Monday, December 08, 2003

Hersh in the New Yorker on Iraq secret plan and Israel Posted here Monday, December 08, 2003 at 1:56:55 PM     From Hersh in the New Yorker One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers—again, in secret—when full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one wants to talk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” on Iraq.) The critical issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is much debate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a practical—or politically effective—way to bring about stability in Iraq, especially given the frequent failure of American forces to obtain consistent and reliable information there. comment: as Bush gets in trouble, escalation, moral and military, is likely to happen. This one seems like a classic short term gain long term disaster kind of move. It requires that Israel in the long run remain a part of a successful market globalization ( a la Friedman) world scenario. If that fails, this alliance will reap revenge. So this is not part of a cut and run strategy, but a deep "win at all costs" strategy. Compares to the recent 'strategic hamlet" initiatives with barbed wire. The requirement that America’s Special Forces units operate in secrecy, a       former senior coalition adviser in Baghdad told me, has provided an additional incentive for increasing their presence in Iraq. The Special Forces in-country numbers are not generally included in troop totals. Bush and Rumsfeld have insisted that more American troops are not needed, but that position was challenged by many senior military officers in private conversations with me. “You need more people,” the former adviser, a retired admiral, said. “But you can’t add them, because Rummy’s taken a position. So you invent a force that won’t be counted.”       At present, there is no legislation that requires the President to notify Congress before authorizing an overseas Special Forces mission. The Special Forces have been expanded enormously in the Bush Administration. The 2004 Pentagon budget provides more than six and a half billion dollars for their activities—a thirty-four-per-cent increase over 2003. A recentcongressional study put the number of active and reserve Special Forces troops at forty-seven thousand, ********