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Raiding a Mosque

From Rahul Mahajan at Empire Notes today:

At 3:30 am on Sunday morning, 100 American troops raided the mosque. They were looking for weapons and mujaheddin. They started the raid the way they virtually always do -- by smashing in the gates with tanks and then driving Hummer in. The Hummers ran over and destroyed some of the stored relief goods (the bulk of the goods had already been sent to Fallujah -- over 200 tons -- but the amount remaining was considerable). More was destroyed as soldiers ripped apart sacks looking for rifles. Rashid estimated maybe three
tons of supplies were destroyed. We saw for ourselves some of the remains,
sacks of beans ripped apart and strewn around.

The mosque was full of people, including 90 down from Kirkuk (many with the Red Crescent). They were all pushed down on the floor, with guns put to the backs of their heads. Another person associated with the mosque, Mr. Alber, who speaks very good English, told us that he repeatedly said, "Please, don't break down doors. Please, don't break windows. We can help you. We can have custodians unlock the doors." (Alber, by the way, was imprisoned by Saddam for running a bakery. As he said, "Under the embargo, you could eat flour, you could eat sugar, you could eat eggs, all separately. But mix them together and bake them and you were harming the economy by raising the price of sugar and you could get 15 years in prison.)

The Americans refused to listen to Alber's pleas. We went all around the mosque and the adjacent madrassah, the Imam Aadham Islamic College. We saw dozens of doors broken down, windows broken, ceilings ripped apart, and bullet holes in walls and ceilings. The way the soldiers searched for illicit arms in the ceiling was first to spray the ceiling with gunfire, then break out a panel and go up and search.

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