Secret police force to be set up in Iraq (funded by CIA)

[papau]

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/04/1073151210964.html

Secret police force to be set up in Iraq
By Julian Coman, Telegraph (AU). Washington January 5, 2004

Nine months after the end of Saddam Hussein's regime and his feared intelligence force, Iraq is to get a secret police force again - courtesy of Washington.

The Bush Administration will fund the agency in its latest bid to root out the Baathist loyalists behind the insurgency in parts of Iraq. The force will cost up to $US3 billion ($A4 billion) over the next three years.

Its ranks will comprise Iraqi exile groups, Kurdish and Shiite forces - and former agents who are now working for the Americans. CIA officers in Baghdad will play a leading role in directing their operations.<snip>

The US hopes to organise the various groups into one force with the local knowledge, motivation and authority to hunt down resistance fighters. According to Washington, the new agency could number 10,000. Initially, salaries will be paid by the CIA, which has 275 officers in Iraq. The force is intended to have a crucial role in post-Saddam Iraq.

"The presence of a powerful secret police ... will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set," said John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at the Global Security organisation. "To begin with, the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule."
- Telegraph (AU)

[Kayla]

1. And when we take back the WH,

this will be reversed! Mark my words.

:wtf: :argh:

[cthrumatrix]

2. Priorities..... always trying to protect thier $$$ commerical interests

nothing about working on employment or social probelms or other.... just keeping power and $$$$ in place.

One dicatatot for another...but more secretive...more marketing ...more deceiving...

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. So we got rid of Saddam and his secret police

so that we could set up our new puppet and our own secret police? I guess it didn't work out so well last time when we let our puppet get too autonomous?

[papau]

4. Why is US media hiding these stories? sigh ....

our non-right wing GOP controlled media - they just act that way.

sigh

:-(

:-)

[0007]

13. I'm outraged, but who in the fuck am I?

The media is only for the disposal of the White House.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING AND CONTROLLING - The only thing fishy about this story is if the CIA is setting up the secret police in Iraq, the Iraqis will soon know who they all are. So why the leak to the public?

[JNelson6563]

5. Exactly.

I wonder how the Iraqis are enjoying their "liberation" so far. :-(

Julie

[treepig]

6. this story is a bit different than what's been reported previously

specifically in regard to the the stated goal "to root out the Baathist loyalists"

not so long ago, the secret police force was to be made up of Baathist loyalists

see http://why-war.com/news/2003/12/11/ciaplans.html

[papau]

7. mainstrean media like the AU Telegraph seems to get it right - if not US

The use of the Baathist loyalists would not make sense - but the report does make sense as a way to make going to a Non-Baathist loyalists secret police seem a great move - so we forget the "secret police" part.

:-(

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. So Richard Perle

or one of his Likudnik War Party members wrote this story?

[treepig]

9. the cia has long-standing ties with the baathists - why stop now?

Roger Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on the NSC staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam Hussein firmly on the path to power.

In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé in 1979.

"It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris says.

His version of history is a far cry from current American rhetoric about Iraq — a country that top U.S. officials say has been liberated from decades of tyranny and given the chance for a bright democratic future.




from
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/ex_us_officials_says_cia_aided_baathists.htm

[Barrett808]

18. INA was implicated in a couple of terrorist bombings in Iraq

They were the Pentagon's blunt instrument for regime change in the 1990s.

[enough]

10. A longer article on the same subject

There is a thread on this in GD.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=297801&mesg_id=297920

http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/1/dreyfuss-r.html
The American Prospect
Phoenix Rising
Tucked away in the recent Iraqi appropriation was $3 billlion for a new paramilitary unit. Close students of Vietnam may see similarities.
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 1.1.04

With the 2004 electoral clock ticking amid growing public concern about U.S. casualties and chaos in Iraq, the Bush administration's hawks are upping the ante militarily. To those familiar with the CIA's Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, Latin America's death squads or Israel's official policy of targeted murders of Palestinian activists, the results are likely to look chillingly familiar.
The Prospect has learned that part of a secret $3 billion in new funds—tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November—will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists—up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq.
"They're clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam," says Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism. Ironically, he says, the U.S. forces in Iraq are working with key members of Saddam Hussein's now-defunct intelligence agency to set the program in motion. "They're setting up little teams of Seals and Special Forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were former senior Iraqi intelligence people, to do these things," Cannistraro says.

snip>

The hidden $3 billion will fund covert ("black") operations disguised as an Air Force classified program. According to John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at globalsecurity.org, the cash, spread over three years, is likely being funneled directly to the CIA, boosting that agency's estimated $4 billion a year budget by fully 25 percent. Operations in Iraq will get the bulk of it, with some money going to Afghanistan. The number of CIA officers in Iraq, now 275, will increase significantly, supplemented by large numbers of the U.S. military's elite counterinsurgency forces. A chunk of those secret funds, according to Mel Goodman, a former CIA analyst, will to go to restive tribal sheikhs, especially in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. "I assume there are CIA people going around with bags of cash," says Goodman.

more>

[papau]

11. Great Article - I missed that - thanks for reposting!

:-)

[reticulatus]

12. Just like Persia under the Shah

Years ago I read an article in a magazine praising the Shah of Persia as being a solid ally of the US. Westernized, debonair, rich, progressive ... he was presented as the ideal leader for the Arab world. What deeply disturbed me in the article, and was the origin of my first political opinion, was the description of the Shah's secret police with their sophisticated system of torture. And the fact that they were backed by the CIA. The rest is history.

[dudeness]

14. not quite on this subject..

for an excellent read on the politics of Iraq, including the invasion ..try Bush in Babylon by Tariq Ali..I can recommend it..

cheers

[goforit]

15. So what else is new.

?

[Barrett808]

16. Okay, I'll be the one to say it: Meet the new boss,,,

The only way Iraq can be ruled is with an iron fist. Within a few years, we will have completely rebuilt the tyranny that we claimed we would remove.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

17. Dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=297801

[mouse7]

19. Geez... Isn't Iran still pissed at us for doing that the last time?

The reason Iran hates us so much was because we set up a puppet regime with secret police.