US is Way Too Soft on Insurgents

By Angus McFistenpooter
Special Right Wing Blogger to The Reasonable Rant

The report about US troops capturing and jailing the wives of suspected iinsurgents is just a little to liberal, left-wing boo hoo hoo for me. So what. These people, the insurgents, are trying to kill our troops and blowing up innocent Iraqi citizens. So jailing their wives and even torturing them to get the husbands to surrender is better than they deserve. Better than they'd offer us.

What we really need to do, though, is capture these people's children and burn them alive. Sweet! And record it on the soldiers camcorders with a cool sound-track, maybe the song, "We don't need no water let the mother-fucker burn!" Then show the video around the clock, you know, kids burning and screaming, wives tortured and caught up in a naughty liittle gang-bang, veils wadded up in a ball on the floor and all on video. Yeah! Let these insurgent scumbags know we Americans mean BUSINESS!

Isn't that the New American Way? Everything's on the table now, jailing Americans without charging them, spiriting people in the dead of night to other countries and torturing them. Maybe what we really need are some concentration camps and gas ovens and just Final Solution these worthless Jews . . . I mean INSURGENTS, really I did, no, no, I like Jews, even know a few, love em, I really do, no, I meant just the dirty Insurgents, we're at WAR, don't you know it, WAR WAR WAR and they're not really humans anyway, but THE ENEMY, THE ENEMY, KILL THE ENEMY, WE MUST KILL THE ENEMY BEFORE HE KILLS US . . .

It is not necessary that we win the war, only that the war continue.
Continue.
Continue.
Continue.

Yeah. That's it. A perfectly Bush response to our problem.

Death to all who oppose us! Long Live the Empire!

God is with us! Kill the enemy! Kill him before he kills you and your family!

Kill.
Kill.
Kill.

It's what Jesus would do.

Documents Show Army Seized Wives as Tactic

By Charles J. Hanley

The Associated Press

Friday 27 January 2006

The US Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, US military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a US intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detainees are freed.

The US military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women among the 14,000 detainees currently held in the 2 1/2-year-old insurgency. All were accused of "aiding terrorists or planting explosives," but an Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that US anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects' houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and "we are not Saddam." A US command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an "imperative threat" are held in long-term US-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far as short-term detentions by local US units. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under US court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices.

In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

"During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," wrote the 14-year veteran officer. He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

"The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing," the intelligence officer wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained, he said.

Like most names in the released documents, the officer's signature is blacked out on this for-the-record memorandum about his complaint.

Of this case, command spokesman Johnson said he could not judge, months later, the factors that led to the woman's detention.

The second episode, in June 2004, is found in sketchy detail in e-mail exchanges among six US Army colonels, discussing an undisclosed number of female detainees held in northern Iraq by the Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

The first message, from a military police colonel, advised staff officers of the US northern command that the Iraqi police would not take control of the jailed women without charges being brought against them.

In a second e-mail, a command staff officer asked an officer of the unit holding the women, "What are you guys doing to try to get the husband - have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?"

Two days later, the brigade's deputy commander advised the higher command, "As each day goes by, I get more input that these gals have some info and/or will result in getting the husband."

He went on, "These ladies fought back extremely hard during the original detention. They have shown indications of deceit and misinformation."

The command staff colonel wrote in reply, referring to a commanding general, "CG wants the husband."

The released e-mails stop there, and the women's eventual status could not be immediately determined.

Of this episode, Johnson said, "It is clear the unit believed the females detained had substantial knowledge of insurgent activity and warranted being held."