Rumsfeld considering Death Squads in Iraq

[xpanda]

U.S. Considers Elite Hit-Squads for Iraq -Report

Sat Jan 8, 2005 10:42 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pentagon is debating whether to set up elite hit-squads to target leaders of the Iraq insurgency in a new strategy based on tactics used against leftist guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday.

One proposal would send U.S. Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads of hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, Newsweek said, citing military insiders familiar with the discussions.

The squads may operate across the border in Syria, Newsweek said on its web site, but added it was unclear whether they would assassinate leaders or be involved in "snatch" operations.

The magazine said the plan is being called "the Salvador option" after strategy instigated during the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.

Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.

"What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one unidentified senior military officer told Newsweek. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing."

Newsweek said Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision to launch the special squads. The Defense Department had no comment on the Newsweek article.

Amid concern over a bold and growing insurgency, the Pentagon is sending retired Gen. Gary Luck to Iraq next week to review overall military operations.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....Q5QHRSCRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=7272542

Two things:

1. What will GWB say in 20 years when a major Shi'ia leader thanks y'all very much for the weapons and the fighting lessons, and beats on you like OBL?
3. I thought the reason the US couldn't leave was fear of a civil war breaking out? Doesn't this act qualify as funding and instigating a civil war?

So much for any semblence of humanitarian motivation. Eventually, they will have to publicly announce why they really went in there.

 

[GAMEFACE]

This is long over due. Drop the PC BS and get it done.

 

[JinnRikki]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]IRAQ
The Salvador Option[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]To deal with the skyrocketing insurgency, the Pentagon is considering creating secret death squads in Iraq. Now, the Pentagon's brave new solution for democracy in the Middle East is to revisit the reprehensible "Salvador Option," the clandestine operation implemented by the Reagan White House in the 1980s in El Salvador. Back then, faced with losing a war against the Salvadoran rebels, the United States government funded "nationalist" forces "that allegedly included so-called death squads" which killed scores of innocent civilians. Today, according to an explosive new article in Newsweek, the Pentagon dusted off that model and has a proposal on the table to "advise, support and possibly train" secret Iraqi squads, "most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria."[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]WHAT THE SQUADS WOULD DO: It's unclear whether the current proposed policy would direct the Iraqi squads to assassinate their targets or "snatch" them and send them to secret facilities for interrogation. In plain language: the squads would be either hit men or kidnapper/torturers. The United States has recently come under serious criticism for whisking suspects to countries with questionable interrogation techniques. Recently, for example, a German national was allegedly kidnapped by Macedonian authorities, turned over to the United States and flown to a prison in Afghanistan where he claims to have been repeatedly beaten, all because he shared a name similar to one of the 9/11 suspects. Other reports show the CIA has employed a secret private jet to ferry terror suspects to places with terrible human rights records, such as Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan and Libya.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]EL SALVADOR AS A TEMPLATE: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has held El Salvador up as a model for Iraq. And during the recent Vice Presidential debates, Vice President Dick Cheney stated, "Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had a guerilla insurgency that controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections…And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections." According to a 1993 U.N.-sponsored truth commission, however, up to "90 percent of the atrocities in the conflict" were committed by the U.S.-sponsored army and its surrogates, "with the rebels responsible for 5 percent and the remaining 5 percent undetermined." These death squads "abducted members of the civilian population and of rebel groups. They tortured their hostages, were responsible for their disappearance and usually executed them."[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]NEGROPONTE'S NEFARIOUS NEGLIGENCE: John Negroponte, the current U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad, is no stranger to death squads. In the 1980s, Negroponte served as the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras. At the time, he was "cozy" with the chief of the Honduran national police force, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who also ran the infamous Battalion 316 death squad. Battalion 316 "kidnapped, tortured and murdered more than 100 people between 1981 and 1984." According to Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, "Negroponte publicly adopted a see-no-evil attitude to this army death squad."[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ABRAMS, THE ATROCITY APOLOGIST: President Bush also appointed neocon Elliot Abrams to be his senior adviser on the Middle East. Abrams was also a staunch supporter of the Salvador Option in the 1980s: when newspapers "reported that a U.S.-trained military unit had massacred hundreds of villagers in the tiny Salvadoran hamlet of El Mozote, Abrams told Congress the story was nothing but communist propaganda." When confronted with the United Nations report that the vast majority of "atrocities in El Salvador's civil war were committed by Reagan-assisted death squads," Abrams's response: "The administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievements." Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra in 1987 – he was pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992.[/font]

 

[JinnRikki]

Whatever it takes at this point to get troops home, and stop the drain on the taxpayers credit card. I don't think the consensus will ever be 'the wonderful U.S. brought us democracy'. So let's do it and get on with the next screw up.

 

[Jointpleasure]

The Salvador option...........HMMM..lets look closely at the benefits and the copay. Nope, I looked, and have decided the best choice for my family is the Hiroshima option.

 

[docmercer--banned]

I remember telling a buddy back in early 2003 that if they wanted to do it the right way ... just hire the flappin Mosad and let em do their thing

 

[Jointpleasure]

I remember taking off work and heading down to the local bar the first day of Shock and Awe. I couldn't believe that our bombs left buildings standing. I told the patrons that precision bombing is the worse thing we could do. I begged for the Baathist to come out and fight like men. Yeh, the older gents thought I was nuts when I didn't see dead scum bodies flying in the air and realized from the very first hour - the libs were fighting this war.

 

[docmercer--banned]

What does "Liberal" have to do with fighting a war??

Seems to me a so called "Liberal" President dropped a A-Bomb 2 times on Japan ...

 

[JudgeWapner]

No real point to make except El salvador is still a mess. More violent than ever there.

 

[Marco]

"Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." - an unidentified senior military officer

No wonder he remains unidentified. Wouldn't want to blaspheme Dubya's unflappably rosy opinion of how the war is going.....

Kinda reminds me of a certain leader in a country in Europe about 1944-1945.....seems all the generals in the field had a better idea of what was happening than the leader.....who was that guy with the short little mustache that couldn't tolerate even the faintest hint of defeat regardless how many troops he lost? Was that a certain Adolph Hitler?

Judge.....how right you are.....don't expect many Americans to be welcome in Iraq or the middle east for at least a few centuries to come.....not that anyone would really want to go there, with all the neck slicers and depleted uranium scattered all over.

 

[docmercer--banned]

Marco:

Pretty good comparison of the WW2 situation ....

Very quiet tonite ... Bblight Coulter must be staying late at his Hitler, sorry Bush, Youth Rally