The Return of U. S. Death Squads

[Judi Lynn]

September 10, 2008

From Afghanistan to Africa
The Return of U. S. Death Squads
By CONN HALLINAN

United Nations officials charge that secret “international intelligence services” are conducting raids to kill Afghan civilians, then hiding the perpetuators behind an “impenetrable” wall of bureaucracy.

~snip~
When Alston tried to investigate the murders, however, he hit a stonewall. “Not only was I unable to get any international military commander to provide their version of what took place, but I was unable to get any military commander to even admit that their soldiers were involved,” the UN official told the Financial Times.

Suspicion has fallen on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which led such teams into Afghanistan during the 1990s in an attempt to capture or kill Osama bin Ladin, and again during the 2001 invasion.

According to Alston, the shadow units work out of two bases: U.S. Camp Ghecko near Kandahar, and a base in the province of Nangarhar. “It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily armed internationals, accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces, to be wondering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them,” he wrote in a recent UN report.

Something very similar may be going on in Iraq. In his latest book, “The War Within,” Bob Woodward writes that the U.S. military has a program to “locate, target and kill key individuals in extremist groups.” Last month U.S. Special Forces killed the son and nephew of the governor of Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad. Unlike the shootings at roadblocks by U.S. troops, a common occurrence, Iraqi investigators say the two men were essentially executed.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan09102008.html

[Bob Dobbs]

1. U.S. death squads never went away.

They have been an integral part of amerikkka's foreign policy forever.

See the latest version here.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/10-3

"A Policy of Deliberate Cruelty"

[norepubsin08]

2. google SOAW

The School of America's Watch they got such a bad reputation that they had to change their name. They were the ones training people to assassinate progressives in their own Central American countries. They were responsible for the deaths of 6 Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the assassination of the 4 American Nuns. 1990 I ran in the Democratic primary against my DINO congressman, because he refused to vote to cut funding to the SOA. I won 40% of the primary vote and forced him to spend about 4 times what he should have spent. In the end, after the general election that year, he finally changed his vote to cut funding of the SOA. This has been a problem for a LONG time...ask the country of Chile!