Posted by JAS on 04/02/06 03:09

This story horrified NZ the other night for those that watched the news on
channel 3.



Where has this story gone? Is it being told in the USA?

"In one incident a U.S. army squad leader shot the foot off an unarmed Iraqi
civilian and fellow soldier kicked a severed head around as if they're in a
football match, described Joshua Key, a U.S. war deserter.



Speaking to an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing on Thursday, Joshua
Key, the first U.S. deserter with combat experience in Iraq to apply for
refugee status in Canada, detailed what he said were numerous atrocities
committed by U.S. Army he witnessed while serving eight months as a combat
engineer in Iraq, according to the Canadian Press.



Key, who was told in Iraq by superior officers that the international law
guiding humanitarian standards was just a "guideline," said he was never
trained on the Geneva Convention.



"It's shoot first, ask questions later," Key, 27, said of his squad's
guiding principles.



"Everything's justified."



Key, one of five members of the U.S. armed forces seeking asylum in Canada,
told the hearing he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and
frequently has nightmares over the horrific scenes and the inhuman acts of
the U.S. soldiers he witnessed in Iraq.



As a member of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company, Key recalled taking part in
almost nightly raids on houses of what the military claimed belonged to
suspected rebels in Ramadi and Fallujah.



Key said soldiers ransacked homes and steal jewelry and money, while
superior officers looked the other way, adding that those attacks on seldom
turned up anything valuable.



During those raids, several Iraqis were shot dead, Key said, adding that
there were cases where soldiers "shoot out of fear and invent reasons
afterward."



Key said he saw beheaded bodies of fours Iraqis beside a shot-up vehicle in
Ramadi. He also described seeing members of the Florida National Guard
kicking a severed head "like a soccer ball."



In Khaldia, a village between Fallujah and Ramadi, Key witnessed one of his
"trigger happy" platoon's squad sergeants shoot part of an unarmed Iraqi
man's foot off.



He also described another horrific scene where U.S. soldiers
indiscriminately kick and scream at two hooded and naked group of Iraqis
while escorting them to a grassy area to relieve themselves.



Asked by Keith Brennenstuhl, the IRB member overseeing the hearing, ruled at
an earlier hearing that the board would not consider the legality of the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, whether he received any interrogation training
before snatching what the military called were suspects out of their homes
during raids, Key said:



"The only thing we were told was how to keep them quiet," Key said. Soldiers
cuffed prisoners' hands behind their backs and put hoods over their heads,
key added.



"Could they breathe?" Brennenstuhl asked.



"I guess it wasn't my concern," replied Key, who also said that officers
used the hoods with the aim of "humiliating them."



Key, who says he went to Iraq as a willing participant believing U.S.
intelligence claims that the former Iraqi Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons
of Mass Destruction, noted he became disillusioned with the war during his
service and thus decided to abandon his contract with the army during a
two-week leave from Iraq in November 2003.



Of the latest scandals involving the U.S. soldiers' inhuman acts in Iraq was
the Haditha incident where the American invaders murdered 15 Iraqi
civilians.



Ignoring residents' accounts about the Nov. 19 incident in Haditha where
U.S. Marines killed 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl,
following a roadside bomb that killed a Marine, a U.S. military official,
who asked not to be identified, claimed that it was common for Iraqi rebels
to fight from civilian homes and structures and place noncombatants in the
line of fire.



But a 10-year-old Iraqi girl, who lost seven members of her family in an
attack by American marines in the horrific November incident, has
exclusively given ITV News a shocking first hand account of the horrific
Haditha massacre which residents say amounts to mass murder by U.S. invader.



According to the Iraqi girl's story, which has been disputed by the U.S.
occupying Army, a group of screaming soldiers stormed Iman Waleed's house in
the Iraqi town of Haditha spraying bullets in every direction. 15 people
were killed, including Iman's parents and grandparents.



Although Iman's account was confirmed by other eyewitnesses who also said
that the incident, described by human rights workers as the worst massacre
of civilians by U.S. forces in the country since March 2003 invasion began,
was a revenge attack after a roadside bomb killed only one marine.



A November statement issued by the U.S. military claimed that the incident
was an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol that left 15 civilians, eight
rebels and a U.S. Marine dead in the bombing and a subsequent firefight.



But the claim had been rejected by numerous residents' accounts, which
confirm that the only shooting after the bombing was by U.S. forces." NOW I
COULD ONLY FIND THIS STORY ON:
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/04/01/4562.shtml

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