Israel 'training US assassins'

[Resistance]

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1456845,00.html

London - Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, Britain's Guardian daily reported on Tuesday.

US special forces teams were already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign Islamic extremists before they cross the border with Iraq, the newspaper said.

"This is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team," a former senior US intelligence official told the paper.

[kalian]

1. That's all Israel knows how to do...

pretty friggin sad. And now, the US-Israeli fusion is complete...

[Jackie97]

2. Why stereotype Israel that way?

Really, what possibly makes them worse than the US? Nobody would say such things about us unless they were non-Americans perhaps.

The assassination program pisses me off though. Should this be compared to Palestine or Columbia?

[reknewcomer]

21. Yeah sure - and all Palestine knows is how to suicide bomb. Right?

pretty friggin sad indeed.

[reknewcomer]

3. I don't see any problem with eliminating terrorists

The terrorists blowing up Red Cross, the UN, Police stations etc need to be taken out. If Israel can help then all the better.

[brainshrub]

6. They aren't helping.

1) What is going on in Iraq is not terrorism, it's a nationalist resistance movement.

2) Allowing Israel to help fuels Iraqi feeling that they are going to be treated like Palestinians.

3) Israel has totally failed to bring peace to their own country. Why are they qualified to give us advice?

4) Note: "US special forces teams were already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign Islamic extremists before they cross the border with Iraq, the newspaper said."

Ask yourself: How would you feel if, during the 70's, England sent soldiers into New York to kill suspected IRA members? This policy of sending death-squads into Syria to pre-emptively assassinate people is likely to kill more innocent civilians than criminals; with the added bonus of further alienating the Arab world. (Especially the Syrians.)

[Darranar]

9. Some of it is terrorism, some of it isn't...

attacking the UN and the Red Cross was most certainly terrorism.

[brainshrub]

12. True.

But it's still nationalist-motivated violence. These people don't hate us because we are free, they hate us b/c we are in Iraq.

[Character Assassin]

13. I see precious little evidence of this.

But it's still nationalist-motivated violence.

And wishing it were so won't make it so.

[Resistance]

14. then

what are the motivations, in your view?

[Character Assassin]

15. I have suspicions, but I do not presume to know.

There are several possibilities, but I have come to no conclusions.

[number6]

18. so tell us, who are your suspects ?

..

[DuctapeFatwa]

8. LOL Poor Team Sharon!

I know, and so do some others here, that Israel has had its "operatives" in Iraq for almost a year, but for whatever reason the regime has now decided to go public with it, maybe the "training" they are giving General Boykins' boys is just too big a project to hide.

Either way, it is going to be tough for some sharoniacs, who will have to start calling the Crusaders "liberators" and twisting themselves six ways from Thursday to come up with nifty new ways to defend the same things that they condemned two days ago!

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[begruntled]

19. hmmm

The delays in the news are truly spiffy now aren't they? The collaboration goes back much farther than a year ago. The current strategems goes at least as far back on paper as 1998. All hands were on deck with "pre-emptive manhunting" as I stated below since 2001. It is one thing for mainstream to delay the news, but for "informed" Americans to choose to remain in the dark...that is truly even spiffier. I do not understand what purpose it serves to deny the collaboration. Do you?

[DuctapeFatwa]

23. I assume the intent is directed toward public opinion in the US

but as usual, I think it is an unnecessary strategy.

Although the difference between the news the rest of the world sees and what the US sees is dramatic, the reality is that the vast majority of those who vote, regardless of party preference, do not spend anywhere near as much time or attention on world events, or give a fraction of thought to US foreign policy one way or the other, as the most apathetic (relatively speaking) message board denizen of any current events forum.

On this board, which has a bigger chunk of informed people than most, look how often you see threads about Taliban in Texas with replies like "OMG, I didn't know that, this is HUGE," not to mention that the most insightful, connected dots, information-packed and elegantly written piece about US foreign policy will sink like a stone while "Candidate X cannot win because" hangs on for days.

Lining up dry facts about who is making money killing whom is just not as enchanting to most people as "my candidate's evasion of the crux of issue C is much more attractively phrased than yours." :)

[Gimel]

4. Question

Why would a "former US Intelligence Officer" go around giving interviews if:

"He added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced co-operation with Israel would inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East. "

Just doesn't make sense.

[Resistance]

5. so he should

just keep quiet about it?

[brainshrub]

7. Maybe s/he knows this is a bad idea

so s/he is leaking the info?

[Gimel]

11. An unnamed source

I tend to think s/he is a fiction. Neither of the other two stories posted about this mention a US intelligence informant. Nor are Israeli advisors present in Iraq as the Britain's Guardian daily reported. I think that is simply put in to caste Israel in a bad light. The New Yoker Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is the better source.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=37812

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=37797

[Resistance]

16. So

now you think the Guardian is making the whole thing up? Created a fictional person to interview, with the sole motivation of smearing Israel?

Wow.

[begruntled]

20. here is something from 2001 (september 7th)

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/isra-s07.shtml

snip

The Bush administration knows full well that Israel’s claim to be using targeted killings only as a defensive tactic against imminent terrorist attacks is a lie. The US government, the American media and the bulk of the liberal establishment are complicit in a policy of state murder.

Events of the past two weeks have illuminated the real motives behind the series of assassinations carried out by Israel over the past year. On August 27 Israeli helicopters fired two laser-guided missiles into the West Bank office of Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Mustafa, one of the top five officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was the highest-ranking Palestinian to be eliminated in the recent wave of Israeli assassinations.

end snip

I came across articles months ago to suggest The training of the US and the UK began in and around December of 2001.

another recent source...

snip

The major media outlets have ignored the CIA's on-going strategy of mass assassinations as one of the main weapons in Bush's burgeoning global war of terror. This is why it came as something of a shock to highbrows and media elites when Seymour Hersh, in a recent article for The New Yorker, revealed the existence of what he wrongfully referred to as "a new Special Forces operation" that is intended to assassinate the people comprising "the broad middle of the Ba'athist underground."

This is a half-truth at best. To begin with, this is a CIA assassination program, not a Special Forces program; and while Hersh is correct when he says the targets are members of the outlawed Ba'ath Party, he tactfully skirts the fact that this assassination program is illegal because it targets civilians not soldiers. Americans have denied these Iraqui civilians due process in their own country. Based on the word of a single anonymous informant, Ba'ath Party members who have never harmed a single American can be detained indefinitely, tortured until they rat out some colleagres, or become a double agent, or they can be assassinated along with their family, friends and neighbors.

end snip

http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine12112003.html

Three years after the fact the alternative and leftist (independent presses) are on it, but for wsws.org who was really on it a year after the policy already was active. There appears to be an extended dealy regarding independent or alternative press and mainstream of about 5-7 years. Mainstream has yet to touch upon the key strategems from the two very key proposals our illustrious policy mongers are following. That probably won't hit mainstream for another 30 years (particularly if it falls into that rabbit hole and so called "conspiracy theory".

[Resistance]

22. keeping the real agenda secret

is a normal function of today's "mainstream" media. If the American people had any idea the elite corporate/government planners were up to, they would not want any part of it. So they're kept in the dark; remember the same planners are the same ones deciding what programs the American news-viewer will be allowed to watch.

[begruntled]

17. what did Sy Hersh call this in the New Yorker recently?

pre-emptive manhunting! Old news there are articles dating back to 2001 regarding this "consultation" Israel is providing to both the UK and the US.

[Resistance]

24. If anyone is good at assassinations

It's the Israeli military - maybe the US can learn how to murder peace activists and get away with it?