Salvador Option

The 'Salvador Option' was a secret military proposal that Newsweek originally reported on January 8th, 2005. The magazine claims to have recieved its information from military insiders speaking on conditions of anonymity. The program was supposed to have been based on the Reagan administration's still classified support for El Salvador's right wing forces' fight against left wing guerrilas in the 1980's. These right wing forces are alleged to have included so called 'death squads'. According to Newsweek:

"...one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries."[1]

While Donald Rumsfeld has publically denounced this report as "nonsense"[2],some argue that the 'Salvador Option' was put into operation, pointing to the discovery of 'death squads' in the Shiite led Iraqi ministry.[3]