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.