U.S. Considers Using Peshmergas To Target Sunni Insurgents

THE Pentagon is reportedly considering sending elite "hit squads" into Iraq to target militant leaders amid growing fears the insurgency will derail landmark elections due to be held in three weeks.

The operation would draw on tactics used against leftist guerillas in Central America 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine reported yesterday.

The report follows weeks of insurgent violence – which US-led forces appear powerless to prevent – designed to frighten Iraqis from participating in the January 30 polls.

Even if the polls do proceed, there are concerns a low participation rate will undermine their legitimacy.

The British Government is said to be close to announcing the dispatch of up to 650 more troops to help safeguard the election. The soldiers would come from the Royal Highland Fusiliers, now based in Cyprus as a designated Iraq reserve force, London's Sunday Telegraph reported.

The paper cited an unnamed senior army officer as saying the deployment would be announced by the Blair Government as soon as today, when parliament returns from its Christmas break.

In his latest comments on Iraq, George W. Bush vowed to stand by Iraqis during the election but sparked speculation about a possible shift in policy when he gave no commitment to an extended US presence after the vote.

The Pentagon also fuelled doubts about Washington's medium-term plans by dispatching a four-star general to Baghdad to make an "open-ended" review of the military's Iraq policy.

General Gary Luck, former head of US forces in South Korea and an adviser to US commanders during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will arrive in Baghdad this week to review troop levels, the training of Iraqi recruits and how to tackle the insurgency.

His orders appear to be a tacit admission that US policy in Iraq has reached a fork in the road and that the White House and Pentagon must now choose whether to dig in deeper or begin preparing an exit strategy.

In remarks to reporters in the Oval Office at the weekend, Mr Bush made no mention of lingering in Iraq. "Once the elections take place, we look forward to working with the newly constituted government to help train Iraqis as fast as possible so they can defend themselves."

The US added to its problems in Iraq yesterday when an F-16 fighter jet bombed a house near Mosul that had been mistaken for an insurgents' hideout, killing at least five people.

"The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby," the military said in a statement. "The multinational force in Iraq deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives."

The Newsweek report said one proposal would send US special forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads of hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shi'ite militiamen to target Sunni insurgents.

The squads might operate across the border in Syria, the magazine said, but added it was unclear whether they would assassinate militant leaders or be involved in "snatch" operations.

The plan was being called "the Salvador option" after a strategy instigated during the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.

Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the US government funded or supported "nationalist" forces to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathisers.

The US Defence Department had no comment on the article.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11897332%255E2703,00.html

By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 10:22 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2005

Jan. 8 - 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.)

Read More
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

The US is losing Iraq, something they can't allow to happen. I guess this option deserves a chance. Better than staying with the current program.

See:

http://www.g2mil.com/May2004.htm

According to Newsweek, the U.S. government is considering "The Salvador Option" - setting up assassination squads to target leaders of the Iraqi resistance. We speak with journalist and activist Allan Nairn whose 1984 article in The Progressive Magazine titled "Behind the Death Squads" exposed the CIA's backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee. [includes rush transcript]

LISTEN ONLINE
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/10/1456242

As violence in Iraq continues into 2005, the U.S. government is considering setting up assassination squads to target leaders of the Iraqi resistance. Newsweek Magazine is reporting that the Pentagon is drawing up possible proposals to send special forces teams to advise, support and train hand-picked Iraqi squads to target Sunni rebels.

Within the Pentagon, the tactic is named "The Salvador option" after the strategy that was secretly employed by Ronald Reagan's administration to combat the guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. The U.S.-backed death squads hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters.

The current US ambassador in Iraq is John Negroponte. As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in coordinating US covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras.

The Newsweek report says the Iraqi squads would most likely be made up of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen and could even operate across the Syrian border. It is also still unclear whether Pentagon or the CIA would take responsibility for the squads.

We are joined right now by journalist and activist Allan Nairn. In 1984, his article in The Progressive Magazine entitled "Behind the Death Squads" [Download pdf] exposed the CIA"s backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

LISTEN ONLINE
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/10/1456242

AMY GOODMAN: The Intelligence Committee came out with a 400-page report, which never saw the light of day. I believe there were only two copies made, but let's ask Allan Nairn. Welcome to Democracy Now!

ALLAN NAIRN: Thanks.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you talk about what this Salvador option means, hearing about the Newsweek report that they might employ it in Iraq?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Newsweek said that -- they described the Salvador option as the targeting of combatants and their sympathizers, and the key word is sympathizers. In El Salvador and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the C.I.A., the Pentagon, and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists. In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads. For example, General “Chele” Medrano, who was on the C.I.A. payroll, described how they picked their targets. He said, they targeted people who speak, and these are his words: “…against yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do, when they found them this he kill them.” Actually, they didn't always kill them. Often, they brought them to the headquarters of the treasury police, the national guard, the army and they tortured for them days. One former member of the Salvadoran treasury police, Rene Hurtado, described a course that was given at army general staff headquarters where American officers gave instruction in techniques including electroshock torture. Hurtado himself said he conducted such torture. He said, these are his words: “You put wires on the prisoner’s vital parts. You place the wires between the prisoner’s teeth, on the penis, on the vagina. The prisoners feel it more so the feet are in the water, and they are seated on iron so the blow is stronger… When it's over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying, Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade.” These are the names of the Salvadora death squads. I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran National Police, the intelligence archives and you could see they have filed marked, union, student, religious. They showed me a card file, which included surveillance reports on activists who had traveled to other countries. These surveillance reports were given to them, according to the captain who was giving me this tour, by the C.I.A. The whole filing system was set up for them by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Medrano was at one point brought to the oval office in the White House, and presented a silver medal by president Lyndon Johnson for an - he showed me the medal, inscribed on the medal - for exceptionally meritorious service. This program actually began not just under Reagan, but during the John F. Kennedy administration. It encompassed all of Latin America or all of the dictatorships of Latin America that were being backed the by the U.S. in the Central American region, it included Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras. A special teletype system, which at that time was the top technology, was set up for exchanging information among the intelligence services of the various participant countries, where information would be passed back and forth about, for example, labor leaders who would travel from one country to another for conferences, and then on their return, they would be picked up, tortured and assassinated. Something on the order of 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military, most of them during the 1970's. And the majority of these were targeted by these death squad type forces. So one point is, these were not combatants who were being killed. These were not armed guerrillas. They were sometimes engaged by the Salvadoran military in combat, but the death squad operations, which the Pentagon according to Newsweek is now talking about using for Iraq, these went after civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Allan Nairn. You talk about General Medrano, who is known as the father of these death squads, trained by the United States in El Salvador. Again, this 20 years ago. And I'm looking at a full-page ad that The Progressive took out in the Washington Post, “Behind the Death Squads,” an exclusive report on the U.S. role in Salvador's official terror. Can you talk about the effect of this, and how this information was made known?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, based on some of those interviews that I just described and also U.S. internal documents I did that article for The Progressive. They published, I think it was May of 1984 and it was almost completely ignored by the corporate press. There was no notice whatsoever. So then The Progressive went out and raised money from various donors, and they were able to buy a full-page ad in the Washington Post where they reprinted about a third of the article. This got some attention in Washington. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee then asked me to come in, and meet with them. So I did in a closed session and was questioned by dozens of the Intelligence Committee staff for about three or four hours about what the U.S. had done to back and create the Salvadoran death squads. Now this was a bit curious since they were the ones, who had security clearance, who had access to the C.I.A. and Pentagon files. They were the ones who worked with them, indeed funded them, but they were asking me, I think in part maybe to try to find out how much I knew. What I knew is what I printed in the magazine, but I was trying to spur them to investigate. And they did. They then launched an investigation where they say they examined more than a million internal documents. They produced a 400 page report, which was heavily classified. They told me that only two copies of the report were produced, one was in a sealed room that only -- kept on Capitol Hill, which only the Senators on the committee could read, and another at the C.I.A. headquarters. A public report was released, which said nothing. Some of the Senators told me that the classified - they told me a little bit about the classified report. They said they had verified that in fact, yes, the U.S. had set up these death squads in Salvador and also that U.S. personnel had sometimes been on the premises during torture sessions and had supplied questions for the prisoners being tortured.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this was back in 1984 and 1985 when this was coming back -- coming out. Did it surprise you that the Pentagon is actually calling this proposal, according to Newsweek, to train -- it's not clear if it's C.I.A.-backed, Pentagon-backed assassination and kidnapping squads in El Salvador, that they're calling it the Salvador option. Have they ever acknowledged it publicly?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, it sounds … No, they never acknowledged it publicly. That Senate report was classified. But now it sounds like in an offhand way, it's almost -- it sounds as if they're almost talking about it even in a -- almost a joking way, oh yeah, we'll do to them what they did to Salvador. It's an astonishing admission, but I think now that this is on the record, immediately, the Senate Intelligence Committee should release their classified report of 1984, and there should be a demand that the Pentagon and the C.I.A. release all internal documents they have about the Salvador option, and similar activities in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Salvador, also - there are dozens of other countries in the world where this has happened. Recently, we had the revelations about General Pinochet and his bank account, the Riggs Bank in Washington. He was paid millions by the U.S. as a very similar intelligence exchange system and assassination system was being set up the southern cone countries. This admission should be pursued, and the U.S. officials who participated in creating units that killed civilians should be prosecuted for murder. We have to enforce the murder laws.

AMY GOODMAN: The nuns, the American nuns it is referred to in the Newsweek piece, that were killed in El Salvador, Allan. Can you give some background as we -- as the Pentagon apparently weighs this option of the Salvador option in Iraq?

ALLAN NAIRN: They were killed by the Salvadoran National Guard. They were pulled from their vehicle, raped, shot, dumped into a ditch, and this was a typical Salvadoran death squad operation. This one got a lot of the attention in the press in the U.S., because victims were American. Although at the time, U.S. officials actually tried to excuse it, Alexander Haig, I believe it was Alexander Haig spoke publicly about there being an exchange of gunfire, which implied these were pistol packing nuns who had to be brought down in combat by the Salvadoran forces. Jean Kirkpatrick actually said, well, these were not real nuns, her suggestion being that they were activists and this somehow -- she seemed to be suggesting this somehow legitimized their targeting. That was in fact the principle behind these death squad operations.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the Jesuits who were killed in El Salvador, not to mention the archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romereo.

ALLAN NAIRN: Archbishop Romero was killed as part of the -- according to later investigations, he was killed by an offshoot of the operation of Roberto D’Aubuisson who ran the ARENA party, which was one of the death squad operations or one of the smaller one, actually. The larger came from the regular Salvadoran armed forces and police. He also had U.S. backing. In fact, D’Aubuisson launched his career as a major figure in Salvador by going on TV and making a speech. He had a video role as he spoke with an illustrated death list of union people and religious figures and others who he said should be killed as traitors to the country. And the data for the list were supplied to him by American intelligence, again according to the officers there I interviewed.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, one link between Salvador 20 years ago and today in Iraq is the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte, who is the current ambassador to Iraq. And I also want to get to Aceh and talk about the latest that's happening there, but in just a minute, if you could sum up that link.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Negroponte was one of the people who ran the Contra operation, the central -- the invasion against Nicaragua, which the world court later ruled to be an act of aggression by the Contras, which were created and funded by the U.S. government. He also oversaw the back -- the military backing for Battalion 316, which was a Honduran military death squad that specialized in torture and assassination.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what it means that he is in charge of Iraq right now. Do you think he has a part of designing this “Salvador option?”

ALLAN NAIRN: Maybe not. They probably have other people who are specialists in that. He's probably handling the economic side of it, but if there are political apologies to be done, Negroponte may handle it. The thing is that these programs, which backed the killing of foreign civilians, it's a regular part of U.S. policy. It's ingrained in U.S. policy in dozens upon dozens of countries. In Indonesia for example, which we are going to talk about in a minute, where the tsunami hit, the Kopassus, the Red Berets, which there specialize in torture and assassination, they have been trained by U.S. Green Berets in things like urban warfare. This is a longstanding policy, and it's nothing new.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/10/1456242

Remember the heady, idealistic days of early 2005? You know, like, January 1st through to, say, the 7th or 8th? After the three-hundred-and-sixty-six day bloodbath that was 2004, and once the Are-the-Tourists-Okay? angle of the Tsunami story was driven into the ground--because apparently middle-aged sex tourists are still a more compelling image of Thai suffering than orphaned locals--it really seemed as though, this year, mourning brown-skinned folks as though they were real people would be en vogue.

News agencies started turning away, slowly, from the fates of small, exclusive sea-side resorts, and started talking about the indigenous human toll of the South East Asian catastrophe; news that's not, it should be pointed out, without its relevance to the goings-on of American capitalism: the post-traumatic suffering of those lucky children who survived the waves raises relevant commercial questions, like how many Asian kids is Nike's Philip Knight going to have to fire as absenteeism skyrockets whilst they look for their parents' bodies? (A quick aside: Remember how nobody wanted to give up wearing Nikes despite the devastation the company wrought on South-East Asia? Seriously, though, that Tsunami was positively Shakespearean.)

Despite their status as walking contradictions in terms, "Television Journalists" waxed poetic about the devastation. Suddenly bereft of their go-to metaphor--"Huge waves of refugees," "Market ebbs and flows," and so on--reporters struggled to find the proper timbre for such chilling, desperate news. We started talking about debt relief, and aid packages, and we were all so swept up in the profoundly humanitarian moment that it didn't even seem to bother anybody that American helicopters weren't readily available to help, bogged down as they were in a Quagmire.

And it was that very Quagmire, in Babylon, that snapped us back into the realpolitik of our current post-January 10th paradigm. Shifty, far-out, conspiratorially anti-government sources like Newsweek began to report on a raging debate in the Pentagon that has definitively put to rest any Tsunami-mirage hopes that in 2005, the white North might assign even mildly human-like values to non-white lives: The debate over the "Salvador Option," a term in an of itself so chilling and inhuman as to recall the moral fitness of another first-world regime that weighed the "option" of Madagascar against Zyklon B.

What's that? You're not familiar with the 'Salvador Option'? Well, remember in the 1980s, when all those fiery, irrationally passionate Latinos and their wacky hippy allies advanced the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that the CIA was orchestrating bands of marauding assassins and torturers in El Salvador against the left-wing FMLN guerrillas, as well as Catholic clergy and innocent civilians? Well--and we don't really need to dwell on thisñ essentially, every accusation they made was true, and we're tacitly admitting it now, only because we're hoping to do the exact same thing (except openly this time) in Iraq. So while you thought the question to ask new Bush appointees like Gonzales was 'Do you condone torture', it turns out that the more germane question might be 'Do you condone mutilating nuns' genitalia and leaving bishops dead in ditches?' And the answer you'll get, at this point, is: We'll let you know. Also, according to Newsweek, "The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option." Thank God that the tyrant Hussein is in U.S. custody, so that dedicated democrats like Allawi can set themselves to the difficult task of building a free and thriving political expression for Iraqi civil society.

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http://www.ccmep.org/2005_articles/iraq/011005_demers.htm

Allawi is a Quisling. His gang are the Vichy Iraqis. Hanging's too good for them.