Lets look at what we know to be highly plausible or uncontroversially true:

The US Army started developing death squads in Iraq as far back as April 2003 according to Shane Bauer
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/bauer/single

Newsweek proudly reported in 2005 that the US military had resurrected the “el Salvador option”. No outcry. Not much concern out of congress.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Additionally, Michael Hirsh and John Barry incredibly claim “There is no evidence, however, that Negroponte knew anything about the Salvadoran death squads or the Iran-Contra scandal at the time.”
Of course a 2-minute Google search would reveal that to be complete nonsense. But after all they are Serious Washington reporters. The discipline of the media is astonishing at times.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames/2203

And what are we to make of Sy Hersh’s comment’s, discussed briefly, then tossed in the memory hole:
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

“Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

“Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

“It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue.”

Winter Patriot observes however:
http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2009/03/screwed-again-seymour-hersh-puts-pro.html
“And so, here we are, in never-never land. Even Seymour Hersh, famed investigative reporter, can’t help slinging it, one shovel-full at a time.

“They’re not murderers, even though what they’re doing is murder. But how do we define a “murderer”? Is it not someone who murders? Hersh can’t even bring himself to call it that, but he will go so far as to say that they’re “committing what we would normally call murder”.

“I’m not a writer. I’m just doing what we would normally call writing. And you’re not a reader. You’re just doing what we would normally call reading. Really. No exaggerations. It’s all highly specialized.”

“Apparently it’s “very complicated”, at least in Hersh’s imagination. And it might not be murder, even though it’s what we would normally call murder, because the murderers are not actually murderers but instead “young men that went into the Special Forces”.

And so the charade goes on. Perhaps until Hersh finally writes that, um… well… it actually was operational… but its a very complicated issue.