Salvador Option

The Salvador Option was a term quoted in a January 8, 2005 article in Newsweek. This phrase was used to refer to options then being intensely debated in Pentagon and Iraqi government circles for dealing with the rapidly growing insurgency movement in Iraq, drawing an explicit analogy to the U.S. military involvement in El Salvador, in which quasi-official death squads were instrumental in bringing a decade-long war against FMLN to a close. The article quoted anonymous military insiders, and did not specify the precise origin of the phrase "Salvador Option", or explicitly say that those words were actually used by Pentagon sources.

According to Newsweek:

"...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."[1]

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has publicly denounced the Newsweek article as "nonsense", when directly asked if such a policy was under consideration, he answered "Why would I even talk about something like that?" [2]. Observers of the Iraqi conflict have taken these and other cues to argue that the "Salvador Option" was put into operation. They point in particular to the existence of a Shi'ite led unit affiliated with the Iraqi ministry known as the Wolf Brigade.

Death squad activity in Iraq

Main article: Special Police Commandos

Much of what the CIA and the U.S. Military Advisory Group in El Salvador actually knew about the Salvadoran death squads is still kept highly secret. Statements by U.S. officials regarding the activities of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's Special Police Commandos, and other MOI units (which have been accused either of being death squads, of being infiltrated by insurgents, or both), are equally opaque.

What is known is that both the key U.S. official behind both the Milgroup in El Salvador from 1984 to 1986, and the Special Police Commandos since it was formed in September 2004, is the same person, Colonel James Steele.

The death squads activities are in the country and land where operate a complete cover and support of the puppet government, In San Salvador in the years of president Jose Napoleon Duarte 1984 to 1989 these infamous groups were responsible of thousands of extra judicial executions, tortures, disappear civilians suspects or to belong to FMLN guerrilla forces.

Every day is the Salvadorean war the death squads make the dirty jobs of counter insurgency "cleaning" the cities and around places, covered, tolerated and helped for the puppet government local in every action against of their enemies who are the really innocent people, these groups are kept in secret inside the machinery and army, police and ministries where operate.

To be part and member of the death squads terrorists against civilians groups are enough reason to keep after in total impunity and not to be prosecuted and demand for the crimes were to be involved in the past.

A curious case of the impunity granted and given is the case of the El Salvador death squad members and their collaborators in the year 1982 in the city of San Salvador a member named: JUAN FRANCISCO MERINO RIVAS ex-agent of the National Police in El Salvador and guilty of: extra judicial executions, torture, kidnapping, assassinations and disappear civilians and guilty in the crime of the green cross humanitarian worker MANUEL DE JESUS JOVEL MEJIA are right now living with total impunity under a fraud and perjury to the US immigration laws like a North American citizen in California.

Against several investigation of ongs and ombudsman who make officials informs to US embassy in San Salvador this guy still lives protected of all the crimes among the Salvadorean war.

It is not a problem to be guilty of crimes of war and crimes against humanity. To be a member of a death squad is a guarantee of impunity and security and a legal promise of never to be prosecuted and this is only one of hundreds or maybe thousands of examples and cases.

See also

• Wolf Brigade, Shi'ite counter-insurgency unit operating since October 2004.
• Special Police Commandos, a Sunni unit operating since September, 2004.
• Phoenix Program
• The Chinese Solution

References

• http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35159 - Iraq: Gov't Death Squads Ravishing Baghdad
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120300881.html - Iraq's Death Squads

External links

• The ex-DEA agent Cele Castillo's site
• 'The Salvador Option' in Newsweek (not bylined
• "Salvador Option' on 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' (at articles from both links, see "show more text" near bottom