More Brit Troop Shame:Interview with Racist Civil Military Operations Officer
Ewa J | 01.05.2004 18:27 | Social Struggles
The Army is institutionally racist. These stories of a few sadistic bad apples are meant to re-enforce the Occupation's agenda by implying that Iraqi resistance is a response to the actions of individual soldiers in detention camps when the resistance is a response to the entire occupation and the logic of the genocidal 13 year sanctions campaign which killed over a million and a half Iraqis and reduced the country to an Infrastructural Ground Zero - ripe for the current free market take-over fleecing the country. Below is a synopsis of an interview I had with Major Clements at CPA South in Basra, January
Sergeant Major Clements is the Moustacheod face of the British Occupation. If you have a problem, family member killed by soldiers, home or car damaged by soldiers, he's your an. Baghdad has over 12 Civil Military operations Centres, The Occupation in the South just has one and Major Clements runs the Basra HQ Civil Military Centre along with an Iraq Translator (who arent allowed, or were not allowed certainly up until February, gun licenses despite being walking targets for the resistance).
I went to visit Major Clements to ask him about the accountability of Iraq police, given that the Occupation has been training them, who a few days previously had shot over 10 unemployed protestors in the Ashar district - killing at least one. What process of compensation is there for the families of the bereaved I asked him. He told me, (and these are his exact words) 'Well, if youre in a Riot, then youre committing a criminal act so there won't Be any compensation'. I told him, 'Thats extra judicial killing, its up to a court to decide what a criminal act is!'. He was silent. He then also relayed a story of a ex-solider protest which were regularly taking place outside the CPA HQ (Coalition Provisional Authority) over lack of stipends and escalating poverty. He told me that one of the demonstrators was on the bonnet of a car with a rock in his hands and was going to smash it through the windshield of a car with someon sat in the front seat of it. he said, 'One of our lads shot Him in the legs, I personally would have shot him dead!'. Again, authorising implicitly Extra-Judicial Killing. There are UN Guidelines on the Use of Firearms for Law Enforcement Officials which are widely followed the world over and concern the use of acceptable and proportionate force. If this 'face' of the British Occupation, the 'Bridge' between civillians and the occupation can sanction such behaviour, what are commanders telling their men behind closed doors? Its ok to kill, we accept and expect that.
Major Clements also said that he's put all the religious parties in jail too if he could. Im sure that the Da'awa Party, Iraq's oldest and most respected Islamic Party whose philosophers include Moqtadr Al Sadr's father and grandfather, would be horrified to hear such a thing. I put Major Clement's racist, Islamophobic ignorance down to his conditioning courtesy of the British media and government and also down to fake human rights groups made up of former Baathists visiting the CPA and reporting revenge beatings and killings on their blood-stained fascist commrades who are being executed on an almost daily basis in the ravaged city, as unprovoked attacks or 'fanatical' islamic attacks which have everything to do with vengeance and retribution for generations of terror, torture and repression, social and physical/personal, and little to do with any religious scores to settle.
Anyway, i thought Id report this because its timely given the 'bad apples' in the military barrel stories coming out now which ignore the fundamental and enduring ideology of white supremacy which saturates the occupation and commentary on it and permeates every level of the occupation administration, from the footsoldiers to the commanders to the generals to the overseers, politicians and national leaders.
And there will also be no 'sovereignty' on June 30th. There are 14 permanent military bases being consolidated in Iraq and a national security adviser - American - will make all war/attack decisons in Iraq, as in who lives or dies, which village will be bombed with F16s and Apache hellicopter gunships, where to impose curfew, how long to detain prisoners for, how to torture them (the 10,000 re-employed Intelligence officers by the Occupation should be able to help them) and which homes and trees to demolish. There will also be a US 'embassy' in Baghgdad headed by John Negroponte - Nicaragua and Honduras Contra terror overseer and which will employ a staff of 3000. In effect, a government, enforcing and re-enforcing the over 70 Occupation Orders (De-Facto National Laws) which the Occupation has unilaterally instituted, most crucially those on the imposition of free market privatisatiom, slave wages and rock-bottom taxes).
The rage and resistance against the occupation is popular, generalised, predominantly anti-Baathist and is directed as much against the Occupation as it is against the Occupation installed neo-Baathi ruling class (generals, police chiefs, mayors, industrial bosses, civil service managers).
Also, NEWSBREAK:
US TROOPS HAVE PULLED OUT OF FALLUJAH. DEMONSTRATIONS OF VICTORY AND JUBILATION ARE FILLING THE STREETS THERE AND THE WITHDRAWAL HAS BEEN TAKEN AS DEFEAT A FOR THE AMERICANS!!! NO PASARAN!!! (The Americans had only ever managed to take 10% of the city, despite their forces, thanks to the unstoppable resistance, and had been consigned to the outskirts of the city as far back as last June).
I went to visit Major Clements to ask him about the accountability of Iraq police, given that the Occupation has been training them, who a few days previously had shot over 10 unemployed protestors in the Ashar district - killing at least one. What process of compensation is there for the families of the bereaved I asked him. He told me, (and these are his exact words) 'Well, if youre in a Riot, then youre committing a criminal act so there won't Be any compensation'. I told him, 'Thats extra judicial killing, its up to a court to decide what a criminal act is!'. He was silent. He then also relayed a story of a ex-solider protest which were regularly taking place outside the CPA HQ (Coalition Provisional Authority) over lack of stipends and escalating poverty. He told me that one of the demonstrators was on the bonnet of a car with a rock in his hands and was going to smash it through the windshield of a car with someon sat in the front seat of it. he said, 'One of our lads shot Him in the legs, I personally would have shot him dead!'. Again, authorising implicitly Extra-Judicial Killing. There are UN Guidelines on the Use of Firearms for Law Enforcement Officials which are widely followed the world over and concern the use of acceptable and proportionate force. If this 'face' of the British Occupation, the 'Bridge' between civillians and the occupation can sanction such behaviour, what are commanders telling their men behind closed doors? Its ok to kill, we accept and expect that.
Major Clements also said that he's put all the religious parties in jail too if he could. Im sure that the Da'awa Party, Iraq's oldest and most respected Islamic Party whose philosophers include Moqtadr Al Sadr's father and grandfather, would be horrified to hear such a thing. I put Major Clement's racist, Islamophobic ignorance down to his conditioning courtesy of the British media and government and also down to fake human rights groups made up of former Baathists visiting the CPA and reporting revenge beatings and killings on their blood-stained fascist commrades who are being executed on an almost daily basis in the ravaged city, as unprovoked attacks or 'fanatical' islamic attacks which have everything to do with vengeance and retribution for generations of terror, torture and repression, social and physical/personal, and little to do with any religious scores to settle.
Anyway, i thought Id report this because its timely given the 'bad apples' in the military barrel stories coming out now which ignore the fundamental and enduring ideology of white supremacy which saturates the occupation and commentary on it and permeates every level of the occupation administration, from the footsoldiers to the commanders to the generals to the overseers, politicians and national leaders.
And there will also be no 'sovereignty' on June 30th. There are 14 permanent military bases being consolidated in Iraq and a national security adviser - American - will make all war/attack decisons in Iraq, as in who lives or dies, which village will be bombed with F16s and Apache hellicopter gunships, where to impose curfew, how long to detain prisoners for, how to torture them (the 10,000 re-employed Intelligence officers by the Occupation should be able to help them) and which homes and trees to demolish. There will also be a US 'embassy' in Baghgdad headed by John Negroponte - Nicaragua and Honduras Contra terror overseer and which will employ a staff of 3000. In effect, a government, enforcing and re-enforcing the over 70 Occupation Orders (De-Facto National Laws) which the Occupation has unilaterally instituted, most crucially those on the imposition of free market privatisatiom, slave wages and rock-bottom taxes).
The rage and resistance against the occupation is popular, generalised, predominantly anti-Baathist and is directed as much against the Occupation as it is against the Occupation installed neo-Baathi ruling class (generals, police chiefs, mayors, industrial bosses, civil service managers).
Also, NEWSBREAK:
US TROOPS HAVE PULLED OUT OF FALLUJAH. DEMONSTRATIONS OF VICTORY AND JUBILATION ARE FILLING THE STREETS THERE AND THE WITHDRAWAL HAS BEEN TAKEN AS DEFEAT A FOR THE AMERICANS!!! NO PASARAN!!! (The Americans had only ever managed to take 10% of the city, despite their forces, thanks to the unstoppable resistance, and had been consigned to the outskirts of the city as far back as last June).
Ewa J
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