All's not fair on Iraqi battlefields

 

    Unconventional fighting tactics adopted by the Iraqi military and paramilitary groups such as Fedayeen Saddam and the Baath party militia have bloodied the battlefield with deception.
    Recent reports place al Qaeda terrorists fighting alongside the Iraqis.
    The news media have reported repeated violations of the laws of war beginning with the fake surrender of Fedayeen operatives on March 23.
    U.S. support personnel from the 507th Maintenance Company were shot while others were taken hostage.
Iraqi artillery, located by unmanned drone, was spotted in a field adjacent to a school.
Fortunately, coalition forces have been able to pinpoint the artillery and destroy it with little damage to the school.
    Iraqi forces use civilians as human shields, as well as dressing as civilians to integrate themselves into the population. This action only reinforces the fact that they do not care about their own countrymen.
    The Iraqi government and forces did not care about the country's citizens when they poisoned the Kurds with chemical weapons in 1988.
    Even more importantly, they do not care about them now.
    Not only do they risk civilian lives by integrating themselves with them, they kill their own citizens who try to escape.
    They kill their citizens who try to rise up.
    They even hanged a woman just for waving at coalition troops.
    They used an Iraqi hospital marked as such and flying a medical flag as a secret military installation and began firing on American troops. Afterwards, when U.S. Marines seized the hospital, located in Nasiriya, no medical personnel or patients were found.
    Iraqi troops use nonmilitary vehicles, such as pick-up trucks with mounted machine guns, that have been captured by U.S. military groups. Officers now say that wire-guided missiles are being launched from pick-up trucks.
    A CIA report, distributed to the Bush administration and military leaders, warns of Iraqi forces firing on their own civilians and blaming the carnage on coalition forces through the use of propaganda.
    The report also warns of the threat of rear attacks to coalition forces, attacking rear area support personnel who are not trained in this type of combat.
    Iraqi forces have recently been accused of executing prisoners of war. A report indicates that seven U.S. Army soldiers were shot as they were surrendering with their hands up in the air.
    An Iraqi television report showed five U.S. soldiers in custody with the bodies of at least five other soldiers with bullet wounds to their foreheads.
     The shock and awe evident on the Iraqi side of this war are the vile atrocities of which this regime is capable.