The New Yorker: "The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies."

U.S. said adopting Israeli army counter-terror tactics in IraqIsrael is helping the U.S. train a special commando force to find the remnants of Ba'ath Party activists and Saddam Hussein loyalists behind some of the attacks on American soldiers in Iraq, the latest issue of New Yorker magazine reports.