UPDATED - ColdType

The CIA role: Out of sight,
not out of hand
IN my experience as a longtime CIA watcher,
who personally spent years investigating covert
activities of the kind dramatized in “The Quiet
American,” the movie about Vietnam that was
briefly released and pulled from theaters by
Miramax even after Michael Caine was nominated
for an Oscar, this operation smells of socalled
“special ops,” a propaganda operation.
Richard Sale of UPI reminded us yesterday
that the CIA has had a long history in Iraq as
well as an association with the man whose
regime they are now helping to topple. “U.S.
forces in Baghdad might now be searching high
and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in
the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence
services as a bulwark of anti-communism and
they used him as their instrument for more than
40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence
diplomats and intelligence officials.”
United Press International has interviewed
almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British
scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to
piece together its investigation. The CIA
declined to comment on the report.
Where is Saddam? Was there a deal?
IF the CIA has been dealing with Saddam over
all these decades, why not now? While the media
keeps focusing our attention on the “where is
Saddam?” question, the Tehran Times is reporting
rumors of a deal between the U.S. military
and Hussein. Here’s the story by Parviz Esmaeili:
“Almost 10 days ago, there was a halt in U.S.-
British operations in Iraq. However, U.S. Defense
SO, THIS IS VICTORY
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Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the chief of the
U.S. Central Command, General Tommy Franks,
in their interviews with the media never elaborated
on the issue but instead tried to mislead
world public opinion in order to hide a greater
secret decision from them.
“Suspicions rose on the same day when U.S.
troops, that had been stopped at the Euphrates,
immediately were able to advance toward the
heart of Baghdad without any significant resistance
by Iraqi forces . . . Or why when the elite
Iraqi forces arrived in eastern Iraq from Tikrit,
the pace of the invaders advancing toward central
Baghdad immediately increased. Also, it has
been reported that over the past 24 hours, a
plane was authorized to leave Iraq bound for
Russia. Who was aboard this plane?
“All these ambiguities, the contradictory
reports about Saddam’s situation, and the fact
that the highest-ranking Iraqi officials were all
represented by a single individual – Iraqi Information
Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf – and the
easy fall of Baghdad shows that the center of collusion
had been Tikrit, where Saddam, his aides,
and lieutenants from the Baath Party had been
waiting for al-Sahhaf to join them so that they
could receive the required guarantees to leave
the country in a secret compromise with coalition
forces.”
This possibility was confirmed by the Al-
Jazeera network, which quoted a Russian intelligence
official as saying that the Iraqi forces and
the invaders had made a deal. The Russian official
told Al-Jazeera that the Iraqi leaders had
agreed “to show no serious resistance against
the U.S.-British troops in return for a guarantee
that Saddam and his close relatives could leave
Iraq unharmed.”