[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 52 (Thursday, May 4, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E727-E729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               APRIL 5, 2006 LETTER TO SECRETARY RUMSFELD

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 4, 2006

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I sent the following letter to Secretary 
Rumsfeld requesting

[[Page E728]]

records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to 
advise, support and train Iraqi death squads:

     Hon. Donald Rumsfeld,
     Secretary of Defense,
     The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
       Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: I am writing to request a copy of 
     all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special 
     Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and 
     kidnapping teams.
       On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a 
     report that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi 
     squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal 
     has been called the ``Salvador Option,'' which references the 
     U.S. military assistance program, initiated under the Carter 
     Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan 
     Administration, that funded and supported ``nationalist'' 
     paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel 
     leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in 
     El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public 
     backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent 
     civilians were assassinated and ``disappeared,'' including 
     notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar 
     Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the 
     Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect 
     the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that 
     despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, 
     it was successful in eradicating guerrillas.
       Mr. Secretary, at a news conference on January 11, 2005, 
     you publicly stated that the idea of a Salvador option was 
     ``nonsense.'' Yet mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. 
     has in fact funded and trained Iraqi assassination and 
     kidnapping teams and these teams are now operating with 
     horrific success across Iraq.
       We know that the Pentagon received funding for training 
     Iraqi paramilitaries.
       About one year before the Newsweek report on the ``Salvador 
     Option,'' it was reported in the American Prospect magazine 
     on January 1, 2004 that part of $3 billion of the $87 billion 
     Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations 
     in Iraq, signed into law on November 6, 2003, was designated 
     for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by 
     militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. 
     According to the Prospect article, experts predicted that 
     creation of this paramilitary unit would ``lead to a wave 
     of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of 
     nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and 
     thousands of civilian Baathists.'' The article further 
     described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, 
     disguised as an Air Force classified program, would be 
     used to ``support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and 
     revenge-minded Iraqi security force.'' According to one of 
     the article's sources, John Pike, an expert of classified 
     military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org. ``the big 
     money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to 
     liquidate the resistance.''
       We know that some of the Pentagon's Iraq experts were 
     involved in the Reagan Administration's paramilitary program 
     in El Salvador.
       Colonel James Steele, Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador for 
     Iraqi Security Forces, formerly led the U.S. Military 
     Advisory Group in El Salvador from 1984-1986, where he 
     developed special operating forces at brigade level during 
     the height of the conflict. The role of these forces in El 
     Salvador was to attack `insurgent' leadership, their 
     supporters, sources of supply, and base camps. Currently 
     Colonel Steele has been assigned to work with the new elite 
     Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police 
     Commandos, operating under Iraq's Interior Ministry.
       Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, was 
     U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005. From 
     1981 to 1985, he was ambassador to Honduras where he played a 
     key role in coordinating U.S. covert aid to the Contras, 
     anti-Sandinista militias who targeted civilians in Nicaragua. 
     Additionally, he oversaw the U.S. backing of a military death 
     squad in Honduras, Battalion 3-16, which specialized in 
     torture and assassination. The U.S. had similar programs of 
     supporting paramilitary groups set up Nicaragua and Honduras 
     as its program in El Salvador. In a Democracy Now interview 
     on January 10, 2005, Allan Nairn, who broke the story about 
     U.S. support of death squads in El Salvador, suspected that 
     Ambassador Negroponte would most likely be involved in the 
     economic side of U.S. support to death squads in Iraq.
       We know that a wave of abductions and executions, in the 
     style of the death squads of El Salvador, and with ties to an 
     official government sponsor, and to the U.S., has hit Iraq.
       News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that 
     the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi 
     commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have 
     operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating 
     thousands of Iraqis. Some news highlights:
       May 1, 2005--Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. is 
     providing technical and logistical support to the Maghawir 
     (Fearless Warrior) brigades, the Interior Ministry's special 
     commandos, according to Major General Rasheed Flayih 
     Mohammed. Iraqi authorities plan to increase deployment of 
     the 12,000-strong Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades, which 
     are composed of well-trained veterans who have worked closely 
     with U.S. forces in Najaf, Fallujah and Mosul and include 
     the Wolf, Scorpion, Tiger and Thunder brigades.
       May 16-20, 2005--Los Angeles Times and New York Times 
     reveal discovery of 46 bodies, all Iraqi men abducted and 
     slain execution-style, in various locations: floating in the 
     Tigris, dumped in ditches and garbage-strewn lots, and buried 
     at a poultry farm.
       June 15, 2005--Washington Post reports that U.S. forces had 
     knowledge of secret and illegal abductions of hundreds of 
     minority Arabs in Kirkuk. The abductions were by forces led 
     by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military.
       June 20, 2005--Los Angeles Times reports that Saad Sultan, 
     of Iraq Human Rights Ministry said that police and security 
     forces attached to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, thousands of 
     whom have been trained by American instructors, are 
     responsible for abusing up to 60% of estimated 12,000 
     detainees in prison and military compounds. He says the units 
     have used tactics reminiscent of Saddam's secret intelligence 
     squads.
       July 3, 2005--Reuters News reports that the government of 
     Iraq publicly acknowledged that the new security forces were 
     using torture. Article further says that accounts are common 
     of people being seized by armed men in the uniforms of the 
     police, army or special units like Baghdad's Wolf Brigade 
     police commandos, and then disappearing without trace or 
     being found dead.
       July 28, 2005--Los Angeles Times reports that members of a 
     California Army National Guard company, the Alpha Company, 
     who were implicated in a detainee abuse scandal, trained and 
     conducted joint operations with the Wolf Brigade, a commando 
     unit criticized for human rights abuses. In an online Alpha 
     Company newsletter, Captain Haviland wrote, ``We have 
     assigned 2nd Platoon to help them transition, and install 
     some of our `Killer Company' aggressive tactical spirit in 
     them.'' The article further states that despite the Wolf 
     Brigade's controversial reputation for human rights 
     violations, it is regarded as the gold standard for Iraqi 
     security forces by U.S. military officials.
       August 31, 2005--BBC reports that on the night of August 
     24, a large force of the Volcano Brigade raided homes in Al-
     Hurriyah city in the Baghdad, kidnapping and then executing 
     76 citizens. The victims were all shot in the head after 
     their hands and feet had been tied up. They suffered the 
     harshest forms of torture, deformation and burning.
       November 16, 2005--Reuters News reports the discovery of 
     173 malnourished men, some of whom were tortured, imprisoned 
     in a secret jail run by Shi'ite militias tied to the Interior 
     Ministry.
       November 17, 2005--Newsday reports that in the past year, 
     the U.S. military has helped build up Iraqi commandos under 
     guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces 
     officer who led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador 
     in the 1980s. The brigades built up over the past year 
     include the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and Volcano 
     Brigade.
       February 15, 2006--Associated Press reports that the 
     Interior Ministry has launched a probe into death squad 
     allegations.
       February 19, 2006--BBC reveals that morgues in Baghdad 
     receive dozens of bodies picked up daily from rivers, sewage 
     plants, waste burial sites, farms and desert areas. Most of 
     the bodies are handcuffed and blindfolded civilians with a 
     bullet or more in the forehead, indicating that they were 
     executed. The handcuffs used on the victims are like those 
     used by the Iraqi police.
       February 26, 2006--The Independent reports that outgoing 
     United Nations' human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, 
     revealed that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death 
     or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by the 
     death squads working from the Ministry of Interior. He said 
     that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the 
     Baghdad mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head 
     or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.
       March 9, 2006--Los Angeles Times reports that Iraqi police 
     officers who worked at the Interior Ministry's illegal prison 
     had received American training, and that U.S. trainers have 
     also given extensive support to 27 brigades of heavily armed 
     commandos accused of a series of abuses, including the death 
     of 14 Sunni Arabs who were locked in an airtight van last 
     summer.
       March 10, 2006--Sidney Morning Herald reports that men 
     wearing the uniforms of U.S.-trained security forces, which 
     are controlled by the Interior Ministry, abducted 50 people 
     in a daylight raid on a security agency. Masked men who are 
     driving what appear to be new government-owned vehicles are 
     carrying out many of the raids.
       March 27, 2006--The Independent reports that while U.S. 
     authorities have begun criticizing the Iraqi government over 
     the ``death squads,'' many of the paramilitary groups accused 
     of the abuse, such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade 
     and the Special Police Commandos were set up with the help of 
     the American military. Furthermore, the militiamen were 
     provided with U.S. advisers some of whom were veterans of 
     Latin American counter-insurgency which also had led to 
     allegations of death squads at the time.
       Mr. Secretary, in light of this evidence of U.S. support 
     for and the existence of death squads in Iraq, what is the 
     basis for your January 11, 2005 statement, that the idea of a 
     Salvador option in Iraq is ``nonsense''?
       I request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon 
     plans to use U.S. Special Forces to

[[Page E729]]

     advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping 
     teams. I look forward to receiving your response.
           Sincerely,
                                               Dennis J. Kucinich,
     Member of Congress.

                          ____________________