The Salvador option.

This is beginning to really take on some aspects of the dirty war in Central America in the eighties conducted by many of these same administration officials under Reagan. There were leaks way back when that Negroponte was being brought into the Iraq planning cycle so that he could install the "Nicaragua" option. The WaPo had a telling piece on the new tactics which echoed those of the "death squads" that operated in Nicaragua when Negroponte was involved there.

Everytime you read about an Iraqi found, hands bound, a bullet in the head, you should understand that this is often a result of policy.

An Iraqi working as a reporter for the New York Times was found dead in the southern city of Basra on Monday after being kidnapped by masked men, family members and a doctor said. .....

Haider's brother told Reuters in Basra that four masked men in a dark Toyota vehicle had arrived at the family home in an apartment complex in central Basra after midnight on Sunday.

They said they were from the intelligence services and that they needed to speak to Haider in connection with an investigation, the brother said. They bundled him into their vehicle and told his wife and family not to interfere.

If the US is resorting to allowing these sorts of "dirty war" tactics, like the "death squads" in Nicaragua or the Phoenix operations in Vietnam, we need to get out of Iraq. We need to set a timetable to allow the Iraqis to plan to take over security, but we've got to get out.

In the effort to bring the Iraqi government up in freedom and human rights, we are allowing ourselves to be dragged down in the same measures.