Why Not the Best?

What are the US Army Green Berets best known for? I would have said training foreign militaries to murder, torture, rape, and destroy dissent under dictatorial regimes and I would be basing it on historical facts. But facts and history are not going to interfere with NPR's propaganda piece for the Pentagon's activities in Iraq. John Hendren reports from Kirkuk in a piece on US Special Forces training for Iraqi soldiers. His piece is a laudatory send up of the US Army Green Berets and a condescending and patronizing description of Iraqi trainees. His statement early in the report that left me speechless was this: "So you want to field an army….next you need trainers, well why not the best….the Green Berets, the elite Army Special Forces so secretive we’ve agreed not to disclose even their first names. The Green Berets are are best known for their combat skills but their primary mission since 1952 has been training foreign militaries."

I wonder if any of the forces they're training will be able to live up to past students of the Green Berets like those in Vietnam, El Salvador, Egypt, Colombia, and Uzbekistan? Given the bodies turning up in the streets of Baghdad, they may already be hard at work.