Seymour Hersh: NYT "Man Hunt in Iraq"

[BeHereNow]

MUST read...
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/031215fa_fact
Excerpt:
"One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the
war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the
Middle East. 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.
(Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one
wants to talk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both
governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests
to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” on Iraq.) The critical
issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is much
debate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a
practical—or politically effective—way to bring about stability in Iraq,
especially given the frequent failure of American forces to obtain
consistent and reliable information there."

Also check out his interview by Amy Goodman at the
Democracy Now site (12/09/03)
http://www.democracynow.org

[Malva Zebrina]

1. as usual excellent from Seymour Hersch

thanks for posting it.

Some things that stood out

“preëmptive manhunting”


has the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program. Phoenix was the code name for a counter-insurgency program that the U.S. adopted during the Vietnam War, in which Special Forces teams were sent out to capture or assassinate Vietnamese believed to be working with or sympathetic to the Vietcong. In choosing targets, the Americans relied on information supplied by South Vietnamese Army officers and village chiefs. The operation got out of control. According to official South Vietnamese statistics, Phoenix claimed nearly forty-one thousand victims between 1968 and 1972; the U.S. counted more than twenty thousand in the same time span. Some of those assassinated had nothing to do with the war against America but were targeted because of private grievances. William E. Colby, the C.I.A. officer who took charge of the Phoenix Program in 1968 (he eventually became C.I.A. director), later acknowledged to Congress that “a lot of things were done that should not have been done.”
official went on, “It’s not the way we usually play ball, but if you see a couple of your guys get blown away it changes things. 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.”

All of this would not have been necessary at all if Bush had not lied about invading Iraq. It all sounds so macho--as if these guys are running around with hard ons constantly. This is not reality.
Bush has caused this and is totally repsonsible for all the killings because he lied about it--attacked this country on false premises--and he knew it.

we are to believe after all this insight into our intelligence we are being treated to in this article, that Bush et all did NOT KNOW 9-11 was coming down? I don't think so. He knew and LIHOP

[BeHereNow]

2. "Pre-emptive"

indeed-
Just another way of saying the rule of law is null and void
under this Cabal.
Lord help us all.
BHN

[DrBB]

3. So now we know why Boykin, 'member him?

One of the key planners of the Special Forces offensive is Lieutenant General William (Jerry) Boykin, Cambone’s military assistant. After a meeting with Rumsfeld early last summer—they got along “like two old warriors,” the Pentagon consultant said—Boykin postponed his retirement, which had been planned for June, and took the Pentagon job, which brought him a third star. In that post, the Pentagon adviser told me, Boykin has been “an important piece” of the planned escalation. In October, the Los Angeles Times reported that Boykin, while giving Sunday-morning talks in uniform to church groups, had repeatedly equated the Muslim world with Satan. Last June, according to the paper, he told a congregation in Oregon that “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” Boykin praised President Bush as a “man who prays in the Oval Office,” and declared that Bush was “not elected” President but “appointed by God.” The Muslim world hates America, he said, “because we are a nation of believers.”
</snip>

Yup, that's the guy. And what else has he done? Well, some pretty interesting stuff, actually:

Boykin has been involved in other controversies as well. He was the Army combat commander in Mogadishu in 1993, when eighteen Americans were slain during the disastrous mission made famous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.” Earlier that year, Boykin, a colonel at the time, led an eight-man Delta Force that was assigned to help a Colombian police unit track down the notorious drug dealer Pablo Escobar. Boykin’s team was barred by law from providing any lethal assistance without Presidential approval, but there was suspicion in the Pentagon that it was planning to take part in the assassination of Escobar, with the support of American Embassy officials in Colombia. The book “Killing Pablo,” an account, also by Mark Bowden, of the hunt for Escobar, describes how senior officials in the Pentagon’s chain of command became convinced that Boykin, with the knowledge of his Special Forces superiors, had exceeded his authority and intended to violate the law. They wanted Boykin’s unit pulled out. It wasn’t. Escobar was shot dead on the roof of a barrio apartment building in Medellín. The Colombian police were credited with getting their man, but, Bowden wrote, “within the special ops community . . . Pablo’s death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has it that its operators were in on the kill.”

“That’s what those guys did,” a retired general who monitored Boykin’s operations in Colombia told me. “I’ve seen pictures of Escobar’s body that you don’t get from a long-range telescope lens. They were taken by guys on the assault team.” (Bush Administration officials in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, including General Boykin, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Hersh is a treasure.

[BeHereNow]

4. "Hersh is a treasure"

I couldn't agree more-
I have to tell you, his interview with Amy Goodman
yesterday really shook me up.
The situation just keeps getting worse.
I am really ready to move to New Zealand.
I can not in spiritual consciousness continue to
be a citizen under a government who fully
intends to do these things in my name, with my tax dollars.
I can't look at myself in the mirror thinking about it.
And now that the voting machines are set, I really don't
think there is anyway to stop what is happening, BUT
by giving up my citizenship, I can sleep at night
knowing I am not paying for the atrocities they will commit
in my name.
BHN

[DrBB]

5. You can fill out a NZ immigration eligibility form online

My wife and I did, after visiting there for a couple of weeks. It gives you a rating number according to their criteria. We're both in technical fields and have advanced degrees, so we did great--until we'll put in the age data. Oh well....

[KoKo]

6. My husband and I were re-watching Herman Wouk's "Winds of War" tonight.

It was a miniseries which we taped years ago. All three parts.
The episodes we are watching are the lead up to Hitler's invasion of Poland and on from there.

We felt we were watching what's going on in America. We also are thinking that it may be time to get serious about leaving. What if we are the first to know here? What if what our "gut" is telling us is true, that we have gone so far down a road that just getting a Democratic President in, won't stop it. There are so many signs of creeping fascism around. There's a depth of anger in the country I don't remember even during the 70's. The media is totally corrupt. Everything is corrupt, actually. Cronysm reigns, theft from our Mutual Funds, Pensions and Banks. What can one trust, anymore? It's going to get much worse before there's hope for a change, we think. It's not our country anymore. It's certainly not the country I believed in the Promise of.

[Wonk]

7. Wolf Blitzer interviewed him about this too. MP3 here.

1 M

[jbfam4]

8. Check out wash journal for Hersh interview

Washington Journal


http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&Page=2

Seymour Hersh, Contributing Writer to the New Yorker, discusses his recent article about how the Bush administration is targeting Iraqi "insurgents."
12/10/2003: WASHINGTON, DC: 45 min.

[minkyboodle]

9. brilliant

Operation Phoenix with Israel involved is gonna go over really well with the populace in Iraq. Way to think it through Rummy.
Scott

[PSU84]

10. Read the last few paragraphs!

"There is a debate going on inside the Administration about American and Israeli intelligence that suggests that the Shiite-dominated Iranian government may be actively aiding the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq—“pulling the strings on the puppet,” as one former intelligence official put it." ... "A former intelligence official said that one possible response under consideration was for the United States to train and equip an Iraqi force capable of staging cross-border raids. The American goal, he said, would be to “make the cost of supporting the Baathists so dear that the Iranians would back off,” adding, “If it begins to look like another Iran-Iraq war, that’s another story.”"

"The requirement that America’s Special Forces units operate in secrecy, a former senior coalition adviser in Baghdad told me, has provided an additional incentive for increasing their presence in Iraq. The Special Forces in-country numbers are not generally included in troop totals. Bush and Rumsfeld have insisted that more American troops are not needed, but that position was challenged by many senior military officers in private conversations with me. “You need more people,” the former adviser, a retired admiral, said. “But you can’t add them, because Rummy’s taken a position. So you invent a force that won’t be counted.”"

"At present, there is no legislation that requires the President to notify Congress before authorizing an overseas Special Forces mission. The Special Forces have been expanded enormously in the Bush Administration. The 2004 Pentagon budget provides more than six and a half billion dollars for their activities—a thirty-four-per-cent increase over 2003. A recent congressional study put the number of active and reserve Special Forces troops at forty-seven thousand, and has suggested that the appropriate House and Senate committees needed to debate the “proper overall role” of Special Forces in the global war on terrorism."

[teryang]

11. Arbitrary and capricious killing

...by indoctrinated goons. No chance of working.