(no subject)

[kmusser]

I sure this will come as a complete shock to anyone that's been paying attention, but
Rumsfield wants U.S. death squads.

Comments

[kalkail.livejournal.com]

Yeah as if El Salvador had taught the U.S. nothing.

[bluekitsune.livejournal.com]

This is my shocked face, yes.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's my conspiracy-theorist background talking, but does anyone really believe that we *don't* have covert ops and plans to assassinate people we don't like? The only difference is that now it's in the news.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I'm sarcasm impaired today. *facepalm*

[kmusser]

*nods* and we've already had people "disappearing", it just goes to show our fascist overlords are becoming more blatant.

[winterbadger]

I'm torn. Obviously, if we want the Iraqis to be able to carry out free elections, the insurgency needs to be crushed. The most effective way to do this is to combine the carrot (of convincing intiatives to show that life in a free Iraq would be better than a life in reBaathified Iraq) with the stick of eliminating whatever insurgent forces we can identify. As a practical matter, I have no problem with sending Special Forces teams into Syria, if that's what it takes, or assassinating leaders of the insurgency, whether they're leading bomb squads on the ground in Iraq or running a finance-and-supply chain outside the country.

But "delegating" this sort of operation to Iraqi security forces, it seems to me, brings up a host of really serious problems, not least of which is the control factor. Give Kurds or Shiites carte blanche to take this kind of action, and we end up with our own version of Ulster, with scores getting settled that have more to do with who was rude to whose sister or whose grandfather got cheated in a property deal, rather than who planted a bomb or shot a group of poll workers.