The "Salvador Option" - Death Squads in Iraq

Regular readers know that I have been writing for months about the death squads in the dirty war of Iraq. The allegations of death squads have finally punched through to the top story at the NYTimes site, but this story is very sketchy on possible US involvement in training and advising these troops.

Remember, the idea of forming, funding, training, and, advising death squads in Iraq was debated as policy in the DoD. From Newsweek (Jan 14, 2005)

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. ......

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.

So, today, the NYTimes publishes this:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 28 - As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods. ....

An investigator for the human rights organization said it had not been able to determine the number of executions carried out by the Iraqi security forces. So far, the investigator said, the evidence was anecdotal, but substantial.

"There is no question that bodies are turning up," said the investigator, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns. "Quite a few have been handcuffed and shot in the back of the head."

As I have said before, one of the particular traits of this seems to be that the dead are always found with their hands bound behind their back. And these are not small groups, fifty men show up in Interior Ministry uniforms in ten to fifteen Interior Ministry trucks.

And you have to wonder about this in relation to new evidence that Moqtada al Sadr is being brought into the mainstream political process.

The chief suspects, according to Sunni leaders, human rights workers and a well-connected American official here, are current and former members of the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-backed militia controlled by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a principal part of the current government. ....

With Badr gunmen operating inside and outside the government, the militia can act with what appears to be official backing. It is not clear who is directing the security services, the government officials or the heads of the militias.

If this interests you, whether you agree with me or not, take a look at this previous post, it has a ton of links looking at previous posts littered with media links on the topic.

AND REMEMBER: If this is going on, there is no evidence that the rank and file soldier in Iraq is involved. Although there may be some special ops soldiers, or CIA personnel, involved in training, advising, or funding these groups, there is no reason to suspect that the regular military is involved in this in any way. In fact, the regular military is probably working against these groups.

UPDATE: The LATimes also has a piece on the topic today which pretty much confirms that there are "death squads" operating out of the Interior Ministry.

BAGHDAD — Shiite Muslim militia members have infiltrated Iraq's police force and are carrying out sectarian killings under the color of law, according to documents and scores of interviews.....

But increasingly, the Shiite militias operating within the national police force are also suspected of committing atrocities.

The Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs.....

U.S. officials have long been concerned about extrajudicial killings in Iraq, but until recently they have refrained from calling violent elements within the police force "death squads" — a loaded term that conjures up the U.S.-backed paramilitaries that killed thousands of civilians during the Latin American civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s.

But U.S. military advisors in Iraq say the term is apt, and the Interior Ministry's inspector general concurs that extrajudicial killings are being carried out by ministry forces.

"There are such groups operating — yes, this is correct," said Interior Ministry Inspector General Nori Nori ......

The U.S. military is investigating whether police officers who worked at the secret prison were trained by American interrogation experts..

(Oh, and I did finally get the Newsweek article up somewhere bigger than here(I'm MV). Oh, and now it's linked up on eschaton. I actually did it. After three months of trying, I actually did get the newsweek story on the Salvador Option some attention. Let's hope that somehow that can make a difference, and stop this policy.)