[Cableguy]

Highly recommended. Great piece of writing.

[Travis McGee]

Got a login?

[bnelson44]

yep, these are the guys Iraq will be depending on in the next weeks. Hope they have a lot of them.

[fso301]

I'll have to read this later.

[FairOpinion]

Very interesting -- long, but interesting.


"There are far more Americans in Iraq today -- some 140,000 troops in all -- than there were in El Salvador, but U.S. soldiers and officers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role. In the process, they are backing up local forces that, like the military in El Salvador, do not shy away from violence. It is no coincidence that this new strategy is most visible in a paramilitary unit that has Steele as its main adviser; having been a key participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces. "

It's great that US is training strong Iraqi commando units, so the Iraqis can fight the terrorists themselves. I am sure they won't get all worried about putting panties on a terrorist's head.

[james500]

I went to http://www.iraqimedianet.net/tv/ where
they have a daily schedule and I don't see this show
listed. Is it supposed to be a full show or just something
like the sports portion of a newscast?

For some reason, I find it mildly amusing that http://www.iraqimedianet.net/tv/programsAZ.htm is alphabetically sorted neither by the english program title nor the arabic name.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Good read, even from the NY Slimes. Great to see we now have some home grown bad arses covering our guy's backs in Iraq. Enemy of my enemy, my friend, et all.

Thanks for posting.

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

ping for later reading

[james500]

"The [Iraqi] commandos cultivate a vaguely menacing look. They wear camouflage uniforms, but also irregular clothing, like black leather gloves and balaclavas -- not to hide their identities but to inspire fear among the enemy. It is a look I saw among the Serbian paramilitaries who terrorized Croatia and Bosnia during the Balkan wars in the 90's, and it is the look of the paramilitaries that operated in Latin America a decade earlier."

Or any moderately sized American city's SWAT team. This is just one example of many in the article where the author seems bent on portraying our efforts as less than honorable.

[dennisw]

btttt

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[CGVet58]

just read it - which considering my extreme disregard for the birdcage liner that is the times, is a big step for me (but one which upon recommendation fm fellow freeper as yourself was worth the effort).

Inasmuch as the writer doesn't go too far off the reservation (by plugging in the "Salvador=RtWing Death Squad" association-as-meme that the left is fond of commencing their rants about...) he does paint a fairly accurate picture of the difficulties in Iraq. Too often, the left exhibits a complete lack of understanding about the world as it really works - I guess the constant weaning on the teat of utopian solutions (that universally and conveniently disregard the unintended consequences of their ideas...) has bred out anything that promotes real thinking on their part.

The writer could have explored the "dirty war" theme in more detail, like further explaining why it is a dirty war. First, life has been very cheap in Iraq for over a generation; most of the population there have no friggin' idea that a place where life is respected can even exist. Second, it follows that a transition from worthless human value (that can be fed into plastic shredders) to a pluralistic society based on rule of law, respect for life and property will not take place overnight, 12 months or 5 years. Libs most vocal arguments against our efforts focus on this disparity and scream failure-in-the-NOW because the changes haven't taken effect yet.

The third point - the transition - is writing truthfully about the brutal reality that is dealing with murderous vermin from the previous regime/worldview, and how it is necessary to be capable of brutality towards those enemies. The writer, at least in the above piece, doesn't automatically equate the commandos with the SS. In fact, just reading material from a leftist organ which doesn't slip into rote response on something like this - an omission of accusation-as-the-normal charge, if you will - is in itself a glaring change from the norm for that paper.

[Cruz]

Ping

[em2vn]

It's a NYT hatchet job, all ten pages.

[Travis McGee]

Yeah, no bias here. Obviously, the NYTs only likes wars where the USA loses."The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and its associated paramilitaries included ''extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, 'disappearances' and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.'' As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

(Login info is in thread at 14)

[Travis McGee]

Yeah, no bias here. Obviously, the NYTs only likes wars where the USA loses."The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and its associated paramilitaries included ''extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, 'disappearances' and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.'' As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

(Login info is in thread at 14)

[Travis McGee]

The commandos cultivate a vaguely menacing look. They wear camouflage uniforms, but also irregular clothing, like black leather gloves and balaclavas -- not to hide their identities but to inspire fear among the enemy. It is a look I saw among the Serbian paramilitaries who terrorized Croatia and Bosnia during the Balkan wars in the 90's, and it is the look of the paramilitaries that operated in Latin America a decade earlier.

Oh no! They dress scary! They're just like Serb and Latin American paramilitaries! How AWFUL!