War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Elliott Abrams defends Democracy

[Say_What]

Same recycled RayGun Bush war criminals, different spot on the globe but under a different Bush (no pun intended). ;-)

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War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Elliott Abrams defends Democracy:
If you believe that, then we have a bridge…

Why has an admitted perjurer, a facilitator of death squads and an arms broker to Islamic terrorists just been appointed to be deputy national security adviser to President Bush?

It’s tough to think of anything more “un-American” and less reflective of traditional family values than lying to Congress about illegal U.S. arm sales to a CIA-created band of murderous rightwing terrorists known as the Contras, and sticking up for death squads. Also, can one defend selling arms to Islamic terrorists by claiming that waging the Cold War sometimes required subscribing to the thesis that the end justifies the means? Given that Elliott Abrams managed to commit all the derelictions cited above, one might think that there was sufficient reason to prevent his name from being associated with the word “democracy.” However, it appears that the Bush administration, as was the case of its appointing a known human rights violator like U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte (when he was the ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s), rewards those who offer the White House their blood-soaked resumes.

On February 2, the White House announced that Abrams was being appointed to the number two position on the National Security Council, where he “will be responsible for pushing Bush’s strategy for advancing democracy.” In terms of the outrageous, one could compare this to appointing Pinochet or Kissinger to head the inquiry into Chile’s human rights record during the general’s dictatorial rule, or Saddam’s conversion to the Quaker faith.

A brief review of his more notorious exploits will show that no one in the president’s neocon inventory would be a less appropriate candidate than Abrams to be the overseer of global democratization and to make certain that “freedom’s on the march.” Needless to say, he was once again given a job at his present agency, the National Security Council, which would thus not require the all-but impossible achievement of being confirmed by the Senate, a body that is well aware of his blighted record.

http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2005/05.13%20Abrams%20Piece%20The%20One.htm

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From School of the Americas Watch website,
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The 'Salvador Option'

The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq.

What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"-and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one senior military officer told Newsweek. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November's operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency-as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time-than in spreading it out.

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. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success-despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

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.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government-the Defense department or CIA-would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)

http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=652

[ladjf]

1. Welcome to the reverse Universe.

Everything they say is exactly opposite the truth.