AMERICA'S PROXY DEATH SQUADS AND
TORTURE TEAMS STILL IN
IRAQ
By William Boardman
Recent News of
Old War Crimes in Iraq
Death squads, torture, secret prisons in Iraq, and
General David Petraeus are among the featured atrocities in a recently-released
new British documentary -- " James Steele:
America's Mystery Man in Iraq" -- the
result of a 15-month investigation by Guardian Films and BBC Arabic, exploring
war crimes long denied by the Pentagon but confirmed by thousands of military
field reports made public by Wikileaks.
The hour-long film explores the arc of American counterinsurgency
brutality from Viet-Nam to Iraq, with stops along the way in El Salvador and
Nicaragua. James Steele is now a
retired U.S. colonel who first served in Viet-Nam as a company commander in
1968-69. He later made his
reputation as a military advisor in El Salvador, where he guided ruthless
Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s.
When his country called again in 2003, he came out of retirement to
train Iraqi police commandos in the bloodiest techniques of counterinsurgency
that evolved into that country's Shia-Sunni civil war that at its peak killed
3,000 people a month. Steele now lives in a gated golf
community in Brian, Texas, and did not respond to requests for an interview for
the documentary bearing his name.
"James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq" is online
News coverage of this documentary has been largely absent in mainstream
media. The Guardian had a [1]report[1], naturally, at the time of release and DemocracyNOW had a long [2]segment[2] on March 22 that includes an interview with veteran, award-winning
[3]reporter[3] Maggie O'Kane, as well as several excerpts from the movie she
directed.
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