BBC video of what is REALLY going on in Iraq - The Death Squads

[beachmom]

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2006_11_01_healingiraq_archive.html#116374108815637411

(if you view it, hit play, and then hit pause. Go away for a while and then watch it -- that tends to work better -- it is 47 minutes long)

Zeyad says it is accurate, so that's all the stamp of approval I need.

*** Warning ***

Very graphic pictures of torture and murder.


It ends talking about how if American troops withdraw the Death Squads will run all of Iraq -- once again, how will our staying not stop that? Maliki will not put a lid on the militias. The Americans cannot stop the killings. There's a conventional wisdom going on that keeps us stuck. There seems to be almost a presumption that American forces are "peacekeepers", which is simply not the case.

Also interesting about the film is Americans who come forward with info about the Interior Ministry -- why haven't we learned this on American TV?

Zeyad concludes:

Be sure that you'll never get this on American TV.

[SutaUvaca]

1. Ah. the incredible power of lies-of-omission!

Of course the American public won't see any such thing.
I'd bet the dufuss Chimperator is shielded even from such things.
But I reckon lots of top US officials are very very aware, in great detail, of all of this.
And so the Idiot's War goes on.

[beachmom]

2. It's more about the horrible things happening in Iraq

Just how bad it is and who controls the streets (the militias). As I said in the OP, they interview Americans who had helped advise the Interior Ministry who felt the needed to come clean about how they KNEW that ministry was up to no good.

It also just shows pictures that we seem to not get anymore, of what Baghdad looks like.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

3. If you want to read something

the New Yorker article this week on Rumsfeld is quite eye-opening into how dim they all were to the importance of maintaining security in the opening weeks of the post war period.

...The man who came to exemplify this new way of war was Major General Buford (Buff) Blount, a courtly Mississippian who commanded the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division—the 3rd I.D.—and who became a popular figure with reporters...

...But within a few weeks Rumsfeld and his closest advisers came to regard Blount as part of a problem they had not foreseen and were wholly unprepared to handle: the gathering chaos that soon became an insurgency....

Blount’s 3rd I.D. had been slated to go home, and his troops, having stormed into Baghdad, considered their mission accomplished. (Gee, where'd they get idea?) But the days passed, and Blount’s unit found itself faced with a policing mission it didn’t want and hadn’t expected. Scores of looters appeared, and then hundreds and thousands, making off with anything that could be carried away.

“Never, from the first day that we ever started planning this until we got to Baghdad, in all the processes, rehearsals—nobody ever mentioned the word ‘looter,’ ” Blount told me. “I mean, it was just never, ever, ever mentioned. Our focus was on fighting the war.” ....

Blount ordered patrols to secure hospitals, power facilities, and other key structures, but in many cases the looters had already come and gone. As it became apparent in Washington that the disorder might spin out of control, the 3rd I.D.’s pullout was delayed. At the division’s home base, in Georgia, some of the troops’ spouses began to voice their dismay, and in Baghdad, some of Blount’s soldiers complained to reporters. One, a private named Matthew C. O’Dell, told the Times, “You call Donald Rumsfeld and tell him our sorry asses are ready to go home.”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061120fa_fact

BTW: are you the same beachmom on kos?