Death Squads? The Salvador option? Breaking News

[MaryH]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/printer_010905V.shtml

"Now, Newsweek has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan adm.'s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980's. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the US govt. funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.
snip
Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train 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."

Me again - why don't we just nuke the country. That would be one option. The sad part is that Bush has probably talked about it already.

This is getting totally out of hand here. Do you think anyone in Congress has noticed?

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Death squads will endear us EVEN MORE to Iraqis...

Brilliant... just fucking brilliant...:grr:

[MaryH]

2. And such an improvement over Sadaam - don't you thinK?

[cornermouse]

3. "Do you think anyone in Congress has noticed?"

No. I don't.

[Lexingtonian]

4. From manslaughter to murder

Not exactly the moral direction our government should be travelling, eh?

What was this deal I kept on hearing a while ago...something about Saddam Hussein murdering his people and needing to put an end to that kind of thing?

That thing about killing 'sympathizers'- we all know what that means. No Gun Ri, My Lai, El Mozote, and Lidice, you're going to have more company in the history books.

Last guys don't finish nice.

[MaryH]

7. Does anyone realize that the insurgents are Iraqis who just

disagree? I don't condone their violence. Have read that many are hopped up on drugs. Don't know if that is true.

But when we get to the point where we are killing the people - the citizens - of the country then we have gone way too far. Actually, I think we went way too far the moment Bush and buds thought up the war.

But Death Squads? We have moved over the line into insanity a long time ago.

[Lexingtonian]

18. well, it's really all about Bush/neocon bitter enders

Horrible people deal with defeat in horrible ways. That's what defines them. That's why you want the best possible people to run governments, not the worst.

It all makes their political dismissal/characterization of the Iraqi guerilla uprisings at the end of the 2003 invasion as 'Ba'athist bitter enders' rather ironic. It makes the characterization of Hussein as a murderous dictator look sardonic.

Personally, I suspect this report/leak is all to some degree more of an attempt by the Pentagon to intimidate the guerillas and warn off the Bushies from degenerating this fight into a Latin American-type ethnocidal war. I mean, the "Coalition" has more to lose overall by creating a tit-for-tat anarchic assassination/massacre conflict a la Columbia. One successful nerve gas attack or determined infiltration of the 'Green Zone' wiping out the Allawi puppet government could wipe out all the minimal Bushie political efforts and hopes in Iraq in one fell swoop, literally.

The Pentagon and White House gambling has become desperate. I think the Pentagon wants out of Iraq and the White House is deathly scared- but the CIA and Pentagon have exposed them (the essential triumvirate of Dubya/Cheney/Rummie) as so responsible for everything that it's impossible to offload the political damage. The next move in the Iraq game is really about who gets jettisoned in Washington.

[mazzarro]

5. Congress being concerned?

"This is getting totally out of hand here. Do you think anyone in Congress has noticed?"

Congress was not even perturbed by the scale of death in Fallujah why will we expect anything different on this?

[charlie]

6. Hardly a surprise to Iraqis, I'm sure

Considering who Bush appointed as Ambassador to Iraq. We're reenacting the idiocy and worst excesses of the Cold War in compressed time. With the same sorry cast of characters!

[MaryH]

8. So, are we going to use chemical agents on them next.

We'll show them - those sorry son's of bitches.

You know, this is really awful! And Congress is worried about undoing their own ethics rules.

Ironic, isn't it.

[Theres-a]

12. Didn't we already use a variant of napalm?

[MaryH]

14. I read that - but I don't know if it is true.

If it sounds too awful and stupid to be true then it probably is true.

[Theres-a]

17. The whole thing is too awful and stupid to be true....

I don't know if it's true either.I take it all with a grain of salt.

[G_j]

9. Negreponte must be elated! n/t

[ck4829]

10. It's going to become 'the war on terror' to 'the war of terror'

Those Death Squads were terrorists.

We're just going to make this thing terrorist vs. terrorist.

And, how do you fund terror?

Usually with drugs, it happened with the Contras, it happened with the other Death Squads, it happened with the Afghan 'freedom fighter', and it will happen again if they do this.

The RW will create a new terrorist threat.

[MaryH]

11. Sounds like Mad Magazine

Terrorist vs Terrorist

But I don't think we have a very good track record at playing terrorist. We mostly just fucked it up.

[MaryH]

13. Maybe we could all just form Neighborhood Terroris Networks

instead of Neighborhood Watch Groups.

Then we could all play!

I want to be the leader!

[jackofhearts]

15. This is the most ominous statement...

I have read concerning this bloodletting in a long time:

"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."

We have killers and murderous thieves running our government and half the nation just gave them a vote of confidence.

[AlbizuX]

16. Isn't this a violation of human rights

not to mention a stupid idea likely to inflame ethnic tensions and lead to civil war?

Can Shiite Ayatollah Sistani please renounce this practice and declare that the United States will not set Iraqi against Iraqi...this is wrong. The Sunnis already feel against the wall, and letting them know that we are training Shiite death squads to go after them is going to inflame their insurgency, not make peace.

[iconoclastic cat]

19. Hey, isn't this how OBL was created in Afganistan?

Refresh my memory, please.

[jhain]

20. if it is such a good idea...

why didn't they take out Saddam this way?
and save the 100,000 + Iraqi lives and the thousands of Americans, too?

Bastards.

it's a rhetorical question./sarcasm off.

[neebob]

21. And we have what reason to believe this is not already operational ...? nt

[pss]

22. What the hell is wrong with you people?

You act as if this isn't all part of the plan? You respond as if this kind of thing isn't what they had in mind all along? Come on, get real! THE AGENDA OF THE BUSHIES IS AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN TO KILL OFF AS MANY POOR BROWN PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE! In the pursuit of profits, of course. Once you understand that, none of this will surprise you ever again.

"We have killers and murderous thieves running our government and half the nation just gave them a vote of confidence."

That's about the gist of it...