Long ago in a much different forum I developed a reputation as a conspiracy theorist because of some detailed research I posted on globalization and elites. I know some of the readers of that intentionally tongue-in-cheek information are reading Also Also, and I'm happy to announce that I will bring back the conspiracy angle, as a form of lighter (or much much heavier if-you-go-there) Sunday reading.
The Sunday series will focus primarily on the state of American Christianity, neoconservatism, and the apocalypse. Juicy stuff. But not today, because I am working on a more involved review of modern Christianity in response to this remarkable work by David Gelernter . Give it a read, if interested.
None of that has anything to do with El Salvador's death squads other than two of my favorite conspiracy theorists are alarmed by this current story.
Kevin at Cryptogon was well ahead of the media on this one.
Cryptogon readers were informed that a major U.S. policy shift in Iraq might be underway a full four days before it was reported in mainstream news.
My analysis of server logs indicated that a user from the U.S. Central Command was looking for information about counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador.
I assumed that a military analyst was working on something related to covert counterinsurgency operations, and that a flawed analogy was being drawn between El Salvador and Iraq.
At the least he was intuitive, and I warn you that if you spend much time at Cryptogon, the NSA will hoist red flags with your name on them. :)
Kevin replied to the user from CENTCOM in the form of an open letter:
HINT to the CENTCOM user: If you're an analyst trying to use analogical reasoning to link the tactics that resulted in "success" for the U.S. in El Salvador to Iraq, you can forget it. The U.S. will bankrupt itself, economically and politically, before an El Salvador-type horror show could ever work. Besides, El Salvador was a covert war. Iraq is much more in the spotlight. How many U.S. trained death squad members did it take to terrorize El Salvador into semi-submission? Scale that up to the Iraqi situation. The FMLN never had the level of public support the Iraqi insurgency has now. And, the last time I checked, FMLN guerrillas weren't willing to use their bodies as weapons delivery platforms in suicide attacks by the thousands... but I digress.
A more to the point writer among educated conspiracy bloggers is xymphora, who scooped the media several times during the elections; thus, gaining a spot in several of the most popular blogger's rolls. Here's his or her (maybe their) take:
If you really wanted to start a civil war in Iraq and World War III in the Middle East - and the neocons do - this would be the way to do it. Paying a group of terrorists from one ethnic group to target insurgents from another ethnic group, not to mention their 'sympathizers' - which presumably covers the entire Sunni population of Iraq - is simply insane. They talk about the model of El Salvador, a completely immoral operation, but one with fairly limited repercussions outside of El Salvador. They should really be thinking of the model of Afghanistan, where similar American meddling to use insurgents to fight the Cold War led directly to the creation of al Qaeda and international Islamic terrorism (a result not displeasing to the neocons, who use it as their chief propaganda weapon to make their case for American neocolonial wars, not to mention to make the general case for Israeli state terrorism). Actually, it is fairly clear that someone, if not the CIA/Pentagon, then Israel, is already up to this kind of dirty trick, attempting to ensure both that Iraq is broken up into non-threatening statelets and that the United States is drawn, on behalf of Likudnik and arms dealer and warmonger interests, into a World War in the Middle East.
Also also, I'm not endorsing the above allegations, but I do support the "if then" scenario which would bring the term "escalation" back in all it's ugliness. Since CENTCOM apparently likes to search Cryptogon, perhaps they'll heed Kevin's advice. Let's hope.
--Zap
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