http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/184561,are-women-children-disabled-iraqs-new-cannon-fodder--feature.htmlBaghdad - Little boys with rifles drag a man from a bicycle. Others scream as they storm a house after climbing over the exterior walls like elite soldiers. These are images from a DVD that US soldiers found during a raid in the restive central Iraqi province of Diyala in December. The DVD was aired on Iraqi television two days ago.
The footage was supposed to prove that the Sunni extremist organization al-Qaeda in Iraq was now even training "child terrorists."
Just a week ago the Iraqi capital was rocked by a real terrorist act.
Two female suicide bombers suffering from Down's Syndrome blew themselves up in pet and bird markets, killing at least 69 people and wounding 180 in the deadliest attacks in Baghdad in six months.
Iraqi state television al-Iraqiya aired a portrait of a woman claiming she was one of the mentally retarded suicide bombers, but an Iraqi Army spokesman said immediately after the attacks that the women had been abused by the al-Qaeda planners as "living bombs."
The question is: are children, women and the mentally disabled now being used as cannon fodder by Islamic terrorists in Iraq? snip
Some independent commentators have even questioned that the women who carried out the attacks were in fact suffering from Down's Syndrome.
Iraq expert Juan Cole of the University of Michigan said it was "unlikely."
"The story that the women had Down's syndrome seems unlikely to be true; you wouldn't trust a sensitive terror plot to someone without their full faculties," Cole wrote on his blog.