Fwd: Origins of Iraqi S.W.A.T. (Shi'a Militias) and Steele/Petraues ... جذور الـ "سوات" و الميليشيات الشيعية - مجرمي الحرب ستيل و بتريوس

[Z Alani]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Imad Khadduri <imad.k...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 8:57 AM
Subject: Origins of Iraqi S.W.A.T. (Shi'a Militias) and Steele/Petraues ... جذور الـ "سوات" و الميليشيات الشيعية - مجرمي الحرب ستيل و بتريوس
To:

Origins of Iraqi S.W.A.T. (Shi'a Militias) and Steele/Petraues ... جذور الـ "سوات" و الميليشيات الشيعية - مجرمي الحرب ستيل و بتريوس

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Previous postings in this site on the "Salvador Option" in Iraq were:

The “Salvador option”, with dressings, is being served in Iraq, April 22, 2005
Getting to Know the General, May 2, 2005
"Combat terrorism" by causing it, May 16, 2005
CIA terrorism in Iraq ..... Who? US?, June 1, 2005
"We learned quickly" .... Rumsfeld had already, many times, claimed that non-distinction. Keep fooling yourself. August 24, 2005
Phoenix and the Salvador Option - Non-transparent CIA 'precedents' in Iraq's torrent of bloodshed, September 16, 2005
British 'aid' to CIA covert operations in Iraq? September 22, 2005
Samara's black day .... لا سُـرّ من رأى, February 23, 2006
Finally, on February 5, 2007, وباللغة العربية أيضاً
The Iraqi ‘Salvador Option’ mercenary James Steele ..  مجرم فرق الموت"ستيل"

Now,

"Sparked by Wikileaks' release of classified US military documents, this investigation uncovers how the Pentagon sent James Steele, a US veteran of the 'dirty wars' in Central America, to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents.

Composed of violent Shia militias, these commandos evolved into death squads and eventually numbered over 17,000 men.

General David Petraeus is also implicated in the chain of command in this abuse of human rights. Colonel James Coffman, another special forces veteran drafted in to oversee the operation, describes himself as Petraeus' "eyes and ears out on the ground" in Iraq.

"They knew everything that was going on there, the most horrible kinds of torture," says General Muntadher al-Samari, speaking for the first time about the US role in the interrogation units. Ten years on from the invasion, the long-term impact this paramilitary force has unleashed is a deadly sectarian militia that has helped germinate a civil war claiming tens of thousands of lives."
...
"When the Wikileaks documents came out in November 2010, there was one leak in particular that caught my attention. It referenced something called "Frago 242", which was short for “Fragmentary Order 242” - a US military order instructing US soldiers to ignore Iraqi-on-Iraqi torture. Along with the team I work with, I found that the term "Frago 242" appeared more than a thousand times in the documents we examined. Having spent a lot of time covering the war in Iraq, we naturally wondered why this order was issued and what the story behind it was. 

There were also references in the Wikileaks files to a General Adnan Thabit, who was visiting the American embassy at the time".

Searching for Steele, Al-Jazeera's WITNESS series (Documentary 47 minutes)

An investigation into the role played by a retired US colonel in Iraq's US-funded sectarian interrogation units. 

[See Adnan Thabit, now in Amman].

September 5, 2013
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Imad Khadduri
http://abutamam.blogspot.com

 

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Zaineb Alani
http://www.thewordsthatcomeout.blogspot.com
http://www.tigresssmiles.blogspot.com

"Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers."  -Tagore, The Heart of God