Severian
16th November 2005, 19:54
"In free Iraq there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near."
---George W. Bush (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/bushtext_031703.html)
In reality, it turns out.... (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article327331.ece)
The raid was at a building in central Baghdad. Men armed with automatic rifles burst in and made their way to a set of underground cells where they found 175 people huddled together. They had been captured by paramilitaries and tortured. The terrified, mainly Sunni, captives had been held in an office of the Iraqi interior ministry, and the rescue party were Iraqi police and American soldiers.
.....
People are arrested and disappear for months. Bodies appear every week of men, and sometimes women, executed with their hands tied behind their backs. Some have been grotesquely mutilated with knives and electric drills before their deaths.
The paramilitaries are not held responsible for all the deaths - some are the work of insurgents murdering supposed informers or government officials, or killing for purely sectarian motives.
You very seldom see American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad now. The Iraqi police are in evidence outside, but so are increasing numbers of militias running their own checkpoints - men in balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, with leather mittens and an array of weapons. An American official acknowledged: "It is getting more and more like Mogadishu every day."
Travelling through the Iraqi capital you meet Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army; fellow Shias from the Badr Brigade; the Kurdish peshmerga; as well as Western and Iraqi security guards. Then there are Iraqi soldiers and policemen, government paramilitaries, special police commandos and a group which prides itself on being the most feared, the Wolf Brigade of the interior ministry.
....
Although the US forces had ridden to the rescue on this occasion, many of these units have been created, trained and armed by the Americans. According to reports, $3bn (£1.7bn) out of an $87bn Iraq appropriation that Congress approved last year was earmarked for the creation of paramilitary units to fight the insurgency. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, said: "They set up little teams of [Navy] Seals and special forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were in senior intelligence under the Saddam regime."
Some of the other news reports related to this are linked and summarized here. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1116/dailyUpdate.html)
One aspect of it, which is not fully brought out in the article I just quoted, is how various parts of the Iraqi army, police, and security forces are becoming more and more closely associated with various Shi'a and Kurdish party militias. The feared Wolf Brigade, for example, basically the Badr militia in new uniforms. (http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot2_060905.html)
---George W. Bush (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/bushtext_031703.html)
In reality, it turns out.... (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article327331.ece)
The raid was at a building in central Baghdad. Men armed with automatic rifles burst in and made their way to a set of underground cells where they found 175 people huddled together. They had been captured by paramilitaries and tortured. The terrified, mainly Sunni, captives had been held in an office of the Iraqi interior ministry, and the rescue party were Iraqi police and American soldiers.
.....
People are arrested and disappear for months. Bodies appear every week of men, and sometimes women, executed with their hands tied behind their backs. Some have been grotesquely mutilated with knives and electric drills before their deaths.
The paramilitaries are not held responsible for all the deaths - some are the work of insurgents murdering supposed informers or government officials, or killing for purely sectarian motives.
You very seldom see American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad now. The Iraqi police are in evidence outside, but so are increasing numbers of militias running their own checkpoints - men in balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, with leather mittens and an array of weapons. An American official acknowledged: "It is getting more and more like Mogadishu every day."
Travelling through the Iraqi capital you meet Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army; fellow Shias from the Badr Brigade; the Kurdish peshmerga; as well as Western and Iraqi security guards. Then there are Iraqi soldiers and policemen, government paramilitaries, special police commandos and a group which prides itself on being the most feared, the Wolf Brigade of the interior ministry.
....
Although the US forces had ridden to the rescue on this occasion, many of these units have been created, trained and armed by the Americans. According to reports, $3bn (£1.7bn) out of an $87bn Iraq appropriation that Congress approved last year was earmarked for the creation of paramilitary units to fight the insurgency. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, said: "They set up little teams of [Navy] Seals and special forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were in senior intelligence under the Saddam regime."
Some of the other news reports related to this are linked and summarized here. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1116/dailyUpdate.html)
One aspect of it, which is not fully brought out in the article I just quoted, is how various parts of the Iraqi army, police, and security forces are becoming more and more closely associated with various Shi'a and Kurdish party militias. The feared Wolf Brigade, for example, basically the Badr militia in new uniforms. (http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot2_060905.html)