Pentagon Considers US Led Death Squads For Iraq

[DistressedAmerican]

Found this newsweek article very disturbing. Especially the fact that they make light of Regan's Latin American death squads by calling such plans the "Salvador Option". Sickening. As the article says it suggests a high level of desperation within Pentagon plannig circles regarding our situation over there.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

(snip)
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.

Distressed American
http://www.seedsofdoubt.com/distressedamerican/main.htm

[shraby]

1. I read that deeply disturbing article too.

Negreponte is busy, huh?

[DistressedAmerican]

3. How long before we declare this whole effort

a wash and get the hell out of there? Sadly, I expect it will be a long time.

My guess: Bush's full term and a year of the next guy. Iraqi liberation in 2009! After that our bases linger in the region for decades.

[soothsayer]

16. vietnam took 5 presidents

[DistressedAmerican]

21. My god lets hope it doesn't stetch out like that!

[aquart]

2. Considering, my Aunt Fanny.

Our death squad specialist has been in place for months.

[DistressedAmerican]

4. Yeah, I figured really "may" meant "have" and are

now, leaking to notify the "evil doers and dead enders".

[Divernan]

5. Pogo would say,"We have met the banana dictator and it are Bush.

I suspect the US forces have already been carrying out such acitons (ranging from one-on-one secret executions to the oh-my-we accidentally-dropped-a-500 lb. bomb-on-the-wrong-house-my-bad), and some particularly brutal incidents are about to be made public. It's the rumsfeld style to pre-empt negative news by going on the offensive.

Publicly flaunted U.S. death squads - short of unleashing a nuclear holocaust, this administration has finally how low it can go.

[RC]

6. How many of these insurgents

are Iraqi nationalists? 95%? 97%? 99%?
What were these insurgents doing before we shocked and awed Baghdad into retaliating for the Iraqi innocents killed? How many insurgents were shuffling papers in a downtown office? Or running shops or business? How many of these 'insurgents' used to go home after work to a wife and kids that do not exist anymore? How many of these insurgents do not have a home anymore?

[Stinky The Clown]

7. The architect of those death squads is right in the middle of Iraq

One "Ambassador" Negroponte.

[LynnTheDem]

8. They'll be working WITH the Columbian paramilitary terrorists bush hired?

Or against? Maybe bush can get a twofer war going in Iraq.

[rhino47]

9. Using ethnic divides

to ethnic cleanse .How sweet.
<snip>
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.

This sounds like the perfect cocktail for an outright civil war if you ask me.

[bowens43]

10. How is US occupation different from life under Saddam?

[farmbo]

11. Err..we already have "Death Squads" they're called "Air strikes"

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of "suspects" have already been targeted for elimination without arrest or trial by air strikes using smart bombs since the beginning of the insurgency.

No need to arrest suspects in the middle of the night then execute them. We have the technology to do this from twenty miles away...and no messy paperwork is required.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IndianaGreen]

13. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid... err, I meant to say "Support the troops"!

This may come as a shock for some, but Clinton's Plan Colombia had a death squad component to it, and still continues to this very day. President Urribe of Colombia ran his own private army of murderers, and he is wined and dined by politicians of both major parties in Washington.

When it comes to war crimes, it is truly a bipartisan enterprise!

[klyon]

23. and that is why some of us are not 100% Clinton fans

he did a number of things I disagreed with, but still he was thousands of times better than Bush.

KL

[DistressedAmerican]

25. I for one am not a huge Clinton foreign policy fan

however, he did get a Mideast peace process happening and he didn't invade invade the heart of the Mideast. Bushies like to say that Bush looked at much of the same intelligence as Clinton. Clinton didn't go off all half cocked. Yee-Haw!

[sendero]

14. These morons..

.... are always 2-10 years behind the power curve.

Death squads are EXACTLY how Saddam should have been taken out, not levelling a whole country and killing 100,000 or them and 1,400 of us.

To suggest that the only way a superpower like us can deal with a two-bit tinpot tyrant like Saddam is full scale war is beyond ludicrous.

[soothsayer]

17. i'm not convinced it was any of our business to take out saddam

by whatever means

[sendero]

18. I agree....

... my comments assumed that the decision to do so was already made.

We could have simply kept the weapons inspectors in place until Saddam died of old age. They couldn't deploy a pea-shooter under those circumstance. It would have cost us almost nothing in money, and nohting in lives lost.

All the more reason to be certain that this whole thing was about anything but Saddam.

[DistressedAmerican]

15. My Assessment Is That The Civil War Is Coming/already

here. We have just publicly announced what side we will be on. Sunni general population look out. When we begin funding private paramilitary troops with loose or no U.S. control it always comes back to bite us on the ass. Look how well our contractors have done. Abuses, torture, strung up on a bridge in Falluja. The fact they have decided to put the Kurdish Peshmerga into the fight is a troubling new development. At least they are better trained and more willing to fight for their American masters than the new Iraqi National Guard troops. What the fuck is going on over there?!?!

Take Bush to the Hague to face his crimes!

[DistressedAmerican]

19. Colin "Not Familiar" with the report or plan.

Told Wolf Blitzer to ask the Pantagon. Refusing to answer the question. Answer the question you freaking sellout bastard! "I see you baby shanking that anthrax". Give me a break.

[atommom]

20. I'm sure there are war crimes being committed already that we haven't

gotten wind of. What we already know is very disturbing. At this point I would not put anything past the Bushies. They've shown a total lack of concern for anything but their own twisted agenda. Our citizens don't matter .... our troops don't matter ... and "foreigners" matter even less.

[klyon]

22. Yea blowing up innocent civilians houses don't count?

and so it goes

KL

[DistressedAmerican]

24. Actually, I think this is worse

At least we have control over the errant bombing. We can make it stop anytime we want. Arming groups to do our proxy fighting in a paramilitary fashion has always worked out badly for the U.S. Remember the Mujahadeen. It is unlikely we will accidentally drop a 500 pounder on an American city but ex-Muhajadeen would be happy to. How long 'til the "unintended consequences" come around?