zimv20
Jan 4, 2004, 02:33 PM
link (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/04/wirq04.xml)
Nine months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime and his feared mukhabarat (intelligence) operatives, Iraq is to get a secret police force again - courtesy of Washington.
The Bush administration is to fund the new agency in the latest initiative to root out Ba'athist regime loyalists behind the continuing insurgency in parts of Iraq.
The force will cost up to $3 billion (£1.8 billion) over the next three years in money allocated from the same part of the federal budget that finances the Central Intelligence Agency.
Its ranks are to be drawn from Iraqi exile groups, Kurdish and Shi'ite forces - in addition to former mukhabarat agents who are now working for the Americans. CIA officers in Baghdad are expected to play a leading role in directing their operations.
(more)
it's going to cost the US a couple hundred billion to learn what i could have told them for a buck: in order to keep a country like iraq together, you _need_ to be as brutal as saddam.
the only way i see around it is to break iraq into smaller countries.
oh -- isn't nice how this will be paid from the CIA budget. aren't they supposed to be hard at work on the real terrorist threats?
oh yeah:
CIA officials expect that the very existence of a strongly pro-American security force will terrify civilians who are currently supporting the insurgency into refusing assistance and aid to Ba'athist rebels.
note the irony in use of the word 'terrify'
Nine months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime and his feared mukhabarat (intelligence) operatives, Iraq is to get a secret police force again - courtesy of Washington.
The Bush administration is to fund the new agency in the latest initiative to root out Ba'athist regime loyalists behind the continuing insurgency in parts of Iraq.
The force will cost up to $3 billion (£1.8 billion) over the next three years in money allocated from the same part of the federal budget that finances the Central Intelligence Agency.
Its ranks are to be drawn from Iraqi exile groups, Kurdish and Shi'ite forces - in addition to former mukhabarat agents who are now working for the Americans. CIA officers in Baghdad are expected to play a leading role in directing their operations.
(more)
it's going to cost the US a couple hundred billion to learn what i could have told them for a buck: in order to keep a country like iraq together, you _need_ to be as brutal as saddam.
the only way i see around it is to break iraq into smaller countries.
oh -- isn't nice how this will be paid from the CIA budget. aren't they supposed to be hard at work on the real terrorist threats?
oh yeah:
CIA officials expect that the very existence of a strongly pro-American security force will terrify civilians who are currently supporting the insurgency into refusing assistance and aid to Ba'athist rebels.
note the irony in use of the word 'terrify'
