From my blog at MOVELEFT.COM,
http://moveleft.com/moveleft_essay_2005_01_12_will_the_us_train_iraqi_death_squads.asp
I opposed the Iraq War before it started.
After the US invasion, initially I wanted the US to stay to try to bring some good out of it.
Then after the torture at Abu Ghraib, I wanted the US to leave promptly, and that has been my position ever since.
I felt the US had lost any moral authority with Abu Ghraib, and should leave before making things worse.
My concern that the US presence was making things worse was supported by a recent Newsweek article ("`The Salvador Option:' The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq" by Michael Hirsh and John Barry, web-exclusive, updated Jan. 11, 2005) which states that the Pentagon is considering training Iraqis to serve in death squads to terrorize their fellow Iraqis.
The Whiskey Bar blog puts death squads in historical context.
More below...
Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld denies the Newsweek report ("
Rumsfeld denies consideration of so-called 'Salvador Option,'" AP via KESQ News online, Jan. 11, 2005):
:
"Somebody has been reading too many spy novels," (said Rumsfeld)...
Newsweek reports the plan is for American Special Forces units to train Iraqi soldiers to serve as "death squads" to hunt down insurgents. The Newsweek report also suggests the units might even go into places like Syria to hunt down insurgent leaders.
Rumsfeld says "the Pentagon doesn't do things like that." He also says the type of training that Iraqi soldiers are receiving "doesn't involve the kinds of things that are characterized in that story."
Of course, anyone who would plan death squads would also be willing to lie about it, and so a denial doesn't mean much in this situation.
The background of John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams adds believability to the Newsweek story that the US is considering training death squads.
Wikipedia provides this background information on the current US Ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte:
From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year, a country at that time ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.
Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.
Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.
Wikipedia provides this background information on Elliott Abrams, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs:
In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre -- thought to be the worst atrocity in modern Latin American history -- began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas." Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda. He later claimed Washington's policy in El Salvador a "fabulous achievement."
When Congress stopped shut down funding for the Contras with the 1982 Boland Amendment, the Reagan administration began looking for other avenues for funding the group. As part of this strategy, Abrams flew to London using a fake name to solicit a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei.
Abrams was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony about his role in the illicit money-raising schemes, but he pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. President George H. W. Bush pardoned Abrams along with a number of other Iran-Contra defendants shortly before leaving office in 1992.
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Returning to the topic of Abu Ghraib, there is an article in the Jan. 12, 2005 Financial Times about the trial of accused torturer Charles Graner which starts ("Abu Ghraib inmate tells of beatings and rape threats" by Demetri Sevastopulo):
A Syrian detainee formerly imprisoned at Abu Ghraib on Tuesday told a military court that US soldiers at the notorious Baghdad prison repeatedly beat prisoners, forced them to eat from toilets and threatened to rape them.
The article later notes that while George W. Bush has blamed Abu Gharib on "a few bad apples...the White House has had to battle suggestions that it attempted to loosen the definition of torture to facilitate interrogations in the war on terror."
Note: Wikipedia is a participatory encyclopedia, frequently updated.