...one case in which he claimed a British rifleman had shot dead an eight-year-old girl who was playing in the street in Basra.
"For some reason the tank stopped at the end of the street, she's there in her yellow dress, a rifleman pops up and blows her away."
It's not just that: It turns out they did do body counts; and the majority of those dying in the coalitions own figures, are civilians. Given that I'm sure soldiers sometimes lie about who they had killed to cover-up mistakes - this is still a staggering figure..
Leaked Pentagon files obtained by the Guardian contain details of more than 100,000 people killed in Iraq following the US-led invasion, including more than 15,000 deaths that were previously unrecorded.
British ministers have repeatedly refused to concede the existence of any official statistics on Iraqi deaths. US General Tommy Franks claimed in 2002: "We don't do body counts."
The mass of leaked documents provides the first detailed tally by the US military of Iraqi fatalities. Troops on the ground filed secret field reports over six years of the occupation, purporting to tot up every casualty, military and civilian.
The ignoring of torture - and remember that Bliar and Bush took us into Iraq to stop the torture of Saddam - and they turn out to be almost as bad. With us paying the tax bill... and the Iraqi's paying the butchers bill:
This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a "fragmentary order" which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, "only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ".
Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.
I've run out of outrage words to describe all this....
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1 comment:
you should remember the atrocities carried out by Saddam's regime which we the liberators saved them from. I mean people like Chemical Ali:
"He received his fourth death sentence last week for his most famous crime when he ordered a gas attack on northern Iraq's Kurdish population.
He was convicted of ordering the single biggest atrocity of Saddam's rule, the gassing of 5,600 people in the town of Halabja"
5,600 is bigger than 100,000 isn't it?
Trying to keep the peace between 3+ groups of religious fundamentalists could require rule of fear hmmmm someone rather like saddam really!
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