Negroponte's Salvador Option

Negroponte was one of the dirty warriors of the Reagan/Bush I wars in Central America. There was a brief flurry of stories about this when he was promoted to his current position, director of national intelligence, about some of the tactics Negroponte put in place in Central America way back when. Then, there were some leaks out of the leak proof Bush administration that Negroponte was pushing the "salvador option" for resolving the insurgency in Iraq. Basically, roaming, government endorsed "death squads."

Previously, I cited the Washington Post story about a whole village of Iraqi men, cuffed and lined up who were selected by a masked teen as to who would be left in town and and who would go for "further interrogation," and how different it must be when the WaPo reporter isn't invited along. At that time, I said, keep an eye out for dead Iraqi men found with their hands bound, as it is the hallmark of this kind of death squad. Of Negroponte's policy.

This is virtually identical to the kind of information that came out of Central America in the eighties. We're in another dirty war. And just as before, our soldiers aren't doing the killing, but if it's like Negroponte's previous involvement, the spooks are hip deep in it.

This is your government at work.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The 22 bodies, lined up in coffins in a mosque courtyard Friday, are as shriveled as ancient mummies after lying a month in the desert where they were dumped, bound and bullet-ridden. They were Sunni Arabs, rounded up from their Baghdad homes one night by men in police uniforms. .....

Both minority-Sunnis and Shiites accuse one another of using death squads — and the accusations are deepening the Sunni-Shiite divide at a time when mistrust is already high over a new constitution that Iraqis will vote on in eight days. ......

But there have been several cases of Sunni Arabs who turn up dead in large groups after being taken by men claiming to be Interior Ministry forces. The largest group of bodies found outside Baghdad was 36 Sunnis discovered Aug. 25 in a dry riverbed near Badrah, close to the Iranian border, after being kidnapped in Baghdad.

The grisly finds have led Sunnis to believe that Shiite Muslims who dominate the government and the Interior Ministry are waging a quiet, deadly campaign against them. But the Interior Ministry denies any role and blames insurgents using stolen police equipment. ......

On Aug 18, some 50 vehicles full of men in Interior Ministry uniforms swept into Baghdad's Iskan neighborhood just after dawn and surrounded several streets, going into houses and grabbing the 22 young men — some of them pairs of brothers, said Jamal Amin Mustafa, 60, who lives nearby and was at Friday's funeral service.

"They took them from their bedrooms," said Mahmoud al-Sumeidaie, the cleric who delivered prayers during the service. "We blame the government, which came to save us from Saddam's terrorism but has brought terrorism worse than Saddam."

The story is echoed by Tahir Dawood, who on Sept. 28 went to the Baghdad morgue to identify his two younger brothers and five of his cousins whose bodies — bound, blindfolded and shot — were found that morning dumped in a lot near his neighborhood of Hurriyah.

The seven, all construction workers, had been taken from their homes the previous day before dawn, by a large force of men in police uniforms who told families they were from the Interior Ministry, Dawood told AP. He has since fled Baghdad with most of his immediate family.