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

in/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/22/MNG45CDDBQ1.DTL ).In light of these bodies in the Tigris, it may be significant to note a strange report on the websiteJihad Unspun of US soldiers dumping body bags from helicopters in the Diali River in easternIraq during the early hours of the morning. The writer argues that the bags held the corpses ofAmerican soldiers or foreign mercenaries that the army wished to conceal from publicknowledge(http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=100552&list=/home.php& ). Thisimplausible theory leaves a very large question mark over the identity of bodies that the US armywishes to conceal and recalls the report submitted to the Brussels Tribunal, ‘Tarmiya: the SilentAgony’. This account contains first hand testimony from an agricultural worker who survived anattempted execution by a team of US special forces. He and a colleague were abducted from thefarm where they worked, then taken to a secluded grove where their throats were cut. They wereleft for dead, but miraculously, one of them survived (http://www.brusselstribunal.org /). Whilstthis account lacks corroboration and has remained anonymous to protect the identities of thoseinvolved, it remains a convincing description of the kind of long-range ‘reconnaissance’missions that people like James Steele were conducting in Vietnam.Modelling the Iraq WarWhilst much of the violence across Iraq appears chaotic, some lines are starting to emerge thatfollow the pattern and the logic of other counter-insurgency wars. In El Salvador, when the warfinally came to an end, it became clear that the majority of its victims had been participants inprogressive social movements as well as peasants who had been perceived as sympathising withor supporting the guerrillas. The object of the war was not to defeat an ideologically motivatedrebellion, it was to prevent the possibility of progressive social change and to maintain thecountry within the US economic orbit in its traditional tributary role.The same can be said of Colombia at present, where the long current phase of the internalconflict in which thousands of social activists have been murdered has butted seamlessly with thecountry’s exposure to economic liberalisation. In short, legitimate social demands are violentlysuppressed in favour of allowing foreign capital to extract super profits from Colombia’s richnatural resources and selling off its public assets for the same purpose. Much of the conflict takesplace within the realm of so-called ‘civil society’, where progressive leaders are excluded oreliminated, whilst those who are prepared to throw in their lot with predatory foreign capital arerewarded and extolled.In Iraq the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existingstate, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phaseconsists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector ofsociety. Openly, this involves applying the same sort of economic shock therapy that has done somuch damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern Europe. Covertly, it meansintimidating, kidnapping and murdering opposition voices.87