Worth Reading: Seymour Hersh and Robert Dreyfuss on a secret US program to create Iraqi assassination squads.

"Part of a secret $3 billion in new funds—tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November—will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups," Dreyfuss reports in the American Prospect, here. "Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists—up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq."

"The U.S. occupation of Iraq is beginning to resemble Vietnam in more ways than one," Dreyfuss continues. "American forces under attack are reportedly responding with indiscriminate fire, often killing combatants and innocents alike."

Hersh also evokes comparisons of the US occupation of Iraq to Vietnam. He notes that US special ops teams are being trained and advised on counterinsurgency techniques by Israeli intelligence and commando units in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. And that makes sense, because apparently the "rising star" in the Pentagon is Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone. "Cambone also shares Rumsfeld’s views on how to fight terrorism," Hersh writes. "They both believe that the United States needs to become far more proactive in combatting terrorism, searching for terrorist leaders around the world and eliminating them." In other words, targeted assassinations.

Posted by Laura at December 9, 2003 02:15 PM