Facing a bloody insurgency by guerrillas who label it an “occupier,” the U.S. military has quietly turned to an ally experienced with occupation and uprisings: Israel.In the last six months, U.S. Army commanders, Pentagon officials and military trainers have sought advice from Israeli intelligence and security officials on everything from how to set up roadblocks to the best way to bomb suspected guerrilla hide-outs in an urban area.”Those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can,” Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, said Friday at a defense writers breakfast here.The contacts between the two governments on military tactics and strategies in Iraq are mostly classified, and officials are reluctant to give the impression that the U.S. is brainstorming with Israel on the best way to occupy Iraq. Cambone said there is no formal dialogue between the two allies on Iraq, but they are working together. Indeed, the U.S. is loath to draw any comparison between what it says is its liberation of Iraq and what the international community has condemned as Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.But Israeli and American officials confirm that with extremists carrying out suicide bombings and firing rocket-propelled grenades and missiles on U.S. forces in Iraq, the Pentagon is increasingly seeking advice from the Israeli military on how to defeat the sort of insurgency that Israel has long experience confronting.The Israelis “certainly have a wealth of experience from a military standpoint in dealing with domestic terror, urban terror, military operations in urban terrain, and there is a great deal of intelligence and knowledge sharing going on right now, all of which makes sense,” a senior U.S. Army official said on condition of anonymity. “We are certainly tapping into their knowledge base to find out what you do in these kinds of situations.”Many of the tactics recently adopted by the U.S. in Iraq
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