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<font face="Georgia" size=3><b>If You Can't Beat 'Em, Hire 'Em: Rumsfeld
and the Assassins<br>
by <a href="http://www.balkanalysis.com/">Christopher Deliso<br>
</a>December 23, 2003 <br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=7>T</b></font><font face="Georgia" size=4>here's
a new policy livening things up over at the Pentagon.
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html">Israeli-trained
US Special Forces</a> are planning to set up a "hit squad" of
former Baathist Iraqi intelligence officers, men who could get the dirt
on resistance leaders and ideally, kill them. That such a remarkable plan
is even being considered indicates the desperation gripping the Bush
Administration, as
<a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20031222-0534-iraq.html">Iraq's
deadly resistance</a> campaign continues.<br><br>
The controversial policy of targeted assassinations has been
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031207_297.html">carried
out clumsily</a> and over large areas (Afghanistan) as well as
efficiently (the missile attack that took out a suspected al Qaeda leader
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/09/attack/main528782.shtml">in
Yemen last November</a>). However, questions of efficacy aside, there is
also the issue of ethical actions, especially when a morally
self-righteous blusterer like America is performing them. Charges veteran
journalist and former military man
<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/reese/reese9.html">Charley
Reese</a>:<br><br>
<i>"&the idea is to hire some of the worst of the worst members
of Saddam's old secret police to infiltrate the resistance and finger key
players for the American murder squads. Thus, we climb in bed with the
very people our boy president likes to moralize about those dreaded
evildoers. Only now they will be evildoers on our payroll instead of
Saddam's. Only now, instead of bringing democratic values to Iraq, we
will show the Iraqis we are just as good at murder as
Saddam."<br><br>
</i></font><font size=5><b>Rumsfeld's 'Manhunt': Gladly Seeking Out
Monsters<br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=7>N</b></font><font face="Georgia" size=4>ot
just antiwar critics are concerned about Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's
enthusiastic backing for this "Manhunt" policy, one that by
virtue of its method is being relegated to the shadows. Even
Establishment opponents fear that Rumsfeld's increasing use of the
secrecy-bound Special Forces will allow the Pentagon to remain largely
unaccountable before Congress and the public. Coming from Rumsfeld, this
is hardly a surprise; the tactic was used with his
"<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact">Office
of Special Plans</a>," a
<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j072103.html">pseudo-intelligence
lie factory</a> set up to tell the Secretary what he wanted to hear about
Iraq and its potential threat to the United States in the run-up to the
war.<br><br>
Now, however, the executor of that operation Undersecretary for Defense
Doug Feith is being pushed aside, according to another comprehensive
exposé from
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031215fa_fact">the
</a><i>New
Yorker's</i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031215fa_fact">
Seymour Hersh</a>. Yet this neocon's apparent fall from favor should not
be taken to mean that Rumsfeld has tired of the movement much to the
contrary, the transition from Special Plans to Special Forces indicates
that Rumsfeld is championing not just neoconservatism, but
neoconservatism on steroids. Hersh provides more details about the new
policy:<br><br>
<i>"&they (the Americans) plan to assemble teams drawn from the
upper ranks of the old Iraqi intelligence services and train them to
penetrate the insurgency. The idea is for the infiltrators to provide
information about individual insurgents for the Americans to act on. A
former C.I.A. station chief 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 into
them. We have to resuscitate Iraqi intelligence, holding our nose, and
have Delta and agency shooters break down doors and take them' the
insurgents 'out.'"<br><br>
</i></font><font size=5><b>Rumsfeld's New Yes-Men<br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=7>A</b></font><font face="Georgia" size=4>ccording
to Hersh, the men who now have Rumsfeld's ear are Under-Secretary for
Intelligence
<a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/cambone_bio.html">Stephen
Cambone</a> and his assistant, Lieutenant General
<a href="http://www.dod.mil/news/Oct2003/n10212003_200310217.html">William
Boykin</a>. The former's neoconservative logic harmonizes with the
Rumsfeldian one that led to the Office of Special Plans. Cambone argues
that "&intelligence agencies should be willing to go beyond the
data at hand in their analyses." Indeed, he does seem to fit the
bill:<br><br>
<i>"'&Rumsfeld's been looking for somebody to have all the
answers, and Steve is the guy,' a former high-level Pentagon official
told me. 'He has more direct access to Rummy than anyone
else.'"<br><br>
</i>As for Lieutenant General Boykin, his faith-based intelligence is far
more literal. A fundamentalist Christian, he has gotten into trouble for
claiming that
<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1016-01.htm">God ordains
and protects America's wars</a> against the Islamic "Satan,"
and that all manner of phenomena such as a smudged picture evidently
indicating the
<a href="http://www.ajc.com/saturday/content/epaper/editions/saturday/faith_values_f3eb5c73b562c01d00f5.html">maleficent
presence of demons</a> can be interpreted in this context.<br><br>
Despite these rather unorthodox views, Boykin has achieved great
popularity in Washington for his martial zeal and can-do attitude. Most
importantly, Boykin also has experience with the kind of targeted
assassination program Rumsfeld and Cambone are pushing. In 1993, Boykin
was in charge of a Delta Force mission to hunt down
<a href="http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/special_packages/killing_pablo/2155806.htm">Colombian
drug lord Pablo Escobar</a>, and a little later commanded the infamous
Mogadishu raid, meant to capture a Somali warlord, which instead ended in
death, ignominy, and a
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000065U1N/antiwarbookstore/">box-office
hit</a>.<br><br>
</font><font size=5><b>Rambo Reasoning<br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=7>H</b></font><font face="Georgia" size=4>ersh
records other backers of the plan who express even burlier
bravado:<br><br>
<i>"&a former intelligence official said that getting inside the
Baathist leadership could be compared to '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 Baghdad said, '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 into
submission.'"<br><br>
</i>Despite this gung-ho fervor, one suspects that the project might not
be as easy as it seems.
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/Iraq_infiltrators_031218.html">ABC
News recently interviewed</a> unnamed "Pentagon officials"
regarding the appearance of resistance spies within the newly-established
Iraqi police force. The dismaying response from the Pentagon officials
who have consistently gone out of their way to say that Iraq will not be
another Vietnam was that they "&were not surprised about the
infiltration. It is a common tactic that certainly happened in Vietnam,
they said."<br><br>
According to the report, the main reason that the US ended up hiring
Iraqis with malevolent intentions was "hastiness" in the
vetting process. Still, considering the pressure being put on President
Bush to both lower the American death toll and speed up the transition to
an Iraqi-run government, time is not a luxury now available to the US.
Besides, even if there were time to properly "vet" the
recruits, who could possibly separate the "good" guys from the
bad? Has America penetrated Iraqi society so well that its soldiers can
tell the difference? Or should they just rely on the input of
well-meaning
<a href="http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/21/dreyfuss-r.html">"allies,"
like Ahmad Chalabi?</a><br><br>
The answer to these questions is, of course, no. And the Pentagon seems
to have accepted this. As the desire to win hearts and minds continues to
wane, war planners have changed tack entirely. For rather than recruit
Iraqis who <i>might</i> be good, they're going to hire the ones they
<i>know</i> to be the worst. It's one way of being sure,
alright.<br><br>
</font><font size=5><b>Will It Be Another Vietnam? Do They Even
Care?<br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=7>T</b></font><font face="Georgia" size=4>his
is essentially what the zealots quoted above are alluding to when they
speak of "holding our noses" while working with the Iraqis, of
somehow "going unconventional." Yet is this operating procedure
really so unusual for the Americans? Some have argued that the plan has a
lot in common with the Phoenix Program, a disastrous campaign aimed at
eliminating Vietcong sympathizers. From 1968-72, somewhere between 20,000
and 40,000 people were killed many of them innocent civilians. Then there
were the personal grudge killings set up by South Vietnamese
"allies." Reminiscing on that war which allegedly bears no
resemblance to today's, Charley Reese recounts:<br><br>
<i>"&another friend of mine, on loan to the CIA from the Green
Berets, paid Nung mercenaries $5 for each Vietnamese head they brought
in. They brought them in by the croaker sack full, but of course a
severed head can't tell you if the person who used to wear it was a Viet
Cong or just a poor farmer the Nungs happened upon. After all, they hated
all the Vietnamese without regard for ideology.<br><br>
"The same thing will happen in Iraq. Our paid evildoers will finger
people they have a personal grudge against or, if they are smart,
innocent Iraqis actually on our side. That way our death squads will
endear us to the Iraqi people just as the Israeli death squads have
endeared them to the Palestinians."<br><br>
</i>A similar opinion was expressed by a Pentagon advisor and expert on
unconventional warfare interviewed by Seymour Hersh:<br><br>
<i>"'&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 as anybody, but we're
also a democratic society, and we don't fight terror with terror. There
will be a lot of close controls do's and don'ts and rules of engagement.'
The adviser added, 'the problem is that we've not penetrated the bad
guys. The Baath Party is run like a cell system. It's like penetrating
the Vietcong we never could do it.'"<br><br>
</i>And, speaking of the Iraqis, a critical former Special Forces officer
added:<br><br>
<i>"'&these guys have their own agenda. Will we be doing hits
(based) on grudges? When you set up host-nation elements' units composed
of Iraqis, rather than Americans 'it's hard not to have them going off to
do what they want to do. You have to keep them on a short
leash.'"<br><br>
</i></font><font size=5><b>Is the Program Already in Place?<br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=7>H</b></font><font face="Georgia" size=4>owever,
the targeted assassination policy has many more enthusiastic backers, and
especially after the capture of Saddam, it should be an easy sell. In the
Pentagon today, the sentiment seems to be that since the US has suffered
enough, the answer is <i>not</i> to pack up and go home but simply to
step up the brutality. As one former CIA official and supporter
bloviated, "&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."<br><br>
Whether or not this is true, Rumsfeld and Cambone are certainly going to
give it their all, and this will mean
<a href="http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/6681.html">increased usage</a>
of "off the books" units <a href="http://belgium.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/78999.php">for example</a>, the ultra-secret <a href="http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2003117.asp">Task Force 121</a>, created in November <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/07/1068013391442.html?from=storyrhs">to hunt down Saddam</a>. Buoyed by his <a href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3713751/">successful capture</a>, the "Manhunt" amen corner is bound to get louder in the days and weeks ahead.<br><br>
Yet what if the policy gets "out of control," as Seymour Hersh stated about the Vietnam-era Phoenix Program? There are two likely problem areas here: one, the clandestine cooperation with Israel; and two, the Pentagon's zeal for "cross-border raids." A recent <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html">report from the </a><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html"><i>Guardian</a></i> described the Israeli training program and its potential fallout:<br><br>
<i>"'&this is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team,' said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.<br><br>
"'It is bonkers, insane. 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.'"<br><br>
</i>The same source alleged that US Special Forces are also operating in Syria, "attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border." It is this logic of deterrence more than anything that may invite serious problems for America and the whole Middle East region.<br><br>
According to Hersh, there is currently a "debate" raging within the Bush Administration about whether the same type of "cross-border raids" should be conducted against <i>Iran</i>. Suspecting that Tehran may be behind the Iraq insurgency, the War Party has come up with the brilliant idea of unleashing the "worst of the worst" from Saddam's former loyalists on Iranian government troops. Now <i>that</i> would be a great idea. <br><br>
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