Dubya keeps saying things are going swell in Iraq. Iraqis think otherwise, and now they’ve asked the U.N. Security Council to get involved because of war crimes committed by U.S. troops:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The justice minister demanded Tuesday that the U.N. Security Council ensure that a group of U.S. troops are punished in the alleged rape and murder of a young Iraqi and the killing of her family, calling the attack “monstrous and inhuman.”
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The March 12 attack on the family in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, was among the worst in a series of cases of U.S. troops accused of killing and abusing Iraqi civilians. Iraq’s largest newspaper, Azzaman, said in an editorial Tuesday the rape “summarizes what has been going in Iraq for the past years not only by the American occupation army, but also by some Iraqi groups.”
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“If this act actually happened, it constitutes an ugly and unethical crime, monstrous and inhuman,” said Justice Minister Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shebli, a Sunni Arab. “The Iraqi judiciary should be informed about this investigation which should be conducted under supervision of international and human organizations. Those involved should face justice.”
“The ugliness of this crime demands a swift intervention of the U.N. Security Council to stop these violations of human rights and to condemn them so that they will not happen again,” he added.
The two lawmakers, Safiya al-Suhail and Ayda al-Sharif, said condemnation was not enough.
“We demand severe punishment for the five soldiers involved,” al-Sharif said. “Denouncements are not enough. If this act has taken place in another country, the world would have turned upside down.”
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The Azzaman newspaper expressed skepticism the soldiers would be severely punished.
“The U.S. Army will conduct an investigation and the result at best is already known. One or two U.S. soldiers will receive a ‘touristic punishment’ and the whole crime will be forgotten as it happened with Abu Ghraib criminals,” the newspaper said, referring to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at a prison in west Baghdad.
They have every reason to want third-party monitoring and security now. We’ve not only screwed that country ten ways from Sunday by making it a haven for insurgents and terrorists, but we’ve destroyed the infrastructure and demonstrated our troops are willing to rape, torture, and murder with abandon. Why should the Iraqis trust us? And it’s terribly sad that a small minority of our forces there are destroying our image and any trust the world may have had left for us, and they’re wholly confirming everything the terrorists have been saying about us for years. Until now, those things weren’t true; now they are. And why do you think any of our troops felt this kind of behavior was acceptable? They’ve been told as much by their leadership—all the way up to Rumsfeld and Bush.
Of course, read the entire article to see how safe the country is in addition to the mayhem caused by U.S. troops. Death and destruction everywhere. Assassinations, bombings, mob scenes, and on and on. Given our track record thus far, I’d want someone else to step in as well. At this point, it’d be hard to imagine anyone doing a worse job than we’ve done.