How the US exported its 'dirty war' policy to Iraq – with fatal consequences
How the US exported its 'dirty war' policy to Iraq – with fatal consequences
Using Latin American covert operations as a template for its Iraqi paramilitary proxies, the US once again lost the moral war
Murtaza Hussain, guest-blogging for Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 March 2013 16.08 EST
In one of the fiery oratories for which he was well-known, the late Hugo Chávez once stated his belief that "the American empire is the greatest menace to our planet." While his detractors have often sought to paint his rhetorical flourishes as a manifestation of unprovoked and unpopular extremism, to his death Chávez remained extremely popular with the majority of the Venezuelan people.
Indeed, far from being an outlier, Chávez fit well within the spectrum of both Central and Latin American popular opinion. While his style may have been his own, his beliefs and worldview regarding US interventionism were reflected in other leaders throughout the region. Looking at the history of US engagement in Latin America, it becomes evident why such a situation exists. From overthrowing democratically elected leaders, operating death squads, and torturing civilians, the history of US involvement in the region has understandably helped create a widespread popular backlash that persists to this day.
The primary theatre of war has since switched from Latin America to the Middle East, but many of the same tactics of that period – which caused so much devastation and engendered so much visceral anger – seem to have been redeployed on the other side of the world. As reported this week by the Guardian, recent investigations have suggested that Pentagon officials at the highest levels oversaw torture facilities during the war in Iraq. The allegations are decidedly gruesome: rooms used for interrogating detainees stained with blood; children tied into extreme stress positions with their bodies beaten to discoloration.
Most chillingly, a veteran of the United States' "dirty war" in El Salvador was reported to have been brought in to personally oversee the interrogation facilities. As described by Iraqi officials this program was condoned at the highest levels of the US military and utilized "all means of torture to make the detainee confess … using electricity, hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails". The alleged involvement of a senior participant of the American intervention in El Salvador is, indeed, particularly odious given the legacy of institutionalized torture and murder which characterized US military involvement in that country.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/08/us-export-dirty-war-iraq
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's exactly the same "modus operandi". But now the buggyman is no longer "evil communism" (that didn't even exist in several countries that were "freed" from their democratically elected leaders and turned into facist governments), but terrorism and whatever is that they call "Al-Qaeda" (sic).
We can only hope they'll fail again, as they did in Latin America. But it's interesting how some self-proclaimed "progressives" on DU LatAm group never take time to stop by in threads such as yours and give us a little more insight of their general outlooks. They only have eyes and ears to the usual mainstream media bashing of leftists, "populists" (this word is used in a very similar way to "Al-Qaeda"
, while bowing to the right-wing governments of the region and showing a sick support for some of the worst politicians of the continent, including the facists in Honduras, the coup plotters in Paraguay, Uribe and Capriles. They do nothing but echo media bullshit and reinforce popular ignorance about US foreign policy, therefore supporting these extremists, facists policies themselves. Quite exotic "progressives"...
