Bradley Manning Won't Be SF Pride Grand Marshal

[struggle4progress]

19. So what? We've known for years that during the Bush II era, the neocons

pushed for a counter-insurgency model in Iraq based on the Salvadoran death squads and that the Bush II administration adopted this policy. Death squads were set up in Iraq based on the Reagan era policy towards El Salvador: responsibility for the decision went all the way to the top. Anyone who thinks this is a revelation simply wasn't paying attention when it was actually happening, because it was widely covered. Despite all the hype, we didn't learn about these crimes from Assange or Manning

US considers 'Salvador option' to tackle Iraq insurgents
David Teather in New York
The Guardian, Sunday 9 January 2005 21.51 EST
The United States is considering setting up an elite squad of assassins to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency, according to reports yesterday. Newsweek .. said the Pentagon, in Washington, is drawing up possible proposals to send US special forces teams to advise, support and train hand-picked Iraqi squads to target Sunni rebels. The ploy has .. been called the "Salvador option" after the strategy that was secretly employed by Ronald Reagan's administration to combat the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. In that instance, the US government backed "nationalist forces" that hunted down rebel leaders and their supporters ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/10/iraq.davidteather

The Way of the Commandos
May 1, 2005
By PETER MAASS
... The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam .. but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and its associated paramilitaries included ''extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, 'disappearances' and torture ... Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.'' As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses. There are far more Americans in Iraq today -- some 140,000 troops in all -- than there were in El Salvador, but U.S. soldiers and officers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role. In the process, they are backing up local forces that, like the military in El Salvador, do not shy away from violence. It is no coincidence that this new strategy is most visible in a paramilitary unit that has Steele as its main adviser; having been a key participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces. He is not the only American in Iraq with such experience ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ARMY.html?pagewanted=print

U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq
October 24, 2005
CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence Personnel Implicated
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions. "There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths," said Anthony D. Romero ... "High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal that has rocked our military." The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and "OGA" (Other Governmental Agency) ...
http://www.aclu.org/human-rights-national-security/us-operatives-killed-detainees-during-interrogations-afghanistan-and-

(Baghdad) Morgue pressed to stay quiet
<Wed Mar-01-06 10:27 AM>
... Officials overseeing Baghdad's morgue have come under pressure not to investigate the soaring number of apparent cases of executions and torture in the country, the former U.N. human rights chief for Iraq said yesterday ... Al-Jaafari said the toll was 379. Gen. Ali Shamarri of the Interior Ministry statistics department put the toll at 1,077 ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2139194&mesg_id=2139194

Horror show reveals Iraq’s descent (Baghdad Morgue)
<Sat Jun-17-06 11:26 PM>
... It is here that bodies from the nightly slaughter are dumped each morning. The stench of decaying flesh, mingled with disinfectant, hits you at the checkpoint 100 yards away. Each corpse tells a different story about the terrors of Iraq. Some bodies are pocked with holes inflicted by torturers with power drills. Some show signs of strangulation; others, with hands tied behind the back, bear bullet wounds. Many are charred and dismembered ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2343679&mesg_id=2343679