“Palestinian security officers schooled by U.S. later used tactics against Israel.” From the San Francisco Chronicle, with thanks to Teri:
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….
As Israeli commentators had been warning for years, the CIA inadvertently helped train future adversaries — as it has done in other countries, including the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan who ended up as Taliban and al Qaeda militants….
A U.S. official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said that if previous U.S. aid went to train would-be militants, “obviously steps will be taken so that any future training does not lead to a similar outcome.”
What steps? How can they possibly do this?