WP: Guard Unit Established by U.S. Suspected in Death Squad Executions

Iraq Begins to Rein In Paramilitary Force
'Out of Control' Guard Unit Established by U.S. Suspected in Death Squad-Style Executions
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Last month, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr accused the Facilities Protection Service, known as the FPS, of carrying out some of the killings widely attributed to death squads operating inside his ministry's police forces. A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition that he not be identified further, said Saturday he believed that members of the FPS, along with private militias, were the chief culprits behind Iraq's death squads.

L. Paul Bremer, then U.S. administrator of Iraq, signed an order establishing the Facilities Protection Service in 2003, aiming to free American troops from guarding Iraqi government property and preventing the kind of looting that erupted with the entry of U.S. forces and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Initially given only three days of training, the guards were assigned to protect Iraq's ministries and other sites under government control. Bremer's September 2003 order put the guards under the command and pay of the ministries they protected, not of the interior or defense ministries, which handle the rest of Iraq's security forces. The order also allowed private security firms to handle the contracting of FPS guards for the ministries.

Although the FPS guards are not police officers, they were allowed to wear variations of the blue uniform of Iraqi police. Many witnesses and survivors of death squad-style attacks have said the assailants were dressed in police uniforms......

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/13/AR2006051300843.html

We should have the humility to understand that we don't really know, and Jabr has a heavy motivation to deflect the blame.

<snip>FPS guards often are seen roaming Baghdad's streets, holding Kalashnikov assault rifles...<snip>