In Iraq: Death squads on the government payroll

Once again, Robert Fisk is proved right.

According to Knight Ridder:

Senior Iraqi officials Sunday confirmed for the first time that death squads composed of government employees had operated illegally from inside two government ministries.

"The deaths squads that we have captured are in the defense and interior ministries," Minister of Interior Bayan Jabr said during a joint news conference with the Minister of Defense. "There are people who have infiltrated the army and the interior."

And this is what veteran correspondent Robert Fisk had to say in an interview earlier this month about insurgents allegedly "dressing up" as security forces:

I mean, we keep hearing about kidnaps. In every case they were kidnapped by people, quote, "wearing police uniforms," unquote. There's a police station on the airport road, it was overrun and all the policemen executed by men wearing, quote, "army uniforms," unquote.

Now, we used to have this phenomenon in Algeria, when I was covering the Islamist government war there, and it took a while before we realised that they were policemen and they were soldiers.

In other words, they were being paid by the authorities. These were not people… there's not a huge wardrobe factory in Fallujah with, you know, 8,000 policemen's uniforms, waiting for the next suicide bomber. It's not like that. What we've got is death squads, and some of them are clearly working for government institutions within Baghdad. [emph added]

Let's see how long the corporate media — especially FOXNews — persist in reporting incidents in which killers and kidnappers were "dressed as" soldiers and policemen. Their reluctance is understandable -- "government death squads" just has such a nasty ring to it.

I wonder how Bush will deal with this revelation in his scheduled Last Throes speechifying tour.