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Military Executions in Iraq

by TChris

This is the system American soldiers are fighting (and dying) to protect?

As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

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    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#1)
    by soccerdad on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:30 PM EST
    Is this really any surprise given the history between the Shia and Sunnis. There are atrocites being committed by both groups as well as the US, the white phospherous story being only the latest example. I know PPJ wants a solution; There appears to be 3 choices: 1. come up with about 600-700k troops which would give the same troop/citizen ratio as kosovo, hope it improves security, and allows a government to begin to function 2. get out and let them sort it out in a civil war or 3 stay as is let the civial war go on a lower level while letting Americans get killed and bankrupting the country which was one of OBL's real goal. They are all awful. You can't put the evil genies back in the bottle.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#2)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:30 PM EST
    of course the US is shocked, shocked I tell you to find out death squads are operating in iraq!
    the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.


    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#3)
    by Quaker in a Basement on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:30 PM EST
    This is the system American soldiers are fighting (and dying) to protect?
    In a word: yes.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#6)
    by teacherken on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:30 PM EST
    and over the weekend four members of a Christian Peacemakers Team were abducted in W Baghdad. Now there is video of them on Al Jazeera. The abductors are accusing them of being spies.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    It's interesting to me that both TChris and the NYT suggest that the evidence to support these claims is mounting, but then neither one offers even a shred of it to us. Hmmm.....suspicious.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#5)
    by roy on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    TChris passes along the conclusions, but none of the skepticism over the evidence. Is he "fixing" the intelligence? But seriously, this isn't the sort of blog that does original research. It's not TChris's job to do an investigative reporter's job.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#7)
    by john horse on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    Variable,
    It's interesting to me that both TChris and the NYT suggest that the evidence to support these claims is mounting, but then neither one offers even a shred of it to us. Hmmm.....suspicious
    (Warning: Sarcasm Alert) Its good of you to be skeptical. After all, there were only "hundreds of accounts of killings and torture" by Iraqi death squad. That is not nearly enough to be able to form an opinion, is it? There was the recent admission by former prime minister Allawi that human rights abuses by the government are as bad, if not worse, than they were under Saddam. But what does he know?

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#8)
    by john horse on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    I suggest anyone who has any doubts that government death squads exist in Iraq read the recent LA Times article (found via Body and Soul)
    The Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs. But U.S. military advisors in Iraq say the term (death squads) is apt, and the Interior Ministry's inspector general concurs that extrajudicial killings are being carried out by ministry forces. "There are such groups operating — yes, this is correct," said Interior Ministry Inspector General Nori Nori. Over several months, the Muslim Scholars Assn., a Sunni organization, has compiled a library of grisly autopsy photos, lists of hundreds of missing and dead Sunnis and electronic recordings of testimonies by people who say they witnessed abuses by police officers affiliated with Shiite militias.
    This is, unfortunately, only a partial list of the evidence for the existence of Iraqi government death squads.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#9)
    by desertswine on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    Not to worry. This is all part of Bush's diabolical "Victory Strategy."

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#10)
    by owenz on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    Newsweek knew about this in January, folks:
    NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras. There is no evidence, however, that Negroponte knew anything about the Salvadoran death squads or the Iran-Contra scandal at the time. The Iraq ambassador, in a phone call to NEWSWEEK on Jan. 10, said he was not involved in military strategy in Iraq. He called the insertion of his name into this report "utterly gratuitous.")
    Ok, so it took them 10 months to organize the program. Not a big shock, considering how incompetant the Pentagon is. My prediction is that evidence will soon emerge making it crystal clear that these are U.S. backed Death Squads. Much like the torture debate, however, the emergence of clear and conclusive evidence of Pentagon-sponsored Death Squads will do nothing to stop the practice and rightwingers will eagerly defend the killings.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#11)
    by owenz on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    As for whether or not Death Squads are actually operating in Iraq, well, could they all be wrong?
    Yochi J. Dreazen, Greg Jaffe and John D. McKinnon write in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "President Bush, in an address at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., Wednesday is expected to emphasize progress in training Iraqi troops. But the administration's endorsement comes as Iraqi forces increasingly are operating as sectarian militias, targeting Sunnis on behalf of their Shiite political patrons and raising the possibility of all-out civil war." The Journal quotes Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies as saying: "It's increasingly becoming a war of all against all, with no rules. . . . The Iraqi security forces themselves are becoming just another of the players, and if they owe allegiance to anything, it's to their commanders or communities, and not remotely to the state itself." Dexter Filkins writes in the New York Times: "As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods." Solomon Moore writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Shiite Muslim militia members have infiltrated Iraq's police force and are carrying out sectarian killings under the color of law, according to documents and scores of interviews." Peter Beaumont writes in the Observer: "Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime. " 'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.' " And Ellen Knickmeyer writes in The Washington Post that a prominent Shiite leader wants even more leeway, rather than less: "The leader of Iraq's most powerful political party has called on the United States to let Iraqi fighters take a more aggressive role against insurgents, saying his country will only be able to defeat the insurgency when the United States lets Iraqis get tough."


    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#12)
    by Repack Rider on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:31 PM EST
    Freedom is messy.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#13)
    by Ernesto Del Mundo on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:32 PM EST
    Newsweek knew about this in January, folks:
    And some of us saw this coming even before that. More than a year ago in fact: November 27, 2004: soccerdad: 2 Sunni clerics were assassinated this week. All of this has the hallmarks of a Negroponte move, i.e. decapitate the leadership. Me: Yep this is exactly the method John "Mr. Death Squad" Negroponte used in Central America when he was working for Ronnie Raygun twenty years ago. Of course, we must maintain the "plausible denial" facade here, lest the world sees that there ain't a dime's bit of difference between us and the terrorists we are fighting. --------------------------- Plausible deniability still rules, apparently.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#14)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:32 PM EST
    Death squads, or revenge squads. Either one will do. Nice work Monkey Boy MF.

    Re: Military Executions in Iraq (none / 0) (#15)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:33 PM EST
    EDM and SD, yep ... that's exactly why I like both of you guys around. We all get distracted, but the truth should be a shining beacon, no matter who says it. Che, I think I finally found bush's exit strategy