A rchive Date
[ 28-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
Terrors prove war was needed
By PETER WORTHINGTON - Toronto Sun
March 28, 2003
On Larry King Live this week, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the Pentagon's No. 2 soldier, said there'd never been so many war crimes so early in a war, as in the first five days of Iraq.
This categorical view of the Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was echoed yesterday by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the press conference with President George Bush.
Blair was particularly outraged about a couple of British soldiers who apparently had been taken prisoner and then executed - that fate of five members of an American maintenance crew that took a wrong turn last Sunday near An Nasiriya, and shown on al-Jazeera TV with bullet holes in their foreheads.
The trouble with "war crimes" is that there are rarely witnesses on the spot willing to talk.
But in this war against Saddam Hussein, some well-documented reports really are "disgusting," as Gen. Pace says, but are also in character for Saddam's homicidal regime.
Those 14 Marines killed when a bunch of happy civilians surrendering to them opened fire, will result in it being more difficult for small groups of Iraqis to surrender.
That ambush was cunning, and an inevitable aspect of war, but it usually only works once.
WOMAN HANGED
It violates the Geneva Conventions for soldiers not to wear a distinguishing uniform. If caught in civilian garb they can be shot as spies.
If not a war crime, it certainly qualifies as a crime against humanity when the Iraqi military hanged a woman who allegedly waved at British troops on the outskirts of Basra.
And what Saddam's security forces did to a government worker they caught trying to flee the al-Hurriya suburb of Baghdad, exceeds anything in fiction: To make an example of him and dissuade others from fleeing, he was tied to a lamp post and had his tongue cut out and left to bleed to death, with passersby ordered to watch.
Iraqis who know about such things say he got off relatively lightly. Before being killed, he could have been forced to watch his wife or children being raped or killed.
British Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who catalogues Iraqi war crimes, tells of those hostile to the regime being dropped into giant shredders which rip them limb from limb.
She also says menstruating women who've offended the regime have been suspended by their legs to humiliate them.
In the first week of war, grenades and weapons have been found stored in primary schools, tanks hidden behind mosques, anti-aircraft guns sited in civilian areas, and women and children used as human shields to protect Iraqi soldiers.
The Brits found 400 grenades and stockpiles of rifles and rocket launchers hidden in a primary school at Umm Qasr.
TV PICTURES
All of the above make showing TV pictures of captured British and American soldiers seem unimportant, so long as they aren't abused or beaten.
In fact, TV shots of PoWs might be a good thing, and will make it difficult for the regime to explain if such prisoners go "missing" or wind up with bullet holes in their foreheads while trying to "escape." So far, Iraq won't give the Red Cross access to PoWs.
As the war continues, the incidents of cruelty that keep emerging, make it understandable why defenders of the regime may resist more strongly than originally expected.
It also explains why this war had to be fought, and why Saddam has to be ousted. More puzzling, is why so-called "peace lovers" in the squishy democracies want Saddam Hussein and his regime preserved.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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