September 13, 2008

Bob Woodward’s newest book "the War within" which he reveals in it how the Bush administration has administrated the war in Iraq and in it he talks about a US secret program to counter the Iraqi insrugency. Woodward told CNN’s Larry king, earlier this week, that he has obtained secret information on the workings of US military in Iraq that enabled the US forces to stem the tide of violence and al-Qaeda terrorism in Iraq.

Though it looks like it is a super secret as to what kind of program the US forces had developed to counter the military-style attacks in Iraq against its forces, but this supposed super secret is not quite that big of a secret after all.

It was reported in the US and British press as far back as 2003 that the US forces is using the Israeli Army tactics and Israeli advisers for training and consultations to counter the insurgency in Iraq. In a 2003 article titled"Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq" the British newspaper the Guardian Reported that "The Israeli defense Force (IDF) has send urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources , Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq"

Israel has developed urban warfare tactics due its decades long occupation of Palestinian lands and its tight control over the population. Israel has been killing off the leadership of Palestinian resistance and organizations leaders through its "Arabaized units" known as Dovdovan" in Hebrew who operate by infiltrating and blending in with the local population as well as dress in Arab clothes and speak fluent Arabic in order to assassinate Palestinian leaders. The Israeli tactics however are illegal under international law because the Israeli presence in the Palestinian territories is also illegal.

Moreover, Israel was successful in its assassination program in part due to its use of huge network of spies and informants to pinpoint Palestinian members of organizations Israel deems terrorist and deals them a fatal blow. Though Israel has mastered this technique but it is far from subduing the Palestinians and eradicating their resistance to its occupation.

Elaborating on the Israeli connection in Iraq, the Guardian reported" This is basically an assassination program. That is what is being conceptualized here. This is a hunter killer team" said a former senior US intelligence official .

Israeli presence in Iraq well documented in the press . Israel maintains a well established relations with Kurds in northern Iraq and it has set up shop to operate its intelligence network with the Kurdish and Iraqi leaders to spy on Iran and the Iraqi leadership as it was widely reported by the New Yorker Magazine reporter Seymour Hersh.

Hersh was perhaps the first western journalist to report on the assignation teams set up in Iraq by the US military with the help of Israeli army personal in Iraq and in the US in a well known piece in the New Yorker magazine titled " Moving Targets" in December of 2003.

This 'assassination teams" strategy, almost an exact copy of Israel’s assignation campaigns against Palestinians, was formulated during former defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who through his under secretary of defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, has been deeply involved in developing the new special forces approach wrote Hersh in 2003 in the New Yorker.

Though it remains to be a well guarded secret as to how this program works but it appears to be working in reducing and in some cases stemming violence in vast regions of Iraq. And if we take into consideration that this program has succeeded in its goals, for the time being, especially in combination of other factors such as the decision of young shia leader Muqtada Sadr to freeze his Mahdi Army military confrontation with the US and Iraqi forces, and the decision of the Sunni tribes in al-Anbar to abandon Al-Qiada who shot itself in the foot by adopting harsh tactics and inflaming the secretion passions with it indiscriminate suicide bombing campaigns against shia and Sunni populations centers.

Another key player in this secretive program is General William" Jerry" Boykin a controversial General with fanatical anti-Muslim hatred and who had made some inflammatory remarks against the religion of Islam and Muslims. General Boykin remarked in 2003 to an evangelical group meeting about his experience in Somalia in the nineties that he worships the true God while his enemies, in Somalia, the Muslims worship "False God"

Boykin is a well know neocon whose world is black and white, a world raging with battles between good and evil as he sees it. In June of 2003,Boykin repeatedly equated the Muslim world with Satan in an interview with the Oregonian newspaper He remarked: "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian Army"


(Ali Alarabi is an award winning Arab-American journalist and columnist and member of Arab writers group syndicate. He can be reached at http://TheArabDesk.blogspot.com and by email at alialarabi1@aol.com.)
Notes:

1:George Bush must remove General: by Ali Alarabi, Chicago Sun Times, 2003
2:Moving Targets: by Seymour Hersh;New Yorker 2003
3:Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq; Julian Borger, the Guardian, 2003zopinionz