Teachers beheaded in Baghdad in front of students

[sabra]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO943550.htm

Teachers beheaded in Baghdad in front of students


BAGHDAD, April 19 (Reuters) - Separate groups of gunmen entered two primary schools in Baghdad on Wednesday and beheaded two teachers in front of their students, the Ministry of State for National Security said.

"Two terrorist groups beheaded two teachers in front of their students in the Amna and Shaheed Hamdi primary schools in Shaab district in Baghdad," a ministry statement said.

A ministry official said he believed the attacks were aimed at: "intimidating pupils and disrupting learning."

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. That ministry official...

Is, perhaps, the greatest living master of understatement.

[rpannier]

15. Yeah...

"...disrupting learning."
What a bizarre statement

[saigon68]

19. It's like saying

The rocket carrying the space shuttle 'Challenger' exploded in a catastrophic fireball soon after take-off, on 28th January 1986. Comment: by Steve Nisbett, public commentator for Mission Control at NASA: "Obviously a major malfunction...

[Jack from Charlotte]

25. That was the SECOND biggest understatement in history... #1 was...

when Hirohito, on 8/15/45 said, "the war situation has developed .....NOT NECESSARILY TO JAPAN'S ADVANTAGE."

Oh really? You think...?

Every city in Japan down to those of comparable size of Nashville in the US, have been firebombed. No shipping can enter or leave the main island due to being surrounded by US submarines. You have the whole American military including those from Europe coming to the Pacific to invade your island kick your ass. And they ain't real happy after what occurred at Iwo and Okinawa. And when you tried to reach out with some peace feelers to Russia.... they respond by declaring war on you. And your last 2 cities of any size not firebombed... got a taste of the big nuke.....

and you say......"the war situation has developed, not necessarily to Japan's advantage."

That was the #1 understatement of all time.

"Obviously a major malfunction..." is probably #2.

[Jazz2006]

37. Indeed. n/t

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. Oh. My. Dear. God.

I often have unruly classroom dreams. This will add a whole new dimension to them.

[AnneD]

16. Guess that will teach them...

not to ask for a pay raise and limited class size:evilgrin:
Seriously it is really sad...I just hope it doesn't give certain folks ideas here.

[oldtime dfl_er]

28. er...the only mention I can find of this

horrific event on google news is an article in the Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3804262.html
Guess Snotty's resignation is THE story of the day.

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/1365270

[lumpy]

40. The story has been debunked

according to the article. Stories like this must be designed to emphasize the 'Iraqis brutal nature'.

[tanyev]

3. Is that some of the good news?

:cry:

[laruemtt]

4. this did not happen under saddam.

how can the *ists contort this into being an improvement in the lives of the iraqi people? :cry:

[Canuckistanian]

24. Yes, there was a surprising lack of schoolroom beheadings

When Saddam was in power. Probably just a coincidence.

[Roaming]

34. Yeah, it was a lot better under Saddam with rape-rooms and

wood-chippers. Sheesh.

[billbuckhead]

39. Iraq was better off under Saddam

Life wasn't very good under Saddam but it was better for the vast majority of Iraqis than under Chimpy.

[Roaming]

42. The Germans after WW2 could have said exactly the same thing...

The tyrant, Hitler, was gone and his ruthless political party was in shambles, but people were suffering starvation, violence, disorder, looting and occupation for some time. But time healed that country, and I'm hopeful the same will be true for Iraq.

[BIgJohn83]

57. good point... n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

60. Seems to me I recall that Nazi Germany had invaded several....

...countries, exterminated at least 12 million civilians (Jews and others), and caused the deaths of roughly 40 million combatants to include Russians, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Italians, French, British, Americans, and several other nationalities.

Nazi Germany started the mess in Europe, and they paid the ultimate price. Time allegedly "healed" that country only when the Berlin Wall was demolished, and the Soviet military left approximately 40 years after WWII ended. The U. S. military has NEVER left.

I don't recall Saddam invading anyone unless he believed he had the okay from the U. S. I don't recall that Iraq did anything to cause our illegal and immoral invasion/occupation. I also don't recall hearing anything definitive from the NeoCon Junta as to how soon we will be leaving Iraq.

Who's the tyrant now?

[Roaming]

67. The point I'm making is that Germany was a rotten regime,

just like Saddam.

[billbuckhead]

65. Germany didn't have a civil war after Hitler fell

Iraq's more akin to the former Yugoslavia which broke into parts after Tito passed.

[0007]

66. Germany got on its feet fairly fast after they were destroyed

It didn't take long for the country to heal.

Saddam been gone for three years now and it worse than before.

[Roaming]

68. It took Germany close to 10 years to fully recover; it was pure

misery for years after the war ended. I know about this since my mom was a child at that time and the stories she tells are horrifying.

[Justitia]

43. Woodchippers? You do know that bit of war propoganda has been

determined to be pure fiction, don't you?

Sheesh.

[Roaming]

45. No, I didn't know that was "fiction"

Was this also fiction? -- (source: Wikipedia)
--

Human rights organizations have documented government approved executions, acts of torture, and rape for decades since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.

In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned President Saddam Hussein's government for its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions... the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances".

Two years earlier, two human rights groups, the International Federation of Human Rights League and the Coalition for Justice in Iraq released a joint report, accusing the Saddam Hussein regime of committing "massive and systematic" human rights violations, particularly against women. The report spoke of public beheadings of women who were accused of being prostitutes, which took place in front of family members, including children. The heads of the victims were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honor of Iraq." The report documented 130 women who had been killed in this way, but stated that the actual number was probably much higher. The report also describes human rights violations directed against children. The report states that children, as young as 5 years old, are recruited into the Ashbal Saddam, or "Saddam's Cubs," and indoctrinated to adulate Saddam Hussein and denounce their own family members. The children are also subjected to military training, which includes cruelty to animals. The report also describes how parents of children are executed if they object to this treatment, and in some cases, the children themselves are imprisoned.

Full political participation at the national level was restricted only to members of the Arab Ba'ath Party, which constituted only 8% of the population. Therefore, it was impossible for Iraqi citizens to change their government.

Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it was to express support for the government. The Iraqi government controlled the establishment of political parties, regulates their internal affairs and monitors their activities.

Police checkpoints on Iraqi's roads and highways prevented ordinary citizens from traveling abroad without government permission and expensive exit visas. Before traveling, an Iraqi citizen had to post collateral. Iraqi women could not travel outside of the country without the escort of a male relative.

The activities of citizens living inside Iraq who received money from relatives abroad were closely monitored.

In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.

In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 40,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.

In June of 1994, the Hussein regime in Iraq established severe penalties, including amputation, branding and the death penalty for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion.

On March 23, 2003, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraqi television presented and interviewed prisoners of war on TV, violating the Geneva Convention.

In March of 2003, Britain released video footage of Iraqi soldiers firing on fleeing Iraqi citizens near the town of Basra in southern Iraq.

Also in April of 2003, CNN revealed that it had withheld information about Iraq torturing journalists and Iraqi citizens in the 1990s. According to CNN's chief news executive, the channel had been concerned for the safety not only of its own staff, but also of Iraqi sources and informants, who could expect punishment for speaking freely to reporters. Also according to the executive, "other news organizations were in the same bind."

After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, several mass graves were found in Iraq containing several thousand bodies total, and more are being uncovered to this day. While most of the dead in the graves were believed to have died in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein, some of them appeared to have died due to executions or died at times other than the 1991 rebellion.

Also after the invasion, numerous torture centers were found in security offices and police stations throughout Iraq. The equipment found at these centers typically included hooks for hanging people by the hands for beatings, devices for electric shock, and other equipment often found in nations with harsh security services and other Middle Eastern nations.

According to some reports, torture was used to improve the performance of the Iraqi soccer team.

[Justitia]

48. So, what's your point? And why are you using propaganda to make it?

Saddam was a bad guy? Check, got it.

I don't need "wood-chippers" and "babies being thrown from their incubators" to bullshit me into forming my own opinions.

[Roaming]

52. My point was replying to your original post, which seemed to

imply that because there were no beheadings of children in Iraq under Hussein that somehow it would be preferable that he was still in power. Why try to make Hussein look "better" when terrible things like this happen. He wasn't "better".

[Justitia]

53. I didn't imply a single one of those things, I called you on using

a specific piece of propaganda to dismiss someone else's point.

Sensationalistic propaganda used as a tool to emotionally manipulate perception is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

If the truth is so unequivocal, why does it need to be costumed in a lie?

[Canuckistanian]

49. I was looking for anything debunking that

It seemed too much like propaganda to me, even when I heard it the first time.

Now the freepers are also talking about "acid baths", like it was Common Wisdom.

[Justitia]

51. The "people shredders" are parked right next to the "WMDs".

You know, inside the "mobile weapons labs".
They used to crank up the "woodchippers" after they got bored "throwing babies out of their incubators" and were done "torturing Jessica Lynch" but before they mowed down Pat Tillman so he too could be used as a propaganda tool for this bullshit "war".


http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,1155399,00.html

[Media_Lies_Daily]

61. The first step in the NeoCon propaganda plan was....

...the use of the "terrorist attacks" on 911 to consolidate their power and to advance their plan to invade and occupy certain Middle Eastern countries. The document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" on the PNAC website specifically mentions that "another Pearl Harbor" would be needed to get Americans to buy into securing natural resources in the Middle East.

I am also becoming increasingly more convinced that Flight 93 was shot down and the passengers turned into heroes solely for the purposes of helping Americans buy into the coming, and pre-planned, war in the Middle East.

[KC21304]

54. The wood chippers were made up by the same people

who said there were giant paper shredders. More of Chalabi's nonsense.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

59. I guess you drank all of the NeoCon Koolaid, eh?

[Catrina]

62. Still believing the pre-war rightwing horror stories? The wood chipper

stories were debunked, and Bush et al no longer mention them ~ as was the 'babies in the ovens' story that got Congress to vote for the first Gulf War. They did get the desired result, and the fact that they were fabrications doesn't matter after the fact.

Saddam did torture people, we seem to have beaten him even there. But what has been proven re Saddam is bad enough. I don't know why they needed to lie.

[BikeWriter]

69. You believe the raping has stopped?

[ShortnFiery]

58. Not to mention, such happenings were reported in

1964 when the "communists" invaded Singapore, i.e., school was stormed and teachers were beheaded. Hum ... that's quite a strange trend?

If it did happen, it's nothing new. Small bands of insurgents HIT hard for effect. But I fail to under stand the purpose in this case?

[Dr.Phool]

5. Maybe they were teaching evolution

Or they didn't want vouchers.

[benburch]

6. We have sown the wind.

And we shall now reap the whirlwind.

[ewagner]

10. benburch...that...

is the definitive statement of this whole fiasco......

[benburch]

50. I wish it weren't.

You know when Bush did this thing, I was hoping that he was right about it, and that it would be over in six months, and the Iraqi people would love us, and that our oil supply would be secure and that there would be a blossoming of love for the USA in the whole Muslim world.

I don't think even the freepers are deluded enough to think that is what happened.

[enigma000]

7. I guess they were Quislings

Educating children using a post-Saddam curriculum with US approved textbooks. Yeah, that will get you killed…………..

[Divernan]

8. Is it civil war yet? What else would it take to reach this conclusion?

nt

[Rude Horner]

9. Ya know, we don't hear enough GOOD things

coming out of Iraq. Sure there are road side bombs going off left and right, and teachers heads are being cut off in front of their students, but screw that - what about the warm and fuzzy stuff?! :sarcasm:

[Mz Pip]

11. See, see, see!

This is PROOF that we are making progress!. The schools are open! The schools are open! Children are learning! Democracy is messy! :sarcasm:

Have anothe OXY Rush.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Atman]

12. Yes, but the school was freshly painted and had a new playground!

Why must you people always focus on the bad news? Sheesh.

[Inland]

26. That was my first thought.

Nothing would illustrate better the futility of our actions in Iraq. Civil order has to come first, then new playground equipment.

[DS1]

13. *pfft* Happens in Aruba all the time

:eyes:

[BoneDaddy]

14. Ya know

These freaking wing nuts over there are not only violent brutal and demonic, they are also stupid. With the world showing some sympathy for the Iraqi plight, they go and do something like this.

As far as I am concerned people like the beheaders deserve a quick trip to hell.

[lumpy]

41. Don't believe everything you see

or hear. Someone has an agenda. Read the article.

[Coventina]

17. Let Freedom Reign!!!!

:puke:

[Roland99]

18. They experienced freedom, though.

[saigon68]

20. For 3 years they had "LAW & ORDER"

I don't think so.

[ContraBass Black]

21. "intimidating pupils and disrupting learning."

No shit.

I'd guess that it worked.

[lovuian]

23. I think it was aimed at what they were teaching

and heaven knows!!! What a horrible thing...

[Turbineguy]

22. That sounds like

the sort of stuff the Viet-Cong used to do.

Oh wait, I forgot, I'm not supposed to compare the Iraq war to the Vietnam war.

[Bozita]

27. Another Iraqi teacher was beheaded in March -- link

Here's the news article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

"On Wednesday, armed insurgents burst into the classroom of Khidhir al-Mihallawi, an English teacher at Sajariyah High School, accused him of being an agent for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and beheaded him in front of his students, according to students, fellow instructors and a physician at a local hospital."

more...


Here's the DU thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=761679#762069

[Bake]

29. We don't need no ed-u-cay-shun!

Just another brick in the wall.

Bake

[rodeodance]

30. 'aimed at: "intimidating pupils and disrupting learning."--is this all he

could come up with?

[rodeodance]

31. But the U.S. military cast doubt on it. and resisdents see no evidence.

..An official in the ministry's press office also confirmed the report.

But the U.S. military cast doubt on it.

"There is no evidence that this happened. The Interior Ministry dispatched Iraqi police to the schools and talked to the guards," said U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson.

Police Major Kassim Ahmed told a Reuters reporter who went to the scene his unit was acting on a false tip: "This is not true. It is made up."

Residents of the area in Baghdad's Shaab district also said they were not aware of any such attacks.

[Bozita]

33. Translation: Keep moving, folks. Nothing to see here. Keep moving

[WhiteTara]

35. talked to the guards? How about looking

at the blood on the floor, you moran...oh right rummy's misinformation campaign is at work.

"There is no evidence that this happened. The Interior Ministry dispatched Iraqi police to the schools and talked to the guards," said U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson.

BTW, I suppose the military is going to have to allow beards as these men will no longer be able to look in the mirror and will be too afraid to have anyone else shave them.

[rodeodance]

32. Iraq police, US deny teachers beheaded at school (new headline)

.......Iraq police, US deny teachers beheaded at school
19 Apr 2006 15:50:36 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds US spokesman's comment, residents).......

[katty]

36. Sure, things are going well in Iraq

[wordpix]

38. And the good news out of Iraq today is: students weren't beheaded, just

teachers. :sarcasm:

[0rganism]

44. Assuming this is a fabrication, who fabricated it? Who gains?

The Iraq Ministry of State for National Security made an affirmative statement about the killings, and re-confirmed them.

Then the reporters go there and the cops tell them it didn't happen, the American military says it didn't happen, and the locals don't know about it.

So let's hypothesize that the beheadings didn't happen. What does the Iraq Ministry of State for National Security stand to gain from publicizing such a hoax? Or, were they just parroting misinformation obtained from another source who had something to gain? What would that source be?

Frankly, it's a lot easier to see an immediate angle of benefit for a US military/Iraqi police denial of a real killing than the other way around.

[shanti]

46. omg, i FEEL for the iraqi children so much!

:cry: most of them have to be mentally ill after what they have been going thru.

[underpants]

47. Vo.Tech?

[Rex]

55. "intimidating pupils and disrupting learning."

YA THINK? Nothing like seeing your teacher get his/her head cut off during 4th period! Jebus! What a horrible thing to do! :(

[goclark]

56. That does it for me!

"They hate us for our freedom! ~ HA!

Awful, just awful!

"They will greet us with flowers and be so happy that SH is gone"

[GoddessOfGuinness]

63. "But the U.S. military cast doubt on it."

More from the article:

"There is no evidence that this happened. The Interior Ministry dispatched Iraqi police to the schools and talked to the guards," said U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson.

Police Major Kassim Ahmed told a Reuters reporter who went to the scene his unit was acting on a false tip: "This is not true. It is made up."

Residents of the area in Baghdad's Shaab district also said they were not aware of any such attacks.

Why would Reuters bother with it if there was such strong reason to doubt the story's validity? This seems like something that should have waited to be reported.

[anotherdrew]

64. WHERE WERE THE DAMN GUARDS?!?! IDIOTS CAN'T EVEN THINK TO GUARD SCHOOLS?

bunch of worthless dickheads

so now I see "we talked to the guards" and don't believe it happened.

so now it's impossible to believe anything comming out of there. sounds like the locals are getting into the psywar game.