Beating the Freedom Into Them Iraqis

Saw this in a comment by Anna Wiseman at Body & Soul. From Malaysia News Online:

An Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shia Muslim leader Muqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut, Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.

After the man refused to remove Sadr's picture, the soldiers forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he said.

US troops also detained from the same area five men wearing black pants and shirts, the usual attire of Sadr's Mehdi Army militiamen and followers.

Qassem Hassan, the director of Kut general hospital, identified the man as Salem Hassan, a resident of a Kut suburb. He said the man had died of wounds sustained in the beating.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition could not confirm the incident.

Maybe it's not as destructive as destroying a village in order to save it, but it certainly doesn't speak volumes for either freedom or concern for ordinary Iraqis when stuff like this happens. But, let's be honest: freedom, or even a degree of concern for Iraqi citizens, was never high on the list for those who were (and presumably still are) in the throes of war-fever.

No, far more important than, say, making sure the soldiers KNEW SOMETHING about the country that was being invaded was the chance to SHOW THEM DAMNED ANTI-WAR FOLKS that Uncle Sam can kill with impunity and shove his boot into the small of anyone's back he wishes. Would that mean that a few thousand civilians, who never did a thing to hurt the US, would suffer a horrible death? Well, maybe so, but, like Tommy Franks says, we don't do body counts.

We also don't do studying the institutions which set the foundation of the socio-political structure, nor do we seek to understand local conditions nor do we keep looters from destroying basic records required for civil society to function. Nah--it's far too important to just invade, so that Bush can be seen as "pResidential."

Sort of like how he was pResidential Tuesday night: Q."Did you do anything based on the threat of hijackings in general, based on information current to the summer of 2001? A. "I asked for the PDB. It was mostly a historical document."