Reply #58: Is the U.S. Organizing Salvador-Style Death Squads in Iraq?

[seemslikeadream]

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you talk about what this Salvador option means, hearing about the Newsweek report that they might employ it in Iraq?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Newsweek said that -- they described the Salvador option as the targeting of combatants and their sympathizers, and the key word is sympathizers. In El Salvador and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the C.I.A., the Pentagon, and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists. In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads. For example, General “Chele” Medrano, who was on the C.I.A. payroll, described how they picked their targets. He said, they targeted people who speak, and these are his words: “…against yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do, when they found them this he kill them.” Actually, they didn't always kill them. Often, they brought them to the headquarters of the treasury police, the national guard, the army and they tortured for them days. One former member of the Salvadoran treasury police, Rene Hurtado, described a course that was given at army general staff headquarters where American officers gave instruction in techniques including electroshock torture. Hurtado himself said he conducted such torture. He said, these are his words: “You put wires on the prisoner’s vital parts. You place the wires between the prisoner’s teeth, on the penis, on the vagina. The prisoners feel it more so the feet are in the water, and they are seated on iron so the blow is stronger… When it's over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying, Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade.” These are the names of the Salvadora death squads. I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran National Police, the intelligence archives and you could see they have filed marked, union, student, religious. They showed me a card file, which included surveillance reports on activists who had traveled to other countries. These surveillance reports were given to them, according to the captain who was giving me this tour, by the C.I.A. The whole filing system was set up for them by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Medrano was at one point brought to the oval office in the White House, and presented a silver medal by president Lyndon Johnson for an - he showed me the medal, inscribed on the medal - for exceptionally meritorious service. This program actually began not just under Reagan, but during the John F. Kennedy administration.
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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/10/1456242