In "The truth behind the Iraqi insurgency", we reported that the Iraqi death squads were if not set up, then at least inspired by similar US-established death squads in El Salvador and elsewhere. Now, more evidence is emerging that the US has had a direct hand in creating these Iraqi death squads.

Since our first airing, further material has landed on our desk that reveals that the US has a direct involvement in the creation of the death squads that operate from within the Iraqi Interior Ministry and police forces.
As early as January 14, 2005, Michael Hirsh and John Barry, writing for Newsweek, spoke out about the possibility of the Pentagon implementing the so-called "Salvador Option" in Iraq. For them, the "Salvador Option" meant dispatching death squads "to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. [...] One Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions."
More ominously, there have been allegations that the "death squads" were actually signed off by the Bush Administration in October 2004, "in a single paragraph in an 800-page defense authorization bill", according to Stephen R. Shalom, citing Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times.

In the article, we noted the special importance of the bombing of the Samara Mosque. Others are now arguing that the charge that the Badr Brigade was responsible for most acts of sectarian violence through its infiltration of the Interior Ministry was revised almost overnight following the bombing of the Samara Mosque in February 2006. From that moment on, the so-called Mahdi Army was held to be responsible. Commentators now finally note that no explanation has ever been provided as to how such a switch could have come about, especially perplexing given that it was explicitly clear that police units were the primary culprits prior to Samara. No serious evidence has ever been presented for this change of opinion and contradictions in the official narrative abound.

In our report, we outlined some evidence that suggested that the US was aware of the problem and was at best a party that was being played. But some commentators have gone further - and point the figure directly at the US. Max Fuller in "Silence of the Lambs? Proof of US orchestration of Death Squads Killings in Iraq" reports that "testimony of Iraqi torture victim confirms the presence of US personnel at the infamous Jadiriyah bunker." The Jadiriyah detention facility was in November 2005 discovered by US troops who were reported to have uncovered the prison in their hunt for a missing person, only to discover some 170 detainees in horrific conditions.
Fuller interviewed one of the victims of that abuse, the former Professor of Pedagogy at Baghdad University Tareq Samarree, who had been seized from his home in March 2005 by plain-clothed Interior Ministry personnel - without charge. When American soldiers officially discovered the bunker, Professor Samarree's physical condition was so bad that he, along with around a dozen other detainees, was instantly taken to a local hospital. Though given medical assistance, he and his companions remained without access to lawyers, journalists, officials or even a telephone. In fact, it quickly became clear that they were to be returned to Iraqi detention, from which he was eventually able to escape with the help of a US soldier. Within days, Samarree arranged for himself and his family to flee the country. He is now in Europe, where he is claiming political asylum.

On February 7, 2007, another former inmate from Jadiriyah, Abbas Z Abid, presented his sworn testimony at the international peace conference in Kuala Lumpur. Abid was an electrical engineer from Fallujah who was the Chief Engineer in Baghdad's Science and Technology Ministry. He was arrested in August 2005, but was not released until October 2006. That means that Abid, like Samarree, was held when the American soldiers raided the facility, but his ordeal did not end there. In fact, not only does Abid describe the ongoing tortures that he was repeatedly subjected to after the US intervention, he also witnessed the tortures that were inflicted on fellow inmates, including the use of Black and Decker drills and other power tools. Abid named eight fellow detainees who died from their injuries and added that "American troops have visited the prison many times and therefore cannot deny the existence of such a prison". It adds to the erosion of the official line and begins to unveil that the US Military is perfectly aware, if not active partners, in creating the ethnic cleansing that is occurring in Iraq.

But it seems that the scope of the torture is no longer limited to US troops only. Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price stated that British trained policemen had tortured prisoners to death with drills. The New York Times has reported that American intelligence officers had been working alongside their British counterparts at the Jamiyat police station, where they passed on names of suspects, knowing that those suspects would end up as the victims of death squads. This modus operandi is duplicated by British military intelligence units, like the Joint Support Group, who are now accused of having brought their nefarious experience from Northern Ireland to Iraq. Thus, in Basra, we find a paramilitary death squad outfit called the Revenge of God (Thar Allah) nurtured and protected by the British, linked to police intelligence. It has also been given control of nightly curfews, despite its boasts of killing members of the former state.

The cherished western mainstream media notion that Iraq has fragmented into a state of intercommunal sectarian civil war, is the biggest single impediment to understanding the role of the Anglo-US Occupation in the thousands upon thousands of extrajudicial killings taking place in Iraq.
We have used the term ethnic cleansing, but the distinguished dissident academic Edward Herman recently wrote a paper entitled "Iraq: the Genocide Option", in which he argued that the US war in Iraq actually threatens to become genocidal.
With credible figures of over one million Iraqi casualties, another three to four million displaced internally and externally, the total collapse of civic infrastructure and the imminent threat of political disintegration, there must already be a very real question as to whether Iraq continues to exist as a viable nation. That, of course, may be the entire purpose of the exercise - though a recent poll showed that the majority of Iraqis, whether Shiite or Sunni, want Iraq to remain one nation.

The situation was not helped when on March 7, 2007, the Israeli Ma'ariv Daily reported that "Israeli officer sells weapons to terrorists in Iraq". The story focuses on Shmoel Avivi, an Israeli retired officer, who established a firm in Iraq two years ago. Amnesty International also reported that Avivi was one of the biggest weapon dealers in the Middle East. There are questions raised whether Avivi may have kept his intelligence links alive, as Iraqi sources have announced that terrorist attacks in Iraq are backed by the CIA and the Israeli Mossad - an allegation which may be specifically related to Avivi. Irrelevant of whether or not Avivi is still working for his "former employers", it is clear evidence that there is little need for Iran to sell weapons in Iraq.

The accusation of US collusion with the death squads has now reached the circles of the "democratically elected Iraqi parliament". Iraqi parliament security commission chairman Hadi Ameri has accused the occupying soldiers of secretly directing the terrorist attacks and forming terror squads in Iraq.
But it could go much further, to the corridors of the "democratically elected White House": American journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that Iran-Contra veterans working out of Dick Cheney's office are using stolen funds from Iraq to foment a larger Sunni-Shiite war. That war, of course, is fought by the death squads.
Hersch's story goes that in 2005, an "informal" meeting of "veterans of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others.
In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded that the complex operation had been a success - but would have worked far better (read: would have remained a secret) if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office. Note the methodology, in which "dirty ops" are run by the Administration itself, bypassing the old culprits, the CIA - and the military.
Another Iran-Contra alumnus is John Negroponte, who according to Hersh left his post as Director of National Intelligence in order to avoid a repeat of Iran-Contra occurring in Iraq: "No way. I'm not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. [National Security Council] running operations off the books, with no [presidential] finding." It seems that the Bush Administration, however, has done exactly that: create death squads to carry out killing/ethnic cleansing/genocide in Iraq. When Cheney is therefore referring to the "fact" that Iraq is not a disaster as the media claims, but instead considers it to be a success story, perhaps he is referring to the way his office has been able to successfully create the death squads?