The idea is to go to major cities. They did Fallujah, they're doing Ramadi right now, take it down, make the people of the Sunni heartland more afraid of the American/Iraqi Mukhabarat than they are of the resistance. That's the idea. And Abizaid, so I have been told, has made it clear that he thinks he can, within a year, he can take down four or five of the major strongholds. And I think the plan is to go from Ramadi to another major city of 300,000 or 400,000 and begin the same kind of operation. No more embedded journalists, only on a rare occasion. We're not there like we were in Fallujah. We don't really know what's going on in Ramadi. It seems like it’s holy hell there, but we don't know. And I think that’s the game plan. It’s sort of a desperate game plan. It's not going to work, obviously. Occupiers, terror and these techniques don't work...
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005
Seymour Hersh: Iraq "Moving Towards Open Civil War"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/142250 AMY GOODMAN: And what about this issue of the Salvadorization, the idea that John Negroponte has been the US Ambassador -- of course, he’s head of National Intelligence now -- formerly in the early ‘80s, Ambassador to Honduras, the staging ground for the Contra War? Do you see a connection between the people that are being brought in now who worked Salvador, two decades ago working with paramilitaries?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I don't want to beat my breast, but I think I used the notion that it's an El Salvadorian war in an article in The New Yorker about six months ago, saying it's gone El Salvador. And Negroponte is a true believer. He really supports this administration and Bush. He's totally on the team. Somebody said to me when he was named head of the overall intelligence apparatus by Bush, you know, we all joked that everybody who goes to the White House has to drink the Kool-Aid in order to get there. In other words, you only want to hear from people who believe what you’re -- there's no opposition, no dissent allowed. I mean, there's just no dissent allowed inside. Any dissent is not just honest dissent, it's being a traitor. And somebody said to me, well, he's going to mix the Kool-Aid. That's his job now as head of intelligence. He’s very nice, a very pleasant man, he’s very articulate. And I think what he has done in terms of setting up a covert, off-the-books apparatus and a hunter-killer team, that's what we have now. We’re taking down -- the idea is, I think it’s ungodly in a way, really, what he has done. The idea is right now in Iraq, the goal they have now is they want to go into the various major cities in the Sunni heartland, the four provinces of Iraq that are considered to be pro-Saddam or pro-Ba'athist, and which what 40% of the population reside, around Baghdad. The idea is to go to major cities. They did Fallujah, they're doing Ramadi right now, take it down, make the people of the Sunni heartland more afraid of the American/Iraqi Mukhabarat than they are of the resistance. That's the idea. And Abizaid, so I have been told, has made it clear that he thinks he can, within a year, he can take down four or five of the major strongholds. And I think the plan is to go from Ramadi to another major city of 300,000 or 400,000 and begin the same kind of operation. No more embedded journalists, only on a rare occasion. We're not there like we were in Fallujah. We don't really know what's going on in Ramadi. It seems like it’s holy hell there, but we don't know. And I think that’s the game plan. It’s sort of a desperate game plan. It's not going to work, obviously. Occupiers, terror and these techniques don't work. You know, the Israelis, you could argue, did well --
(more)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/142250 
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