Do we really have to take military action to Syria?

Virtually every move we have made in that part of the world has been a disaster. What makes people think this one's the charm?

Virtually every move we have made in that part of the world has been a disaster.

oralloy wrote:

trying2learn wrote:

Unfortunately, I do think the United States is going to strike Syria.

Unfortunately it will be a horrific disaster if we do not.

in other words your Raytheon stock will take a hit when the US Gov buys fewer of the $1.5 million Tomahawks....

Obama administration is considering a plan to use U.S. military trainers

US trained death squads

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/death_squads1.htm

CIA Support of Death Squads
by Ralph McGehee
Posted on RemarQ, 9 October 1999

The information below is from CIABASE files on Death Squads supported by the CIA. Also given below are details on Watch Lists prepared by the CIA to facilitate the actions of Death Squads.

Angola Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Central America
Chile Columbia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic
Eastern Europe East Timor Egypt El Salvador Europe
Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Haiti
Honduras Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel
Italy Latin America Mexico Nicaragua Norway
Panama Paraguay Philippines Puerto Rico Russia
South Africa South America Syria Thailand Turkey
Uruguay USSR Vietnam

Death Squads in El Salvador:

A Pattern of U.S. Complicity

by David Kirsch

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html

Terrorism with a “Human Face”: The History of America’s Death Squads

Death Squads in Iraq and Syria. The Historical Roots of US-NATO's Covert War on Syria

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

August 27, 2013 "Information Clearing House - The recruitment of death squads is part of a well established US military-intelligence agenda. There is a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of terror brigades and targeted assassinations going back to the Vietnam war.

As government forces continue to confront the self-proclaimed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), the historical roots of the West’s covert war on Syria –which has resulted in countless atrocities– must be fully revealed.

From the outset in March 2011, the US and its allies have supported the formation of death squads and the incursion of terrorist brigades in a carefully planned undertaking.


The recruitment and training of terror brigades in both Iraq and Syria was modeled on the “Salvador Option”, a “terrorist model” of mass killings by US sponsored death squads in Central America. It was first applied in El Salvador, in the heyday of resistance against the military dictatorship, resulting in an estimated 75,000 deaths.

The formation of death squads in Syria builds upon the history and experience of US sponsored terror brigades in Iraq, under the Pentagon’s “counterinsurgency” program.

READ ON AT, ORALBOY,

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35996.htm

'US-trained death squads' organized torture sites across Iraq
Published time: April 08, 2013 23:25
Edited time: April 09, 2013 06:17 Get short URL


After one year in Iraq the US government secretly enlisted retired Special Forces operatives to train Shia militia in the art of torture and other war crimes that fueled the Iraqi civil war, according to a new report.

Just over year into the Iraq War a desperate US government secretly organized and funded small militia groups to set up torture camps across the Middle Eastern country under the direction of a retired US Special Forces commander, according to a new report.

James Steele, who came out of retirement in 2003 after guiding US-backed commandos in El Salvador in the 1980s, was deployed to Iraq as an “energy consultant” not long after the invasion began. A member of General David Petraeus’ inner circle, Steele quietly trained a Iraqi paramilitary force numbering in the thousands. With the help of Col. James Coffman, another Special Forces operative, he freely dispatched Shia militias to torture Saddam Hussein’s Sunni soldiers in order to learn the details of the insurgency.

The subject is the focus of a new documentary by The Guardian in collaboration with BBC Arabic entitled “James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq,” which is viewable online. The Pentagon has denied participation in any war crimes but, upon being questioned, said the military would “investigate” the matter. Steele has rebuffed interview requests from his home in Texas.

“This is one of the great untold stories of the Iraq War, how just over a year after the invasion, the United States funded a sectarian police commando force that set up a network of torture centers to fight the [Sunni] insurgency,” the film begins.

“This is also the story of James Steele, the veteran of America’s dirty war in El Salvador. He was in charge of the US advisers who trained notorious Salvadorian paramilitary units to fight left-wing guerrillas. In the course of that civil war, 75,000 people died, and over a million people became refugees.”

Steele’s role in the Middle East has been blamed with fueling the Iraqi civil war between Sunnis and Shias, the peak of which saw 3,000 people killed every month. At the behest of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Steele and Coffman committed various human rights violations but were never implicated by subordinates, in part because they never tortured prisoners themselves.

READ ON AT, ORALBOY,

http://rt.com/usa/steele-iraqi-death-squads-527/

Guardian Lays Out Details of How Petraeus Organized Death Squads in Iraq
Posted on March 7, 2013 by Jim White

[picture] Petraeus salutes the death squads that advanced his career

Yesterday, the Guardian published an article detailing how the US turned to the use of death squads in Iraq to quell the rise of Sunni militias. The article provides convincing evidence that this was an intentional policy and was in fact a central tenet of David Petraeus’ often-praised counterinsurgency, or COIN, strategy. The key person in the Guardian’s reporting is James Steele, who was a veteran in organizing Central American death squads on behalf of the US during the Reagan years.

In reading the material from the Guardian, however, it should be kept in mind that Petraeus did not institute his COIN strategy only in Iraq. He put it into place in Afghanistan as well, and the fact that it lead to widespread allegations of torture and murder there demonstrates that the atrocities committed by these militias is a feature of the funding and training provided to them and not an unfortunate outgrowth, because this practice has now produced death squads in Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan. Recall that less than two weeks ago, Hamid Karzai called for the expulsion of US Special Operations forces from Maidan Wardak province due to allegations of abuse by the Afghan Local Police there. The Afghan Local Police are in reality groups of local militias trained and funded by US Special Operations forces and operating separately from the Karzai government. The ALP became one of the primary features of Petraeus’ COIN strategy when he moved it to Afghanistan.

- See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/03/07/guardian-lays-out-details-of-how-petraeus-organized-death-squads-in-iraq/#sthash.49U9FzvH.dpuf

You'll lie low for a bit then come back with the same steady stream of lies that have been your modus operandi since forever. That's exactly how US propaganda has been operating since day one.

Same ole, same ole.

U.S. Considering Using Military To Train Syria Rebels
huffingtonpost
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering a plan to use U.S. military trainers to help increase the capabilities of the Syrian rebels, in a move that would

JTT wrote:

Same ole, same ole.

Nice bit of irony if the main result of the anti-war kooks blocking US airstrikes against Syria, is US ground forces in Syria.

Granted, Green Berets and not regular infantry. But still.

No boots on the ground has barely left his lips before boots on the ground is proposed.

I'm hoping that you will come to all our aid, Oral, and lead those Green Berets into action.
What with their training and your undoubted bravery and strategic genius, it would all be over in a week.