U.S. TRAINED PALESTINIANS FOUGHT AGAINST ISRAEL

GEE, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? ARM AND TRAIN A BUNCH OF TERRORISTS AND THEY END UP ATTACKING THEIR ENEMY. I'M AS SHOCKED AS YOU ARE. LUCKILY, THE U.S. HAS LEARNED ITS LESSON. IT'S ABOUT TO REPEAT THE SAME MISTAKE. IS THIS ANY WAY FOR THE U.S. TO TREAT ITS FRIEND ISRAEL?

Mideast training program backfires Palestinian security officers schooled by U.S. later used tactics against Israel (SF Chronicle)
Bethlehem, West Bank -- In June 1998, somewhere near CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., two rows of men in military fatigues posed for their graduation photo. All of them were officers in Palestinian General Intelligence Service, charged with hunting down terrorists and preventing attacks on Israel. They had just completed a training course, paid for by the U.S. government, in which they learned firearms and counterterrorist tactics.

But the graduation photo holds a stark warning for the Bush administration as it gets more involved in Middle East peacemaking. Some of the men in the picture later swapped sides and began using the skills they learned in Virginia against the Israelis. Such training courses, which were suspended with the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, will be an integral part of Washington's aid package for the new government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"There will need to be some international effort, and the United States is prepared to play a major role in that, to help in the training of the Palestinian security forces and in making sure that they are security forces that are part of the solution, not part of the problem," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month on the London stop of her European tour. Lt. Gen. William Ward, Rice's newly named Mideast security coordinator, will visit the region this month to "start looking at how to build Palestinian security forces," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.
"What we're really all talking about is helping the Palestinian security forces get organized, get equipped, get trained and get the command structure that allows them to take care of security problems," Boucher said.