US military deliberately sent Shia and Kurdish commandoes into Sunni areas for torture, Wikileaks documents show.
By Gareth Porter
Al-Jazeera
"The revelation by Wikileaks of a US military order directing US forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the US military about detainee abuse.
But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger US strategy of exploiting Shia sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the US war.
And General David Petraeus was a key figure in developing the strategy of using Shia and Kurdish forces to suppress Sunnis in 2004-2005.
The strategy involved the deliberate deployment of Shia and Kurdish police commandoes in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by Wikileaks show.....
In fact, the US military and the US Embassy were well aware of the serious risk that the strategy of relying on vengeful Shia police commandos to track down Sunnis would exacerbate sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shia. In May 2005, Ann Scott Tyson wrote in the Washington Post that US military analysts did not deny that the US strategy "aggravates the underlying fault lines in Iraqi society, heightening the prospects of civil strife".
In late July 2005, when Petraeus was still heading the command, an unnamed "senior American officer" at MNSTC-I was asked by John F. Burns of the New York Times whether the US might end up arming Iraqis for a civil war. The officer answered, "Maybe"....."
By Gareth Porter
Al-Jazeera
"The revelation by Wikileaks of a US military order directing US forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the US military about detainee abuse.
But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger US strategy of exploiting Shia sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the US war.
And General David Petraeus was a key figure in developing the strategy of using Shia and Kurdish forces to suppress Sunnis in 2004-2005.
The strategy involved the deliberate deployment of Shia and Kurdish police commandoes in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by Wikileaks show.....
In fact, the US military and the US Embassy were well aware of the serious risk that the strategy of relying on vengeful Shia police commandos to track down Sunnis would exacerbate sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shia. In May 2005, Ann Scott Tyson wrote in the Washington Post that US military analysts did not deny that the US strategy "aggravates the underlying fault lines in Iraqi society, heightening the prospects of civil strife".
In late July 2005, when Petraeus was still heading the command, an unnamed "senior American officer" at MNSTC-I was asked by John F. Burns of the New York Times whether the US might end up arming Iraqis for a civil war. The officer answered, "Maybe"....."
COMMENT
While Iraqis were slaughtering other Iraqis, in the service of the US occupation, consider this story from Afghanistan today.
I think that the Afghans are displaying by far a stronger sense of national identity and cohesion than the Iraqis. Their main resistance is against the foreign occupation instead of slaughtering each other. That resistance to foreigners has a very long tradition in Afghanistan, but in Iraq they are too busy with their sectarian bloodbaths and they want the occupiers to stay!
It was not always like that. In the 1920 uprising against the British Empire, all Iraqis fought together against the British occupation. In fact the Kurds played a leading role in that fight to the extent that Winston Churchill bombed Kurdish villages from the air to subdue the Kurds.
3 US troops killed by Afghan soldier
"Three American troops have been killed by an Afghan National Army soldier in southern Afghanistan, a NATO statement says.
NATO said on Saturday that the Afghan soldier opened fire on the troopers and killed them in the city of Sangin in Helmand province on Friday evening.
“The coalition and the Afghan government” launched a joint investigation into the incident, NATO added.
“An Afghan soldier shot and killed the American service members on their base” Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef said in a statement on Saturday.
He added that the Afghan solider defected to the militants after killing the Americans.
Taliban militants “took him to a safe place,” the Taliban spokesperson further explained...."
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