Ordered to just walk away (Giving Iraq back to the thugs)

[Q]

Ordered to just walk away

Saturday, August 07, 2004
MIKE FRANCIS

BAGHDAD - The national guardsman peering through the long-range scope of his rifle was startled by what he saw unfolding in the walled compound below.

From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in plainclothes beat blind folded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.

In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices - metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.

The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions.

But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 - Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S. invasion.

The incident, the first known case of human rights abuses in newly sovereign Iraq, is at the heart of the American dilemma here.

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/oregonian/iraq/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1091880082213032.xml#continue

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- Is this what Americans and thousands of innocent Iraqis are dying for? The US has no intention of 'winning' in Iraq...unless winning means installing a puppet government no bettter than that of Saddam.

[timtom]

1. Thank God

for those National Guardsman who have shown mercy and compassion. It's just too bad that it's the kind of attitude that belongs in "free speech zones" and does NOT reflect the underlying position of this current "administration!"

"Compassionate conservative" indeed!! Ptui! I spit on *'s "compassionate conservative!"

I truly pray for the restoration of the spirit that these men showed as representative of America.

[Q]

2. The Guardsmen did great...

...but this episode shows that the Bushies have no intention of 'installing democracy' in Iraq or anywhere else. They got their puppet government and oil...and to hell with the Iraqi people.

- This is but ONE reason why we shouldn't be there and that this phony war has nothing to do with the fight against terrorism.

[Hubert Flottz]

3. The Bad part is, that you and I fund terrorism with our tax dollars!

Thanks to the Neocons!

[timtom]

8. Amen to that, brother.

One little "trick", if you will, that I use is to refuse to refer to the military actions of the US since 2001 as a "war", thus I don't legitimize it in any way. It is nothing more nor less than unjustified military aggression against virtually defenseless nations.

I don't remember ANYONE ever comparing JFK, Carter, or Clinton to Hitler. And yet this person...this "Bush"...seems to attract this comparison from all quarters. Odd, no? Call me a sentimental old fool
but maybe...just maybe...there is some cause for comparison.

By the way, just to clarify, this rant is in no way directed at you, Q. Just the subject line. This stuff makes me go bananas and off on a tear I go.

[gaijin99]

4. Think nastier here people

This is not news, its olds. The incident happened on June 29, almost two months ago. The question you need to be asking is "Why is this being released now?"

Do you suppose that the "brave Americans stopping torture" meme is being released now because of the show trials for the scapegoats of Abu Gharib?

I don't think that Oregon Live is part of some deep conspiricy, but I'll bet that *someone* in the Bush government had to authorize the release of the info contained in the article, and I will believe that the whole Bush government is dedicated to doing whatever it takes to get elected <1>.

Its horrible, its awful, and its yet another confirmation that Bush never had any intention of putting a democracy in Iraq, but more importantly its a destraction ploy, and you've fallen for it. Forget about the Iraqi government's abuse of prisoners, bring the light back to the US government's abuse of prisoners. Not that Iraqi abuse isn't important, but its a lot more important to focus on the Bush government authorized and encouraged torture.

<1> Or at least re-selected. I don't think they'd turn down being elected for the first time, but being defeated the first time around didn't seem to hinder 'em any.

[Hubert Flottz]

6. Welcome to DU!

I remember how secure America was four years ago! I do not think that 9/11 would have happened if the winner had won in 2000! I know we wouldn't be in Iraq in the first place if Al Gore had been allowed to do the job he was elected to do! The blood of all the dead since Bush TOOK office is on the hands of the Five Greedy Supreme Court Judas...err Justices!

Impeachment is not only to remove a BAD President!

[newyawker99]

10. Hi gaijin99!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[amber dog democrat]

5. Has anything changed?

Besides this being old news, i don't see that anyone arrested in Iraq has expectations of anything better.
If anything the US helps brutal dictatorships. It always has since..... the Spanish American War.

[cosmicdot]

7. wash, rinse, repeat - Iraq is a profit center

making money on the way in and on the way out ... democracy, just the sales pitch ... running the USA like a corporation ...

the trickle around theory ... what tax money goes into Iraq comes back into the treasury of a corporation ...

re-arming Iraq with weapons of mass destruction is an investment for future conquering, re-sovereignization, destroying, rebuilding product cycle for Halliburton-Raytheon-Bechtel, etc.


Product Forecast:/Upcoming Profit Centers: Syria and Iran



imo - just more proof of the thread's premise

Jul 13, 2004

Arms suppliers scramble into Iraq

By Thalif Deen

NEW YORK - When the 15-member United Nations Security Council legitimized the US-imposed interim government in Baghdad in June, the five-page unanimous resolution carried a provision little publicized in the media: the lifting of a 14-year arms embargo on Iraq.

The Security Council's decision to end military sanctions on Iraq has triggered a rush by the world's weapons dealers to make a grab for a potentially multimillion-dollar new arms market in the already over-armed Middle East.

The former US-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which handed over power to the new Iraqi government on June 28, finalized plans for the purchase of six C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft, 16 Iroquois helicopters and a squadron of 16 low-flying, light reconnaissance aircraft - all for delivery by next April.

The proposed purchases were part of an attempt to rebuild and revitalize Iraq's sanctions-hit, weapons-starved military.

But some experts question the strategy.

"The flow of weapons to Iraq will not improve the security situation in Iraq, nor will it make the country safe from outside threats or an external invasion," said Naseer H Aruri, chancellor professor (emeritus) at the University of Massachusetts. "With 140,000 US military personnel, 20,000 from the so-called coalition of the willing and another 20,000 contracted civilians, Iraq remains occupied and denied effective sovereignty," said Aruri, author of Dishonest Broker: The US Role in Israel and Palestine.

~snip~

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG13Ak01.html

[HamdenRice]

9. It's part politics within the Bush junta

Part of what is going on is the continuing struggle between the Pentagon on the one hand and the State Dept/CIA on the other. The last several months have seen intense struggle between these two factions of the junta, with the end result that State/CIA has begun to take over Iraq from the Pentagon.

The State/CIA faction always favored "turned" Bathists, like Alawi, while the neo-cons at the Pentagon had deluded fantasies of purging Iraq of Bathists in order (1) to privatize the economy, taking it away from the pseudo-socialist Bathists and (2) protect Israel, by removing a political authority that is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.

This struggle broke open most dramatically into the public view when the State/CIA faction had the Pentagon's handpicked leader, Chalabi, arrested.

The return of Sadam's torture specialists means that State/CIA is doing its "neo-realist" program of Sadamism without Sadam. All this uder "Saint Colin" who is no better than the rest of them -- except he believes that Iraqis' torture should be for the Iraqis, under the indirect direction, of course, of John "hitman" Negroponte of Central American death squad fame, while the Pentagon faction's preferred method was to take the matter of torture into its own hands.