# U.S. using illegal militias (including Ba'athists) to fight Iraq insurgency **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 23, 2005, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772 "2005-04-23T17:08:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/1 "2005-04-23T17:08:15Z")
The stated policy of the Coalition at the end of the Iraq War was to thoroughly “de-Ba’athify” the country. Hussein’s Ba’ath Party (which, like the ruling party of any one-party state, was the one you **had** to sign up with if you wanted any kind of important government job – so practically every ambitious person who did not find its ethics or ideology utterly abhorrent did join) was officially banned and dissolved in June 2003. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba’ath](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath)) Since then former Ba’athists have provided one source of the anti-occupation insurgency. We all know that. Less noticed by the media up to now is that the U.S. has at the same time been recruiting and funding private militias to fight against the insurgents – including Ba’athist militias – and this could produce a political crisis. From “Let a Thousand Militias Bloom,” 4/21/05, by A.K. Gupta of Indymedia, [http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/147880/index.php:](http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/147880/index.php:) > [@](#): > > In trying to defeat the Iraqi insurgency, the Pentagon has turned to Saddam Hussein’s former henchmen. Under former Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, U.S. officials has installed many of the hated Baathists who tormented Iraq in high-level posts in the interior and defense ministries. But the new Iraqi government, overwhelmingly composed of Shiites and Kurds who suffered the most under Hussein, have announced that they are going to purge the ex-Baathists, putting them on a collision course with the United States. > > Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made one of his surprise visits to Baghdad last week, warning the new government not to “come in and clean house” in the security forces. The official line is that the U.S. is worried about losing the “most competent” security forces. But there is a deeper concern that purging the security forces could feed into sectarian tensions and explode in civil war. > > Much of that is due to a ruthless U.S. policy of using any tactic, no matter how unsavory, in trying to defeat the insurgency. According to a slew of reports, the U.S. military is encouraging tribal vendettas, freeing kidnappers to spy on insurgents, incorporating ethnic-based military units into the security forces, and encouraging the development of illegal militias that draw in part from Hussein-era security forces. > > \ > > A report by the Wall Street Journal from Feb. 16 revealed that numerous “pop-up militias” thousands strong are proliferating in Iraq. Not only are many of these shadowy militias linked to Iraqi politicians, but the Pentagon is arming, training and funding them for use in counter-insurgency operations. > > Most disturbing, one militia in particular—the “special police commandos”—is being used extensively throughout Iraq and has been singled out by a U.S. general for conducting death squad strikes known as the “Salvador option.” The police commandos also appear to be a reconstituted Hussein security force operating under the same revived government body, the General Security Directorate, that suppressed internal dissent. > > \ > > The police commandos were identified as one of at least six militias by Greg Jaffe, the Journal reporter. Last October it was said to have “several thousand soldiers” and lavishly armed with “rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, mortar tubes and lots of ammunition.” Yet these militias owe their allegiance not to the Iraqi people or government, but to their self-appointed leaders and associated politicians such as interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Even the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, admitted in testimony before Congress on March 1 that such militias are “destabilizing.” > > \ > > Thabit told the Armed Forces Press Service last October that the police commandos are drawn from “police who have previous experience fighting terrorism and also people who received special training under the former regime” of Saddam Hussein. The report from Oct. 20, 2004, also quotes U.S. Army Col. James H. Coffman Jr., who specifies that police commandos are “former special forces and (former Directorate of General Security) personnel…” > > The Directorate of General Security was one of the main security services Hussein used to maintain an iron grip on Iraq. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies describes the service’s role as “detecting dissent among the Iraqi general public” by monitoring “the day-to-day lives of the population, creating a pervasive local presence.” I don’t know where to begin . . . I can understand how desperate the U.S. officials must be to put an end to the insurgency by any means necessary. But in the process, the U.S. is helping to fund, arm and organize both sides of a potential civil war. And even considering use of the “Salvador option” is completely indefensible, just as it was in El Salvador. And even when these militias don’t assassinate, their methods are shockingly brutal. From an interview Gupta gave on the left-wing radio show _Democracy Now!_ on 4/21/05 – [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/21/1418219:](http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/21/1418219:) > [@](#): > > ARUN GUPTA: Well, these militias, which the government, the U.S. government is referring to as pop-up militias first came to prominence a couple of months ago in a report in the Wall Street Journal. This Journal reporter Greg Jaffe noted that these militias are appearing all over Iraq. And he was interviewing various members of a General Petraeus’s staff. General Petraeus is the U.S. general and head of training all security services in Iraq. And it was presented as like, gee, all these militias are starting to appear all over Baghdad, militias with names like the Muthana Brigade, the Defenders of Khadamiya, and the special police commandos. And Petraeus’s staff was interested in funding and supporting these, but what it really appears to be turning out that these have been set up in secret with the U.S. government’s knowledge all along and that in many instances these militias are actually ex-Ba’athists, many of the thugs who served under Saddam Hussein in his notorious intelligence services, and they are being deployed extensively throughout Iraq in counter-insurgency operations. They have also been implicated in death squad operations known as the “Salvador option,” and they also appear to be using torture extensively throughout Iraq, so it’s a very unseemly situation. What essentially the U.S. is trying to do is privatize, is outsource these militias and provide itself with cover, but the whole time it’s actually funding and creating these militias apparently. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, your article seems to indicate also that the militias have been having some effect on the resistance in that the actual – just by counting the toll of American soldiers, that there’s been a reduction in recent months of the actual number of American soldiers killed. Could you talk about that? > > ARUN GUPTA: Yes. The peek number of U.S. soldiers killed in combat was last November, during the sacking of Fallujah. 126 U.S. soldiers died in combat. By this past March, it had fallen by 75%. So, going on that and U.S. casualties, in general, it appears that there is some success. They’re using these militias extensively in the so-called Sunni Triangle area: Baghdad, Mosul, Samarra, Tikrit, Ramadi. And what it appears to be, according to Jane’s Intelligence Digest is that they’re using ex-Ba’athists to hunt down their former colleagues who are directing much of the insurgency. So they’re – the U.S. is saying, like, well, these are a bunch of Ba’athist dead-enders in the insurgency, but at the same time they’re using the ex-Ba’athists themselves, who they said they were freeing Iraq from, to hunt down insurgents. But they are also just rounding people up willy-nilly, and there appears, like I said, to be extensive use of torture, much of it coming from this TV show that is now appearing on Iraq called, Terror: The Grip of Justice. There have been many accounts of this in the media, where a number of times a week on this television station set up by the Pentagon, Al-Iraqiya, they parade insurgents before the TV. And these reports are all noting that the suspects have swollen faces, bruised, that they’re very cowed. And they’re also admitting to the most absurd charges, that they are participating in gay orgies, that they get drunk inside mosques, that they’re pedophiles engaging in rape, that they practice beheadings by cutting off the head of sheep. And the interesting thing is, one commentator noted, it’s the exact same tactic Saddam Hussein used under his government of airing televised confessions. :rolleyes: :mad: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Why are our leaders doing this? How stupid and/or cynical can they be? ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/2 "2005-04-23T19:48:56Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :rolleyes: > > :mad: My feelings exactly! Exasperation that you feel the need to quote massive chunks of articles all of the time. Ill humor that you actually think a story first printed on Z-mag (you know, that hard-left rag), is acceptable as a ‘cite’. (Not that a ‘Democracy Now!’ interview is any better!) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/3 "2005-04-23T20:36:15Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > Ill humor that you actually think a story first printed on Z-mag (you know, that hard-left rag), is acceptable as a ‘cite’. (Not that a ‘Democracy Now!’ interview is any better!) The basic facts come from the _Wall Street Journal._ No point in my linking to that, you need a subscription to access the site. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/4 "2005-04-24T15:12:59Z")
Found an online copy of the _WSJ_ article! 🙂 By Greg Jaffe, 2/16/05, [http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=1159:](http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=1159:) [quote] “We don’t call them militias. Militias are…illegal,” says Maj. Chris Wales, who spent most of January tracking down and finding these new forces. "I’ve begun calling them ‘Irregular Iraqi ministry-directed brigades.’ " [quote] ---
**Author:** ![Avenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Avenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avenger)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/5 "2005-04-24T15:16:23Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > My feelings exactly! Exasperation that you feel the need to quote massive chunks of articles all of the time. Ill humor that you actually think a story first printed on Z-mag (you know, that hard-left rag), is acceptable as a ‘cite’. (Not that a ‘Democracy Now!’ interview is any better!) No doubt you have plenty of cites from more acceptable sources refuting the charges then. The rest of us might appreciate seeing them… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/6 "2005-04-24T16:16:18Z")
I note a parallel here between this situation and the “denazification” policy of the Allies, particularly the Americans, in post-WWII Germany: Officially everyone who had ever belonged to the Nazi Party was supposed to be purged from all public posts and marginalized. But practically every German of energy and ambition who did not find the Nazis completely abhorrent had joined the party at some point, if only for the sake of career advancement (same reason a lot of Soviet citizens joined the Communist Party). A thoroughgoing denazification would have deprived Germany of a vast pool of talent. In the British and French zones, the occupiers took a more measured approach, dismissing only the elite party leaders, not all members. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification)) The Americans started off with a much more thorough approach – but, faced with the new necessities of the Cold War, they eventually found it necessary to make use of some ex-Nazis for their own purposes – e.g., intelligence-gathering, or building up their space program (Wernher von Braun had been a Nazi Party member). Of course, the situation on the ground in Iraq today is a lot more violent, volatile and complicated than it was in postwar Germany. However pressing the necessity might be to make use of some ex-Ba’athists (e.g., to fight against the more recalcitrant ex-Ba’athists), there are any number of ways it might come back to bite us on the ass. Especially if we allow them to use the same methods they used when they worked for Hussein. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/7 "2005-04-24T16:25:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But practically every German of energy and ambition who did not find the Nazis completely abhorrent had joined the party at some point, if only for the sake of career advancement (same reason a lot of Soviet citizens joined the Communist Party). And US politicians go to church. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/8 "2005-04-24T18:09:48Z")
So the United States government is providing funding, weaponry, and support for bands of brutal, murderous thugs somewhere in the Middle East. And this is news … why? Same old, same old, for anyone who’s been awake during the last fifty years. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/9 "2005-04-24T21:32:30Z")
Is there any evidence besides Mr. Gupta’s say-so that any of the mini-militias which have received support from the US or from the democratically-elected Iraqi government (man, I love typing that!) has actually done anything improper? Note that the one labled “most disturbing” by the terrorist advocates at indymedia is led by an “ex-Ba’athist” who got “ex’d” on account of his assassination plot against Saddam Hussein – not exactly a loyalist. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2005, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/10 "2005-04-25T02:15:55Z")
> [@manhattan](#): > > Is there any evidence besides Mr. Gupta’s say-so that any of the mini-militias which have received support from the US or from the democratically-elected Iraqi government (man, I love typing that!) has actually done anything improper? He’s not talking about the results of some undercover investigation, he’s talking about stuff that’s been **broadcast on television** in Iraq – broadcast not by investigative journalists, but by the people perpetrating it, on a sort of reality show. You think he just made it up? Maybe you do. Here’s a TimesOnline story on it: [The Times & The Sunday Times](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1518168,00.html) And one from the Chicago Tribune: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0504170268apr17,1,7688366.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0504170268apr17,1,7688366.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true) > [@manhattan](#): > > Note that the one labled “most disturbing” by the terrorist advocates at indymedia is led by an “ex-Ba’athist” who got “ex’d” on account of his assassination plot against Saddam Hussein – not exactly a loyalist. So what? Hussein does not have to decide, at this point, whether he’s safe to use; the U.S. officials do. And apparently they have made the wrong decision. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2005, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/11 "2005-04-25T02:21:47Z")
> [@manhattan](#): > > the terrorist advocates at indymedia Nine posts in and I’m already perilously close to revoking my long-held policy of not using the rolleyes smily. Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2005, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-using-illegal-militias-including-baathists-to-fight-iraq-insurgency/300772/12 "2005-04-27T00:23:45Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > Nine posts in and I’m already perilously close to revoking my long-held policy of not using the rolleyes smily. Sigh. Don’t be such a prude, **ITR!** Let yourself go and wallow in it! 🙂 Oh, and look into this thread: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=310495](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=310495)