This is a must read.

MOVING TARGETS
Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?
by Seymour M. Hersh

The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.

The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls “Manhunts”—a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon’s leadership to get his way. “Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,” a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.

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.
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  thanks to The Agonist

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Baker Takes the Loaf: The President's Business Partner Slices Up Iraq

Well, ho ho ho! It's an early Christmas for James Baker III.

All year the elves at his law firm, Baker Botts of Texas, have been working day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the September 11 attack from seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the Kingdom's funding of Al Qaeda fronts.

It's tough work, but this week came the payoff when President Bush appointed Baker, the firm's senior partner, to "restructure" the debts of the nation of Iraq.

And who will net the big bucks under Jim Baker's plan? Answer: his client, Saudi Arabia, which claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq plus $12 billion in reparations from the First Gulf war.
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In Revival Of Najaf, Lessons for A New Iraq
Shiite Clergy Build A Spiritual Capital

The story of Iraq is written on the walls of the Prophet's Street.

Staring down on the crowds of Najaf are portraits of men killed during 35 years of Baath Party rule. They were clergy, their families and followers who were assassinated or executed, often tortured first. Along the street's colonnade are leaflets celebrating the community's new freedoms. Signs announce the anniversary of the death of Shiite Islam's most revered saint, and rickety stands offer the beads and prayer stones of ritual long discouraged. On banners and posters are the demands of the resurgent community. Elections, some insist. Others urge loyalty to the clergy or call on the young to join the muammimeen, or turbaned ones.

Through the landscape walked Heidar Moammar, a gaunt, 25-year-old cleric in a white turban.

"What was forbidden is beloved," he said, smiling as he glanced at the signs of the city's reawakening.
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