Speaking of War Crimes…The Etiology of the Death Squads in Iraq

[me b zola]

Another day of reports of dozens of dead, mutilated bodies being found in Baghdad killed by Iraqi death squads. It's becoming a daily occurence:

Fifty more bodies found in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The bound bodies of dozens more torture victims were found in Baghdad in the past day, officials said on Friday, fuelling anarchic sectarian anger as political leaders square off over an issue some say could mean civil war.

In all, police retrieved 50 bodies in the 24 hours to Friday morning, most shot in the head after being trussed and tortured, a senior Interior Ministry official told Reuters. That took the body count in the city for three days to at least 130.

(...)

"It's barbaric but sadly we've become used to it," the Interior Ministry official said of bodies found around the capital, in both Sunni and Shi'ite areas. "Forty bodies, 60 bodies -- it's become a daily routine."

The White House, defending its Iraq policy from fierce criticism ahead of November's congressional elections, called the body counts "horrible".

~more @ link~
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L15375920.htm

Here's a Newsweek article from Jan,2005 that says that the
Pentagon was considering using death squads in Iraq. I've posted this
article a few times within other people's threads, but it has now
become clear that it needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

‘The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq
AP
Nuns pray over the bodies of four American sisters killed by the military in El Salvador in 1980

By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 5:59 p.m. PT Jan 14, 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. There is no evidence, however, that Negroponte knew anything about the Salvadoran death squads or the Iran-Contra scandal at the time. The Iraq ambassador, in a phone call to NEWSWEEK on Jan. 10, said he was not involved in military strategy in Iraq. He called the insertion of his name into this report "utterly gratuitous.")

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.

~more @ link~
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek

The media is reporting on the death squads and the carnage in Baghdad,
but they suffer from memory loss. I think that they need to be
of this report.

[ShortnFiery]

1. These EVIL neo-con bastards refuse to learn from their horrific mistakes!

It didn't work for The Neo-Cons in Central America during the 80s and it will NOT work in Iraq today, i.e., the flourishment of Death Squads. :grr: :(

Isn't the definition of INSANITY the act of repeating the same deleterious behaviors but expecting a different result each time? :shrug:

[Amonester]

10. But their "buddies" (the havemore's) make billions (today).

At the time, they were only making a few hundreds of millions.

Of course, the taxpayers see their national cc charges increase each time they "do it" again. :grr:

[me b zola]

2. "In response" to the amount of deaths by death squads...

The US is sending more US soldiers into Baghdad.


Insanity wrapped in warped minds = war crimes.

[me b zola]

3. .....

[Jcrowley]

4. Connecting The Dots

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire.

[me b zola]

5. I had not heard about the P2OG

..but it sounds like SOP for these guys. Do you have any links?

[Jcrowley]

6. Donald Rumsfeld's plan to fight terror is to create a lot more of it

In August 2002, the first public hints of a new U.S. secret counterintelligence group -- the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) -- emerged from a report of the Defense Science Board (DSB), a Pentagon advisory group, and found its way into daylight.
? "The DSB briefing was first reported by Dan Dupont in Inside the Pentagon" on September 26, 2002. The briefing was also discussed by William M. Arkin in the Los Angeles Times on October 27, 2002.
? On September 26, 2002, United Press International (UPI) announced that it had exclusively obtained documents summarizing the report of the Defense Science Board, which were to be publicly released in late October, after it has been presented to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The report is entitled Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism. <3>

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Proactive_Preemptive_Operations_Group

According to a classified document, "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism" prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, a new organization has been created to thwart potential terrorist attacks on the United States. This counter-terror operations group— the "Proactive Preemptive Operations Group" (P2OG) will require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. The team of covert counter-intelligence agents will be responsible for secret missions designed to target terrorist leaders. The secret missions are designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

This means that the United States government is planning to use secret military operations in order to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. In a strange twist of logic, it seems the plan is to somehow combat terrorism by causing it. According to the report, other strategies include stealing money from terrorist cells or tricking them with fake communications. The Defense Department already maintains a secretive counter-terror operations group known as Delta Force that is called in when a crisis happens.

Exactly what type of actions would be required to "stimulate reactions" by terrorist groups has yet to be revealed. When asked questions regarding what measures would be taken, Pentagon sources responded with, "Their sovereignty will be at risk."

The current P2OG program is not entirely new to the United States. One similar program was Operation Northwoods. In 1963, America's top military brass presented a plan to President John Kennedy that called for a fake terrorist campaign — complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans — to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, a Mafia/corporate fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro. Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by his predecessors, and no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him.

Former president Nixon wanted such a group, but congress denied it; President Reagan tried to use the National Security Council instead, but ran into trouble with the Iran-Contra affair. Now, President Bush may finally realize the dream.

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/4.html

Look Out ! Here Comes P2OG

Donald Rumsfeld's plan to fight terror is to create a lot more of it. In an L.A. Times column (registration required), military analyst William Arkin describes the Pentagon's plan to create an elite secret army, equipped with a vast array of equipment and resources, using "aggressive new 'off-the-books' tactics." He calls it, "the largest expansion of covert action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era.".

The Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) – as described in an internal briefing drafted this summer to guide other Pentagon agencies – would carrry out "secret operations aimed at 'stimulating reactions' among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction – that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces." Wait a minute – prod terrorists into action?! Hello again, Dr. Strangelove.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/2002/11/000092.html

More:
http://www.wanttoknow.info/021027latimes

[truth2power]

7. I remember this...

When that MFer Negroponte showed up, I knew it was a done deal. We don't know the half of what the REAL story is over there.

I don't believe in Satan as an actual entity, but sometimes, I swear, there's a palpable
contagion of evil lurking around these guys.

Ya' know..several years ago someone posted on DU that supposedly Hitler and his top Nazis made a solemn pact that they would be reincarnated. Hmm...Hitler died in '45. Bush was born in '46. Just sayin'. :evilgrin:


Don't flame me. I'm running out of ways to explain to myself how this cabal can perpetrate so much horror on the innocent people of this planet. :cry:

[me b zola]

9. Yeah, Negroponte's arival was certainly ominous to many of us

No reason to flame you over feeling the overwhelming feeling of evil that permiates this malAdministration. As a matter of fact, on one of H20Man's great threads there was a little discussion of the sense of evil--or whatever people choose to call it--that was unleashed the day JFK was assasinated. Something very dark happened to the soul of our nation that day, and we are truly reaping the consequences of it now.

These evil clowns (cheney, rumsfeld, negroponte, etc...)have been around for a while, they keep popping up in rethuglican administrations. Octafish has the best threads on connecting the dots, tracing these rat bastards to their roots. I highly recommend the journals of H20Man & Octafish.

[truth2power]

14. Thanks. I'll check those out. n/t

[WhiteTara]

13. it's a way to explain this incredible madness

and horror that is being perpertrated on the entire planet. Devil incarnate is not too far off.

[struggle4progress]

8. Charter of the International Military Tribunal (August 8, 1945)

... ARTICLE 6 ... The following acts, or any of them, are crimes .. for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(a) Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression .. or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;
(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment .. of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war .., killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
(c) Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, .. and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, .. whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan ...

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/NurembergIndictments.html

[BeFree]

22. They broke the LAW

Time and again they have conspired to break the law and willfully set about doing just that.

Shock and awe was the first action: "...wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;"

The few honest folks in the Pentagon are coming to the fore now, three years later, the LAW as their sword, and they will slice and dice these bastsards back into the hole they came from, or we are finished.

I wish these honest men God's speed.

[Swamp Rat]

11. That's why this lizard was sent there:

[magellan]

12. Thank you for this

I remember the report from last year about using death squads in Iraq. There's no doubt in my mind that these yahoos are creating terrorists to fight.

[me b zola]

21. It's really even uglier when you say it out loud

The bush* administration is intentionally creating the enemy who is killing our GI's.

:grr: :cry: :mad: :cry: :cry: :cry:







edited to insert the word intentionally :cry: :cry: :cry: :grr:

[me b zola]

15. ...

[EFerrari]

16. Btw, Kucinich is on the Government Reform Subcommittee

(I'm watching a rerun of a hearing on Iraq and state sponsored killing.) Dennis would be open to hearing about this.

[me b zola]

18. Talk about pandora's box

Holding the leadership in the Pentagon accountable for these crimes would be historical---and necessary. We will not be able to survive as a nation unless we address the crimes that were committed in our name.

I have a lot of faith in and respect for Dennis. :thumbsup:

[EFerrari]

19. The Pentagon really IS the seat of evil in our government.

Secrecy, corruption, human rights violations.

I think I'm going to try to call him on Monday. Dennis is a good man. That rare thing. :)

[EFerrari]

17. Back to the future kick

:kick:

[lonestarnot]

20. Get the hell out and let them kill one another if that's what they

think they need to do. 5.9 billion a month and the lives or our American men and women who were lied into this shit is just the crazy action of a certified nutcase in the Whitehouse. GET OUT NOW!

[me b zola]

23. ..