The Salvador Option is an approach to counter-insurgency warfare involving the use of death squads utilized by the United States Department of Defense during the Salvadoran Civil War.
It raised the question of possible U.S. military involvement in the use of quasi-official death squads, a tactic that was allegedly instrumental in bringing a decade-long war against the Salvadoran Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) to a close.
[5] Israeli officers trained American troops in urban warfare techniques based on their experience in the West Bank and Gaza.
[6][7] An article published in the Guardian quoted senior a US intelligence official who confirmed Israeli involvement and the setting up of assassination teams.
An article published by Newsweek in January 2005 that explored the notion of the "Salvador Option" quoted anonymous military insiders but did not specify the precise origin of the phrase or explicitly say that those words were actually used by Pentagon sources..[8] 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.