posted
All morning I've been reading various news reports of whatever it was that happened over in Iraq -- where it appears British soliders and Iraq policemen were fighting each other when they are supposed to be on the same side...
Anyone else read these stories? There are very different and opposing views of what happened being given from the British media and from the Iraq media.
posted
From what I heard on NPR yesterday, two British soldiers were in an Iraqi jail. There's conflicting reports about how they were freed - by the Iraqis or by British soldiers using tanks.
I haven't heard anything else.
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To summarize, two members of the British military force in Iraq were doing something the Iraqi's found suspicious while they were in civilian clothes. They were picked up and held. Contrary to previous agreement that all coalition forces picked up by Iraqi police would be turned over to the US-led multinational force, they didn't turn them over immediately. Negotiations were supposedly happening, but the British military broke into the jail (finding the prisoners were not there) and then into a house where the prisoners were being held. Rioting ensued involving rocks and Molotov cocktails wherein one British soldier fled a flaming vehicle.
Apparently the British government originally stated that the prisoners were released through negotiation, but then retracted that, confirming they were taken back by force.
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posted
Well, I've read most of those stories, but there are huge discrepencies in most of the various stories.
The BBC says that for some reason the undercover soldiers were turned over to a "militia group" by the Iraqi's. Now what exactly is a militia group in that context? Is that someone who is on our side of the war, working with Iraqi police, or someone we are fighting against?
So were these Iraqi "policemen" actually working for the enemy? That's how the British make it sound. Otherwise, they would have just released them, no?
quote:In August, American freelance journalist Steven Vincent was abducted and killed by men in a police car after having written that Basra's police force was heavily infiltrated by radical Shiite militiamen.
posted
I’m not sure what is going on. I’ve just watched a news report that said that some of the police officers sympathise with the militia and whilst the Iraqi authorities (sorry, can’t remember the individuals) had ordered their release to British custody the officers on the ground had instead handed them over to a militia. The concern now is how to identify which of the police are on the US / UK / Iraq government side and which are on the militia’s side.
Of course that could be a whole lot of spin and nowhere near the truth. I sympathise with the ordinary soldiers who have to deal with this mess.
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posted
Were the british soldiers undercover or simply out of uniform? If the former, I think the action may have been justified, particularly if their purpose was in determining the infiltration of the police force. The fact that they were being held in some house and not the police station does raise questions. But this is about as pro-British a spin as could be imagined.
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