How to train death squads and quash revolutions from San Salvador to Iraq

Julian Assange of Wikileaks introduces the 219-page U.S. military counterinsurgency manual, titled, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), with the declaration:

How to covertly train paramilitaries, censor the press, ban unions, employ terrorists, conduct warrantless searches, suspend habeas corpus, conceal breaches of the Geneva Convention and make the population love it.

That there exists such a manual isn't at all surprising. Those that know the history of the U.S., knows the country has repeatedly engaged in some questionable colonial excursions to other countries, usually with disastrous consequences for the peoples of the host nation. What should be surprising -- shocking, even -- is some of the tactics the manual advocates: warrantless searches; detainment without charge; the suspension of habeas corpus; prosecuting individuals for terrorism who are not terrorists; concealing human rights abuses from journalists; and, the use of subterfuge and "psychological operations" (propaganda) to make these and other "population & resource control" measures more palatable. These are exactly the tactics the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have employed on the United States.