Thursday, October 30, 2003
US troops using Israeli military's brutal tactics
It has been 18 days since Patrick Cockburn of the UK's Independent reported that US troops in Iraq bulldozed "ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops."
This comes on top of all the other humiliations Iraqis have been subjected to at the hands of soldiers who neither understand their language or customs, but occupy their country. None of which are being reported on US television network news.
It is estimated that some 50 families in Dhuluaya, 50 miles north of Baghdad, lost their livelihoods.
Cockburn wrote, "'They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees,' said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as 'a punishment of local people because "you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us."' What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added."
Is this George W. Bush's way of getting Iraqis to love their American liberators?
This comes on top of all the other humiliations Iraqis have been subjected to at the hands of soldiers who neither understand their language or customs, but occupy their country. None of which are being reported on US television network news.
It is estimated that some 50 families in Dhuluaya, 50 miles north of Baghdad, lost their livelihoods.
Cockburn wrote, "'They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees,' said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as 'a punishment of local people because "you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us."' What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added."
Is this George W. Bush's way of getting Iraqis to love their American liberators?
