The Iraq thread 4

[walker 0]

Hi all

It looks like control of the town of Qaim has been taken over by the Al Qaida in an action that echoes Falujha.

Quote[/b] ]Insurgents Seize Key Town in Iraq

Al Qaeda in Iraq's Black Banner Flying From Rooftops

By Ellen Knickmeyer

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, September 5, 2005; 8:30 AM

BAGHDAD, Sept. 5 -- Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led Al-Qaeda in Iraq took open control of a key western town at the Syrian border, deploying its guerrilla fighters in the streets and flying , witnesses, residents and others in the city and surrounding villages said.

A sign newly posted at the entrance of Qaim declared, "Welcome to the Islamic Kingdom of Qaim." A statement posted in mosques described Qaim as an "Islamic kingdom liberated from the occupation."

Zarqawi's fighters were killing officials and civilians seen as government-allied or anti-Islamic, the witnesses, residents and others said. On Sunday, the bullet-riddled body of a woman lay in a street of Qaim. A sign left on her corpse declared, "A prostitute who was punished."

There was no immediate comment from U.S. or Iraqi military officials. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, said he was looking into the reports.

Qaim, within a few miles of the Syrian border, has been a major stronghold for insurgents ferrying fighters, weapons and money from Syria into the rest of Iraq along a network of Euphrates River towns.

Many of the towns along the river have appeared to be heavily under the insurgents' domination, despite repeated Marine offenses along the river since May. Residents and Marines have described insurgents escaping ahead of the offensives, and returning when the offensives are over.

While the stepped-up U.S. offensives have been unable to drive out insurgents permanently, the U.S. attacks are credited by some with helping disrupt insurgent networks and reduce the number of car-bombings and suicide attacks in the rest of Iraq...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn....13.html

I keep saying the coalition needs to put in more troops in order to control the situation.

If only the sacked US generals had been listened to and enough troops had gone into the stabalisation force in first place we would probably have been out of there by now with a stable healthy Iraq.

Now we have a quagmire

Sadly Walker

[ThudBlunderQ8 0]

Never bothered to read this thread before, let alone post. However, had a very interesting conversation with an oppo who's just finished his third 9-on/3-off stint with a security company in Iraq. He's an experienced operator - not one of your Weekend Warriors or Wisconsin Wannabe's; many years in S Africa's Police Task Force.

He is very scathing about the nature and scale of many of the Coalition undertakings in Iraq. Driving the whole thing, he says, is Business - not aid, not reconstruction, not justice, just Business. Nothing new there, I suppose.

Some of the specific stories were hair-raising to say the least. He was lead escort in a convoy from Baghdad to Kirkuk (these blokes do 35,000 km in every 9 week det...) when they approached the rear of a US convoy. Now, the civvies drive at full chat - around 130 kph loaded, 160 kph empty which in those big trucks is going some. US convoys are very hostile things to be around; won't let you near (within 250m) without specific clearance from the tail gunner in the rear Humvee. Well, this time the tail-gunner was fast asleep. Not just looking the other way, not reading his comic - he was asleep at his Mk19-or-whatever. Our friend's convoy isn't slowing up behind him, so rather than get rammed by his own trucks he takes the decision to pass the convoy. No reaction from the Americans until he gets up to the front of the US vehicles. The lead American vehicle belatedly realises what's zooming up in his mirror, throws a dicky-fit and opens fire. My oppo's vehicle and one truck hit - no-one wounded but the truck driver is badly injured when his truck rolls. Both convoys continue - injured are picked up by civ escort, trashed vehicles abandoned.

Another occasion, US Humvee opens up on a passing convoy and destroys a truck. US vehicles are effectively unmarked, so no comeback from the civvies to find out wtf had upset that particular gunner that particular day.

Yet another time, oppo has to stop vehicle near US unit so picks up HUGE Union Flag (he works for a Brit employer), gets out of vehicle and goes over to identify himself. US guard goes into hyper-mode, screaming at him (only in English, or his version of it.. ) to get face-down yesterday or he's dead. After lots more shouting and testosterone, another guard comes over, tells my oppo to get up and asks the first guard what the problem was. First guard says "this guy approaches waving some kinda flag I don't know so I challenge him". Let's see - they're in the area S of Baghdad near the Brit "controlled" zone centred around Basra, the bloke's just climbed out of a vehicle covered in Brit markings and is holding a Union Flag yet the brain-donor guard doesn't know the emblem of one of their Coalition nations?

As for Basra - don't get him started. The Brits (those of us who were HM Forces for 28 years, anyway) would be saddened to hear how poorly we're faring there. There are 2 main "players" - warlords, if you prefer - there who control everything. You don't pay the money to the right man, you get bombed/ shot-at/ you-name-it. From the news over the past few days, it would appear that our defence budget hasn't been handing over enough fallous to the appropriate individual...

[Airbourne Alchaholic 0]

Just as a sidenote, I found something interesting:

Bagdad, Arizona

I found it while using Flight Simulator, it's right above Baghdad Intl.

Check it out here!

Please don't let this post distract you from the main argument, I thought it would be interesting for some of you to know.

[walker 0]

Hi all

The day to day bombings shootings and rocket attacks go on in Iraq. Nothing has changed nothing moves forward.

Here is an interesting report from the front lines by one of the brave coalition soldiers who continue to do their duty despite the failures of leadership of TBA it is well worth a read:

Quote[/b] ]For a U.S. Platoon in Iraq, Merciless Missions

Days Are Spent Pursuing Enemy, Fending Off Death

By Steve Fainaru

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A01

BALAD, Iraq -- On an asphalt road surrounded by apple trees and date palms, a bomb went off beneath an armored Humvee leading a midnight patrol. The towering fireball, followed by an explosion, lit up the night and propelled the five-ton vehicle two feet into the air.

The Humvee fell and sputtered to a halt, its bulletproof windshield cracked, its electrical system shut down. Inside, four American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter choked on dust and grit. The attack was witnessed by a reporter riding along on the Aug. 26 patrol and later described by soldiers involved

"My face! My face! I can't see!" screamed Sgt. Jason Fishbein, 30, a diminutive gunner from the New York City borough of Queens. Along with the Humvee's other occupants, Fishbein was unharmed; the gray dust had momentarily blinded him and it was sweat -- not blood, as he feared -- that poured from his face.

"Man, I got a headache now," said Cpl. William Young, the 24-year-old driver of the second Humvee, which careened into a ditch as fist-sized chunks of asphalt hurtled toward it. Young reached into the back seat, where Sgt. Joseph Smith, 29 and deaf in his right ear from an earlier blast, handed him an extra-large bottle of migraine medicine.

Six hours after the attack, and with only a few hours of sleep, the soldiers of the 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, were back patrolling the bomb-cratered streets of Balad, an agricultural city about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The attack quickly faded, taking its place alongside myriad others that have occurred during the platoon's first eight months of a yearlong combat tour in Iraq.

The experiences of the 17-man "Blue Platoon," as the unit is called, go to the heart of the growing debate over the continued involvement of U.S. troops in Iraq. The days are infused not with the politics of war but the stark realities of it: tragedy and loss, loneliness and exhaustion, resilience and camaraderie in the face of a stubborn and deadly insurgency. The platoon's daily life has been ordered by nothing more than the merciless patrol schedule, twice-daily, four-hour combat missions that inevitably place the soldiers in the paths of attacks aimed at killing them.

"I can tell you right now: We ready to go home," said L.B. Baker, 38, a lanky trumpet player and farmer from Belcher, La., who as platoon sergeant is responsible for holding the unit together.

"I tell my guys every day, 'Look, this is the home stretch,' " Baker said. "I don't want them to relax right now. It's not the time to start thinking this is a game."

In three days of patrols culminating in the roadside attack, the physical and emotional toll of prosecuting the war in Iraq was vividly apparent in interviews, personal diaries written by the soldiers, and even songs they recorded in makeshift barracks studios. Weighted down by 50 pounds of body armor and ammunition, the soldiers venture out every day in 120-degree heat to find the insurgents. More often than not, they never do, even after bombs explode directly on them, a source of endless frustration compounded by what the soldiers said is the unwillingness of most Iraqis to help them.

"It's always kul shee maku ," said Sgt. Rob Hammer, a 32-year-old squad leader from Sublette, Kan., reciting the Arabic phrase for "there is nothing," which the entire platoon has memorized.

In such an unforgiving environment, the Americans said they found meaning in their commitment to each other, "the friends who would take a bullet for me, friends who would kill their own selves to save my life," said Sgt. Patrick Hagood, 24, of Anderson, S.C.

In the tense moments after that Friday's bombing, Blue Platoon's medic, Pfc. James Tickal, 23, of Oviedo, Fla., first checked to make sure his soldiers were okay. He then took out a brown, leather-bound diary he keeps inside his Humvee and recorded the incident in the middle of rubble...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn....62.html

The diary goes on for a further 5 pages so click the link to read more of what it is like for the troops in Iraq.

The similarities to Vietnam are as plain as the nose on your face.

The difference is this mess has to be cleared up, there are no excuses. We are going to have to put in more troops and take hold of the situation.

Never the less the failures of leadership by the coalitions political leaders need investigation. I think it is time for a special prosecutor to examine what brought us to this sensless war and who is responcible for the deaths of 2091 coalition soldiers, the wounding and maiming of 6813 coalition Soldiers, the killing of 3105 Iraqi security forces and the killing of over 24500 Iraqi Civilians and the wounding and maiming of probably 80,000 more.

Tens of thousands of Deaths Tens of thousands badly wounded and maimed.

All for no WMD, No linlk to 9/11 and No link to Al Qaida till we invited them in.

And all we have done since is run Iraq as a training ground for Al Qaida.

Criminal, Criminal, Criminal.

Sadly Walker

[Balschoiw 0]

With the latest shift in Zarquawi tactics over 250 people died over the last 5 days. He has declared war in shias now and the victims they found were showing traces of torture and hard interrogation which indicates that the AQ brnach is specifically after shia names and population.

In another scenario Basra has been turned into the Wild West:

Iraq probe into soldier incident

Quote[/b] ]The Iraqi government has launched an inquiry into the events that led the British Army to stage a dramatic rescue of two UK soldiers detained by police.

Both men were members of the SAS elite special forces, sources told the BBC's Richard Galpin in Baghdad.

The soldiers were arrested by police and then handed over to a militia group, the British Army says.

Iraq's interior ministry ordered the police force in Basra to release the soldiers but that order was ignored.

Defence Secretary John Reid told reporters that a delegation of six British military personnel, including a legal officer, had been sent to the police station to ease the release of the men.

Mr Reid said surveillance had established the men were being moved to another location, while at the same time an angry crowd posed an obstacle to the departure of the six-strong team.

The British commander on the ground, Brigadier John Lorimer, ordered British forces to move into the police station to help the team.

Almost simultaneously, a separate operation was staged to rescue the men from the place where they had been moved to.

It is understood force was also used in this operation, although there were no casualties as the Shia militia holding the British soldiers fled.

The episode saw a wall flattened at the police station by a British armoured personnel carrier, but Mr Reid said the coalition was still going "in the right direction" in terms of its overall strategy in Iraq and said this incident was merely "local".

Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili said the men - possibly working undercover - were arrested for allegedly shooting dead a policeman and wounding another.

Richard Galpin said al-Jazeera news channel footage, purportedly of the equipment carried in the men's car, showed assault rifles, a light machine gun, an anti-tank weapon, radio gear and medical kit.

This is thought to be standard kit for the SAS operating in such a theatre of operations, he said.

The arrests sparked angry protests from locals in which British vehicles were attacked and set on fire.

Haydar al-Abadi, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said the British rescue had been "a very unfortunate development".

"My understanding is that, first, it happened very quickly. Second, there is lack of discipline in the whole area regarding this matter...

"It is a very unfortunate development that the British forces should try to release their soldiers the way it happened, it's very unfortunate."

Soon afterwards, the Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement insisting there was no crisis in relations with the British.

"In response to recent events in Basra, the Iraqi government wants to clarify that there is no 'crisis' - as some media have claimed - between it and the British government.

"Both governments are in close contact, and an inquiry will be conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior into the incident.

"We will await the outcome of that inquiry. In the meantime we urge all sides to remain calm."

Brigadier John Lorimer said it was of "deep concern" the men detained by police ended up held by Shia militia, something that put their lives in danger.

In a statement, Brig Lorimer said that under Iraqi law the soldiers should have been handed over to coalition authorities, but this failed to happen despite repeated requests.

The Conservatives' defence spokesman Michael Ancram has accused the government of "uncertainty" over its strategy in Iraq, while the Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy said Iraq was drifting towards civil war.

Tensions were already high in Basra on Monday morning following the detention on Sunday of a senior figure in the Shia Mehdi Army, suspected of being behind a series of attacks on British troops.

It has been reported that the SAS guys didn´t stop at a checkpoint. They were dressed in civil clothes and during the firefight that happened one Iraqi policemen got killed and another one injured. The 2 guys were captured and taken to a police station. The policestation was later on overrun by an APC and the military vehicles came under attack by angry demonstrators. Several demonstrators were killed by gunfire in the aftermath.

No good news.

[Supah 0]

On the BBC it was reported that the British Army was respectfull of local law up untill the point the two men were handed over to local insurgents by the police there. Now if this is true all I can say is good job on preventing another Iran hostage situation. The Iraqi security advisor admitted the police forces were infiltrated on all levels by the insurgents.

[walker 0]

Hi supah

You are correct in saying that the Police in Iraq are infiltrated.

It is a little more complicated than that though.

In the Sunni triangle the Police and Army have been infiltrated by the insurgents.

In the Kurdish areas the Police are predominantly Kurds and in fact the Kurds make up most of the Army. In point of fact most of the effective brigades are and those used recently in the Sunni Triangle, Kurds.

In the Shia areas the police are Shia. I hesitate to say it but  they or rather the millitias they belong to have infiltrated the police.

The particular millitias involved are the Badr Organization and in this case probably the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al-Sadr's millitia. I am sure you remember him he is the man who fermented the Shia insurgency in Sadr city and Najaf, he is now back in government and his fighters released. So in theory at least he is no longer an insurgent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqtada_al-Sadr

There is a turf war going on between Sadr's Millitia and the Badr Organization as well as titi for tat and revenge killings of Sunnis in the south. In Particular the former regime members are being hunted by death squads. The death Squads have infiltrated the police they are predominantly the Badr Organization. There have several cases of the marked police cars taking people in the night. They are also killing any one they do not like the look of.

Recently a US journalist was killed after he started writing stories about the Badr Organization activities, possibly by the Badr Organization or allthough I am by no means certain it may have been Sadr's Millitia. While that was being investigated by the UK Army road side bombings in the area suddenly went on the up and some british soldiers were killed as a result. I leave it to you to form your own opinion as to why a formerly quiet area has suddenly got hot.

The Badr Organization runs the city of Karbala and probably wants to run Basra as does Muqtada al-Sadr's millitia hence the turf war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badr_Organization

Recently one of Muqtada al-Sadr's lieutenants was captured and held in Basra.

My Guess is the SAS guys, if that is what they were, were investigating the killings and observing the police or they were just passing through and captured to be used as bargening counters for the Muqtada al-Sadr's lieutenant. Either is plausable. If they are SAS we will never get a report.

As to the alleged shoot out between them and the police or the circumstances of the reason for their capture. I have seen no clear report. The fact the police gave them up to the millitia when they had been told to release them in to UK army custody may have had several motivations:

* Revenge for killing of a buddy when they were told they had to free them

* Original intention was to use them as bargening counters

* fear of the millitia and mob outside the police station

* higher orders from their own millitia if they are part of one.

The situation in Iraq has always been complicated. hence why I have always said it needs at least five times as many troops.

Kind Regard Walker

[Warden 0]

Quote[/b] ]WARRANT FOR SAS SOLDIERS

An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for two SAS soldiers who were rescued by UK forces.

The judge said they were wanted in connection with the deaths of several Iraqis during a confrontation with the British Army.

He warned the two men could face a life sentence if found guilty of deliberately killing an Iraqi civilian during a disturbance.

The under-cover soldiers were thought to have been on a surveillance mission outside a police station in Basra when they were challenged by Iraqi police.

Local officials have accused the men of opening fire as they tried to escape.

British military authorities had demanded their release and then more troops stepped in to free them.

The judge was reported to have said he was not convinced the two British men were immune from arrest and possible prosecution in Iraq.

British military spokesman Major Steve Melbourne said: "We are not fully aware of the issue of these warrants.

"But what I must say is they have no legal basis for the issue of these."

Taken from Sky News.

[Warden 0]

Quote[/b] ]WARRANT FOR SAS SOLDIERS

Defence Secretary John Reid says arrest warrants issued by an Iraqi judge for two SAS soldiers in Basra have no legal effect.

The judge said the two men freed by British forces on Monday were wanted in connection with the deaths of several Iraqis during an escape bid.

He warned the men could face a life sentence if found guilty of deliberately killing an Iraqi civilian during a disturbance.

But Mr Reid said: "The MoD has not received any arrest warrant relating to any British personnel in Iraq.

He added: "Iraqi law is very clear: British forces remain subject to British jurisdiction."

The undercover soldiers were thought to have been on a surveillance mission outside a police station in Basra when they were challenged by Iraqi police.

Local officials have accused the men of opening fire as they tried to escape.

The judge was reported to have said he was not convinced the two men were immune from arrest and possible prosecution in Iraq.

[Balschoiw 0]

Interesting reads:

Account of Sergeant A, 82nd Airborne Division

Quote[/b] ]Sergeant A served in Afghanistan from September 2002 to March 2003 and in Iraq from August 2003 to April 2004. Human Rights Watch spoke with him on four separate occasions in July and August 2005.

In retrospect what we did was wrong, but at the time we did what we had to do. Everything we did was accepted, everyone turned their heads.

We got to the camp in August [2003] and set up. We started to go out on missions right away. We didn’t start taking PUCs until September. Shit started to go bad right away. On my very first guard shift for my first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, this is what we are allowed to do? This is what we are allowed to get away with? I think the officers knew about it but didn’t want to hear about it. They didn’t want to know it even existed. But they had to.

On a normal day I was on shift in a PUC tent. When we got these guys we had them sandbagged and zip tied, meaning we had a sandbag on their heads and zip ties [plastic cuffs] on their hands. We took their belongings and tossed them in the PUC tent. We were told why they were there. If I was told they were there sitting on IEDs [improvised Explosive Devices, homemade bombs] we would fuck them up, put them in stress positions or put them in a tent and withhold water.

The “Murderous Maniacs†was what they called us at our camp because they knew if they got caught by us and got detained by us before they went to Abu Ghraib then it would be hell to pay. They would be just, you know, you couldn’t even imagine. It was sort of like I told you when they came in it was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy goes before he passes out or just collapses on you. From stress positions to keeping them up fucking two days straight, whatever. Deprive them of food water, whatever.

To “Fuck a PUC†means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day.

To “smoke†someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.

Guard shifts were four hours. We would stress them at least in excess of twelve hours. When I go off shift and the next guy comes we are already stressing the PUC and we let the new guy know what he did and to keep fucking him. We put five-gallon water cans and made them hold them out to where they got muscle fatigue then made them do pushups and jumping jacks until they passed out. We would withhold water for whole guard shifts. And the next guy would too. Then you gotta take them to the john if you give them water and that was a pain. And we withheld food, giving them the bare minimum like crackers from MREs [Meals Ready to Eat, the military’s prepackaged food]. And sleep deprivation was a really big thing.

Someone from [Military Intelligence] told us these guys don’t get no sleep. They were directed to get intel [intelligence] from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling. All that shit. We never stripped them down because this is an all-guy base and that is fucked up shit. We poured cold water on them all the time to where they were soaking wet and we would cover them in dirt and sand. We did the jugs of water where they held them out to collapse all the time. The water and other shit… start[ed] [m]aybe late September, early October, 2003. This was all at Camp Mercury, close to the MEK base8 like 10 minutes from Fallujah. We would transport the PUCs from Mercury to Abu Ghraib.

None of this happened in Afghanistan. We had MPs [military police] attached to us in Afghanistan so we didn’t deal with prisoners. We had no MPs in Iraq. We had to secure prisoners. [Military intelligence] wants to interrogate them and they had to provide guards so we would be the guards. I did missions every day and always came back with 10-15 prisoners. We were told by intel that these guys were bad, but they could be wrong, sometimes they were wrong. I would be told, “These guys were IED trigger men last week.†So we would fuck them up. Fuck them up bad. If I was told the guy was caught with a 9mm [handgun] in his car we wouldn’t fuck them up too bad – just a little. If we were on patrol and catch a guy that killed my captain or my buddy last week – man, it is human nature. So we fucked them up bad. At the same time we should be held to a higher standard. I know that now. It was wrong. There are a set of standards. But you gotta understand, this was the norm. Everyone would just sweep it under the rug.

What you allowed to happen happened. Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel. As long as no PUCs came up dead it happened. We heard rumors of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and legs and shit. If a leg was broken you call the PA – the physician’s assistant – and told him the PUC got hurt when he was taken. He would get Motrin [a pain reliever] and maybe a sling, but no cast or medical treatment.

In Afghanistan we were attached to Special Forces9 and saw OGA. We never interacted with them but they would stress guys. We learned how to do it. We saw it when we would guard an interrogation.

I was an Infantry Fire Team Leader. The majority of the time I was out on mission. When not on mission I was riding the PUCs. We should have had MPs. We should have taken them to Abu Ghraib [which] was only 15 fucking minutes drive. But there was no one to talk to in the chain – it just got killed. We would talk among ourselves, say, “This is bad.†But no one listened. We should never have been allowed to watch guys we had fought.

FOB Mercury was about as big as a football field. We had a battalion there with three or four companies and attachments. We lived in the buildings of an old Iraqi military compound that we built up with barriers, ACs [air conditioners], and stuff. We had civilian interpreters on post and contractors came every day to fix shit. The contractors were local Iraqis.

The PUCs lived in the PUC area about 200 meters away. It had a triple-strength circle concertina barrier with tents in the middle with another triple-strength concertina perimeter. Inside each was a Hesco basket that is wire that normally has cloth in it. We filled them with dirt to make barriers and some we emptied and buried to use as access points for the Iraqis. This was all inside the confines of the FOB. There was a guard tower behind the PUC tent with two guards. One was always looking at the PUC tent. We never took direct fire but did take regular rocket and mortar attacks. We did not lose anyone but had shrapnel injuries.

On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all US soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the fucking cook. He shouldn’t be in with no PUCs. The PA came and said to keep him off the leg. Three days later they transported the PUC to Abu Ghraib. The Louisville Slugger [incident] happened around November 2003, certainly before Christmas.

People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could fuck them up. Broken bones didn’t happen too often, maybe every other week. The PA would overlook it. I am sure they knew.

The interrogator [a sergeant] worked in the [intelligence] office. He was former Special Forces. He would come into the PUC tent and request a guy by number. Everyone was tagged. He would say, “Give me #22.†And we would bring him out. He would smoke the guy and fuck him. He would always say to us, “You didn’t see anything, right?†And we would always say, “No, Sergeant.â€

One day a soldier came to the PUC tent to get his aggravation out and filled his hands with dirt and hit a PUC in the face. He fucked him. That was the communications guy.

One night a guy came and broke chem lights10 open and beat the PUCs with it. That made them glow in the dark which was real funny but it burned their eyes and their skin was irritated real bad.

If a PUC cooperated Intel would tell us that he was allowed to sleep or got extra food. If he felt the PUC was lying he told us he doesn’t get any fucking sleep and gets no food except maybe crackers. And he tells us to smoke him. [intel] would tell the Lieutenant that he had to smoke the prisoners and that is what we were told to do. No sleep, water, and just crackers. That’s it. The point of doing all this was to get them ready for interrogation. [The intelligence officer] said he wanted the PUCs so fatigued, so smoked, so demoralized that they want to cooperate. But half of these guys got released because they didn’t do nothing. We sent them back to Fallujah. But if he’s a good guy, you know, now he’s a bad guy because of the way we treated him.

After Abu Ghraib things toned down. We still did it but we were careful. It is still going on now the same way, I am sure. Maybe not as blatant but it is how we do things.

Each company goes out on a mission and you kick the door down and catch them red handed. We caught them with RPGs [rocket propelled grenades]. So we are going to give you special attention. We yank them off the truck and they hit the ground hard, maybe 5-6 feet down. We took everything and searched them. Then we toss him in the PUC tent with a sandbag on his head and he is zip tied. And he is like that all day and it is 100 degrees in that tent. Once paperwork was done we started to stress them. The five-gallon water can was full of water. We would have people hold out their arms on each side parallel to the ground. After a minute your arms get tired and shake. Then we would take some water out and douse them to get them cold. And the tent is full of dust and they get dirty and caked with it. Then we make them do pushups and jumping jacks. At the end of a guard shift they look like zombies.

We had these new high-speed trailer showers. One guy was the cleaner. He was an Iraqi contractor working on base. We were taking pretty accurate mortar fire and rockets and we were getting nervous. Well one day we found him with a GPS11 receiver and he is like calling in strikes on us! What the fuck!? We took him but we are pissed because he stabbed us in the back. So we gave him the treatment. We got on him with the jugs and doused him and smoked and fucked him.

Account of Sergeant B, 82nd Airborne Division

Quote[/b] ]Sergeant B served in Afghanistan from September 2002 to March 2003 and in Iraq from August 2003 to April 2004. Human Rights Watch spoke with him on two separate occasions in August 2005.

I was an infantry squad leader doing mounted patrols and conducting raids in Iraq. I would catch the bad guys. You heard a lot of stuff as a squad leader in charge of guys watching PUCs about guys mistreating PUCs.

We got to Mercury on the 6th of September. We came from working in al-Qaim. In late September we started to take on PUCs as part of our mission. Since we were capturing them we would detain them for no more than three days, three days max, to interrogate them for intel. We had a mechanized company attached to us which took us up to about battalion strength, maybe 750 people when you include the HHC [headquarters].

PUCs were placed in a GP [general purpose] medium or small tent, about 20x15, and that is being generous. We had 2-3 tents with no more than 10-15 PUCs per tent with a couple guards to a tent. You added guards if you had more PUCs. We would immediately put these guys in stress positions. PUCs would be holding hands behind their backs and be cuff tied and we would lean their forehead against a wall to support them.

As far as abuse goes I saw hard hitting. I heard a lot of stories, but if it ain’t me I wouldn’t care. I was busy leading my men. I did hear about [a sergeant] breaking PUC bones. Stories came out on mission. Guys were always talking about what they did to the PUCs. Guys mentioned stuff but I couldn’t care less what happened at the PUC tent a week ago. Putting guys with frustration in charge of prisoners was the worst thing to do.

I also saw smoking. They would get the PUCs to physically exert themselves to the limit. Feeding was a huge issue and it was brought up. The PUCs wouldn’t eat what we were feeding them as they were against Americans and MREs, so all I saw them eat were crackers. [sergeant A told Human Rights Watch that PUCs were often only fed crackers. It is unclear why Sergeant B believes the detainees had a choice.]

Rest was also an issue. We were told they could be interrogated 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off for sleep and whatever, but I was not regularly in the PUC tents. I brought the PUCs in for interrogation. That is when I saw whatever I saw. Intel had some bad guys and we all know sleep deprivation is a powerful tool.

In Iraq, from the beginning, we messed up on the treatment soldiers had to endure while guarding prisoners. There are five “S’s†[search, Silence, Segregate, Speed (to the rear), Safeguard] and we blew Speed and Security. Speed was the biggest problem. Speed means you get them to the rear to process them. You need to get them away from the troops they are trying to kill.

The Geneva Conventions is questionable and we didn’t know we were supposed to be following it. In Afghanistan you were taught to keep your head down and shoot…. You never thought about the Geneva Conventions. There was an ROE [Rules of Engagement] and it was followed, same in Iraq. But we were never briefed on the Geneva Conventions. These guys are not soldiers. If we were to follow the Geneva Conventions we couldn’t shoot at anyone because they all look like civilians.

Account of Officer C, 82nd Airborne Division

Quote[/b] ]C is an officer with the 82nd Airborne Division and West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan from August 2002 to February 2003 and in Iraq from September 2003 to March 2004. HRW spoke with him more than two dozen times in July, August, and September 2005. Below are excerpts from those interviews grouped by subject matter (the subject headings were supplied by Human Rights Watch).

At FOB Mercury, he was not in charge of interrogations but saw several interrogations in progress and received regular reports from NCOs on ill-treatment of detainees. He felt strongly that abuses there reflected larger policy confusion about what was permitted, and that the officer corps in particular has a duty to come forward and take responsibility.

On Conditions at FOB Mercury

When we were at FOB Mercury, we had prisoners that were stacked in pyramids, not naked but they were stacked in pyramids. We had prisoners that were forced to do extremely stressful exercises for at least two hours at a time which personally I am in good shape and I would not be able to do that type of exercises for two hours.… There was a case where a prisoner had cold water dumped on him and then he was left outside in the night. Again, exposure to elements. There was a case where a soldier took a baseball bat and struck a detainee on the leg hard. This is all stuff that I’m getting from my NCOs.

In the PUC holding facility you could have had people that could have been in the wrong house at the wrong time brought in an all of a sudden they are subjected to this. So that’s a big problem, obviously a huge human rights issue.

It’s army doctrine that when you take a prisoner, one of the things you do is secure that prisoner and then you speed him to the rear. You get him out of the hands of the unit that took him. Well, we didn’t do that. We’d keep them at out holding facility for I think it was up to seventy-two hours. Then we would place him under the guard of soldiers he had just been trying to kill. The incident with the detainee hit with baseball bat; he was suspected of having killed one of our officers.

[At FOB Mercury] they said that they had pictures that were similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, and because they were so similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, the soldiers destroyed the pictures. They burned them. The exact quote was, “They [the soldiers at Abu Ghraib] were getting in trouble for the same things we were told to do, so we destroyed the pictures.â€

On Frustration Obtaining a Meaningful Response within the Military Chain of Command

I witnessed violations of the Geneva Conventions that I knew were violations of the Geneva Conventions when they happened but I was under the impression that that was U.S. policy at the time. And as soon as Abu Ghraib broke and they had hearings in front of Congress, the Secretary of Defense testified that we followed the spirit of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan, and the letter of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and as soon as he said that I knew something was wrong. So I called some of my classmates [from West Point], confirmed what I was concerned about and then on that Monday morning I approached my chain of command.

I talked to an officer in the Ranger regiment12 and his response was, he wouldn’t tell me exactly what he witnessed but he said “I witnessed things that were more intense than what you witnessed,†but it wasn’t anything that exceeded what I had heard about at SERE school.13

After that I called the chaplain at West Point who I respected a lot and I talked to him about some things and we were on the same page. Then I had said well, “I’m going to talk to my company commander and then my battalion commander on Monday.â€

My company commander said, “I see how you can take it that way, but…†he said something like, “remember the honor of the unit is at stake†or something to that effect and “Don’t expect me to go to bat for you on this issue if you take this up,†something to that effect.

I went and talked to my battalion commander. Again, he clearly thinks he has done the right things and that what I am bringing attention to is within the standards and that he is okay. He didn’t dismiss me. He just said “Go talk to JAG. We’ll work this out.†It wasn’t alarming to him in any way, shape or form that these things had happened.

So I went to JAG and … he says, “Well the Geneva Conventions are a gray area.†So I mentioned some things that I had heard about and said, “Is it a violation to chain prisoners to the ground naked for the purpose of interrogations?†and he said, “That’s within the Geneva Conventions.†So I said, “Okay. That is within the Geneva Conventions.†And then there is the prisoner on the box with the wires attached to him, and to me, as long as electricity didn’t go through the wires, that was in accordance with what I would have expected US policy to be and that he wasn’t under the threat of death. And he said, “Well, that is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.†And I said, “Okay, but I’m looking for some kind of standard here to be able to tell what I should stop and what I should allow to happen.†And he says, “Well, we’ve had questions about that at times.â€

Then he said, “There was a device that another battalion in the 82nd had come up with that you would put a prisoner in. It was uncomfortable to sit in.†And he went to test it out by sitting in it and he decided that it wasn’t torture. I hear this and I am flabbergasted that this is the standard the Army is using to determine whether or not we follow the Geneva Conventions. If I go to JAG and JAG cannot give me clear guidance about what I should stop and what I should allow to happen, how is an NCO or a private expected to act appropriately?

When I talked to [an official in the Inspector General’s office about the policy confusion on what was permitted] he says, “You obviously feel very upset about this, but—I don’t think you’re going to accomplish anything because things don’t stick to people inside the Beltway [Washington, D.C.].†He says, “I worked at the Pentagon and things don’t stick to people inside the Beltway.â€

When the Secretary of the Army came [to my training], I addressed him on numerous issues, which I don’t want to go into. One of those issues was treatment of prisoners. I mentioned that I didn’t have clear guidance, and the Secretary of the Army said, “Well, we realized that that was a problem but you are a little bit behind the times. We’ve solved that matter. And I didn’t get a chance to respond to that. I should have, I should have pressed that issue a lot harder. That’s one of my regrets. Just bringing up the issue at all was stressful, but it hasn’t been resolved because there is no clear guidance. And through discussions with other officers the problem is not taken care of. It really is multiple problems. It’s two problems. One is the Army handling interrogations and the other is the relationship between OGA and prisoners and what they can and can’t do.

The officer also spoke with multiple experts on the U.S. military Law of Land Warfare, his peers, and his soldiers, all of whom, he said, expressed concern that the Geneva Conventions were not being applied in Iraq. He decided to bring his concerns to the Congress since he felt they were not being adequately addressed by his chain of command. Days before this report was published his brigade commander told him to stop his inquiries; his commanding officer told him that he could not leave the base to visit with staff members of Senators McCain and Warner without approval and that approval was being denied because his commanding officer felt the officer was being naÄve and would do irreparable harm to his career.

On Policy Confusion within the Ranks on Coercive Interrogation

[in Afghanistan,] I thought that the chain on command all the way up to the National Command Authority14 had made it a policy that we were going to interrogate these guys harshly.

[The actual standard was] “we’re not going to follow the Geneva Conventions but we are going to treat you humanely.†Well, what does humane mean? To me humane means I can kind of play with your mind, but I cannot hit you or do anything that is going to cost you permanent physical damage. To [another officer I spoke with] humane means it’s okay to rough someone up and to do physical harm. Not to break bones or anything like that but to do physical harm as long as you’re not humiliating him, which was the way he put it. We’ve got people with different views of what humane means and there’s no Army statement that says this is the standard for humane treatment for prisoners to Army officers. Army officers are left to come up with their own definition of humane treatment.

I don’t know for sure [how high up the hierarchy responsibility for the abusive treatment lies]. What I know is that it’s widespread enough that it’s an officer problem. It’s at least an officer problem. You make the standard, and that is what goes up to the executive branch. You communicate the standard, that’s when it’s somewhat the executive branch, but then it comes more into the officer branch, and enforcing the standard is the officer branch… And in the Schlesinger report15 it even says that when the President made the decision that al-Qaeda wasn’t going to be covered by the Geneva Conventions, there was a clear danger that it was going to undermine the culture in the United States Army that enforces strict adherence to the law of land warfare. That’s in the Schlesinger report.

But anyway, the President makes that decision, and decides that we’re not going to cover them by the Geneva Conventions, which according to the letter of the law, I think there’s a strong argument for that…. [but] then that lack of standard migrates throughout the Army. It filters throughout the Army, so that now the standard, this convoluted, “You’ll know what’s right when you see it,†filters through the whole Army.

If you draw a hard line and you say “Don’t do anything bad to prisoners,†like you bring them in, you give them food, you give them water, and then you leave them alone. If that happens then, yeah, that is an easy line to draw, but when you start drawing shades of gray and you start stripping prisoners, or you start making prisoners do humiliating things and then you tell a soldier to draw the line somewhere, then no. A soldier is not going to be able to draw that line because as soon as you cross that line and as soon as you start stripping prisoners or you start making people do vigorous exercise, or you start basically putting yourself in a position of authority where you are subjecting someone else to harsh treatment, things are going to get out of hand because everyone is going to draw the line at a different place. Just like the discussion between me and the other officer, where’s the line? What is acceptable and what is not acceptable? People don’t know. The West Point officers knew the line coming out of West Point. We knew where the Geneva Conventions drew the line, but then you get that confusion when the Sec Def [secretary of Defense] and the President make that statement. And we were confused.

[in Iraq, my understanding of how we should treat prisoners] didn’t change. There are a couple of reasons for that. Pre-deployment training was minimal going to Iraq because we deployed on short notice from West Point through Fort Bragg to Iraq. So there might be some disconnect there, but also none of the unit policies changed. Iraq was cast as part of the War on Terror, not a separate entity in and of itself but a part of a larger war.

[i didn’t discuss abuse of detainees with my superiors in Iraq because] to me, it was obviously part of the system and the reasons had been laid out about why we’re not following the Geneva Conventions in respect to the detainees. We did follow them in other aspects and once that was laid out I thought it was pretty clear cut.… That was just the way I thought we were running things.

Another officer approached me and was like “I’m not sure this is the way you should be treating someone.†It was almost like an off-hand, kind of like…just a conversation like making a comment. He said something like “I don’t know if this is right†and my response was “Hey, it’s out in the open and we’ve said that we are doing this. It’s not like we’re doing it on the sly.â€

If I as an officer think we’re not even following the Geneva Conventions, there’s something wrong. If officers witness all these things happening, and don’t take action, there’s something wrong. If another West Pointer tells me he thinks, “Well, hitting somebody might be okay,†there’s something wrong.

What I’m saying is had I thought we were following the Geneva Conventions as an officer I would have investigated what was clearly a very suspicious situation.

On the Implications of the Abu Ghraib Abuse Revelations in April 2004

Someone mentioned to me in passing that there was a really bad prisoner abuse scandal and I took note of it and I thought, “that is horrible. That is going to be bad PR [public relations] for the Army†and I thought, “Okay, rogues did something.†And then as the week progressed I watched on the news and they showed some of the pictures -- not all of them -- a large portion of the pictures were in accordance with what I perceived as U.S. policy. Now all the stuff with sodomy with the chem light and all that was clearly beyond what I would have allowed to happen on a personal moral level and what I thought policy was. But the other stuff, guys handcuffed naked to cells in uncomfortable positions, guys placed in stress positions on boxes, people stripped naked. All that was…if I would have seen it, I would have thought it was in accordance with interrogation procedures.

I listened to the congressional hearings and when the Secretary of Defense testified that we followed the spirit of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan and the letter of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq… that went against everything that I [understood about US policy]. That’s when I had a problem.

The first concern when this originally happened was loyalty to the Constitution and separation of powers, and combined with that is the honor code: “I will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.†The fact that it was systematic, and that the chain of command knew about it was so obvious to me that [until that point] I didn’t even consider the fact that other factors might be at play, so that’s why I approached my chain of command about it right off the bat and said, “Hey, we’re lying right now. We need to be completely honest.â€

Congress should have oversight of treatment of prisoners. That is the way; the Army should not take it upon itself to determine what is acceptable for America to do in regards to treatment of prisoners. That’s a value… that’s more than just a military decision, that’s a values decision, and therefore Congress needs to know about it, and therefore the American people need to have an honest representation of what’s going on presented to them so that they can have a say in that.

On Failure of the Officer Corps

It’s unjust to hold only lower-ranking soldiers accountable for something that is so clearly, at a minimum, an officer corps problem, and probably a combination with the executive branch of government.

It’s almost infuriating to me. It is infuriating to me that officers are not lined up to accept responsibility for what happened. It blows my mind that officers are not. It should’ve started with the chain of command at Abu Ghraib and anybody else that witnessed anything that violated the Geneva Conventions or anything that could be questionable should’ve been standing up saying, “This is what happened. This is why I allowed it to happen. This is my responsibility,†for the reasons I mentioned before. That’s basic officership, that’s what you learn at West Point, that’s what you should learn at any commissioning source.

That’s basic Army leadership. If you fail to enforce something, that’s the new standard. So I guess what I’m getting at is the Army officers have overarching responsibility for this. Not privates, not the Sergeant Jones, not Sergeant Smith. The Army officer corps has responsibility for this. And it boggles my mind that there aren’t officers standing up saying, “That’s my fault and here’s why.†That’s basic army leadership.

Look, the guys who did this aren’t dishonorable men. It’s not like they are a bunch of vagabonds. They shown more courage and done more things in the time that I’ve spent with them than I could cover in probably a week of talking to you. They are just amazing men, but they’re human. If you put them in a situation, which is the officer’s responsibility, where they are put in charge of somebody who tried to kill them or maybe killed their friend, bad things are going to happen. It’s the officer’s job to make sure bad things don’t happen.

[Another important] thing is making sure this doesn’t happen again…. [We need] to address the fact that it was an officer issue and by trying to claim that it was “rogue elements†we seriously hinder our ability to ensure this doesn’t happen again. And, that has not only moral consequences, but it has practical consequences in our ability to wage the War on Terror. We’re mounting a counter-insurgency campaign, and if we have widespread violations of the Geneva Conventions, that seriously undermines our ability to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

f America holds something as the moral standard, it should be unacceptable for us as a people to change that moral standard based on fear. The measure of a person or a people’s character is not what they do when everything is comfortable. It’s what they do in an extremely trying and difficult situation, and if we want to claim that these are our ideals and our values then we need to hold to them no matter how dark the situation.

On the Role of “OGAâ€

In Afghanistan we were attached to Special Forces and saw OGA. We never interacted with them but they would stress guys. We learned how to do it. We saw it when we would guard an interrogation.

They [OGA interrogators in Afghanistan] had a horn. In this case they would involve U.S. soldiers. There was a really loud horn and any time the detainee would fall asleep they would blare the horn in his ear so that he had to wake up and they would do that until he stood up again and stayed awake.

[A]t FOB Tiger [near the Syrian border] there were a lot of high value targets and …there was a Special Forces [sF] team nearby and I was going to talk to them just about career stuff and as I was going out I saw someone who I thought was OGA… go into the prisoner detainee holding facility and take one of the detainees out. And then they took infantry guards and they went into an unoccupied building that they could seal off, closed the door, and they gave orders to the infantry guards not to let anyone in. The reason I know this is because I was trying to talk to the SF guys and I asked them “Hey, do you know where the SF guys are?†and they were like “Well, maybe some of them are in here but you can’t go in there right now. They are with a prisoner.†And there were noises coming out of there. There could have been physical violence but [they were at least] threatening the prisoner,… doing things that weren’t actually causing bodily harm but threatening to do that.

I talked to an MP who said that he was in charge of holding detainees and that the CIA would just come and take the detainees away. They would be like, “How many detainees do you have?†and he knew he has seventeen detainees but the OGA would be like, “No, you have sixteen,†so he’d be like “Alright. I have sixteen.†And who knows where that detainee went.

I know it´s been a long read, but comprehensive records like these put a detailed light on the torture issue with US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the records indicate it were not acts of a few and the torture has been nodded through up to top levels. Hell, even JAG had no problem with it.

Something is definately going wrong there.

[chops 111]

And we'll see Rumsfeld deny everything keep his job and say "Support the troops, goddamit"!

[Balschoiw 0]

I guess even if they deny to apply the geneva convention they have indeed broken a numerous number of US laws and military rules.

Quote[/b] ]Effectively throwing out military manuals based on the laws of armed conflict was a prescription for the abuse that followed. Field Manual 34-52 for instance, does not merely restate the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, but it provides useful advice for soldiers to apply the standards in practice. For instance, the manual states: “Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.â€

Torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment alleged in this report do not fall into the “gray areas†in the law. Common article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which is accepted as the minimal standard of treatment for persons in custody during any armed conflict, prohibits “at any time and in any place whatsoever, … violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture, [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.†Further protections can be found in the fundamental guarantees under article 75 of the Protocol I of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions, which is accepted as reflecting customary laws of armed conflict.

Even if the Geneva Conventions were not applicable, various provisions of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice subjects soldiers to court-martial or disciplinary measures for mistreating prisoners. Applicable UCMJ criminal provisions include article 93 (cruelty and maltreatment), article 128 (assault), and articles 118 and 119 (murder and manslaughter), as well as article 120 (rape and carnal knowledge), article 124 (maiming), and, for officers, article 133 (conduct unbecoming an officer). Superior officers who order the mistreatment of prisoners or who knew or should have known that such mistreatment was occurring and did not take appropriate measures can be prosecuted as a matter of command responsibility.

The treatment of prisoners alleged here also violates U.S. obligations under international human rights law. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment provides that “[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.†The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which also bans torture and other mistreatment, ensures that the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment can never be suspended by a state, including during periods of public emergency.

These standards have largely been incorporated into U.S. law that is applicable to members of the armed services. The War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. § 2441) makes it a criminal offense for U.S. military personnel and U.S. nationals to commit war crimes as specified in the Geneva Conventions. The federal anti-torture statute (18 U.S.C. § 2340A), enacted in 1994, provides for the prosecution of a U.S. national or anyone present in the United States who, while outside the United States, commits or attempts to commit torture.

I guess this speaks for itself. But let´s guess...

The "investigation" will take 2 or more years until the people´s focus switched to something else and some grunts will get a prison term or even less. Noone in the TBa or the pentagon is really interested in this. They are just interested in sweeping it under the carpet. People of the USA can really be proud of their administration

[Colossus 2]

It's just been announced that the new goverment in Norway will withdraw all forces from both Iraq and Afghanistan in there term.

They'll beginning withdrawal of officers in Iraq in a short while.

While the operations in Enduring Freedom will continue until there mandate* is expired.

VG Nett (Norwegian)

PS: I haven't found any english written articles about this yet but I'll post it when I find it.

*(Not sure what they ment with that since I don't know how the NATO rules works, I hope you understand)

[EiZei 0]

It's just been announced that the new goverment in Norway will withdraw all forces from both Iraq and Afghanistan in there term.

They'll beginning withdrawal of officers in Iraq in a short while.

While the operations in Enduring Freedom will continue until there mandate* is expired.

VG Nett (Norwegian)

PS: I haven't found any english written articles about this yet but I'll post it when I find it.

*(Not sure what they ment with that since I don't know how the NATO rules works, I hope you understand)

Well.. let's just say if my OFP squad decided to join the coalition and everybody of us would go there we would be bigger contributor than Norway now (measured by manpower)..

[Colossus 2]

It's just been announced that the new goverment in Norway will withdraw all forces from both Iraq and Afghanistan in there term.

They'll beginning withdrawal of officers in Iraq in a short while.

While the operations in Enduring Freedom will continue until there mandate* is expired.

VG Nett (Norwegian)

PS: I haven't found any english written articles about this yet but I'll post it when I find it.

*(Not sure what they ment with that since I don't know how the NATO rules works, I hope you understand)

Well.. let's just say if my OFP squad decided to join the coalition and everybody of us would go there we would be bigger contributor than Norway now (measured by manpower)..

If you ask me there was no reason for them to go there in the first place.

But for god sake don't compare the AIs in OFP with norwegian troops, at least they don't get stuck in buildings

[chops 111]

I saw the other day on CNN tha Dubya has threatened to veto a military spending bill of $400 billion because the senate attached an amendment clearly defining and strictly prohibiting torture!!

I saw John McCain interviewed and he said members of the military had pleaded with him for it. It seems TBA will never miss an opportunity to fuck things up

[EiZei 0]

I saw the other day on CNN tha Dubya has threatened to veto a military spending bill of $400 billion because the senate attached an amendment clearly defining and strictly prohibiting torture!!

I saw John McCain interviewed and he said members of the military had pleaded with him for it. It seems TBA will never miss an opportunity to fuck things up  

Did they give any excuses or have we finally reached the point where GWB could kill a kitten in national television without certain people minding it all?

[Balschoiw 0]

Talking about heart and minds and an insurgency in it´s last throws:

‘Attacks against US, UK troops justified’

Quote[/b] ]

BAGHDAD: Fourty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks on US and British troops are justified, according to a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defence leaders and cited by The Sunday Telegraph.

Less than 1 per cent of those polled believed that the forces were responsible for any improvement in security.

Eighty-two per cent of those polled said they were strongly opposed to the presence of the troops.

The paper said the poll, conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence.

Britain has more than 8000 soldiers stationed in the south of Iraq, and has had 97 soldiers killed, the most recent killed by a roadside bomb on Tuesday night.

The past 10 days have seen a relative lull in violence amid a constitutional referendum on 15 October and the start of Saddam Hussein’s trial for crimes against humanity on Wednesday.

On Sunday, the US military confirmed that four American contractors were killed and two wounded in Iraq last month when their convoy got lost and was attacked by an angry group of Iraqis in a town north of Baghdad.

The attack occurred on 20 September when the convoy, which included US military guards riding in Humvees, made a wrong turn into the mostly Sunni Arab town of Duluiya and armed fighters opened fire with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, Major Richard Goldenberg, a spokesman for Task Force Liberty in north-central Iraq, said.

"Task Force Liberty soldiers, which have a forward operating base in that area, responded to assist the convoy, administered first aid to two wounded contractors and evacuated the remains of four contractors killed," Goldenberg said.

He said the attack caused no US military casualties, but that his men, acting on a tip, returned to the area two days later to detain an individual suspected of ties to the attack, and killed two people after coming under fire.

The 20 September Duluiya attacks, which occurred about 75 km north of Baghdad, were first reported on Saturday by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

It was not immediately clear why the US military had not reported the deaths earlier, but two other military spokesmen said on Sunday that the military generally relied on US government officials to report the deaths of American civilians and contractors in Iraq.

The contractors killed or wounded were identified by the newspaper as employees of the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, the biggest US military contractor in Iraq, but Goldenberg said he could not confirm their identities.

He said the convoy was being protected by a separate division of the US military, and that Task Force Liberty soldiers responded because it was travelling north through their district when the attack occurred.

The newspaper reported that two of the contractors who had not been killed in the initial attack in Duluiya were dragged alive from their vehicle, which had been badly shot up, and forced to kneel in the road before being killed.

The paper said: "Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight."

It said: "Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man’s body to stoke the flames." The crowd then "dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-US slogans", the newspaper reported.

Goldenberg said he could not confirm such details since his men were not at the scene when the attack occurred.

But he questioned a part of the report saying the US soldiers escorting the convoy were unable to respond quickly because the hatches on their Humvees were closed.

He said gunners generally had open positions on top of such vehicles. In its report on the attack, The Washington Post said on Sunday that the September killings brought to about 320 the number of non-Iraqi contractors killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, according to statistics complied by the Brookings Institution.

At least 1996 US servicemen and women have been killed since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to the Pentagon. More than 15,000 have been wounded.

Makes you wonder who is really taking benefit from the war.

Maybe this will give a clue:

‘Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal’ hijacked US policy: ex-Powell aide

Quote[/b] ]WASHINGTON, Oct 21: Former secretary of state Colin Powell’s top aide has accused Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of creating a “cabal†that has hijacked US foreign policy.

Retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell’s right-hand man for 16 years in the public and private sectors, also skewered President George W. Bush, saying the US leader was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.â€

“I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran,†Wilkerson, who was Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department, said Wednesday at a policy forum at the New America Foundation.

“The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process,†he said.

“What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made,†he said.

The Bush administration “made decisions in secret, and now I think it is paying the consequences of having made those decisions in secret. But far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences,†Wilkerson said.

“You and I and every other citizen like us is paying the consequences, whether it is a response to (Hurricane) Katrina that was less than adequate certainly, or whether it is the situation in Iraq, which still goes unexplained.â€

He added: “So you’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of defence and the vice president, and you’ve got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.

“And so it’s not too difficult to make decisions in this what I call Oval Office cabal, and decisions often that are the opposite of what you’d thought were made in the formal process.â€

He said the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal†is influenced by the business world and that Cheney was a member of the “military industrial complex.â€

“How much influence on their decisions? I think a lot — in how much the decisions reflect their connections with the cartels and the corporations and so forth, I think a lot. I think the president, too,†Wilkerson said.

The former top aide, who has criticized the administration in the past, accused the administration of “cowboyism†in its dealings with former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung, who won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his landmark summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, which ushered in a new era of rapprochement between the two Koreas.

“When you put your feet up on a hassock and look at a man who’s won the Nobel Prize and is currently the president of South Korea, and tell him in a very insulting way that you don’t agree with his assessment of what’s necessary to be reconciled with the North, that’s not diplomacy, that’s cowboyism,†he said.

Wilkerson also accused Powell’s successor, former national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, of cozying up to the president and of being “extremely weak†in her previous post.

As Bush’s confidante before becoming secretary of state, “she made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president,†he said.—AFP

It´s a shame what the TBA has done to the USA. It´s a shame what they have done to the people of the USA and the people in Iraq. And all that for money and greed and power.

[Homefry 0]

They haven't done anything to the USA. My life is the same now as it has been since I can remember. I think it's a bit narrowminded to say the USA has changed drastically. Everyday life here hasn't.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]They haven't done anything to the USA.

No ?

*insert Abu Ghraib, restriction of basic rights, a funny speach at the UN, Gitmo, National guard in Iraq, oil in alaska and the repositioning for US citizens as number one targets all over the world here*

If you haven´t realized yet. The US is very isolated due to TBA´s policy and your economy is suffering hard. So does your health system, school system, etc.

Almost 2000 US servicemen were sent to death in Iraq and the number of people injured there is very high.

There are already studies that deal with the problems that will arise from people returning home, suffering from PTSD.

TBA has changed the US, but not in a positive way.

[ralphwiggum 6]

as of today, 2000 US soldiers were killed.

considering that 15,000 were injured, the war is still an on going work.

It was 2003 when the war started, and by May 2003, the

"major combat" operation wa over. It's been 2 years and 5 months, and the numbers are still adding up. When the war started, it was one or two KIA for US soldiers per day. the rate has been steady if not increased a bit. And Iraq is still working on constitution(vote result pending).

[Scorpio 0]

Article showing referendum results.

[ralphwiggum 6]

Putting a face to the situation,

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/25/iraq.soldier.story.ap/index.html

Quote[/b] ]THOMSON, Georgia (AP) -- During his 18 years in the Georgia National Guard, James Kinlow settled into a peaceful, small-town life focused more on being a citizen than a soldier.

Kinlow had married his high-school sweetheart and rarely missed the Lincoln County Red Devils' home football games. He worked in a lumber yard and drove a freight truck. The citizen-soldiers he trained with every month included family friends and former teachers; he cracked them up with his imitations of the officers.

Then, late last year, he got the news: He was going to war.

So between Christmas and New Year's, he tore off two sheets of notebook paper and wrote out his life in summary, with a blank for the newspapers to fill in later, beginning with the end.

"Mr. James O. Kinlow, 35, of Holt St. died -------- in Iraq."

Nearly seven months later, the sentence was completed.

(more in the article linked above)

[Thunderbird 0]

How many foreign soldiers are actually in Iraq? and how many nations of the GW2's coalition are represented over there ?

Regards

TB84

[EiZei 0]

How many foreign soldiers are actually in Iraq? and how many nations of the GW2's coalition are represented over there ?

Regards

TB84

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat_coalition.htm

Can't vouch for it's accuracy but I did'nt spot any obvious errors.

Quote[/b] ]

GW2's coalition are represented over there

If by GW2 you mean the 2003 thing one could say that it's still going on if casualty rates are any indication.

However at least Spain and NZ along with several other nations have already withdrawn and Ukraine and Poland are about to do the same. There also has been strong speculation in the UK as well if I am not mistaken.