Plot to kill President Uncovered
Vendicar Decarian
By Bill Vann
10 December 2003
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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.
--
"We must create a <economic> crisis in order to ensure that there is no
alternative to a smaller government." - Bush - Imprimus Magazine 1995.
"We seek to remove resources from the control of the state, thereby starving
it." - International Society for Individual Liberty - NeoCon Libertarian.
"Throughout his term, Bush has implied tax cuts would starve the government,
paying for themselves by causing budget deficits that, in turn, would place
heavy pressure on Congress to lower spending." - Jeff Lemieux - Senior
Economist - Progressive Policy Institute.
"They have an agenda which is to starve the government of revenue. But in
order to get it through, they keep on having to pretend that the tax cuts
are affordable, and so they've been suppressing the likely cost of
everything, including the war on terror." - Paul Krugman - Economist.