http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/8/21595/02169


Newsweek is reporting that Rumsfeld is considering sending teams on Americn Hit Men into the streets of Iraq.

Gee... remember back in good ole 2002 then expert military advisors was telling the idiots at BushCo to do this very same thing? Send in commando teams to elliminate Saddam and the major Baath party players.... in and out... what would that have cost us.... several million bucks?? Oh then, the righties would have said things like... well.. that's not playing by the rules... or.... gee, what happens to Iraq after removing it's president like that??? Yeah... lets do it BushCo's way and here we are with the very same mess and looking at a (future) $trillion bill to support and fix Iraq...plus America becoming the world's number one axis of evil.

Yeah, now they want to send in death squads.... just like everything else the stupid righties and neocons do, ass backwards and after the fact.

I suspect "death squads" are already roaming Iraq. They are primarily Kurdish with the help of the Israelis.

Proof? You know, something like NOT from a Nazi or Arab site, cause they hate Kurds more than they hate Israelis?

Are you talking about Special Ops? Yeah, they were in Kurdistan in 2002, and quite welcome too by the way. And furthermore, the Kurds would like to know if they can have a US military base there AND they want a Starbucks and couple of real American stores and goods, particularly some good chocolate, and "cinnobon" stores.

Oh, and they want to speak Kurdish in their schools, along with Arabic. They want freedom for women and minorities guarenteed. They want to run their own little government, but they will do what the US wants pretty much....OH, and this is a big one...they want to fly their own flag and have an airport.

That's what they ask in return for their support.

According to Seymore Hersh (he maybe a Nazi, I'm not sure) the Mossad is running operations out of Kurdistan. The Kurds and the Israelis are very close these days, which ticks off the Turks, because they thought they were Israel's favorite in the Moslem world. That just shows the Israelis can't be trusted.

Nope. You CAN be friends with Kurds AND Turkey too!

But you said "death squads" not Mossad, that's not the same thing.

Actually, Israel has been in Kurdistan since the 1960's. The Kurds have the same problems as the Jews, and have had for a long time. Jewish Kurds, spent 2,600 years in Kurdistan. In fact, the first known female Rabbi was named Aseneth bat Barazani from Irbil, the capital of Kurdistan. Especially after the Anfal campaign, where Saddam gassed a bunch of villages and killed so many, Israel sent aid. It's hard to resist cause Kurds honest to goodness just want freedom. 25 million Kurds and no home for them. Everywhere they go they are discriminated against, forbidden from speaking Kurdish, even forbidden from wearing green, yellow and white at the same time.
We do owe Kurds a lot. They were very good to the Jews that lived there before Saddam threw all the Jews out. It's a debt I feel the US, and Israel too, owe to them. They DID throw sweets and candy at our soldiers, and now their lives are at risk for it.

So, what's your point? Lemme guess, you think Israel isn't allowed to be friends with anyone Turkey doesn't like or they are traitors?

The story that Saddam gassed the Kurds is false. Even our own CIA reported the gassed Kurds was a result of an Iranian gas attack due the ongoing Iran-Iraq war. The Kurds simply got caught due to the wind. Saddam is getting a bum rap on this one. Saddam needs to be tried in the World Court at the Hague so we for the sake of History know what he is guilt of and not guilty of.

Oh, so your an al jazeera fan! That's B.S. and everyone knows it. The tapes don't lie. Now you're defending Saddam. So, you hate the Kurds too?

Read it and weep: Human Rights Watch has the whole tapes transcribed and catologued. In your "journey toward truth" you should actually GET the truth from someplace besides your usual neo-nazi haunts like hnn.

1. A meeting with Northern Bureau members and directors of the Ba'ath Party headquarters in the northern governorates: tape is dated May 26, 1988, but from context appears to be 1987.

(Response to a question about the success of the deportation campaign): … Jalal Talabani asked me to open a special channel of communication with him. That evening I went to Suleimaniyeh and hit them with the special ammunition. [This presumably refers to the April 1987 chemical attack on the PUK headquarters in the Jafati Valley.] That was my answer. We continued the deportations. I told the mustashars that they might say that they like their villages and that they won't leave. I said I cannot let your village stay because I will attack it with chemical weapons. Then you and your family will die. You must leave right now. Because I cannot tell you the same day that I am going to attack with chemical weapons. I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? "expletive deleted" them! The international community and those who listen to them.

… This is my intention, and I want you to take serious note of it. As soon as we complete the deportations, we will start attacking them everywhere according to a systematic military plan. Even their strongholds. In our attacks we will take back one third or one half of what is under their control. If we can try to take two-thirds, then we will surround them in a small pocket and attack them with chemical weapons. I will not attack them with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days. Then I will announce that anyone who wishes to surrender with his gun will be allowed to do so. Anyone willing to come back is welcome, and those who do not return will be attacked again with new, destructive chemicals. I will not mention the name of the chemical because that is classified information. But I will say with new destructive weapons that will destroy you. So I will threaten them and motivate them to surrender.

… 2. Meeting with unnamed officials, August 1, 1988.

… We deported them from Mosul without any compensation. We razed their houses. We said come on, go, go! But those who are already fighters, we tell them from the beginning that they must go and settle in the complexes. After that we will tell them to go to the Autonomous Region. We will not get into any arguments with them. I read the pledge for them and they must sign it. Then wherever I find [passage unclear], I will smash their heads. These kind of dogs, we will crush their heads. We will read the pledge for them: I the undersigned admit that I must live and settle in the Autonomous Region. Otherwise I am ready to accept any kind of punishment including the death penalty. Then I will put the pledge in my pocket and tell the Amn director to let him go wherever he wants. After a period of time, I will ask where is he? They will tell me, here he is. The Ba'ath Party director must write to me saying that the following people are living in that place. Immediately I will say blow him away, cut him open like a cucumber.

Do you want to increase the Arab population with these bloody people?.... We must Arabize your area [Mosul]--and only real Arabs, not Yezidis who say one day that they are Kurds and the next that they are Arabs. We turned a blind eye to the Yezidi people joining the jahsh in the beginning, in order to stop the saboteurs from increasing. But apart from that, what use are the Yezidis? No use.

3. Northern Bureau meeting to review the campaigns of 1987 and 1988; the tape is undated, but is in a batch dated January 21 and 22, 1989.

… So we started to show these senior commanders on TV that [the saboteurs] had surrendered. Am I supposed to keep them in good shape? What am I supposed to do with them, these goats? Then a message reaches me from that great man, the father [i.e. Saddam Hussein], saying take good care of the families of the saboteurs and this and that. The general command brings it to me. I put his message to my head. [The sense conveyed in the Arabic phrase is that Saddam Hussein's wish is always al-Majid's command--but not, he goes on to say defensively, in this instance.]

But take good care of them? No, I will bury them with bulldozers. Then they ask me for the names of all the prisoners in order to publish them. I said, "Weren't you satisfied by what you saw on television and read in the newspaper?" Where am I supposed to put all this enormous number of people? I started to distribute them among the governorates. I had to send bulldozers hither and thither… [ The tape is cut off in mid-sentence at this point.]
http://hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/#Anfal

ghostgovt
I see your post above Bro' and know where your coming from. But got to tell you, plenty of Death Squads and Merc's running around in Iraq getting paid by Uncle Sammy. Cannot leave a URL - but my word will have to do Bro' - know some very well ghostgovt. And truthfully the dinaro is not all that bad if this is your type of thing.

What they seem to be saying is "How the hell do you win against an insurgency?"!!!! Obviously, bombing everyone in the country doesn't work. So....where are the brilliant minds of the Army War College or something? 30 years later and NO ONE came up with a good strategy to fight a guerilla war? It's far better to hunt their cells down one by one, than to try to bomb whole cities. Any other great ideas? Surely someone must have thought of something?

This will clear up your confusion on the "gassing of the Kurds."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2098.htm

As to Saddam, I want to know the truth. What are his crimes and what are the lies? A trial at the Hague would be better for truth and justice.

No, that's not going to "clear up" anything. The tape transcripts are the original source. AND, you DO know that it was Halabja that was a single incidnent right? The Anfal campaign was longer and much, much more. This idea, that the gas was the worst things is bullsh#t because the "arabization" program and the execution killings where Kurds were shot en masse and then thrown in mass graves was what followed. They retreated to the mountains (Kurds only friends are the mountains) and died of starvation, the gas, disease, and things an antibiotic could fix. Meanwhile, Arabs from the Ba'ath Party were moved into their homes....like about 100,000 people were forced from their homes so Saddam could make it an "ARAB" province. GET REAL!! Attack Israel all you want....there's plenty for you to do. Attack Kurds and you're just being totally inhuman, abysymal, and sick. You might as well be trying to kill more starving ethiopian children who are already dying, or more starving sudanese who are fleeing the Arabization campaign there. Go pick on some group of people that haven't been brutalized for a 100 years and are unable to defend themselves.

THIS IS WHAT SADDAM DID TO KURDS, AMONG OTHERS:

Torture and Executions
From Hammorabi:
There are countless numbers of the documented crimes and torture of this family and those who worked with it. Some of these crimes and tortured methods are listed below:
1. Mass executions without trials
2. Genocides against Shia and Kurds by chemical and conventional weapons
3. Disappearances of thousands for ever after their arrest
4. Arresting and executing large numbers of young men, women and children during Iraq Iran war. The arrests could happen at any time and in any place.
5. Arresting any students just by simple doubt especially if not in the Baath party Shia and Kurds. In 1980s the Baath introduce what is called the (Closed Colleges and Universities) which means that all the students should be Baathist.
6. Cutting tongues until death
7. Mutilation of the body parts including ears cutting and tattoing on the forehead
8. Decapitations with swords
9. Falakah which is striking the feet with a painful sticks
10. Nails pulling
11. Insertions of glass in the gentilia
12. Death by mass rape (raping the victim by several rapist until death)
13. Death by starving dogs or lions
14. Hanging on a fan
15. Hanging up side down
16. Raping relatives in front of a victim to force him or her to confess
17. Inserting needles or nails in the body
18. Inserting then hammering to drive in a big piece of wood from the anus to go out from the shoulder
19. Keeping the prisoners in a coffins with nails inside it and no air go in but opened for 30 minutes a day
20. Eyes gouging out
21. Putting salt and acids on the wounds
22. Sitting on a broken bottle to go inside the anus
23. Making the prisoners to rape each other or to whip each other
24. Inserting the heads in the faces or the whole body
25. Putting snakes and scorpions and insects with the prisoner in a small cell and he should not kill them
26. Putting the person in Al Mathramah (Chopping Machine) starting with his feet to make his body into mince
There are too many other countless psychological and physical ways of tortures.
http://iraqiholocaust.blogspot.com/

Yes, I agree with you that existing commando type squads are already in Iraq, same same 'nam. Two things comes to my mind with what the Pentagon is now suggesting.

1) Iraq is simply a huge mess now. Once BushCo started with it, that train left the station in repairing Iraq without wiping out more than half of it's population and starting over... and then, I really doubt those who are left to live in Iraq will be able to get along and agree with each other in their own beliefs. Ppl now on here ask what are the suggestions with how to fix Iraq now. I really have no answer since it's in the bad shape it's in now. I do know that we are there only making it worse... and spending $$billions on top of $$billions while our defense and country gets weaker by the day. If removing Saddam was what the ppl of Iraq wanted, then that could have been done swiftly in a few weeks/mths with special forces (commando) teams inserted into Bagdad in 2002.... then dee mou out of there and leave Iraq to the ppl to live as they wish.... with advisers from whatever govt they would choose to guide them in setting up their own govt. It really was none of our business to cross the ocean and begin tearing Iraq up. We did not solve the problem, only magnified it.

2) What my main concerns with this article's mentioning is this. It was the CIA back in the late '70s who also recruited Bin Laden and trained him to be a terrorist and supporting the terrorist camps that fought the Russians during the '80s. Ring a bell? Those terror groups went into Russia and ravaged towns with their terrorist methods, and those terrorist grew in size and grew to be a threat to Afghanistans and other countries, including America. Now the Pentagon wants to repeat another scenario with training Iraqis how to search and destroy death squads ... and guess what crazy "expletive deleted" will happen once this starts? This will grow also like a cancer... and others will attach themselves to this terror wannabee club. Have we ever really seen our CIA succeed at anything overseas???? It may start out as a great idea but then like always, it turns into a huge broken machine that we later pay for it.... not only in $ but in lives and the problems it attracts.

BushCo entered Iraq with the dumbass brains that he runs this country with. We assumed Iraqs previous problems afterwards. Our presence there will not cure the Middle East of it's own cancer. Yes, now we have to supply some of the Iraqi ppl with weapons to fight with... but to train them to be 'death squad' experts... terrorists... so to fight terrorist with... is this the real right anwer? Just like the ARVNs in 'Nam... they just didn't have enough of them and or the total balls to fight off the NVA.. and the NVA overran the ARVNs in '71-'72. Those ARVN's even turned on their own also, out of fear and who knows what else, but they got caught up in the furry of a country being overran and also 'screwed over' by Washington DC. I do not like the idea of repeating the OBL terror theory in Iraq by turning a handfull of Iraqis into killer squads and thinking that this will fix Iraq. Hell... some of the damn Iraqi forces now are some who were under Saddam.. and some are disguised insurgents pretending to be for America/Iraq.... so how they hell does anyone think that the CIA will even train the right Iraqis for being the choosen death squads? See my point here? It just smells Bin Laden type terrorist camps all over again in my opinion.

I hold compassion for the Iraqis... especially since BushCo messed it up further, but this would be the same as if we had civial war in the USA.... there's nothing other ppl in other countries can really do to come to America and fix the problem. See my point? We are divided ourselves and there's more beliefs in this country that just two. How can anyone from another country step into our country and choose who is right or wrong and actually be a part of fixing this country??? As soon as a foreigner chooses who they want to support, they just alienated a few million others. How do you fix that?? Country's themselves must fix their own problems.... and they should always never interfer with others. Only when another country is a real threat to a country, should there be a intervention (like what the UN as designed for) and if that threat takes a real physical move against another, then a full out war should be wagered.

Iraq is broken... and I hold the GOP/Neocons and it's followers responsible. They should pay pay pay for what they have done!!!

ghostgovt
This Death Squad BS is a "SHRUB" smokescreen and nothing more. Yeah, the U.S. is going to train Iraqi people to help them route out people of their own culture. We tried it with the montagnards in the Nam Bro' and look what the good Ol' U.S.A. did to them for helping us out - In the final days of the Vietnam War in 1975 and immediately following, 1,000,000 Vietnamese refugees were evacuated from Vietnam and resettled in the United States. And in keeping with a 1960's promise, 150,000 Hmong tribesmen of the US "Secret Army" in Laos were evacuated to our country in 1975. Yet only 3,000 Montagnards, our most distinguished and loyal ally, have reached the U.S. http://www.montagnards.org/

Now we are in Iraq and are talking about training Death Squads with Kurds and more. The Kurds have no reason in the world to trust the U.S.A. - The Kurdish people can not guarantee any government, whether American or other wise, that they will import more weapons and goods than the governments that consider them not worthy of equal rights but they number more than 35 million and belong to a nation that has existed thousands of years before the states that suppress them were known. In Iraq they number about five million. They deserve to be free in a civilized democratic federal Iraq. If this is not possible should they once again be governed by a dictatorship of one form or another from Baghdad? I will leave the question to be answered by any decent Western leader or politician. I say “Western” for according to many Kurds there is no hope left for them to expect anything fair from the states of the Middle East and the Islamic world. What a sad conclusion, I agree!

Finally, I would like to note here that many years ago I argued in one of my articles that the states dividing Kurdistan were wrong in denying their Kurdish citizens their legitimate rights, that such policies instead of ending the “problem” as the rulers of these states hoped will indeed gradually lead to the Kurds losing faith and thus becoming more militant in their demands. I also argued that refusing the Kurds equal rights will sooner or later lead not only to more bloodshed but to the struggle for an independent Kurdish state. Therefore, whether it is in Iraq, Iran, Turkey or Syria it is to the benefit of these countries and their peoples for the Kurds to be treated as equals and to be given the right to self-rule within federal united states, for other wise the fight for an independent Kurdish state or even a united Kurdistan in the future will be justified. http://www.kurdishmedia.com/reports.asp?id=1842 -- Can you blame these people? I sure as hell can't - for sure.

As far as the pottery effect - the U.S.A. is going to be paying for the "SHRUB" mindless invasion of Iraq for years to come, not only monetarily but militarily as well. This is a tough condition for anyone to fix and it is going to take more than the "SHRUB" and his so called coalition to do so. Willie Pete knows some on "Death Squads" with his involvment with the Phoenix Program in the Nam then in a few more after Nam. Just more talk, to make more enemies and kill more people for the "SHRUB" war machine. Thats the way I see it anyway Bro' !

This SOB that the War Prez has our country in is a total mess and fiasco that will cost our relatives for generations to come heavy. Keep the faith -

WP

Slow the hell down Bro'. I knew that Death Squad crapola would send you on a mission Bro' - for sure. They do not need a biography Bro', they will learn like they always do about such "Not Nice" things payed for with their dinaro and done by Uncle Sammy, whether they want to face reality is a different story. Think about your Scoot Bro' (LOL) and what that SOB is going to look like come Ridin' time!

Seen one in their about the Elite Tiger Strike Force Bro' - http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/s...ry=SRTIGERFORCE - Yup that was a Death Squad bought and paid for by the U.S. of A.Those G.I.'S were just following orders Bro', you know the score on that game. Rules of War Bro' - LOL- you know the score there!

Like I told ghostgovt Bro', this is a free-kin "SHRUB" smokescreen for his fiasco of a war. Remember one thing Bro' - "It Don't Mean Nothin' - there it is ! Relax and read one of your Biker Rags. I know - you know what the fudge your talking about jarhead, but the majority has no clue. So cool the V Twin Bro' - okay! That S & S might just overheat! LOL Hang Tough Bro' -

Why Do They Hate Us So Much?

America's New Problem With Terrorism

This link is worth a gander - for sure. Makes sense to me but that is my oppinion and you know what they say about oppinions!!! http://www.bidstrup.com/hate.htm

WP, not trying to rattle your chains Bro', but I know you will be in here again. So maybe you can add some to this link! Hang Tough Bro' and your triple tree came in Fed X - looks decent. Should give you the rake you want for that trike. Documents from the Phoenix Program

supplied and introduced by Douglas Valentine
author of The Phoenix Program



>>> Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"—through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture—the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution" that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality. (For a full introduction to Phoenix, see below.)

While researching the Phoenix Program for my book on the subject, I conducted over a hundred interviews and collected boxes full of documents from individuals, as well as from the State Department and Department of Defense. The most important documents provided by any one individual came from retired CIA officer Nelson Brickham, the man most responsibile for the creation of the Phoenix Program.

Luckily for history, Brickham kept copies of the documents he wrote while with the CIA; otherwise, there would be no documentary evidence of how Phoenix was actually created. During the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, the CIA destroyed most of the documents it had about its assassination program, and none of what it kept at Langley headquarters can be obtained through Freedom of Information Act
requests. This is no accident, for Phoenix is the model for the equally terrifying US homeland security aparatus.

Documents

Attack Against VC Infrastructure - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/attack-against.htm

A Concept for Organization for Attack on VC Infrastructure - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/conce...rganization.htm

Personal Observations - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/perso...bservations.htm

A Proposal for the Coordination and Management of Intelligence Programs and Attack on VC Infrastructure and Local Irregular Forces - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/coordination.htm

MACV Directive 381-41 - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/macv-381-41.htm

Action Program for Attack on VC Infrastructure, 1967-1968 - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/action-program.htm

Carver memo, 7 August 1967 (re: Attack on the Viet Cong Infrastructure) - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/carver-memo-7aug67.htm

Program Guidance--Mount Attack on VC Infrastructure [Project TAKEOFF] - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/proje...ff-guidance.htm

ICEX Briefing, August 1967 - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/icex-briefing.htm

MACV Joint Messageform DTG 06 0910Z - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/macv-dtg-06-0910z.htm

MACV Directive 381-43 - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/macv-381-43.htm

Evaluation Report: Processing of Viet Cong Suspects - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/evaluation-report.htm

Directive of the Prime Minister on the Neutralization of the VCI - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/directive-pm.htm

Phung Hoang Advisor Handbook - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/advisor-handbook.htm

Internal Security in South Vietnam - Phoenix - http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/internal-security.htm


If for any reason you do not think the U.S. government is capable of anything, think again!

Ollie North, Inc.

OPUS DEI

Shadow Military

"And the wheel keeps turning round and round
Round and round
Round and round......"

The Phoenix Project and Its Creator, Nelson Brickham

by Douglas Valentine

Nelson Brickham joined the CIA in 1949, serving first in the sedate Directorate of Intelligence, then transferring in 1955 to the Operations Division, where he served in the high-profile Soviet-Russia Division. Brickham gained a wide range of experience, from running black propaganda and false-flag recruitments, to gathering information on Soviet missile silos. Over the years he developed his own "systems approach" to spookery that he later employed when developing the Phoenix Program.

Brickham volunteered for duty in Vietnam in 1965. In the spring of 1966 he became chief of Field Operations in the Saigon station's Foreign Intelligence "liaison" branch. He had an office in the U.S. Embassy Annex but also spent time with his senior Vietnamese Police Special Branch counterparts in their office at the National Interrogation Center.

Brickham managed the veteran CIA liaison officers who were working with Police Special Branch officers in South Vietnam's 44 provinces. These Vietnamese Special Branch officers functioned like detectives in the intelligence branch of a big-city police department. They also managed the CIA's gulag archipelago of secret interrogation centers. The Special Branch mounted both positive intelligence and counterintelligence operations. In some respects the Vietnamese Police Special Branch is the model for the covert action branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Upon assuming the job as Chief of Field operations, Brickham inherited and sharpened three existing programs:

1) The Hamlet Informant Program (HIP), in which principal agents working for the CIA and Special Branch recruited informants in the hamlets. This was dangerous work, because no one likes a snitch, and because the snitches often lied and set-up innocent people. Informants know they are unliked, and they need to be motivated. Some of them were blackmailed into becoming informants; others did it for revenge. Money was the most common motivating factor used in recruiting people for the HIP Program. (The eerie resemblance to Ashcroft's short-lived TIPS program need not be emphasized.)

2) The Province Interrogation (PIC) Program. The CIA began building a secret torture chamber in each of South Vietnam's 44 provinces in 1964. Try to file an FOIA for information on them and see what happens. The CIA hired Pacific Architects and Engineers to build these facilities. Information from defectors and captured documents was put into the PIC Program reporting system, to which the CIA had total access.

3) Penetrations into the Viet Cong Infrastructure (usually by blackmailing or terrorizing a member of a targetted individual's family) were the most sought-after means of gathering information. Brickham conducted penetrations unilaterally and in liaison with the Special Branch. CIA province officers trained their counterpart Special Branch officers on how to mount penetrations, how to interrogate suspects, and how to recruit informants.

As Chief of Field Operations, Brickham established six regional offices and put a CIA liaison officer in each of South Vietnam's 44 provinces. CIA Station Chief John Hart liked this organizational scheme so much that he decided to put a CIA Covert Action paramilitary officer in each province, too. The CIA's Covert Action program under Tom Donohue had a $28-million budget, while Brickham's liaison budget amounted to a paltry $1 million a year. Many Covert Action officers were refugees from the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They ran the CIA's Armed Propaganda Teams (versions of which will soon be deployed by the Department of Homeland Security), Census Grievance Program, Montagnard program, and most importantly, the Counter-Terror (CT) Teams. According to Brickham, the purpose of the CT Teams (versions of which will also soon be deployed in America through the Homeland Security covert action apparatus) was to do to the terrorists what they were doing to us. In Vietnam that meant leaving severed heads on fence posts.

Brickham would eventually bring the liaison and covert action people together in the Phoenix Program. The process began in July 1966 with the Roles and Missions Study, which concluded that military operations alone would not win the Vietnam War, and that a second "Pacification" war was needed 1) to destroy the Viet Cong Infrastructure and 2) win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese through political propaganda and psychological warfare. The Special Branch was assigned the task of attacking the Viet Cong Infrastructure, and Brickham focused on articulating the problem.

President Johnson sent CIA officer Robert Komer to Vietnam in August 1966 to organize this second Pacification war, through the Office of Civil Operations (OCO), formed in October 1966. (OCO is an early model of the current Office of Homeland Security.) OCO "coordinated" field units from the State Department, the Information Service, and the CIA, and had branches for psyops, political action, defectors, public safety, and economic development. At this point Brickham's boss, Howard Stone, the chief of Foreign Intelligence in the CIA's Saigon station, transferred Brickham and his field operations people out of the CIA station and put them in the Revolutionary Development Cadre Program, which was managed by CIA officer Lou Lapham. Considered the CIA's "second" station, the Rev Dev Cadre program taught the CIA's Vietnamese assets how to "pacify" the Vietnamese people. http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/


Douglas Valentine is an author, researcher, investigator, consultant, critic, and poet. His published works to date include The Hotel Tacloban, a highly praised account of life and death in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and The Phoenix Program, which Professor Alfred W. McCoy describes as "the definitive account" of the CIA's most secret and deadly covert operation of the Vietnam War. Both The Hotel Tacloban and The Phoenix Program are available through iUniverse.com, the on-demand Internet book publisher, as Authors Guild imprint backinprint books. Valentine's most recent book, TDY, also is available through iUniverse.com. His fourth book, The Strength of the Wolf: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics 1930-1968, will be published by Verso in spring 2004. His Websites are here and here.



http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_de...n=0-595-00738-4

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11...1433353,00.html

Here is another article: These people are truly sick, to unleashed this action on a nation who did not threaten us.

The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq
AP
Nuns pray over the bodies of four American sisters killed by the military in El Salvador in 1980
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 5:27 p.m. ET Jan. 10, 2005Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? 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. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.



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. There is no evidence, however, that Negroponte knew anything about the Salvadoran death squads or the Iran-Contra scandal at the time. The Iraq ambassador, in a phone call to NEWSWEEK on Jan. 10, said he was not involved in military strategy in Iraq. He called the insertion of his name into this report "utterly gratuitous.")


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.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)

Meanwhile, intensive discussions are taking place inside the Senate Intelligence Committee over the Defense department’s efforts to expand the involvement of U.S. Special Forces personnel in intelligence-gathering missions. Historically, Special Forces’ intelligence gathering has been limited to objectives directly related to upcoming military operations—"preparation of the battlefield," in military lingo. But, according to intelligence and defense officials, some Pentagon civilians for years have sought to expand the use of Special Forces for other intelligence missions.

Pentagon civilians and some Special Forces personnel believe CIA civilian managers have traditionally been too conservative in planning and executing the kind of undercover missions that Special Forces soldiers believe they can effectively conduct. CIA traditionalists are believed to be adamantly opposed to ceding any authority to the Pentagon. Until now, Pentagon proposals for a capability to send soldiers out on intelligence missions without direct CIA approval or participation have been shot down. But counter-terrorist strike squads, even operating covertly, could be deemed to fall within the Defense department’s orbit.


Alaa Al-Raya / AP
Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, center, was ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan years
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The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option. Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days. Shahwani told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the insurgent leadership—he named three former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein’s half-brother—were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. "We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite them "have not borne fruit so far."

Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision yet to launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option.


With Mark Hosenball


EDITOR'S NOTE: This report, initially published on Jan. 8, was updated on Jan. 10 to include Negroponte's comments to NEWSWEEK

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