# The "Salvador Option" for the Iraq insurgency: Train death squads to kill the leaders **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 10, 2005, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969 "2005-01-10T01:27:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![alaricthegoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@alaricthegoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alaricthegoth)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2005, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/101 "2005-01-13T22:09:34Z")
> [@alaricthegoth](#): > > Didn’t Allawi already blow up a bus, albeit not full of kids? > > Back in the early 90’s, I think. I will be back with google loot in a flash… Iyad Allawi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia … CIA officers, Allawi’s INA organised terrorist attacks in Iraq between 1992 and 1995, allegedly including the bombing of mosques, a cinema and a school bus . my mistake…it WAS a school bus… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2005, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/102 "2005-01-13T22:10:21Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > We’re the ones telling the Iraqis we want them to have the rule of law - as we torture prisoners and train assassins. > [@Puffs](#): > > Training assassins have nothing to do with the law. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > True. What’s your point? > [@Puffs](#): > > If you would read what I quoted right above it you may be able to figure it out. Just let me know if you still need help. You seemed to be implying that, just because assassins are not **lawful** agents of the state, their existence and use is perfectly compatible with a rule-of-law regime; which is such a ridiculous, fatuous, cynical and immoral proposition that I could not believe that was the point you were actually making. Was it? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2005, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/103 "2005-01-13T22:44:11Z")
Ignoring the moral issues, there is the sheer stupidity factor. These people will be mercenarys. There is no other way to describe them. Our own soldiers are our own, they have a purpose and a cause. We will be hiring commercial killers, the one variety of humanity lower than pimps. There is no possibility that we can have any faith in the judgement or justice of their actions. They can haul in any corpse and tell us that this is a dangerous insurgent, and we won’t have a clue. What is to stop them from picking someone at random? More to the point, perhaps, what is to stop them from picking someone based on a personal grudge? Further, what is to stop them from extorting payments to prevent being so named? Nothing. We will have to place our trust entirely in men who we know will kill for money. This isn’t putting a fox to guard the hens, this is putting a _rabid_ fox to guard. Perhaps they won’t be entirely mercenary. Perhaps a Shia dominated government will hire devoted Shia loyalists to help ferret out the insurgents (who are, we are given to understand, mostly Sunni/Baathist). What is to prevent them from calling any outspoken Sunni leader an “insurgent”? This isn’t merely a bad idea. This is criminally stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Demorian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demorian/32/7273_2.png) [@Demorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Demorian)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/104 "2005-01-14T00:59:47Z")
> [@alaricthegoth](#): > > Iyad Allawi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia > … CIA officers, Allawi’s INA organised terrorist attacks in Iraq between 1992 and > 1995, allegedly including the bombing of mosques, a cinema and a school bus . > my mistake…it WAS a school bus… You know what, this all reminds me terribly of some of the tragic incidents of state terrorism that happened with Israel and the CIA and in 1985. As for trained groups of thugs… all I can think of is how horrible that idea has worked out for us in the past. There is a long history of coups and groups the US supported or indirectly supported that ended up committing gross atrocities. ---
**Author:** ![annaplurabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@annaplurabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annaplurabelle)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/105 "2005-01-14T01:47:49Z")
Any hard cites on where these “elite hit squads” might come from ? As I recall, there are a lot of “alumni death squad” mercenaries in Iraq - from South Africa, and even from [El Salvador](http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/world/9870896.htm). At one time, I read the number of such mercenaries as high as 16,000. But now I’ve lost track. How do we know they are only there for private security purposes? I don’t suppose it matters who perpetrates this atrocity. Just curious… ---
**Author:** ![Demorian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demorian/32/7273_2.png) [@Demorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Demorian)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/106 "2005-01-14T02:06:41Z")
> [@annaplurabelle](#): > > Any hard cites on where these “elite hit squads” might come from ? As I recall, there are a lot of “alumni death squad” mercenaries in Iraq - from South Africa, and even from [El Salvador](http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/world/9870896.htm). Correct. If you’ll recall, all seemed smooth sailing in Iraq to most people until that fateful week in Fallujah with the contractor’s death, and the eventually tragic soldier’s corpse dragged and mutilated that most people have forgotten about. At the time, the buzz was about the “mercenaries” - privately contracted security forces - brought in to provide security for private industrial contractors and, as it was later revealed, light defense of US supply convoys and small bases. I may be misremembering some of the details, but that was indeed a heated time. ---
**Author:** ![Puffs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@Puffs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Puffs)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/107 "2005-01-14T03:56:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You seemed to be implying that, just because assassins are not **lawful** agents of the state, their existence and use is perfectly compatible with a rule-of-law regime; which is such a ridiculous, fatuous, cynical and immoral proposition that I could not believe that was the point you were actually making. Was it? I don’t know that assassins are not lawful agents of the state. I do know that there is a presidential ban on assassinations that may be formally rescinded. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/108 "2005-01-14T05:31:05Z")
I know that Bill Clinton – that lazy, do-nothing terrorist-coddlin’ Clinton guy – approved the use of assassination to take out Osama Bin Laden(\*) back in the late '90s. I’m not sure if that order was limited to Bin Laden, however. (\* = George W. Bush: “Osama who?”) ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/109 "2005-01-14T05:48:14Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > (\* = George W. Bush: “Osama who?”) That’s unfair. President Bush mentioned bin Laden just today: > [@](#): > > “I remember when I talked about Osama bin Laden, I said we’re going to get him dead or alive. I guess it’s not the most diplomatic of language,” Bush said. [Bush Regrets Language That Hurt U.S. Diplomacy](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20050114/pl_nm/bush_bluntness_dc) ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/110 "2005-01-14T13:46:41Z")
How’s the diplomatic approach to getting Osama workin’ out for ya, George? ---
**Author:** ![Demorian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demorian/32/7273_2.png) [@Demorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Demorian)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/111 "2005-01-14T14:50:54Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > How’s the diplomatic approach to getting Osama workin’ out for ya, George? I find this incredibly ironic. As of November 2001, there was heavy polarization to get Osama’s head. The right wanted him simply dead, the left was more for capturing him and putting him to trial for his crimes. There are more than enough political cartoons from that era to bear this out. The Republicans at the time called the Democrats weak for not wanting to hunt down Osama… but 3 years later, Osama isn’t guilty anymore? I don’t even see Bush making a diplomatic approach to capturing him. He just stopped chasing him. This defies all reason and rational thought to me. I simply don’t understand how he could just abandon the quest for Osama bin Laden, and get away with it. The sum effect of his hunt for the people responsible for the September 11th attacks was to get the NLA to seize control from the Taliban (who fled intact, along with Al Qaeda) and kill and/or arrest a few hundred random people and lock them away, ignoring the concepts of proving that they were actually terrorists at all. But the Taliban fell, and America felt satisfied for a second, then Iraq took over as an immediate threat. I don’t see how this could have happened. It is one of those things historians are going to look back upon and shake their heads. I don’t know what is going through Bush’s mind, much less the majority of the American people who fell for it all. I don’t know what the Bush Administration had/has in mind regarding it. I don’t even know if they ever cared about Al Qaeda at all. I certainly don’t feel like the people responsible for September 11th were punished, and I very much don’t feel any safer than I did on September 12th. Was this an illusion of defeating Al Qaeda? Is it a public relations coup? I just don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/112 "2005-01-14T18:25:40Z")
Well, **Demorian** , given that bin Laden’s basic objective with the 9/11 attack was not to “hurt America” but to drag our military into his own internecine Muslim-against-Muslim conflict and budding civil war, and given that Bush cheerfully followed bin Laden’s script and has shown no interest in pursuing bin Laden himself, a conspiracy-minded individual could make a pretty convincing case that Bush and bin Laden are somehow collaborating on this whole adventure. Me, I don’t go that far. I just think a combination of hubris and ignorance caused Bush either to fail to recognize bin Laden’s trap or to think he could outsmart him on another front or something, and now he’s painted himself into a corner he can’t confess to having gotten himself into. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/113 "2005-01-14T20:40:01Z")
> [@Puffs](#): > > I don’t know that assassins are not lawful agents of the state. I do know that there is a presidential ban on assassinations that may be formally rescinded. So, again, what’s your point? Are you suggesting that rescinding the presidential ban on assassinations in Iraq would help us teach the Iraqis about the rule of law? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Puffs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@Puffs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Puffs)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/114 "2005-01-14T21:34:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So, again, what’s your point? Are you suggesting that rescinding the presidential ban on assassinations in Iraq would help us teach the Iraqis about the rule of law? :dubious: What did I say? Assassins have nothing to do with the law. Hence, rescinding the presidential ban on assassinations in Iraq should not help or hurt in regards to the rule of law. Are you suggesting that there is a due process in Iraq to handle the insurgents that murder innocents and authority with almost impunity? Does your rule-of-law definition in Iraq demand that these same murderers be allowed to continue at the risk of more lives lost when current attempts have demonstrably proven ineffectual? I understand where you would say that in a society that the rule of law is dominant, assassins would hurt. I just don’t see how you can compare the environement in Iraq with that of inside the US. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2005, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/115 "2005-01-14T21:47:03Z")
> [@Puffs](#): > > What did I say? Assassins have nothing to do with the law. Hence, rescinding the presidential ban on assassinations in Iraq should not help or hurt in regards to the rule of law. **Of course** it would hurt. Countries ruled by law **do not use assassins.** (Not within their own borders, anyway . . .) Furthermore, if the presidential ban on assassinations should be rescinded, then any anti-insurgent assassins operating in Iraq will be operating with presidential permission – and in the name of some ostensibly **lawful** authority, either the Coalition or the Interim Government or the yet-to-be-elected National Assembly. How is that supposed to instil confidence in any of them? > [@Puffs](#): > > Are you suggesting that there is a due process in Iraq to handle the insurgents that murder innocents and authority with almost impunity? No. I am suggesting that due process of law is something we are ostensibly attempting to **establish** in Iraq, and resorting to state-sanctioned assassins, a tactic unlawful and abominable by the standards of every genuine rule-of-law regime on Earth, will simply destroy our credibility in that effort. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2005, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/116 "2005-01-18T02:54:36Z")
From “Bush’s Death Squads,” by Robert Parry, _In These Times,_ January 17, 2005, [http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1872/:](http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1872/:) > [@](#): > > The insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala were crushed through the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians. In Guatemala, about 200,000 people perished, including what a truth commission later termed a genocide against Mayan Indians in the Guatemalan highlands. In El Salvador, about 70,000 died including massacres of whole villages, such as the slaughter carried out by a U.S.-trained battalion against hundreds of men, women and children in and around the town of El Mozote in 1981. > > The Reagan-Bush strategy also had a domestic component, the so-called “perception management” operation. Administration propaganda justified U.S. actions in Central America by portraying the popular uprisings as an attempt by the Soviet Union to establish a beachhead in the Americas to threaten the U.S. southern border. > > By employing the “Salvador option” in Iraq, the U.S. military would crank up the pain, especially in Sunni Muslim areas where resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been strongest. In effect, Bush would assign other Iraqi ethnic groups the job of leading the “death squad” campaign against the Sunnis. > > \ > > The conditions in Central America and Iraq are not parallel, however. > > In Central America, powerful oligarchies had long surrounded themselves with ruthless security forces and armies. So, when uprisings swept across the region in the early ’80s, the Reagan-Bush administration had ready-made—though unsavory—allies who could do the dirty work with help from Washington. > > A different dynamic exists in Iraq, because the Bush administration chose to disband rather than co-opt the Iraqi army. That left U.S. forces with few reliable local allies and put the onus for carrying out counterinsurgency operations on American soldiers who were unfamiliar with the land, the culture and the language. > > Those problems, in turn, contributed to a series of counterproductive tactics, including the heavy-handed roundups of Iraqi suspects, the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the killing of innocent civilians by jittery U.S. troops fearful of suicide bombings. The blame for these medieval tactics continues to climb the chain of command toward the Oval Office. > > Bush finds himself facing a narrowing list of very tough choices. He could acknowledge his mistakes and seek international help in extricating U.S. forces from Iraq. But he abhors admitting errors, even small ones. > > Instead Bush appears to be upping the ante, expanding the war by having Iraqi Kurds and Shiites kill Sunnis. This is a prescription for civil war or genocide. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2005, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/117 "2005-01-18T03:17:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What do you think? Is this justifiable tactic? Is it a workable one? IMO is the 2005 incarnation of[Vietnamization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamization#.22Vietnamization.22) . ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2005, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/118 "2005-01-18T03:38:35Z")
Apologies for my poor editing. Above should read “IMO (in my opinion) this is the 2005 incarnation of Vietnamization.” ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2005, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/119 "2005-01-18T14:28:25Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > Apologies for my poor editing. Above should read “IMO (in my opinion) this is the 2005 incarnation of Vietnamization.” I’m sorry, but I don’t get what your point is, they are sometime are going to have to fight the battle themselves without fullscale American support. Its like saying us equipping Germany to defend itself against the Soviet Union was Germanisation or Koreans against the North was Koreanisation of their wars and battles. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2005, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969/120 "2005-01-18T15:27:35Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > I’m sorry, but I don’t get what your point is, they are sometime are going to have to fight the battle themselves without fullscale American support. Its like saying us equipping Germany to defend itself against the Soviet Union was Germanisation or Koreans against the North was Koreanisation of their wars and battles. From the Wikipedia article linked by **NattoGuy:** > [@](#): > > Nixon was elected President and began his policy of slow disengagement from the war. The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called “Nixon Doctrine”. As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called “Vietnamization”. The stated goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the NLF and the North Vietnamese Army. The unstated goal of Vietnamization was that the primary burden of combat would be returned to ARVN troops and thereby lessen domestic opposition to the war in the U.S. > > During this period, the United States conducted a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon continued to use air power to bomb the enemy, and American soldiers continued to die in combat. Ultimately, more American soldiers died, and more bombs were dropped, under the Nixon Presidency than under Johnson’s. I think **NattoGuy** is making the point that the “Salvador Option” proposal has a lot more in common with the above scenario than with our Cold War support of Germany or South Korea. In particular, that **active** American military involvement, complete with combat deaths and offensive operations, will continue while the conflict is ostensibly being turned over to local allies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-salvador-option-for-the-iraq-insurgency-train-death-squads-to-kill-the-leaders/283969.md?page=5)