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.)
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.
You are taking one extreme outcome of training that occurs every single day and use that as the norm.
If special forces training (SWAT, SEAL, Ranger, etc) was provided and then those individuals break the law of their own country after the trainers have left and there was no knowledge that they would use the skills that way then there is no transfer of cupability to the trainers.
End the hypocrisy!
Card's Law:No event has just one cause, no person has just one motive, and no action has just the intended effect.
A poor record of selecting the wrong people to train for the right reasons around the world, especially in Africa, Central America and the Middle East, we should think long and hard before implementing any plans like this in Iraq.
When the U.S. goes into a country by request and trains their troops and special forces, good things result. When we go into a country embroiled in war to train those troops, we invariable create the worst war criminals on record.
As savage as the Iraqi insurgents and thus the Iraqi at large by association, has proved to be, scares me a bit. Do we really want to train a operators in a country where its nearly impossible to tell freedom fighter from sociopath?
I have to agree with the left on this and hope that we are just hearing some Pentagon scuttlebutt that never comes to fruition.
There you go again making claims without offering any proof. What evidence do you have that they were by design death squads?
And for the record I do not support training groups in Iraq that are "nationalist" but are not answerable to the Iraqi government. However I do fully support training of special operations groups within the Iraqi police and military departments.
If those forces break the laws of Iraq then we need to support Iraq in capturing them and punishing them. If the government supprots the actions of these individuals then we need to apply pressure to have that changed.
End the hypocrisy!
Card's Law:No event has just one cause, no person has just one motive, and no action has just the intended effect.
Well seeing how i come to this board to learn about myself, others, and the world around me your education would be most welcome.
I am not saying your are incorrect on the issue. I am just asking for some evidence or support because I refuse to believe something posted on this board just because it is posted. Nor do I attack others for the same.
End the hypocrisy!
Card's Law:No event has just one cause, no person has just one motive, and no action has just the intended effect.
The only one with the closed mind here is you. If you don't want to educate someone after stating they don't know about this part of history that is fine and your choice. But don't assume that I am not open to hearing about this.
Having looked at some sites everything points to the facts that the United States was involved in training El Salvador military personel.
Those soldiers then later broke their own laws and were involved in death squads which were ignored by their own government.
There however is no proven facts that the United States knowingly supported this behavior. However if they could prove the El Salvador military which was being trained was involved in these actions and the US continued to train them, then while legally ok there is a certain amount of culpability there.
I just refuse to make the assumption that just because there is still some classified material from the investigation that this indicates wrongful actions.
End the hypocrisy!
Card's Law:No event has just one cause, no person has just one motive, and no action has just the intended effect.
It's a fair cop. My mind is utterly closed to the possibility of having an intelligent conversation with you. But in my own defense, you worked awfully hard to close it.
So now you have seen an example of what can happen when the US trains foreign soldiers to conduct political assassinations.
The US has a long history of training and arming proxies and then having the proxies turn and bite them in the ass.
Noriega, bin laden and Hussein are all former US proxies.
