November 22, 2004 - Is there a reason Margaret Hassan was killed and Teresa Borcz Khalifa was not? Hassan was British, married to an Iraqi, and worked for the humanitarian organization CARE, while Borcz Khalifa was Polish, also married to an Iraqi, and worked for Poland’s embassy in Iraq in the early 1990s. Teresa Borcz Khalifa was kidnapped on October 28 and Margaret Hassan was kidnapped on October 19. Khalifa appeared in two videos aired on al-Jazeera, pleading with her government to pull its troops from the country. Hassan also appeared in a video, imploring British troops to leave Iraqi. The resistance group that kidnapped Khalifa, Abu Bakr al-Seddiq al-Salafiya (Salafist) Brigades, made certain to their banner was visible in the video they released, while no such insignia or identification was shown in the Hassan video, or did any particular group claim responsibility for abducting her. "I was held in good conditions and treated well and that gave me hope that I’d be freed," Borcz Khalifa told al-Jazeera upon her release ( http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/62DE0967-9F1A-4323-96
F0-983EBF791294.htm ). Hassan was executed.

"If anyone doubted the murderous nature of the insurgents, what better way to prove their viciousness than to produce evidence of Margaret Hassan’s murder?" asked Robert Fisk of the UK Independent ( http://www.uruknet.info/?p=7305 ). "Even in the topsy-turvy world of Iraq, nobody is suggesting that people associated with the government of Mr Allawi had a hand in Margaret Hassan’s death." Maybe not Allawi who, after all, takes his orders from Bush and the Pentagon. Of course, the assumption is that the Iraqi resistance killed Hassan, even though this makes absolutely no sense, that is unless there are people running around Iraq, as there are in America and elsewhere, who get their kicks murdering people. It’s possible. Serial murderers usually don’t release videos.

So who killed Hassan? Christian Harleman and Jan Oberg speculate on the Counterpunch site ( http://www.counterpunch.org/oberg11172004.html ): "Desperate, fanatic people who thereby cast a dark shadow over their nationality, organization, religion and philosophy. People who mistakenly believe that a better Iraq will emerge from such a crime and who cares nil for the welfare of the Iraqi people to whom she devoted most of her life and work. Or someone related to the occupation forces seeking to discredit the image of all Iraqi resistance."

It appears Hassan’s killers are not "desperate, fanatic people," at least not desperate, fanatic people from the Iraqi resistance.

In September, 2003, Jim Simpson, a contributing editor of DefenseWatch, posted an interesting article about counterinsurgency in Iraq ( http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Defensewatch_0917
03_Scouts,00.html ). "As I first noted last February, only by completely destroying the Ba’ath party would a peaceful, stable Iraq emerge. Despite their best efforts, the coalition has not yet found an effective way to deal with them. I have an answer: bring back the Selous Scouts," writes Simpson.

Of the many special forces units formed throughout history, the Scouts are perhaps one of the least known but most effective ever fielded. Named after famed Rhodesian hunter and bushman, Frederick C. Selous, the Scouts were a mixed-race unit formed by the Rhodesian government in 1973 in response to the civil war being waged by communist insurgents. … The Scouts utilized an innovative formula to break the secrecy of [insurgent] cells. They perfected the "pseudo team" counter-insurgency concept, originally developed by the British in 1951 in response to the Malayan communist insurgency. Like the fabled Trojan Horse, groups of fake or "pseudo" terrorists would enter an area and attempt to gain acceptance within the actual insurgent network.

As we know, the Ba’ath Party is now coordinating the military aspects of the Iraqi resistance.

V.I. Kurochkin ( http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAP/is_1_11/ai_8
5071904 ), in Military Thought, writes that "[p]reemption in counterinsurgency warfare" includes "infiltration of insurgent units," "creation of false guerrilla units," and "provoking insurgents into action doomed to failure."

In August 2002, the idea of "provoking insurgents" emerged in a report issued by the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory group. Pamela Hess of the UPI reported ( http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020925-041703-4695r ):

The report, which reads in parts like a fantastical "spy vs. spy" manual, will … advocate tagging key terrorist figures with special chemicals so they can be tracked by laser anywhere on Earth; creating a special SWAT team to surreptitiously find and destroy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons all over the world; and creating a "red team" of particularly diabolical thinkers to plot imaginary terror attacks on the United States so the government can plan to thwart them. … The counter-terror operations group alone would require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. Rather than simply trying to find and foil terrorists’ plans – the approach that characterizes the current strategy—the "Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group"—known as P2OG—would devise ways to stimulate terrorists into responding or moving operations, possibly by stealing their money or tricking them with fake communications, according to the report.

"The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities," William Arkin ( http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1028-11.htm ), a military analyst, reported for the Los Angeles Times on October 27, 2002. "The new apparatus for covert operations and the growing government secrecy associated with the war on terrorism reflect the way the Bush administration’s most senior officials see today’s world … and thus justifies … aggressive new 'off-the-books’ tactics."

This "elite secret army" is to be modeled on the Army’s Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA. In May 1982, Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci called the ISA "uncoordinated and uncontrolled." It reportedly worked behind the scenes in Somalia and Bosnia.

P2OG "is the latest sign of a new assertiveness by the Defense Department in intelligence matters, and an indication that the cutting edge of intelligence reform is not to be found in Congress but behind closed doors in the Pentagon," the Federation of American Scientists ( http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/10/102802.html )reported on October 28, 2002.

Finally, is it possible the Pentagon and the CIA—or whatever other covert intelligence organizations we have no knowledge about—would actually abduct and kill innocent people in an effort to discredit the Iraqi resistance or drive humanitarian workers out of Iraq?

If you think not, consider Operation Northwoods (as described by David Ruppe: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3140.htm ):

In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban emigres, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

For more on Operation Northwoods, see Excerpts from declassified 1962 U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Memo Operation Northwoods, Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/Northwoods.html .

Is the Hassan murder a P2OG operation?

Or is the Iraqi resistance simply comprised of blood-thirsty maniacs?