Feeling helpless before the increasingly Iraqi resistance attacks that left a trail of dead U.S. soldiers, the U.S. is recruiting Saddam's agents

BAGHDAD, August 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Feeling helpless before the increasingly Iraqi resistance attacks that left a trail of dead U.S. soldiers, the U.S.-led occupation authorities in Iraq have begun in a contradictory move recruiting agents of the intelligence service of deposed president Saddam Hussein to help capture Iraqi fighters, a leading U.S. newspaper reported on Saturday, August 23.

U.S. officials said that there was a dire need to make "unusual compromises" by cooperating with Saddam's agents, arguing that "without Iraqi input, that's not going to work," the Washington Post reported.

"Pragmatically, those are people who are potentially very useful because they have access to information, so you have to compromise on that," one U.S. official said.

"The only way you can combat terrorism is through intelligence. It's the only way you're going to stop these people from doing what they're doing," added another official according to the paper.  

Iraqi officials put the number of former Iraqi agents that have been recruited so far from dozens to a few hundred, while a U.S. official saying that "we're reaching out very widely."

"There is an obvious evolution in American thinking. First the police are reconstituted, then the army. It is logical that intelligence officials from the regime would also be recruited," the Post quoted a Western diplomat as saying.

According to former Iraqi intelligence officials and agents, the daily said that U.S.officials have managed to reach out to agents who once were assigned to Syria, Iran, Israel and the United Nations.

One officer, a 23-year veteran who spied on the United Nations, said about 100 agents worked on Iran, between 75 and 100 on the United Nations and 50 each on Israel and Syria, in addition to their networks and contacts, according to the Post.

One former Iraqi officer said he believed that about 300 people were being recruited.

Adil Abdul Mahdi, the director of the political bureau for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), put at 20 the number of recruited Iraqi agents in the Iran-focused section with the once-dreaded military intelligence.

Quoting Mahdi, the Post said that at least one of those agents was sent to the United States for training last month.

The recruitment of such agents comes as U.S. overseer in Iraq Paul Bremer had warned that Iraq's porous borders with Iran and Syrian helped fighters from Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia infiltrate into Iraq to carry out attacks against the U.S. troops.

Policy Shift

The new U.S. move to depend on intelligence is also highly significant, after realizing that the massive sweeps on Iraqi families, night raids and arbitrary arrests have alienated the Iraqi locals.

Earlier in the month, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the chief commander of U.S.-led troops forces in Iraq, admitted that this "iron-fisted" approach has proved counterproductive.

Bremer also said that the decentralized Iraqi resistance groups necessitate intelligence cooperation with former Iraqi agents to pinpoint raids and create the possibility of infiltrating the groups.

At a news conference on Saturday, Bremer repeatedly stressed the need for better intelligence, saying that U.S. authorities were "constantly working to refine and upgrade our intelligence capabilities," the Post said.

The goal, he said, was "to find and, if necessary, kill as many of them as possible before they find and kill us."

The daily said that the Baath Party, with membership in the millions, had forged almost endless network of informers in every town and village.

Wafiq Samarrai, a former military intelligence chief who went into exile in 1995, told the daily that U.S. officials were seeking to "rebuild it very quietly."

But U.S. officials voiced concern about relying on an instrument loathed by the Iraqi people and renowned across the Arab world for its casual use of torture, fear, intimidation, rape and imprisonment.

"We have to be very careful in how we vet them, in how we go through their backgrounds," a senior U.S. official said.