Who’s behind the active death squads running in Iraq?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11542

By: Steven Harris

Over the past year and a half, a terrifying new development in Iraq has been the discovery of dozens of bodies dumped in rubbish heaps, rivers or abandoned buildings. In most cases, the victims had suffered torture and mutilation before being killed by a single shot to the head. A recent variation of this theme is simply severed heads. A typical news item which did not cause too many headlines around the world was typical on 6th June 2006 – 9 heads found wrapped in plastic bags and left in fruit boxes by the roadside.

These repulsive and revolting images are too much for any news channel to show and the facts of the killing are merely stated, without any analysis of who is behind these killings and why. Anyone with any familiarity with American tactics of counter-insurgency will not be remotely surprised or puzzled by the grisly news coming out of Iraq every day.

During the 1980’s the U.S. trained, armed and directed ‘death squads’ throughout Central and South America. El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua and Colombia were amongst the countries who suffered the most. The Latin American experience was also following on from the U.S. first known death squads; those in Vietnam. The Vietnamese death squads were given monthly targets by the CIA to kill. The CIA later admitted that the figure was 1,800 per month to be killed by their trained and directed death squads.

Guatemala was the one of the worst to suffer, with 200,000 dead and 40,000 missing till today. The suffering in Guatemala was so great and the U.S. link is so well documented that in 1999, the then President Clinton apologised for the U.S. role. The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region till this day.

From the time of invasion of Iraq in March 2003 till June 2004, the phenomenon of death squads was unknown to Iraq and the U.S. soldiers were being killed and injured daily by the Iraqi resistance, something the Americans were unprepared for and had not expected. The U.S. response was to send John Negroponte, the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 - during the worst of death squads operations there, to Baghdad as ‘ambassador’.

Negroponte was notorious during his tenure in Honduras for not only failing to admit to existence of death squads there, he was almost universally believed to be directing death squads in both Honduras and Nicaragua.

His appointment as ambassador to Iraq by Bush in June 2004 until April 2005 marked the development and the formation of the now notorious Iraqi death squads...

[Virginia Dare]

1. That name does seem to crop up quite often...

when nasty horrible things are happening around the world, doesn't it? I find him to be a fascinating character. His connection to British royalty through his marriage is particularly intriguing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Anything that Negroponte is involved in is suspect

He arrives in Iraq, and suddenly there are death squads. Verrrrry interesting.

Oh, yes, and the death squads are cited as a reason why the U.S. troops can't leave.

[ChickMagic]

3. The minute I heard that Negroponte was going to Iraq

I told all my friends to expect to start hearing stories of "death squads".
They laughed at me for being so paranoid, but they're not laughing now.
And they think I'm weirdly prescient.

[NNN0LHI]

4. Lot of people around here said the same thing

And next thing we knew there were death squads running all over Iraq dressed in Iraq police uniforms.

Some people still think it is a civil war.

Don

[godhatesrepublicans]

5. I think they're called "liberty squads" now.

It tested better with most demographics.