"Trigger-happy" troops: British defense chiefs have warned that "trigger-happy" US troops will make the occupation of Iraq more bloody and lengthy. One British officer said:
"US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk.War crimes investigation: Fifty-one House members, led by Rep. John Conyers, have called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to "appoint a special counsel to investigate whether high-ranking officials within the Bush Administration violated the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 2441, or the Anti-Torture Act, 18 U.S.C. 2340 by allowing the use of torture techniques banned by domestic and international law at recognized and secret detention sites in Iraq, Afghanistan Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere."
"It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.
"I explained that their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we explained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed."
2 comments:
I don't see the number of desertions as necessarily significant. The article even says that "the running rally had declined since 9/11 from 8,396 to the present total of 5,133. and that "the vast majority of those who desert do so because they have committed some criminal act, not for political or conscientious objector purposes."
That doesn't mean that the number of desertions due to the war isn't increasing (it could be that an even greater number of those who would normally desert have stopped joining up in the first place), but in any case, the number of real desertions has indeed declined. Well, unless the Pentagon is lying, that is.
But they are significant. In a story headlined "Desertion huge problem for US in Iraq war," the NZ Herald confirms numbers blogged here, but adds: "campaigners say the true figure of those who have gone Awol could be much, much higher. Staff who run a volunteer hotline to help desperate soldiers and new recruits looking to get out or else having discovered at basic training that military life is not for them, say the number of calls has increased by 50 per cent since 9/11. Last year alone, the GI Rights Hotline received more than 30,000 calls. At the moment the hotline is receiving up to 3000 calls a month and the volunteers say that by the time a soldier or new recruit dials the help line he or she has almost always decided to get out by one means or another." Sounds serious to me.
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