U.S. Soldiers Ordered To Walk Away From Ongoing Iraqi Torture
Following recent allegations that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi personally executed as many as six prisoners with his pistol, Americans soldiers are telling reporters that they have been ordered to walk away when they encounter agents of the new Iraqi government torturing prisoners.
The Allawi accusations recently made the rounds in the Australian press (here, here, and here) but made no ripples in the mainstream American or European media. The story was covered somewhat in the blogosphere and looks to be approaching the tipping point.
A story on Saturday in The Oregonian reports that American national guardsmen saw men in plainclothes "beat blindfolded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry."
The soldiers intervened and "found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days." Exploring the compound, the soldiers "counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs."
After disarming the Iraqi torturers they radioed for orders and received a strange response. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., reports that his superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 -- Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S.-led invasion.
Both stories allege sanctioned Iraqi torture and American soldiers and operatives being told to look away. Although we claim to have handed authority of Iraq "to Iraqis," the unavoidable perception remains that if something goes wrong we had a hand in it. Iyad Allawi is a former U.S. agent and to many Iraqi's that employment appears to be influencing his current decision making.
His recent effort to offer amnesty appeared at first to be a genuine attempt to resolve the situation. However, Allawi's American handlers quickly became nervous about the impact of this policy in America and made their demands. Allawi was told that if anyone who had killed an American was given amnesty then it would be difficult to justify to the American people. Allawi immediately issued a corollary to the amnesty decree declaring that all who killed Americans would not be welcome. To the Iraqi on the street it reinforced two dangerous ideas: that Allawi was a mere puppet and the Americans truly see the lives of their troops as far more valuable than the lives or ordinary Iraqis.
Recent fighting in Najaf reveals the continued presence and strength of both rebels and American troops and conditions only appear to be deteriorating. A puppet of American power is in no position to convince the Iraqi people that he can solve their problems. Infrastructure problems are ongoing and the security situation is collapsing. As Paul Krugman pointed out last week, American casualties continue mount with 42 American soldiers dead in Iraq in June and 54 in July. The war has not stopped on the ground, it has merely left the front page of the newspaper and been edited out of the six o'clock news.
Who is this guy?
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