Jason Vest: Reporting Errors of History

Vest, Jason. "Repeating Errors of History." AlterNet (January 12, 2005)

The U.S. counterinsurgency tactics used in El Salvador are at best a case study in how to prolong an insurgency, not end it. And it won't be any different in Iraq.

On Jan. 8, Newsweek revealed that the Bush administration is "intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration¹s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s." The "option" under consideration: the use of death squads to kill Iraqi insurgents.