Thursday, February 22, 2007

The Horrors of War

I have never been a soldier. I have never known what it feels like to have that amount of power over other people. Like almost everyone else, I would like to think that I would use it well.

However, it appears that some people find this power simply too intoxicating and it leads them to think that they can, literally, do as they please. In the chaos that the Iraq invasion unleashed, some young American soldiers acted on that belief.

This story is depressing beyond words:

A US soldier being court-martialled for raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her family last March broke down in tears yesterday as he gave a graphic account of the unprovoked attack.

Sgt Paul Cortez, one of five men facing criminal charges for the atrocity, described how he and his comrades discussed "having sex with an Iraqi female" and then selected their target in such a way as to minimise getting caught.

He, James Barker and Steven Green had their eye on a farmhouse near their checkpoint in Mahmudiya, near Baghdad. They visited it before the attack and behaved so lasciviously around Abeer Qasim al-Janabi that she was sent to sleep at a neighbour's house. They made their move in broad daylight, when Abeer's parents and five-year-old sister were also home. Cortez told the court that Green took the three into a bedroom while Cortez and Barker took turns raping Abeer in the living room.

"She kept trying to keep her legs closed and saying stuff in Arabic," Cortez said. "During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard gunshots that came from the bedroom. After Barker was done, Green came out and said that he had killed them all... Green then placed himself between Abeer's legs to rape her."

Green shot the girl dead too, at which point the soldiers set her on fire.

US authorities at first described the attack as having been carried out by Iraqi insurgents.

It was only after member's of Cortez's unit were kidnapped and beheaded by an Iraqi Shia group in an explicit act of revenge that the truth came to light when a unit member spoke of the incident during counselling.

I wonder how much the US authorities almost instinctive habit of attaching the blame to Iraqi insurgents contributed to the mindset that led to these soldiers feeling that they could participate in such an atrocity and that they would probably get away with it?

Click title for full article.

2 comments:

AF said...

Needless to say it is Vietnam all over again.

The question I have is how many atrocities have gone under the radar, and how many are happening right now?

I remember a double-page spread in The Sun when the first of Sadam's palaces were taken. Troops posing victoriously and becoming well acquainted with the luxurious surroundings. It was as if they had, had a taste of the power that Sadam had previously wielded. They didn't look like liberators then, and as more and more evils are uncovered since the occupation started, it increasingly seems that some of them became intoxicated with that power.

How much of the civil war now is fuelled by revenge being taken for covered up atrocities committed by the occupiers?

Kel said...

Amen Alex, and I remember the very photo you are talking about.

And for every one of these atrocities that we hear of there will be many that, as you say, simply slip under the radar. The army's initial response was to blame the insurgents. How many times have they tried that and had it succeed I wonder?