I believe the Salvadorian Option is also the Nicaraguan Option or the Guatemlan
Option it is actually Low Intensity Warfare. This type of warfare is carried
out in national security states, where the enemy is not from without the state
but within, namely the civilian population. The idea in Central was to kill or
slaughter lots of people in order to terrorize the entire civilian into
submission. Like in Iraq the stated objective was to promote democracy, the
end result was a military democracy, that is one where elections are held and
provided the results do not upset the status quo the military and their death
squads will stay in their barracks and underground. If the elections go badly
for the power elite in the country both the militaryand thier allies the right
wing death squads are ready to terrorize the ciavilian population back into
submission. The strategy worked quite well in all the aforementioned
countries. In Guatemala the Low Intensity War almost resulted in
genocide of the indigenous population. Many of the deaths were as a result of
murderous conivance of a bunch of religious fanatical christians, who wished to
help the government kill communists for Jesus. Many of the more brutal
military personel in these countries were trained how to murder and torture
civilians right in the U.S. at such traing bases as the one in Fort Benning,
Georgia. The Atlacal division was one of the most well known and brutal of the
U.S. trained counterrorism outfits who were responsible for horrendous
slaughters of civilians and the Jesuit priests and employees of a faith based
group opposing the death squads,counterrorism and Low Intensity Warfare. What
is particularly disheartening is to find Rumsfield speaking frankly about the
Sunni civilian not paying anything for supporting the insurgents and that this
equation must change. What he is actually saying is they will attempt to stop
their enemies by murdering thier families women and children,
committing genocide against the Sunni population if necessary to reach their
desired ends of controlling the worlds oil distribution when supply of this
vital commodity is overcome by demand on the worlds market. With India and
China's economies growing at unbelievable rates the time is near when it will
become necessary to go to war to control oil distribution so as to benefit the
U.S. and it's allies at the expense of the people viewed as less worthy by the
U.S. power elite.
I think a good start for the antiglobalization, pro-democracy resistance
should involve advocating for conversion to renewable energy and end of fossil
fuels as a means of producing energy. Kennedy promoted a U.S. person on the
moon in ten years and did it ahead of time, why not an oil free economy in the
next 10 years. Argentina's working people have demonstrated to the world that
you can tell the World's globalizers and their organizations like the WTO, IMF,
World Bank, the national government and capitalist swine who abandoned their
wokers and closed their factories, food distribution plants and businesses, to
go to hell and still have a viable economy and nation. Up the revolution, long
live the people's resistance and long live anarchy. Chairman Mao-"Power
comes out of the barrel of a gun." Chairman Bush - Democracy comes out of the
barrel of a gun. The revolution will never be over until the last capitalist
is hung with the intestines of the last bureaucrat.
In Solidarity
Jay
CISPES-LA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
�The Salvador Option�
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination
or kidnapping teams in Iraq
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Jan. 11, 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.)
RELATED STORY | CHRISTOPHER DICKEY
Are there parallels between El Salvador in the �80s
and Iraq today? Maybe. But the �lessons learned� by
Washington are the wrong ones
� Debating 'Death Squads'
NEWSWEEK's Michael Hirsh on a possible Pentagon
strategy to target Iraqi insurgents
NEWSWEEK
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.
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
=====
CISPES
Committee In Solidarity With The People of El Salvador
8124 West 3rd Street L.A. Ca. 90048
323-852-0721
Founded: 1980 - 23 Years of Solidarity
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