More unbelievable every day

It's back to the future with the death squad "option" in Iraq


New version of ribbon symbol for jingo cars

One [Salvadoran] death squad member, when asked about the types of tortures used, replied: "Uh, well, the same things you did in Vietnam. We learned from you. We learned from you the means, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls. But for the "toughest ones" -- that is, those who resist these other tortures -- "we have to pop their eyes out with a spoon. You have to film it to believe it, but boy, they sure sing."

Raymond Bonner
Weakness and Deceit
June 1984

That quote via Billmon, who has a bunch more.

As we were heading up the interstate from Portland yesterday when Democracy Now! came on the radio reporting about the "Salvador option" described in a recent Newsweek story. I should be used to it by now, but my jaw dropped nonetheless. I don't know how many more of these offenses to humanity of the American government that I can take. They've come like a flood in the run-up to the utterly bankrupt US election process in Iraq. I suppose it's good that I can still feel how wrong this all is -- how wrong my country is -- in its current policy of occupation, torture, and death.

I believe Mahajan is correct in Empire Notes about the thrust behind the brutal policies of torture and now death squads in the Iraq occupation:

The truth of the matter is that, just as torture isn’t really primarily about extracting information, death squads aren’t primarily about killing particular people who are judged to be a threat. The true rationale for both is to create a climate of pervasive fear.

I'll go further. I say that the extreme violence and bombings carried out by the Iraqi resistance are just fine with Bush and Allawi -- it all engenders the climate of fear that Bush just loves to have during his elections.

Come January 31, Bush will speak of the bravery of the Iraqis who will apparently put Allawi's parliamentary slate over the top, thus giving the election an air of legitimacy that it will not have.

Amy Goodman (on Democracy Now!) and Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints (see Monday Jan. 10) both had interviews on the "Salvador option" with Allan Nairn on the plan to bring aggressive new death squads to Iraq. Nairn broke some important Salvador stories 20 years ago following an investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose 1985 report remains classified.

Also see Seymour Hersh's piece on "preëmptive manhunting" where he compares the US Special Forces Task Force 121 to the Vietnam era Phoenix Program.

Bali bombers flown to tsunami relief sites
Yesterday, in the same interviews mentioned above, Nairn talked about another story that was in the New York Times Monday. And, mother of God, that one oughta be a BLOCKBUSTER too for everyone who thought the US and its tenuous Indonesian allies were against radical Islamists, who are all just out to destroy America (though it won't) -- Indonesia is flying in Qaeda-connected terrorists to "help" with disaster relief in Aceh.

ALLAN NAIRN: ... Well, Colin Powell announced that the U.S. would be supplying spare parts for C-130 transport planes ostensibly to help with the relief effort, the Indonesian military transport planes. Within days of Powell making this announcement, it came out that the Indonesian military, which had previously used these planes to transport the goods looted from East Timor, as they were destroying East Timor in 1999 to take thousands of Timorese civilian prisoners out after the 1999 campaign of slaughter in Timor, which previously have been used to drop paratroops over Aceh, were now used just in the past week to bring members of two Bin Laden affiliated Indonesian groups, the FPI and the MMI, the Islamic Defenders Front and the Islamic Mujahadin Council, they flew them up to Aceh, ostensibly to help in the relief effort. These groups were created or - well the FPI was in part created by the Indonesian armed forces, and the MMI has received backing from Indonesian military intelligence at various points. The MMI includes Laskar Jihad a group the went into Malukus and helped spark sectarian fighting between Muslim and Christian peasants, Muslim and Christian militias, in which thousands were killed. This was done to create chaos, which the Indonesian military could then take advantage of. And these groups are openly connected to Bin Laden and espouse that ideology.

These were the 2002 Bali bombers! Is the US through its Indonesian client using them to take advantage of the opportunity to clean out a movement that Indonesia is determined to crush, and so prevent from achieving independence in the manner of the Timorese? The American public thusfar has a very poor understanding of blowback, its role in 911, and how all this could backfire too.