The Associated Press is reporting a massacre in the Kurdish village of Hamid Shifi in Northern Iraq. In the middle of the night, families were taken out of their homes. The men were separated out and shot. 15 of them did not survive.
The Associated Press calls the people who did it “gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms”. That’s a curious phrase. It seems to skip and jump around a very uncomfortable possibility: That those “gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms” were, in fact, members of the Iraqi army.
It’s possible that the army uniforms were part of a fraud. Hamid Shifi residents had expected a Sunni insurgent attack. Perhaps it was the Sunnis, after all. If the Sunnis were behind the attack, however, how did they get the army uniforms?
Was the massacre at Hamid Shifi orchestrated by the Iraqi government that has been installed and supported by the American military occupation? I wasn’t there. I don’t know.
We would all be better served if the American news media would stop pretending that it’s not a possibility that gunmen dressed as members of the Iraqi army were actually members of the Iraqi army. We would be best served if the American military would stop propping up a corrupt and ruthless government that has been caught in so many barbaric acts that it can be reasonably suspected in the massacre at Hamid Shifi.
For the sake of the victims of Hamid Shifi, let’s elect an antiwar progressive President in 2008, and stop compounding our nation’s complicity in the Iraqi bloodbath.
(Sources: Associated Press, May 19, 2007; New York Times, May 20, 2007)
Today’s al-Jazeera reports atrocities by Moqtadr al-Sadr’s group:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F85B1782-30CF-4808-A5C4-588A647E0402.htm
And both sources report:
You don’t suppose those “tips and information leads” came from some of those little “enhanced interrogation techniques†the Republican candidates were talking about in their debate? When in Rome….?
Well, who knows? One thing’s easy to see – all that chaos that Republicans say would take place if the Americans LEFT is happening right now. The surge escalation has not worked.
It’s WAY too early to see if the surge will work.
It’s really hard to figure out what is going on over there, but they are bringing groups of Iraqi soldiers to another city for retraining in an effort to teach them, uh, not to torture people and leave bodies on the streets of Baghdad overnight, I guess. It takes time to cycle all those people through the training; it must be something really difficult to learn…can you sense the sarcasm coming through my keyboard?
Seriously, I hope the surge works, but there is no political will on the part of the Iraqis. They all pay lip service to a united Iraq, but every two bit mullah has their own private militia out there, just like Lebanon, that will keep that from happening.
Why, if it’s a surge, is it too early to see if it will work?
A surge is a short-term military tactic. We ought to be able to see results in the short term. What we’ve seen is continuing chaos.
Now, if it’s actually not a surge, that’s a different matter. But, if the new strategy really has worked, why has George W. Bush ordered yet again another surge on top of the first surge?
It doesn’t add up.
“Just like Lebanon” – a frightening phrase.
As far as I can see, they’re using the “added” soldiers to go after al-Qaeda pockets, which makes sense to me as a miltary strategy, but of course will have no effect unless there is a political strategy to go with it. For instance, who is financing al-Qaeda in Iraq? Can they follow the money? What is the plan to involve the Sunnis in the government and how are they going to get the Shiites to accept it? Is de-Bathification dead yet?
In the above piece, the province borders Iran, but inhabitants are Kurds who were killed presumably by Sunni al-Qaedas. The Kurds let them into the city because of their uniforms even though a Sunni attack was expected. These type of little militias can be hunted down.
As far as I can see, their only political strategy is to get the Iraqi government to take a one month vacation instead of a three month vacation. Oh, and there are talks with Iran next week in Baghdad.
Maybe they are using the “surge” also to replace Iraqi soldiers away at training, but I’m just guessing with that.
I don’t personally think it’s a real surge, I think it’s a shell game and a propaganda war. Of course if the troop strength isn’t actually being increased you don’t want to announce, hey, we’re stretched thin over in this place here, so be sure not to attack us there while we’ve got our guys away out looking for those al-qaeda pockets in another place.
Lebanon failed because of private militias–Hizbollah funded by Iran, plus Syria occupying the country for 30 years and probably assasinating Lebanese President Harrari. Now guess which ones of those countries also border Iraq.
I heard that Lebanon had beautiful beaches too…A pity…