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

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6814001/site/newsweek/Dickey: Iraq, Salvador and Death-Squad Democracy. Are there parallels between ElSalvador in the ‘80s and Iraq today? Maybe. But the ‘lessons learned’ by Washington arethe wrong onesWEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARYBy Christopher DickeyNewsweekJan 11, 2005Jan. 11 - Among the many tools used to build and defend pro-American democracies, murder isamong the trickiest. But murder—yes, let’s insist on that word—is also quite common in theannals of nation-building, at least in my experience, and sometimes it’s been very effective. Nowwe hear that some of the Bush administration’s strategists are talking about what they call “TheSalvador Option”, which seems to imply “death squads” (as the murderers were called in ElSalvador and Guatemala) or “hit teams” (as they’ve been called in Israel).Having watched the slaughter in El Salvador first hand during the early 1980s, having lost manyfriends and acquaintances to the butchers there—among them nuns, priests and an archbishopwho will someday be sainted—and having been targeted myself, I have something of a personalinterest in this notion. I’m not about to forget the bodies lying unclaimed in the streets, thefamilies of the victims too afraid to pick them up lest they become targets as well. When I heartalk of a Salvador Option, I can’t help but think about El Playón, a wasteland of volcanic rockthat was one of the killers’ favorite dumping grounds. I’ve never forgotten the sick-sweet stenchof carnal refuse there, the mutilated corpses half-devoured by mongrels and buzzards, the holloweyes of a human skull peering up through the loose-piled rocks, the hair fallen away from thebone like a gruesome halo.Still, I’m prepared to admit that building friendly democracies sometimes has to be a coldbloodedbusiness in the shadowland of moral grays that is the real world. The Reaganadministration was just doing—or, more often, allowing to be done—whatever it took to defeat alargely Communist insurgency. I’m even prepared to believe that Arena, the political partyfounded by the late death squad leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson, has long since cleaned up its act.Salvadoran voters returned Arena to power last year for the third time since 1992. Its presidentialcandidate, Tony Saca, beat former guerrilla leader Shafik Handal by a landslide. Would ElPlayón’s voters have made a difference? Well, we’ll never know.The question of the moment is not the state of play in El Salvador, however, it’s the disaster inIraq. The Bush administration has a dismal record learning the wrong lessons from the wrongparadigms when it comes to Iraq. This was not the liberation of France, nor the occupation ofGermany or Japan, and America’s war on terrorists is not the same as Israel’s war with thePalestinians. So, let’s take a real close look at what we’re talking about here when we discuss theSalvador Option.64