Have thugs will travel
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15603
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
09.10.03
In case you missed the latest from the White House:
On Sunday night, President Bush announced that major operations in the
war against terrorism were over; Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden has been
captured in the mountains of Afghanistan; the Taliban’s Mullah Omar has
surrendered to an envoy from the Vatican; Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was
killed outside an ice-cream parlor in Tikrit; and Iraq’s weapons of
mass destruction have been discovered buried under an apple tree near
Ur, in what some believe was the site of the garden of Eden.
Bush pledged that democracy would be established in Iraq by Christmas
and all U.S. troops would be home no later than Groundhog Day; to
guarantee fair and free elections, the president announced they
administration had cut a deal with the Diebold Co. for its touch-screen
machines; Veteran’s hospitals in the U.S. will not be closed; benefits
for all soldiers serving oversees will be doubled immediately; and a
plan for universal health care will soon be sent to Congress.
Finally, the president announced a few personnel moves: Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned to join the staff of Fox News;
National security advisor Condoleezza Rice signed a long-term contract
with Cirque du Soleil; and vice president Dick Cheney has given notice
that he was leaving the administration to take an executive position
with Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
And, of course, that’s the way it wasn’t.
Within the past five weeks or so, four major bombings have taken more
than 120 lives in Iraq: On Tuesday, September 2, a car bombing at a
western Baghdad police station killed one Iraqi employee and wounded at
least 18 others; on Friday, August 29, 83 people, including Ayatollah
Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, were killed in the bombing of the Imam Ali
Mosque in Najaf; on Tuesday, August 19, the United Nations’ Canal Hotel
headquarters was bombed and 20 people were killed, including Sergio
Vieira de Mello, the U.N.'s top envoy to Iraq; and on Thursday, August
7, 10 were killed in the bombing at the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.
Against this backdrop of death, destruction and utter chaos, President
George W. Bush, in a prime time television address from the White House
this past Sunday night, announced to the nation and the world that now
that Iraq had become “the central front” in his war on terrorism, he
needed more money – some $87 billion – more international support,
and a heck of a lot more sacrifice from Americans.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, while some intelligence reports claim that
terrorists from across the Middle East flocking to Iraq may be behind
some of the bombings, for the most part the U.S. has viewed these
actions as the work of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Party remnants. Now,
those bright folks at the Pentagon have decided that the best way to
hunt down Hussein and any remaining Baathists is to put some of the
brutal dictator’s former buddies on the payroll: They figure if you
offer the former regime’s torturers, executioners, and rapists enough
money and outfit them properly, they can be of great assistance to the
occupation forces. St. Petersburg (Russia) Times columnist Chris Floyd
recently mused that a headline covering this new enterprise might read
“War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals.”
According to Floyd, America’s tax dollars are now being used by the
Bush Administration “to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat
and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo – perhaps hundreds of them.
The logic, if that’s the word,” writes Floyd, “seems to be that these
bloodstained ‘insiders’ will lead their new imperial masters to other
bloodstained ‘insiders’ responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in
Baghdad – and killing another dozen American soldiers…”
The Washington Post’s Anthony Shadid and Daniel Williams first reported
on these disturbing developments in late August: “U.S.-led occupation
authorities have begun a covert campaign to recruit and train agents
with the once-dreaded Iraqi intelligence service to help identify
resistance to American forces here after months of increasingly
sophisticated attacks and bombings, according to U.S. and Iraqi
officials.” Although U.S., officials wouldn’t say how many former
Husseinistas were being put on the payroll, “recruitment” had been
“stepped up” despite protestations from members of the U.S.-appointed
Iraqi Governing Council, “who complain that they have too little
control over the pool of recruits.”
Don’t think that U.S. officials aren’t sensitive to the problems hiring
former Hussein operatives might cause. They claim they are, but
desperate times call for desperate measures. “The only way you can
combat terrorism is through intelligence,” a senior U.S. official told
the Washington Post. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop these
people from doing what they’re doing.” He added: “Without Iraqi input,
that’s not going to work.”
Shadid and Williams: “The emphasis in recruitment appears to be on the
intelligence service known as the Mukhabarat, one of four branches in
Hussein’s former security service, although it is not the only target
for the U.S. effort. The Mukhabarat, whose name itself inspired fear in
ordinary Iraqis, was the foreign intelligence service, the most
sophisticated of the four. Within that service, officials have reached
out to agents who once were assigned to Syria and Iran, Iraqi officials
and former intelligence agents say.”
As Chris Floyd points out, this isn’t the first time the U.S. has
embraced world class thugs and killers and put them in service of the
homeland: It appears to be “business as usual for the American security
apparatus, which happily incorporated scores of its Nazi brethren into
the fold after World War II, and over the years has climbed into bed
with many a casually raping and murdering thug – such as, er, Saddam
Hussein, who spent a bit of quality time on the CIA payroll.”
Bush’s neoconservative advisors have thoroughly botched the post-war
occupation of Iraq by a) over-estimating the support the Iraqi
man/woman on the street would have for Operation Iraqi Freedom and, b)
by under-estimating the strength of the resistance. Caught with their
pants down, but still claiming success, Bush’s neocons, both inside and
outside the administration, are clamoring for more troops to be sent to
Iraq – two divisions – and for more money to be tossed down the
occupation rat hole.
As ever, it’s easy and oh-so-painless to issue a call for greater
sacrifice from America’s young men and women from the safety and
comfort of a Washington, DC air-conditioned office. Conservative
columnist Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote that the “war plans [of the
neocons] are taking us back to the draft… Lacking sufficient military
forces to occupy Iraq with its small population of 25 million, what
would we do once neocons get us mired down in Iran or Egypt with their
large populations?”
In early September, the Washington Times reported that "A secret report
for the Joint Chiefs of Staff [titled “Operation Iraqi Freedom
Strategic Lessons Learned”] lays the blame for setbacks in Iraq on a
flawed and rushed war-planning process that ‘limited the focus’ for
preparing for post-Saddam Hussein operations.
This past February, a report issued by the Army War College warned that
“Without an overwhelming effort to prepare for occupation, the US may
find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a
world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of
new problems of America’s own making.” As prescient as “Reconstructing
Iraq: Insights, Challenges and Missions for Military Forces in a
Post-Conflict Scenario” appears to be, the authors couldn’t possibly
have envisioned the chaos and instability now embodying day-to-day life
in Iraq.
If William Kristol, Robert Kagan and their Weekly Standard crowd still
think that Iraq is a noble enterprise, this would be just about the
right time for them to escort their sons, daughters, nephews, nieces
and cousins to a nearby recruiting office. And while they’re at it,
they might want to enlist as well.
(c) 2003 Working Assets Online. All rights reserved
Comment:
Another new definition of who are americas friends and allies, those who are with them and help them to fulfil their objectives are their friends, and those who oppose them and call for an alternative Islamic system are their enemies. As far as they are concerned the ends justify the means. This is the reason why people and nations who hold such a view are a danger to its own citizens as well as the whole of humanity.