Related: The Salvador Option
Special Police Commandos
Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq
Happens more often than you would know by reading the newspaper.
"The starkly different accounts underscored the volatile atmosphere in Baghdad, where multiple security branches operate, often in secrecy."
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Cheney's CIA Assassination Teams
The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Blackening Out Blackwater Assassins
"Covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden"
Get why I write what I write now?
"Iraqi and US forces raid neighborhood, killing 2; Assert gunshots were self-defense" by Ned Parker and Usama Redha, Los Angeles Times | September 10, 2009
BAGHDAD - Iraqi forces, backed by US soldiers, entered a residential street in southeast Baghdad’s Zafraniya district early yesterday during a security sweep. When the mission was over, two men were dead and their relatives and neighbors were accusing the Iraqi forces of murder.
The US military said the Iraqi security unit, which was not identified, came under fire and shot back in self-defense. Relatives and neighbors said troops set off explosives that knocked down the gates and doors to a home, detained an Iraqi military intelligence officer, and killed two civilians. Their bodies were discovered with dog bites and gunshot wounds on a kitchen floor, which was streaked with blood, the witnesses said.
What happened might never be known. The starkly different accounts underscored the volatile atmosphere in Baghdad, where multiple security branches operate, often in secrecy.
It was not clear which Iraqi security branch - special forces, an elite police unit, or regular infantrymen - took part in the raid. Iraq’s counterterrorism branch, which commands the special forces, denied any involvement. A spokesman for the Iraqis’ Baghdad operations command did not respond to requests for comment.
“Iraqi security forces conducted a security operation in southeastern Baghdad yesterday,’’ it read. “During the operation, the force was fired upon by two individuals in a nearby building. In self defense, the force immediately returned fire and killed the two aggressors.’’
Salt shaker, please.
Yesterday, neighbors and relatives gathered near the cinnamon-colored home, with its smashed-in gate and door. They had their own account of what happened in Zafraniya’s Muwalamin Ula section, home to Sunni Arabs and Shi’ite Muslims.
Oh, now CUT IT OUT!
Maliki's death squads!!!! Has to be!
I NO LONGER BELIEVE in "sectarianism" because THEY INTERMARRIED and GOT ALONG without blowing up mosques, etc, ALL THESE CENTURIES -- until USrael gets there!?
Abu Haitham, a resident on the same street, said he had been awakened before dawn by an Iraqi police vehicle that announced that US and Iraqi forces had sealed off the area and people should not leave their homes. He said he saw military vehicles outside and that his home was shaken by three large explosions, accompanied by the sound of women and children screaming.
--more--"
