Allegedly Unlawful Activities
Journalist Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reported in 2006 that the OSP "deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions" in Iraq both before and after the beginning of combat. The teams operated independently of other operations, occasionally causing confusion on the battlefield. The teams appear to have had a political rather than military mission; specifically, to find Iraqi intelligence officers willing to come up with evidence of WMD in Iraq whether or not such weapons actually existed:
- "They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them", said. "Then they start talking about WMD and they say to that 'Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?'"
According to the United Nations source, the intelligence officers did not cooperate with the OSP forces because they were aware that forged WMD evidence "would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology."
Read more about this topic: Office Of Special Plans
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