US, Israel Prepare
Mass Killings
In Iraq
By Bill Vann
World
Socialist Web
10 December 2003
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 Novembers 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 Washingtons 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 arewere
already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and weve 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 weeks New Yorker magazine also warning of a major escalation
of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq and providing additional
confirmation of Israels role in training those who will carry
out the assassination program.
According to Hersh,
a new Special Forces groupTask Force 121has 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 advisersagain,
in secretwhen 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;
its 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 Washingtons turn to the Israeli experts on
repression. Within the last month, four former heads of Shin Bet, Israels
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 punishmentincluding the mass
destruction of homes and the use of roadblocks and curfewshave
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 Bushs
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 Sharons 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 Boykins
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 Pentagons 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 Pentagons 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.