Revision as of 01:09, 18 June 2015 view sourceTheTimesAreAChanging (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users23,365 edits All of SomewhatDamaged edits are non-encylopedic POV propaganda and blatant original research. I checked every source in the "Iraq" section, for example, and not one even mentioned "state terrorism". This garbage cannot be reformed, only purged.← Previous edit | Revision as of 17:32, 18 June 2015 view source S0mewhat Damaged05 (talk | contribs)309 edits Undid revision 667429189 by TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) Removal of sourced content. Executions of insurgent "sympathizers" is state terror.Tag: nowiki addedNext edit → | ||
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Several scholars have accused the ] of conducting ]. They have written about the ]' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to the ]. According to them, state terrorism was used to protect the interest of ] elites, and the US organized a ] system of ], co-operating with local elites to rule through terror. This work has proved controversial with mainstream scholars of both state and non-state ].<ref>Blakeley, pp. 20-21</ref> | Several scholars have accused the ] of conducting ]. They have written about the ]' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to the ]. According to them, state terrorism was used to protect the interest of ] elites, and the US organized a ] system of ], co-operating with local elites to rule through terror. This work has proved controversial with mainstream scholars of both state and non-state ].<ref>Blakeley, pp. 20-21</ref> | ||
Notable works include ] and ]'s ''The political economy of human rights'' (1979), Herman's ''The real terror network'' (1985), ]' ''Western state terrorism'' (1991), Frederick Gareau's ''State terrorism and the United States'' (2004) and ]' ''America's other war'' (2005). Of these, Chomsky and Herman are considered the foremost writers on the United States and state terrorism.<ref>Blakely, pp. 20-21</ref> | Notable works include ] and ]'s ''The political economy of human rights'' (1979), Herman's ''The real terror network'' (1985), ]' ''Western state terrorism'' (1991), Frederick Gareau's ''State terrorism and the United States'' (2004) and ]' ''America's other war'' (2005). Of these, Chomsky and Herman are considered the foremost writers on the '''United States and state terrorism'''.<ref>Blakely, pp. 20-21</ref> | ||
==Notable works== | ==Notable works== | ||
Beginning in the late 1970s, ] and ] wrote a series of books on the ]' involvement with ]. Their writings coincided with reports by ] and other ] of a new global "epidemic" of ] and murder. |
Beginning in the late 1970s, ] and ] wrote a series of books on the ]' involvement with ]. Their writings coincided with reports by ] and other ] of a new global "epidemic" of ] and murder. Chomsky and Herman argued that terror was concentrated in the US ] in ], and documented ] carried out by US ]s in ]. They argued that of ten Latin American countries that had ], all were US client states. Worldwide they claimed that 74% of regimes that used torture on an administrative basis were U.S. client states, receiving military and other support from the US to retain power. They concluded that the global rise in state terror was a result of ].<ref>Sluka, p. 8</ref> | ||
In 1991, a book edited by ] also argued that other ] powers sponsored terror in developing countries. It concluded that the US and its allies were the main supporters of ] throughout the world.<ref>Sluka, pp. 8-9</ref> Gareau states that the number of deaths caused by ] (3668 deaths between 1968 and 1980, as estimated by the ] (CIA)) is "dwarfed" by those resulting from state terrorism in US-backed regimes such as Guatemala (150,000 killed, 50,000 missing during the ] - 93% of whom Gareau classifies as "victims of state terrorism").<ref>{{cite book | In 1991, a book edited by ] also argued that other ] powers sponsored terror in developing countries. It concluded that the US and its allies were the main supporters of ] throughout the world.<ref>Sluka, pp. 8-9</ref> Gareau states that the number of deaths caused by ] (3668 deaths between 1968 and 1980, as estimated by the ] (CIA)) is "dwarfed" by those resulting from state terrorism in US-backed regimes such as Guatemala (150,000 killed, 50,000 missing during the ] - 93% of whom Gareau classifies as "victims of state terrorism").<ref>{{cite book | ||
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|isbn=978-0-8304-1578-6 | |isbn=978-0-8304-1578-6 | ||
}}</ref> In ''Worse Than War,'' ] argues that during the last two decades of the ], the number of American client states practicing mass murder outnumbered those of the ].<ref>] (2009). ''Worse Than War.'' ]. ISBN 1586487698 p.537 | }}</ref> In ''Worse Than War,'' ] argues that during the last two decades of the ], the number of American client states practicing mass murder outnumbered those of the ].<ref>] (2009). ''Worse Than War.'' ]. ISBN 1586487698 p.537 | ||
* "During the 1970s and 1980s, the number of American client states practicing mass-murderous politics exceeded those of the Soviets."</ref> | * "During the 1970s and 1980s, the number of American client states practicing mass-murderous politics exceeded those of the Soviets."</ref> And according to Latin Americanist John H. Coatsworth, the number of victims of said state terror in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the U.S.S.R. and its East European satellites.<ref> John H. Coatsworth, Ch 10</ref> | ||
Chomsky concluded that all powers backed state terrorism in client states. |
Chomsky concluded that all powers backed state terrorism in client states. At the top were the US and other powers, notably the United Kingdom and France, that provided financial, military and diplomatic support to ] regimes kept in power through violence. These governments acted together with ], particularly in the arms and security industries. In addition, other developing countries outside the Western sphere of influence carried out state terror supported by rival powers.<ref>Sluka, p. 9</ref> | ||
The alleged involvement of major powers in state terrorism in developing countries has led scholars to study it as a global phenomenon, rather than study individual countries in isolation.<ref>Sluka, p. 9</ref> | The alleged involvement of major powers in state terrorism in developing countries has led scholars to study it as a global phenomenon, rather than study individual countries in isolation.<ref>Sluka, p. 9</ref> | ||
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In ''State terrorism and the United States'' Frederick F. Gareau writes that the intent of terrorism is to intimidate or coerce both targeted groups and larger sectors of society that share or could be led to share the values of targeted groups by causing them "intense fear, anxiety, apprehension, panic, dread and/or horror".<ref>{{cite book|last=Gareau|first=Frederick H.|title=State terrorism and the United States : from counterinsurgency to the war on terrorism|year=2004|publisher=Clarity Press|location=Atlanta|isbn=0-932863-39-6|page=14|url=http://www.amazon.com/State-Terrorism-United-States-Counterinsurgency/dp/0932863396}}</ref> The objective of terrorism against the state is to force governments to change their policies, to overthrow governments or even to destroy the state. The objective of state terrorism is to eliminate people who are considered to be actual or potential enemies, and to discourage those actual or potential enemies who are not eliminated.<ref>Wright, p. 11</ref> | In ''State terrorism and the United States'' Frederick F. Gareau writes that the intent of terrorism is to intimidate or coerce both targeted groups and larger sectors of society that share or could be led to share the values of targeted groups by causing them "intense fear, anxiety, apprehension, panic, dread and/or horror".<ref>{{cite book|last=Gareau|first=Frederick H.|title=State terrorism and the United States : from counterinsurgency to the war on terrorism|year=2004|publisher=Clarity Press|location=Atlanta|isbn=0-932863-39-6|page=14|url=http://www.amazon.com/State-Terrorism-United-States-Counterinsurgency/dp/0932863396}}</ref> The objective of terrorism against the state is to force governments to change their policies, to overthrow governments or even to destroy the state. The objective of state terrorism is to eliminate people who are considered to be actual or potential enemies, and to discourage those actual or potential enemies who are not eliminated.<ref>Wright, p. 11</ref> | ||
== |
== El Salvador == | ||
{{See also|El Salvador–United States relations}} | |||
] | |||
The overthrow of Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979 stoked fears in Washington that it may further lose its grip on its proverbial "backyard". U.S. strategists saw El Salvador as the next domino to fall to "subversion", where there was an emergence of "popular organizations" in the 1970s: dissident labor unions, student and peasant groups under Church sponsorship and controlled by the leftist guerrilla-political front, the FMLN-FDR, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and the Democratic Revolutionary Front. On the other side was a U.S.-run terror state with a rightward leaning civilian president, who won farcical elections, and served as a "fig leaf" for a rightist-controlled military regime, protecting the interests of agribusiness elites.<ref name="Struggle in Salvador">{{cite news|last1=Smith|first1=Hedrick|title=Struggle In Salvador Pinches Washington's Vietnam Nerve|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/07/weekinreview/struggle-in-salvador-pinches-washington-s-vietnam-nerve.html|accessdate=1 June 2014|work=New York Times|publisher=NYT|date=7 February 1982}}</ref><ref name="Ray Bonner">"Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador", Raymond Bonner, Times Books, 1984, pp. 243, 25, 290-303, 67-69, 88-92</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">"Central America Inside Out: The Essential Guide to Its Societies, Politics, and Economies" Tom Barry, Grove Press, 1991, p. 145-147</ref><ref> Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 1985</ref><ref> Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 1985</ref><ref> Christian Science Monitor, November 26, 1986</ref><ref> Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 1989</ref> | |||
To protect itself from it's own population, Washington resorted to clandestine "low-intensity warfare", defined as "total war at the grassroots level", by former U.S. Military Advisory Group Commander, Colonel John D. Waghelstein in 1985.<ref name="Kissinger on Central America">{{cite news|last1=Gwertzman|first1=Bernard|title=Kissinger On Central America: A Call For U.S. Firmness|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/19/world/kissinger-on-central-america-a-call-for-us-firmness-news-analysis.html|accessdate=1 June 2014|work=New York Times|publisher=New York Times|date=19 July 1983}}</ref><ref>"War Against the Poor: Low-intensity Conflict and Christian Faith", Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Orbis Books, 1989, p. 10</ref><ref> Colonel John D. Waghelstein, U.S. Army, May 1985</ref> The U.S. administrations used the Cold War as cover for what was essentially an imperial project; an effort to establish imperial "credibility", reform a government, and leave behind a dependent U.S. client state with electoral plutocracy.<ref name="America's Half-Century">"America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After", Thomas J. McCormick, JHU Press, Feb 1, 1995, p. 211</ref><ref name="Kissinger on Central America" /><ref name="Kissinger 1998">{{cite book|last1=Kissinger|first1=Henry|title=Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America|date=1998|publisher=DIANE publishing|isbn=9780788143137|page=93|accessdate=1 June 2014}}</ref><ref name="Chicago-style economic policies"> Christian Science Monitor, August 28, 1989</ref><ref name="The American connection, Vol. 2">"The American connection: State terror and popular resistance in Guatemala, Volume 2", Michael MacClintock, Zed books, 1985, pp. 284-288</ref><ref> Robert W. Tucker, Foreign Affairs, Winter 1980/81 Issue</ref><ref>"Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America", Abraham F. Lowenthal, Johns Hopkins University Press, Feb 1, 1991, p. 97</ref><ref name="Monitoring Sweatshops">"Monitoring Sweatshops: Workers, Consumers, and the Global Apparel Industry", Jill Louise Esbenshade, Temple University Press, 2009, p. 167</ref> The U.S. administrations "didn't know shit about the left" because "they were not interested" in the fact that the predominant guerrilla factions — with ERP Commander Joaquin Villalobos at the forefront — were not aligned with the Soviet Union and that they could not be presumed to aspire to Gulag society.<ref name="Ray Bonner">pp. 87-88, 133</ref><ref> Carl G. Jacobsen, Feb 28, 1985, pp. 48, 52</ref><ref> Miami Herald, September 18, 1984</ref><ref> Washington Post, March 9, 1981</ref><ref> Clifford Krauss, The Nation, July 3, 1982</ref><ref>"Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America", Walter LaFeber, W. W. Norton & Company, Jan 1, 1993, pp. 244-245, 314</ref><ref>"Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean", Peter Winn, University of California Press, 1999, p. 533</ref><ref name="Negotiations or Total War"> Frank Smith, August 7, 1989</ref> Though one CIA memo did acknowledge that "the severe instabilities" that existed within U.S. domains would continue to exist "regardless of the U.S.S.R."<ref name="Ideal Illusions">"Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights", James Peck, Macmillan, Mar 15, 2011, p. 90</ref> According to the FMLN platform, their goal was to establish political and economic democracy, a mixed economy, a non-aligned foreign policy, and independence from U.S. tutelage.<ref> Associated Pres, Feb 11, 1989</ref><ref> Joaquin Villalobos, 1989</ref><ref name="Ray Bonner">p. 133</ref><ref name="Negotiations or Total War" /> | |||
Professor ], formerly President Reagan's ] Director, wrote: | |||
In 1992, the United Nations brokered a peace agreement between the two sides. The 12 year war ended with more than 70,000 civilians killed and 1.5 million uprooted refugees.<ref name="Monitoring Sweatshops" /> The U.N. Truth Commission report on El Salvador attributed 85% of the human rights abuses to the Armed Forces (ESAF), the security forces, and associated death squads. 5% to the FMLN.<ref> U.S. G.P.O. : 1993.</ref> Moreover, "the success of U.S. policy in El Salvador -- preventing a guerrilla victory -- was based on 40,000 political murders" (Benjamin Schwarz, RAND Corp).<ref name="Dirty Hands"> Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic, December 1998</ref> In 1999, the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) claimed credit for helping to defeat liberation theology.<ref name="FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS"> U.S. ARMY SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS (SOA), April 28, 1999</ref><ref> Committee of Santa Fe, 1981</ref> But "history will be kind to the Reagan-Bush era", writes David Broder of the Washington Post. In El Salvador "the United States effectively supported the people whose values and aspirations came closest to our own and helped them prevail".<ref> Washington Post, January 17, 1993</ref> | |||
<blockquote>As many critics have pointed out, terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today's war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.<ref name="odom_terrorismtactic">{{Cite journal|author=Odom, General William|title=American Hegemony: How to Use It, How to Lose It|work=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=151|issue=4|date=December 2007|page=410}}. Online copy available </ref></blockquote> | |||
=== Running the war === | |||
Professor ] holds that the US and other rich states, as well as mainstream ] institutions, have obfuscated the true character and scope of terrorism, promulgating a one-sided view from the standpoint of ] privilege. He has said that: | |||
Throughout the war, the United States, through the Military Advisory Group (MilGroup), provided planning and operational direction and assistance, material support, and training to all branches of the Armed Forces (ESAF).<ref name="HOW U.S. ADVISERS RUN THE WAR IN EL SALVADOR"> Philadelphia Inquirer, May 29, 1983</ref><ref name="Military Review"> Military Review, March–April 2004</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">pp. 203-204</ref> An official total of 55 U.S. military advisers and 150 CIA agents were involved.<ref name="Ray Bonner">p. 264</ref><ref name="Deserter Links U.S. Advisers to Army Unit"> Washington Post, Oct 27, 1989</ref> Unofficially, the number of U.S. military advisers was closer to 150.<ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 203</ref> U.S. Army Operation and Planning Assistance Teams (OPATs) were attached to the army High Command and all six brigades, secretly "running the war" as strategists, tacticians and planners.<ref name="HOW U.S. ADVISERS RUN THE WAR IN EL SALVADOR" /><ref name="Military Review" /><ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 204</ref> U.S. Special Forces Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) provided infantry, artillery, and military intelligence instruction.<ref name="Military Review" /><ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 204</ref> Most brigade advisers regularly engaged in combat.<ref> Newsweek, 4/4/93</ref><ref> Frank Smyth, August 11, 1987</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 203</ref> U.S. "trainers" who accompanied Salvadoran pilots occasionally located, pinpointed, and bombed guerrilla positions.<ref> New York Times, April 12, 1984</ref> Select military personnel were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in the Canal Zone, and later in Ft Benning Ga, after Panama's President Aristides Royo denounced the program was unethical, and intended to "repress a country" (El Salvador).<ref>"Report on human rights in El Salvador: a report to the Board of the American Civil Liberties Union", American Civil Liberties Union. Board, The Union, Jan 1, 1982, p. 191</ref> U.S. Army human right training consisted of instructions to keep intelligence targets alive for interrogation, rather than killing them on the spot.<ref name="The American Connection, Vol. 1">"The American Connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador", Michael McClintock, Zed, 1985, p. 339</ref> For these reasons, Human Rights Watch argues that the United States bears a "special responsibility" for the Armed Forces' war crimes.<ref>"Nightmare Revisited, 1987-88: Tenth Supplement to the Report on Human Rights in El Salvador", Human Rights Watch, 1988, p. 81</ref> | |||
<blockquote>If 'terrorism' as a term of moral and legal opprobrium is to be used at all, then it should apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians, whether committed by state actors or their non-state enemies.<ref name="Falk 1988">{{Cite book|last=Falk |first=Richard |title=Revolutionaries and Functionaries: The Dual Face of Terrorism |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |year=1988}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | |||
|url=http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/Nonviolence/2004/Falk_GandhiNonviolence.html | |||
|title=Gandhi, Nonviolence and the Struggle Against War | |||
|last=Falk |first=Richard | |||
|publisher=The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research | |||
|date=January 28, 2004 | |||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 | |||
}}</ref></blockquote> | |||
In 1977, the Salvadoran government enacted the Law for the Defense and Guarantee of the Public Order — known as the Ley de Orden — practically declaring war on labor and the like. The law legalized state violence against non-elite sectors of the society and restricted the right to organize, to strike, and to all forms of public dissent. U.S. Ambassador Frank Devine approved of it. "We believe any government has the full right and obligation to use all legal means at its disposal to combat terrorism," he said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In early 1981, the new Reagan administration outlined its approach to the counter-terror program. Where "human rights concerns conflict with other vital U.S. interests," we will not allow them "to paralyze or unduly delay decisions," the report said.<ref name="Ray Bonner">pp. 38, 247</ref> And in Congressional testimony, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights nominee Ernest W. Lefever argued that economic and military aid should not be given or withheld "to reform domestic institutions and practices, however obnoxious". Lefever then lost his confirmation bid.<ref name="Taking Liberties">"Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights", Aryeh Neier, Public Affairs, 2003, p. 176</ref> | |||
Falk has argued that the repudiation of authentic non-state terrorism is insufficient as a strategy for mitigating it.<ref name="falk">{{cite journal | |||
|title=Thinking About Terrorism | |||
|journal=] | |||
|date=June 28, 1986 | |||
|first=Richard |last=Falk | |||
|volume=242|issue=25|pages=873–892 | |||
}}</ref> | |||
Falk also argued that people who committed "terrorist" acts against the United States could use the ]. | |||
In reaction to a massive escalation in counter-terror killings in 1981, the U.S. Congress conditioned further military aid on bi-annual human rights "Certification", until 1983. The MilGroup was able to overcome this by reigning in the army's political murder program shortly before each deadline.<ref> United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, first session, February 2, 1983, p. 18</ref><ref name="The American Connection, Vol. 1">p. 304</ref> Behind the scenes, Reagan administration officials were telling Salvadoran military leaders that they had to "be patient" with members of Congress, who were threatening to cut off aid if the abuses didn't end. "We learned our way of operating from you", complained one senior army officer. "I studied in the Canal Zone. I studied in North Carolina. You taught me how to kill communists and you taught me very well. And now you come along and persecute my companeros for doing their jobs, for doing what you trained them to do" - referring to Vice President George Bush's trip to El Salvador in December 1983 in which he told the Salvadoran government to put an end to death squad activities and remove officers involved in them.<ref>"Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad", Renny Golden, Michael MacConnell, Orbis Books, 1986 - Church work with refugees, p. 139</ref><ref>"NACLA Report on the Americas, Volume 18", North American Congress on Latin America, 1984, p. 48</ref> The purported "communists" were defined as persons who spoke against Yankee imperialism and the military-oligarchy.<ref>"Latin American labor organizations", Gerald Michael Greenfield, Greenwood Press, 1987, p. 360</ref><ref name="Behind the Death Squads"> Allan Nairn, the Progressive, May 1984</ref> In any case, the Congress chose not to cut off aid because both parties agreed that they could not permit the "loss" of El Salvador. The Certification process was simply a way for Democrats to fund the war while reserving the right to call the administration "fascist".<ref> New Yorker, December 6, 1993</ref><ref name="Ideal Illusions">p. 117</ref> | |||
], reviewing Falk's ''Revolutionaries and Functionaries'', stated that Falk's definition of terrorism hinges on some unstated definition of "permissible"; this, says Schorr, makes the judgment of what is terrorism inherently "subjective", and furthermore, he claims, leads Falk to label some acts he considers impermissible as "terrorism", but others he considers permissible as merely "terroristic".<ref>{{cite web | |||
=== Intelligence work === | |||
|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFD8133BF932A35756C0A96E948260 | |||
] | |||
|title=The Politics of Violence | |||
U.S. aid to the Salvadoran intelligence apparatus, the nerve center of the Army General Staff, and the heart of its covert death squad bureaucracy, was provided through the U.S. Military Advisory Group (MilGroup) and the Central America Joint Intelligence Team (CAJIT). Over the years, the MilGroup and the CAJIT directly supervised the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI - Operations and Counterintelligence), Departments 2 (Intelligence) and 5 (Civil Affairs) of the Army General Staff, and the intelligence sections (S-2) of the Armed Forces (ESAF) and the security forces - the National Guard, National Police, and Treasury Police. These specialized in abductions, extracting intelligence, and summary executions; or "pump and dump" for short: "Pumping suspects for information by torture and then dumping the bodies" (Alfred McCoy).<ref name="MILITARY INTELLIGENCE"> National Security Archive, George Washington University, "The fingerprints of the United States"</ref><ref name="Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?"> Christian Science Monitor, May 8, 1984</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">pp. 166, 204</ref><ref name="Army's Project X Had Wider Audience"> Washington Post, March 6, 1997</ref><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /><ref name="Alfred McCoy">"A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror", Alfred McCoy, Macmillan, Apr 1, 2007, pp. 119, 71</ref> The tortures often used included physical beatings, burnings, and electric shocks.<ref name="Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?" /><ref name="Army's Project X Had Wider Audience" /><ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 71</ref> Also "more sophisticated" techniques that didn't leave visible injuries, such as the capucha (hood to suffocate), immersion in filthy water, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, and threats to family members.<ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 71</ref><ref> Frank Smith, December 10, 2014</ref> The primary targets of the units were activists with popular organizations, that their U.S. overseers termed "FMLN fronts".<ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 166</ref><ref name="Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?" /><ref name="Army's Project X Had Wider Audience" /><ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 71</ref><ref name="Declassified Army and CIA Manuals"> Latin American Working Group, "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla", U.S. Army, p. 69</ref> Suspects were added to a "blacklist" and would be picked up soon afterward.<ref name="Declassified Army and CIA Manuals" /><ref name="Army's Project X Had Wider Audience" /> The killers carried out their work while wearing civilian clothes and driving unmarked vans or trucks with dark tinted windows (for clandestine executions).<ref name="MILITARY INTELLIGENCE" /><ref name="El Salvador: Death Squads, a Government Strategy">"El Salvador: Death Squads, a Government Strategy", Amnesty International, 1988</ref> All of their operating expenses were provided by the CIA.<ref name="Deserter Links U.S. Advisers to Army Unit" /> | |||
|first= Daniel |last=Schorr | |||
|date=1 May 1988 | |||
|publisher='']'' | |||
}}</ref> | |||
And according to former death squad member Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez of the 1st Brigade's S-2, the two U.S. military advisers who "had control of the department" received "all the reports from our agents on clandestine captures, interrogations...but we did not provide them with reports on the executions. They did not want to hear of the actual killings." This is how they kept it off the record and thus hidden from Congressional oversight.<ref>"Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture", Jennifer Harbury, Beacon Press, 2005, pp. 46-47</ref><ref> Associated Press, Oct. 27, 1989</ref><ref> In These Times, Nov 15, 1989</ref><ref name="Deserter Links U.S. Advisers to Army Unit" /> Several analysts said the Bush administration treated Joya Martinez "like a smoking gun" when they deported him back to El Salvador to face certain death for his treachery (deserting and testifying to Congress about death squads).<ref> Human Rights Watch, August 14, 1991</ref><ref> Alexander Cockburn, L.A. Times, July 19, 1990</ref><ref> Jefferson Morley, Washington Post, March 28, 1993</ref> | |||
In a review of Chomsky and Herman's ''The Political Economy of Human Rights'', Yale political science professor ] holds that the authors' case for accusing the United States of state terrorism is "shockingly overstated". Fishkin writes of Chomsky and Herman: | |||
<blockquote>They infer an extent of American control and coordination comparable to ]. ... Yet even if all evidence were accepted... it would add up to no more than systematic support, not control. Hence the comparison to Eastern Europe appears grossly overstated. And from the fact that we give assistance to countries that practice terror it is too much to conclude that "Washington has become the torture and political murder capital of the world." Chomsky's and Herman's indictment of US foreign policy is thus the mirror image of the '']'' rhetoric they criticize: it rests on the illusion of American omnipotence throughout the world. And because they refuse to attribute any substantial independence to countries that are, in some sense, within America's sphere of influence, the entire burden for all the political crimes of the non-communist world can be brought home to Washington.<ref name=Fishkin>{{cite journal | |||
|last=Fishkin|first=James S. | |||
|title=American Dream/Global Nightmare: The Dilemma of U.S. Human Rights Policy by Sandy Vogelgesang (W. W. Norton)<br/> The Political Economy of Human Rights Volume I: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism <br/>Volume II: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman (South End Press) | |||
|journal=] | |||
|date=September 6{{ndash}}13, 1980 | |||
|volume=183| issue=10/11 | |||
|pages=37–38 | |||
}}</ref></blockquote> | |||
Fishkin praises Chomsky and Herman for documenting human rights violations, but argues that this is evidence "for a far lesser moral charge", namely, that the United States could have used its influence to prevent certain governments from committing acts of torture or murder but chose not to do so.<ref name=Fishkin/> | |||
] | |||
Commenting on Chomsky's ''9-11'', former US Secretary of Education ] said: "Chomsky says in the book that the United States is a leading terrorist state. That's a preposterous and ridiculous claim. ... What we have done is ], helped in ] and the ]. We have provided sanctuary for people of all faiths, including Islam, in the United States. We tried to help in ]. ... Do we have faults and imperfections? Of course. The notion that we're a leading terrorist state is preposterous."<ref>{{cite news | |||
Meanwhile, the CAJIT regularly shared strategic and tactical intelligence with their Salvadoran counterparts.<ref name="MILITARY INTELLIGENCE" /> CIA field agents infiltrated popular organizations and turned in members' names, photographs, and whereabouts.<ref name="Ray Bonner">p. 264</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 166</ref><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /> Many of them were later "neutralized" by "escuadrones de la muerte".<ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 166</ref><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /> The death squads were controlled by senior military officers of the army High Command (Amy General Staff). During a reformist-led coup in 1979, the CIA ensured that these same officers retained their command positions and employed them as informants until 1984.<ref name="Ray Bonner">p. 147</ref><ref name="Ideal Illusions">pp. 117-118</ref><ref name="Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?" /><ref name="Call Off The Spies"> Washington Post, Feb. 7, 1996</ref><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /> Known among them was Treasury Police chief Col. Nicholas Carranza, who was the former Vice Minister of Defense, from 1979-81.<ref name="Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?" /><ref name="Call Off The Spies" /><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /> Not because he was a particularly important source of intelligence but because he served as a paid agent of influence who "promoted actions or policies favored by the CIA in that country" (Robert E. White).<ref name="Call Off The Spies" /> Carranza was the officer most directly involved with running the death squads.<ref name="Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?" /><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /> | |||
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}}{{unreliable source|date=May 2013}}</ref>{{unreliable source|date=May 2013}} | |||
Moreover, the political murder strategy itself was "made in the U.S.A". It was specifically designed to cripple the FMLN in the city. Death squad killing was not indiscriminate. U.S. military manuals explicitly identified FMLN-controlled labor, peasant, and student activists as targets for elimination. The Counterintelligence (CI) course dealt with "the techniques used in combating guerrilla forces and revolutionary movements" and taught how to prevent them from succeeding (U.S. Army Brig. Gen. William Yarborough). The CI targets in the early 80s were with the Revolutionary Coordinator of the Masses (CRM), an umbrella organization, representing the left's political base.<ref name="Ideal Illusions">pp. 116-117</ref><ref name="Declassified Army and CIA Manuals" /><ref> In These Times, January 13, 1988</ref><ref name="U.S. Instructed Latins on Executions"> Washington Post, September 21, 1996</ref><ref name="Army's Project X Had Wider Audience" /><ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 71</ref><ref name="Behind the Death Squads" /><ref name="Our Own Backyard">"Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992", William M. LeoGrande, Univ of North Carolina Press, Feb 1, 2000, pp. 234-235</ref><ref name="The Central American Crisis Reader">"The Central American Crisis Reader", U.S. Bureau of Public Affairs, Dept. of State, Edited by Robert S. Leiken, Barry Rubin, 1985, p. 333</ref> The CRM was eliminated with upwards of 40,000 political murders by 1983. Their demise was a major strategic victory for Reagan & Co. Without an infrastructure in the city, the guerrillas were unable to set off an urban insurrection, through mass demonstrations and strikes, during their "final offensive" in 1981.<ref name="Dirty Hands" /><ref name="Our Own Backyard" /><ref name="The Central American Crisis Reader" /><ref name="Ambrose Evans-Pritchard" /> Thereafter, the rate of political murders gradually declined as the army ran out of people to kill. The Reagan administration said this was progress in human rights.<ref name="Ray Bonner">p. 350</ref><ref name="Ideal Illusions">p. 116</ref><ref name="Ambrose Evans-Pritchard"> Spectator, May 9, 1986</ref><ref name="A Year of Reckoning">"A Year of Reckoning: El Salvador a Decade After the Assassination of Archbishop Romero", Human Rights Watch, 1990, p. 207</ref> While secretly they shared the view of the army High Command that "the death squads worked" (RAND Corp).<ref name="Ideal Illusions">p. 118</ref> They "stabilized" the society, as one U.S. Embassy official put it.<ref>"U.S. Knows Death Squad Chiefs but Cannot Stop Killings," Reuters, November 3, 1983.</ref><ref name="The American Connection, Vol. 1">p. 280</ref> | |||
Stephen Morris also criticized Chomsky's thesis: | |||
<blockquote>There is only one regime which has received arms and aid from the United States, and which has a record of brutality that is even a noticeable fraction of the brutality of ], ], ], or the ]. That is the ] government in ]. But....the United States was not the principal foreign supplier of Indonesia when the generals seized power (nor is there any credible evidence of American involvement in the coup). Within the period of American assistance to Indonesia, and in particular during the period of the ], the number of political prisoners has ''declined''. Finally, the current brutality of the Suharto regime is being directed against the people of ], a former colony of Portugal that Indonesia is attempting to take over by force....not as part of its normal process of domestic rule.<ref>Morris, Stephen, Chomsky on U.S. foreign policy, ''Harvard International Review,'' December-January 1981, pg. 26.</ref></blockquote> | |||
Clandestine terror could then be carried out more selectively, as it was until 1987-88, when newly formed popular organizations were met with a resurgence of death squad killings and disappearances, reminiscent of the early 80s.<ref name="Ideal Illusions">p. 116</ref><ref name="Ambrose Evans-Pritchard" /><ref> Sun Sentinel, July 12, 1987</ref><ref> Excerpted from "El Salvador: 'Death Squads'-A Government Strategy," Amnesty International, Chicago Tribune, November 06, 1988</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 166</ref><ref> Christian Science Monitor, April 21, 1989</ref> The CIA classified these groups with the CRM as FMLN "front organizations". They ranged from the so called "umbrella front group", the National Unity of Salvadoran Workers (U.N.T.S.) to the Committee of Mothers and Families of Political Prisoners, Disappeared Persons, and Assassinated of El Salvador (COMADRES).<ref name="The 1991 CIA World Factbook">"The 1991 CIA World Factbook", United States. Central Intelligence Agency, 1992</ref> The U.S. administration particularly aimed to "destroy" labor unions of the left.<ref name="Duarte’s Secret Friends"> Frank Smyth, March 14, 1987</ref> "The U.S. Embassy repeatedly justified repression of rank and file members of unions affiliated with the U.N.T.S. on the grounds that the individual victims were members of guerrilla front organizations" (Human Rights Watch).<ref name="Labor Rights in El Salvador">"Labor Rights in El Salvador", Human Rights Watch, Jan 1, 1988, pp. 98-101</ref> The State Department is also known to have aided the government's repression of church officials and human rights groups.<ref> New York Times, August 3, 1986</ref> The Nongovernmental Human Rights Commission (CDHES) was on the CIA's list of guerrilla "front groups".<ref name="The 1991 CIA World Factbook" /> | |||
"The Gang that Blew Vietnam Goes Latin" is how the Washington Post characterized President Reagan's pacification team.<ref> Washington Post, November 28, 1982</ref> Naturally, all of the above was a faithful regurgitation of the CIA's Phoenix program in Vietnam, which targeted "VC-controlled officials" for "neutralization".<ref name="Ray Bonner">pp. 240, 247</ref><ref name="Army's Project X Had Wider Audience" /><ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 71</ref><ref> National Security Archive, George Washington University, "DOD, USSOUTHCOM CI Training-Supplemental Information, CONFIDENTIAL, 31 July 1991"</ref><ref name="Instruments of Statecraft"> Michael McClintock, 2002</ref> "We learned from you", a death squad member once told a U.S. news reporter. "We learned from you the means, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls ... the same thing you did in Vietnam."<ref>"Crossfire El Salvador", Jessica Savitch, Judith Vecchione, WGBH Transcripts (Firm), WGBH Transcripts, 1983, p. 4</ref> | |||
=== Clearance sweeps === | |||
] | |||
Also a Vietnam import, the ESAF employed a strategy of forced relocation, i.e. aerial bombing, strafing, and infantry sweeps in villages to generate refugee flows to military-controlled hamlets, and thus deprive the guerrillas of support.<ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 204</ref><ref name="Ambrose Evans-Pritchard" /><ref name="War Similarities"> L.A. Times, Mar 20, 1983</ref><ref>"Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia", Andrew Friedman, Univ of California Press, Sep 1, 2013, p. 238</ref><ref name="PREPARING THE BATTLEFIELD"> Sara Miles, NACLA, 1986</ref><ref name="U.S. Reconnaissance Helps El Salvador Increase Bombing"> Washington Post, Apr 12, 1984</ref><ref name="Salvador raiding villages?"> Christian Science Monitor, April 6, 1984</ref><ref> Dallas Morning News, January 21, 1985</ref><ref name="Civilians Caught in El Salvador Bombings"> Dallas Morning News, August 27, 1984</ref><ref name="Caught With Their Pants Down"> Frank Smyth, Dec. 5, 1989</ref> The targets were pinpointed by U.S. surveillance flights and CIA-led reconnaissance patrols. The intelligence was relayed to the Army High Command or to a U.S. operations adviser, directing the campaign.<ref name="Ray Bonner">p. 138</ref><ref name="Central America Inside Out">p. 204</ref><ref> New York Times, March 30, 1984</ref><ref> L.A. Times, July 09, 1987</ref><ref name="Caught With Their Pants Down" /><ref name="U.S. Reconnaissance Helps El Salvador Increase Bombing" /><ref name="Salvador raiding villages?" /><ref name="Civilians Caught in El Salvador Bombings" /> In neighboring Honduras, a team of U.S. Green Berets operated at a refugee camp along the border, where they controlled the flow of uprooted peasants fleeing from Salvadoran government troops. They were tasked with preventing "masas" (civilian supporters of the guerrillas) from passing aid to guerrillas across the border. Discussing refugees, team Captain Michael Sheehan said, "They have no human rights".<ref> New York Times, August 9, 1981</ref><ref> New York Times, December 23, 1981</ref> | |||
The U.S. Embassy explicitly justified the operations on the grounds that the victims were "masas", who they defined as persons who resided in contested areas. The village of El Mozote was in a province controlled by the FMLN. "That was enough cause for the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion to kill it's residents, most of them young children" (Aryeh Neier, Human Rights Watch).<ref name="Taking Liberties">pp. 207-208</ref> Soldiers of "the Yankee's battalion", the army's crack unit and the pride of the U.S. MilGroup, consistently carried out the largest massacres in the war.<ref name="A Year of Reckoning">"A Year of Reckoning: El Salvador a Decade After the Assassination of Archbishop Romero", Human Rights Watch, 1990, pp. 224-227</ref><ref> New York Times, May 13, 1990</ref><ref name="How U.S. Actions Helped Hide Salvador Human Rights Abuses"> New York Times, March 21, 1993</ref> They were "the best unit in the country", according to Colonel John D. Waghelstein, Commander of the MilGroup, 1982-83.<ref>"El Salvador at War: An Oral History of Conflict from the 1979 Insurrection to the Present", Max G. Manwaring Court Prisk, Max G. Manwaring, DIANE Publishing, Aug 1, 1995, p. 235</ref> Human rights constraints directly conflicted with the goal of winning the war.<ref name="A Year of Reckoning">p. 227</ref> U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Nestor Sanchez argued as much to Congress in reference to the ESAF's "clearance" operations.<ref name="The American Connection, Vol. 1">p. 320</ref><ref></nowiki> : hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, first session, February 2, 1983."] United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. G.P.O., 1983</ref> Accordingly, the Atlacatl battalion was purposed for turning a losing war around.<ref name="How U.S. Actions Helped Hide Salvador Human Rights Abuses" /> | |||
== The Phoenix program == | |||
{{Main|Phoenix Program}} | |||
] | |||
In South Vietnam, 1965-72, the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces administered Operation "Phoenix", providing planning and operational direction, and assistance, logistical support, and training to indigenous paramilitary forces, purposed for intelligence gathering, through identifying and "neutralizing" members of the Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI); i.e. Viet Cong guerrillas (NLF - National Liberation Front) and persons under their influence.<ref name="Instruments of Statecraft">Chapters 9-10</ref> Originally, the squads were called "Counter-Terror Teams" (CTTs), then later "Provincial Reconnaissance Units" (PRU), after CIA officials became apprehensive of adverse public relations with the use of the word "terror".<ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 66</ref> According to one U.S. military handbook, the PRUs were to be recruited from among young landowning elites.<ref name="Instruments of Statecraft">Chapter 10</ref> | |||
VCI suspects identified by the PRUs were added to a "blacklist" for immediate "neutralization" - that is to kill, capture, or convince to surrender.<ref name="The American Connection, Vol. 1">p. 47</ref><ref>"Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account", Stuart Herrington, Random House Publishing Group, Aug 22, 2012, p. 6</ref> Slain victims and the homes of potential victims were marked with the PRUs' "calling card", the "Eye of God" — a U.S.I.S. printed leaflet of a "grotesque" human eye — that came with the message "our terrorists" are playful, letting it be known that "big brother is watching you".<ref name="Instruments of Statecraft">Chapter 10</ref><ref>"Vietnam: policy and prospects, 1970: Hearings, Ninety-first Congress, second session on civil operations and rural development support program", United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1970, p. 350</ref> | |||
Suspects not killed outright were sent to the National Interrogation Center (NIC) in Saigon or at a Provincial Interrogation Center (PIC), jointly run by the CIA and it's South Vietnamese counterparts. The facilities were chiefly designed to extract intelligence from prisoners, in order to launch attacks on the Viet Cong underground. Interrogation methods commonly used included, force feeding water to prisoners until their stomachs swelled up, electric shocks applied to nipples and genitals, physical beatings with a truncheon, and demonstration executions. "Sometimes we have to kill one suspect to get another to talk", one U.S. PRU adviser remarked. The CIA had most prisoners "pump and dump" to avoid the formalities of prosecution.<ref name="CIA ‘Torture’ Practices Started Long Before 9/11 Attacks"> Newsweek, December 10, 2014</ref><ref name="Alfred McCoy">pp. 68, 71, 119, 199</ref><ref>"The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam", Douglas Valentine, Open Road Media, Jun 10, 2014</ref> Summarizing this, Jeff Stein, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer in Vietnam: | |||
<blockquote>"The CIA would direct the PRU teams to go out and take care of a particular target... either capture or assassination, or kidnapping. Kidnapping was a common thing that they liked to do. They’d put him in one of these garbage collection type bins — and the helicopter would pick up the bin and fly him off to a regional interrogation center. It was common knowledge that when someone was picked up their lives were about at an end because the Americans most likely felt that, if they were to turn someone like that back into the countryside it would just be like multiplying NLF followers."<ref>"The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam", Douglas Valentine, Open Road Media, Jun 10, 2014</ref></blockquote> | |||
U.S. counterinsurgents put it in the context of "protecting" the masses of the people from the insurgents, whom they were supporting. In practice, this meant "winning them over" in the course of their suppression.<ref name="Instruments of Statecraft">Chapters 11</ref> According to U.S. military and GVN statistics, the PRUs had killed between 26,369 and 40,994 "suspected enemy civilians" by 1972.<ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 68</ref><ref>"The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House", Seymour Hersh, Simon and Schuster, Oct 29, 2013</ref> | |||
== Iran == | |||
{{Main|1953 Iranian coup d'état}} | |||
Iran 1953: the CIA orchestrates the overthrow of the parliamentary government of ] and reinstates the ], Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, leaving U.S. oil giants with 40% of the formerly British concession.<ref> New York Times, AUG. 19, 2013</ref><ref> National Security Archive, George Washington University, June 22, 2004</ref><ref> New York Times, August 6, 1954</ref> | |||
In the proceeding years, the CIA, through AID Public Safety (OPS), reorganized and equipped SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, "to deal with any likely foreseeable civil disturbance in Tehran", reported the State Department in 1964. SAVAK went on to murder thousands of government opponents. According to former CIA analyst, Jesse Leaf, senior agency officials trained SAVAK in interrogation methods based on torture techniques employed by Nazi Germany in World War II. Also, the regime's torture chambers, utilized by SAVAK interrogators, were all financed by the U.S. government, he said.<ref name="Alfred McCoy">p. 74</ref> | |||
== Iraq == | |||
18 March 2003: The United States invades Iraq to "shock and awe" the world into U.S. subservience and subsequently establish permanent garrisons in a dependent client state at the center of the world's major energy producing region. The latter objective failed due to mass non violent resistance from the country's Shi'ite population, lead by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.<ref>"Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq", Jonathan Steele, Counterpoint, 2008, p. 246</ref><ref>"One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11", Ron Suskind, Simon and Schuster, Jun 26, 2006, p. 123</ref><ref> Boston Globe, January 30, 2008</ref><ref> New York Times, October 14, 2008</ref><ref> Washington Post, Nov 26, 2003</ref><ref> Knight Ridder Newspapers, July 11, 2003</ref><ref> Washington Post, February 21, 2003</ref><ref> FAIR, June 1, 2005</ref> | |||
In 2004, faced with a growing Sunni insurgency and an uncooperative people, the U.S. military, headed by General David Petraeus, drafted in Colonel James Steele, a former commander of the U.S. Military Advisory Group (MilGroup) in El Salvador's "dirty war", to help administer the "Salvador Option" and "scare the Iraqis into submission" (U.S. adviser to the civilian authority in Baghdad). The U.S. Special Forces organized, trained, armed, and directed sectarian police commandos (SPCs) to "pump and dump" insurgents and sympathizers at secret interrogation centers, known as "platforms". Sometimes in the presence of Col. Steele himself. The interrogation sessions included such methods as, electric shocks, pulling out nails, physical beatings, power drills to the body, and summary executions. The squads were organized from reactionary Shia militia groups, such as the Badr Brigades. The most feared was a unit known as the "Wolf Brigade". Although the SPCs succeeded in quelling the insurgency, they also enforced the repressive conditions that gave rise to the Islamic State.<ref> Guardian, October 28, 2010</ref><ref> Guardian, October 24, 2010</ref><ref> Guardian, October 22, 2010</ref><ref> Guardian, March 6, 2013</ref><ref> Guardian, March 6, 2013</ref><ref> Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2005</ref><ref> New Yorker, December 13, 2003</ref><ref> Peter Maass, New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2005</ref> | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
*] | *] | ||
*] | *] | ||
*] | *] | ||
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==References== | ==References== | ||
* Blakeley, Ruth. ''State |
* Blakeley, Ruth (2009). ''.'' ]. ISBN 0415686172 | ||
* Donahue, Laura K. "Terrorism and counter-terrorist discourse". In Hor, Michael Yew Meng, Ramraj, Victor Vridar and Roach, Kent (Eds.), ''Global anti-terrorism law and policy''. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-521-85125-4 | * Donahue, Laura K. "Terrorism and counter-terrorist discourse". In Hor, Michael Yew Meng, Ramraj, Victor Vridar and Roach, Kent (Eds.), ''Global anti-terrorism law and policy''. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-521-85125-4 | ||
* {{Cite book|last=Sluka|first=Jeffrey A., editor|title=Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-8122-1711-7}} | * {{Cite book|last=Sluka|first=Jeffrey A., editor|title=Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-8122-1711-7}} | ||
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* {{Cite book|last=Perdue|first=William D.|title=Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear|publisher=Praeger Press|location=New York|page=240|date=August 7, 1989|isbn=978-0-275-93140-7}} | * {{Cite book|last=Perdue|first=William D.|title=Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear|publisher=Praeger Press|location=New York|page=240|date=August 7, 1989|isbn=978-0-275-93140-7}} | ||
* {{Cite book|last=Selden,|first=Mark, editor|title=War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|date=November 28, 2003|isbn=978-0-7425-2391-3}} | * {{Cite book|last=Selden,|first=Mark, editor|title=War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|date=November 28, 2003|isbn=978-0-7425-2391-3}} | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:United States And State Terrorism}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:United States And State Terrorism}} |
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This article is about allegations of US state terrorism. For terrorism sponsored by the United States, see United States and state-sponsored terrorism.
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Several scholars have accused the United States of conducting state terrorism. They have written about the liberal democracies' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to the Cold War. According to them, state terrorism was used to protect the interest of capitalist elites, and the US organized a neo-colonial system of client states, co-operating with local elites to rule through terror. This work has proved controversial with mainstream scholars of both state and non-state terrorism.
Notable works include Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's The political economy of human rights (1979), Herman's The real terror network (1985), Alexander L. George' Western state terrorism (1991), Frederick Gareau's State terrorism and the United States (2004) and Doug Stokes' America's other war (2005). Of these, Chomsky and Herman are considered the foremost writers on the United States and state terrorism.
Notable works
Beginning in the late 1970s, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman wrote a series of books on the United States' involvement with state terrorism. Their writings coincided with reports by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations of a new global "epidemic" of state torture and murder. Chomsky and Herman argued that terror was concentrated in the US sphere of influence in developing countries, and documented human rights abuses carried out by US client states in Latin America. They argued that of ten Latin American countries that had death squads, all were US client states. Worldwide they claimed that 74% of regimes that used torture on an administrative basis were U.S. client states, receiving military and other support from the US to retain power. They concluded that the global rise in state terror was a result of US foreign policy.
In 1991, a book edited by Alexander L. George also argued that other Western powers sponsored terror in developing countries. It concluded that the US and its allies were the main supporters of terrorism throughout the world. Gareau states that the number of deaths caused by non-state terrorism (3668 deaths between 1968 and 1980, as estimated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)) is "dwarfed" by those resulting from state terrorism in US-backed regimes such as Guatemala (150,000 killed, 50,000 missing during the Guatemalan Civil War - 93% of whom Gareau classifies as "victims of state terrorism"). In Worse Than War, Daniel Goldhagen argues that during the last two decades of the Cold War, the number of American client states practicing mass murder outnumbered those of the Soviet Union. And according to Latin Americanist John H. Coatsworth, the number of victims of said state terror in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the U.S.S.R. and its East European satellites.
Chomsky concluded that all powers backed state terrorism in client states. At the top were the US and other powers, notably the United Kingdom and France, that provided financial, military and diplomatic support to Third World regimes kept in power through violence. These governments acted together with multinational corporations, particularly in the arms and security industries. In addition, other developing countries outside the Western sphere of influence carried out state terror supported by rival powers.
The alleged involvement of major powers in state terrorism in developing countries has led scholars to study it as a global phenomenon, rather than study individual countries in isolation.
Definition
See also: State terrorism and Definitions of terrorismThe United States legal definition of terrorism excludes acts done by recognized states. According to U.S. law (22 U.S.C. 2656f(d)(2)) terrorism is defined as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience". There is no international consensus on a legal or academic definition of terrorism. United Nations conventions have failed to reach consensus on definitions of non-state or state terrorism.
According to professor Mark Selden, "American politicians and most social scientists definitionally exclude actions and policies of the United States and its allies" as terrorism. Historian Henry Commager wrote that "Even when definitions of terrorism allow for state terrorism, state actions in this area tend to be seen through the prism of war or national self-defense, not terror.” According to Dr Myra Williamson "The meaning of “terrorism” has undergone a transformation. During the reign of terror a regime or system of terrorism was used as an instrument of governance, wielded by a recently established revolutionary state against the enemies of the people. Now the term “terrorism" is commonly used to describe terrorist acts committed by non-state or subnational entities against a state.
In State terrorism and the United States Frederick F. Gareau writes that the intent of terrorism is to intimidate or coerce both targeted groups and larger sectors of society that share or could be led to share the values of targeted groups by causing them "intense fear, anxiety, apprehension, panic, dread and/or horror". The objective of terrorism against the state is to force governments to change their policies, to overthrow governments or even to destroy the state. The objective of state terrorism is to eliminate people who are considered to be actual or potential enemies, and to discourage those actual or potential enemies who are not eliminated.
El Salvador
See also: El Salvador–United States relationsThe overthrow of Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979 stoked fears in Washington that it may further lose its grip on its proverbial "backyard". U.S. strategists saw El Salvador as the next domino to fall to "subversion", where there was an emergence of "popular organizations" in the 1970s: dissident labor unions, student and peasant groups under Church sponsorship and controlled by the leftist guerrilla-political front, the FMLN-FDR, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and the Democratic Revolutionary Front. On the other side was a U.S.-run terror state with a rightward leaning civilian president, who won farcical elections, and served as a "fig leaf" for a rightist-controlled military regime, protecting the interests of agribusiness elites.
To protect itself from it's own population, Washington resorted to clandestine "low-intensity warfare", defined as "total war at the grassroots level", by former U.S. Military Advisory Group Commander, Colonel John D. Waghelstein in 1985. The U.S. administrations used the Cold War as cover for what was essentially an imperial project; an effort to establish imperial "credibility", reform a government, and leave behind a dependent U.S. client state with electoral plutocracy. The U.S. administrations "didn't know shit about the left" because "they were not interested" in the fact that the predominant guerrilla factions — with ERP Commander Joaquin Villalobos at the forefront — were not aligned with the Soviet Union and that they could not be presumed to aspire to Gulag society. Though one CIA memo did acknowledge that "the severe instabilities" that existed within U.S. domains would continue to exist "regardless of the U.S.S.R." According to the FMLN platform, their goal was to establish political and economic democracy, a mixed economy, a non-aligned foreign policy, and independence from U.S. tutelage.
In 1992, the United Nations brokered a peace agreement between the two sides. The 12 year war ended with more than 70,000 civilians killed and 1.5 million uprooted refugees. The U.N. Truth Commission report on El Salvador attributed 85% of the human rights abuses to the Armed Forces (ESAF), the security forces, and associated death squads. 5% to the FMLN. Moreover, "the success of U.S. policy in El Salvador -- preventing a guerrilla victory -- was based on 40,000 political murders" (Benjamin Schwarz, RAND Corp). In 1999, the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) claimed credit for helping to defeat liberation theology. But "history will be kind to the Reagan-Bush era", writes David Broder of the Washington Post. In El Salvador "the United States effectively supported the people whose values and aspirations came closest to our own and helped them prevail".
Running the war
Throughout the war, the United States, through the Military Advisory Group (MilGroup), provided planning and operational direction and assistance, material support, and training to all branches of the Armed Forces (ESAF). An official total of 55 U.S. military advisers and 150 CIA agents were involved. Unofficially, the number of U.S. military advisers was closer to 150. U.S. Army Operation and Planning Assistance Teams (OPATs) were attached to the army High Command and all six brigades, secretly "running the war" as strategists, tacticians and planners. U.S. Special Forces Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) provided infantry, artillery, and military intelligence instruction. Most brigade advisers regularly engaged in combat. U.S. "trainers" who accompanied Salvadoran pilots occasionally located, pinpointed, and bombed guerrilla positions. Select military personnel were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in the Canal Zone, and later in Ft Benning Ga, after Panama's President Aristides Royo denounced the program was unethical, and intended to "repress a country" (El Salvador). U.S. Army human right training consisted of instructions to keep intelligence targets alive for interrogation, rather than killing them on the spot. For these reasons, Human Rights Watch argues that the United States bears a "special responsibility" for the Armed Forces' war crimes.
In 1977, the Salvadoran government enacted the Law for the Defense and Guarantee of the Public Order — known as the Ley de Orden — practically declaring war on labor and the like. The law legalized state violence against non-elite sectors of the society and restricted the right to organize, to strike, and to all forms of public dissent. U.S. Ambassador Frank Devine approved of it. "We believe any government has the full right and obligation to use all legal means at its disposal to combat terrorism," he said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In early 1981, the new Reagan administration outlined its approach to the counter-terror program. Where "human rights concerns conflict with other vital U.S. interests," we will not allow them "to paralyze or unduly delay decisions," the report said. And in Congressional testimony, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights nominee Ernest W. Lefever argued that economic and military aid should not be given or withheld "to reform domestic institutions and practices, however obnoxious". Lefever then lost his confirmation bid.
In reaction to a massive escalation in counter-terror killings in 1981, the U.S. Congress conditioned further military aid on bi-annual human rights "Certification", until 1983. The MilGroup was able to overcome this by reigning in the army's political murder program shortly before each deadline. Behind the scenes, Reagan administration officials were telling Salvadoran military leaders that they had to "be patient" with members of Congress, who were threatening to cut off aid if the abuses didn't end. "We learned our way of operating from you", complained one senior army officer. "I studied in the Canal Zone. I studied in North Carolina. You taught me how to kill communists and you taught me very well. And now you come along and persecute my companeros for doing their jobs, for doing what you trained them to do" - referring to Vice President George Bush's trip to El Salvador in December 1983 in which he told the Salvadoran government to put an end to death squad activities and remove officers involved in them. The purported "communists" were defined as persons who spoke against Yankee imperialism and the military-oligarchy. In any case, the Congress chose not to cut off aid because both parties agreed that they could not permit the "loss" of El Salvador. The Certification process was simply a way for Democrats to fund the war while reserving the right to call the administration "fascist".
Intelligence work
U.S. aid to the Salvadoran intelligence apparatus, the nerve center of the Army General Staff, and the heart of its covert death squad bureaucracy, was provided through the U.S. Military Advisory Group (MilGroup) and the Central America Joint Intelligence Team (CAJIT). Over the years, the MilGroup and the CAJIT directly supervised the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI - Operations and Counterintelligence), Departments 2 (Intelligence) and 5 (Civil Affairs) of the Army General Staff, and the intelligence sections (S-2) of the Armed Forces (ESAF) and the security forces - the National Guard, National Police, and Treasury Police. These specialized in abductions, extracting intelligence, and summary executions; or "pump and dump" for short: "Pumping suspects for information by torture and then dumping the bodies" (Alfred McCoy). The tortures often used included physical beatings, burnings, and electric shocks. Also "more sophisticated" techniques that didn't leave visible injuries, such as the capucha (hood to suffocate), immersion in filthy water, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, and threats to family members. The primary targets of the units were activists with popular organizations, that their U.S. overseers termed "FMLN fronts". Suspects were added to a "blacklist" and would be picked up soon afterward. The killers carried out their work while wearing civilian clothes and driving unmarked vans or trucks with dark tinted windows (for clandestine executions). All of their operating expenses were provided by the CIA.
And according to former death squad member Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez of the 1st Brigade's S-2, the two U.S. military advisers who "had control of the department" received "all the reports from our agents on clandestine captures, interrogations...but we did not provide them with reports on the executions. They did not want to hear of the actual killings." This is how they kept it off the record and thus hidden from Congressional oversight. Several analysts said the Bush administration treated Joya Martinez "like a smoking gun" when they deported him back to El Salvador to face certain death for his treachery (deserting and testifying to Congress about death squads).
Meanwhile, the CAJIT regularly shared strategic and tactical intelligence with their Salvadoran counterparts. CIA field agents infiltrated popular organizations and turned in members' names, photographs, and whereabouts. Many of them were later "neutralized" by "escuadrones de la muerte". The death squads were controlled by senior military officers of the army High Command (Amy General Staff). During a reformist-led coup in 1979, the CIA ensured that these same officers retained their command positions and employed them as informants until 1984. Known among them was Treasury Police chief Col. Nicholas Carranza, who was the former Vice Minister of Defense, from 1979-81. Not because he was a particularly important source of intelligence but because he served as a paid agent of influence who "promoted actions or policies favored by the CIA in that country" (Robert E. White). Carranza was the officer most directly involved with running the death squads.
Moreover, the political murder strategy itself was "made in the U.S.A". It was specifically designed to cripple the FMLN in the city. Death squad killing was not indiscriminate. U.S. military manuals explicitly identified FMLN-controlled labor, peasant, and student activists as targets for elimination. The Counterintelligence (CI) course dealt with "the techniques used in combating guerrilla forces and revolutionary movements" and taught how to prevent them from succeeding (U.S. Army Brig. Gen. William Yarborough). The CI targets in the early 80s were with the Revolutionary Coordinator of the Masses (CRM), an umbrella organization, representing the left's political base. The CRM was eliminated with upwards of 40,000 political murders by 1983. Their demise was a major strategic victory for Reagan & Co. Without an infrastructure in the city, the guerrillas were unable to set off an urban insurrection, through mass demonstrations and strikes, during their "final offensive" in 1981. Thereafter, the rate of political murders gradually declined as the army ran out of people to kill. The Reagan administration said this was progress in human rights. While secretly they shared the view of the army High Command that "the death squads worked" (RAND Corp). They "stabilized" the society, as one U.S. Embassy official put it.
Clandestine terror could then be carried out more selectively, as it was until 1987-88, when newly formed popular organizations were met with a resurgence of death squad killings and disappearances, reminiscent of the early 80s. The CIA classified these groups with the CRM as FMLN "front organizations". They ranged from the so called "umbrella front group", the National Unity of Salvadoran Workers (U.N.T.S.) to the Committee of Mothers and Families of Political Prisoners, Disappeared Persons, and Assassinated of El Salvador (COMADRES). The U.S. administration particularly aimed to "destroy" labor unions of the left. "The U.S. Embassy repeatedly justified repression of rank and file members of unions affiliated with the U.N.T.S. on the grounds that the individual victims were members of guerrilla front organizations" (Human Rights Watch). The State Department is also known to have aided the government's repression of church officials and human rights groups. The Nongovernmental Human Rights Commission (CDHES) was on the CIA's list of guerrilla "front groups".
"The Gang that Blew Vietnam Goes Latin" is how the Washington Post characterized President Reagan's pacification team. Naturally, all of the above was a faithful regurgitation of the CIA's Phoenix program in Vietnam, which targeted "VC-controlled officials" for "neutralization". "We learned from you", a death squad member once told a U.S. news reporter. "We learned from you the means, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls ... the same thing you did in Vietnam."
Clearance sweeps
Also a Vietnam import, the ESAF employed a strategy of forced relocation, i.e. aerial bombing, strafing, and infantry sweeps in villages to generate refugee flows to military-controlled hamlets, and thus deprive the guerrillas of support. The targets were pinpointed by U.S. surveillance flights and CIA-led reconnaissance patrols. The intelligence was relayed to the Army High Command or to a U.S. operations adviser, directing the campaign. In neighboring Honduras, a team of U.S. Green Berets operated at a refugee camp along the border, where they controlled the flow of uprooted peasants fleeing from Salvadoran government troops. They were tasked with preventing "masas" (civilian supporters of the guerrillas) from passing aid to guerrillas across the border. Discussing refugees, team Captain Michael Sheehan said, "They have no human rights".
The U.S. Embassy explicitly justified the operations on the grounds that the victims were "masas", who they defined as persons who resided in contested areas. The village of El Mozote was in a province controlled by the FMLN. "That was enough cause for the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion to kill it's residents, most of them young children" (Aryeh Neier, Human Rights Watch). Soldiers of "the Yankee's battalion", the army's crack unit and the pride of the U.S. MilGroup, consistently carried out the largest massacres in the war. They were "the best unit in the country", according to Colonel John D. Waghelstein, Commander of the MilGroup, 1982-83. Human rights constraints directly conflicted with the goal of winning the war. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Nestor Sanchez argued as much to Congress in reference to the ESAF's "clearance" operations. Accordingly, the Atlacatl battalion was purposed for turning a losing war around.
The Phoenix program
Main article: Phoenix ProgramIn South Vietnam, 1965-72, the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces administered Operation "Phoenix", providing planning and operational direction, and assistance, logistical support, and training to indigenous paramilitary forces, purposed for intelligence gathering, through identifying and "neutralizing" members of the Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI); i.e. Viet Cong guerrillas (NLF - National Liberation Front) and persons under their influence. Originally, the squads were called "Counter-Terror Teams" (CTTs), then later "Provincial Reconnaissance Units" (PRU), after CIA officials became apprehensive of adverse public relations with the use of the word "terror". According to one U.S. military handbook, the PRUs were to be recruited from among young landowning elites.
VCI suspects identified by the PRUs were added to a "blacklist" for immediate "neutralization" - that is to kill, capture, or convince to surrender. Slain victims and the homes of potential victims were marked with the PRUs' "calling card", the "Eye of God" — a U.S.I.S. printed leaflet of a "grotesque" human eye — that came with the message "our terrorists" are playful, letting it be known that "big brother is watching you".
Suspects not killed outright were sent to the National Interrogation Center (NIC) in Saigon or at a Provincial Interrogation Center (PIC), jointly run by the CIA and it's South Vietnamese counterparts. The facilities were chiefly designed to extract intelligence from prisoners, in order to launch attacks on the Viet Cong underground. Interrogation methods commonly used included, force feeding water to prisoners until their stomachs swelled up, electric shocks applied to nipples and genitals, physical beatings with a truncheon, and demonstration executions. "Sometimes we have to kill one suspect to get another to talk", one U.S. PRU adviser remarked. The CIA had most prisoners "pump and dump" to avoid the formalities of prosecution. Summarizing this, Jeff Stein, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer in Vietnam:
"The CIA would direct the PRU teams to go out and take care of a particular target... either capture or assassination, or kidnapping. Kidnapping was a common thing that they liked to do. They’d put him in one of these garbage collection type bins — and the helicopter would pick up the bin and fly him off to a regional interrogation center. It was common knowledge that when someone was picked up their lives were about at an end because the Americans most likely felt that, if they were to turn someone like that back into the countryside it would just be like multiplying NLF followers."
U.S. counterinsurgents put it in the context of "protecting" the masses of the people from the insurgents, whom they were supporting. In practice, this meant "winning them over" in the course of their suppression. According to U.S. military and GVN statistics, the PRUs had killed between 26,369 and 40,994 "suspected enemy civilians" by 1972.
Iran
Main article: 1953 Iranian coup d'étatIran 1953: the CIA orchestrates the overthrow of the parliamentary government of Mohammed Mossadeq and reinstates the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, leaving U.S. oil giants with 40% of the formerly British concession.
In the proceeding years, the CIA, through AID Public Safety (OPS), reorganized and equipped SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, "to deal with any likely foreseeable civil disturbance in Tehran", reported the State Department in 1964. SAVAK went on to murder thousands of government opponents. According to former CIA analyst, Jesse Leaf, senior agency officials trained SAVAK in interrogation methods based on torture techniques employed by Nazi Germany in World War II. Also, the regime's torture chambers, utilized by SAVAK interrogators, were all financed by the U.S. government, he said.
Iraq
18 March 2003: The United States invades Iraq to "shock and awe" the world into U.S. subservience and subsequently establish permanent garrisons in a dependent client state at the center of the world's major energy producing region. The latter objective failed due to mass non violent resistance from the country's Shi'ite population, lead by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
In 2004, faced with a growing Sunni insurgency and an uncooperative people, the U.S. military, headed by General David Petraeus, drafted in Colonel James Steele, a former commander of the U.S. Military Advisory Group (MilGroup) in El Salvador's "dirty war", to help administer the "Salvador Option" and "scare the Iraqis into submission" (U.S. adviser to the civilian authority in Baghdad). The U.S. Special Forces organized, trained, armed, and directed sectarian police commandos (SPCs) to "pump and dump" insurgents and sympathizers at secret interrogation centers, known as "platforms". Sometimes in the presence of Col. Steele himself. The interrogation sessions included such methods as, electric shocks, pulling out nails, physical beatings, power drills to the body, and summary executions. The squads were organized from reactionary Shia militia groups, such as the Badr Brigades. The most feared was a unit known as the "Wolf Brigade". Although the SPCs succeeded in quelling the insurgency, they also enforced the repressive conditions that gave rise to the Islamic State.
See also
- Targeted killings by the United States government
- War crimes committed by the United States
- United States support of authoritarian regimes
- United States and state-sponsored terrorism
- Covert United States foreign regime change actions
Notes
- Blakeley, pp. 20-21
- Blakely, pp. 20-21
- Sluka, p. 8
- Sluka, pp. 8-9
- Gareau, Frederick Henry (2002). The United Nations and other international institutions: a critical analysis. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 246. ISBN 978-0-8304-1578-6.
- Daniel Goldhagen (2009). Worse Than War. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1586487698 p.537
- "During the 1970s and 1980s, the number of American client states practicing mass-murderous politics exceeded those of the Soviets."
- "The Cold War in Central America, 1975-1991" John H. Coatsworth, Ch 10
- Sluka, p. 9
- Sluka, p. 9
- Gupta, Dipak K. (2008). Understanding terrorism and political violence: the life cycle of birth, growth, transformation, and demise. Taylor & Francis. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-415-77164-1.
- Sinai, Joshua (2008). "How to Define Terrorism". Perspectives on Terrorism. 2 (4). Terrorism Research Institute.
- U.S. Department of State (February 1, 2010). "Title 22 > Chapter 38 > § 2656f - Annual country reports on terrorism". Cornell University Law School, Legal Information Institute.
- Gupta, p. 8
- Sinai, Joshua (2008). "How to Define Terrorism". Perspectives on Terrorism. 2 (4). Terrorism Research Institute.
- "Country Reports on Terrorism - Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism". National Counterterrorism Center: Annex of Statistical Information. U.S. State Department. April 30, 2007.
- Williamson, Myra (2009). Terrorism, war and international law: the legality of the use of force against Afghanistan in 2001. Ashgate Publishing. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-7546-7403-0.
- Rupérez, Javier (6 September 2006). "The UN's fight against terrorism: five years after 9/11". U.N. Action to Counter Terrorism (in Tr. from Spanish). Real Instituto Elcano of Spain.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - Selden p. 4
- Hor, Michael Yew Meng (2005). Global anti-terrorism law and policy. Cambridge University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-521-10870-6.
- Williamson p. 43
- Gareau, Frederick H. (2004). State terrorism and the United States : from counterinsurgency to the war on terrorism. Atlanta: Clarity Press. p. 14. ISBN 0-932863-39-6.
- Wright, p. 11
- Smith, Hedrick (7 February 1982). "Struggle In Salvador Pinches Washington's Vietnam Nerve". New York Times. NYT. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
- ^ "Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador", Raymond Bonner, Times Books, 1984, pp. 243, 25, 290-303, 67-69, 88-92 Cite error: The named reference "Ray Bonner" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ "Central America Inside Out: The Essential Guide to Its Societies, Politics, and Economies" Tom Barry, Grove Press, 1991, p. 145-147 Cite error: The named reference "Central America Inside Out" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- "Despite tattered economy and ongoing war, Salvador's Duarte rides high for now" Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 1985
- "Salvador's Duarte backs down on peace talks, further weakening his influence" Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 1985
- "Salvador rebels adapt to long war with new strategy. They focus on getting civilian support and exploiting Duarte's problems for political gains" Christian Science Monitor, November 26, 1986
- "Torture on Rise in Salvador" Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 1989
- ^ Gwertzman, Bernard (19 July 1983). "Kissinger On Central America: A Call For U.S. Firmness". New York Times. New York Times. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
- "War Against the Poor: Low-intensity Conflict and Christian Faith", Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Orbis Books, 1989, p. 10
- "Post-Vietnam Counterinsurgency Doctrine" Colonel John D. Waghelstein, U.S. Army, May 1985
- "America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After", Thomas J. McCormick, JHU Press, Feb 1, 1995, p. 211
- Kissinger, Henry (1998). Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America. DIANE publishing. p. 93. ISBN 9780788143137.
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(help) - US-Funded Think Tank Sways New Government; US AID backing leads to Chicago-style economic policies" Christian Science Monitor, August 28, 1989
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- "Insurgent Says He Supports 'Democratic' System" Associated Pres, Feb 11, 1989
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- ^ "Dirty Hands" Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic, December 1998
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- ^ "The American Connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador", Michael McClintock, Zed, 1985, p. 339 Cite error: The named reference "The American Connection, Vol. 1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- "Nightmare Revisited, 1987-88: Tenth Supplement to the Report on Human Rights in El Salvador", Human Rights Watch, 1988, p. 81
- ^ "Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights", Aryeh Neier, Public Affairs, 2003, p. 176 Cite error: The named reference "Taking Liberties" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- "Presidential certification on progress in El Salvador : hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations" United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, first session, February 2, 1983, p. 18
- "Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad", Renny Golden, Michael MacConnell, Orbis Books, 1986 - Church work with refugees, p. 139
- "NACLA Report on the Americas, Volume 18", North American Congress on Latin America, 1984, p. 48
- "Latin American labor organizations", Gerald Michael Greenfield, Greenwood Press, 1987, p. 360
- ^ "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador's official terror" Allan Nairn, the Progressive, May 1984
- "THE TRUTH OF EL MOZOTE" New Yorker, December 6, 1993
- ^ "MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AND THE YELLOW BOOK" National Security Archive, George Washington University, "The fingerprints of the United States"
- ^ "Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?" Christian Science Monitor, May 8, 1984
- ^ "Army's Project X Had Wider Audience" Washington Post, March 6, 1997
- ^ "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror", Alfred McCoy, Macmillan, Apr 1, 2007, pp. 119, 71 Cite error: The named reference "Alfred McCoy" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- "'This is War': How the CIA Justifies Torture" Frank Smith, December 10, 2014
- ^ "Declassified Army and CIA Manuals" Latin American Working Group, "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla", U.S. Army, p. 69
- "El Salvador: Death Squads, a Government Strategy", Amnesty International, 1988
- "Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture", Jennifer Harbury, Beacon Press, 2005, pp. 46-47
- "Salvadoran Soldier Says U.S. Advisers Knew of Death Squad Activity" Associated Press, Oct. 27, 1989
- "Blood Money: assassin says he slit throats while U.S. wrote checks" In These Times, Nov 15, 1989
- "EXTRADITION SOUGHT FOR ALLEGED DEATH SQUAD PARTICIPANT" Human Rights Watch, August 14, 1991
- "Deep-Sixed With All Due Dispatch : U.S. actions could silence one witness to Salvadoran death squads forever." Alexander Cockburn, L.A. Times, July 19, 1990
- "Death From a Distance; Washington's Role in El Salvador's Death Squads" Jefferson Morley, Washington Post, March 28, 1993
- ^ "Call Off The Spies" Washington Post, Feb. 7, 1996
- "Death Squad Strategy Was Made In U.S.A." In These Times, January 13, 1988
- "U.S. Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture" Washington Post, September 21, 1996
- ^ "Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992", William M. LeoGrande, Univ of North Carolina Press, Feb 1, 2000, pp. 234-235
- ^ "The Central American Crisis Reader", U.S. Bureau of Public Affairs, Dept. of State, Edited by Robert S. Leiken, Barry Rubin, 1985, p. 333
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- ^ "A Year of Reckoning: El Salvador a Decade After the Assassination of Archbishop Romero", Human Rights Watch, 1990, p. 207 Cite error: The named reference "A Year of Reckoning" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- "U.S. Knows Death Squad Chiefs but Cannot Stop Killings," Reuters, November 3, 1983.
- "Violent Incidents Again On Rise In El Salvador" Sun Sentinel, July 12, 1987
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- "Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act" Boston Globe, January 30, 2008
- "Bush Declares Exceptions to Sections of Two Bills He Signed Into Law" New York Times, October 14, 2008
- "How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq; Ayatollah's Call for Vote Forced Occupation Leader to Rewrite Transition Strategy" Washington Post, Nov 26, 2003
- "Pentagon civilians' lack of planning contributed to chaos in Iraq" Knight Ridder Newspapers, July 11, 2003
- "Full U.S. Control Planned for Iraq" Washington Post, February 21, 2003
- "Defeated by Democracy" FAIR, June 1, 2005
- "Iraq war logs: 'The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us'" Guardian, October 28, 2010
- "Iraq war logs: US turned over captives to Iraqi torture squads" Guardian, October 24, 2010
- "Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture" Guardian, October 22, 2010
- "From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads" Guardian, March 6, 2013
- "Revealed: Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centres" Guardian, March 6, 2013
- "‘The Salvador Option’" Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2005
- "Moving Targets" New Yorker, December 13, 2003
- "The Salvadorization of Iraq?" Peter Maass, New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2005
References
- Blakeley, Ruth (2009). State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: the North in the South. Routledge. ISBN 0415686172
- Donahue, Laura K. "Terrorism and counter-terrorist discourse". In Hor, Michael Yew Meng, Ramraj, Victor Vridar and Roach, Kent (Eds.), Global anti-terrorism law and policy. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-521-85125-4
- Sluka, Jeffrey A., editor (1999). Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1711-7.
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Taylor, Antony James William. Justice as a basic human need. Nova Science Publishers, 2006. ISBN 1-59454-915-X
- Wright, Thomas C. (February 28, 2007). State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7425-3721-7.
Further reading
- Alexander, George (December 1991). Western State Terrorism. Polity Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-0-7456-0931-7.
- Blum, William (1995). Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press. p. 457. ISBN 1-56751-052-3.
- Campbell, Bruce B., and Brenner,Arthur D.,eds. 2000. Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability. New York: St. Martin's Press
- Chomsky, Noam (January 1988). The Culture of Terrorism. South End Press. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-89608-334-9.
- Churchill, Ward (2003). On The Justice of Roosting Chickens. AK Press. p. 309. ISBN 1-902593-79-0.
- Critical terrorism studies: a new research agenda. Taylor & Francis. 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-45507-7.
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suggested) (help) - Menjívar, Cecilia and Rodríguez,Néstor, editors, When States Kill:Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror, University of Texas Press 2005,isbn=978-0-292-70647-7
- Perdue, William D. (August 7, 1989). Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear. New York: Praeger Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-0-275-93140-7.
- Selden,, Mark, editor (November 28, 2003). War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7425-2391-3.
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)