Did you think that after the chief US commander and the US Ambassador in Baghdad both signed a final “Withdrawal Agreement” with the Iraqi government on November 17, the 140,000-plus US forces remaining in Iraq would shift their mission to prepare for their successive withdrawals (a) out of all Iraq’s cities and large towns, and (b) out of the whole country, as mandated by the agreement? Did you think they might start to work very hard at building a much better, more cooperative relationship with all segments of Iraqi society, as a way of ensuring their regrouping and subsequent complete withdrawal could be carried out with minimum casualties?
Did you think they might start to behave better?
Think again.
CNN today carries a grotesque story about a US “Special Forces” raid on a family farmstead outside Baghdad on December 10, in the course of which the Americans killed a member of the farming family, apparently in cold blood, and then either before or after the killing chopped off his right index finger and apparently took it away with them.
(HT: Raed Jarrar.)
CNN’s Michael Ware is careful to report both “sides” of the story. Including the detailed claims made by surviving family members about how the man, Hardan al-Jubouri, was first of all forced by the heavily armed Americans to lie down in an outside courtyard in only his underwear, like all other male family members, and was then directed by the Americans to return inside the house and turn on all the lights, after which they killed him inside there. And the claims from the US military that he had somehow escaped from their control in the courtyard, returned voluntarily into the house and emerged with an assault rifle.
The family has some grainy video footage of the aftermath of the raid, including of a lot of blood on the walls, bullet holes, and Hardan’s mutilated hand.
Ware reported that the US military is conducting an investigation.
Raed is asking his readers to contact the US military and ask whether cutting off people’s fingers is official policy… also about whether executing people described simply as “Al-Qaeda suspects” is also official policy. (He gives an email address at the Iraq.centcom.mil domain name. I think it might be better to go higher up the chain of command?)
These are good and important questions.
There are also some larger questions that urgently need asking about the US’s military policy in Iraq. Primarily this: Does our government intend to fulfill its completely unequivocal obligations to undertake a complete withdrawal from the cities by the end of next June and a complete withdrawal from the whole country by the end of 2011– or is it planning to look for a way to evade those obligations?
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I guess you were there and have all the answers. I look forward to your personally collected evidence. Why would there be bullet holes in the walls if all the males were laying peacefully in the courtyard? Could it be that the wonderfully gracious host was pointing his weapon at the soldiers when his finger was supposedly chopped off? That could be due to his finger in the trigger when pointed at the soldiers. WOW! I can spin suppositions just like you. My story has as much truth to it as yours. What a rube!
These are good and important questions.
“If you give people power without oversight it is a formula for abuse,”
Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo
When Abu Ghraib brook out GW Bush told those some ” Bad Apples”, US military then came with massage telling us that they introduced new training programs for US solders.
It’s common now you read from Iraqi newspapers (which are US funded as leaked before) telling every day that:
US Army killing / arresting of al Qaeda suspect!! So whoever apposing US occupation in Iraq called to be al Qaeda suspect, as there is no other name.
Campaign Against Torture
Three Years After the Abu Ghraib Scandal
US Guidelines on Detainee Treatment Still Leave Room for Abuse, Accountability Is Inadequate
US’s military policy in Iraq.
Helena your question answered before asking.
Obama kept Gate as his defense secretary so it means there is no change.
“GATES: That’s absolutely right. They are a sovereign country, and if they tell us after the end of 2011, we want you all out, I think we have no choice but to do that.”
will be the new man in charge of US-led forces in Iraq, taking over from General Petraeus.
New US Commander General Odierno the new man in charge of US-led forces in Iraq, taking over from General Petraeus few days after singing the fake treaty called SOFA. Odierno himself, few weeks ago that he had no intention of sticking to the U.S. agreement with Iraq which says all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the summer. Now he’s saying that “any decision on force structure here in Iraq will be made by me,” and he won’t be making it before next Spring, in anticipation of a Surge (TM) in violence surrounding the upcoming Iraqi provincial elections.?
They are a sovereign country!!!
“Does our government intend to fulfill its completely unequivocal obligations to undertake a complete withdrawal from the cities by the end of next June and a complete withdrawal from the whole country by the end of 2011– or is it planning to look for a way to evade those obligations?”
They NEVER intended to fulfill the obligations outlined in the so-called SOFA.
What did they need the three year window for other than to buy time to find a way to obviate the agreement?
What the world doesn’t need, Ms. Cobban, is another leftist website full of Pro-Islamist vitriol. I can only be grateful that your not in charge of teaching U.S. history to American schoolchildren