29-10-2004 06:41									#61
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US, Israel prepare mass killings in Iraq
By Bill Vann
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 November’s 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 Washington’s 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 are—we’re already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we’ve 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 week’s New Yorker magazine also warning of a “major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq” and providing additional confirmation of Israel’s role in training those who will carry out the assassination program.

According to Hersh, a new Special Forces group—Task Force 121—has 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 advisers—again, in secret—when 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; it’s 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 Washington’s turn to the Israeli “experts” on repression. Within the last month, four former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s 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 punishment—including the mass destruction of homes and the use of roadblocks and curfews—have 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 Bush’s 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 Sharon’s 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 Boykin’s 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 Pentagon’s 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 Pentagon’s 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

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/d.../iraq-d10.shtml

History of Death squads (long)
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/death_squads.htm

Death Squads for Iraq (some of the articles referred to in the article above)
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/DS4Iraq.html

	29-10-2004 06:50									#62
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quote: What class do you teach Agggy?

At the time I was taking seminars as a TA for an introduction to the history of philosophy course. A lot of students were angry about the war (or pleased) and I gave them the opportunity to talk about it in class, I reserved my own comments (other than to referee the discussion) although I did say that I had attended the protests when the students asked.

	29-10-2004 06:52									#63
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quote: Originally posted by DanS These numbers seem really fishy.

Oh, say we discount it by 50%, 50,000 excess deaths are still very high.

	29-10-2004 09:52									#64
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark 2. Counting common crimes? Cause er, they happen anyway. Youd have to calculate the surplus of deaths from common crimes versus the average.

Crime kinda exploded after the fall of Saddam. Hence the growing number of people who say that life was better under the dictator.

	29-10-2004 10:19									#65
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quote: Originally posted by GePap quote: We started the war. We are therefore responsible for every death that has resulted from the war. No, we are responsible for deaths that occured due to events that would not have happened without the war- events that might have occured with or without the war don't count.

I really can't see the difference between these two claims.

	29-10-2004 18:39									#66
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The WaPo showed the results on a map, by province.

Interesting points - in the one predominantly Kurdish province surveyed (out of 3) the death rate was down, signicantly.

Now one might say that thats because there has been little fighting in the Kurdish north.

In Shiite Karbala province, the death rate was about the same, despite significant fighting in Karbala during the Sadr uprising.

The most dramatic increase in deaths, accounting for about two thirds the violent deaths found, was in Al Anbar province, seat of the insurgency.

Well that makes sense you might say, thats where the US is doing the most bombing, isnt it?

Well yes, but whats striking is that Al Anbar shows, if i read the bar chart accompanying the map correctly, ZERO pre-war deaths. Amazing, a death free province. Well of course it doesnt mean zero deaths - this is a sample of the the population, not the whole population. But based on the survey methodology, it would mean a close to zero death rate. Now i KNOW that Al Anbar was a favored province under the old regime, and received better economic development, social services, etc than other provinces. But close to zero deaths is difficult to credit. And a similar low prewar death rate is shown for the province that includes Tikrit, also very pro-Saddam. So its not just that the most pro-Saddam provinces have the highest post-war death rates, but they have, by far, the lowest pre-war death rates.


Next month, Hopkins school of Public Health surveys sexual behavior in America by asking 16 year old boys how many girls theyve had sex with.

	29-10-2004 18:42									#67
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Yes. It was a foreseeable consequence. It's just like the person who refuses to tell the Nazi soldiers that he has Jews living in his basement. Sure, they are responsible for killing the Jews if he tells them, but he is responsible too, if he knows that they will kill the Jews.

so if you encourage the people of a south american country to support socialism, and they do, and there is a rightist putcsh that is bloody, YOU (to the extent they actually listened to you) are responsible for the deaths at the hands of the putschists?

If you encourage decolonization, and civil war follows, those whose actions led to decolonization are responsible?

	29-10-2004 18:43									#68
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Crime kinda exploded after the fall of Saddam. Hence the growing number of people who say that life was better under the dictator.

yet few want him back. What they want is a strong hand to take on the insurgency.

	29-10-2004 18:45									#69
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Crime kinda exploded after the fall of Saddam. Hence the growing number of people who say that life was better under the dictator.

Some people will say the most exaggerated thing when a situation seems hopeless or desperate, and not mean it.

I seriously doubt the majority of Iraqis would want another dictator like Saddam Insane.

	29-10-2004 20:18									#70
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Friday, October 29, 2004
US Has Killed 100,000 in Iraq: The Lancet

Juan Cole

The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, reports that the US and coalition forces (but mainly the US Air Force) has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians since the fall of Saddam on April 9, 2003. Previous estimates for civilian deaths since the beginning of the war ranged up to 16,000, with the number of Iraqi troops killed during the war itself put at about 6,000.

The troubling thing about these results is that they suggest that the US may soon catch up with Saddam Hussein in the number of civilians killed. How many deaths to blame on Saddam is controverial. He did after all start both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. But he also started suing for peace in the Iran-Iraq war after only a couple of years, and it was Khomeini who dragged the war out until 1988. But if we exclude deaths of soldiers, it is often alleged that Saddam killed 300,000 civilians. This allegation seems increasingly suspect. So far only 5000 or so persons have been found in mass graves. But if Roberts and Burnham are right, the US has already killed a third as many Iraqi civilians in 18 months as Saddam killed in 24 years.

The report is based on extensive household survey research in Iraq in September of 2004. Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham found that the vast majority of the deaths were the result of US aerial bombardment of Iraqi cities, which they found especially hard on "women and children." After excluding the Fallujah data (because Fallujah has seen such violence that it might skew the nationwide averages), they found that Iraqis were about 1.5 times more likely to die of violence during the past 18 months than they were in the year and a half before the war. Before the war, the death rate was 5 per thousand per year, and afterwards it was 7.9 per thousand per year (excluding Fallujah). My own figuring is that, given a population of 25 million, that yields 72,500 excess deaths per year, or at least 100,000 for the whole period since April 9, 2003.

The methodology of this study is very tight, but it does involve extrapolating from a small number and so could easily be substantially incorrect. But the methodology also is standard in such situations and was used in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I think the results are probably an exaggeration. But they can't be so radically far off that the 16,000 deaths previously estimated can still be viewed as valid. I'd say we have to now revise the number up to at least many tens of thousand--which anyway makes sense. The 16,000 estimate comes from counting all deaths reported in the Western press, which everyone always knew was only a fraction of the true total. (I see deaths reported in al-Zaman every day that don't show up in the Western wire services).

The most important finding from my point of view is not the magnitude of civilian deaths, but the method of them. Roberts and Burnham find that US aerial bombardments are killing far more Iraqi civilians than had previously been suspected. This finding is also not a surprise to me. I can remember how, on a single day (August 12), US warplanes bombed the southern Shiite city of Kut, killing 84 persons, mainly civilians, in an attempt to get at Mahdi Army militiamen. These deaths were not widely reported in the US press, especially television. Kut is a small place and has been relatively quiet except when the US has been attacking Muqtada al-Sadr, who is popular among some segments of the population there. The toll in Sadr City or the Shiite slums of East Baghdad, or Najaf, or in al-Anbar province, must be enormous.

I personally believe that these aerial bombardments of civilian city quarters by a military occupier that has already conquered the country are a gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, governing the treatment of populations of occupied territories.

http://www.juancole.com/

Concluding remarks in the Lancet report.

"US General Tommy Franks is widely quoted as saying "we do not do body counts". The Geneva Conventions have clear guidelines about the responsibilities of occupying armies to the civilian population they control. The fact that more than half the deaths reportedly caused by the occupying forces were women and children is cause for concern. In particular, Convention IV, Article 27 states that protected persons "....shall be at all times humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against acts of violence...". It seems difficult to understand how a military force could monitor the extent to which civilians are protected against violence without systematically doing body counts or at least looking at the kinds of causalties they induce. This survey [i.e. that described in the Lancet paper] shows that with modest funds, 4 weeks, and seven Iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian deaths could be obtained. There seems to be little excuse for occupying forces to not be able to provide more precise tallies. In view of the political importance of this conflict, these results should be confirmed by an independent body such as the ICRC, Epicentre or WHO. In the interim, civility and enlightened self-interest demands a re-evaluation of the consequences of weaponry now used by coalition forces in populated areas."

	29-10-2004 20:23									#71
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark yet few want him back. What they want is a strong hand to take on the insurgency.

Prove the first assertion. "They" (surely you are kidding)already have a strong hand. Israeli trained deathsquads and American cluster bombs.

	29-10-2004 20:26									#72
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark If you encourage decolonization, and civil war follows, those whose actions led to decolonization are responsible?

Dropping cluster bombs, imposing lethal sanctions and using deathsquads cannot by any meant be labeled "encouragement."

	29-10-2004 20:39									#73
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using special forces to kill or capture terrorists seems like a good idea.

	29-10-2004 20:56									#74
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It is the special forces who are dressing up as terrorists.
Can you disprove that?

	29-10-2004 20:57									#75
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That 100,000 figure quoted in the Lancet was obtained by asking a very small sample of Iraqi's how many people had died. It's a purely subjective figure.

However, as the US has gagged the Iraqi Health Ministry on such matters, it does suggest the true figure is much larger than the 15,000 figure bleated about.

Last edited by Cruddy on 29-10-2004 at 21:02

	29-10-2004 21:00									#76
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quote: Originally posted by Tripledoc It is the special forces who are dressing up as terrorists. Can you disprove that?

The Iraqi Baath party was responsible for the assasination of John F. Kennedy. Can you disprove that?

	29-10-2004 21:08									#77
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How does it feel to be complicit in mass murder? I am curious.

	29-10-2004 21:16									#78
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How does it feel to lap up every hysterical anti-U.S. article you find? Probably pretty good - makes you feel superior.

Do you apply any sort of critical thinking to the articles you post?

For instance "US, Israel prepare mass killings in Iraq" is riddled with spin, assumptions, and unsupported claims.

I for one am certainly willing to believe the U.S. has been intensifying the use of special forces to fight the insurgency, and furthermore that we're getting help from the Israelis, and finally that such cooperation is "hush-hush" since Israel is hated in the Arab world.

That does not add up to the U.S. preparing for mass killings in Iraq.

-Arrian

	29-10-2004 21:36									#79
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Were losing. Of course there are civilian casualties sadly. But keep in mind we are fighting a pretty intense guerilla war.

I will also point out that Sanctions under the former regime killed around 20,000 per month.

It isnt too late to turn this thing around. But we wont. We seem to be ok with letting 3 groups run around and cause trouble

Lets look at the problem groups in there classifications

Tikrit,Mosul,Baghdad, Sammarra

I) Former Regime Loyalist- About 20,000 Ex Republican Gaurd and Ex Fedayeen. Including former Baath party militia. This is the biggest threat to the new Iraq. There Devotion to Saddam to stupid but more and more its becoming nationalism. We know that these guys are being led by Izzat Ibrahim.


II) Foriegn Fighters about 2,000 of them

Fallujah, Ramadi, Tal Afar, Baghdad

Foriegners linked with Abu Musab Zarqawi. Another large threat. You can bet every car bomb that goes off in Iraq is from this group. There seems to be an actual conflict between Saddam Loyal groups and the foriegn fighters. Some foriegn fighters had been found without heads and some shot execution style. The 2 groups dont seem to like each other. Evidence shows foriegn fighters arent responsible for many of the ambushes either. Thats probably cause there terrorists and not former soldiers.


III) Shiite

Led by Sadr. Fortunately this group has been knocked out of the equasion in the last 6 weeks


What we need to do.
I) Go into Fallujah guns blazing. Get control of the city. We havent patrolled the streets of fallujah sinch May of 2003! Go in hard. The city is really a dagger in the side


II) Restore the Iraqi economy. I mean REALLY restore it. Provide basic services, give the people something to do besides join rebel groups.


III) Legalize the baath party again. Outlawing was way too far. Let people be whatever political affiliiation they want to be. Half of the fighters loyal to saddam would of NEVER taken up arms against us had we promised them an actual future in the new iraq. Instead we told them they couldnt take part in the government, they couldnt vote, and they couldnt even get jobs. Did you know that? They arent allowed jobs in the new Iraq? No positions of power? Nothing...there expected to do what? Renounce there political beliefs and then what. They still are excluded from the New Iraq.

Geez if Bush had told me I couldnt get a job or couldnt call the fire department when my house was burned down cause i voted for clinton years ago. Of course Ide be pissed and take up arms

	29-10-2004 21:55									#80
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quote: Some foriegn fighters had been found without heads and some shot execution style.

Clearly the word of the Zionist-Crusader Death Squads brought to our attention by Tripledoc!

-Arrian

	29-10-2004 22:42									#81
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from rantingprofessors blog

"Well, I look forward to reading the full study in Lancet, but if you come up with more civilian deaths by an order of magnitude than the man who claimed more civilian deaths in Afghanistan than the Taliban, something just ain't right.

And this is supposed to be strictly counting deaths after the combat phase, and mostly in Fallujah?

Most of the casualties occurred after the end of major hostilities in May 2003, researchers said in the study. Observations suggest that civilian deaths since the war are mostly caused by air strikes, the survey said. Two-thirds of the deaths were in the insurgent-held Sunni Muslim Iraqi city of Fallujah, the study said.

Every airstrike on Fallujah is reported. To reach these levels we would have had to have seen a Dresden-level of destruction. Before civilians began to get out of dodge ahead of what looks to be coming, the size of the city's population was 300,000. If two thirds of the casualties were in the city, that isn't quite one third of the population dead, but it's close.

Is it even plausible that that level of destruction could have happened without the press screaming blue bloody murder? For God's sake, how many times did they report the false claim that the April seige had caused 600 casualties? This simply could not have happened without the press getting wind of it and reporting it. It. Is. Not. Plausible. Is it plausible that the city's population would have been so decimated, yet the terrorists (who claim that every airstrike hits civilians) wouldn't have mentioned anything? Even. Less. Plausible.

I would remind you that the firebombing of Dresden and the firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000.

While this researcher is apparently a very spiritual man, and that's lovely, his specialty does not seem to have much to do with the very arcane specialty of determining casualties due to the impact of war.

I'll read the Lancet study, but of course by then, everyone will "know" that the war caused 100,000 civilian deaths, won't they?"

	29-10-2004 22:51									#82
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quote: Originally posted by Arrian I for one am certainly willing to believe the U.S. has been intensifying the use of special forces to fight the insurgency, and furthermore that we're getting help from the Israelis, and finally that such cooperation is "hush-hush" since Israel is hated in the Arab world.

This is what the article says, and its claims are fully supported.

quote: That does not add up to the U.S. preparing for mass killings in Iraq. -Arrian

They do have a good point with this, though:

quote: 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.

The title may be exaggerated (papers always do that to draw readers) but the concerns it expresses are justified.

	30-10-2004 00:53									#83
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quote: Originally posted by Tripledoc How does it feel to be complicit in mass murder? I am curious.

You can go ahead and call it mass murder if it makes you feel like you have a bigger d!ck.

	30-10-2004 01:04									#84
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quote: Is it even plausible that that level of destruction could have happened without the press screaming blue bloody murder?

Al Jazeera?

	30-10-2004 01:45									#85
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Fake Boris ( ) -

quote: This is what the article says, and its claims are fully supported.

That's what the article's factual content says, yes. The article says more than that. Take, for instance, this segment:

quote: “No one wants to talk about this; it’s 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 last bit - on the assassination program is the article's spin. What the unnamed Israeli source actually SAID was that US-Israeli cooperation wrt Iraq is being kept hush-hush. The reasons for that ought to be obvious.

quote: They do have a good point with this, though: quote: 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. The title may be exaggerated (papers always do that to draw readers) but the concerns it expresses are justified.

I *do* understand that concern. I share it.

But I was talking to Tripledoc, Oncle. Specifically, I bit on his "mass murder" troll.

-Arrian

	30-10-2004 01:55									#86
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Al Jazeera?

even al jizz hasnt claimed 50000 plus deaths in Fallujah.

	30-10-2004 01:56									#87
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark using special forces to kill or capture terrorists seems like a good idea.

I fully agree, as long as they are brave enough to hold their fire until they have the correct target in their scope. But using heavy machine guns, AC-130's and F-16's is a bad idea.

	30-10-2004 01:57									#88
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quote: Originally posted by Chemical Ollie I fully agree, as long as they are brave enough to hold their fire until they have the correct target in their scope. But using heavy machine guns, AC-130's and F-16's is a bad idea.

er, heavy machine guns? Youre supposed to go after people hitting you with RPGs and automatics using what, pistols?

Look, this is war. If its necessary, air support should certainly be used. Guarantee you, when we go into Fallujah it will be cleaner that what the Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis would have done on their own.

	30-10-2004 01:58									#89
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Blaming Bush for the people killed by terrorists in Iraq is like blaming Hitler for the Dresden bombings

	30-10-2004 02:00									#90
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark er, heavy machine guns? Youre supposed to go after people hitting you with RPGs and automatics using what, pistols?

Heavy machine gun bullets go right through concrete buildings, killing people you don't even see, a mile away.