Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed.
"The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills," said John Pace, the Maltese UN official. The killings had been happening long before the bloodshed after last week's bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra.
Note that the 7,000 bodies emerged before the outbreak of open Sunni-Shiite hostilities sparked by shrine bombing in Samarra.
Unreformed leftists will remember the prodigious use of death squads in the 1980s by U.S. proxy governments in El Salvador, Honduras, and--most appallingly--in Guatemala. There's even a direct link from those bloody days and these: John Negroponte. He served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985; and ambassador to Iraq from June 04 to April 05. Read all about this illustrious patriot's career here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte#Ambassador_to_Honduras_.281981_-_1985.29
5 comments:
It bears noting that Negroponte now serves as Director of National Intelligence, a cabinet post created post 9/11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Director_of_National_Intelligence
I don't know what to say. I can't imagine that death sqauds could figure into steps toward civilization... except to imagine that Shia democrats are executing cut throats. A civil war might be the best of several paths, all awful, but maybe yet leading to civilization.
Who said I was applauding this Tom? I was simply pointing out that there are some who are taking into their own hands severely punishing those who are trying to derail the political process there.
The political process in Iraq was derailed by the Bush administration who chose to invade instead of following legal political channels. You still support him.
Of course Bush has hired several convicted felons, most notably some of the main architects of the Iran-Contra scandal. Negroponte, John Poindexter, Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams...
No wonder they have no respect for the rule of law. They are all criminals.
Six: I agree that it is possible that these death squads are providing a useful service in the road towards civilization. It may be true that the executed people are monsters, and that their deaths represent the savings of future lives. The road to civilization is often a hellish one.
Of course this does not mean that all hellish actions in general lead to the advancement towards/in civilization, or that these hellish actions in particular do. If the four of us were Iraqis who sought a peaceful and free life for our country, we may also form a death squad to execute the Jefferson Davises, Robert E. Lees, Adolf Hitlers, and Hirohitos in our midst.
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