[News] Bush's Global Dirty War

[Anti-Imperialist News]

BUSH'S GLOBAL 'DIRTY WAR'
_________________________________________________________________________

By Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/100107.html

Via ANTIFA Bulletin http://www.wbenjamin.org/antifa.html


George W. Bush has transformed elite units of the U.S. military -- 
including Special Forces and highly trained sniper teams -- into 
"death squads" with a license to kill unarmed targets on the 
suspicion that they are a threat to American military operations in 
Iraq and Afghanistan, according to evidence from recent court cases.

Though this reality has been the subject of whispers within the U.S. 
intelligence community for several years, it has now emerged into 
public view with two attempted prosecutions of American soldiers 
whose defense attorneys cited "rules of engagement" that permit the 
killing of suspected insurgents.

One case involved Army sniper Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. who was acquitted 
by a U.S. military court in Baghdad on Sept. 28 in the murders of two 
unarmed Iraqi men -- one on April 27 and the other on May 11 -- 
because the jury accepted defense arguments that the killings were 
within the approved rules.

The Sandoval case also revealed a classified program in which the 
Pentagon's Asymmetric Warfare Group encouraged U.S. military snipers 
in Iraq to drop "bait" -- such as electrical cords and ammunition -- 
and then shoot Iraqis who pick up the items, according to evidence in 
the Sandoval case. [Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2007]

(Sandoval was convicted of a lesser charge of planting a coil of 
copper wire on one of the slain Iraqis. He was sentenced to five 
months in prison and a reduction in rank but will be eligible to 
rejoin his unit in as few as 44 days.)

The other recent case of authorized murder of an insurgent suspect 
surfaced at a military court hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 
in mid-September. Two U.S. Special Forces soldiers took part in the 
execution of an Afghani who was suspected of leading an insurgent group.

Though the Afghani, identified as Nawab Buntangyar, responded to 
questions and offered no resistance when encountered on Oct. 13, 
2006, he was shot dead by Master Sgt. Troy Anderson on orders from 
his superior officer, Capt. Dave Staffel.

According to evidence at the Fort Bragg proceedings, an earlier Army 
investigation had cleared the two soldiers because they had been 
operating under "rules of engagement" that empowered them to kill 
individuals who have been designated "enemy combatants," even if the 
targets were unarmed and presented no visible threat.

Yet, whatever the higher-ups approve as "rules of engagement," the 
practice of murdering unarmed suspects remains a violation of the 
laws of war and -- theoretically at least -- would open up the 
offending country's chain of command to war-crimes charges.

Troubling Picture

The troubling picture is that the U.S. chain of command, presumably 
up to President Bush, has authorized loose "rules of engagement" that 
allow targeted killings -- as well as other objectionable tactics 
including arbitrary arrests, "enhanced interrogations," kidnappings 
in third countries with "extraordinary renditions" to countries that 
torture, secret CIA prisons, detentions without trial, and 
"reeducation camps" for younger detainees.

The U.S. counterinsurgency and security operations in Iraq and 
Afghanistan also have been augmented by heavily armed mercenaries, 
such as the Blackwater "security contractors" who operate outside the 
law and were accused by Iraqi authorities of killing at least 11 
Iraqi civilians in a shooting incident on Sept. 16.

The use of lethal force against unarmed suspects and civilians has a 
notorious history in irregular warfare especially when an occupying 
army finds itself confronting an indigenous resistance in which 
guerrillas and their political supporters blend in with the local population.

In effect, Bush's "global war on terror" appears to have 
reestablished what was known during the Vietnam War as Operation 
Phoenix, a program that assassinated Vietcong cadre, including 
suspected communist political allies.

Through a classified Pentagon training program known as "Project X," 
the lessons of Operation Phoenix from the 1960s were passed on to 
Third World armies, especially in Latin America allegedly giving a 
green light to some of the "dirty wars" that swept the region in the 
following decades. [For details, see Neck Deep: The Disastrous 
Presidency of George W. Bush.]

Bush's global strategy also has similarities to "Operation Condor" in 
which South American right-wing military regimes in the 1970s sent 
assassins on cross-border operations to eliminate "subversives."

Despite behind-the-scenes support for some of these Latin American 
"death squads," the U.S. government presented itself as the great 
defender of human rights and criticized repressive countries that 
engaged in extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions.

That gap between American rhetoric and reality widened after 9/11 as 
Bush waged his "war on terror," while continuing to impress the 
American news media with pretty words about his commitment to human 
rights -- as occurred in his address to the United Nations on Sept. 25.

Under Bush's remarkable double standards, he has taken the position 
that he can override both international law and the U.S. Constitution 
in deciding who gets basic human rights and who doesn't. He sees 
himself as the final judge of whether people he deems "bad guys" 
should live or die, or face indefinite imprisonment and even torture.

Effective Immunity

While such actions by other leaders might provoke demands for an 
international war-crimes tribunal, there would appear to be no 
likelihood of that in this case since the offending nation is the 
United States. Given its "superpower" status, the United States and 
its senior leadership are effectively beyond the reach of international law.

However, even if the Bush administration can expect a real-politik 
immunity from a war-crimes trial, the brutal tactics of the "global 
war on terror" -- as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan -- continue to 
alienate the Muslim world and undermine much of Bush's geopolitical strategy.

The ugly image of Americans killing unarmed Iraqis also helps explain 
the growing hostility of Iraqis toward the presence of U.S. troops.

While the Bush administration has touted the supposed improved 
security created by the "surge" of additional U.S. troops into Iraq, 
a major poll found Iraqis increasingly object to the American occupation.

A survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis by the BBC, ABC News and the 
Japanese news agency, NHK, discovered mounting opposition to the U.S. 
occupation and increasing blame put on American forces for Iraq's 
security problems.

Eighty-five percent of those polled said they had little or no 
confidence in American and British occupation forces, up from 82 
percent in February, when the "surge" began. Only 18 percent said 
they thought the coalition forces had done a good job, down from 24 
percent in February. Forty-seven percent said occupying forces should 
leave now, up from 35 percent.

The number of Iraqis who feel the U.S. invasion was wrong also jumped 
10 percentage points to 63 percent in August compared to 53 percent 
in February. The new survey found 57 percent of Iraqis supporting 
attacks on U.S. troops, up from 51 percent in February and 17 percent in 2004.

As for the surge itself, 70 percent said it had made the security 
situation worse with only 18 percent citing any improvement.

Regarding social and economic conditions, the poll also revealed a 
dismal outlook:

Only 8 percent of Iraqis now rate their supply of electricity as 
good, down from 46 percent in 2005. Only 25 percent were satisfied 
with the availability of clean water compared to 58 percent two years 
ago, helping to explain the outbreak of cholera from northern Iraq to Baghdad.

Only 32 percent of Iraqis called medical care adequate compared to 62 
percent in 2005. Satisfaction with schools fell to 51 percent from 74 
percent in 2005. Satisfaction with family economic situations also 
was down to 37 percent from 70 percent two years ago.

Blackwater Mercenaries

Little wonder that the unpopular Iraqi government of Prime Minister 
Nouri al-Maliki has sought to make an issue over the trigger-happy 
tendencies of Blackwater mercenaries who provide security for U.S. 
embassy personnel and other American VIPs.

On Sept. 16, Blackwater gunmen accompanying a U.S. diplomatic convoy 
apparently sensed an ambush and opened fire, spraying a Baghdad 
square with bullets. Eyewitness accounts indicated that the 
Blackwater team apparently overreacted to a car, containing a husband 
and a wife and their child, moving into the square and killed at 
least 11 people, including the family in the car.

"Blackwater has no respect for the Iraqi people," an Iraqi Interior 
Ministry official told the Washington Post. "They consider Iraqis 
like animals, although actually I think they may have more respect 
for animals." [Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2007]

Iraqis have objected to other disregard of innocent life by American 
troops, such as the killing of two dozen Iraqis in Haditha on Nov. 
19, 2005, after one Marine died from an improvised explosive device.

According to published accounts of U.S. military investigations, the 
dead Marine's comrades retaliated by pulling five men from a cab and 
shooting them, and entering two homes where civilians, including 
women and children, were slaughtered.

The Marines then tried to cover up the killings by claiming that the 
civilian deaths were caused by the original explosion or a subsequent 
firefight, according to investigations by the U.S. military and human 
rights groups.

One of the accused Marines, Sgt. Frank Wuterich, gave his account of 
the Haditha killings in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," 
including an admission that his squad tossed a grenade into one of 
the residences without knowing who was inside.

"Frank, help me understand," asked interviewer Scott Pelley. "You're 
in a residence, how do you crack a door open and roll a grenade into a room?"
"At that point, you can't hesitate to make a decision," Wuterich 
answered. "Hesitation equals being killed, either yourself or your men."

"But when you roll a grenade in a room through the crack in the door, 
that's not positive identification, that's taking a chance on 
anything that could be behind that door," Pelley said.

"Well, that's what we do. That's how our training goes," Wuterich said.
Who's at Fault?

Four Marines were singled out for courts martial over the Haditha 
killings though some legal analysts believe the case could be 
jeopardized by the loose "rules of engagement" that let U.S. troops 
kill Iraqis when a threat is detected.

Nevertheless, as in earlier killings of Iraqi civilians -- or the 
sexual and other abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison -- 
punishments are likely to stop at the level of rank-and-file soldiers 
with higher-ups avoiding accountability.

In large part, the lack of high-level accountability stems from the 
fact that the key instigator of both the illegal invasion of Iraq and 
the harsh tactics employed in the "war on terror" is President Bush.

Not only did he order an aggressive war -- a concept condemned by 
World War II's Nuremberg Tribunal as "the supreme international crime 
differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within 
itself the accumulated evil of the whole" -- but Bush pumped U.S. 
troops full of false propaganda by linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks.

Bush's subliminal connections between the Iraq War and 9/11 continued 
years after U.S. intelligence dismissed any linkage. For instance, on 
June 18, 2005, more than two years into the Iraq War, Bush told the 
American people that "we went to war because we were attacked" on 9/11.

Bush's rhetorical excesses, though primarily designed to build and 
maintain a political consensus behind the war at home, had the 
predictable effect of turning loose a revenge-seeking and heavily 
armed U.S. military force on the Iraqi population.

Little wonder that a poll of 944 U.S. military personnel in Iraq -- 
taken in January and February 2006 -- found that 85 percent believed 
the U.S. mission in Iraq was mainly "to retaliate for Saddam's role 
in the 9/11 attacks." Seventy-seven percent said a chief war goal was 
"to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaeda in Iraq."

In that context, many Americans sympathize with the individual U.S. 
soldiers who have to make split-second life-or-death decisions while 
thinking they are operating under legitimate rules of engagement that 
allow killing perceived enemies even if they are unarmed and showing 
no aggressive intent.

'Salvador Option'

By early 2005, as the Iraqi insurgency grew, an increasingly 
frustrated Bush administration reportedly debated a "Salvador option" 
for Iraq, an apparent reference to the "death squad" operations that 
decimated the ranks of perceived leftists who were opposed to El 
Salvador's right-wing military junta in the early 1980s.

According to Newsweek magazine, President Bush was contemplating the 
adoption of that brutal "still-secret strategy" of the Reagan 
administration as a way to get a handle on the spiraling violence in Iraq.

"Many U.S. conservatives consider the policy [in El Salvador] to have 
been a success -- despite the deaths of innocent civilians," Newsweek wrote.

The magazine also noted that many of Bush's advisers were leading 
figures in the Central American operations of the 1980s, including 
Elliott Abrams, who is now an architect of Middle East policy on the 
National Security Council.

In Guatemala, about 200,000 people perished, including what a truth 
commission later termed a genocide against Mayan Indians in the 
Guatemalan highlands. In El Salvador, about 70,000 died including 
massacres of whole villages, such as the slaughter committed by a 
U.S.-trained battalion against hundreds of men, women and children 
near the town of El Mozote in 1981.

The Reagan administration's "Salvador option" also had a domestic 
component, the so-called "perception management" operation that 
employed sophisticated propaganda to manipulate the fears of the 
American people while hiding the ugly reality of the wars.

[For details about how these strategies worked and the role of George 
H.W. Bush, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege. For more on the Salvador 
option, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Death Squads," Jan. 11, 2005.]

In the Iraqi-sniper case, Army sniper Sandoval admitted killing an 
Iraqi man near the town of Iskandariya on April 27 after a skirmish 
with insurgents. Sandoval testified that his team leader, Staff Sgt. 
Michael A. Hensley, ordered him to kill a man cutting grass with a 
rusty scythe because he was suspected of being an insurgent posing as a farmer.

The second killing occurred on May 11 when a man walked into a 
concealed location where Sandoval, Hensley and other snipers were 
hiding. After the Iraqi was detained, another sniper, Sgt. Evan Vela, 
was ordered to shoot the man in the head by Hensley and did so, 
according to Vela's testimony at Sandoval's court martial.

Sandoval was acquitted of murder charges because a military jury 
concluded that his actions were within the rules of engagement. 
Hensley is to go on trial in a few weeks.

Regarding the Afghanistan case, Special Forces Capt. Staffel and Sgt. 
Anderson were leading a team of Afghan soldiers when an informant 
told them where a suspected insurgent leader was hiding. The U.S.-led 
contingent found a man believed to be Nawab Buntangyar walking 
outside his compound near the village of Hasan Kheyl.

While the Americans kept their distance out of fear the suspect might 
be wearing a suicide vest, the man was questioned about his name and 
the Americans checked his description against a list from the 
Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan, known as 
"the kill-or-capture list."

Concluding that the man was insurgent leader Nawab Buntangyar, 
Staffel gave the order to shoot, and Anderson -- from a distance of 
about 100 yards away -- fired a bullet through the man's head, 
killing him instantly.

'Classified Mission'

The soldiers viewed the killing as "a textbook example of a 
classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of 
engagement," the International Herald Tribune reported. "The men said 
such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American 
military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively 
identified him."

Staffel's civilian lawyer Mark Waple said the Army's Criminal 
Investigation Command concluded in April that the shooting was 
"justifiable homicide," but a two-star general in Afghanistan 
instigated a murder charge against the two men. That case, however, 
has floundered over accusations that the charge was improperly filed. 
[IHT, Sept. 17, 2007]

The U.S. news media has given the Fort Bragg case only minor coverage 
concentrating mostly on legal sparring. The New York Times' 
inside-the-paper, below-the-fold headline on Sept. 19 was "Green 
Beret Hearing Focuses on How Charges Came About."

The Washington Post did publish a front-page story on the "bait" 
aspect of the Sandoval case -- when family members of U.S. soldiers 
implicated in the killings came forward with evidence of high-level 
encouragement of the snipers -- but the U.S. news media has treated 
the story mostly as a minor event and has drawn no larger implications.

The greater significance of the cases is that they confirm the 
long-whispered allegations that the U.S. chain of command has 
approved standing orders that give the U.S. military broad discretion 
to kill suspected militants on sight.

The "global war on terror" appears to have morphed into a global 
"dirty war" with George W. Bush in ultimate command.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for 
the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The 
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, can be ordered at 
neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The 
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: 
Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.

Copyright 2007 The Consortium for Independent Journalism



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