Language fatigue. posted by Richard Seymour

Comedy abounded in the desperate scramble to expound a credible thesis of a threat from Iraq to the UK in the run up to the war. Who remembers the release of this IISS report ? Obviously suffused with the joys of John Prescott, the Prime Minister's spokesman told the world - now, pay close attention here:

"This is clearly a very serious piece of work. It has been produced without any access to intelligence materials."

This was a man who knew. He went on to warn against "language fatigue", adding:

"We're obviously not talking about washing powder here".

In the event, the discovery of some washing powder would have been splendid vindication compared to what was actually turned up.

Well, I only raise it because - as is so often - the language revival redounded to Downing Street's disadvantage, since a report showing that the "UK sells chemical weapons to the world" was not long off the presses. Don't let that language fatigue fool you, now: this isn't washing powder, although it does help keep the world free for the whiter-than-whites.

Similarly, a few months ago, the world was recoiling from the shock news that the US was preparing to implement "the Salvadoran option" in Iraq. John Negroponte, having directed death squads for the puppet regime in El Salvador from the US Embassy in Honduras, was now sitting in the brand new US Embassy in Iraq with a serious proposal for the formation of death squads to help the puppet regime deal with an insurgency. At the time, US government spokespeople dismissed it as so much waffle, especially railing against the intimations that 'death squads' might be involved.

Then we heard tell of these pop-up militias in Iraq . These were armed groups formed mainly from the Shi'ite south, numbering about 15,000. Many had close connections to senior Iraqi politicians, like Iyad Allawi, while most were being armed, funded and trained by the Pentagon for 'counter-insurgency' operations.

How to justify such a policy - not just to Iraqis, but to those hippies in the 'human rights community' who had already complained about the use of torture and disabling beatings by Iraqi forces? First, invent a hostage drama in which Sunni insurgents have taken hundreds of Shi'ites hostage and threatened to kill them if every other Shi'ite does not leave town. How would that help the resistance? We don't know. Then, suddenly 'discover' the hostages floating dead in the Tigris, apparent victims of some mass atrocity only a few days old (this despite the fact that the bloated corpses discovered had evidently been in the water for weeks). When that is revealed as a pack of lies, rely on the BBC to obfuscate for you. (Remember Jalal Talabani? "We have all the names...").

And now, (via Needlenose ), it turns out that the New York Times magazine has given the game away. Among the many American advisers involved in the direction of death squads in Iraq is a James Steele:

"As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces [in El Salvador in the 1980s], 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."

Further:

"...having been a key participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces. He is not the only American in Iraq with such experience: the senior U.S. adviser in the Ministry of Interior, which has operational control over the commandos, is Steve Casteel, a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America."

It also appears that the General in charge of the particular squad being interviewed by the NYT magazine was behind the lynch mob television spectaculars in Iraq.

Open brutality meets the NYT journo when he visits a 'detention centre' run by the militia:

We walked through the entrance gates of the center and stood, briefly, outside the main hall. Looking through the doors, I saw about 100 detainees squatting on the floor, hands bound behind their backs; most were blindfolded. To my right, outside the doors, a leather-jacketed security official was slapping and kicking a detainee who was sitting on the ground. We went to a room adjacent to the main hall, and as we walked in, a detainee was led out with fresh blood around his nose. The room had enough space for a couple of desks and chairs; one desk had bloodstains running down its side. . . .

A few minutes after the interview started, a man began screaming in the main hall, drowning out the Saudi's voice. ''Allah!'' he shouted. ''Allah! Allah!'' It was not an ecstatic cry; it was chilling, like the screams of a madman, or of someone being driven mad. ''Allah!'' he yelled again and again. The shouts were too loud to ignore. Steele left the room to find out what was happening. When returned, the shouts had ceased. But soon, through the window behind me, I could hear the sounds of someone vomiting, coming from an area where other detainees were being held, at the side of the building.

. . . One afternoon as I was standing near City Hall, I heard a gunshot from within or behind the detention center. In previous days, I saw or heard, on several occasions, accidental shots by commandos -- their weapons discipline was far from perfect -- so I assumed it was another negligent discharge. But within a minute or so, there was another shot from the same place -- inside or behind the detention center.

Needlenose comments:

There are caveats throughout the article that, of course, the U.S. isn't really condoning any of this brutality, much less pursuing it as an intentional policy. And yet, all of the above incidents occurred in the presence of American military officers and a U.S. civilian journalist.

So there you are: death squads, murdered captives, torture, and a farrago of lies issued to justify it. Don't let that language fatigue get you: we're not talking of washing powder here, although one assumes it will wash pristine white.