Another way station on our plunge into darkness was passed last week with the publication of Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within. Along with the usual backstairs gossip dished out by self-serving insiders eager to plant their spin on events, Woodward revealed -- or, rather, confirmed -- the existence of what he called the key element to the "success" of Bush's escalation of the war crime in Iraq: a "secret killing program" aimed at assassinating anyone arbitrarily deemed a "terrorist" by the leaders of the foreign forces occupying the conquered land. In a TV appearance to puff the book, Woodward celebrated the arbitrary murder, by methods unknown, of people designated "terrorists," by criteria unknown, as "a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have." The White House acknowledged the existence of the assassination program, but insisted that it was the "surge" of troops that was mainly responsible for the drop in violence from the howling hell of 2006 to today's level, which, as Juan Cole has pointed out, is still greater than some of the most horrific civic conflicts of the last century..
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A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite
Chris Floyd
September 16, 2008
Terror the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy the Human Dress
-- William Blake
I.
Another way station on our plunge into darkness was passed last week with the publication of Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within. Along with the usual backstairs gossip dished out by self-serving insiders eager to plant their spin on events, Woodward revealed -- or, rather, confirmed -- the existence of what he called the key element to the "success" of Bush's escalation of the war crime in Iraq: a "secret killing program" aimed at assassinating anyone arbitrarily deemed a "terrorist" by the leaders of the foreign forces occupying the conquered land.
In a TV appearance to puff the book, Woodward celebrated the arbitrary murder, by methods unknown, of people designated "terrorists," by criteria unknown, as "a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have." The White House acknowledged the existence of the assassination program, but insisted that it was the "surge" of troops that was mainly responsible for the drop in violence from the howling hell of 2006 to today's level, which, as Juan Cole has pointed out, is still greater than some of the most horrific civic conflicts of the last century. (It is a strange country indeed that can celebrate the creation of a blood-gushing sinkhole of violence and destruction as a "success beyond our wildest dreams," to use Barack Obama's new take on the surge.)
Of course, Woodward, the consummate Beltway courtier, embraces this bipartisan conventional wisdom about the success of the surge. And he is certainly right, at least from one point of view, as we noted here recently:
The "surge" -- which in addition to an influx of troops included the ruthless ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, the walled ghettoization of vast swathes of the city, and the arming and funding of violent sectarian militias across the land -- certainly succeeded in extending the duration of the murder, suffering and chaos engendered by America's armed and belligerent presence in Iraq. So it is indeed a great "success" ... in the same way that, say, Albert Speer's miraculous efforts to keep the Nazi war machine going from 1943 to 1945 -- resulting in the deaths of millions of people, including the worst ravages of the Holocaust -- was a "success."
But beyond this little insider quibble over the most effective element in the prolongation of the war -- Woodward, a former military intelligence officer, naturally plumps for the covert op, while the White House ballyhoos the high-profile presidential directive to increase troop levels -- what is most noteworthy about the "revelations" is that they have provoked no controversy at all. The United States admits that it is operating secret death squads in Iraq, and this barely rates a passing mention in the press, and certainly no comment whatsoever on the campaign trail, no debate among the national leadership. And this despite the fact that, as Woodward makes clear, the targets of the American death squads are not merely "terrorists," as the general public broadly understands the term -- i.e., religious extremists in the al Qaeda mold -- but anyone arbitrarily designated an "insurgent" or a leader in "the resistance."
That is, anyone who resists the invasion and occupation of his native land is deemed a legitimate target for a secret death squad. For execution without charges, without trial, without evidence. And this, to Woodward, is "wonderful" and "amazing." By this logic, of course, the Nazis were fully justified in murdering leaders of the French resistance in World War II. The British would certainly have been justified in sneaking into George Washington's house and killing the insurgent leader in his bed. (And his wife too, no doubt, as an acceptable level of "collateral damage.") In fact, Woodward sternly warns members -- members, mind you, not just leaders -- of "the resistance" to "get your rear end out of town;" i.e., leave your native land or else be murdered in your bed by secret assassins of the occupying power.
This is the heroic, honorable stance of the American elite in the 21st century. What the Nazis did, we do, and for the same reason: to secure the forcible occupation of a land we conquered through an unprovoked war of aggression. It is indeed wonderful and amazing that such a state of affairs -- such an abyss of depravity -- is accepted so calmly by the great and good among us....and by tens of millions of our fellow citizens.
II.
But as noted above, there is really nothing new about Woodward's "revelations." I've been writing here, and elsewhere, for several years about the "global death squad" of the Terror War. These reports were based not on any insider knowledge but on universally accessible stories from the most staid and respectable media sources: mainstream papers, news agencies, leading magazines, etc.
And of course, it began long before the war crime in Iraq. As I noted in 2005:
On September 17, 2001,
George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal
measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated
an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial
evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no
law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents
in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own
initiative and kill them as they see fit.
The existence of this universal death squad
– and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not
provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy
in the American Establishment, although it's no secret. The executive
order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001. I first wrote of it in my Moscow Times column in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002.
That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also
applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.
The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month,
when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza
Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the
site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew,
Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to
terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but
killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.
But most of the
assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like
a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put
it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate
clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover
arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."
The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on "extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004:
" Empowering governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places
no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those
against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists… While it is
portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually
creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category
to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political
opponents, or others."
It's hard to believe
that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he
could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard
to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history
or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power,
knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is what the great and
good in America have done. And this is what they continue to do, to this very day, this very hour, as the non-response to Woodward's macabre and freakish celebration of covert murder demonstrates so clearly.
(Continued after the jump.)
In Iraq, the death squads were in operation almost from the start. For example, one of the earliest reports about the American formation of "paramilitaries" and "commando squads" to "track down" insurgents came from the Washington Post in December 2003:
Two weeks ago, the U.S. occupation authority decided to form a paramilitary unit to track down insurgents. The unit, composed of Iraqi militiamen from the country's five largest political parties, will work with U.S. Special Forces soldiers, and their operations will be overseen by U.S. military commanders. Since the summer, the CIA has recruited and trained some former Iraqi intelligence agents to help identify the insurgents...
An even earlier Post report, in August 2003, also noted the hiring of Baathist operatives to hunt "insurgents." As I put it in the Moscow Times that month:
Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."
Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam's murderous security forces on America's payroll.
Yes, the sahibs in Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo – perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad – and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.
Naturally, the Iraqi people – even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin "Governing Council" – aren't exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam's goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they're certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam's most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis – men, women and children as young as 11 – seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their "disappeared" loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: "No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave." Perhaps an Iraqi Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.
So here -- in August 2003 -- the leading newspaper in the nation's capital is openly reporting that goon squads are being sent to take care of insurgents and "terrorists," while the leading newspaper in the capital of America's war ally, Britain, is openly reporting that the notorious Abu Ghraib prison is being glutted with new captives -- including children -- sealed off behind American razor wire. The seedbed of the whole panalopy of the horrors to come was already there, in the open, from the very beginning.
And so it went on. As I noted early last year:
As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars,"
New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W.
Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized
the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including
a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads
employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during
the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their
teeth – and made their bones."Do
you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?" a former
high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we
financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we
want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon
insider added: "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys." Another
role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said
Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during
the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created
their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and
killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising. Bush's
formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already
securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world
into a "global free-fire zone" for covert operatives, as one top
Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and
"stimulate" them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then
writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the "Proactive,
Pre-emptive Operations Group," was described in the Pentagon documents
as "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that brings "together CIA
and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover
and deception."Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" to
serve as U.S. proxies for "counter-insurgency and "counterterrorist"
operations in "ungoverned areas" and hot spots around the world, Agence
France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These
hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an
"arc of crisis" that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing
lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East,
Africa and South America...Brazen daylight
raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos
or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time.
For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies – including
veterans of the original "Salvador Option" – insisted that these were
Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were
Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were
now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had
"infiltrated" Iraq's institutions. But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of
information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public
Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to
"rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of
government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by
Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets.
As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior,
you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever
a U.S. colonel enters the room." ...With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war – infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" – it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.
Or as Blake put it:
The Human Dress is forged Iron
The Human Form a fiery Forge
The Human Face a Furnace Seal'd
The Human Heart its hungry Gorge
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:: Article nr. 47284 sent on 16-sep-2008 19:27 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=47284
Link: www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1604/135/
:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.
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| Comment by george - 17 Sep 2008 - 20:38 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | Well phrased, my friend. |
| Comment by richard h. clark - 17 Sep 2008 - 21:38 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | My sincerest apologies for the unforgivable behavior of the American government. Some of us are indeed trying to stop the atrocities. MiddleClass2008.com
|
| Comment by musings - 17 Sep 2008 - 22:26 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | Just today, a Nobel prizewinner in economics declared that the "innovations" of the financial industry are just another way to cover up the age-old pyramid sche me, known by other names, but always the same.
So we are faced with reality, in a sliding market. Eventually the light shines.
So it is with the "great and good" of Washington and all their burnishing lipsti ck on the real pig: a totally unjustified war on false pretenses, with probably the vague hope of securing the "oil pie" (oozing oil close to the surface, light ly dusted with sand), and with protecting Israel and supposedly ourselves from t errorists like the deadly mideasterners who pulled off Oklahoma City and later the anthrax (oh - they didn't do those? well at least there's 9/11, which is sacred ground because terrorists did that)...
"Thou shalt not kill." It was violated, it was justified, it was hoked up. Those who are lashing out in the defense of their families or homes or countries are designated as worthy of summary execution, and this is supposed to be an...."inn ovation" ....
Are we making out like bandits yet? Have we secured the peace? Is it fun to fly these days? Are we enjoying a golden age in the Homeland? No? Well, why the hel l not?
Could it be that when you sell your soul, the devil never lets you enjoy the pro mised bounty? Maybe. |
| Comment by farawayray - 18 Sep 2008 - 00:47 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | I don't know why everyone gets so upset everytime the United States gets into a war ??? That's what we do. It goes with the territory, I am almost 70 years old and my country has been fighting the whole time. What do you want to do? disband the military? War isn't "nice" but unless you folks that are so "Shocked" at ou r wars want to live in some other country ,[which is what would be happening right now were it not for our fighting men and women] you just have to control yourselves, THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE! and you don't anyway better. |
| Comment by joe kim - 18 Sep 2008 - 02:48 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | Everyone should read War is a Racket by the two time Congressional Medal of Hono r Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired |
| Comment by ahmed - 18 Sep 2008 - 03:12 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | KillAllSunnis! |
| Comment by mohammed - 18 Sep 2008 - 03:13 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | No,KillAllShi'a!!! |
| Comment by bobo - 18 Sep 2008 - 03:14 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | HeyYouGuys!
StopThat!
Let'sKill'emAll&LetGod(Allah)sortThemOut!!! |
| Comment by flipzeppelin - 18 Sep 2008 - 04:01 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | 'What the Nazis did'
I think it's time to drop the comparison with the Nazis. We don't in fact know a nything about what they did because the entire history of WWII is shrouded in my thology and apologetics for the US/UK/USSR axis of evil. Many if not most of the crimes attributed to the Nazis turn out to be false, and Katyn is not the only one. So please let's not discuss the current policies of the US government by using the mostly mythical crimes of the Nazis as some kind of absolute yardstick. |
| Comment by wargames - 18 Sep 2008 - 09:15 [REGISTERED USER] | Chris Floyd is a brilliant writer, and it is a pleasure to read his work. His w riting is so good he almost makes one forget that what he is describing here is the death of everything that was once decent in the American psyche and its repl acement by the mind of ... how can I express it? The only name I can put to it is the heart of Antichrist. As horrific as what he describes and documents is, it keeps getting worse and worse, and worse. The soul of America is imploding. This implosion seems destined to create a kind of singularity of evil that has no dimensions; a passage to another universe, one of pain, suffering, chaos, and the denial of everything good and noble: a passage to Hell.
And it is happening so fast! It is as if our whole society is transforming befo re our eyes into an enormous, hideous, ravening beast! Even comparisons to the transformation of the German people under Hitler seem to pale by comparison. We are creating a new standard of totalitarian transformation of a people. But wh at will we be when the transformation is complete, if it ever is complete? I can't even imagine it.
Perhaps our transformation is happening so quickly because all the elements of t otalitarianism have been present in American society for some time. If you look at the period when we first began to acquire our empire, you can identify eleme nts of totalitarian control, even if only in embryonic form. The first element was mind control through not only media, but through our society itself. Americans have always been the world's most mind-controlled people, because our society has instilled in us a denial of reality in favor of a false view of ourselves. This was fostered by our theory and practice of "democracy," which, as the French historian D'Tocqueville pointed out after his journey though America in 1835, was never true democracy, but a facsimile, an image of it that was always at odds with reality. This disconnect between our conception of ourselves and the reality has gotten continuously more profound as time has progressed, and has, in effect, fragmented the American psyche into several elements that are unaware of each other, exactly as Adolph Mengele, the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, discovered from his "experiments" with concentration-camp victims, who he subjected to horrific psychic trauma in order to induce a fracturing of consciousness. Though our psychic fracturing is not primarily trauma-based, it makes the American mind vulnerable to manipulation and control.
Because of this and many more elements in our society and history, Americans hav e always been vulnerable to totalitarianism, and more and more elements of it ha ve surfaced over the last century, in particular. |
| Comment by the.real.gipsy - 18 Sep 2008 - 15:19 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | What's going on is not only in USA but all over. It's the new world order. But THE ALMIGHTY will eventually take care of it. |
| Comment by shocked - 18 Sep 2008 - 16:04 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | | 70 years old and still an idiot? |
| Comment by masher1 - 18 Sep 2008 - 17:17 [REGISTERED USER] | | Hey America Your looking down the barrel of a VERY loaded shotgun. |
| Comment by masher1 - 18 Sep 2008 - 17:29 [REGISTERED USER] | The ONLY hope you have is to come out with your government raised over your head whilst you offer them to the wolves at your doorstep DEMANDING YOU PAY UP!
there is no telling the shit-kicking the good Ol USA will get if this gets serio usly out of hand but this is going to have to be said....
If you fuck up America NUCLEAR WEAPONS are going to come and visit AMERICA for t his error.
You Arrogant Yanks are just going to have to get the message "You DONT RUN THE WHOLE WORLD"
Just one of your nukes used to further your empire and SPLAT the whole game goes into fallout land for final innings. |
| Comment by indignation - 18 Sep 2008 - 20:01 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | Heart In Darkness
Vile symphonies of thought wave, gather round the hearts of men
Buried in the fleshy shroud, Ancient worship of OMEN
Phantom riders saddle there, mixed with passion, lust and greed
Images of a glorious story, the heart creates a dust filled creed
Heart fed mind, mind fed heart, draws the darkness ever near
Solitary through the ages...gray mass of wanton knowledge...fear!
The creature's nostrils flare with fire, exploits the body to the grave
Bent....the image of itself, The mortal soul it cannot save.
Horrors of the earth will be, and often we shall see
What men shall do to other lives, till death has set them free.
Man's destruction waits for him, quick judgement we shall see
Beyond the tomb, One Holy God.
Where will you spend Eternity???
|
| Comment by tseeess - 18 Sep 2008 - 23:58 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | Now hold on just a cotton-pickin' minute, mother fucker!
The "great and the good in America" have nothing to do with this shit.
Try to cut a finer line with your hyperbole. |
| Comment by demosthenes - 21 Sep 2008 - 20:18 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | An excellent piece. Woodward, of course is but one step from the reasoning of St alin, so death-defying also applies- to him, "terrorist"
also encompassed "intellectual" of which he felt the regime had no need, and for that matter "scientist" as the state would decide what was scientific truth an d what was not (thus the retarded state of Russian science and technology until recent times). Even their military
has been hobbled by the Lenin dictum, acquiring the force of reality that "quant ity has a quality all its own." What is truly fearsome is
Woodward's 1984-ish sense of omnipotence combined with U.S. technological capabi lities that Orwell did not dream of- armed drones with operators thousands of mi les away, casually killing at will, maybe with a second computer window also op en to browse the sports news. |
| Comment by masher1 - 21 Sep 2008 - 22:46 [REGISTERED USER] | 'great and the good in America'?
Boy are you in for a RUDE awaking.
America is in DEEP.
Don't allow this delusional wishful thinking to keep up YOUR whole life is depen dent on you Yanks getting the message Quick... You or YOUR LEADERS Don't run the WHOLE WORLD.
Claims of 'The great and the good in America' of being Above this and the like a re NOT going to do anything as you all starve for stupid reasons of greed and li es.
End Lies and Secrets and you may be around tomorrow. Fail and your collective Ev il ways are GOING to end One Way Or Another.
Denial or Truth.
I would work it out QUICK America your time of lies is over.
Moving on to Peace is the only way. |
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