Iraq's Slumdog Massacre: One Million Dogs Face Death

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:



Amid its struggles with Sunni jihadists, Shiite radicals, and Kurdish separatists, the Iraqi government is training its sights on a new enemy: dogs. According to the UK's Daily Mail, Iraq is spending 35 million dinars—about $30,000—to send 20 shotgun-wielding squads out to hunt down the capital's strays. Their goal: Killing one million canines. So far, they've scratched 42,000, and they're averaging 2,400 a day. "We could consider this the biggest campaign of dog execution ever," Baghdad's chief veterinarian, Mohammed al-Hilly, told the newspaper.

Put so bluntly, it sounds heinous, perhaps even criminal. It's also a tough pill to swallow for many US servicemembers in Iraq, who find comfort in adopted Iraqi pets that wandered in from the wild. But the dog-eradication program is incredibly popular among Iraqis, and could even enhance the government's standing with its discontented populace. And it's not unprecedented: Saddam Hussein used to sponsor dog roundups, and the US military is currently waging its own campaign against the country's feral dogs.

Wild animals also pose special problems for American service members in Iraq. Despite the fortifications at the US coalition's largest bases—mazes of walls, cameras, guns, checkpoints—coyotes and cats slip through at will, often crossing soldiers' paths in the dusty dark of night, catching fish on base lakes and moats, or tracking rats underneath the soldiers' sleeping trailers. Rabies is an ever-present concern, as is the general nastiness of the feral animal population. Plus, military working dogs are ubiquitous in Iraq, and keeping them away from wild animals is a paramount concern. Units that rely on working animals have rules of engagement empowering them to kill any creature that ventures too close to their dogs.

The US military command also forbids soldiers to own pets. It's right there in General Order No. 1, the master document regulating military and contractor behavior: "Adopting as pets or mascots, caring for or feeding any type of domestic or wild animal" in the Iraqi war zone is a crime, on a par with using illegal drugs, distributing pornography, drinking liquor, keeping war spoils, or selling your gun. The military doesn't just ban contact between soldiers and animals; it's contracted with KBR—yes, that KBR—to provide "vector control" on big installations like the Victory Base Complex on Baghdad's outskirts. The company's employees roam those bases, rounding up any animals they find, especially those being sheltered by the troops. All the animals are destroyed. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/iraq-kbr-one-million-dogs-death

[pipoman]

1. tacos de perro

:hide:

[MidwestTransplant]

2. Our pets are lucky not to have been born in Iraq. Same with us.

[patrice]

6. ? That sounds like a variation on the once popular "Thank God we are having our war over there

instead of here." I hope you didn't intend that.

Proxy Wars are Satan's own Evil and we, as the ones who vote for them and finance them http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/2414.htm , are MORE damned by the political expediency of displacing the violence onto the INNOCENT , so there's nothing to thank "God" about.

Recall that those who financed and carried out 9/11 were Saudi Arabian, but FAR FAR be it from us to attack our real Royal Slave Masters.


(BTW: check out which oil company in the news recently was complicit in the overthrow of a nationalistic prime minister in Iran to help out our Shah who was elevated by the CIA - as was also, BTBTW, Saddam Hussein.)

[MidwestTransplant]

9. It means we can't control where we are born and we are lucky to not be born in a

country that is devastated by war.

[patrice]

11. I guess I'm confused. Was where the war occurred a matter of luck?

[MidwestTransplant]

14. Not sure how I can be any more clear. Don't read into it too much.

[patrice]

15. Just trying to understand what luck has to do with it.Perhaps you & I have different perspectives on

the definition of "we"/"us".

[patrice]

13. I mean, what's lucky about where we are born or not, unless, as in this example, there is a

war there or not?

[patrice]

17. Please see my apology below.

Have a good day.

[patrice]

3. Well, 1 million is more than 105,000+ so I guess this is more important than non-combatant deaths

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

[mnhtnbb]

4. Who, or what, is a best friend to an Iraqi?

[patrice]

8. I won't dishonor their innocent dead by making a joke out of that.

[maxsolomon]

5. different culture - 'dog' being a insult

as opposed to 'whatup, dog?'

[jp11]

7. If people read the article linked they'd know that

over there they don't really spay or neuter dogs and the fact that they actually expect to kill a million wild dogs means the situation is out of control. Humane to shoot dogs with a shotgun no but is it really practical to round them all up and put them to sleep?

We aren't so great here in america either plenty of people still abandon their pets, let them run wild and breed to increase the feral population as well.

[Mojeoux]

10. My heart goes out to all those poor doggies and anyone who loves them.

May they be reincarnated as lucky caring people, who all become veterinarians.

[undeterred]

12. We should bring the troops home from Iraq now.

What a hell that place is.

[patrice]

16. I want to apologize to this thread for being kind of snarky about this yesterday.

I got up this morning feeling a new low.

Sat in my chair trying to figure out how to go forward.

Ernie came in and jumped up onto the foot of the bed and lay down facing me, the way cats do (so that he's resting on what would be his elbows if he were a human), and he started flirting with me, to get some love, which I gave to him and he gave back in spades, as much as I wanted, for as long as I want it.

This story about the million (innocent) dogs is one of the saddest of Operation Iraqi "Freedom".

Those dogs, the whales, the pelicans and birds, all of the fish, none of them choose any of this.

What do do?

I don't know anymore than this.

.................................................

Live the love, you all.

[hayu_lol]

18. Many of these dogs have rabies...

that goes for the coyotes and related animals as well.

These packs of roving animals are dangerous to be around.

[Barack_America]

20. That's unlikely.

Dogs are not a carrier for rabies. When they get it they become pretty noticeably sick.

[patrice]

21. Yes, of course they are, so what has to be done now, has to be done, but what made it necessary is

just one of many profoundly bad CHOICES made by those who earn the big bucks to do better.

War is one of the ultimate proofs of failed leadership. One of the other such proofs is (any) invasion and occupation and when that invasion and occupation comes from within it's called a coup and is often accommpanied by more or less legal appurtenances, such as that which happened on American soil in the year 2000, the one that put our troops in this position of having to kill dogs, many of whom would never have been born, nor contracted rabies if it were not for the blaspheming hubris of certain extremist Christian sects in this country who just HAD to have their Armageddon at the expense of EVERYTHING else and got used and discarded by Oil ROYALTY instead.

Pity the poor sick dogs!

[Barack_America]

19. Wish they could couple that with a spay and neuter program. nt