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US military plans Iraq pullout in case 'surge' fails

WASHINGTON (AFP) -
Pentagon planners have begun work on a fallback position for
Iraq that includes a phased pullout of US troops in case the current
"surge" strategy fails or is undercut by Congress, a newspaper
reported Monday.

The "surge" proposed in January by President George W. Bush calls for
sending 21,500 additional combat troops and several thousand more
support forces in order to pacify Baghdad and other key parts of the
country.

But citing unnamed military officials and Pentagon consultants, The
Los Angeles Times said the alternative strategy was based in part on
the US experience in El Salvador in the 1980s.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070312/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryplan

'The Salvador Option'
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping
teams in Iraq

By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 8:59 p.m. ET Jan 14, 2005

Jan. 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.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

John Pilger detects the Salvador Option

John Pilger

Published 08 May 2006

The ministry of the interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA,
directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively
Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special
Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam's Ba'ath
Party. This unit was formed and trained by CIA "counter-insurgency"
experts, including veterans of the CIA's terror operations in central
America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador. In his new book, Empire's
Workshop (Metropolitan Books), the American historian Greg Grandin
describes the Salvador Option thus: "Once in office, [President]
Reagan came down hard on central America, in effect letting his
administration's most committed militarists set and execute policy. In
El Salvador, they provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a
lethal counter-insurgency campaign . . . All told, US allies in
central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people,
tortured hundreds of thousands and drove millions into exile."

Although the Reagan administration spawned the current Bushites, or
"neo-cons", the pattern was set earlier. In Vietnam, death squads
trained, armed and directed by the CIA murdered up to 50,000 people in
Operation Phoenix. In the mid-1960s in Indonesia CIA officers compiled
"death lists" for General Suharto's killing spree during his seizure
of power. After the 2003 invasion, it was only a matter of time before
this venerable "policy" was applied in Iraq.

According to the investigative writer Max Fuller (National Review
Online), the key CIA manager of the interior ministry death squads
"cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military
mission in El Salvador". Professor Grandin names another central
America veteran whose job now is to "train a ruthless
counter-insurgent force made up of ex-Ba'athist thugs". Another, says
Fuller, is well-known for his "production of death lists". A secret
militia run by the Americans is the Facilities Protection Service,
which has been responsible for bombings. "The British and US Special
Forces," concludes Fuller, "in conjunction with the [US-created]
intelligence services at the Iraqi defence ministry, are fabricating
insurgent bombings of Shias."

http://www.newstatesman.com/200605080016

The Death Squad Option

By Christy Harvey and Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin, Center for
American Progress. Posted January 10, 2005.

Faced with an intractable insurgency in Iraq, the Pentagon is
returning to its bad old ways. Remember El Salvador?

John Negroponte, the current U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, is no
stranger to death squads. In the 1980s, Negroponte served as the U.S.
ambassador to Honduras. At the time, he was cozy with the chief of the
Honduran national police force, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who
also ran the infamous Battalion 316 death squad. Battalion 316
"kidnapped, tortured and murdered more than 100 people between 1981
and 1984." According to Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human
Rights Watch, "Negroponte publicly adopted a see-no-evil attitude to
this army death squad."

President Bush also appointed neocon Elliot Abrams to be his senior
adviser on the Middle East. Abrams was also a staunch supporter of the
Salvador Option in the 1980s: when newspapers "reported that a
U.S.-trained military unit had massacred hundreds of villagers in the
tiny Salvadoran hamlet of El Mozote, Abrams told Congress the story
was nothing but communist propaganda." When confronted with the United
Nations report that the vast majority of "atrocities in El Salvador's
civil war were committed by Reagan-assisted death squads," Abrams's
response: "The administration's record on El Salvador is one of
fabulous achievements." Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress
about Iran-Contra in 1987 - he was pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20941/

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Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://music.download.com/johnnyasia

Want to know what's really going on in Iraq?
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/wakeup.html

"I will make a bargain with the Republicans.
If they will stop telling lies about Democrats,
we will stop telling the truth about them." -

Aldai Stevenson, former Illinois Governor
and democratic presidential candidate.