"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
The Pentagon is debating whether to set up elite hit-squads to target leaders of the Iraq insurgency in a new strategy based on tactics used against leftist guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday.
One proposal would send U.S. Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads of hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, Newsweek said, citing military insiders familiar with the discussions.
The squads may operate across the border in Syria, Newsweek said on its web site, but added it was unclear whether they would assassinate leaders or be involved in ``snatch'' operations.
The magazine said the plan is being called ``the Salvador option'' after strategy instigated during the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.
Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported ``nationalist'' forces to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.
``What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are,'' one unidentified senior military officer told Newsweek. ``We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing.''