- The Bush administration is about to launch a campaign
of wholesale killings in Iraq with the assistance of the Israeli military,
according to both US and Israeli sources quoted in several recent news
reports.
-
- Frustrated over the growing popular resistance to the
US military occupation and determined to reduce US casualties in Iraq before
next November's election, the administration has authorized a policy that
could well resemble the infamous "Operation Phoenix" assassination
program run by the CIA during the Vietnam War. That operation claimed the
lives of as many as 41,000 Vietnamese over a four-year period beginning
in 1968.
-
- In preparation for the new counterinsurgency campaign,
the US military has brought urban warfare specialists from the Israeli
Defenses Force (IDF) to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the headquarters of
the US Special Forces. They are training assassination teams in methods
that the IDF has used to suppress Palestinian resistance to the Israel
occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
-
- "This is basically an assassination program....
This is a hunter-killer team," a former senior intelligence official
told the British Guardian newspaper. He warned that Washington's reliance
on Israeli assistance in launching the operation would only intensify anger
over the US occupation throughout the Middle East.
-
- "It is bonkers, insane," the former official
said. "Here we are-we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab
world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting
up assassination teams."
-
- The Guardian also cited intelligence sources in Washington
as reporting that Israeli military "consultants" have been sent
to Iraq to advise US forces there on counterinsurgency operations.
-
- According to the British newspaper, the new operation
also includes the deployment of killer squads inside Syria to hunt down
suspected resistance fighters from other Arab countries before they cross
the border into Iraq.
-
- Meanwhile, an article by Seymour Hersh, the veteran US
investigative reporter, appeared in this week's New Yorker magazine also
warning of a "major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in
Iraq" and providing additional confirmation of Israel's role in training
those who will carry out the assassination program.
-
- According to Hersh, a new Special Forces group-Task Force
121-has been formed, drawing upon Army Delta Force troops, Navy SEALs and
CIA paramilitaries. "Its highest priority is the neutralization of
the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination," he reports.
-
- Hersh continues: "According to American and Israeli
military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence
units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the
Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel
to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected
to serve as ad-hoc advisers-again, in secret-when full-field operations
begin."
-
- US and Israeli officials have refused to comment on the
record about this collaboration on the Iraqi counterinsurgency campaign.
"No one wants to talk about this; it's incendiary," an Israeli
official told Hersh. "Both governments have decided at the highest
level that it is in their interest to keep a low profile on US-Israeli
cooperation" on the assassination program.
-
- The new revelations concerning the Israeli role in preparing
US troops to drown the Iraqi resistance in blood follow reports from Iraq
indicating that the US military has already introduced tactics pioneered
by the IDF in the occupied Palestinian territories.
-
- In recent weeks there have been repeated incidents in
which US forces have demolished homes believed to belong to members of
the Iraqi resistance. In addition, relatives of suspected resistance leaders
have been taken hostage, and, in at least one instance, an entire village
has been surrounded by razor wire, with its residents forced to enter and
leave through a checkpoint manned by US soldiers.
-
- All of these are tactics that have been employed by the
Israeli occupation forces during their crackdowns in the West Bank and
Gaza.
-
- A substantiation of the Israeli role in supplying tactics
for the US counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq came last July in a letter
to Army magazine from a senior Pentagon planning officer.
-
- Brig. Gen. Michael Vane, US Army Deputy Chief of Staff
for Doctrine, Concepts and Strategies, confirmed that US military officers
had been sent to Israel to consult on urban combat and intelligence methods
with the IDF.
-
- The general wrote: "Although there is much work
to be done, it is inaccurate to characterize our thinking and doctrine
on urban warfare as anachronistic. Experience continues to teach us many
lessons, and we continue to evaluate and incorporate them appropriately
into our concepts, doctrine and training."
-
- Vane continued: "For example, we recently traveled
to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations
in urban areas."
-
- The US-Israeli cooperation on Iraq is not new. Before
the invasion last March, US forces were sent to Israel to train for urban
warfare at an IDF mockup of a Palestinian town in the Negev desert. US
officers also reportedly reviewed Israeli tactics in the brutal assault
on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin the previous year.
-
- There is an unmistakable irony in Washington's turn to
the Israeli "experts" on repression. Within the last month, four
former heads of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency that directs
so-called anti-terrorist operations, as well as the current chief of staff
of the Israeli military have all warned that the iron-fisted repression
employed in the occupied territories by the right-wing Zionist regime of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is preparing a social and military catastrophe.
-
- So-called "targeted assassinations" that almost
invariably claim the lives of large numbers of bystanders and collective
punishment-including the mass destruction of homes and the use of roadblocks
and curfews-have only increased the Palestinians' hatred of the occupation
and led to mass support for acts of resistance.
-
- There is no reason to believe that the deployment of
Israeli-trained US military death squads in Iraq combined with the other
illegal means of repression already in use by the occupation authorities
will not generate a similar increase in support for the resistance among
broad layers of the Iraqi population. Far from extricating American troops
from the quagmire created by Bush's policy, the resort to these murderous
tactics will only deepen the conflict in Iraq.
-
- Many of the leading figures in the Bush administration,
who planned the Iraq war and continue to direct the occupation, have the
closest political connections to the right-wing Likud government in Israel
and are politically blind to the bankruptcy of Sharon's strategy of repression.
-
- Meanwhile, playing the central role in organizing the
new counterinsurgency campaign is Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin.
The general, a Special Forces veteran, became embroiled in controversy
earlier this year for publicly portraying the war in Iraq as a struggle
between Christianity and Islam. He also proclaimed that he answered only
to God for his actions as a commander of a "Christian army."
In remarks to Christian evangelical audiences, Boykin expressed the view
that God had placed Bush in the White House, despite the fact that "the
majority of the American people did not vote for him."
-
- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed aside the widespread
demands for Boykin's dismissal when reports of the inflammatory remarks
were published in October. It is now clear that Rumsfeld insisted that
the general remain at his post because of his key involvement in planning
the escalation of repression in Iraq.
-
- Hersh points out an additional motive behind the turn
to greater reliance on Special Forces troops in Iraq. Under the Pentagon's
rules of engagement, the operations of Special Forces units remain secret,
including their deployment overseas. Therefore, the addition of such troops
to the US occupation force in Iraq will not be publicly disclosed. Under
conditions in which, for political reasons, the administration has vowed
to reduce the number of US troops deployed in Iraq, it can covertly add
substantial forces, while hiding the buildup from the American people.
-
- The Special Forces have undergone an immense expansion
under the Bush administration. Hersh notes that the Pentagon's budget provides
$6.5 billion for their operations and that the total number of such troops,
both active and reserve, has risen to 47,000.
-
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- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/iraq-d10.shtml
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