PENTAGON MULLS DEATH SQUADS FOR IRAQ

From Newsweek courtesy of Eschaton:

‘The Salvador Option’

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in 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 that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

And

One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

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That last bit shows that, if implemented, "The Salvador Option" will in all probability be directed at civilians as much as at insurgents. In short, US sponsored terrorism. Creepy, huh?

This isn't surprising given the number of former Reagan era figures currently skulking about the White House, but it is pretty weird because, as far as I know, the US has still not admitted to any connection with the Salvadoran death squads of the 1980s. This Newsweek report comes pretty close to doing so. However, if anyone still has any doubts that our government would do such a thing, consider this 1990 essay from Covert Action Quarterly via Third World Traveller:

Death Squads in El Salvador:
A Pattern of U.S. Complicity

Now, there is compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, members of the U.S. military and the CIA have helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador.

In the last eight years, six Salvadoran military deserters have publicly acknowledged their participation in the death squads. Their stories are notable because they not only confirm suspicions that the death squads are made up of members of the Salvadoran military, but also because each one implicates U.S. personnel in death squad activity.

The term "death squad" while appropriately vivid, can be misleading because it obscures their fundamental identity. Evidence shows that "death squads" are primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government's counterinsurgency strategy. Civilian death squads do exist but have often been comprised of off-duty soldiers financed by wealthy Salvadoran businessmen.

It is important to point out that the use of death squads has been a strategy of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. For example, the CIA's "Phoenix Program" was responsible for the "neutralization" of over 40,000 Vietnamese suspected of working with the National Liberation Front.

And

It is widely accepted, in the mainstream media and among human rights organizations, that the Salvadoran government is responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths which are the result of ten years of civil war. The debate, however, has dwelled on whether the death squads are strictly renegade military factions or a part of the larger apparatus. The evidence indicates that the death squads are simply components of the Salvadoran military. And that their activities are not only common knowledge to U.S. agencies, but that U.S. personnel have been integral in organizing these units and continue to support their daily functioning.

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Speaking of denials, the new US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, denies in the Newsweek story that he had anything to do with death squads when he was ambassador to nearby Honduras during the Reagan administration. However, it's pretty much an open secret that Negroponte has blood stained hands: this "Salvador Option" was predicted last spring when he was named to his current position.

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