Re: Not Good News From Israel
This is about the closest thread of relevance I could find....so if Mods want to move it, that is o.k by me.
But it does show WHY it is important and why the Australian and Coalition forces have been staying in Iraq (and should stay in Iraq) for as long as they are needed.
It is very easy to say 'get the forces out' and 'bring home our troops' but what then for the Iraqi citizens and the children mentioned in the story below?
Whether we should have gone there in the first place is inconsequential...we are there...and we should stay as long as necessary so this country does not slowly fall into the hands of groups like Al-Qaeda or the Iranians right next door, who would jump at the chance to take over an unstable Iraq:
Videos show al-Qaeda child terrorists: US
February 8, 2008
AL-QAEDA in Iraq is training boys as young as 10 to kidnap and kill, US and Iraqi officials claimed, showing propaganda videos seized from suspected insurgent hide-outs that depict masked boys wielding guns and kicking down doors.
"Al-Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, a US military spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday.
The five videos were found during a raid on December 4 in Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad, in the insurgent hotbed of Diyala province.
The authenticity of the videos could not independently be verified, nor was it clear where or when the videos were made.
In the videos, boys in black balaclavas and soccer jerseys jump out of a blue van, hop over a mud wall and storm a house where a family is asleep.
In another scene, boys are seen ordering a man out of his car and escorting him away at gunpoint. Adults speaking Arabic with an Iraqi accent are heard giving the boys instructions.
"We believe this video was produced to be used as propaganda to convince youth to join al-Qaeda," Admiral Smith said.
US soldiers, he said, had previously found propaganda material involving children but not in the detail seen in the videos.
In a December 8 operation, also in Diyala province, US troops seized a movie script with scenes of children interrogating and executing victims, Admiral Smith said.
He described two incidents involving teenage suicide bombers, but he said that such cases were not a trend. He could not offer statistics on the number of children who had joined the insurgency.
He added that the children in the videos did not appear to have been kidnapped or forced to act like insurgents. None of the boys was in custody, Admiral Smith said.
"As we watched the videos and watched the reaction with adults in the neighbourhood," he said, "it appears that it is a tribal series of families in which the adults are involved in training and it is their children."
Abu Anwar al-Obaidi, an al-Qaeda in Iraq member in Garma, east of Fallujah in Anbar province, said the videos were authentic but described the boys as orphans and beggars.
Some were the kidnapped children of Iraqi policemen and soldiers, he said.
"They should expect not only kids to be trained," Obaidi said in a telephone interview with a Washington Post correspondent. "We might even put bombs on animals and send them to checkpoints. The American forces will find it impossible to find a solution for this. They will be forced to kill kids, animals, which will bring shame on the American forces."
Major-General Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for Iraq's Defence Ministry, told reporters that the videos were a sign that al-Qaeda in Iraq was growing desperate. General Askari also said the group was kidnapping children but provided no further details or figures.
"This is not only to recruit them, but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of al-Qaeda," he said. The US and Iraqi officials also showed a video clip depicting Iraqi security forces rescuing an 11-year-old boy who had been kidnapped by the insurgent group. They said the boy was being held for a $US100,000 ($A112,000) ransom.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/alqaeda-training-children-us/2008/02/07/1202234065074.html
This is about the closest thread of relevance I could find....so if Mods want to move it, that is o.k by me.
But it does show WHY it is important and why the Australian and Coalition forces have been staying in Iraq (and should stay in Iraq) for as long as they are needed.
It is very easy to say 'get the forces out' and 'bring home our troops' but what then for the Iraqi citizens and the children mentioned in the story below?
Whether we should have gone there in the first place is inconsequential...we are there...and we should stay as long as necessary so this country does not slowly fall into the hands of groups like Al-Qaeda or the Iranians right next door, who would jump at the chance to take over an unstable Iraq:
Videos show al-Qaeda child terrorists: US
February 8, 2008
AL-QAEDA in Iraq is training boys as young as 10 to kidnap and kill, US and Iraqi officials claimed, showing propaganda videos seized from suspected insurgent hide-outs that depict masked boys wielding guns and kicking down doors.
"Al-Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, a US military spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday.
The five videos were found during a raid on December 4 in Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad, in the insurgent hotbed of Diyala province.
The authenticity of the videos could not independently be verified, nor was it clear where or when the videos were made.
In the videos, boys in black balaclavas and soccer jerseys jump out of a blue van, hop over a mud wall and storm a house where a family is asleep.
In another scene, boys are seen ordering a man out of his car and escorting him away at gunpoint. Adults speaking Arabic with an Iraqi accent are heard giving the boys instructions.
"We believe this video was produced to be used as propaganda to convince youth to join al-Qaeda," Admiral Smith said.
US soldiers, he said, had previously found propaganda material involving children but not in the detail seen in the videos.
In a December 8 operation, also in Diyala province, US troops seized a movie script with scenes of children interrogating and executing victims, Admiral Smith said.
He described two incidents involving teenage suicide bombers, but he said that such cases were not a trend. He could not offer statistics on the number of children who had joined the insurgency.
He added that the children in the videos did not appear to have been kidnapped or forced to act like insurgents. None of the boys was in custody, Admiral Smith said.
"As we watched the videos and watched the reaction with adults in the neighbourhood," he said, "it appears that it is a tribal series of families in which the adults are involved in training and it is their children."
Abu Anwar al-Obaidi, an al-Qaeda in Iraq member in Garma, east of Fallujah in Anbar province, said the videos were authentic but described the boys as orphans and beggars.
Some were the kidnapped children of Iraqi policemen and soldiers, he said.
"They should expect not only kids to be trained," Obaidi said in a telephone interview with a Washington Post correspondent. "We might even put bombs on animals and send them to checkpoints. The American forces will find it impossible to find a solution for this. They will be forced to kill kids, animals, which will bring shame on the American forces."
Major-General Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for Iraq's Defence Ministry, told reporters that the videos were a sign that al-Qaeda in Iraq was growing desperate. General Askari also said the group was kidnapping children but provided no further details or figures.
"This is not only to recruit them, but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of al-Qaeda," he said. The US and Iraqi officials also showed a video clip depicting Iraqi security forces rescuing an 11-year-old boy who had been kidnapped by the insurgent group. They said the boy was being held for a $US100,000 ($A112,000) ransom.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/alqaeda-training-children-us/2008/02/07/1202234065074.html
