Iraq: Proposal for U.S. Death Squads

‘The Salvador Option’. The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/)

www.msnbc.msn.com, Michael Hirsh & John Barry of Newsweek, Jan 10 ’05

“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, … 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.”

“… 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, …”

“One military source … suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “

A terrorist practices terror. One definition of “terror” is

“violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands” (Merriam-Webster)

The U.S. government – a group – doesn’t apply the word “terror” to its own actions even when it plans to intimidate the Sunni population. The purpose of the U.S. bombing of Iraq was to intimidate the Iraqi government, so the entire Iraq War falls within the same definition of “terror”.

(Original Post)