It appears the "secret weapon" used to kill a million Iraqis was US trained and funded death squads

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0109-06.htm

Published on Sunday, January 9, 2005 by Newsweek

'The Salvador Option'

The Pentagon May Put Special-Forces-led Assassination or Kidnapping Teams in Iraq

by Michael Hirsh and John Barry

What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

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, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)




http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0809/09/ltm.03.html

Aired September 9, 2008 - 08:00 ET

<snip>ROBERTS: Barbara Starr with that breaking news for us from the Pentagon this morning. Barbara, thanks, as always.

A secret U.S. program to kill terrorists. Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward says that is the reason violence in Iraq has dropped so dramatically, not because of the so-called troop surge. The claim is in Woodward's new book, "The War Within." Here he is on "LARRY KING LIVE" last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB WOODWARD, AUTHOR, "THE WAR WITHIN": Somewhat compare it to the Manhattan Project in World War II. If you look at the chart, it's a ski slope right down in a matter of months cutting the violence in half.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: CNN's Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware has been living the past six years in the middle of that war, and joins us now with his perspective. So what do you think of what he's saying?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, I mean, let's say that these (INAUDIBLE) teams as they called have come into effect. The first thing to say is, well, about time.

I mean, on the ground you've seen the lack of coordination, as the left hand of one agency has not worked with the right hand of another agency within the American effort. But by and large to suggest that anything like this being done now has been the major reason for the decline in violence is a bit rich.

I mean, the U.S. subcontracted out an assassination program against al Qaeda way back in early 2006. And this was conceded by the then chief of military intelligence in Baghdad and by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad himself. That's what broke the back of al Qaeda.

Then, when America put 100,000 plus insurgents on the U.S. government payroll, including members of al Qaeda, that not only took them out of the field, but it also let them run their own assassination programs against the Iranian-backed militias.

ROBERTS: So, it sounds like assassination was the real part of the program here. But was that the only thing that worked? What about the addition of these troops, these neighborhood stations that were set up that it all kind of work together.

WARE: It does work together. But, I mean, the key to the downturn in violence that we're seeing now is not so much the surge of 30,000 troops in itself. What it's been is the segregation of Baghdad into these enclaves. It's been cutting a deal Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Iranian-back militias, and primarily it's been putting your enemy on your payroll.

The Sunni insurgents and many members of al Qaeda, that's what's brought down the violence. And this is your American militia. The counter balance to the Iranian militias. So if these new teams out there with new technology, great, but they're riding the wave of previous success.

ROBERTS: Interesting. Michael Ware, thanks so much for that. Appreciate the insight perspective.

[gratuitous]

1. Why else would they have put John Negroponte in Iraq?

They needed a seasoned hand with the Death Squads, and who better than Mr. Negroponte, who had so much experience with Death Squads in Central America?

[Ian David]

2. We also have death squads in The Republic of Georgia, too. n/t

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

Negroponte..a stench that never goes away