: A comment on the below article, at indymedia: "if the
: corporate masters behind the white house and the war on
: iraq get their way, these 'contractors' will bring their
: fresh 'interrogation' skills back home to the 'urban
: environment' of america."
Your post reminded me of something that a reader sent late last month. It was Recommended reading from APFN <APFN@apfn.org>
[American Patriot Friend's Network]:
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Urban warfare: Is Iraq a rehearsal for US hoods?
by Mike Davis
(snip)
The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighborhood militias inflicted 60 percent casualties on elite Army Rangers, forced U.S. strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT: “Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain.” Ultimately, a National Defense Panel review in December 1997 castigated the Army as unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World.
...“The future of warfare,” the journal of the Army War College declared, “lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world.”
(snip)
However, Capt. Thomas - whose article is provocatively entitled “Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights” - like RAND, is brazenly confident that the Pentagon’s massive new investments in MOUT technology and training will surmount all the fractal complexities of slum warfare.
One of the RAND cookbooks, “Aerospace Operations in Urban Environments,” even provides a helpful table to calculate the acceptable threshold of “collateral damage” - aka dead babies - under different operational and political constraints.
The occupation of Iraq has, of course, been portrayed by Bush ideologues as a “laboratory for democracy” in the Middle East. To MOUT geeks, on the other hand, it is a laboratory of a different kind, where Marine snipers and Air Force pilots test out new killing techniques in an emergent world war against the urban poor.
Entire article at:
http://www.sfbayview.com/042804/urbanwarfare042804.shtml
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I am wary of this focus on the 'potential' threat posed by the opportunity that Iraq affords w.r.t. being a 'test site.'
Is this contention yet another swipe at America?
OR
Is it possibly the agenda of F1 operatives that exist above the military that is just meant to carry out orders?
Oh for a scorecard on the players!
Of course, any 'collateral damage' would come to the ones following orders (not knowing the purpose thereof) not the sources of such orders (if they do exist).
In any case... Consider the devastation of morale that is being caused amonsgt the units allegedly involved with the torture, etc., let alone the loss of credibility that is evident upon the world stage - and is that not the point perhaps?
Oh for a voluntary militia that could ask questions of it's 'superiors' and act based more upon conscience... Oh for a people of conscience... Oh for a people that would ask more questions in the field!!!
Blessings,
Mammonator
