Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Bush's Hit Teams

By Robert Parry
July 15, 2009

Despite the new controversy over whether a global CIA “hit team” ever went operational, there has been public evidence for years that the Bush administration approved “rules of engagement” that permitted executions and targeted killings of suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read on.

3 comments:

knowbuddhau said...

I love it. This meshes perfectly with what I've already written this morning.

Pepe Escobar: Pakistan's army leaders have been masters of the double game since the 1980s. Could you briefly describe how they deploy their stealth?

Arif Jamal: Actually, the strategy of playing a double game is as old as the country....

Pakistani military strategist Colonel Akbar Khan conceived the concept of jihad...no more than subversion in the enemy country, but it was couched in jihadi terms. He himself took over the grand-sounding name of a Muslim conqueror as his nom de guerre....

At the same time, Pakistan never abandoned the diplomatic option of resolving its conflicts with India. The Pakistan army supported a full-scale anti-Soviet jihad or subversive guerrilla war in Afghanistan. Publicly, Pakistan denied any support to the Afghan mujahideen. The only time Pakistan claimed responsibility for subversion in a neighboring country was when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan [in 1989]. It was a victory for the jihad policy. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KG17Df01.html


Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise...

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common ... Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html


Note the mechanistic reduction he makes. That's what ails us. What unites us? Just Our Mother's womb itself. Our myths unite us in a common human cosmos.

You provide another example of the same method in use by the US military and foreign policy establishments.

"That gap between American rhetoric and reality widened after 9/11....

Joseph Campbell began lecturing at State's Foreign Services Institute in 1956. The pages of history since then are filled with one myth-jacking after another, such as the one perpetrated by the "look forward, not backward" meme championed by so-called "NBC White House reporter" Chuck Todd et al.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/15/todd/index.html

Isn't it obvious by now? Someone, besides George Lucas and the Grateful Dead, has taken Campbell's powerful lessons to heart. The power of myth is being used to power weapons-grade domestic propaganda the world over.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/15/todd/permalink/5fa060803673462cd46a0f5d620045dc.html

webbedouin said...

Over the last 60 years wherever the US has intervined there have been Death Squads. I would argue that this is not just Cheney/Bush, it is standard operating proceedure for US foreign policy.

Let’s just take a look at US military interventions just since 1950:

PUERTO RICO 1950 Death Squads
IRAN 1953 Death Squads
GUATEMALA 1954 Death Squads
EGYPT 1956 Death Squads
LEBANON l958 Death Squads
PANAMA 1958 Death Squads
VIETNAM l960-75 Death Squads
CUBA l961 Death Squads
LAOS 1962 Death Squads
IRAQ 1963 Death Squads & CIA assassinates President and installs our boy Saddam Hussein
PANAMA l964 Death Squads
INDONESIA l965 Death Squads (One million killed)
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66
GUATEMALA l966-67 Death Squads (so effective back in ‘54)
CAMBODIA l969-75 Death Squads (Two million killed)
OMAN l970 Death Squads
LAOS l971-73 Death Squads
CHILE 1973 Death Squads
ANGOLA l976-92 Death Squads
EL SALVADOR l981-92 Death Squads
NICARAGUA l981-90 Death Squads
LEBANON l982-84 Death Squads
GRENADA l983-84 Death Squads
HONDURAS l983-89 Death Squads
LIBYA l986 Death Squads
BOLIVIA 1986 Death Squads
IRAN l987-88 Death Squads
PHILIPPINES 1989 Death Squads
PANAMA 1989 (-?) Death Squads
LIBERIA 1990 Death Squads
IRAQ 1990-91 Death Squads
SOMALIA 1992-94 Death Squads
YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94 Death Squads
BOSNIA 1993-? Death Squads
HAITI 1994 Death Squads
ZAIRE (CONGO) 1996-97 Death Squads
LIBERIA 1997 Death Squads
ALBANIA 1997 Death Squads
SUDAN 1998 Death Squads
AFGHANISTAN 1998 Death Squads
YUGOSLAVIA 1999 Death Squads
MACEDONIA 2001 Death Squads
AFGHANISTAN 2001-? Death Squads
YEMEN 2002 Death Squads (including a missile attack on a US citizen.)
PHILIPPINES 2002-? Death Squads
COLOMBIA 2003-? Death Squads
IRAQ 2003-? Death Squads
LIBERIA 2003 Death Squads
HAITI 2004-05 Death Squads
PAKISTAN 2005-? Death Squads
SOMALIA 2006-? Death Squads
SYRIA 2008 Death Squads

Well, there’s only been 52 interventions during that time period. All of these US interventions feature other co-incidences. If one were to google each and every one of these US interventions one would begin to understand exactly what US foreign policy is all about. Support and arm the right wingers, train or provide the death squads to eliminate the opposition leaders and make the world safe for US corporations to do business, be they involved in anything from growing bananas to pumping oil…

Unknown said...

The reality of this type of action by our government is common-place among the military community. My boss' SEAL son-in-law was killed several months ago in Afghanistan (well, okay, maybe Pakistan, we'll never really know). Anyway, he had months earlier related to his father-in-law (himself a military retiree) how his "team" was frequently ordered to assassinate individuals (civilians). They would quietly go into villages late at night, break into the victims house/hut, and kill everyone present - men, women, and children.