http://www.decaturdailydemocrat.com/articles/2006/06/02/news/opinion/editorial01.txt<snip>At first, the dominant presence of the U.S. military - with its towering vehicles rumbling through Baghdad's streets and its soldiers like giants with their vests and helmets and weapons - seemed overwhelming. Now in Baghdad, you can go days without seeing American soldiers. Instead, it feels as if Iraqis are occupying Iraq, their masked militiamen blasting through traffic in anonymous security vehicles, shooting into the air, pointing their Kalashnikovs at passersby.
Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis.
Last fall I visited the home of a Sunni man called Sabah in the western Baghdad suburb of Radwaniya, where the Sunni resistance had long had a presence, and where a U.S. soldier had recently been killed. On Friday night a few days before I came, his family told me, American soldiers surrounded the home where Sabah lived with his brothers, Walid and Hussein, and their families and broke down the door. The women and children were herded outside, walking past Sabah, whose nose was broken, and Walid, who had the barrel of a soldier's machine gun in his mouth. The soldiers beat the men with rifle butts, while the Shiite Iraqi translator accompanying the troops exhorted the Americans to execute the Sunnis.
As the terrified family waited outside, they heard three shots from inside. It then sounded to them as though there was a scuffle inside, with the soldiers shouting at each other. Thirty minutes later the translator emerged with a picture of Sabah. ``Who is Sabah's wife?'' he asked. ``Your husband was killed by the Americans, and he deserved to die,'' he told her. At that he tore the picture before her face.
Walid was then taken away, and inside the house the family found Sabah dead. Three U.S.-made bullet casings were on the floor. Photographs of Sabah had been torn up and his ID card confiscated. One photograph remained on his wife's bureau: Sabah standing proudly in front of his Mercedes.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
