US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

More documents

Recommendations

Info

said. At a Pentagon news conference Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasquestioned about the death squads.REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, are you concerned over – and, in fact, is the United Stateslooking into growing reports of uniformed death squads in Iraq, perhaps assassinating andtorturing hundreds of Sunnis? And if that's true, what would that say about stability in Iraq?DONALD RUMSFELD: I’m not going to comment on hypothetical questions. I've not seenreports that hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all. We know for a fact that it’s aviolent country. We know for a fact that there have been various militias. We know that therehave been some militias that have been Iran-oriented. We also know there's been a – somemilitias in the north that have been very helpful. The Peshmurga have been very constructive inwhat they’ve done. But I'm not going to get into speculation like that.REPORTER: But sir, that’s not a hypothetical, I don't believe. The Sunnis themselves arecharging that hundreds have been assassinated, people shot in the head, found in alleys.DONALD RUMSFELD: What you're talking about are unverified -- to my knowledge, atleast -- unverified comments. I just don't have any data from the field that I can comment on in aspecific way. Do you General?GENERAL PACE: I do not, sir, although I do know that the Iraqi government has said thatthey are going to investigate those kinds of allegations.DONALD RUMSFELD: And they should. That's a good thing. Look, it's a sovereigncountry. The Iraqi government exists. There's also a political campaign taking place. And weought to be aware of that, that there are going to be a lot of charges and countercharges andallegations, and they may very well be timed -- as they are in every country in the world that hasa free political system -- they may timed in a way to seek advantage. We also will find that insome cases that there will be investigations and that they will prove to have been valid. I justdon't know. I can only talk about what I know. That’s life.AMY GOODMAN: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at his news conference on Tuesday.While the story only recently made front page news, we first reported on it six months ago.Investigative journalist Arun Gupta was one of the first to report on the presence of death squadsin Iraq back in April. We interviewed him at the time. He joins us in the studio now. Arun iseditor of the New York City Independent Media Center’s newspaper, The Indypendent.Welcome to Democracy Now!ARUN GUPTA: Thank you, Amy.AMY GOODMAN: So, lay out what you're seeing right now in Iraq.ARUN GUPTA: What you're seeing is, I think, really the fruition of U.S. strategy in Iraq. ThePentagon has spent over $10 billion to try to stand up Iraqi military forces, and it's been acomplete disaster. So what they're trying to do is they’re turning to death squads to fight the108
insurgency. The Iraqi forces, the military forces, the army, they really don't stand and fight; andeven when they do, they depend on tremendous U.S. logistical support to carry out anyoperation. So, they really can't operate on their own.But there are these militias that Donald Rumsfeld was talking about; but, of course, what hedoesn’t want to talk about is that the U.S. set up these militias. They funded them. They armedthem. They trained them. And a lot of this came out in the Pentagon's own reports, Pentagon’sgenerals talking about how great they were over a year ago, how they really took the fight to theresistance. And so, what's been going on is that the U.S. has set these up.And there's been a certain conflict. In April, when the Shiite government took control, theystarted firing a lot of the commanders who were basically ex-Baathists, and they started bringingin their own guys, especially from the Badr Brigade. And a lot of these are concentrated in what'sknown as special police commandos, and they have all sorts of various brigades, one called theWolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade, the Lion Brigade, another called the Fearless Warriors. Andthey sound like death squads. And they are death squads. They go around with masks. They'reconducting these raids, especially throughout Baghdad.And the U.S. is saying, ‘Well, you know, who knows who's doing this?’ But when twentyvehicles pull up with a hundred troops in them, and reporters are recounting -- the New YorkTimes article also recounts this -- they're showing up with sophisticated communicationsequipment. They're showing up with these expensive Glocks, nine-millimeter Glocks that weresupplied by the U.S. government. They have the insignia, the uniforms of the special policecommandos. And these -- In Baghdad there's a very strict curfew that’s in place every singlenight. Yet how can these large convoys of vehicles be going around?And so, they conduct these roundups, and in many areas it's largely Sunni Arab males. And thenthey're disappeared. They're taking them to this network of secret prisons. One of the thingsthat’s come out is that there's this absolutely vast network of prisons throughout Iraq. In a nationof 27 million, the Iraqi government has 1,100 prisons.AMY GOODMAN: Outside the U.S. prisons?ARUN GUPTA: And this is – Yes, this is in addition to the U.S. prisons. Officially, the Iraqigovernment says they only have about 12-13,000 detainees. But that really strains credibility.That's only 11 prisoners per facility, whereas the -- what really set this all off was the uncoveringof a secret detention center within an interior ministry building where they found approximately170 men. Another Iraqi male spoke extensively to Reuters where he was kept in a building with800 men. The BBC just published a report and photographs of another prison that they wereallowed to enter, which showed a room so crowded that the prisoners could barely sit down. Sonobody knows even really how many prisoners are being held by the Iraqi government.And what's been happening is that they're being -- you're finding all these men being seized,primarily it looks like Sunni Arab males who are though to form the core of the armed resistance,and then bodies are turning up weeks, months later, often two or three governances away. Sothey’re seized in Baghdad, for instance, and then these 20-30 bodies will turn up on the Iranian109
Page 7 and 8:
guard was called upon. Now people l
Page 11 and 12:
After the commandos set up their he
Page 13 and 14:
more skilled than American troops I
Page 15 and 16:
‘‘I think it was all an act to
Page 17 and 18:
Ministry of Interior Security Force
Page 19 and 20:
‘‘For some, there’s definitel
Page 21 and 22:
with prominent Shiite cleric Hussei
Page 23 and 24:
The Police Commandos’ penchant fo
Page 25 and 26:
effective at responding to the atta
Page 27 and 28:
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2005/da
Page 29 and 30:
In another twist, the bodies of 8 m
Page 31 and 32:
Subject: [oneheartpeacework] Traine
Page 33 and 34:
3. Maass, Peter, "The Way of the Co
Page 35 and 36:
We now have Judith Miller’s New Y
Page 37 and 38:
arrangements with the CEO of the Ir
Page 39 and 40:
November 6, 2003, was designated fo
Page 41 and 42:
March 9, 2006 -- Los Angeles Times
Page 43 and 44:
http://www.newyorker.com/printables
Page 45 and 46:
The former official says that the B
Page 47 and 48:
officials in Colombia. The book “
Page 49 and 50:
The majority of the Bush Administra
Page 51 and 52:
Part Three:200451
Page 53 and 54:
military base on Honduran territory
Page 55 and 56:
Not everyone in Chile is opposed to
Page 57 and 58: Secret US Gulfstream jets and Swedi
Page 59 and 60: If ever possible…FOOTNOTES:Seymou
Page 61 and 62: Part Four:200561
Page 63 and 64: The organization said U.S. and Iraq
Page 65 and 66: For starters, what’s been written
Page 67 and 68: http://www.counterpunch.org/hersh01
Page 69 and 70: Fallujah I called him at home. I'm
Page 71 and 72: these people worked as night clerks
Page 73 and 74: http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/d
Page 75 and 76: y shifting their targets, concentra
Page 77 and 78: * Arun Gupta, former editor of The
Page 79 and 80: From Iran-Contra To IraqThe NationB
Page 81 and 82: his actions this time around become
Page 83 and 84: might have been imagined.According
Page 85 and 86: put out by the Interior Ministry, t
Page 87 and 88: in/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/arch
Page 89 and 90: However, the analogy is misleading
Page 91 and 92: http://nytimes.com/cfr/internationa
Page 93 and 94: which have raised sectarian tension
Page 95 and 96: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstr
Page 97 and 98: A grocer in west Baghdad told Salih
Page 99 and 100: use of their experience in mass rep
Page 101 and 102: Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Iraqi
Page 103 and 104: http://www.informationclearinghouse
Page 105 and 106: The slaughter and destruction in we
Page 107: SEC. RUMSFELD: I'm not going to com
Page 111 and 112: Part Five:2006111
Page 113 and 114: They told soldiers they were taking
Page 115 and 116: http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq
Page 117 and 118: One photo showed what appeared to b
Page 119 and 120: Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, who announ
Page 121 and 122: Baghdad, the 14 Sunnis seized from
Page 123 and 124: "You've got the facilities protecti
Page 125 and 126: Peterson, the U.S. officer in charg
Page 127 and 128: homes or mosques by men in uniform
Page 129 and 130: moniker that sounds about as unauth
Page 131 and 132: there is a general consensus that t
Page 133 and 134: the government officials, media lac
Page 135 and 136: experience with Saddam's government
Page 137 and 138: http://www.globalecho.org/view_arti
Page 139 and 140: working within the country's interi
Page 141 and 142: Mr. Karim was originally sentenced
Page 143 and 144: Close to one million Iraqis, most o
Page 145 and 146: Neither Republicans nor Democrats s
Page 147 and 148: Democratic position and that of the
Page 149 and 150: This year's Democratic primaries an
Page 151 and 152: http://www.informationclearinghouse
Page 153 and 154: Of Hariri's assassination, Syrian o
Page 155 and 156: Sourcewatch information on Aegis:
Page 157 and 158: RAMOPS RISK MANAGEMENT GROUP (compr
Page 159 and 160:
Section 2: Organization of the FPS1
Page 161 and 162:
The UK was criticized for starting
Page 163 and 164:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/
Page 165 and 166:
FPS, proposing to give its members
Page 167 and 168:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/68
Page 169 and 170:
personnel and CIA operators and con
Page 171 and 172:
Although Bush hasn't specifically s
Page 173 and 174:
massive military aid to the Salvado
Page 175 and 176:
The convoy was traveling in the Cam
Page 177 and 178:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl
Page 179 and 180:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world
Page 181 and 182:
The Mehdi Army does not always have
Page 183 and 184:
clarification of what happened in S
Page 185 and 186:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Bri
Page 187 and 188:
"What our police found in their car
Page 189 and 190:
3. the international cadre of war f
Page 191 and 192:
If you thought the U.S. wouldn't bl
Page 193 and 194:
Regrettably, that is prospect that
Page 195 and 196:
The initial demand from the puppet
Page 197 and 198:
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/septe
Page 199 and 200:
FLASHBACK: Sick strategies for sens
Page 201 and 202:
into the river. That thought alone
Page 203 and 204:
Zarqawi is actually a real person o
Page 205 and 206:
Examples “were found during the M
Page 207 and 208:
Witnesses said about 150 Iraqi pris
Page 209 and 210:
A British military source has said
Page 211 and 212:
Meanwhile, frantic negotiations con
Page 213 and 214:
The British troops believed the two
Page 215 and 216:
Naturally, the sleazy Laurence-emul
Page 217 and 218:
eing arrested by the Iraqi police o
Page 219 and 220:
When viewed in the context of all t
Page 221 and 222:
throw rose petals at the invaders,
Page 223 and 224:
enders’ in the Sunni Community. S
Page 225 and 226:
thus making people believe that cas
show all

US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?