Covert operations? We're in trouble...can you say Contras/Sandinistas?

[loudnclear]

""The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq," reports The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh. He says the proposed operation, "called 'preemptive manhunting' by one Pentagon adviser," and secretly assisted by the Israeli military, worries many U.S. officials who think that it has the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program." www.cursor.org

[terryg11]

1. what the heck was wrong with Phoenix?

midnight raids/kidnappings, torture and assasinations but that was only against the enemy

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. General Boykin wasn't in charge of Phoenix

With Crusader Boykins on the case, those kill figures will go up, up, up, and so will Bush's poll ratings!

Do not underestimate the unslakable thirst for Muslim blood endemic in the affluent voting class.

[Ilsa]

8. I've noticed that also.

"Do not underestimate the unslakable thirst for Muslim blood endemic in the affluent voting class."

Yeah. I'm about to lose a friend over it. She is scared shitless that she is about to be bombed or something in her home in CA, and I think she's been talked out of morality and into the "it's them or us" position, even though she is too smart for that. She's scared.

[DuctapeFatwa]

10. One positive thing about the aftermath of the 9-11 events

It really stripped the veneer off and taught a lot of people who their friends are.

There were a lot of hurt feelings, and it was, and still is, especially hard on kids who suddenly weren't invited to parties etc. and even harder for parents who had to explain why, but in reality, the best thing that can happen is to find out whom you can trust - and who you can't.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. That's for sure

9/11 uncovered a lot of racists and xenophobes lurking under rocks.

I even recall a DUer (sensible on other issues) advocating the nuking of all Islamic countries.

It's been my observation that it's the racists (overt or covert) who tend to be the most fearful in general. It's wealthy Californians who fear that "the Arabs" are going to bomb them or Midwestern suburbanites who are afraid to go downtown because "the blacks" will kill them.

[punpirate]

3. Maybe... maybe not....

I've read accounts (wish I could remember the source) that offered plenty of examples of corrupt officials using the Phoenix program to off their competition, or to divert attention from their own illegal activities.

The problem with any such program, always, is the lack of oversight, and the tendency for such groups to become judge, jury and executioner. Given the lousy state of intelligence now, and the degree to which the Defense Dept. has been compromised by bad intelligence, coming particularly from groups with a vested interest in siphoning off money in Iraq, I doubt this program will do much more than create even more problems.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. "Pre-emptive manhunting". Nation building by murder.

Brilliant!! We're going to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people by cooperating with the Israelis in murdering them.

We can see almost daily how well the Israeli's "war on terrorism" has worked. Not to mention the unqualified success of the "Phoenix Program" in Vietnam.

The fascists never learn.

[enough]

5. Link to Hersh's article in the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/031215fa_fact

MOVING TARGETS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?
Issue of 2003-12-15
Posted 2003-12-08


The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.

The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls “Manhunts”—a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon’s leadership to get his way. “Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,” a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.

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.

much more>

[MrPrax]

6. Did they only start now?

I presumed they have been targeting all along...ergo why so many civillians are being piled up.

Now they announce a 'program', so when civillians are killed it makes it easier to plant the suggestion they were 'terrorists' or 'suicide bombers'...


An Israeli bomb squad robot drags the wounded Palestinian man on the road near Megiddo junction in the northern Israel, May 8, 2002. Israel claimed the man was a suicide bomber who detonated his bomb when approached by Israeli troops. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

[incapsulated]

7. It was only a matter of time

Before they started this sort of thing. They refuse to logically and fairly deal with the Iraqi people, so, they will just have to kill them for being so tiresome.

[kodi]

9. so we fight terrorism with terrorism & the moral high ground sinks

as if we ever had it....just like nam

"history is a nightmare from which i am trying to awaken"

[ConsAreLiars]

12. Hersh was on Democracy Now! today

"Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh reveals how a new Special Forces group assembled to “neutralize” Iraqi resistance is working with Israeli commandoes to train in assassination and other tactics – comparable to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. One of the key planners is Lt Gen. William Boykin who declared that Bush was not elected but appointed by God."

To listen/view:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/09/162219