Pentagon considers Death Squads in Iraq

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2005-01-09 05:07pm

The Kernel wrote:
Illuminatus Primus wrote: So shithead, what is your solution for the hundreds of insurgents?
Simple, we leave.

That's not an acceptable option. Any idiot can see that many more will die in a civil war, then be trapped in a cycle of religious oppression and ignorance, as well as racial and sectarian war for decades. Nice of you to love that kind of a fate for a nation.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2005-01-09 05:11pm

If this article didn't have the words "death squad" attached I doubt anyone would care.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2005-01-09 05:13pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote: I'd still love to see how any death squad could be as grossly destructive as a 500 lb. bomb.

Both are fucking lethal you ignorant shit.

The Kernel wrote: We're not going to leave. Most of us recognize that this would be a terrible thing for both us and the Iraqi people. Sure we didn't want to be there, but you choose the best of evils.

If the reason for us deposing Saddam was truly because we wanted to free the Iraqi people (that is the Bush administrations reason this week isn't it?) does it make sense to stay if under us they have LESS freedoms then under Saddam?

The Kernel wrote: No, but he implied that across the board, regardless, assassinations were wrong. This article doesn't even admit to knowing if they are going to commit snatches or assassinations, despite your goofy delusional hysterics.

I can use a particular brand of reasoning that seems to elude you called "common sense" which can tell me what these groups are for. Now, let's see, what possible reason could they have to form squads made up of Shiites and Kurds ONLY as opposed to mixed squads or squads of American special forces? Gee, could it be because we want Iraqis to do the sort of rampant murder and intimidation that American forces are incapable of doing? Perhaps you can give another explanation?

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2005-01-09 05:14pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote: That's not an acceptable option. Any idiot can see that many more will die in a civil war, then be trapped in a cycle of religious oppression and ignorance, as well as racial and sectarian war for decades. Nice of you to love that kind of a fate for a nation.

Better that then the same fucking thing preceeded by a horrible failure of an American occupation.

SecondStorm · Post by **SecondStorm** » 2005-01-09 05:16pm

Faram wrote: And Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit executions without a fair trial.

Warmongering Rightwinger: "The Geneva Conventions doesnt apply to insurgents. We can torture them, shoot them, and piss on their mass-grave if we want to" Dont like it ? Its WAR you liberal pussy. So that makes it OK"

Gunhead · Post by **Gunhead** » 2005-01-09 05:17pm

Theoretical solution to the problem is really easy, implementing it is hard/quasi-impossible. When people have jobs and a future they're less inclined to help these terrorist cells actively or passively. This requires money and time. This approach worked in N. Ireland so with modification and the right people at the helm it might work in Iraq too. Unfortenately nothing like this can be even attempted in present conditions.

-Gunhead

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2005-01-09 05:24pm

Personally I think a move like this was long overdue, you can't fight insurgents & guerillas using conventional forces & tactics, especially if you're required to keep the civilian casualties down for PR & political reasons. SpecOps is the way to do it, send in operators to whack & sack some tangos and start turning the population against the bad guys. It's not pretty and it's frowned upon by pretty much everyone since it's dirty, underhanded, and not fair among other things, but do it right and it works. Chances are they're going to fuck it up and we'll have to send in SEALs to whack all the guys we just trained. Whether that'll be better than sitting around doing more of the same and taking our 10 casualties a week while the country continues to go to shit is arguable.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-01-09 05:29pm

Gunhead wrote:Theoretical solution to the problem is really easy, implementing it is hard/quasi-impossible. When people have jobs and a future they're less inclined to help these terrorist cells actively or passively. This requires money and time. This approach worked in N. Ireland so with modification and the right people at the helm it might work in Iraq too. Unfortenately nothing like this can be even attempted in present conditions.

Funny you should bring up Northern Ireland, seeing how the British repeatedly used SAS teams to assassinate IRA leadership, often specifically because if they where captured and tried they couldn't be put to death.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2005-01-09 05:37pm

Sea Skimmer wrote: Funny you should bring up Northern Ireland, seeing how the British repeatedly used SAS teams to assassinate IRA leadership, often specifically because if they where captured and tried they couldn't be put to death.

That wasn't what solved the N. Ireland situation though, now was it?

Gunhead · Post by **Gunhead** » 2005-01-09 05:42pm

N. Ireland is a good example how warring factions can be brought together for negotiations if peace is wanted by both sides. Yes I know what SAS did there. It obviously worked, at least to degree. They also had good on ground intel to ID their targets, something the US seemingly doesn't have in Iraq. If and when they do, I'll give this "death squad" approach more credit.

-Gunhead

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-01-09 05:43pm

The Kernel wrote:
That wasn't what solved the N. Ireland situation though, now was it?

It certainly helped contain the military situation and weakened the IRA, and without that peace would not have been possibul.

Gunhead · Post by **Gunhead** » 2005-01-09 05:48pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:
The Kernel wrote:
That wasn't what solved the N. Ireland situation though, now was it?
It certainly helped contain the military situation and weakened the IRA, and without that peace would not have been possibul.

Well, weakened maybe the wrong word. Let's say some uber hard liners who were obstacles to peace were removed. IRA wanted peace too, most of them anyway. Some in the IRA wanted to continue the fight for more personal reasons so outside help was needed in removing them. While keeping the IRA from splintering. Talking about cloak and daggers.

-Gunhead

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2005-01-09 06:07pm

I love how the Brit moron is whining about us doing what the British did
in Northern Ireland because it was inconvient to let people go because
Britain did not have the death penalty...so the solution was to use the
SAS to kill them

Ah yes, there are two sets of standards:

One for the US of A, and another for everyone else!

Nevermind that Project Phoenix, which was essentially the
same thing, broke the back of the Viet Cong in Vietnam,
by targeted assassinations of the very people who recruited
people into the Viet Cong....

And Degan, as for your talk about a El Salvador style democracy,

well, Wikipedia says:

Linka

The most recent presidential election, held on 21 March 2004, resulted in the election of Tony Saca of the ARENA party with almost 58 percent of the vote, the highest in Salvadoran history. The turnout of 70 percent was also a record. The youthful Saca, who embraced pro-business and pro-American policies, recovered ground lost in the 1999 Presidential election, which ARENA had barely survived, and in the March 2000 legislative races, in which ARENA had been eclipsed as the largest single party by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and had retained overall control of the Assembly only by forging a coalition with a smaller party.

ARENA is El Salvador's leading political party. It was created in 1982 by Roberto D'Aubuisson and other ultra-rightists, including some members of the military. His electoral fortunes were diminished by credible reports that he was involved in organized political violence. Following the 1984 presidential election, ARENA began reaching out to more moderate individuals and groups, particularly in the private sector. By 1989, ARENA had attracted the support of business groups, and Alfredo Cristiani won the presidency. Despite sincere efforts at reform, Jose Napoleon Duarte's PDC administration had failed to either end the insurgency or improve the economy. Allegations of corruption, poor relations with the private sector, and historically low prices for the nation's main agricultural exports also contributed to ARENA victories in the 1988 legislative and 1989 presidential elections. The 1989-1994 Cristiani administration's successes in achieving a peace agreement to end the civil war and in improving the nation's economy helped ARENA, led by standard-bearer Calderon Sol, keep both the presidency and a working majority in the Legislative Assembly in the 1994 elections. ARENA's legislative position was weakened in the 1997 elections, but it recovered its strength, helped by divisions in the opposition, in time for another victory in the 1999 presidential race that brought President Francisco Flores to office. In the March 2000 legislative and municipal elections, ARENA won 29 seats in the Legislative Assembly and 127 mayoral races.

In December 1992, the FMLN became a political party, composed of the political factions of the wartime guerrilla movement, and maintained a united front during the 1994 electoral campaign. The FMLN also came in second in the legislative assembly races. Internal political differences, however, among the FMLN's constituent parties led to the breakaway of two of the FMLN's original five factions after the 1994 elections. Despite the defections, the FMLN was able to consolidate its remaining factions and present itself as a viable option to ARENA in the 1997 elections. Divisions between "orthodox" and "reformist" wings of the FMLN crippled the party in the 1999 elections. In the March 2000 legislative and municipal elections, FMLN received 31 seats on the Legislative Assembly, which is three more than rival party ARENA. FMLN also won 77 mayorships and won 10 municipalities in coalition with other parties. The right wing of the National Conciliation Party (PCN), which ruled the country in alliance with the military from the 1960s until 1979, maintain a small electoral base, and gained 10 seats in the March 2000 legislative election. Several smaller parties have in recent years fought for space in the political center with limited success. The PDC, which won more municipal elections in 1994 than did the FMLN, is now down to five seats in the Legislative Assembly and is no longer a significant electoral force.

Yes, a country in which the former Marxist rebels are actually able to win
and hold political office without being knocked off by ARENA is not
a "Democracy" by Degan Standards

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2005-01-09 07:16pm

SecondStorm wrote:
Faram wrote: And Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit executions without a fair trial.
Warmongering Rightwinger: "The Geneva Conventions doesnt apply to insurgents. We can torture them, shoot them, and piss on their mass-grave if we want to" Dont like it ? Its WAR you liberal pussy. So that makes it OK"

What a lovely strawman. Is every killing in a war an execution?

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-01-09 09:11pm

In the US if some white supremecy group was out blowing up trains, attacking police stations, bombing government buildings, we'd do the same to them. If and when we found out where they and their leaders where hiding we'd send in SWAT to apprehend them. Hopefully it would be a clean operation, but if they gave SWAT shit, they're getting hot lead in return. Sitting around waiting for them to come out of the wood work to engage the local sherrif's deputies, killing innocents in the process, would not be acceptable.

The best defence is a good offense.

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » 2005-01-09 09:23pm

Part of the reason that some parts of the world are still a little skeptical on this whole 'making war to create stable democracies' plan is that we seem to be so selective about which democratic principles actually matter to us.

ANTIGUA, Guatemala -- Efrain Rios Montt, the former dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest eras in Guatemalan history, has been under house arrest in the capital since early last year. He is accused of inciting a riot, and he is being investigated for genocide in the killings of thousands during a 1980s military campaign against Marxist rebels.

But several weeks ago, the retired general threw a grand bash for his daughter's wedding at his mansion in this colonial city at the foot of postcard-perfect volcanoes. Fine scotch flowed, and the guest list included both the U.S. ambassador and a member of the U.S. Congress, who happened to be the groom.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... 5Jan7.html

We're just a little too selective about which hemispheres we give a shit about democracy and human rights in for most people to take us seriously when we use it as justification for bombing the shit out of somebody.

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2005-01-09 09:25pm

The difference between the Northen Irleand situation and the Iraq situation is that I TRUST the SAS to work within their orders and their ROE. Being elite and well trained special operations forces.

We're not talking about sending Delta or Seals after these people, we're talking about training peope in Iraq in crash coures of Special Operations (ALWAYS a Bad Idea), mix in hundreds of years of ethenic HATE and give them a licence to kill.

Iraq has a WONDERFUL history of 'special forces' being secret police who operated outside what little law existed, doing things best described as the most refined torture in the world to everyone from political disadents to opposing politicians.

WHO exactly are the US forces going to train up? The regular army are hardly up for this kind of work. They are almost certianly going to turn to the same paramilitary people who worked for Saddam because they DID keep the religious nutters scared shitless and supressed, Iraq being more or less secular prior to Saddams downfall.

And frankly, I can't see good comming of this. I CAN see that when the Iraqi elections take place and the US is asked polielty to leave by the new sovereign government (and they will have no choice really) that these people will turn into the terror police, happily US trained and equiped.

Oh. JOY.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2005-01-09 09:59pm

Chris OFarrell wrote:We're not talking about sending Delta or Seals after these people, we're talking about training peope in Iraq in crash coures of Special Operations (ALWAYS a Bad Idea), mix in hundreds of years of ethenic HATE and give them a licence to kill.

Yes, nevermind that the Right Wing Death Squads in El Salvador stopped
killing indiscriminately AFTER we sent in Special Forces to train them in
the 1980s.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2005-01-09 10:02pm

MKSheppard wrote:Yes, a country in which the former Marxist rebels are actually able to win
and hold political office without being knocked off by ARENA is not
a "Democracy" by Degan Standards

The point was that ARENA still fielded death-squads and we tried to wallpaper that over by claiming that the ARENA party represented the true democratic force during the Contra War. It was only after Alfredo Christiani pursued peace negotiations that the country began to hit the right path to real reform.

Link

Sunday, 24 March, 2002, 18:28 GMT
US role in Salvador's brutal war
Hundreds of Salvadoreans mark the anniversary of Monsignor Romero's death

By Tom Gibb
BBC correspondent in El Salvador during the civil war in the 1980s
line

There is a tremendous irony that President George W Bush has chosen to visit El Salvador on the anniversary of the murder of the country's Archbishop, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, 22 years ago.

A campaigner against the Salvadorean army's death squad war, Monsignor Romero was shot through the heart while saying Mass, shortly after appealing to the US not to send military aid to El Salvador.

US officials are saying that President Bush's visit is in part to celebrate a US success story in which his father was personally involved

The appeal fell on deaf ears and for the next 12 years, the US became involved in its largest counter-insurgency war against left-wing guerrillas since Vietnam.

Today US officials are saying that President Bush's visit is in part to celebrate a US success story in which his father was personally involved.

His father was president when the two sides in El Salvador finally negotiated a UN-brokered peace deal, signed in 1992.

US officials say that President Bush senior's policies set the stage for peace, turning El Salvador into a democratic success story.

However, it took more than 70,000 deaths and mass human rights violations, before peace was reached.

Archbishop Romero's murder is a good example.

War against rebels

It was, according to declassified US documents and other witnesses, carried out by Salvadorean police intelligence agents on the orders of Major Roberto D'Aubuisson.

President George W Bush and his father George Bush
Mr Bush's father was president when a peace deal was signed
He was at the time running the army's intelligence war and went on to found the right-wing Arena party which is in power in El Salvador today.

No-one was brought to justice and for the next decade, when President Bush's father was heavily involved in Salvador policy, the same police agents would be at the centre of US funded efforts to wipe out left-wing guerrillas.

To defeat the rebels, the US equipped and trained an army which kidnapped and disappeared more than 30,000 people, and carried out large-scale massacres of thousands of old people women and children.

Republican worries

Many of the colonels in charge of these policies, far from facing war crimes tribunals at the end of the war were later made US citizens.

George Bush's father, then US vice-president, also visited El Salvador in December 1983.

At the time the guerrillas were winning the war and the Reagan administration was deeply worried that a Democrat-controlled congress would cut military aid because of the Salvadorean army's dreadful human rights record.

In election campaign ads, President Bush senior later boasted that he "faced down the death squads in El Salvador".

In reality he met with the high command of the army - whose policies were behind the killings.

Priests murdered

The Salvadoreans were given a list of names of army officers the US wanted removed.

El Salvador has remained one of the most violent societies in the hemisphere

President Bush's aide, who personally handed over the list, was Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North - later discredited for selling weapons to Iran to pay for the CIA's secret wars in Central America.

The war ended largely because Perestroika in the Soviet block forced the guerrillas to change their aims and opt for a democratic platform.

But the US only applied serious pressure on the government to negotiate after the rebels launched their largest offensive of the war in November 1989, showing that they were far from defeated.

At the same time an elite US-trained army unit murdered six Jesuit priests, the country's leading intellectuals, in cold blood.

The murders showed that after a decade of US instruction the army still had a lot to learn about human rights and democracy.

The priests were taken out of their house and repeatedly shot through the head with machine guns.

A US congressional investigation found strong evidence that the army's high command had ordered the murders, prompting a cut in military aid.

Model for Colombia?

Since the end of the civil war, El Salvador has remained one of the most violent societies in the hemisphere - with a murder rate rivalled only by Colombia.

A new civilian police force has struggled to cope with a crime wave in a country still awash with weapons and plenty of former combatants hardened by a decade of killing.

Today the model of US involvement in El Salvador is being put forward by some in Washington as a possible solution for Colombia's 30-year civil war.

Apart from the open agenda of free trade and immigration - wishing to raise support for a policy of more active US involvement in Colombia may be part of the real reason behind President Bush's choice to visit El Salvador.

However many would say it takes a serious re-writing of history to portray El Salvador as a US success story.

And El Salvador's democracy isn't exactly what one would want to look to as a model even today:

Link

Published on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 by the Long Island / NY Newsday
El Salvador No Model for the Future of Iraq
by Mark Engler

What began as an odd remark by Dick Cheney in the vice presidential debate has now become a pattern. Conservatives have repeatedly cited the Central American nation of El Salvador as a model for building democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wracked by civil war in the 1980s, El Salvador has since made the transition to a stable democracy. Yet, the warped lessons that Bush administration hawks draw from the Reagan-era intervention in this country suggest a willful blindness to even the most murderous consequences of the United States' Cold War foreign policy. They give us reason to look critically again at the actions the White House is taking under the guise of promoting freedom.

During a mid-November visit to El Salvador, the only Latin American nation that currently has troops in the U.S. "coalition of the willing," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised the country's conservative government. He said El Salvador "understands well the human struggle for liberty and democracy."

In drawing a parallel to Iraq, the secretary echoed the comments of Cheney in his Oct. 5 debate with John Edwards. The vice president argued that in 1980s El Salvador "a guerilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. ... And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied their right to vote. And today El Salvador is ... a lot better because we held free elections."

There is a serious problem with this story. The 75,000 people Cheney mentioned were indeed killed by terrorists, but not by the rebel FMLN forces that he intended to condemn. Rather, they were under assault from the very Salvadoran government that the Reagan administration was supporting and from its paramilitary death squads. With a list of opposition politicians having already been executed or exiled, the 1984 elections were little more than a farce designed to give democratic respectability to a regime that was perpetuating some of the worst human rights abuses in the hemisphere.

Before peace accords ended the civil war in 1992, the United States would provide the bloody-handed Salvadoran government more than $6 billion in aid.

The facts of Salvadoran history were definitively established by a UN-sponsored truth commission in 1993. It concluded that 90 percent of the atrocities in the conflict were committed by the army and its surrogates, with the rebels responsible for 5 percent and the remaining 5 percent undetermined.

"The army, security forces, and death squads linked to them committed massacres, sometimes of hundreds of people at a time," the truth commission reported. Among the crimes that the Reagan administration had attempted to obscure or deny were the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, the slaughter of hundreds of villagers and the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Even if U.S. involvement in the country did not present a damning cautionary tale, it is uncertain what lessons the current administration would like to draw from the conflict for the present. While El Salvador experienced a conventional civil war with clearly defined adversaries, the invasion of Iraq has created a broad and varied resistance. It has placed U.S. soldiers in a type of guerrilla war that even many counter-insurgency experts consider impossible to win.

Of course, "winning" on President George W. Bush's terms may not be desirable, especially if it means using Iraq as a long-term base from which to project military power. In El Salvador, it was only after the Cold War ended and the United States relented on its anti-Communist obsession that the UN and other international mediators were able to help facilitate a transition to democracy - something the FMLN had long desired, and that the Iraqi people may long be denied.

El Salvador's current democracy is not perfect, and U.S. interventions in the latest elections - thinly veiled threats that votes for the FMLN, now the leading opposition party, would lead to reprisals from the White House - have hardly helped. But the years since U.S. military support was curtailed have certainly seen an improvement. The clearest lessons from the El Salvador model are that the White House is all too capable of perpetuating crimes in the name of liberty. And that U.S. withdrawal can sometimes be of greatest service to freedom.

Mark Engler is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus.

© 2004 Newsday, Inc.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2005-01-09 10:20pm

The Kernel wrote:Both are fucking lethal you ignorant shit.

No shit? Means of killing people in war are lethal? Fuck me dead. You need a mission complete, you choose the cleanest option. This is clearly more appropriate for addressing individuals or handfuls of individuals than bombing raids.

The Kernel wrote:If the reason for us deposing Saddam was truly because we wanted to free the Iraqi people (that is the Bush administrations reason this week isn't it?) does it make sense to stay if under us they have LESS freedoms then under Saddam?

I didn't agree with the war, but during a period of guerilla war you're going to have to bare with some of the consequences of martial law. That's simply a condition of Iraq right now and if you think any state of that country right now wouldn't include violence and restricted rights you are out of your fucking mind.

The Kernel wrote:I can use a particular brand of reasoning that seems to elude you called "common sense" which can tell me what these groups are for.

Wow, that's convienent, you get to handwave two words and make your alarmist shit the default assumption of how things will be done. I thought SD.net was where you presented evidence for your position, regardless of what that'd be.

You don't have the evidence? You're going into hysterics? Eat my shit. I don't care.

The Kernel wrote:Now, let's see, what possible reason could they have to form squads made up of Shiites and Kurds ONLY as opposed to mixed squads or squads of American special forces?

Because HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF SUNNI CITIZENS ARE ALREADY COMPROMISED, SEE THE FUCKING ARTICLE FOR EVIDENCE AND ALL THE ARMY AND POLICE DESERTIONS, STUPID.

Does it occur to you we've had manpower problems with day one and their is not enough Delta or Rangers to go door-to-door searching or knocking off every two-bit local shitstirring bastard?

The Kernel wrote:Gee, could it be because we want Iraqis to do the sort of rampant murder and intimidation that American forces are incapable of doing? Perhaps you can give another explanation?

Simple, the squads will be used to supplement U.S. military efforts to apprehend or eliminate insurgent leaders and to seize insurgent safehouses to phase out the ridiculous "wait for them to bomb us or alternatively use huge aircraft-dropped bombs to take out single houses" approach we've currently been screwing around under. Y'know, the article could support that. You're relying on "assume my position is true from the start!" convienent interpretation of the word "common sense" (and given how everyone's looking at your goofy ass, I wonder about the "common").

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2005-01-09 10:22pm

The Kernel wrote:Better that then the same fucking thing preceeded by a horrible failure of an American occupation.

Assuming that Iraq MUST be doomed to such a fate is a very positive political outlook, but since its totally ridiculous and implausible to be implemented, you can quietly circlejerk that by yourself.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2005-01-09 10:36pm

MKSheppard wrote:Yes, nevermind that the Right Wing Death Squads in El Salvador stopped killing indiscriminately AFTER we sent in Special Forces to train them in the 1980s.

You lying dickhead.

The most infamous murder unit in El Savador was the Atlacatl Battalion. They carried out numerous massacres, including El Mozote. Their killing spree was constant from 1980 to 1992. The unit was started, supplied and trained by US Special Forces from the beginning and throughout the 1980s. Late in 1989, they butchered six unarmed Jesuit priests.

In fact, the worst units in Latin America during that time (and their most murderous commanders) were almost all trained by the US, with their officers trained at Ft. Benning. Look at the resume of any death squad leader and you'll find a stint at the School of the Americas. So, numbnuts -rather than calming down the Nazi death squads in C. America, it's pretty obvious that US training only enabled them to rape, torture and murder more efficiently.

I'll bet you keep a stash of back issues of Soldier of Fortune with the pages stuck together.

Skelron · Post by **Skelron** » 2005-01-09 10:39pm

What the people saying but Britain did it with the IRA by sending in the SAS seem to be missing is that generally the SAS wasn't composed of Orange Men, possible former members of the 'Loyalist' groups. The Iraq Solution would be the same as saying to the 'Loyalists' here you heres carte Blanche to go kill anyone you suspect of being a terrorist.

it was also a completly different scale, in short the situation is in no way the same, before we even approach the issue raised by Chris OFarrell that the level of training and professionalism of the SAS is something on a whole different level.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2005-01-09 10:49pm

And these examples are relevent how? They may be on opposite sides of political dynamics, but that's more than a stone's throw away from opposite sides of civil war. What gross atrocities and sectarian/ethnic violence have you seen in Iraq which implies to you that any troops recruited in this manner will go down a similar path?

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2005-01-09 11:32pm

Elfdart wrote:Look at the resume of any death squad leader and you'll find a stint at the School of the Americas.

Yes of course, Elfpenis doesn't miss a chance to malign the School of Americas because GASP, it teaches South American militaries to be
less corrupt and less bloodthirsty!

30,000 Graduates have gone through SoA, of which 300 are wanted for
war crimes. That's only 1% of all Graduates.