[Peace-discuss] US death squads in Iraq

[C. G. Estabrook]

Dennis Kucinich speaking from the Floor of the House -
Extensions of Remarks

"Mr. Speaker, [on April 5] I sent the following letter to
Secretary Rumsfeld requesting records pertaining to Pentagon
plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support, and train
Iraqi death squads:"

   Hon. Donald Rumsfeld,
   Secretary of Defense,
   The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
   April 5, 2006

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:

I am writing to request a copy of all records pertaining to
Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support
and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams.

On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report
that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi squads
to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has been
called the "Salvador Option," which references the U.S.
military assistance program, initiated under the Carter
Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan
Administration, that funded and supported "nationalist"
paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel
leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in
El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public
backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent
civilians were assassinated and "disappeared," including
notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar
Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the
Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect
the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that
despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights,
it was successful in eradicating guerrillas.

Mr. Secretary, at a news conference on January 11, 2005, you
publicly stated that the idea of a Salvador option was
"nonsense." Yet mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. has
in fact funded and trained Iraqi assassination and kidnapping
teams and these teams are now operating with horrific success
across Iraq.

We know that the Pentagon received funding for training Iraqi
paramilitaries.

About one year before the Newsweek report on the "Salvador
Option," it was reported in the American Prospect magazine on
January 1, 2004 that part of $3 billion of the $87 billion
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations
in Iraq, signed into law on November 6, 2003, was designated
for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen
associated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the
Prospect article, experts predicted that creation of this
paramilitary unit would "lead to a wave of extrajudicial
killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other
opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian
Baathists." The article further described how the bulk of the
$3 billion program, disguised as an Air Force classified
program, would be used to "support U.S. efforts to create a
lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force." According to
one of the article's sources, John Pike, an expert of
classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org. "the
big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to
liquidate the resistance."

We know that some of the Pentagon's Iraq experts were involved
in the Reagan Administration's paramilitary program in El
Salvador.

Colonel James Steele, Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador for
Iraqi Security Forces, formerly led the U.S. Military Advisory
Group in El Salvador from 1984-1986, where he developed
special operating forces at brigade level during the height of
the conflict. The role of these forces in El Salvador was to
attack "insurgent" leadership, their supporters, sources of
supply, and base camps. Currently Colonel Steele has been
assigned to work with the new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency
unit known as the Special Police Commandos, operating under
Iraq's Interior Ministry.

Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, was U.S.
Ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005. From 1981 to
1985, he was ambassador to Honduras where he played a key role
in coordinating U.S. covert aid to the Contras,
anti-Sandinista militias who targeted civilians in Nicaragua.
Additionally, he oversaw the U.S. backing of a military death
squad in Honduras, Battalion 3-16, which specialized in
torture and assassination. The U.S. had similar programs of
supporting paramilitary groups set up Nicaragua and Honduras
as its program in El Salvador. In a Democracy Now interview on
January 10, 2005, Allan Nairn, who broke the story about U.S.
support of death squads in El Salvador, suspected that
Ambassador Negroponte would most likely be involved in the
economic side of U.S. support to death squads in Iraq.

We know that a wave of abductions and executions, in the style
of the death squads of El Salvador, and with ties to an
official government sponsor, and to the U.S., has hit Iraq.

News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the
U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando
brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as
death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis.
Some news highlights:

    * May 1, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S.
is providing technical and logistical support to the Maghawir
(Fearless Warrior) brigades, the Interior Ministry's special
commandos, according to Major General Rasheed Flayih Mohammed.
Iraqi authorities plan to increase deployment of the
12,000-strong Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades, which are
composed of well-trained veterans who have worked closely with
U.S. forces in Najaf, Fallujah and Mosul and include the Wolf,
Scorpion, Tiger and Thunder brigades.
    * May 16-20, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times and New York Times
reveal discovery of 46 bodies, all Iraqi men abducted and
slain execution-style, in various locations: floating in the
Tigris, dumped in ditches and garbage-strewn lots, and buried
at a poultry farm.
    * June 15, 2005 -- Washington Post reports that U.S.
forces had knowledge of secret and illegal abductions of
hundreds of minority Arabs in Kirkuk. The abductions were by
forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S.
military.
    * June 20, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times reports that Saad
Sultan, of Iraq Human Rights Ministry said that police and
security forces attached to the Iraqi Interior Ministry,
thousands of whom have been trained by American instructors,
are responsible for abusing up to 60% of estimated 12,000
detainees in prison and military compounds. He says the units
have used tactics reminiscent of Saddam's secret intelligence
squads.
    * July 3, 2005 -- Reuters News reports that the government
of Iraq publicly acknowledged that the new security forces
were using torture. Article further says that accounts are
common of people being seized by armed men in the uniforms of
the police, army or special units like Baghdad's Wolf Brigade
police commandos, and then disappearing without trace or being
found dead.
    * July 28, 2005 -- Los Angeles Times reports that members
of a California Army National Guard company, the Alpha
Company, who were implicated in a detainee abuse scandal,
trained and conducted joint operations with the Wolf Brigade,
a commando unit criticized for human rights abuses. In an
online Alpha Company newsletter, Captain Haviland wrote, "We
have assigned 2nd Platoon to help them transition, and install
some of our 'Killer Company' aggressive tactical spirit in
them." The article further states that despite the Wolf
Brigade's controversial reputation for human rights
violations, it is regarded as the gold standard for Iraqi
security forces by U.S. military officials.
    * August 31, 2005 -- BBC reports that on the night of
August 24, a large force of the Volcano Brigade raided homes
in Al-Hurriyah city in the Baghdad, kidnapping and then
executing 76 citizens. The victims were all shot in the head
after their hands and feet had been tied up. They suffered the
harshest forms of torture, deformation and burning.
    * November 16, 2005 -- Reuters News reports the discovery
of 173 malnourished men, some of whom were tortured,
imprisoned in a secret jail run by Shi'ite militias tied to
the Interior Ministry.
    * November 17, 2005 -- Newsday reports that in the past
year, the U.S. military has helped build up Iraqi commandos
under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces
officer who led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador
in the 1980s. The brigades built up over the past year include
the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and Volcano Brigade.
    * February 15, 2006 -- Associated Press reports that the
Interior Ministry has launched a probe into death squad
allegations.
    * February 19, 2006 -- BBC reveals that morgues in Baghdad
receive dozens of bodies picked up daily from rivers, sewage
plants, waste burial sites, farms and desert areas. Most of
the bodies are handcuffed and blindfolded civilians with a
bullet or more in the forehead, indicating that they were
executed. The handcuffs used on the victims are like those
used by the Iraqi police.
    * February 26, 2006 -- The Independent reports that
outgoing United Nations' human rights chief in Iraq, John
Pace, revealed that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to
death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by
the death squads working from the Ministry of Interior. He
said that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the
Baghdad mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head
or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.
    * March 9, 2006 -- Los Angeles Times reports that Iraqi
police officers who worked at the Interior Ministry's illegal
prison had received American training, and that U.S. trainers
have also given extensive support to 27 brigades of heavily
armed commandos accused of a series of abuses, including the
death of 14 Sunni Arabs who were locked in an airtight van
last summer.
    * March 10, 2006 -- Sidney Morning Herald reports that men
wearing the uniforms of U.S.-trained security forces, which
are controlled by the Interior Ministry, abducted 50 people in
a daylight raid on a security agency. Masked men who are
driving what appear to be new government-owned vehicles are
carrying out many of the raids.
    * March 27, 2006 -- The Independent reports that while
U.S. authorities have begun criticizing the Iraqi government
over the "death squads," many of the paramilitary groups
accused of the abuse, such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion
Brigade and the Special Police Commandos were set up with the
help of the American military. Furthermore, the militiamen
were provided with U.S. advisers some of whom were veterans of
Latin American counter-insurgency which also had led to
allegations of death squads at the time.

Mr. Secretary, in light of this evidence of U.S. support for
and the existence of death squads in Iraq, what is the basis
for your January 11, 2005 statement, that the idea of a
Salvador option in Iraq is "nonsense"?

I request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans
to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi
assassination and kidnapping teams. I look forward to
receiving your response.

   Sincerely,
   Dennis J. Kucinich,
   Member of Congress