Counter-Insurgency in Iraq Plagued by Fear, Doubt

[Barrett808]

Counter-Insurgency in Iraq Plagued by Fear, Doubt
Sat Jan 1, 7:17 AM ET
By Matt Spetalnick

HASWA, Iraq (Reuters) - In the numbing cold before dawn, Iraqi commandos backed by U.S. Marines stormed into a farmhouse, forcing four men onto the kitchen floor and isolating dazed women and children in adjacent rooms.

One by one, the sullen men were taken behind a curtain for interrogation by Marine intelligence officers, who checked their names against laminated lists of insurgents while troops scoured for weapons.

The search earlier this week looked like it was going to prove fruitless until a Marine dumped a box at the suspects' feet: "Look what we've got here," he said, showing off a pair of targeting sights for rocket-propelled grenades.

Though the men insisted the devices were harmless remnants from their days as army conscripts, the strike force from Iraq's new National Guard wasted no time in handcuffing them.

"Don't take my sons. They're innocent," an old woman clad in black from head to toe, wailed as she tried to break through a cordon of troops bundling them into a waiting truck.

An American officer tried to calm her but to no avail.


(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20050101/wl_nm/iraq_intelligence_dc

[peacebird]

1. 'Under Saddam we used to beat prisoners' the Iraqi soldier said

and the US Marine in charge of training them said "The old ways die hard"

What? You mean only american soldiers are allowed to beat and rape the prisoners? now that hardly seems fair.
<sarcasm off>
:puke:

[Benhurst]

2. The Iraqis are so stubborn. Why can't they understand we

bomb their cities and kill their civilians only because we LOVE them and want them to be free?