Saddam Hussein kept the Iraqi populace in line through the use of a secret police force called the mukhabarat. The Bush administration apparently believes what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and has directed the CIA to create a secret police force to root out the remnants of Ba’athist insurgency. So says Julian Coman in a Telegraph article this morning.
Costing US$3 billion over the next three years, with the funds coming out of the CIA’s budget, the initiative is being compared to the Phoenix program in Vietnam, which “sought to destroy the civilian infrastructure supporting the Vietcong through assassinations and abductions secretly authorised by Washington,” according to Coman’s report who got a former chief of CIA counterterrorism to admit as much on the record.
Coman clarifies the purpose of the initiative as a clumsy sleight-of-hand maneuver (pay no attention to that assassin behind the curtain):
“The force is intended to take on a crucial role for Washington in post-Saddam Iraq. The Pentagon and CIA have told the White House that the organisation will allow America to maintain control over the direction of the country as sovereignty is handed over to the Iraqi people during the course of this year.”
Coman goes on to quote John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at Washington-based Global Security:
“The creation of a well-functioning local secret police, that in effect is a branch of the CIA, is part of the general handover strategy. If you are in control of the secret police in a country then you don’t really have to worry too much about who the local council appoints to collect the garbage.”
President Bush II seems clearly incapable of deviating from the modern American foreign policy of setting up heinous dictatorships and then knocking them down.
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