Seymour Hersh's reporting occasionally doesn't survive scrutiny, but there are some interesting points made here.
-Israel is providing valuable experience and training to the U.S. in trying to deal with fighting former regime elements - it goes without saying that this is on the dl
-General Boykin is playing a prominent role in this new strategy
-in reaction to Boykin's inflammatory remarks about the war in Iraq being about Christianity vs. Islam, Rumsfeld said: It had a lot of very difficult-to-understand words with subtitles which I was not able to verify,
-killing/capturing high level Baathists may not resolve things, but simply cause the Baathist fighters to re-organize into small cells
-Special Forces were probably involved in the killing of Pablo Escobar
I think there are two flawed assumtions in the article:
-the "resistance" paralells that the Americans faced in Viet Nam - it's probably closer to the Nicaraguan contras
-Hamas is able to operate in small cellular units because they have the overwhelming support of the Palestinian population - from what I have read, the Baathists have no such support
RagleGumm
Canada
September 2003
DEC 08, 2003 07:19 PM