US Managed Clandestine Terror Body Counts

Horhey · Sep 21, 2012

US Clandestine Terror - El Salvador: Operation Phoenix begins at 1:22

[video=youtube_share;Mev5jwfQdN4]http://youtu.be/Mev5jwfQdN4[/video]

These US "counter-terror" (meaning: clandestine terror) operations were indeed as what Colonel John D. Waghelstein, Commander of the Army's Seventh Special Forces bluntly declared:

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

It is total war at the grass-roots level.
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It's one thing to see reports revealing CIA intelligence sharing with the death squads or US Military Advisers supplying them with vans complete with black glass enabling political killings to take place unobserved, but here we see how they managed the body counts to conform to Congressional human rights certification for military aid which is pretty chilling. Clandestine terror killings would remain high and then begin to decline a month before the certification deadline every 6 months and then it would escalate again:

Presidential Certification on Progress in El Salvador: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session, February 2, 1983

If anything characterizes the year as a whole it is the pattern of increases and abatements in the killing: rises during the middle of a certification period and sharp drop-offs as certification approaches. The overall figures by Tutela Legal and Socorro Juridico for the year 1982 - 5,399 and 5,967 - civilian deaths caused by the army, security forces, and paramilitary groups respectively...

--Americas Watch
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The American connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador

By Michael Mac Clintock (Amnesty International)

Monthly totals of counter-terror killings remained high throughout 1981, although the figures indicated lulls in the killings at regular six-monthly intervals. These six month periods coincided with a US government human rights reporting calender; the US congress required the President to provide a bi-annual "certification" that progress was being made in human rights observance as a condition for further aid.

And so President Reagan swore ritually, every six months, that progress was being made in "bringing under control" the Salvadorean "death squads": and indeed there was a decrease observed by Socorro Juridico from 934 non-combatants killed in June to 546 in July (6 months after January military aid authorization), and from 820 in November to 395 in December 1981. In this first full year of sharply increased military aid to El Salvador, with US military advisers on the ground, the death toll was conservatively estimated at 13,353 non-combatant civilians killed by Salvadorean government forces.

In 1982, Socorro Juridico received reports of fewer killings of non- combatants: 5,976. Its successor as the Archbishopric's official monitoring office, Tutela Legal ( Legal Assistance), reported information on 5,399 for the year.

A pattern similar to 1981's, in relation to the US human rights certification timetable, can again be discerned, suggesting a capacity to reign in the counter-terror programme when political expediency so demanded.

From an average of 582 governmental assassinations recorded for each of the first four months of the year [1982] cases dropped to 375 in May, 355 in June and 201 in July, rebounding to 508 in August, after the certification. Similarly, killings registered dropped to 372 in December.
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Foreign assistance legislation for fiscal years 1986-87: hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-ninth Congress, first session

Operational Planning and Assistance Teams (OPATs) of two or three "trainers" were stationed in each of El Salvador's six army brigade headquarters, assisting commanders in management and planning and moving with the headquarters during field operations.
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Horhey · Sep 21, 2012

This is the kind of evidence that puts murderers on death row.

Horhey · Sep 22, 2012

This is why Washington was "draining the sea":

The Christian Science Monitor: Salvador rebels adapt to long war with new strategy

Interviews in different parts of the country reveal that support for the guerrillas, especially in the countryside, appears to be holding firm ...``People see that the guerrillas are more humane, and there is an intuitive sense that they’re on the people’s side,'' notes one Catholic church official. Adds an old-time labor leader: ``The campesinos know whose interests the army really represents''.

The guerrillas, numbering between 5,000 to 7,000, have been fighting since 1980 for the establishment of a ``more just society'' that would function in the interest of the poor. Since 1982, they have been calling for a negotiated settlement that would establish a ``government of broad participation.''

The guerrillas...traditionally have benefited from what one Western diplomat calls ``the Robin Hood mystique'' -- the perception that they are fighting for a just cause, the cause of the poor.

Still, all acknowledge the difficulty in accurately gauging sympathies for the rebels in a society where expressing such sympathies is dangerous.

The Salvadorean guerrilla movement had strong ties with peasant unions and other sectors of the mass organizations that developed in the 1970s.

Historians say the Roman Catholic Church's commitment to the poor as breaking the church's traditional alliance with the upper classes and aiding the revolutionary movement. Church-supported peasant unions, formed in response to the deteriorating conditions for the peasantry, met government-sanctioned repression and found the small armed revolutionary movement a natural ally.

These analysts predict that labor's discontent will continue as long as economic conditions deteriorate.

``We often go hungry to feed our children,'' says an agricultural laborer with three children. ``I don't have any land and the majority of people here are like me. That's the reason we have a war. I know many people who joined [the rebels] and they are all poor. As long as nothing changes, the war will go on.''

Diplomats, foreign analysts, and academics say that Army intelligence has improved significantly. Still, they say the Salvadorean insurgency will be harder to defeat than other guerrilla movements in Latin America. The Salvadorean guerrillas have stronger grass-roots ties than other Latin American guerrilla movements...

The guerrillas have developed a wide logistical support apparatus of people who are willing to take the risk of helping the guerrillas. ``There are people who feed them, hide them, grow crops for them, provide them with intelligence,'' says one Salvadorean academic. In any area where the guerrillas are active, they have some degree of infrastructure, he says.

NACLA report on the Americas

U.S. strategists, therefore, would not expect to win by outfighting the enemy in battle. Instead, they would aim to seperate the enemy from the civilian population, and neutralize enemy social structures — whether embryonic ones in FMLN zones of control, or the more institutionalized kind in revolutionary Nicaragua. This new style of warfare attacks the rebel rearguard, not its main force units, in an effort to destroy the enemy's intelligence, logistical and support systems.
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Horhey · Sep 23, 2012

Americas Watch: July 20, 1982 supplement to the Report on human rights in El Salvador

In August 1981, a team led by Captain Michael Sheehan, based at Santa Rosa de Copan, was seen in the La Virtud 59 camps by numerous international and Honduran volunteers. In an interview with the New York Times that month, Sheehan said that the National Security Council had approved a Green Beret presence in Honduras to support the military effort against Salvadoran guerrillas. Discussing refugees, Sheehan said: "They have no human rights."
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Based on their opposition to the military dictatorship evidentaly:

The War powers resolution: relevant documents, correspondence, reports

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on International Security and Scientific Affairs

Operation Planning and Assistance Teams {OP AT). These two five-man teams have been deployed. One works with the High Command in San Salvador to improve Salvadoran logistics, command and control, and communications procedures. The second OPAT is providing the same kind of assistance to the regional military commands.
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The War Powers Resolution: relevant documents, correspondence, reports

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security, and Science

the five-man operations planning assistance augmentation team (OPAT) visited the regional commands, assisting them in logistics and command and control planning.
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Foreign assistance legislation for fiscal years 1986-87: hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-ninth Congress, first session

Operational Planning and Assistance Teams (OPATs) of two or three "trainers" were stationed in each of El Salvador's six army brigade headquarters, assisting commanders in management and planning and moving with the headquarters during field operations.
Click to expand...

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US Managed Clandestine Terror Body Counts

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