It would have been easy to miss this news item today. The United States military has freed 2 Iraqi women, a 60 year old and her adult daughter. A Lt. Col. Clifford Kent denies that they were hostages intended to force family members to turn themselves in. Please pay no attention the note left in the family home reading “Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention.” Also please pay no attention to the phone number on the note that, when a Reuter’s reporter dialed it, was answered by American soldiers. Kent added that Americans don’t take hostages or “blackmail” people into surrendering. Bull! American forces have been doing that kind of nonsense for 2 years, and it’s still an outrage. Amnesty International points out that such tactics are against international law.
So the next time there are new casualties in Iraq, the next time there is news of an insurgent attack, the next time you are told they “hate us for our freedoms” or the freedoms we are supposedly bringing the region, remember this. This story is not likely to be an isolated incident. Maybe it isn’t our freedoms they hate after all.
Don’t get me wrong, there is some good news coming out of Iraq — including getting a new President — but that is despite American actions, not because of them.