I.
If some idiot with a blog could see this fiasco coming two years ago, why couldn’t the world’s most powerful military — and its most expensive and sophisticated intelligence agency — see it as well?
II.
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June 21, 2005
Dining With the Devil +
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The thing that really annoys me about Billmon seeing in 2003 what Newsweek is just starting to understand is that in Bush’s radio speech recently, he engaged in all this mind reading.
He was constantly commenting on what the motivations of the resistance members were and what they were after.
But if the Prez and his henchmen were so gol-durn smart and had such insight into the minds of the resistance members, why did Newsweek have so litte insight into their ability to penetrate our securiy screening? How come our security people can’t detect the double agents?
from todays iraqi press monitor
Former Ba’athists Negotiate With Americans
(Al-Mutamar) The interim leadership of the dissolved Ba’ath party is holding negotiations with the Americans but not with the Iraqi government. A party leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the negotiators have presented a list of conditions issued by the party, including freeing arrested members and ending the hunt for its members. But the group did not say what it will do in return. Banian al-Jerbe, spokesman of the constitutional monarchy, said the Ba’athists refused to negotiate with the Iraqi government and preferred the Americans instead, but there have been no results to report so far.
(Al-Mutamar is issued daily by the Iraqi National Congress.)
Posted by: annie | Jun 21 2005 16:44 utc | 2
I thought you might like this type – where Bush Rushing To War became Bush Rusing To War. how appropriate is that?
Posted by: James Governor | Jun 21 2005 17:20 utc | 3
There is more carried over from Saddams Iraq to Bush’s Iraq:
Iraqi Security Tactics Evoke the Hussein Era
Up to 60% of the estimated 12,000 detainees in the country’s prisons and military compounds face intimidation, beatings or torture that leads to broken bones and sometimes death, said Saad Sultan, head of a board overseeing the treatment of prisoners at the Human Rights Ministry. He added that police and security forces attached to the Interior Ministry are responsible for most abuses.
The units have used tactics reminiscent of
Saddam Hussein’s secret intelligence squads, according to the ministry and independent human rights groups and lawyers, who have cataloged abuses.
“We’ve documented a lot of torture cases,” said Sultan, whose committee is pushing for wider access to Iraqi-run prisons across the nation. “There are beatings, punching, electric shocks to the body, including sensitive areas, hanging prisoners upside down and beating them and dragging them on the ground…. Many police officers come from a culture of torture from their experiences over the last 35 years. Most of them worked during Saddam’s regime.”
Especially with the U.S. example in mind, they just do what the may have been used to do.
I recall having dinner once with a former US military intelligence officer who’d been grievously injured in the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing and his startling comment about how they were caught off guard in part due to the poorly understood fact that their opponents were not playing by the same rules of engagement.
This stuff would be amusing if it weren’t for the fact that while we sit in comfort discussing this sad state of affairs an Iraqi family will be cowering in the shadows once again caught between a rock and a hard place just because someone in the family is believed to have something a petty but unprinicipled official is envious of.
The types that work in organisations like the Mukhabaret stay constant no matter what regime holds power. They range from the easier to comprehend sadist to the simple greedhead to those who see other humans as merely a means to their own self actualisation.
The skills remain unchanged from regime to regime along with the motivation, therefore these lowlifes have no difficulty in ‘swimming with the tide’.
It is interesting when one comes undone tho.
Stories of the dreadful Adnan Thabit who was claimed to have been assasinated by a resistance hit squad. were just that; stories. Of course it would be nice to imagine that Thabit finally found a principle he couldn’t ignore. That somewhere inside him was a piece of honour that he couldn’t betray and he drew the line at the crude attempts by some in the new Iraqi government to split the anti-invasion forces in iraq as being just Sunnis attempting to hang on to power.
It looks as though the original story was incorrect. That the executed general was “…the counselor to the minister of defense Major General ‘Adnan Mudhish al-Kharajuli and his son ‘Ala’ ad-Din, a lieutenant colonel in the intelligence service in al-Hillah, in ad-Durah at sunset yesterday.”
More than likely Thabit was trying to keep his position in a power play between the old guard intelligence and state repression instruments and elements of Iranian intelligence that are also attempting to control Iraqi security services.
He has been warned but as far as I can tell not removed yet as the US has an investment in him.
This is exactly the sort of swamp that one would need a post graduate degree in Iraqi Intelligence In-fighting to fully comprehend, which is exactly why US attempts to steer this ship will fail miserably. There will be any number of ‘experts’ on the US side with their point of view, much like the Kremlin watchers of old who rarely got it right before the fact.
It would be difficult not to back the old guard Mukhabaret in a fight like this since they have the advantage of existing networks and more claim to ‘loyalty’ than the Iranian arrivistes, but the pro-Iranian intelligence operatives do have the advantage of ‘friends in high places’ such as several ministers in the new government and what the Iraqi resistance describes as “…Badr Brigades, the armed wing of the collaborationist so-called “Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq” (SCIRI)
Only fools overcome by the hubris of high office could imagine that it is possible to implement a coherent strategy when one is so dependant on the actions of this cluster of self interested serpents.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 22 2005 1:51 utc | 6