSoldiers did not fire in fear but to avoid capture and/or interrogation by the Iraqi police.Therefore, they must have had something significant to hide from the Iraqi police who are theirallies in the region. It would be safe to assume that the ‘legitimate’ Iraqi government installed bythe coalition forces were also ignorant of the facts; so far they have been quiet about the wholeaffair.c) According to the Italian press, when the British soldiers fired, two Iraqi police were shot andone of them died later. But that matters little for the mass media and no one seems to even knowtheir names. The benevolent liberators are not perturbed by such small details of killing an Iraqihere and there! However, the event raised the temperature even more, after the earlier arrests oftwo prominent members of the Mehdi army militia (led by the radical Shi'ite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr), carried out by the British forces.d) After capture of the undercover British soldiers, they refused to state what their mission was.Iraqis in the mean time had been driving through the streets, with loudhailers demanding that theundercover Britons remain in jail for their crimes. It was then reported through numerous sourcesthat the British forces with Tanks surrounded the prison, where the two British soldiers inquestion were detained. This led to the protest developing into a riot and pictures were airedshowing the British soldiers being attacked by the mob.e) An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said British forces stormed and demolished the walls of thejail using six tanks and that dozens of Iraqi prisoners escaped. Basra's governor said thedemolition was a "barbaric act of aggression".197

f) However, Britain's Ministry of Defence disputed that the prison had been stormed, on thecontrary, stated that the release of the two soldiers was negotiated. Contradicting the statement ofthe Basra governor and the numerous reports (point d), that clearly alluded to the British forcesaction to release the British prisoners sparked of the riot. Why was there no statement from theso-called new Iraqi government?Whatever the case, the British forces were not happy with two of their soldiers kept in an Iraqiprison, controlled by their Iraqi allies. Inside the prison, their lives were not under any threat. Butwhat the two soldiers concealed as regards to their mission must have really worried the Britishgovernment. Thus, they moved quickly to get the undercover soldiers out of the prisons bystorming it with Tanks and demolishing the walls.Now, what has been deliberately avoided by the mainstream TV and Satellite stations is thereference [1] to allegation from the Iraqi police, that the British soldiers were planting bombs.Turkish and a few other media outlets also reported that the Iraqi police allegedly found bombsin unidentified cars owned by Britons.So the facts are, the British soldiers were caught wearing Arab dress in a civilian car, armed, mayhave been carrying bombs, shot the Iraqi soldiers when approached by them, later the Britishgovernment in desperation stormed the prison to get them out; clearly they were on a secretmission. It was secret because it would be too embarrassing to conduct openly in an area that issupposed to be the calmest with no insurgency. Given the facts, the only plausible explanation isthat the undercover soldiers were engaged in counter-insurgency operations. This incident maywell prove to be another Abu-Ghraib, confirming the strong rumours of counter-insurgencyoperations, particularly the bombs exploding in the markets and mosques, away from coalitionand Iraqi forces that would benefit no one, except the coalition forces.Without a shadow of doubt, a full scale sectarian war would help the collation forces; they wouldbe the primary beneficiary. In fact from the very beginning of the conflict the media has beenconstantly stoking sectarian tensions, the language employed was crafted accordingly. They kepton repeating minority Sunni Arabs of 20%, who become minority Sunnis of 20%! The majorityShi’ites became the oppressed Shi’ites, as if the hearts of the Anglo-US government bleeds forthem! The Arab nationalist Baath party became a Sunni party, as if religion defined it!But the sectarian conflict failed to ignite, and then the coalition forces engaged in counterinsurgencyactivities by exploding bombs in markets, mosques and churches. There have beenearlier reports and independent eyewitness accounts of coalition soldiers caught planting bombs.However, like hurricane Katrina, this time they were caught and exposed, the world can now seetheir fork-tongue and insidious nature.Yamin ZakariaLondon, UK[1] http://www.iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/63808iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/63926198

FLASHBACK: Sick strategies for senseless slaughterJohn KaminskiThe murderous fools are not trying to end the war;they're trying to keep it going as long as they canMay 24, 2005The cat is out of the bag now.It happened quite by accident, as most revelations do. And it is seen by most of the world as themost revolting of the American/Israeli atrocities in the past few years, although it's hard toprioritize that claim because of the level and frequency of barbaric acts that are committed on aregular basis by those affluent automatons who call themselves the good guys.Yet everyone but the comatose American populace — blinded by its Orwellian media andstupefied by its demented diet of physical and mental poisons — can see it.So permit me to spell it out for those cowardly people who say they're living in the freest countryon Earth, but absolutely refuse in their silent ignorance to see the blood they're spilling. Nocountry that condones deliberate torture for any reason can ever be trusted.The first hint came in Imad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and postedon www.albasrah.net on May 11.The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on theWeb, www.uruknet.info , which I try to read every day,and www.globalresearch.ca , which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking andmore analytical news. I consider these two sites essential to keeping up with the real news of theworld, and highly recommend that you monitor them, too.Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all thisinexplicable violence in Iraq. Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abusednation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitariantakeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can'tbe understood by straightforward explanations.I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni orShiite, it makes no sense. Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship. Or whenreporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles ofinternational justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginaryIslamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe thatMuslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue toinsist.So who’s doing all these demented deeds? As if we didn’t know ....199

Khadduri’s report went like this:“A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver andtold him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and inorder to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in thecamp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour. At theend of the session, the American interrogator told him: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, butyou do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we haveforwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, gothere with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. HussainMohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work”.The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as ifcarrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kepthovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He foundnearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by theAmericans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter wasmonitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated “hideous attack by foreign elements”.The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along withthe driver’s license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told togo to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the wayto the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully ladenwith explosives."If this were the only example of this type I heard, I might have let it pass as just a story. But itwasn’t.There was also the sorry tale of the Iraqi man who saw American soldiers plant a bomb whichshortly thereafter exploded, and when he said so out loud for all to hear, he was hauled away,never to be seen again.This story was reported on arguably the most authentic and riveting source of news from Iraq,the heart-rending "Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq," which is compiled by someoneknown only as Riverbend or Iraqi Girl < http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ >. Again,recommended reading.She recounts, "the last two weeks have been violent ....The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been severalassassinations — bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know thatcorpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise toeat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped200

into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as ifBaghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics — several of them well-known.People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done toprovoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up bysecurity forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later — apparently when the new Iraqigovernment recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is amiddle class area located in west Baghdad. It’s a relatively calm residential area with shops thatprovide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up fortheir daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher’s shop. Immediately after, we heardthat a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because itwas said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.I didn’t think much about the story — nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper —hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People fromthe area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew toomuch about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area andpausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bombwent off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystandersthat the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. Hewas promptly taken away.The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and nearAmerican troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in themiddle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that theyare inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicidebombs — they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. Allwe know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you theyare resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Othersblame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplittingblast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then thewails begin — the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail ofcar alarms from neighboring vehicles… and finally the wail of people trying to sort out theirdead and dying from the debris.Then there was this one.On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in hispickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They werestopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. An American soldier climbedon the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly201

inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes. Haj Haidar and his grandsonwere then allowed to proceed to Baghdad.A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a greymelon size object in the back among the tomato containers. The Haj immediately slammed onthe brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the checkpoint. He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes. He immediatelyrecognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier. Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran awayfrom the car. Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took thebomb and carried it in fear. He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug byIraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago.Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing threesheep and injuring their shepherd in his head. He thanked God for giving him the courage to goback and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice hissudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb."They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or'insurgents' or who call themselves the 'Resistance'.I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tell you the story.They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint the Resistance afterfailing to defeat it militarily.Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobody but God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir."The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined inFrank Morales' piece on globalresearch.ca: "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi'Insurgents' — and Global Terrorism," by Frank Morales clearly demonstrates how Donald Rumsfeldsaid he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did.Morales writes:Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predictedthere would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. Howcould he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of theHonorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin,writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence SupportActivity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, informationwarfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others. Nor have weever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitatedone of the great slaughters in history. Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-202

Zarqawi is actually a real person or just another bin Ladenesque boogeyman. Nor if the al-Qaedawebsite which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run by the CIA.Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue toperpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion anddestruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City. The purpose of allthese despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans have been doing all alongto the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it.There is not now nor ever was an Arab terror threat. That was all invented by Rothschild,Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith,Abrams and Warren Buffett. These people are all traitors to not only their countries but tohumanity in general, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately.And so should the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by theircomplicity or their ignorance, support them.The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understandhow the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience,thrives on war and profits from the misery of others.The neocon murder menace has been for months ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we needto invade Iran — which some predict will happen in June — and just this week, rumors of troopmovements in the Caribbean and lockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur animminent invasion of oil-producing Venezuela.The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding. By our silent complicity andcowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior in the name of profit, we are allaccessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society, not to even mention theextinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to be safe and secure in thehomes of our choice.So now that you know, what are you going to do about it? You know if you do nothing, thesesame things will one day happen to you.John Kaminskimailto: skylax@comcast.netJohn Kaminski is a writer whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around theworld. These stories have been compiled into two anthologies, “America’s Autopsy Report” and“The Perfect Enemy.” In addition, he has written “The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn’tBelieve the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001,” a booklet written forthose who still believe the government’s cynical lies about that tragic day. All three books areavailable at http://www.johnkaminski.com/203

www.uruknet.info?p=15949British “Pseudo-Gang” Terrorists Exposed in BasraKurt Nimmo, Another Day in the EmpireSeptember 20, 2005Baghdad Dweller reports two British soldiers held by “Iraqi authorities” in Basra (also describedas “Shiite militiamen” in the corporate media), and subsequently freed after the British stormed apolice jail, were working undercover as bombers. Baghdad Dweller includes a link to theWashington Post, where the following appears: “Iraqi security officials on Monday variouslyaccused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives.Photographs of the two men in custody showed them in civilian clothes.” The Herald notes thefollowing: “Sources say the British soldiers, possibly members of the new SpecialReconnaissance Regiment formed earlier this month to provide intelligence for SAS operations,were looking at infiltration of the city’s police by the followers of the outspoken Shi’ite cleric,Moqtada al Sadr,” thus admitting the soldiers worked undercover.The “Special Reconnaissance Regiment,” according to Regiments.org, “formed with HQ atHereford from volunteers of other units to support international expeditionary operations in thefight against international terrorism, absorbing 14th Intelligence Company (formed foroperations against Ulster terrorists), Intelligence Corps, and releasing the SAS and SBS for the‘hard end’ of missions.” Is it possible the “hard end” of the “mission” in Iraq is to discredit theresistance and sow chaos in the country by fronting pseudo-gang terrorist groups (or the variant“pseudo-guerilla operations”), as the British have ample experience with elsewhere, notably inKenya during the Mau Mau uprising and in Malaya? “Pseudo operations are those in whichgovernment forces disguised as guerrillas, normally along with guerrilla defectors, operate asteams to infiltrate insurgent areas,” writes Lawrence E. Cline for the U.S. Army War CollegeExternal Research Associates Program. “This technique has been used by the security forces ofseveral other countries in their operations, and typically it has been very successful.” Indeed, onelong running pseudo op, Gladio, was so successful it managed to render a nominal Italianterrorist group, the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), into an excuse (after proper infiltration byagents provocateurs) to increase the power of reactionary forces in Italy and discredit socialist,communist, and even labor movements.The British SAS honed its “counter-insurgency” techniques in Northern Ireland and there is noreason to believe it has refrained from doing so in Iraq. “Formed to perform acts of sabotage andassassination behind enemy lines during World War 2, the SAS evolved into a counterinsurgencyregiment after the war,” writes Sean Mac Mathuna. Mathuna cites a 1969 ArmyTraining manual (British Army Land Operations Manual, volume 3, counter-revolutionaryoperations) that enumerates several “tasks,” including:the ambush and harassment of insurgents, the infiltration of sabotage, assassination anddemolition parties into insurgent-held areas, border surveillance … liaison with, and organizationof friendly guerrilla forces operating against the common enemy.204

Examples “were found during the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya during the mid-fifties,” Mathunaexplains, “when SAS officers commanded some of the infamous ‘pseudo gangs’ that terrorizedthe civilian population,” andin Borneo, where they used cross-border operations to attack and destroy guerrilla bases; and inAden in 1967, where they dressed as Arabs and would use an Army officer to lure Arab gunmeninto a trap and kill them. To defeat the insurgents counter-terror must be deployed back atthem—described by Ken Livingstone as “subverting the subverters”….In order to “subvert the subverters” and discredit the IRA in Northern Ireland, the SAS formedthe Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF), a covert pseudo-gang. “During the 1972 [IRA]ceasefire the MRF shot civilians from unmarked cars using IRA weapons,” writes Mathuna. “InNovember 1972 the Army admitted that the MRF had done this one three occasions. One ofthese incidents happened on 22nd June 1972—the day the IRA announced its intention tointroduce a ceasefire. The shootings appear to have been done to discredit the IRA…”It is clear now, that because elements within the security forces did not want a political deal withthe IRA in the mid-seventies, and the military solution was only possible with a change at the topof the Labour leadership, MI5 and the SAS were prepared to use the same methods the IRA arecondemned for - civilian deaths, assassinations, bombings and black propaganda—to bring thisabout.In fact, so effective were these “military solution” pseudo-gang terrorist techniques the Frenchemployed them in Algeria and Vietnam. “The most widespread use of pseudo type operationswas during the ‘Battle of Algiers’ in 1957,” explains Lawrence E. Cline. “The principal Frenchemployer of covert agents in Algiers was the Fifth Bureau, the psychological warfare branch.”The Fifth Bureau “planted incriminating forged documents, spread false rumours of treacheryand fomented distrust among the [FLN, the National Liberation Front] … As a frenzy of throatcuttingand disemboweling broke out among confused and suspicious FLN cadres, nationalistslaughtered nationalist from April to September 1957 and did France’s work for her,” notesCline, quoting Martin S. Alexander and J. F. V. Kieger (“France and the Algerian War: Strategy,Operations, and Diplomacy,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 6-7).Even though the Washington Post mentions two Brits were detained, apparently caught redhandedshooting Iraqi police and planting explosives, it does not bother to mention the SAS or itslong and sordid history of engaging in covert pseudo-gang behavior and conclude the obvious:Britain, and the United States—the latter having admitted formulating the Proactive PreemptiveOperations Group (P2OG) in 2002, a brain child of neocons staffing the Pentagon’s DefenseScience Board, designed to “stimulate reactions” on the part of “terrorists” (in Iraq, that wouldbe the resistance)—are intimately involved in sowing chaos and spreading violence in Iraq andmore than likely soon enough in Iran and Syria.Of course, this unfortunate and embarrassing incident in Basra will fall off the front page ofcorporate newspapers and websites soon enough, replaced with more appropriate, if fantastical,propaganda implicating the Iraqi resistance and intel ops such as al-Zarqawi for the violence,205

obviously engineered to create a civil war in Iraq and thus divide the country and accomplish theneocon-Likudite plan to destroy Islamic culture and society.AddendumIt is not surprising the corporate media in the United States and Britain would omit crucial detailson this story. In order to get the whole story, we have to go elsewhere—for instance, China’sXinhuanet news agency. “Two persons wearing Arab uniforms [see the M.O. cited above]opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured themto discover they were two British soldiers,” an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. “The twosoldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.”So, the next time you read or hear about crazed “al-Qaeda in Iraq” terrorists blowing up childrenor desperate job applicants, keep in mind, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, theperpetrators may very well be British SAS goons who cut their teeth killing Irish citizens.kurtnimmo.com/?p=32Carry on KillingJeff Wells, Rigorous IntuitionSeptember 20, 2005Now at midnight all the agents, and the superhuman crew,Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do - Bob DylanDamn the blind eyes of anyone who still can't see after Basra.How it began:"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrolfollowed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an InteriorMinistry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives,the source said.Here are the two while in Iraqi police custody. Reuters appended a note to each photo over thewire: "ATTENTION EDITORS - THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT REQUESTS THAT THEIDENTIFICATION OF THIS MAN IS NOT REVEALED, EITHER VIA PIXELLATION OFTHEIR FACES OR BY NOT PUBLISHING THE PHOTOS."As you probably know, they didn't remain in custody for long:British forces using tanks broke down the walls of the central jail in the southern city of Basralate Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested oncharges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.206

Witnesses said about 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled the jail.Violence flared earlier in the day as demonstrators hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at Britishtanks; at least four people were killed.The British Defense Ministry spun, but found it difficult to maneuver with its pants about itsankles. "We‘ve heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison," a defense ministry spokesmanin London said. "We understand there were negotiations." When it found some equilibrium, itchanged its story to better comport with the undeniables: "We understand that the authoritiesordered their release. Unfortunately they weren't released and we became concerned for theirsafety and as a result a Warrior infantry fighting vehicle broke down the perimeter wall in oneplace."These hard men, likely SAS ops, must have had some stories to tell, otherwise tanks would nothave negotiated their way through the prison walls of Britain's reputed hosts so soon after theircapture.Walking into the untidied mess of this astonishing and grotesque and predictable story feels a bitlike the British detective catching the killer red-handed: "Well well well, what have we here?"We have long had reason to suspect imperial instigation to Iraq's sectarian violence, but here, asclearly as we've ever seen it, is the provocateur state revealed: two British "undercover soldiers"in Arab dress, caught firing upon police from a car laden with explosives. And the Britishgovernment all but admitting its culpability by breaking them out of prison.It doesn't make sense? Only if you haven't been paying attention. This is the subtext of the Iraqtragedy: blow up the Hajis and play the Sunnis on the Shias; create the chaos that introduces theconditions necessary for the long-game, and the long-held aspirations of the neoconservatives todivide Iraq into ethnographic bantustans.I wonder what will be made of this story by those who think escalating bloodshed in Iraq is ameasure of the failure of US policy, and not its success, and who believe black ops and falseflags are figments of our paranoiac fantasies. Probably, as with so much that would bedevil theirworldview if only they were intellectually honest enough to permit it, this too will be filtered outand forgotten. But our burden is we won't forget. And damned if the Iraqis will.A British soldier jumps from a burning tank which was set ablaze after a shooting incident in thesouthern Iraqi city of Basra September 19, 2005. Angry crowds attacked a British tank withpetrol bombs and rocks in Basra on Monday after Iraqi authorities said they had detained twoBritish undercover soldiers in the southern city for firing on police.rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/09/carry-on-killing.htmlMiddle East Press: "Suspicions occupation involved in armed operations against civilians andplaces of worship"GlobalResearch.caSeptember 20, 2005207

Text of reportSyrian TV (Arabic), 19 September 2005[Newsreader Nidal Zaghbur] Ten Iraqis - seven police commandos, two civilians and a child -were killed and more than 10 others wounded in the explosion of two car bombs near twocheckpoints in Al-Mahmudiyah and Al-Latifiyah south of Baghdad while hundreds of thousandsof Iraqis were heading towards the city of Karbala to mark the anniversary of a religious event.And in a significant incident in the city of Basra, which is also marking the same religious event,Iraqi demonstrators set fire to two British tanks near a police station after Iraqi police hadarrested two British soldiers disguised in civilian clothes for opening fire on police. Eightarmoured British vehicles surrounded the police station before the eruption of the confrontations.A policeman at the scene said the two detained Britons were wearing traditional Iraqi jallabahs[loose cloaks] and wigs.For more details about this development in Basra, we have on the line with us our correspondentin Baghdad Ziyad al-Munajjid. Ziyad, good evening.[Al-Munajjid] Good evening, Nidal.[Zaghbur] What are the dimensions of this incident in light of the increasing operations againstcivilians and places of worship to create sedition among the Iraqis?[Al-Munajjid] In fact, Nidal, this incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that werelacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq.Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in somearmed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But thosewere only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the twoBritish soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves,according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sowsedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraqfor a longer period.[Zaghbur] Ziyad al-Munajjaid in Baghdad, thank you very much.Copyright Syrian Arab TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005bold addedFurther on arrest of two British soldiers in BasraAl-Jazeera TV, Doha, in Arabic 14:14 GMT, 19 Sep 05Text of report by Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite TV on 19 September208

A British military source has said that the Iraqi police in southern Iraq have arrested two Britons.The police said that they had fired at an Iraqi security man in Maydan in the city of Basra.AFP said that angry Iraqi demonstrators torched two British tanks after the British soldiers firedin the air to disperse them.[Anchorman Al-Habib al-Ghuraybi] We have with us on the telephone from Baghdad Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the Iraqi National Assembly. What are the details of and the factssurrounding this incident?[Al-Shaykh] In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. There have been continuousprovocative acts since the day before yesterday by the British forces against the peaceful sons ofBasra. There have been indiscriminate arrests, the most recent of which was the arrest of ShaykhAhmad al-Farqusi and two Basra citizens on the pretext that they had carried out terroristoperations to kill US soldiers. This is a baseless claim. This was confirmed to us by [nameindistinct] the second secretary at the British Embassy in Baghdad, when we met with him ashort while ago. He said that there is evidence on this. We say: You should come up with thisevidence or forget about this issue. If you really want to look for truth, then we should resort tothe Iraqi justice away from the British provocations against the sons of Basra, particularly whathappened today when the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and werein a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meantto explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the cityof Basra arrested them. They [the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and killed someof them. The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and theywere held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding thisdepartment in an attempt to absolve them of the crime.[Al-Ghuraybi] Thank you Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the National Assembly and deputy forBasra.Copyright Al Jazeera TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005bold addedwww.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=973The day that Iraqi anger exploded in the face of the British occupiersHelen McCormack, The IndependentSeptember 20, 2005The dramatic events began to unfold just before dawn yesterday, when two British nationalswere detained by Iraqi authorities. It emerged later that they were British soldiers. Dressed inplain clothes - according to some they were wearing traditional Arab dress - the two men hadbeen driving in an unmarked car when they arrived at a checkpoint in the city.209

In the confrontation that followed, shots were fired, and two Iraqi policemen were shot, one ofwhom later died. The Iraqi authorities blamed the men, reported to be undercover commandos,and arrested them.Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate said that the two men had lookedsuspicious to police. "A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him.Then the police managed to capture them," he said."They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and [suggestedthey] ask their commander about their mission," he added.The Britons were taken to an Iraqi police station, with local officials saying they had beeninformed that the men were undercover soldiers wearing plainclothes. British military officials,both in London and Iraq, began to investigate the arrests.As a behind-the-scenes operation by British diplomats charged with negotiating a release for thesoldiers started, tension spread across the city, where 8,500 British troops are based. A Britisharmy tank was surrounded.In a clear demonstration that the holding of the soldiers would not be tolerated, tanks movedquickly to encircle the police station. Amid the confusion, a crowd initially of about a dozen,which later swelled to hundreds, soon surrounded the tanks.Some said it was because the news had spread that British soldiers had been responsible for thedeath of an Iraqi policeman. One witness said Iraqis were driving through the streets withloudhailers demanding that the soldiers should be kept in the police station, and then jailed.Violence began to break out in the streets near to the prison. As tempers flared, rocks werethrown, and as tempers flared, the soldiers began to fear that they could no longer contain thesituation. What looked like petrol bombs began to fly through the air, and television footagerecorded one tank attempting to reverse away from the growing mob as the crowds around thetanks tightened their grip.Then, flames emerged from the top of one of the tanks. It remained unclear whether it was thevehicle itself on fire, or whether the flames were emerging from military equipment placed onthe back of the tank.One soldier decided to jump. His uniform on fire, the television footage shows him attempting tomake his escape, as the crowd pelts him with stones. Another soldier carrying a riot shield stoodby the tank. Last night the condition of the soldier was not known.In the rioting that ensued, British control of the city, in the Shia-dominated south of Iraq, beganto look seriously under threat. Two Iraqis were reported dead in the rioting, with 15 Iraqisreported injured, along with three British soldiers.210

Meanwhile, frantic negotiations continued to free the men, whose arrest had sent Basra into nearanarchy within the space of less than two hours.Images of the men in captivity were available after television cameramen from Arab satellitebroadcasters in the Persian Gulf were allowed in to the jail. Seated on the floor of what lookedlike a prison cell, their hands tied behind their backs, the men stared directly into the cameralens.Their clothes - plain T-shirts and chinos - were spattered with blood. One had a bandagewrapped around his head, the other also had a head injury, which had been dressed.The television commentary, in Arabic, identified them only as Britons. A provincial councilspokesman for Basra, Nnadhim al-Jabari, confirmed that they were likely to go before an Iraqicourt.Calm then descended on the city. In London, the Ministry of Defence would give no detailsabout the talks aimed at securing the men, a spokesman saying only that they were continuing "tothrash out with Iraqi authorities what is happening and what can be done".Then, just before midday, a solution of sorts appeared to have been found. Reports coming out ofBasra described how up to ten British tanks, possibly Challenger 2 Main Battle Tanks, possiblyWarrior Infantry Fighting Vehicles, had stormed the jail where the two men were being held.Witnesses said that they had smashed down a wall to gain entry. The operation was said to bebacked up by helicopters. The witnesses said that up to 150 prisoners took the opportunity toescape through the wall in the confusion.The British military action was condemned as "barbaric, savage and irresponsible" byMohammed al-Waili, the governor of the province. "A British force of more than 10 tanksbacked by helicopters attacked the central jail and destroyed it. This is an irresponsible act," thegovernor said.The Ministry of Defence in London confirmed that the soldiers had been released, but said thathad been achieved by "negotiation". Its explanation is unlikely to assuage the anger on the streetsof the southern Iraqi city, which has so far been relatively calm compared with the daily violencethat has scarred much of the rest of the country.As an uneasy peace was maintained in the city last night, all the indications were that yesterday'sviolence could be repeated today.news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article313848.ece© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.More Blatant Lies From CNN!Jesse, Editor , TVNewsLIES.org211

September 21st, 2005CNN continued their long tradition of lying to the public today! During their one minute or sothat they dedicate to news items other than the one or two stories they cover during any givenhour, they reported about some tension in Iraq related to some British soldiers who were“rescued” by British troops. “Rescued!” They told the public that the soldiers were “rescued!!!!”This is a bold face out and out lie! The soldiers in question were arrested, shot an Iraqi policeofficer, were dressed up as Arabs, heavily armed, and the British troops broke them out of jailallowing 150 inmates to escape in the process!!! Can CNN possibly mislead the public any morethan they have on this one news item?CNN, the most trusted name in news? How sad a statement about the news industry is that?Think about it!www.tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=126'Five Iraqi civilians killed' in SAS rescue operationTelegraphSeptember 21, 2005Five Iraqi civilians died in clashes surrounding the controversial operation to free two BritishSAS men captured in Basra, it was claimed today.Iraqi police said the latest two died in hospital today after being wounded as British troopsstormed a police station jail on Monday.Iraqi police are reported to have taken part in anti-British demonstrations in the southern Iraqicity today.But John Reid, the Defence Secretary, and Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari insistedrelations between the two countries remained strong."There has not been a fundamental breakdown in trust between the British Government and theIraqi government," Mr Reid said at a press conference following talks between the two men inLondon today.He said the strategy of the British Government had not changed, and it would work towards ahandover of security to Iraqi forces."We will not cut and run, and we will not leave the job half done," he said.Mr Jaafari also said that the incidents of the last few days would not affect British-Iraqi relations,and said such incidents were "expected to happen". He said he had ordered a full inquiry.Confusion still surrounds whether British forces knocked down a prison wall, resulting in theescape of prisoners, in their attempt to rescue the two SAS men.212

The British troops believed the two Special Forces men were being held there but later freedthem from a house in Basra where they were being held by Shia militia.As concern grew that Iraqi police had handed the men over to the militia, Iraq's governmentadmitted that insurgents had infiltrated its security forces.Iraq's national security adviser Dr Mouwafak al-Rubaie said: "Our Iraqi security forces ingeneral, police in particular, in many parts of Iraq, I have to admit, have been penetrated by someof the insurgents, some of the terrorists as well."I can't deny this. We are putting in place a very scrupulous, very meticulous vetting procedurein the process of recruiting a new batch of police and Iraqi army, which will, if you like, cleanour security forces as well as stop any penetration in future from the insurgents and terrorists."The capture of the SAS men came a day after British forces in Basra arrested two leadingmembers of the outlawed Mahdi Army, which is loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and iswidely believed to have heavily infiltrated police in the city.Other groups to have infiltrated the police are believed to include the Badr Brigade, which is thearmed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, and Hezbollah in Iraq.All three groups have historical ties to neighbouring Iran.Police in Basra said the SAS men, who were travelling in a car dressed as Arab men, shot andkilled a policeman when they were stopped.But the British said no one was killed and a spokesman for Mr Jaafari said they were arrested forbehaving suspiciously.British officers say they received intelligence that the men's lives were at risk and bulldozed theirway into the jail, in the face of a mob throwing petrol bombs, to rescue them.The action, condemned by many in Iraq, was defended as "absolutely right" by Dr Reid.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/21/uiraqa.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/21/ixportaltop.htmlDouble Standards in IraqBritish Agents in Local Drag Saved by CavalryLINDA S. HEARD, CounterPunchSeptember 21, 2005 - Monday was one of those rare illuminating days. A juxtaposition ofevents starkly exposed Western double standards and made the Iraqi government's claims ofsovereignty even more nonsensical than it already was.213

Anyone who tuned into the BBC's HARDtalk program during the day would have beensubjected to Iraq's corpulent marionette of a president Jalal Talibani, fresh from groveling aroundthe nether regions of George W.There he was sporting his omnipresent grin worming his way around Stephen Sackur's questionsover Iraq's so-called democracy, the inclusiveness of the draft constitution and his own shillyshallyingover signing Saddam's death warrant.When the Kurdish politician--whose demeanor is more suited to a shisha-puffing carpet traderthan a leader--was faced with a query over his government's legitimacy at a time foreign soldierswere still stomping all over his land, he nostalgically looked back to June 2004 when theinvaders handed back sovereignty to Iraqis. He thought it was a great day.Talabani must be one of the few who took the handover seriously, as anyone with an IQ over 80quickly realized it was yet another Pentagon production on the lines of the rigged toppling ofSaddam's statue, the Jessica Lynch fiasco, and 'Mission Accomplished'.But wait! I'm being too tough on the old warhorse. His pal Hazem al-Shaalan, who was IyadAllawi's defense minister, obviously believed Iraq was sovereign, too, when he allegedlysiphoned off US$1 billion from his procurement budget, which translated means every cent. Apatriot, indeed, especially when one remembers how a whopping US$9 billion went walkaboutunder the watch of Paul L. Bremer.So let's explore the unlikelihood that HARDtalk viewers were dim enough to swallow Talabani'ssales pitch. Let's imagine they bought the purple finger garbage or the new holy grail of aconstitution. And, let's suppose they could even dig deep into their hearts to excuse Talabanifrom his desire to witness Saddam with his neck snapped and his eyes parted from their socketsas long as he wasn't the one signing the order. I'll be absent on that day, he said, with a grin,admitting that task would be left to some subordinate unfortunate.So let's suppose that after that program we were left with starry eyes and a wellspring ofgratitude towards America's compassionate conservative leader for freeing the poor, oppressed,long suffering Iraqis, who thanks to him, have a glorious future in store (those who haven'talready been carried off by men in white coats, that is)The remainder, who had switched off their sets and gone fishing, or used their newspapers forshelf-lining, might still be infused with that rosy Talabani glow. But for newshounds, that glowwould swiftly fade into a pallor. Just a few hours after Talabani's schmaltz there came dramaticbreaking news.According to the BBC, two British servicemen dressed like local Shiites drove up to an Iraqimannedcheckpoint near Basra. They were apparently driving a scruffy civilian car and whenchallenged they opened fire resulting in the deaths of an Iraqi policeman. A confused-lookingBBC anchor struggling to make sense of the incident described it as 'murky'.214

Naturally, the sleazy Laurence-emulating pair was carted off to the slammer--along with theireclectic arsenal of weaponry and communication devices--where a rioting crowd soon gathered,furious over the killing.The Basra police told the British army that the soldiers were due to appear before an Iraqi court,which sounds reasonable to me. Isn't this exactly what would happen in any so-called civilizedcountry where the rule of law applies?But this wasn't good enough for Iraq's Ramboesque British guests, ostensibly there to set this'sovereign' country on the road to security even when, after heavy diplomatic arm twisting, Iraq'sdefense minister ordered their guys' release."Last night, British forces used up to 10 tanks supported by helicopters to smash through thewalls of the jail and free the two British servicemen," reported the Independent, adding, "around150 prisoners were said to have escaped during the assault, which was condemned as 'barbaric,savage and irresponsible' by Mohammed Al-Waili, the provincial governor.Then after this Hollywood-style blockbuster--thought to have terminally eroded whatever trustthere was between the occupation forces in the south and the Iraqi police--the Brits discoveredtheir men had been moved to a private house; the home of a militia-man.Thank the Lord that the Brits are home and dry and even though a British tank was fired withpetrol bombs its occupants have got away with minor injuries. Never mind that three Iraqis losttheir lives during those incidents or that 15 were wounded in their own 'sovereign' democracyappears to be the attitude of most media outlets.The British army in Iraq should be ashamed of itself. Its members have behaved like a gang ofthugs who wouldn't look out of place rescuing banditos in a banana republic. But in a way, it'sdone us all a favor.We are surely forced to cast off our rose-colored specs mine are terminally grey and face reality.Iraq is still occupied. And its government is made up of employees of the Bush administration,its 'jump to it' allies, and its crony companies. Talabani and crew have clearly sold-out, else theywould order yes order--the occupier to sling its hook without delay.Instead, Talabani told the BBC that the allies are welcome to stay as long as they like. And theywill. Don't worry about that!After all, there are reconstruction contracts, still to be doled out. There is the privatization ofIraq's resources to complete. There are four permanent military bases to build and we mustn'tforget that foreign carpet baggers and mercenaries have starving babes of one kind or another tofeed back home in London and Los Angeles.When the Kurdish leader dared ask Mr. Bush how long that might be during his recent visit tothe White House he was apparently told "as long as it takes to do the job". Pity he didn't enquire215

to which job the US President was referring. Could it be the paint job which would allow GeorgeW. to stick up two fingers instead of the usual one perchance?I know all about the arguments which defend the presence of allied armies, warning darkly of afull-blown civil war were they to exit. And it is true that there will be bloodshed, but, on theother hand, the cities and streets are running with the red stuff now. And, unfortunately, the sightof Brits trying to pass themselves off as Arabs and taking part in shoot-outs simply feeds intoinsurgents' claims that the allies are working on a 'divide and rule' ethic.There is more and more of a consensus that our armies are no longer part of the solution but arethe problem. Studies have shown that ordinary Iraqis unable to stomach the horrors of AbuGhraib, the leveling of Fallujah and the brutal 'pacification' of Tal Afar are joining theinsurgency.Others, mostly Sunnis, are outraged over the draft constitution, which they view as either aprelude to an Islamist state or the break-up of Iraq into three segments. Just about all are just sickand tired of the lack of electricity, jobs and opportunity and the abundance of backed-up sewage.Sure, allied fingers point at foreign fighters as being the insurgency's fountainhead but the USmilitary has admitted that these make-up only six per cent of insurgents. But this isn't somethingthey like to dwell upon; not when a low-hanging fruit like Syria is being slowly ripened byaccusations that it supports the insurgents by facilitating their entry through its borders.Put simply, the double standards we impose are nauseating. What if Iraqis had stormed AbuGhraib to free the prisoners there from sexual abuse, torture, beatings and assaults on theirreligious beliefs? If they had succeeded bashing down the wall of that jail and plucking theirfriends from their cells, would that cavalry have been termed "rescuers" or "terrorists"? Wealready know the answer to that one don't we?Get with the rule: The allies are honor-soaked heroes when they drop bombs, fire depleteduranium tank shells, send missiles into heavily-populated areas, use cluster-bombs or napalm andforce people into rivers when they cannot swim. But any Iraqi who would dare retaliate is 'aterrorist' even if that Iraqi happens to be a policeman at a checkpoint guilty of arresting twotrigger-happy drag artist foreign spooks.Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Mid-East affairs based in Egypt. She can be reached atheardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.ukwww.counterpunch.org/heard09212005.htmlAgents Provocateurs?William Bowles, I'n'ISeptember 22, 2005Fascinating. No really, the ‘evolution’ of state disinformation has probably never been betterdisplayed than in the case of the two (more than likely) SAS soldiers who were ‘liberated’ after216

eing arrested by the Iraqi police on 19 September by a phalanx of tanks and helicopter gunshipsthat stormed the police station where the two undercover soldiers were being held after theyallegedly failed to stop at an Iraqi police roadblock and subsequently opened fire on the Iraqipolice, killing one and wounding another.The car they were travelling in was loaded with weapons including allegedly, assault rifles, alight machine gun, an anti-tank weapon, radio gear and a medical kit (’standard’ SAS issueaccording to the BBC). According to at least two reports, the car they were traveling in (AToyota Cressida) was “booby-trapped”.Subsequent accounts vary according to the source but according to the initial story broadcast onthe BBC (19/9/05), the two men wore traditional Arab dress but then this changed to “civiliandress” (BBC TV News).As more information trickled out, a BBC story reported that the men were freed after the policestation had been attacked by British tanks, a report that the British government initially deniedsaying that “the release of the soldiers had been negotiated” (BBC Website 20/0/05).Britain’s Ministry of Defence says the release of the two soldiers had been negotiated and it didnot believe the prison had been stormed.“We’ve heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison,” a ministry spokesman said.“We understand there were negotiations.”Lisa Glover, spokeswoman for the British embassy in Baghdad, says three people have beenwounded in the operation to free the soldiers.She did not give further details of how the soldiers were freed.Then the story changed yet again, only now the ‘official’ story, dutifully reported by the BritishState Broadcasting Company (BSBC), was that “negotiations broke down” and that the two menwere in the hands of the Mehdi Army in another building, in which case, why was the policestation stormed?Then yet another version was issued by the British government only now the police station wasindeed attacked but only after “negotiations broke down”. So were the two SAS men in thepolice station or not?According to yet another BSBC report, after breaking into the police station, the Brits discoveredthat they had been moved to a Mehdi Army house for “interrogation”. Yet subsequent accountsrevealed that they had in fact, been in the police station all along and, according to a CNN report,were being questioned by an Iraqi judge, not, as the British government alleged, by the‘insurgents’.217

By now, in a classic disinformation campaign, so many stories were being circulated that sortingout the truth from fiction was virtually impossible unless one is prepared to dig and dig deep.What is clear is that the two SAS “undercover operatives” had been caught red-handed by theBritish government’s alleged allies, the Iraqi police, dressed as Arabs, replete with wigs andarmed to the teeth and in a car which according to one report, was packed with explosives (thecar by the way, has been taken away by the British occupation forces).The question the BSBC was not and still is not asking, is what were they up to, creeping arounddressed up as Iraqis in what is meant to be a relatively peaceful Basra?Once more the BSBC answered the question, sort of, courtesy yet another ‘official’ story, onethat was to emerge only after a very angry crowd attacked two British armoured vehicles, settingat least one on fire. The “mob”, as the BSBC described them, were according to the report, angryover the arrest of two Mehdi Army members, also on 19 September, and that it had nothing towith the freeing of the two SAS. In reality of course, the ‘mob’ had already been informed aboutthe two SAS undercover guys and were understandably upset.So now, the two undercover SAS men were, it is imputed, searching for ‘insurgents’ as part of acounter-insurgency operation, which if true, what were they doing dressed as Iraqis?Were they on some kind of provocative operation? According to one report, this is exactly whatthey were up to. Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly told this account toal-JazeeraIf you really want to look for truth, then we should resort to the Iraqi justice away from theBritish provocations against the sons of Basra, particularly what happened today when the sonsof Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. Itwas a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of thecity of Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the city of Basra arrested them. They[the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and killed some of them. The two arrestedpersons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the NationalGuard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attemptto absolve them of the crime.And in yet another report from Syrian TV we read[Al-Munajjid] In fact, Nidal, this incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that werelacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq.Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in somearmed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But thosewere only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the twoBritish soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves,according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sowsedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraqfor a longer period.218

When viewed in the context of all the stories that have been circulating about the mythical ‘al-Zarqawi’ and the alleged role of al-Queda, the events in Basra are the first real evidence that wehave of the role of occupation forces in destabilising Iraq through the use of agents provocateursmasquerading as ‘insurgents’.And, as I have long alleged here, it is now almost certain that ‘al-Zarqawi’ is probably long dead.An AFP story tells us[The] Imam of Baghdad’s al-Kazimeya mosque, Jawad al-Kalesi said, that “al-Zarqawi is deadbut Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged militaryoccupation…He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people.” Al-Kalesi addedthat al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north and that “His familyin Jordan even held a ceremony after his death.”And indeed, last year, in a piece I wrote about ‘al-Zarqawi’, I referred to a report about ‘al-Zarqawi’ being killed when the US flattened the ‘base’ of his group Ansar al-Islam in northernIraq in early 2003, a report that actually originated with the US government.Yet the BSBC, along with the rest of the Western media continues to put out endless reams ofdisinformation about ‘al-Zarqawi’ and his connection to the fictitious ‘al-Queda in Iraq’. Giventhe long-held assertion by the West that goes back to 2003, that Iraq was on the verge of ‘civilwar’, it’s instructive to note that as the military situation of the occupation forces hasdeteriorated, so too has the level of so-called al-Queda operations increased, in a transparentattempt to divide the Iraqi national resistance, thus the increasing stories about impending civilwar and the wave of ‘suicide’ bombings.The exposure of the undercover SAS operations will only add to the resolve of Iraqi resistanceforces to step up their campaign to expel the occupiers regardless of what kind of blatantpropaganda line the UK government puts out.It furthermore exposes the untenable position of the Iraqi ‘government’ which is now beingsqueezed by both sides, thus we get contradictory positions from the Iraqi ‘government’, withone denying that the SAS operatives had been handed over to ‘Shiite militia’ and the other tryingdesperately to tread an almost invisible line between condemning the actions of the Britishgovernment whilst blaming the actions of the Iraqi police in Basra on ‘insurgents’ who have‘infiltrated’ the police force. Yet it is a fact that at best, perhaps only 25% of the Iraqi militarycan be relied upon to serve their colonial masters.Continuing to call them insurgents is itself an admission that the majority of Iraqis are opposedto the occupation and indeed, the bulk of the fighting is being carried out by the KurdishPeshmerga as Iraqi forces simply cannot be relied on. It’s a classic situation that the US and UKmilitary top brass know only too well having ‘been there and done that’ before.219

Thus the occupiers become more desperate to destabilise the situation and no doubt we’ll seemore SAS and US provocations revealed over the coming weeks as the situation continues todeteriorate.www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0365.htmlMedia Shifts Attention from SAS Screw Up to IranKurt Nimmo, Another Day in the EmpireSeptember 21, 2005Leave it up to the Moonie-owned United Press International to attempt a none-too delicate effortto steer attention away from the fact British covert intel goons killed a cop and bystander andwere caught red-handed cruising around Basra in car loaded with explosives and detonators.“Attacks on British forces in southern Iraq may be directed from Iran,” reports the UPI. “Theclashes and the arrest of two undercover British soldiers was almost certainly triggered by thearrest at the weekend of Sheikh Ahmed al-Fartusi, the leader of the Mahdi Army, a bannedmilitia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr.”Indeed, al-Fartusi, commander of al-Mahdi’s militia in Basra, was arrested by the Brits in aGestapo-like raid, thus leading to “the spread of a great number of members of al Sadr Militia inal Basra streets and the gathering of many of these men near a building in the city center, whichcontains the headquarters of Al Sadr movement,” explains al-Mendhar News. “Eyewitnesses saidthat they are still in their locations hiding their weapons. Sheikh Mohamed Al Ka’bi, a memberof Al Sadr trend in Baghdad, confirmed, ‘Our office in Al Basra ordered us to remain calm andadopt political means to release our Sheikh and his men.’”Editors on the Moonie payroll grabbed their story from the Times. “Political assassination,murder, smuggling and extortion: the activities of a 50-strong gang of Iraqi policemen in Basra[dubbed the “al-Jameat gang”] whose members seized two British servicemen on Monday werebrought to the attention of the Iraqi government six months ago, according to official sources inthe city.” claims Anthony Loyd for the Times, not making mention of the fact the arrested“British servicemen” were dressed up as Arabs and driving around in a car packed with weaponsand explosives. According to Loyd, this “50-strong gang” of Iraqis, supposedly led by al-Fartusi,is “allegedly connected to a terrorist cell responsible for recent attacks on British units in thecity,” a terrorist cell of course linked to Iran. Al-Fartusi’s allegedterrorist cell is said to be a splinter group of the Mahdi Army, whose followers are loyal toMoqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric at the centre of last year’s Shia insurgency. Now more of apopulist, political figure, al-Sadr is not believed to have been aware, or in control, of al-Fartusi’sactivities. Al-Fartusi, 32, had been sacked from a command position in the Mahdi Army. Iran,however, was aware of his operations. This year an influx of sophisticated shape-charge devicesappeared in southern Iraq. New methods and materiel bore the hallmarks of the Iranian-fundedHezbollah movement.Of course, it all makes sense—the irresponsible and impulsive Moqtada al-Sadr, who had theimpertinence to go up against the occupation when he should have had the common decency to220

throw rose petals at the invaders, spawns a break-away gang involved in “assassination, murder,smuggling and extortion,” and these ruthless thugs are naturally linked to Iran and Hezbollah,thus attempting to buttress the oft-demonstrated bogus claim outsiders are running the resistancein Iraq and maybe stirring up trouble amongst pacified Shi’ites in southern Iraq. Instead of anexplanation of why the Brits are running a pseudo-gang of phony-baloney terrorists in wigs andheaddresses—careless enough to blow their cover and get apprehended red-handed with thegoods—the British media is diverting attention away from the exposed truth—the SAS isresponsible for at least some, probably a lot of the terrorism in Iraq—and are brazenly attemptingto shift blame in the direction of Iran and Hezbollah, two of the usual suspects.It should be obvious the two Brits arrested—and subsequently released after British tanksknocked down the building where they were held—are part of a larger plan to destabilize Iraqand foment civil war. Is it possible the Brits are behind a series of suicide bombings in Basra (73people were killed and 200 wounded, including the incineration of 17 children, on April 21,2004, and 68 were killed on June 24, 2004, to name but two) or are we to believe it was the workof the Shi’a-hating al-Zarqawi, determined, as we are told in various audio and video tapesreleased with curiously appropriate timing, to wipe every Shi’ite Muslim off the face of theearth?“British military intelligence has concluded that Iran has been supporting a local terror group runby Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, who is blamed for the murder of at least 11 British soldiers. And ina secret report, military intelligence warned commanders that attacks on British forces werebeing deliberately intensified,” concludes the Moonie Times, excuse me United PressInternational. Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani is “working for Iran,” warns Time Magazine. “Accordingto a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by TIME, al-Sheibani heads a network ofinsurgents created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with the express purpose ofcommitting violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq…. the U.S. believes al-Sheibani’steam consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking teams and death squads. The U.S.believes they train in Lebanon, in Baghdad’s predominantly Shi’ite Sadr City district and ‘inanother country’ and have detonated at least 37 bombs [described as “shaped” explosive charges]against U.S. forces this year in Baghdad alone.” Considering the track record of U.S.intelligence—from overthrowing democratically elected governments (in Iran for example) tocustomizing lies in preparation for the invasion of Iraq—we can trust the al-Sheibani campfirestory about as far as we can throw it. In other words, it has about the same degree of veracity asthe al-Zarqawi campfire story—that is to say none, since virtually everything the U.S. and itscorporate media disinformation ministries write or report about al-Zarqawi is undocumentedfear-mongering.As should be obvious, the Iraqi resistance has almost completely stalled the Anglo-Americaneffort to pacify the country and reconstruct (or rather deconstruct) it into an acceptable model forthe neocons and their carpet-bagging neolib co-conspirators who entertained high hopes to“structurally adjust” the Iraqi economy and steal its natural resources—not simply oil but also itsminerals, natural gas, phosphates, sulfur, hydropower, and other resources of commerciallyexploitable importance, including cheap human labor. In lieu of the neocon promise that Iraqiswould welcome this thievery with open arms, the Bushites and their British collaborators areworking to split the country into three distinct pieces along religious and ethnic lines through221

civil war—and thus SAS goons (and their counterparts in the Pentagon who have yet to stupidlyblow their cover) are running around with explosives and detonators, pretending to be al-ZarqawiArabs engaged in a mindless jihad. Of course, it will not work and the Iraqis will eventually bevictorious.Unfortunately, here in America, we have an installed president—not the guy from the fakecowboy ranch in Texas, but the other guy, the chicken hawk from Wyoming—who talks aboutlobbing around nukes if millions of people (mostly Arabs and Muslims) don’t assume theposition. If indeed the Iraqis (and the Iranians) eventually eject the U.S. military from the MiddleEast (as Hezbollah did in Beirut on October 23, 1983), irradiating the entire region or at leastsignificant portions will become a distinct possibility with the current crew in control of thelevers of mass murder. Of course, this would only be an increase in magnitude, since the U.S.has already nuked and poisoned Iraq (and Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia) with depleteduranium (half-life of 4.5 billion years), a crime that rivals anything the Nazis have done in termsof outright viciousness since Iraqis will be getting sick and dying from various cancers for a verylong time to come.kurtnimmo.com/?p=33The Tipping PointWhere The Neocon Job UnraveledPhil Toler, Axis of Logic ExclusiveSeptember 21, 2005No matter how they spin it, the red-handed nabbing of two British agents-provocateurs in Basrawill lift the veil of deceit that has cloaked the otherwise unexplainable internecine attacksbetween Sunnis and Shi’ites. The long-held Israeli/Neocon goal has been to break up Iraq,among other Arab states, into more easily managed Bantustans. The obvious fault lines amongthe Sunni, Shia, and Kurd communities made Wolfowitz believe achieving the goal would be acakewalk. It wasn’t the toppling of Saddam he was talking about, you see, and all those terrible'mistakes' made by Proconsuls Garner and Bremmer were as carefully calculated as the rest ofthis bloody farce.What happened in Basra, from the Iraqi standpoint — which is all that matters now that the endgameapproacheth — is that two Brits in robes were driving a civilian car packed withexplosives. Their mission was to throw a heavy distraction at the Shia militias who were quiteupset that three of their chiefs were taken captive by the Brits. They sought to blow up a hugebomb in the busy marketplace, with the obvious blame pointing to Sunnis. But, as often happenswith such false flag tactics, they backfired.Now, those in the Shi’ite community who favor the withdrawal of the occupation troops,sidelined only by their apparent power grab in the elections, are smelling the salts of reality andwill come out of their stupor to realize the Yanks have screwed them yet again. They’ll go backto the bloody beginning, say, to the massive bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad, andrecalculate. They know they weren’t responsible, and it will dawn on them that the ‘coalition’had far more to gain from the routing of the international body, such as it is, than the ‘dead-222

enders’ in the Sunni Community. Same goes for the Jordanian Embassy, the scores of journalists,the mosque bombings, and virtually all of the so-called suicide bombers. These actions all hadthe effect of fomenting civil war with the Kurds, who are heavily backed by the Israelis, beingthe only local party to gain from the mayhem.Early in the war, there were reports of Iraqi men being detained by occupation authorities forseveral hours while they were interrogated and had their vehicles ‘searched’. The were releasedon the condition they must go to a specific police station to pick up their papers, or some suchnecessity. Fortunately, a lucky few discovered by happenstance that explosives had been placedin their vehicle with the purpose remote detonation at whatever destination they were directed to.Apparently the trick still works, because the rash of ‘suicide’ car bombings is unceasing.But back to Basra. The Yanks have to placate the Shia — at least enough to feel secure that theywill not be overwhelmed from the rear, the only point of escape if such becomes necessary. Itwas the only reason elections were held in a way that would guarantee nominal Shia control ofthe ‘government’. But, perhaps with Iran’s nominal assistance, the Shia began to look for proofof coalition involvement in acts that really only benefit the coalition. Hence the capture of thetwo Brit operatives en flagrante. You can ignore comfortably British claims their disguised boyswere just surveying suspected militants. If that was their true mission, why would they shoot upthe Iraqi police who stopped them, and why would storming of the police station occur beforenegotiations could produce the soldiers’ release with far less hoopla? More crucial, why wouldthe usually calm city of Basra erupt in such rage? Perhaps they’re feeling the twisting Yankeeknife in their backs yet again.As for the other predictions I have made, the potential for economic collapse has been virtuallyguaranteed by Katrina and her sibling, Rita, which is poised to take out the drilling platformsKatrina missed. Throw in further damage to refineries, and they’re going to have to retrofit thenation’s gas pumps to accommodate triple digit fill-ups. Toss in roughly the cost of another Iraqiwar, which has quietly surpassed the Vietnam debacle in one third less time, to sop out the porkto Halliburton and the like for hurricane cleanup, and it’s clear the numbers in the debit columnwill overwhelm real American assets to back them up. It’s all blue sky from here on out, baby.As for the growth of doubts about the official legend of 9/11, a former Bush official has bluntlystated that the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives, and it is reported that the probeinto the outed CIA asset has begun to sniff at the edges of the strange anomalies for which noanswer has been given. And this is the real danger for the Neocons, the only thing that couldconceivably bring down the Bush administration, or lead to unabashed martial law so that allwould know the color of their true designs. In this regard, America will collapse from the rotwithin and on a schedule that resembles the famously aggressive Spartans far more than Britainor Rome.Enjoy your Fall, folks, I’ve got to go stock the storm shelter.© Copyright 2005 by AxisofLogic.comwww.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_19697.shtml223

What is Covert Action?J.V. Grady, ICHSeptember 21, 2005 "ICH" -- -- Intelligence services generally are organized into the followingmajor functional areas:· Intelligence Collection· Analysis· Counterintelligence· Covert ActionIntelligence Collection is the collection of Intelligence information, secret or otherwise, throughspying, interrogation, satellites, etc. If the information is collected through spying orinterrogation, it is known as HUMINT (human intelligence). If it is collected through technicalmeans such as electronic eavesdropping or satellites, it is known as TECHINT (technicalintelligence). Open-source Intelligence (OSINT) is information gathered from non-secret, publicsources.Intelligence Analysis is the assessment of collected raw intelligence and the processing of it intousable intelligence product that can be used to guide policy and operations.Counterintelligence has as its mission the prevention of a foreign intelligence service fromobtaining intelligence information from one’s own country. In a preventative role, it ensures theemployment of security practices to safeguard information. In a more active role, it conductsoperations against enemy intelligence services; in other words, it spies on the spies. Such actionis often referred to as spycatching.Perhaps the most interesting and sinister field in Intelligence is Covert Action (also referred to asClandestine Operations, Black Ops, and Black Operations). Some do not consider Covert Actionas being part of the traditional Intelligence mission, and they therefore believe that it should betreated independently and even organized within a separate organization. Others feel that,because it often interrelates with Intelligence Operations and Counterintelligence Operations, itshould continue to remain within the same ruling organization or apparatus.There are many types of Covert Action operations, not all of them violent. For example, if agovernment wishes to influence the politics of another country’s government, the governmentmay secretly fund an opposition party in that country in order to influence that country’selections. Another method is to employ foreign newspaper reporters to write articles that give theversion of events, the propaganda, that you want people to believe, even if it is the furthest thingfrom the truth. Or perhaps the owners or editors of a newspaper or media service can be boughtor won over to allow articles or news stories created by the Intelligence organization forpropaganda purposes to be planted in the newspaper or media service. A slant can then be givento influence public perceptions. For example, mercenaries can be referred to as “contractors”,224

thus making people believe that casualties among the mercenaries are innocent civilianconstruction workers who were unjustly victimized.The main thing about Covert Action is that it must be deniable. There is a term called “plausibledeniability”. When a government authorizes a covert action operation, the operation must bedone in such a way that the government can claim that it knows nothing about it; in other words,the operation must not be attributable to the government that authorized it.Covert Action operations are often Disinformation Operations, which are conducted in such away as to discredit the opposition or the enemy. This is done, for example, by doing a violentaction, such as a bombing, but making it look like the forces of another country or group did it.Such operations are sometimes called False-Flag Operations, meaning that the operation isconducted to make it look like it was done by people serving under another flag, preferably theenemy’s flag. If the operation succeeds as designed, people will blame the action on the wrongparty (the enemy). Thus, public opinion will be won over to the side that actually did the killing.Such false-flag, covert action operations are often referred to as Dirty Tricks.The British regularly employed Covert Action operations in Ireland, with the result that it islikely that the IRA often took the blame for violent actions with which they had no involvement,although they were hardly innocent players in the general mayhem. Many people suspect that theNorthern Irish bank robbery that occurred some time back was actually a British Covert Actionoperation designed to make the IRA take the blame, so that people would believe that the IRAwas not honouring the Good Friday Agreement. Incidentally, most of the British Northern Irishbank notes taken were worthless old notes, so they were no skin off anyone’s teeth.The policy in Iraq is to keep the country destabilized and on the verge of civil war to show that itcannot govern itself and that it therefore requires the continued presence of American and Britishforces. The man accused of being behind much of the bombing going on there is Al-Zarqawi, aman known to be dead for some time now. Also, because he is (or, rather, was) a Sunni,bombings against the Shi’ia population, if blamed on him and the Sunni insurgents, can keep thepot of civil war simmering, thus giving further justification to keeping American and Britishforces there.Most recently, two British Covert Operations specialists were captured in Basra, in SouthernIraq. They were disguised as Arabs and were carrying bomb-making materials. When Iraqipolice tried to apprehend them, the two covert action operatives resisted arrest and killed twopolicemen. They were eventually caught and held in jail. After the British military learned thatthey had been captured, it sent tanks into Basra to forcibly free the two men. An enraged mobattacked the tanks with petrol bombs, and people around the world saw British soldiers jumpingout of a flaming tank and being stoned. The reaction was one of sympathy for the Britishsoldiers. Few stopped to wonder what was behind the anger and the assault. Most weresympathetic towards the “poor” British soldiers, who were perceived as being unjustlyvictimized.225

So, who is behind many of the bombings against the Shi’ia and Sunni populations? It is quitepossible, even probable, that many of them are being carried out by American, British, and evenIsraeli Covert Action operatives.So, when you watch the news, think more deeply about what you’re seeing; and when you readyour newspapers, try reading between the lines or wonder about the source or the writer behindthe article. Has the article been planted? Is the writer in the pay of an intelligence service?J.V. Grady is a former member of US Military Intelligenceinformationclearinghouse.info/article10356.htmIraqi border guards arrest British national in desertTue Oct 4, 5:55 AM EThttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051004/wl_mideast_afp/iraqbritainarrest_051004095405A British national has been arrested by Iraqi border guards near the Saudi border in Najafprovince, British and Iraqi officials said."We can confirm that a UK national has been arrested by the Iraqi department of borderenforcement," a British military spokesman said on Tuesday, adding the Foreign Office wasinvestigating the arrest which was believed to have taken place on Monday night.An Iraqi border guards spokesman in Najaf, Saadun al-Jaaberi, said guards arrested "a terroristgroup consisting of 10 people, including one British national called Colin Peter, near Mathlum,near the Saudi border".The other nine were Iraqis from the southern city of Basra, he said.The group was armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and were carrying a video camera, asatellite telephone and GPS satellite-tracking device, Jaaberi added.The British embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be reached for comment.226