The next American ambassador has the difficult task of repairing the United States’ image, expanding its influence and working with opposing groups inside the country, as well as diplomats from Arab and European nations, to try to stabilize Egypt and put it on a democratic course.[1]
The Sun described the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."
On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled “Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s.” This report was partly declassified on Oct. 22, 1998, in response to demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman.[9]
Under the "Salvador Option," Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi'ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance.
Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. Of course, the fact that the death squad option was implemented so quickly after the release of the report suggests that the mercenaries were being organized and applied long before Newsweek was made aware of them.[12]
[O]ne Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called 'snatch' operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries.[emphasis added][13]
Ford met with the head of the Aleppo military council, Abdul Jabbar Okaidi, who thanked him for the shipment of nonlethal aid. Seven trucks transported some 65,000 MREs, or meals ready to eat, the U.S. military's battlefield rations.[19]
Well, I think we have some mixed signals from the Obama regime here. Let us hasten to say that anybody calling themselves “Free Syrian Army” is, in fact, a representative of the al-Nusra Front because we’re getting reports everyday of more and more units of the so-called FSA showing their true colors or going over to Nusra and proclaiming themselves full-fledged terrorists, al-Qaeda disciples, death squads in every sense of the word. Now, we had, in the last twenty four hours, Ambassador Robert Ford of the State Department, somebody who did a lot to get this tragic rebellion going in the first place . . . Ambassador Robert Ford who is a taskmaster of death squad deployments, having learned it from Negrponte in Baghdad some years ago, he crossed into Syria, not with the permission of the Syrian government, but to go and meet General Idriss. And this General, Salim Idriss, is the new golden boy here. He is the new darling of the CIA and the State Department. And it looks like Ford is trying to coordinate the next move with Idriss. You can think of Idriss as the new Ahmed Chalabi – somebody the U.S. is grooming to become dictator of the country.[27]
