House Raids described by Vets

Lightdemon · 07-13-07, 03:11 PM

Various Seargents describing the protocol for House Raids in an interview.

Democracy Now! | Iraq War Vets Describe "Brutal Techniques" Used by U.S. Military Against Iraqi Civilians

Democracy Now! | If Soldiers Came From Another Country And Did This To My Family, I Would Be An Insurgent Too” – War Vet Describes Iraq House Raid

The interviewees are featured in a recent article titled " The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness" by The Nation.

Here are a few critical points that should be emphasized:

Quote:

SPC. GARETT REPPENHAGEN: Most of the time we didn’t have interpreters with us, so, no, there was a huge miscommunication, really problems with the language barrier. A lot of times we found that once we started these raids, we would get to the second or third house, and the family would be awake, the lights would be on, the men and women would already be separated. The men would have their shoes on. They would be dressed and ready to go and be taken by the US military. So they got almost accustomed to it. And it was constantly -- you could see the frustration on their faces, the anger, the sadness, the worry, the fear. You know, it was very hard to see the faces of the Iraqi people when you took their family members away.

Fighting terrorism with terrorism. How ironic that we name this "The War on Terror."

Quote:

SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: So you go there in the middle of the night, and you want to catch them -- you want to catch the Iraqis off guard. So you enter the house fast and furious. You kick down the door, and you run upstairs, and you get the man of the house and you get him out of bed, and his wife is laying next to him. It’s Baghdad, it’s July, it’s August. His wife sometimes may be exposed, because of her night garments in the middle of the night, which is humiliating for that woman and for that man and for that family. And you separate the man from his wife, and if he has children, you put his family in a room, and, you know, you put two soldiers on the door, outside the door, to make sure that his family stays in that room. And then you get -- we had interpreters, so we would take interpreters with us throughout the house. And we would have the man of the house, and we would interrogate him over and over again. “Who are the insurgents? Do you know who they are? Are you with them?” And, you know, basically we would tear his house apart. We would, you know, take his bed, turn that upside-down, dump his closets, his drawers, if he had them. I mean, just anything.

And I would say eight out of ten times we never really found any intelligence at all within these homes that would lead us to believe that these people were members of the insurgency. What they were was just Iraqis in their own communities. And we came in there, and we came in uninvited. And I believe -- and I don’t blame this on the US military at all. I don’t. I blame this on George Bush. But when you’re involved in a military operation like that, you enter these homes as if you’re going after the enemy, as if you’re going after bin Laden himself, when, for the most part, they're just families living in their homes, trying to get a night's rest before they get up and go to work in the morning, if there is work for them. And it’s just -- I believe that this created a lot of resentment among the Iraqi people, causing them to join a resistance movement against US and coalition forces in Iraq.

Military tactics that create more insurgents. Tactics that make the Iraqis resent the US occupation.

Quote:

SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: When you’re in Iraq, you do not know who the enemy is. They know who you are. If you’re on a patrol in a market and somebody opens fire on you and the US military, I mean, if we respond -- if we return fire in that direction with overwhelming firepower and, let's say, a thirteen-year-old girl gets killed, you’re just going to have to assume right then and there that her father and her brother and her uncles -- they're not going to say, you know, Saddam was a bad guy and thank the United States for coming in here and liberating us. They’re going to say, “If the United States never came here, my daughter would still be alive.” And that’s going to cause them to join the resistance. And when they do join the resistance, President Bush says, “They’re al-Qaeda. They’re al-Qaeda.” But they’re not. They’re just regular Iraqi people who feel occupied, and they’re reacting to an occupation.

The difference between Terrorists and Iraqis who have suffered the concequences of an unsuccessful occupation.

The interviews are long and there are more that I wish to quote, but that'd be taking to much space. But I promise that it will be worth your time to read them.

Gladiator · 07-13-07, 06:22 PM

Dear Light Demon,

Your basic theory is correct, that by being brutal, the West can turn more Iraquis to ISI, the Islamic State of Iraq, (Al Qaida or Califait).

While many Western soldiers may feel that they are being brutal, the fact is that arrest is much kinder than beheading. The ISI is more into murder. 30 bodies are being found murdered each morning in Baghdad, down from 50 a day.

Arresting is more difficult than killing. More brutal in a way. But the arrest shows Western values to the Iraquis. Police under Saddam Hussein used to humiliate offenders, by raping their wives and children. Western soldiers feel bad about putting bags over the heads of those arrested. But when compared with beheading, or killing their children, the West looks pretty good.

Putting bags of their heads for arrest, may seem harsh by Western standards, but compared to the ISI, the West is much more principled.

Michael Yon says it is the Western Values taht is winning the hearts of the Iraqis.
Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » Al-Qaeda on the Run: Feasting on the Moveable Beast

.

Trajan Octavian Titus · 07-13-07, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lightdemon

Various Seargents describing the protocol for House Raids in an interview.

Democracy Now! | Iraq War Vets Describe "Brutal Techniques" Used by U.S. Military Against Iraqi Civilians

Democracy Now! | If Soldiers Came From Another Country And Did This To My Family, I Would Be An Insurgent Too” – War Vet Describes Iraq House Raid

The interviewees are featured in a recent article titled " The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness" by The Nation.

Here are a few critical points that should be emphasized:

Fighting terrorism with terrorism. How ironic that we name this "The War on Terror."

Military tactics that create more insurgents. Tactics that make the Iraqis resent the US occupation.

The difference between Terrorists and Iraqis who have suffered the concequences of an unsuccessful occupation.

The interviews are long and there are more that I wish to quote, but that'd be taking to much space. But I promise that it will be worth your time to read them.

lmfao, well then here's a ****ing idea the Islamic fascist mother****ers need to quit hiding amongst the civilian population in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Wait here's an even better idea let's violate the Geneva Conventions too, so that whenever 1 coalition soldier is killed 50 fighting age men are taken from village that they were killed and publically executed. If the insurgency wants to fight in violation of the rules of war then this is what happens, place blame where blame is do sparky.

Jaguar b. p. · 07-13-07, 10:09 PM

Didn't that horse's аss Alberto Gonzales say the Geneva Conventions were "quaint"?

So Americanofascists are now complaining about the same laws they violated with enthusiasm.

Trajan Octavian Titus · 07-13-07, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaguar b. p.

Didn't that horse's аss Alberto Gonzales say the Geneva Conventions were "quaint"?

So Americanofascists are now complaining about the same laws they violated with enthusiasm.

A) The only fascists in Iraq are the Qutbist descendents of the Reich.

B) The SCOTUS ruled that even the terrorists are entitled to protections under article 3 of the 4th GC which means they can be tried by regularly constituted courts which the Military Commissions became with the signing into law of the MCA.

C) The terrorists do not fall under all the provisions of the GC because they do not qualify for POW status under the guidlines located in Article 4 of the 3rd GC as they are not soldiers but rather criminal scum who need to wiped off the face of the planet along with their Islamist ideology.

D) "Begin facetious rant," if you think that we should scrap the GC then fine I'm game let's do it, it's never done U.S. soldiers any good anyways, first on my to do list hang every prisoner in Gitmo after first using real torture on them perhaps by first placing one of their cell mates into an industrial shredder feet first like Saddam did, while making the rest watch, from there the second step carpet bomb the Sunni Triangle and for every coalition soldier killed 50 civilians will be publicly executed by firing squad, and then drop no less than 5 MOAB's on al-Anbar province, then we can move it on over to Afghanistan where I suggest clearing out the villages in the border region then placing them all into forced relocation camps in a drain the well policy. Sound good to you?

Lightdemon · 07-14-07, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trajan Octavian Titus

lmfao, well then here's a ****ing idea the Islamic fascist mother****ers need to quit hiding amongst the civilian population in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Wait here's an even better idea let's violate the Geneva Conventions too, so that whenever 1 coalition soldier is killed 50 fighting age men are taken from village that they were killed and publically executed. If the insurgency wants to fight in violation of the rules of war then this is what happens, place blame where blame is do sparky.

Who said that everyone will play by the rules? What's more, why must AQ follow it if it doesn't benefit them? Doesn't give much incentive for following it, now does it?

It would be nice if we all followed the rules laid down by the Geneva Convention, but pull your head out of your a$$ for a second and realize we don't live in that world.

Whether they follow, or we follow, the Geneva Conventions is a moot point. It doesn't matter, both sides don't follow it! Why even bring up the Geneva Convention?

The fact of the matter is, as these soldiers described in this detailed interview of what's is like in the front lines, is that the military is incompetent in the current occupation of Iraq. Are you going to dispute this? Are you satisfied with our military?

The tactics that are used deliberately undermines our goal to democratize Iraq. What is so good about democracy? Under Saddam there was less terrorism inflicted upon Iraqis. More Iraqis today are being taken from their homes, without reason or under bad intelligence, to be interrogated and labeled as enemy combatants or terrorists.

The bottomline is our military is not winning this "War on Terror" nor will it ever if it keeps using these tactics.

Trajan Octavian Titus · 07-14-07, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lightdemon

Who said that everyone will play by the rules? What's more, why must AQ follow it if it doesn't benefit them? Doesn't give much incentive for following it, now does it?

AQ doesn't play by the rules because they are criminals not soldiers, and that is who you should be blaming for the house to house raids.

Quote:

It would be nice if we all followed the rules laid down by the Geneva Convention, but pull your head out of your a$$ for a second and realize we don't live in that world.

Then quit bitching about house to house raids or atleast place blame where it belongs IE on the Islamic Fascists who hide behind women and children and like cowards conceal themselves amongst the civilian population.

Quote:

Whether they follow, or we follow, the Geneva Conventions is a moot point. It doesn't matter, both sides don't follow it! Why even bring up the Geneva Convention?

Actually we do follow it.

Quote:

The fact of the matter is, as these soldiers described in this detailed interview of what's is like in the front lines, is that the military is incompetent in the current occupation of Iraq. Are you going to dispute this? Are you satisfied with our military?

Yes I'm am satisfied by our military they have performed their mission admirably.

Quote:

The tactics that are used deliberately undermines our goal to democratize Iraq. What is so good about democracy? Under Saddam there was less terrorism inflicted upon Iraqis.

Bull**** it was just institutional state terrorism perpetrated by the Baathist regime.

Quote:

More Iraqis today are being taken from their homes, without reason or under bad intelligence, to be interrogated and labeled as enemy combatants or terrorists.

The bottomline is our military is not winning this "War on Terror" nor will it ever if it keeps using these tactics.

The blame for the house to house searches rests squarly on the shoulders of those who hide behind the civilian population.

Lightdemon · 07-14-07, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trajan Octavian Titus

AQ doesn't play by the rules because they are criminals not soldiers, and that is who you should be blaming for the house to house raids.

Then quit bitching about house to house raids or atleast place blame where it belongs IE on the Islamic Fascists who hide behind women and children and like cowards conceal themselves amongst the civilian population.

Actually we do follow it.

Yes I'm am satisfied by our military they have performed their mission admirably.

Bull**** it was just institutional state terrorism perpetrated by the Baathist regime.

The blame for the house to house searches rests squarly on the shoulders of those who hide behind the civilian population.

Yawn...All moot. House to house raids are ineffective no matter the justification. Are you going to bring anything worth while in this thread, or are you just waiting for something?

Gladiator · 07-14-07, 01:48 AM

Dear Trajan Octavian Titus,

The West is making gains with the Sunni people in Iraq because of the restraint the Western Soldiers have demonstrated. Making the extra effort to arrest suspected insurgents, rather than simply shooting all suspects. See Michael Yon:
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/...able-beast.htm

Trajan Octavian Titus · 07-14-07, 02:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lightdemon

Yawn...All moot. House to house raids are ineffective no matter the justification. Are you going to bring anything worth while in this thread, or are you just waiting for something?

Ya save for the fact that we have captured many arms cashes, ended bomb making factories, captured insurgents, etc etc in these house to house searches.