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In January, Newsweek reported that the Pentagon was considering the Salvador Option
for Iraq--US-trained Death Squads—in an article titled ‘The Salvador
Option’ The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping
teams in Iraq. Today, Knight-Ridder reports that the Death Squads seem to have
arrived in an article titled Campaign of executions feared in Iraq. Slain Sunnis
have arrived at Baghdad's morgue blindfolded, bound and shot. The author of today's
K-R article himself was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances last week
in Baghdad.
The explicit purpose of the Salvador Option was to terrorize the Sunni population.
According to Newsweek.
[Director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service Maj. Gen. Muhammad Abdallah]
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."
As of January, the Pentagon would admit only that Death Squads were on the
table.
Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision yet to launch the Salvador
option.
In a postscript to the Newsweek article Rumsfeld responded to the charges:
And at a news conference on Jan. 11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said
the idea of a Salvador option was "nonsense" and denied that U.S.
Special Forces were going into Syria. But when asked whether such a policy was
under consideration, he replied, "Why would I even talk about something
like that?"
Today, Knight-Ridder reports that the Salvador Option may be a reality.
BAGHDAD - Days after Iraq's new Shiite-led government was announced on April
28, the director of Baghdad's central morgue began noticing that the bodies
of Sunni Muslim men were turning up after the men had been detained by people
wearing Iraqi police uniforms.
The official response:
Ghathanfar al-Jasim, who sits on Iraq's national judicial council and functions
as an attorney general, said it was difficult to discuss extrajudicial killings.
"We cannot admit that our police are doing it; it would make them look
weak,"
But when battered corpses turn up outside Interior Ministry facilities, [Raad]
Sultan [an official in Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights] said, "How can
I prove it is the security forces?”
Knight-Ridder reports several examples. Here is one.
On May 5, for example, 14 Sunni farmers were abducted from an east Baghdad vegetable
market. […] The bodies of the farmers were discovered in shallow graves
the next day. They had all been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot once in the
back of the head […] "A patrol of more than 10 police vehicles drove
up and parked," said Ali Karim, a fruit vendor. "They were running
through the street with their guns, saying that the farmers had a car bomb with
them. They pushed them against the walls and asked them for their IDs."
A moment of respect for the author of the Knight Ridder article:
[The author of this article] Yasser Salihee was a special correspondent. He
was shot and killed last week in Baghdad in circumstances that remain unclear.
That Yasser Salihee has not died in vain.
Withdraw all troops now.
