They May Be Murderers, but They're Our Murderers-Death Squads in Iraq

They May be Murderers, but They’re Our Murderers.
Counter-insurgency death squads repeating history in Iraq

Abhinav Aima, CommonDreams.org

Friday, April 22, 2005 - First there was the news, delivered by Seymour Hersh, that the U.S. armed forces had started running covert operations in Iran. Then came news reports, and advocacy articles in conservative journals, that the United States was, or should be, using the Mujahideen e-Khalq for running reconnaissance and disruptive operations in Iran.

<snip>

Today, a report by Arun Gupta in The Indypendent, adds to previous reporting by The Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Jaffe, elaborating on how politicians backed by the U.S. in Iraq are running private militia armies as counter-insurgency forces. While they receive some funding and training from the U.S., these militia seem to operate with complete plausible deniability – spook speak for running death squads without fear of legal prosecution.

<snip>

Many academics and journalists observing the Iraqi insurgency had raised flags in late 2004, inquiring why the so-called Sunni insurgents would be killing people who seemingly had little to do with resisting the insurgents. Robert Fisk posed the question specifically after the killing of aid worker Margaret Hassan in November 2004, asking if there were other forces running amock in Iraq killing those critical of the Iraqi administration, then led by Iyad Allawi.

While conservative “patriots” would scoff at any suggestion of American forces being involved in the running of foreign militia, they would be speaking from a peculiarly selective reading of history. The kind of history, for example, that ignores the Georgia-based School of the Americas, the proud alma mater for death squads (special police teams) that slaughtered civilians (communists/socialists) in Central and South America in the 1980s.

:: The incoming address of this article is :
   www.commondreams.org/views05/0422-26.htm

El Salvador option