I cleaned up the report to take out the AP's antiwar bias. If you want to read that BS follow the link.Whether by plan or happenstance, the latest anti-American charge -- that U.S. troops used poison gas during fighting in the northern city of Tal Afar -- is being answered with harsh words from U.S. commanders.
On Tuesday, Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the main U.S. force in the Tal Afar fight, unleashed a verbal barrage.
''The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine,'' he told reporters at the Pentagon.
''Not only were they targeting civilians, brutally murdering them, torturing them, but they were also kidnapping the youth of the city and brainwashing them and trying to turn them into hate-filled murderers,'' he added.
On Wednesday, Col. Robert B. Brown made similar claims about the insurgents in the portion of northern Iraq his Stryker brigade combat team has been operating in for the past 11 months, including the city of Mosul.
''It's the most evil enemy we've ever faced,'' he said. Twice he mentioned ''brainwashing,'' noting that he was not sure that's an official term. ''That's what it seems like to me,'' he said, when the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi recruits young foreign fighters and sends them on suicide missions.
He cited a captured Libyan who was ''clearly brainwashed'' to think he was coming to Iraq to fight American crusaders against the Muslim religion. ''He got here, he saw that it was not correct,'' Brown said. ''They told him that he was going to be a suicide martyr.'' When captured, the Libyan was ''very happy to talk to us.''
...
''They're masters at information operations and they want to grab headlines and take away from the success that we're having,'' he said. ''And I think that we're having success in Tal Afar and many other areas now, in Mosul and all over the north of Iraq. So they're trying to steal those headlines away. And it's really desperate.''
In a similar vein, McMaster cited ''the enemy's propaganda'' on extremist Web sites, including an audiotape posted Sunday that purportedly carried the voice of al-Zarqawi accusing U.S. forces of using poison gas in the Tal Afar fighting.
McMaster said U.S. troops in a residential area of Tal Afar had discovered barrels of chemicals rigged with explosives and apparently intended to be detonated to kill civilians. He said this was part of the terrorists' campaign of deceit: to use the chemical blast against civilians and then blame it on American forces.
''We found some manuals that described how they could make sort of these kind of chemical dirty bombs,'' he said.
US reports child murder, kidnapping, torture, brainwashing and plans to use chemical weapons AP "balances" with antiwar propaganda
Comments
Post a Comment