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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: American Spirit who wrote (386303)4/5/2003 1:12:36 PM
From: TideGlider  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769670
 
A two year vacation? You just started criticizing Bush Now? The Dems just started critizing? Poor memory is the greatest hope for the DNC. Reinvent themselves.



To: American Spirit who wrote (386303)4/5/2003 2:51:09 PM
From: Jerrel Peters  Respond to of 769670
 
Iraqi Soldiers: We Had to Eat Grass, Witness Executions

Human Rights Watch on Friday revealed the first independent, substantial
information about Iraqi army deserters since the war began, and it ain't pretty.

Many of the 26 soldiers interviewed by the organization spoke of extremely
low pay ($2 or even less a month) and meager food rations. One witness
described the summary execution of 10 suspected deserters. Others said
they knew of execution squads of 10 to 12 men.

"Some days we were so hungry we would eat grass, which we mixed with a
little water," said a 21-year-old soldier from Baghdad whose unit was part of
the Fifth Corps. "We didn't wash ourselves for 40 days. Often there was no
drinking water, and they would give us jerry cans and tell us to go and fill
them from the pools of water that gathered on the ground when it rained."

Some of the Iraqi soldiers described inhumane punishments including
beatings or being forced to crawl across stones on their bare knees or backs.
One showed the scars on his back from this punishment. Their officers
frequently warned them that they would be executed if they tried to escape.
Several deserters said their officers forced them to remain in their positions
during the air strikes, telling them to "die like men."

The eyewitness to an execution said that on March 26, 10 deserters were
brought to an open field where a colonel had gathered other units to witness
the execution. "This is what happens to betrayers of our nation," the colonel
told the assembled troops, according to the witness. He then began shooting
the alleged deserters one by one. Other members of the execution squad
joined in. The colonel then ordered the bodies to be dragged up onto a hillside
so the soldiers would have a better view of the corpses.