this is stunningly outrageous. I wish some US newspaper would connect the dots and write a story about this.....
http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=329Bush surrenders Iraq to Maliki’s death squads
by Ahmed Amr
Saturday November 4, 2006
<snip>
Of course, to get a clearer picture of the nature of the evil that stalks Iraq, we can’t be entirely dependent on the American media moguls who played a pivotal role in marketing this murderous venture. To measure the extent of the blank evasive space one regularly encounters in the America’s mainstream media, contrast their coverage to a recent article by Kim Sengupta - “Operation enduring Chaos: The retreat of the coalition and the rise of the militias” (The Independent, 10/31/2006).
“This is a shadowy struggle, which involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, murder victims mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relations who have been “disappeared.” Iraq’s savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacle to any semblance of peace returning than the insurgency. Yet, ironically, the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out “irregular missions.” The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the “Salvador Option” after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rights abuse.”
<snip>
From the earliest days of the American occupation, rumors began to emerge that operatives recruited from the ranks of the Badr Brigades were systematically infiltrating Iraqi Security Forces. For those who haven’t being paying attention, Badr is an Iraqi Shia militia that was trained in exile by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – a political creature that was established and financed by the theocratic regime in Tehran. Aside from SCIRI operatives, the Iraqi Security Forces recruited militia members from Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army and militants from Maliki’s Dawa party.
The man responsible for masterminding the recruitment and integration of death squads into the new Iraqi security forces was Bayan Jabr - a SCIRI leader who first appeared on the scene on Emperor Paul Bremer’s task force assigned to implement a purification program targeting Baathist military officers and bureaucrats
In April 2005, Bayan Jabr was appointed interior minister in Iraq’s transitional government. Ten thousand miles away, Professor Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East from the University of Michigan – had Jabar on his radar screen. He set off the alarm bells. “Bayan Jabar is clearly an old time revolutionary deeply committed to SCIRI’s paramilitary actions. I’d say there is likely to be some trepidation among Iraqi moderates about his now taking over Interior.” I mention Juan Cole – because he is exactly the kind of seasoned well informed Middle Eastern analyst whose talents could have been deployed to chart more rational policies in Iraq. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the neo-con seal of approval to qualify as a mainstream pundit.
Sure enough, within one month of his appointment, Bayan Jabr – technically Iraq’s senior police officer - put his death squads out on the streets of Baghdad and started a purge of Sunni officers.
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