America's Hired Death Squads and Torture Teams Are Still Operating in Iraq

I'm looking forward to watching this documentary. I think it will be very eye opening. Those who believe that we don't carry on very serious operations that involve the violation of humans rights and war crimes are simply wrong.

The reasons given however, either an eye for an eye, or an eye for the country, is simply not acceptable.

A 15-month investigation exploring war crimes long denied by the Pentagon lays out the tragic truth.

Death squads, torture, secret prisons in Iraq, and General David Petraeus are among the featured atrocities in a recently-released new British documentary – James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq – the result of a 15-month investigation by Guardian Films and BBC Arabic, exploring war crimes long denied by the Pentagon but confirmed by thousands of military field reports made public by Wikileaks.

The hour-long film explores the arc of American counterinsurgency brutality from Viet-Nam to Iraq, with stops along the way in El Salvador and Nicaragua. James Steele is now a retired U.S. colonel who first served in Viet-Nam as a company commander in 1968-69. He later made his reputation as a military advisor in El Salvador, where he guided ruthless Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s.

Steele was in Iraq early in 2003 as an “energy consultant” with easy access to authorities like Gen. Petraeus, even though what he actually did in Iraq remained a mystery to most people. As the Sunni insurgency developed, Steele was brought in to organize counterinsurgency. Though still, technically, a civilian, he worked closely with Gen. Petraeus and reported directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

If this is true, then we have proof that very high ranking members of both the military and political sphere were involved.

Source

The rest of the source is above. It's quite the read and even for me, I must admit I take everything here with a grain of salt, until I watch the documentary and read more.

In the meantime, thoughts ATS?

!~Tenth

Kudos for posting this......The more Americans know what the PTB are doing with their US military machine,
The sooner the congress will be moved to impeach, arrest, and try these criminals.

heres a 5 min taste
www.youtube.com...

I understand that there have been some very bad things that men and women in uniform have done..........


But just picking through this article i find this....

When his country called again in 2003, he came out of retirement to train Iraqi police commandos in the bloodiest techniques of counterinsurgency that evolved into that country’s Shia-Sunni civil war that at its peak killed 3,000

The Suni-Shia civil war has been going on long before the US ever got involved in Iraq....

If they cant even get this basic knowledge of the middle east right...........

How honest is this documentary going to be?

Counter-insurgency, intelligence work, all of this is kind of hard to do politely.

It is not a clean business. That being said, there are certainly lines that can be crossed, and shouldn't be, so I also will look forward to watching this film.

However, I have a feeling it will be very one-sided.

HMMMMMMMMMMM
Twinkie, theres obviously a hint of denial in your post.....you precondemn the flick because you dont want these ugly tortures and killings of men women and children on your conscience....
Get over it...it really really did happen.......
Your leaders really really really are war criminals of the most heinous order.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


So you are discrediting a documentary, based on an article written by a third party? Who was unable to even contact him to comment on their writing of the story?

Doesn't seem relevant if you ask me.

The important part is whether or not the documentary has it's facts straight. I did state in my OP I take all of this with a grain of salt until proven otherwise.

But I won't read the first few paragraphs and stop reading because the article may have been butchered.

~Tenth

Originally posted by stirling
HMMMMMMMMMMM
Twinkie, theres obviously a hint of denial in your post.....you precondemn the flick because you dont want these ugly tortures and killings of men women and children on your conscience....
Get over it...it really really did happen.......

Your leaders really really really are war criminals of the most heinous order.

edit on 10-4-2013 by stirling because: (no reason given)

Well actually its not that they are war criminals. See since the insurgents are not covered by the geneva convention protection clause. They were non uniformed and as such were not a legal force. So why hold them responsible for killing a illegal force? The US did not intentionally go out killing women and children. Collatorral damage is not murder ina war zone. A crime would be doing it ON PURPOSE WITH MALICE. Still Personally I do not care and like most americans we dont care.