Iraq Using Kids As Human Shields, Executing Civilians

[MMMMMM]

(excerpt)
PRO-SADDAM Hussein militia in Basra are using children as young as five as human shields and threatening men with death if they do not fight for them, British troops revealed yesterday.

Sergeant David Baird, a tank commander, told Martin Bentham, a journalist with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, that he had seen at least four or five children, aged between five and eight, being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and held by Iraqi fighters as they crossed a road in front of his tank.

He said he was "sickened" by the tactic adopted by the Iraqis who moments earlier had been firing rocket-propelled grenades at him.

Sgt Baird, 32, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, who commands a Challenger 2 tank from C Squadron of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards battle group, said he was forced to halt any retaliatory fire because of the danger of killing the children.

"They [the militia] were crossing the road to try and outflank us on the left and as they crossed, four or five of them grabbed kids by the scruff of their necks and dragged them across with them," he said. "They were using them as human shields so that I had to stop firing."....

....British forces are learning of the desperate situation inside Basra from the hundreds of civilians fleeing the city.

Young men told how the ruling Baath Party militia has rounded up an entire generation of male residents in the city and ordered them to fight the British and Americans. Anyone refusing is shot. Two men in their 30s, who escaped and asked for asylum, told how they fled because they feared their families would be killed if they were found hiding in their homes.

Captain Ken Jolley, a British Army officer, said the two men had begged to speak to military officials at a vehicle checkpoint on a road out of the city. "The government is trying to round up all able-bodied males to fight with weapons," he says they told him. "Anyone not doing it is being executed."....

....Stories of atrocities are also starting to emerge. One mother told British medics that her 12-year-old son was among dozens of children gunned down by death squads. He was shot in the liver and several times in the stomach in Az Zubayr, just outside Basra, and was being treated aboard the British hospital ship, RFA Argus.

Lieutenant Commander Nigel Bassett, the ship’s interpreter, said: "His mother says he was definitely shot by Iraqis and there were another group of children in the same place who were all gunned down by Iraqis.

"It seems there was an area of the town where people were leaving or going to get food to assist the coalition and there was a group of tearaways who came in and started indiscriminately shooting, trying to teach people not to co-operate."(end excerpt)

http://thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=387432003

Well Mr. Alger I don't suppose this fits into your scenario of Iraq being justified in utilizing unusual means to fight off a mismatched superior foe...or does it?

More evidence that the Baathists ruling Iraq are the scum of the earth.

[adios]

The word is getting out I'm sure. Of course there will be more than a few on this forum who are indicitive of many who will say it is mere propaganda and there is no proof. Even with tribunals and trials to ferret out the truth show the extent of the atrocities perpetrated they're very likely to say that such proceedings are coaltion kangaroo courts.

[nicky g]

I don't know if it's propaganda - as yet there's no proof. I think there's good reason not to take what the military says as gospel; surely you'd agree. Certainly I also don't doubt the levels of brutality Saddam is capable of.

I'm all for trials and I wouldn't denounce them as kangaroo courts if they were run by an independent international body, such as the ICC. But we all know that won't happen. I would be pretty suspicious of trials by the US. I don't think a victor that is immune from prosecution should be able to try the loser. Then again, even that would be preferable to the Guantanomo bay situation, where neither trials nor PoW status are allowed. I imagine much the same will happen to alot of Iraqis - apparently anyone fighting the US now is a "terrorist", even when they're resisting invasion. Ho hum.

[B-Man]

According to Irishhand and others, Iraq is justified in using any tactics (including WMD) in this conflict. Here's a good example of where that kind of thinking leads.

Just because something can be done, that doesn't mean it should be done. The actions of Saddam and his men of course are sickening, and this is another example of why this tyrant needs to be removed, ASAP.

[adios]

"I don't know if it's propaganda - as yet there's no proof. I think there's good reason not to take what the military says as gospel; surely you'd agree."

I agree.

"Certainly I also don't doubt the levels of brutality Saddam is capable of."

Yes there seems to be no limits on man's inhumanity to man.

"I'm all for trials and I wouldn't denounce them as kangaroo courts if they were run by an independent international body, such as the ICC."

I don't know much about the ICC so I can't comment on them per se. Of course I would like to see impartial fact finding proceedings that will vigorously attempt to uncover the truth.

"But we all know that won't happen."

Probably not and that is why I stated in another post we will never know the truth for sure.

"I would be pretty suspicious of trials by the US."

As are many, many others.

" I don't think a victor that is immune from prosecution should be able to try the loser."

What about Nuremberg? I recognize that we may not be in the same situation here in Iraq. Clearly in World War II there were crimes against humanity committed by the axis powers that needed to be addressed. Many would point to atrocities by the allies and have a point. To me though it just seems certain crimes such as those committed by the Gestapo for instance clearly can't go unpunished.

Iraq is different in many respects but I wonder about activities such as the ones MMMMMM has mentioned here. Also the activities of the Iraqi secret police seem relevant. Anyway your point about the victors trying the vanquished is relevant I believe and one that will be very problematic if the coalition prevails and implements such proceedings. It will be problematic because I would think (may be wrong about it) that it would do little to satisfy those that were non-supportive and skeptical of USA and possibly other coalition members intentions and actions.

[nicky g]

Nice post. I think Nuremberg was exceptional in that it was the first time something like that had happened, and there was no possibility of an independent, impartial international court being available. Now, on the other hand, there have been numerous efforts to set one up, blocked by the very country that now wants to try Iraqis for war crimes. I definitely think Saddam's regime should be tried, but I think it's time we stopped doing these thing on an ad hoc basis, and only when it involves a US enemy. There needs to be an established procedure for them, just as there should be an established international procedure for determining when a brutal regime should be overthrown through external intervention, or people will continue to see it as US opportunism, and be sceptical about the evidence being presented.

[MMMMMM]

nicky, first of all you raise some valid points in your two prior posts. Each incident taken individually may indeed be uncertain. However as the war continues, and especially after the war, the world will hear a great many descriptions of the brutalities of the Iraqi regime from many first-hand sources--more than enough, I suppose, to convince even most skeptics.

Regarding an international procedure to deterine whether a brutal regime should be overthrown: here we face a similar problem as with the U.N.: most regimes on the face of the Earth today are themselves brutal regimes, non-elected, and thus cannot be depended upon for this purpose.

[nicky g]

I don't doubt that plenty of evidence of Iraqi brutality will emerge. I'm not suspicous of Iraqi atrocities in general - rather of incidents where the coalition makes a mistake or needlessly kills people and then instantly unearths some Iraqi plot that was to blame for the whole thing.

On the international procedure: I agree that's difficult, but there has to be a way between the situation you describe, and the US and its allies unilaterally deciding which dictators are for the high jump and which can carry on killing and torturing.

[Clarkmeister]

I think that there is a crutial difference between WMD and using people against their will as human shields. In one case, the soldiers are defending their land and Iraq against an invading force. In another case, they are using a fellow Iraqi against their will. They are now no longer defending that Iraqi citizen, they are killing them.

Of course, that leads to the morality of the draft. Hmmmm....

[Jimbo]

"Of course, that leads to the morality of the draft. Hmmmm...."

Not too many unwilling draftees fighting in this war Clarkmeister.

[MMMMMM]

I don't believe we ever drafted 5-year olds, but some Iraqis seem perfectly content to use 5-year olds as human shields.

[Clarkmeister]

I wasn't aware that i said there was Jimbo. Your reading skills are seriously deteriorating. First you don't understanding the meaning of the word "depressing" and now this.

[Jimbo]

C'mon Clarkie you can do better than that!!! Don't wimp out on me now and resort to playground tactics, fight like a man. Oh, it must be the pessimist pacifist in you! /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

Seems to me I did not state that you said that either Clarkmeister.

[andyfox]

"In this part of the world, it seems that life is not held in the same way as we regard it."

Why is it always the invader that questions the humanity of the invaded? I don't think the English would want too close an examination of the history of the way they regard life.

If the tank was not there, there would have been no need for the children to have been used as shields. Using children as shields is sickening. I hope I would be just as sickened if Iraq had invaded the United States and some American used a child as a shield.

[adios]

"Of course, that leads to the morality of the draft. Hmmmm.... "

Of whose draft, the Iraqis or the United States? Of course there is only draft registration here but I would like to see an Iraqi be exempt from the Iraqi draft for being aconscientious objector for one or even serve prison time in lieu of being drafted.

[Chris Alger]

I never defended the use of human shields, and my statement that Iraqis are forced to use unconventional means to defend themselves doesn’t imply that any means are acceptable. I hate the use of human shields and have always condemned them.

Your hypocrisy on this issue, however, is simply unbelievable. On more than one occasion, you have defended our alliance and lethal assistance to Israel.

Israel uses human shields as a matter of unofficial policy without condemnation or protest from those like you that condemn the same tactics by Iraq as “crimes” (and they are serious crimes). In fact, Israel uses human shields not defend territory from invasion but in order to conquer it yet is effectively rewarded with more aid than the US gives Africa. Were it up to me, I would withhold all US tax dollars from Israel barring an effective means of preventing these (and similar) abuses.

If instead I chose to continue to support Israel, I wouldn’t go around condemning others for doing the same thing Israel does. I cedrtainly wouldn't say: these human shielders need to be bombed because they're criminals, but these other ones need to be helped. At least, I wouldn’t do that and expect people to take me seriously.

In Jenin last April, according to Human Rights Watch, “IDF soldiers used Palestinian civilians to protect them from danger, deploying them as ‘human shields' and forcing them to perform dangerous work. Human Rights Watch received many separate and credible testimonies that Palestinians were placed in vulnerable positions to protect IDF soldiers from gunfire or attack. IDF soldiers forced these Palestinians to stand for extended periods in front of exposed IDF positions, or made them accompany the soldiers as they moved from house to house. Kamal Tawalbi, the father of fourteen children, described how soldiers kept him and his fourteen-year-old son for three hours in the line of fire, using his and his son's shoulders to rest their rifles as they fired. IDF soldiers forced a sixty-five-year-old woman was forced to stand on a rooftop in front of an IDF position in the middle of a helicopter battle." http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/israel0502-06.htm#P604_103426

Israel refused to let the UN to enter the West Bank to investigate these events, an outrage that stirred no outrage, much less a threat to cut assistance, from the pious human rights police at the White House.

Nor was it a new policy in Jenin. "[Human Rights Watch senior researcher Peter] Bouckaert said that in 2001 and earlier this year, Human Rights Watch had found what he called evidence of Israeli forces' using Palestinians as shields." David Rohde, "Rights Group Doubts Mass Deaths in Jenin, but Sees Signs of War Crimes," New York Times, 5/3/02.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/03/international/middleeast/03JENI.html?tntemail1

In fact, the IDF has been coercing Palestinian civilians to perform dangerous tasks to "shield" soldiers from danger for many years. Ha’aretz: “The use of bodies of Palestinians for the IDF's needs is not new. In the first intifada, residents young and old were ordered to climb electricity poles to remove banned Palestinian flags, some of whom died of electrocution, while others were made to clear away barriers made of stones for fear that they might be booby-trapped. There were also cases in which Palestinians were forced to sit on the hoods of jeeps in order to protect the soldiers with their bodies. The exacerbation of the measures being used in the war against the second intifada has also brought about an exacerbation of the use of Palestinians as human shields: Palestinians have been made to enter buildings that were suspected of being booby-trapped, to carry out packages thought to be explosive devices and assist in manhunts for wanted individuals. Nor are these cases departures from the norm: they are part of a declared and fixed policy, so much so that they have become rooted as a ‘procedure.'" Gideon Levi, "Some Lives are Cheaper Than Others," Ha'aretz, 8/19/02.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://www.danpal.dk/index.php%3Fdoc%3D827&e=2436

Finally, I don’t see how you can exonerate our two-party "coalition." It beseiged a city of 2 million at Basra. It learned immediately that it the city would be defended. The decision to take Basra forced its defenders to choose between (1) defeat and (2) holding the civilians hostage and turning them into “human shields.” When you attack a defended civilian center you either indiscriminately kill or create human shields almost by definition. In other contexts, notably the seige of Jerusalem in 1948, where outnumbered defenders held the city in part by refusing to let civilians escape, this tactic is not only acceptable but heroic. I tend to disagree. But I wouldn’t exculpate the attackers while placing all blame on defenders forced against their will to confront what, in any circumstances, is a terrible choice.

[nicky g]

Worth making the point that Israel also frequently disguises troops as cvilians.

[Chris Alger]

You're right, I had forgotten about their assassination team "death squads." I read last fall that Israel had extrajudicially executed some 90 "militants" during the current intifada, and killed some 70 innocent bystanders in the process. The US will likely do the same thing through local proxies if the Iraqis refuse to bow down to their foreign masters.

[brad]

it was in the newspaper israel said they would be sending ass. teams into friendly countries like US.

some of the posters here thought it was a good idea.

i predict the next brilliant idea (from english patient film) is to chop off everybodys thumbs, thus preventing them from shooting a gun, which if it saves even one child will be worth it.

[ACPlayer]

If one was to look at a pareto chart on the reasons for going to war. The brutality of the regime would be the top reason from a moral perspective.

I dont believe that the decision makers give it a great deal of weight in its decision. They give it a great deal of weight in its propoganda war.

If brutality were to be a determining factor we would be in: Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Angola, Turkey, Chechnya, vaious old USSR states, and a few other countries. Not to mention the brutality shown against the Palesinian populations, and the terrible conditions under which they live.

I do think that Blair gives the moral arguements more weight.