According to recent articles in the London Observer and elsewhere, there is evidence suggesting that the new Iraqi government, using funding from the US and UK, has created "commando" units to serve as paramilitary counter-insurgency forces. These units have been linked to death-squad style tactics such as extra-judicial executions, torture, arbitrary arrest, and detention without trial. Known as the "The Wolf Brigade" (also referred to as "Rumsfeld's Boys"), this unit is operating as part of the Iraqi Defense Department, roaming the countryside in land rovers, killing and torturing as they see fit.

This group, officially known as the Special Police Commandos, is made up of a mixture of former Republican Guard and Mukhabarat, Saddam's notorius secret police. Both groups are experienced with torture and the other instruments of state terror and are led by a former general named Adnan Thabit. Since the elections, the Wolf Brigade has played a major role in the crackdown throughout the Sunni Triangle that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. This story was being tracked by an Iraqi reporter with the Knight Ridder news service named Yasser Salihee. On June 24 Salihee was killed by a single bullet to the head from an American sniper.

The US has played an advisory role in the formation of these paramilitary units in Iraq. One of the men involved with advising the "Wolf Brigade" is James Steele, a veteran of US counterinsurgency efforts. Steele learned his trade by leading a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country's brutal civil war in the 1980's and was later implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal. The civil war in El Salvador resulted in 70,000 dead civilians, the vast majority killed by pro-government death squads funded and trained by the US. The presence of personnel such as Steele seems to confirm that the US is following a similar strategy in Iraq as it did in El Salvador.