American policy in Iraq: Have Thugs, will travel (hiring the Mukhabarat)

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15603

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Within the past five weeks or so, four major bombings have taken more than 120 lives in Iraq: On Tuesday, September 2, a car bombing at a western Baghdad police station killed one Iraqi employee and wounded at least 18 others; on Friday, August 29, 83 people, including Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, were killed in the bombing of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf; on Tuesday, August 19, the United Nations' Canal Hotel headquarters was bombed and 20 people were killed, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.'s top envoy to Iraq; and on Thursday, August 7, 10 were killed in the bombing at the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.

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Meanwhile, back in Iraq, while some intelligence reports claim that terrorists from across the Middle East flocking to Iraq may be behind some of the bombings, for the most part the U.S. has viewed these actions as the work of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party remnants. Now, those bright folks at the Pentagon have decided that the best way to hunt down Hussein and any remaining Baathists is to put some of the brutal dictator's former buddies on the payroll: They figure if you offer the former regime's torturers, executioners, and rapists enough money and outfit them properly, they can be of great assistance to the occupation forces. St. Petersburg (Russia) Times columnist Chris Floyd recently mused that a headline covering this new enterprise might read "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."

According to Floyd, America's tax dollars are now being used by the Bush Administration "to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo -- perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word," writes Floyd, "seems to be that these bloodstained 'insiders' will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained 'insiders' responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad -- and killing another dozen American soldiers..."

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... "The emphasis in recruitment appears to be on the intelligence service known as the Mukhabarat, one of four branches in Hussein's former security service, although it is not the only target for the U.S. effort. The Mukhabarat, whose name itself inspired fear in ordinary Iraqis, was the foreign intelligence service, the most sophisticated of the four. Within that service, officials have reached out to agents who once were assigned to Syria and Iran, Iraqi officials and former intelligence agents say."

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