US trains Iraqis to fight guerillas

[JoFerret]

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/8853108.htm?1c

TAJI, Iraq - U.S. military advisers are forming an all-Iraqi counterinsurgency force and training it in guerrilla tactics such as ambushing trucks and hiding alongside the road camouflaged as bushes.

The new force, called the Iraqi National Task Force, is the most ambitious effort yet to fight the uprising using Iraqis, and it already has 1,000 soldiers with plans to grow to 7,000.

It is being created as a response to the refusal of some regular Iraqi soldiers to face insurgents in Fallujah two months ago.

That breakdown culminated in a tense standoff on an airfield with eight U.S. Marines surrounded by an angry group of 200 armed Iraqis who refused to board helicopters.

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[Doctor Smith]

1. U.S. training Iraqis to ambush trucks.

Is this really a good idea?

[Ripley]

2. I wonder when the 1,000 will "disappear"

like the 100 newly trained police officers did in Najaf.

[Mithras61]

6. My thoughts exactly...

Sounds to me like we're training the "next generation" of Iraqi insurgents. Didn't we try this same thing in a little country in southeast Asia?

Edited for spelling...

[Ms. Clio]

3. Why do they think these Iraqis are different?

"It was our fault. We tried to send the Iraqi army into Fallujah before they were ready, and they pushed back. After that, we realized we needed a force that was specially designed to fight in urban areas and ready to fight fellow Iraqis."

"I personally made the mistake with the Fallujah incident," Eaton said. "I didn't appreciate all the conflicting loyalties these guys have -- to their families, their tribes, their imams, their sects. I've learned a lot since then of the psychology of young Iraqi men and what we're up against."

Notice he deliberately does not include loyalty to their country.

This will probably work about as well as the similar attempt made in Afghanistan.

[Barrett808]

4. Death squads: the Negroponte solution

Creating the new Battalion 316 for Iraq.

[Barrett808]

5. The return of the death squads

It was inevitable that this ominous item would appear sooner or later.

With the transfer of power from Paul Bremer to John Negroponte, the significance of this report is unmistakable. Bush plans to return to the Central America counterinsurgency strategy of the 1980s, which can be summed up in two words: death squads.

This is hardly a surprise, since many of the Iran-contra alums are back in power. Considering the nature of many of the mercenaries fighting Rumsfeld's privatized war -- members of South African death squads formerly deployed against the ANC, for example -- it was only a matter of time before the neocon mobsters reverted to the old game plan.

You may recall that this plan comprised the deployment of US-sponsored terrorists to sew mayhem and mass murder in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and many others. Negroponte is widely believed to be complicit in organizing and directing these terrorist proxy armies.

This approach allows the embarrassingly public hot war to be swept under the covert operations rug, so it becomes a war of "low-intensity combat." Such a war will be waged largely against the civilian population of Iraq, and it has the goal of terrifying the population into submission with torture, disappearances, and the elimination of whole villages. Think El Mozote in the Cradle of Civilization.

On the up side, I suspect this strategy is doomed to fail, like other neocon pipe dreams. In Iraq and surrounding countries, the US does not have anything like the control it had over 1980s Central America. With the pervasiveness of the Iraqi insurgency and the near-total resentment of the US occupation and its collaborators, the death squads are just as likely to turn on the US and the puppet regime at crucial moments. There is ample precedent, as both US-trained Iraqi police and ICDC members have defected en masse. The Iraqi National Task Force will be subject to the same social pressures; they'll just have better training and weapons when they defect.

[ElectroPrincess]

9. Yes, this is creepy

Agreed, it "creeps me out" that BushCo. selected "What Death Squads" Negroponte to go to Iraq. These people are so arrogant they don't even try to cover their wicked plots anymore. Damn!

[Kinkistyle]

10. Iraqi Mujahedeen: The Next Generation.

I wonder if the new American trained "Osama Bin Laden" will be as diabolical as the previous one.

[number6]

11. me too

"I wonder if the new American trained "Osama Bin Laden" will be as diabolical as the previous one."

[daleo]

7. Umm...there seems to be a flaw in this reasoning somewhere

Maybe...just maybe...this training might be turned against the U.S. ten minutes after they are finished.

[Aidoneus]

8. alternate:--'US trains, arms, and funds guerillas to fight occupation"