Americans turn Tikrit into Iraq's own West Bank

[eablair3]

I saw on the BBC World News the video of Americans blowing up peoples' homes, arresting and handcuffing women and even a child. It was unbelievable. They were wiring and blowing up peoples' homes saying that they were "staging areas for terrorists." Isn't that a WAR CRIME to blow up civilian homes?

They certainly didn't show all of that on the national news broadcasts, and I watched all three (ABC, NBC, and CBS)

I felt like I was watching the IDF. I could hardly beieve that American troops were engaging in these tactics. This article from the UK Independent sums it up good.

________________________

Americans turn Tikrit into Iraq's own West Bank

By Phil Reeves in Awja
18 November 2003


It is the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but transported to Iraq. A town is imprisoned by razor wire. The entrance is guarded by soldiers, protected by sand bags, concrete barricades and a machine-gun nest.

Only those people with an identification card issued by the occupation authorities are allowed in or, more importantly, out.

"Hey, this is just like Gaza, isn't it?" a fiery-eyed young Iraqi policeman shouted at us from behind the chest-high, three-layer wire coils which separate his home from the rest of the surrounding dead-flat Iraqi landscape, Sunni Triangle heartland. "We're not happy. Not happy!"

This is Awja, the wealthy enclave outside Tikrit where Saddam Hussein grew up. It has long been a centre of pro-Saddam, anti-American sentiments, home to the ousted dictator's closest tribesmen, his cronies and his relatives. The United States military says it is also the source of persistent violent insurgency.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

snip

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=464771

[leftchick]

1. this guy should be tried for crimes against humanity...

<snip>The American military yesterday proved unable to provide The Independent with any comment on the enclosing of Awja. But Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell of the 4th Infantry Division, who came up with the scheme, told The Washington Post in an interview last week: "The insurgents should not be allowed to swim among the population as a whole. What we elected to do was make Awja a fish bowl so we could see who was swimming inside."

....are our congress people aware of these atrocities?!?

[Ripley]

2. I actually saw it on American Headline News last night.

Just a snippet. But the video was of a home with a huge hole in the wall (you could see pots on a table in the kitchen) and a boy standing there looking in the hole. Looked just like I/P.

[4dsc]

3. Winning the hearts and minds of Iraqi's

everywhere. This is so conterproductive, it hurts. I believe the British told the US that htese tactics do not work..

[smallprint]

4. Maybe they know they don't work...

and they are just doing it for practice.

New World Order, ya know.

[atreides1]

5. 4th ID, The Sharon Division

The 4th ID is steadily becoming an Einzatz Commando unit, and as long as you're a white officer you can violate the Geneva Conventions and the Manuals of Courts Martial.

Does anyone still wonder why the 4th ID is taking the brunt of the casualties. I once served with the 4th ID, it was a good unit, but now it's no better then the IDF.

And you can bet that they won't be releasing the numbers of Iraqi civilians that are killed during this operation