I found this while searching for information on the Iran military....

and I don't know what to think. Is anyone familiar with GlobalSecurity.org? There's a section of the website devoted to the possible invasion of Iran and includes possible military options, information on Iranian military power, an interesting coundown timeline and a "hot documents" page which includes various reports from different thinktanks and US agencies regarding Iran:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran.htm

It's interesting but I don't know this website so I don't know if it should be used as a valid reference. Thoughts?

I use it for reference on hardware and other things...

Thanks. The "hot documents" section is extremely interesting and I think DUers will find it useful

But our military has always 'gamed' scenarios to keep ready. I used to participate in some of that 'gaming.'

I assume it's a normal practice for any military. Have you looked at the countdown timeline?

but most of what I use from it is pretty clear of commentary..and they have good maps.

I read over the site and a few interesting items came to my attention.
In the link below you can track Iran's WMD purchases and other international communications from 1990-2007.
1.) Not to much going on until May 2003 just after George won the Iraq war then U.S. ramps up the rhetoric against Iran at an exponential rate.
2.) Factor out the Nuclear bullshit and Iran has been steadily growing there conventional weapons system.
3.) It looks like they have about 500,000 well trained fighters ready to go and their regular army of another 500,000 troops.
4.) Iran knows this has been coming for over four years i would suspect they ready to defend there country.

Link below overview of transaction and rhetoric from 1990-2007:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/index.html




US accusation on presence of Al Qaeda in Iran misinformation
IRNA

May 28,2003

New Delhi, May 28, IRNA -- A prominent Indian expert said on Wednesday
that the US accusation against Iran on the presence of Al Qaeda in
that country is misinformation which is spread with a vested interest.
B. Raman, Director, Institute of Tropical Studies, Chennai told
this to IRNA in a telephone interview.
Referring to the new wave of propaganda by Washington against
Iran, Raman said, Al Qaeda is an extremist Arab organization and
cannot have a foothold for activities in Iran.
Raman who is also a former additional secretary, Cabinet
Secretariat, Government of India, said, Al Qaeda which is being
established by Osama Bin Laden and is follower of Wahhabi school of
thought is in principle irreconcilable with Iran.
Elaborating, Raman said, Al Qaeda which emerged in Afghanistan in
the form of Taliban after capturing central parts of this country
massacred Hazaras, the ethnic community who are basically Shias and
after capturing Mazar-e-Sharif in North Afghanistan, they killed
Iranian reporter and several Diplomats. With this background, how can
Iran be a place or sanctuary of this organization's terrorist
activities, he added.
Raman said, the hardliners in Bush Administration by utilizing
the opportunity of unipolar world and occupation of Iraq now want to
settle scores with those who are having ideological differences with
them.
In this context, Raman gave an example of Richard Perle in
Pentagon and said, that he who is a member of pro-Zionist lobby wants
American military to achieve strategic objective in the middle east
region which are in line with Israeli plans.
Emphasizing on the falsehood of US accusations on the presence of
Al Qaeda leaders in Iran, he said, that Pentagon previously made
similar accusations against Iraq on the presence of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) and Al Qaeda but after the occupation of Iraq by
Anglo-American forces there is no sign of WMD or the presence of Al
Qaeda.
Raman who is also an expert on counter terrorism, said that some
of the real objective of a part of US administration on recent
allegation is to increase psychological pressure on Iran to change its
stand on the Middle East issues.
While referring to the fact US may try to get information about
Iran through some of its neighbors, Raman said, some of the countries
who have been accused of supporting Al Qaeda may now try to turn this
accusation on others.
He emphasized that Iranian policies have always based on detente
and this by itself negates the notion of terrorism.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2003/iran-030528-irna01.htm

If Iran thinks the U.S. is going to launch an attack on them all they need to do is stage an attack in Iran say the U.S. did it and go on the offensive right out of the gate.

I guess if you're the underdog and you know your country will be invaded at some point, then you would have to rely on the element of surprise to gain any advantage you can...start it on your own terms I guess.

I think this puzzle comes together Iran knows that it was bush and the sunnis working together on 9/11 to start a war to take out the shiites. All Iran has to do is target 4 cities Cairo,Riyadh,Dubai, and Kuwait. That would bring down Israel just by the sheer number of muslims and the entire middle east goes up in flames.

I believe that Osama bin laden has been working with the United States and Saudi Arabia to get rid of the shiites leaving only the sunnis.

BTW, I wanted to welcome you to DU on my last post but then I forgot so Welcome to DU! :hi:

Perhaps my intellectual snobbery will be my downfall, but it's hard to imagine that the Bush gang fully comprehends the differences between the Sunnis and Shiites, much less care enough to use their differences as a war tactic spanning over two countries. Had they acknowledged the rift between the three factions of Islam in Iraq prior to invading rather than telling the public that the war will be a cake walk and we will have flowers thrown at the feet of our soldiers, then I would be more inclined to believe this was their plan all along. Manipulating the Sunnis to get to the Shiites while playing dumb to the public regarding both? That requires damn good acting. Then again, nothing good ever happens from underestimating anyone I suppose. It's all very interesting in a creepy sort of way.

The OBL thing is extremely weird - weird enough for me to don a tinfoil hat over. Trained by the CIA, from a prominent family who seems to still have influence here, hated Saddam's secular rule, hasn't been caught yet...there's enough there to be suspicious. The only small positive thing is that I personally know troops in Afghanistan who are honestly trying to catch him. I just hope they're getting correct intelligence on his whereabout.

There has been a group just outside of the law working with the CIA from the Allen Dulles days back in 1954 to the present days. This is a good example of the way they operate on May 1, 1960 the shooting down of U-2 plane over Russia Allen Dulles ordered the flight it was in direct violation of President Eisenhower standing order of no more spy plane flights over Russia. This is direct proof that there are elements with in the United States government that directly violate Presidential orders and work outside the rule of law, to benefit others without legal over site.

On this incident of the U-2 flight being shot down on May 1, 1960 what is important understanding that the CIA approximately 44 days earlier received their initial funding for the Bay of Pigs operation on March 17, 1960. (Ref:1) By Allen Dulles ordering that flight it stopped any chance of Eisenhower meeting with the Russian leader in June of 1960. That meeting may have headed off the Cuban crisis years later. I do believe that in that funding on March 17, 1960 Bay of Pigs operation is when George H. Bush enters into the deep covert side of the CIA.

Now that we have factual evidence that there exist questionable elements within in the CIA or the United States government; then it is a natural process of evolution that likes Osama Bin Laden would be created by these elements.

Ref:1 http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/baypigs/pigs3.htm

When Allen Dulles sold the Bay of Pigs operation to JFK at the security council meeting in 1961, Dulles told JFK it was a stand alone operation and NO additional military intervention was required. JFK made it VERY clear that the U.S. military was not going to invade or support the operation and that the NIXON & DULLES plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs needed to accomplish exactly what was sold to the security council at that meeting.(paraphrased from Robert F. Kennedy's book he was at the security council meeting in 1961)

After the Bay Pigs failure JFK took the blame just like less then a year prior when Eisenhower had took take the blame for the U-2 disaster that was ordered by Allen Dulles.

Why was Allen Dulles allowed to be a member of the Warren Commission?

Clearly he had tendency to be dishonest,lacked moral charter, and would protect his interest over a legitimate investigation into JFK's execution. That would mean at the onset of the Warren Commission over 16% of the commission members had their own agenda. In a jury trial one member can shape the out come of a verdict. Their was no questioning of the Warren Commission members to their relations to the accused and the victim in JFK's murder.A mandatory jury questioner with instruction from the judge, the judge would also be asking potential members if they are involved with the parties of the trial.



WHY DID THE ASSAULT BRIGADE 2506 GIVE ITS FLAG TO PRESIDENT KENNEDY FOR SAFEKEEPING?
By Maj. Gen. Erneido A. Oliva
Feb 22, 2005


Gen. (DCNG-Ret.) ERNEIDO A. OLIVA was Former Second-in-Command of the Bay of Pigs invasion




ince returning from Cuban prisons after the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961 I have been asked hundreds of times why the flag of the Assault Brigade 2506 was presented to President John F. Kennedy on December 29, 1962 at the Orange Bowl in Miami. To many, who are not aware of all the facts, it seems like a paradoxical action since to this day Kennedy is often directly blamed for our defeat in the Bay of Pigs and as a result for Fidel Castro's five decades of dictatorship and for all of Cuba's ongoing troubles. This perception is a result of the decisions he made to deny the Brigade's freedom fighters the promised air support. There are those who believe that the Brigade was duped into engaging in the flag presenting ceremony by apologies or flattery. However, I thought then, as I do now, that the presentation of the Brigade flag to the President at that time was fully justified and that it was the correct and patriotic thing to do. Until this time I have addressed this topic only with an old friend of the numerous reporters that have come knocking on my door because of the classified information that was involved. Well, the information is now declassified and I would like to put our actions into perspective.

http://unix.dfn.org/ASSAULTBRIGADE2506.shtml

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24131.shtml
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, you devote a whole chapter to another official within Blackwater, Cofer Black.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, Blackwater is really stacked to the deck. The deck is really stacked in Blackwater's favor. In the times that we live in right now, they have several former senior officials from the Bush administration, not from like the Reagan administration, but from the current Bush administration.

Among the most prominent, perhaps the biggest power player in Blackwater's arsenal, is J. Cofer Black, who is a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, began his career in the 1970s in Africa, as the US -- well, some would say supported the apartheid regime, others would say did nothing to stop it. So Cofer Black was one of the key CIA people in Africa throughout the ’70s and ’80s. And he arrived in Sudan in the early 1990s, and he came under diplomatic cover. As a sort of diplomat, he was there, but he actually was CIA.

And as Black was there, a young Saudi billionaire named Osama bin Laden was building up his international network. And by the time Black would leave Sudan a few years later, the CIA would refer to it as the Ford Foundation of Islamic terrorism. And so, Cofer Black and Osama bin Laden are both operating simultaneously in Khartoum in Sudan in the 1990s. And at one point, there was a plot to kill Cofer Black once bin Laden's group had learned that he was actually CIA. And so, they were sort of monitoring each other. And one of Black's operatives in Sudan actually cooked up a plot to kill bin Laden and toss his body over the fence at the Iranian embassy to make it seem like the Iranians had killed bin Laden. But at the time, bin Laden wasn’t considered a big fish. The big fish in Sudan was Carlos the Jackal, the famed international terrorist. And so, Cofer Black's claim to fame in the 1990s had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, but had to do with the fact that he was seen as the man who caught Carlos the Jackal. :rofl:

And Black would go on then to serve in Latin America, and just before 9/11 he was tapped to head up the CIA's counterterrorism center. And so when the 9/11 attacks happened, Cofer Black was called to the Situation Room in the White House on September 13, 2001, to lay out for President Bush the CIA plan to go after bin Laden. And he was said to be throwing papers on the ground as he described how they were going to insert Special Forces into Afghanistan. And he told President Bush that he would bring back Osama bin Laden's head in a box on dry ice. :rofl: And, in fact, those were the orders he gave to his CIA operatives that went in with the Jawbreaker team into Afghanistan after 9/11. And one of them said to Cofer Black, you know, “I don't know what we're going to do about dry ice in the field, but we certainly can get a cardboard box.”

Cofer Black became known in the administration as the flies-on-the-eyeballs guy, because he would talk in these sort of messianic terms about the mission that they were about to undertake and said, “When we're through with them, they'll have flies crawling across their eyeballs.” He told Russian diplomats, “We’re going to stick their heads on pikes in the field.” So this is now the guy who went on after 9/11 to really accelerate the use of extraordinary renditions, the capturing of people, putting hoods on them, putting diapers on them, sending them on these long flights to third countries where they're asked a series of questions provided by US interrogators and where they're tortured and humiliated and broken down -- people like Maher Arar, who you've covered extensively on this show.

AMY GOODMAN: Cofer Black is now part of a new Blackwater effort, a new company called Total Intelligence Solutions.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. This is really the next sort of generation of privatization, is the privatization of intelligence. And they’re marketing their services to Fortune 500 companies. And so, it's not just Cofer Black. It's another CIA guy who went on to work at Blackwater, Robert Richer, who was a Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA. So those two are really the sort of leaders behind this new initiative.





Blackwater Mercenaries in Downtown New Orleans
(Photo from Google Images; original source unknown.)


Shortly after the hurricane hit, Blackwater "launched a helicopter and crew with no contract, no one paying us, that went down to New Orleans," says company vice chairman Cofer Black. "We saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn't have been saved. And, as a result of that, we've had a very positive experience." Indeed. It was only days after the company arrived that it started reeling in lucrative deals.


According to Blackwater's government contracts, obtained by The Nation, from September 8 to September 30, 2005, Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to "protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA." That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater. From September to the end of December 2005, the government paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million—well surpassing the amount of Blackwater's contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer when he was head of the US occupation of Iraq. And the company has likely raked in much more in the hurricane zone. Exactly how much is unclear, as attempts to get information on Blackwater's current contracts in New Orleans have been unsuccessful.


"We saw the costs, in terms of accountability and dollars, for this practice in Iraq, and now we are seeing it in New Orleans," says Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who has been one of Blackwater's few critics in Congress. "They have again given a sweetheart contract—without an open bidding process—to a company with close ties to the Administration."


After The Nation exposed Blackwater's operations in New Orleans this past fall , Schakowsky and a handful of other Congress members raised questions about the scandal. They entered the report into the Congressional Record during hearings on Katrina and cited it in letters to DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, who then began an inquiry. In letters to Congressional offices in February, Skinner defended the Blackwater deal, asserting that it was "appropriate" for the government to contract with the company. Skinner admitted that "the ongoing cost of the contract...is clearly very high" and then quietly dropped a bombshell: "It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years)." Two to five years? Already most of the 330 federally contracted private guards in the hurricane zone are working for Blackwater, according to the Washington Post. Another firm, DynCorp, is also trying to grab more of the action, offering its security services for less than $700 per day per guard.


http://canberra.usembassy.gov/hyper/2004/0518/epf204.htm

*EPF204 05/18/2004
Text: Anti-Terror Chief Sees U.S., Israel Fighting Terror Together
(State's Cofer Black discusses al-Qaida, Iran, Syria at AIPAC) (3290)

The State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism says that of the many nations cooperating with the United States in the global war against terror, "none more stalwart than the state of Israel."

Speaking at the 2004 Policy Conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington May 17, Ambassador Cofer Black said he was certain that "ur two great nations will stand together to fight terror." Terrorists and their supporters "will be brought to justice, or justice will be brought to them. We are in this fight together," Black said, "and for the long haul; there can be no accommodation with this evil."

Black termed the bilateral organization, the U.S.-Israel Joint Counterterrorism Group (JCG), as "an important part of our counterterrorism partnership." Established in 1996, the JCG allows agencies of the two governments to exchange information on terrorism issues, and looks for ways to improve bilateral counterterrorism cooperation. Its focus is "on augmenting key capacities to combat terror," Black said.

Then there is the Technical Support Working Group, Black said, which pursues cooperative research and development projects in areas such as physical security, detecting and defeating explosives, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threat countermeasures, and investigative support and forensics technologies. It reports to the JCG, he said.

Turning to the U.S. effort to combat al-Qaida since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Black noted that the terrorist organization has lost heavily in manpower, especially at its upper levels, in finances and methods of financing, and in its crucial base of operations in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, "it would be fair to say that we are seeing greater cooperation between al-Qaida and smaller Islamic extremist groups, as well as even more localized organizations," Black said. In particular, he noted Ansar al-Islam and the Zarqawi network in Iraq, along with Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/20/1337226

Interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

JEREMY SCAHILL: Among the most prominent, perhaps the biggest power player in Blackwater’s arsenal, is J. Cofer Black, who is a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, began his career in the 1970s in Africa, as the US — well, some would say supported the apartheid regime, others would say did nothing to stop it. So Cofer Black was one of the key CIA people in Africa throughout the ’70s and ’80s. And he arrived in Sudan in the early 1990s, and he came under diplomatic cover. As a sort of diplomat, he was there, but he actually was CIA.

And as Black was there, a young Saudi billionaire named Osama bin Laden was building up his international network. And by the time Black would leave Sudan a few years later, the CIA would refer to it as the Ford Foundation of Islamic terrorism. And so, Cofer Black and Osama bin Laden are both operating simultaneously in Khartoum in Sudan in the 1990s.

And Black would go on then to serve in Latin America, and just before 9/11 he was tapped to head up the CIA’s counterterrorism center.

AMY GOODMAN: Cofer Black is now part of a new Blackwater effort, a new company called Total Intelligence Solutions.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. This is really the next sort of generation of privatization, is the privatization of intelligence. And they’re marketing their services to Fortune 500 companies. And so, it’s not just Cofer Black. It’s another CIA guy who went on to work at Blackwater, Robert Richer, who was a Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA. So those two are really the sort of leaders behind this new initiative.

But, really, the man behind all of it is Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater. He’s rapidly buying up, for instance, a think tank, the Terrorism Research Center, and other intelligence entities and sort of cobbling them together. Blackwater’s big push now is not just for government contracts, but it’s also for corporate contracts. And so, it’s part of this radical privatization agenda. And to have a man heading this who told Congress openly, “There was a before 9/11 and an after 9/11, and after 9/11 the gloves come off” — this is a guy who ran essentially the extraordinary rendition program, now is working as the vice chairman of Blackwater and starting his own private intelligence company.


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill
Revolving Door: from the Pentagon to Blackwater

Since 9/11 Blackwater has hired some well-connected officials close to the Bush Administration as senior executives. Among them are J. Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA and the man who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, and Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General, who was responsible for policing contractors like Blackwater during much of the “war on terror”–something he stood accused of not doing effectively. By the end of Schmitz’s tenure, powerful Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a Congressional probe into whether Schmitz had “quashed or redirected two ongoing criminal investigations” of senior Bush Administration officials. Under bipartisan fire, Schmitz resigned and signed up with Blackwater.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek
Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/29/the-cias-top-counterterrorism-officials /
I wrote two weeks ago that Cofer Black is Bush’s equivalent of Nixon’s Butterfield who divulged the presence of an Oval Office audio taping system. That brought Nixon down. Black said two weeks ago when referring to 9/11 that they had strong feelings that the attack would take place in August. His statement seem to be inadvertent. After 9/11 Black was appointed to an Ambassador At Large position. Was this a reward to keep his mouth shut? Black is now an officer with Blackwell USA, which has made a fortune off the war. If the Democrats gain subpoena power, Cofer Black should be one of the first served.


http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/12/15/031215fa_fact
wrote Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker in December 2003,

"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 cooperation' on Iraq.)"


http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/12/10/2003079052
THE GUARDIAN, WASHINGTON
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, Page 7
Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said on Monday.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq.

US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centers of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.

But the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope that the Baathist-led insurgency can be suppressed ahead of November's presidential election.

US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign fighters before they cross the border, and a group focused on the "neutralization" of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.

................


http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/58/18702
An "Alliance" of Violence
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 29 March 2006

A disturbing trend noticeable in Iraq for quite some time now is that each aggressive Israeli military operation in the occupied territories results in a corresponding increase in the number of attacks on US forces in Iraq. One of the first instances of this was the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 2004 and the reaction it set off across Shia and Sunni, ultimately spiraling into the siege and devastation of Fallujah. Fallujah is but one example one may use to demonstrate how the ongoing use of heavy handed tactics by the US-Israel alliance is proving to be as suicidal as it is homicidal. US troops in Iraq and Israeli civilians in their homes can bear testimony to this, as they are the ones who bear the brunt. Not to mention the collateral damage in Iraq.

May 17, 2004, Washington

Cofer Black, at the time Coordinator for Counterterrorism for the US State Department, in a talk at the 2004 Policy Conference for the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), said that of all the nations cooperating with the US in the global war on terror, "none more stalwart than the state of Israel." He told the audience of the powerful lobby group that "Our two great nations will stand together to fight terror" and deemed the US-Israel Joint Counterterrorism Group (JCG) "an important part of our counterterrorism partnership."

May 10, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

The first US siege of Fallujah ended in early May, 2004, and on May 10th US forces abandoned all control of the city, handing it back over to the Iraqis.

April 4, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

US military directed to launch the first, and eventually failed, revenge assault in retaliation for the four Blackwater USA mercenaries killed on March 31st. The siege caused severe casualties among the people of Fallujah, killing 736 people, over 60% of whom were women, children and the elderly, according to the director of Fallujah General Hospital.

April 2, 2004, Iraq

Speaking on al-Manar TV, Muqtada al-Sadr pledged, "From here I announce my solidarity with the genuine unity announced by Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah with the mujahideen movement Hamas. Let them consider me their striking hand in Iraq whenever the need arises. As the martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said, Iraq and Palestine have the same destiny."

March 31, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

Four Blackwater USA mercenaries killed in Fallujah in an attack avenging the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Nine days after the assassination, the bodies of four mercenaries from Blackwater USA were burned, chopped into pieces, dragged behind vehicles bearing posters of Sheikh Yassin, and finally put on display by being hung from a bridge. Pamphlets were distributed at the scene which declared the attack against the four men as having been carried out in the name of Yassin. It was also reported by several Arab media outlets at the time that a group known as the "Phalange of Sheikh Yassin" claimed responsibility for the attack, and that the deaths of the four men were meant as a "gift to the Palestinian people."

March 28, 2004, Baghdad, Iraq

The head of the CPA, Paul Bremer, ordered the closing of the al-Hawza newspaper, the mouthpiece of Muqtada al-Sadr. One of Sadr's spokespeople, Sheikh Mahmud Sudani, told reporters at the time that al-Hawza had attracted censure because of its strong critique of the killing of Sheikh Yassin by Israeli forces. The closing of this paper was a primary factor that led to the first violent uprising called by Sadr against the occupiers.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060807C.shtml
Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

After filing its suit against the dead men's estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families' existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

Over 300 contractors have been killed in Iraq with very little inquiry into their deaths. The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government. Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater's private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince's relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.

http://www.guardian.co.uk /
It is not only in Iraq that the emphasis on intelligence gathering has led to apparent brutality against military detainees. The American base at Bagram in Afghanistan has acquired a reputation for abusive interrogations of suspected al-Qaeda members. Two prisoners there were said by military pathologists last year to have died through “homicide” but the U.S. Army has provided no information about any subsequent investigation. Notoriously, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief Cofer Black has been quoted as saying about interrogation techniques that “after 9/11, the gloves came off.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0308-33.htm
On the evening of September 11, Bush told his counterterrorism staff, according to Richard Clarke, that “any barriers in your way, they are gone.” And he said: “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we’re going to kick some ass.” He also authorized the CIA to send detainees to third countries for torture. And he let George Tenet and the CIA know that the gloves are off, in the words of Cofer Black, who was head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center on 9/11.