[Rictor]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.

Following that model, 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. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

[karajorma]

Did they learn NOTHING from Afghanistan?

[an0n]

*gets out the crayons*

[karajorma]

If you're drawing pictures of Iraq ten years from now you'll need more red.

[Rictor]

"The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

well, there you have it folks.

[Clave]

It makes sense.  If you want to stop insurgents then stop the leaders.

[vyper]

What part makes sense? Training a new one-day-will-be al-Queda?

[Rictor]

No, collective punishment of the population. Illegal imprisonment. Assasinations and violating yet another country's sovereignty. That makes sense.

...just like it made sense in El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and Columbia and Afghanistan and...

[Clave]

I have flu, I'm in a bad mood, therefore I'm perfectly happy for everyone to die....

[vyper]

I've had the flu for the past week, I have an exam 2morrow, and I can't study.

You don't see me going pathological...

[aldo_14]

Yet.

And - haha,  you've got to sit exams

And moving swiftly back on topic - what the **** are they thinking?  Their big tactic on this claimed 'war-on-terror' is....terrorism?

[Corsair]

It's all for the sake of democracy!

[Liberator]

Well, they do have a point.  Currently terrorists, from outside Iraq, are being protected and supported by Sunnis, not all of them, but enough that insufficient pressure can be brought to bear politically.  The only real viable alternative is to carpet bomb sunni concentrations to try and make them see the light.

[Grey Wolf]

You're saying that bombing an entire religious sect is a viable alternative?

[pyro-manic]

Right. Nobody fly off the handle and flame the place out. I want to understand this.

Liberator: Are you being serious? That's a genuine question, btw, not some "you crazy merkin wtf?!?!?!?!!111" type thing. I want to know - do you honestly think that? If so, why? What do you base it on?

And I repeat, to anyone else thinking of saying something unhelpful: leave it. We all know what you're going to say, so please don't. I want to understand this....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Liberator
Well, they do have a point.  Currently terrorists, from outside Iraq, are being protected and supported by Sunnis, not all of them, but enough that insufficient pressure can be brought to bear politically.  The only real viable alternative is to carpet bomb sunni concentrations to try and make them see the light.

Ah, so you're supporting terrorism as long as its Muslims being killed and not Americans?

[Rictor]

Lib, I hate to break it to you buddy, but the US isn't exactly popular in Iraq. Has it ever occured to you that the Iraqis might actually prefer "the terrorists" to the US? In which case, it is the United States who are the terrorists.

For God's sake, at least stop saying you're doing it on behalf of the Iraqis, and just face up to the fact that its naked agression on America's part. They want you gone man, or at least some of the more moderate ones do. The rest want you dead. Why do you think the insurgency is getting so much popular support? You can't fight the insurgents on behalf of the Iraqi people if its clear that Iraqi people are, to oversimplify it, on their side.

The 9/11 hijackers thought that the entire US population should be punished because some of them support the the US government, which has the blood of countless victims on its hands. So they crashed two planes into the WTC. And now, you're saying that the Sunnis should be punished because some of them support the insurgents, who have the blood of American soldiers (not civilians, soldiers) on their hands.

See the logic?

Not to mention the fact that the Iraqi insurgency is involved in a legitimate struggle to end an illegal occupation by a foreign power, while American agression over the years has never been defensive in nature.

[aldo_14]

Not entirely related, but interesting;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4145585.stm
[q] While the world's attention has been on the disaster in Asia, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated so much that the insurgency has developed into near-open warfare.

The head of Iraq's intelligence service Gen Muhammad Shahwani now puts the number of insurgents at 200,000, of which 40,000 are said to be the hard core and the rest active supporters.



Until recently, the US military has talked of there being about 25,000 fighters in Iraq.

Gen Shahwani has not just upped the estimate, but has put it into the wider context of the active guerrilla support which perhaps gives a truer picture. There are 150,000 US troops.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington commented: "The Iraqi figures do... recognise the reality that the insurgency in Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas, while the US figures downplay this to the point of denial."
[/q]

[Grey Wolf]

The last point is debatable. You need to put a time limit of the last 50 years or so to make it correct.

EDIT: As a note, I was referring to Rictor's post.

[Rictor]

yeah, sorry I should have mentioned that. I'm counting since the end of WW2, though with the exception of WW2 itself and WW1, you could probably include the past 100 years, since the US was very acitve in Sotuh America around the turn of the century.