US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2005/daviespr1105.htmlThe Dirty War in IraqBy Nicolas J. S. DaviesZ MagazineNovember 2005 Volume 18 Number 11On September 8, 2005 the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a human rights report, statingthat the governing institutions created by the United States in Iraq are engaged in an organizedcampaign of detention, torture, and extrajudicial execution, directed primarily at Iraqis whopractice the Sunni form of Islam.The UN report expressed the greatest concern regarding arrests by forces linked to the Ministryof the Interior: “Corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bearsigns of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions.... Serious allegations ofextrajudicial executions underline a deterioration in the situation of law and order…. Accountsconsistently point to the systematic use of torture during interrogations at police stations andwithin other premises belonging to the Ministry of the Interior.”In this report the UN has finally acknowledged what a small number of journalists have beenreporting for at least 18 months, that a brutal “dirty war” has grown out of the U.S. occupation.On March 15, 2004, the New Statesman published an article by Stephen Grey titled “Rule of theDeath Squads” regarding the murder of Professor Abdullatif al-Mayah in Baghdad on January19, 2004. It quoted a senior commander at the headquarters of the U.S.-installed Iraqi police,“Dr. Abdullatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the streethere. He made some politicians quite jealous…. You can look no further than the governingcouncil. There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They arepoliticians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived to Iraq from exile with a list oftheir enemies. They are killing people one by one.”On January 16, 2005 USA Today reported on the work of Isam al-Rawi, a geology professorwho heads the Iraqi Association of University Lecturers. He has been cataloging assassinationsof academics in occupied Iraq and has documented 300 of them. He was unable to identify aclear pattern to the killings, except that, like al-Mayah, the victims were usually the mostrespected and popular members of their universities and their communities.On January 14, 2005 Newsweek reported on “The Salvador Option,” the proposed use of deathsquads as part of the U.S. strategy to subdue the country. It noted that some U.S. policymakersconsider this to have been effective in Central America in the 1980s. Newsweek cited InterimPrime Minister Allawi, a former agent of both the Iraqi Mukhabarat and the CIA, as a principalproponent of this policy. A U.S. military source told Newsweek, “The Sunni population ispaying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is costfree.We have to change that equation.” This source was expressing precisely the rationalebehind the dirty wars in Latin America and the worst abuses of the Vietnam War. The purpose of27