Documents show Army seized wives to 'leverage' surrender

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Documents show Army seized wives to 'leverage' surrender of Iraqi insurgents
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:25:14 -0800
From: Darren G. S. [AvIntel & InfoEdge Groups] avintel@netzero.com

We’ve become so incredibly stupid is blows my mind! We have an American
Christian Science journalist, female, held captive because the
insurgents say we are holding female Iraqi prisoners, probably on mere
suspicion versus evidence, and this is a so-called democracy we say we
were going to implant there?

We are losing the global war, because of failure in strategy and
tactics. We have too many drug crazed civilians and military making
decisions or carrying out rogue actions that serve to undermine our
prestige, creditability, honorability, democracy, morality and much
more.

George W. Bush should be held in criminal contempt for such a stupid
move to attack Iraq and thus he is responsible, in part, for any future
terrorism on America!

Sun Tzu (Art of War) and Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching) must be laughing in
their graves at all our missteps. Now ask yourself, how could we be so
stupid, it must be by design to take on the worldwide persona as the
stupid country with stupid leaders.

If we were not in Iraq, we could actually be fortifying the "homeland"
without breaching civil liberties...what a profound idea.

Darren

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20060127-1029-iraq-leveragingwives.html

Documents show Army seized wives to 'leverage' surrender of Iraqi
insurgents

By Charles J. Hanley
ASSOCIATED PRESS

10:29 a.m. January 27, 2006

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of
suspected insurgents in hopes of “leveraging” their husbands into
surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a
nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a
second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they
catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him “to
come get his wife.”

The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile
since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 and
threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detainees are freed.

The U.S. military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women
among the 14,000 detainees currently held in the 2½-year-old insurgency.
All were accused of “aiding terrorists or planting explosives,” but an
Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that U.S.
anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects'
houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning
themselves in.

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such
claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam
Hussein dictatorship, and “we are not Saddam.” A U.S. command spokesman
in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an
“imperative threat” are held in long-term U.S.-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far
as short-term detentions by local U.S. units. The documents are among
hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under U.S. court order
to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on
detention practices.

In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what
happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in
Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task
Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile
targets.

“During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that
if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage
the primary target's surrender,” wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a
senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

“The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being
as young as six months and still nursing,” the intelligence officer
wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained,
he said.

Like most names in the released documents, the officer's signature is
blacked out on this for-the-record memorandum about his complaint.

Of this case, command spokesman Johnson said he could not judge, months
later, the factors that led to the woman's detention.

The second episode, in June 2004, is found in sketchy detail in e-mail
exchanges among six U.S. Army colonels, discussing an undisclosed number
of female detainees held in northern Iraq by the Stryker Brigade of the
2nd Infantry Division.

The first message, from a military police colonel, advised staff
officers of the U.S. northern command that the Iraqi police would not
take control of the jailed women without charges being brought against
them.

In a second e-mail, a command staff officer asked an officer of the unit
holding the women, “What are you guys doing to try to get the husband –
have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his
wife?”

Two days later, the brigade's deputy commander advised the higher
command, “As each day goes by, I get more input that these gals have
some info and/or will result in getting the husband.”

He went on, “These ladies fought back extremely hard during the original
detention. They have shown indications of deceit and misinformation.”

The command staff colonel wrote in reply, referring to a commanding
general, “CG wants the husband.”

The released e-mails stop there, and the women's eventual status could
not be immediately determined.

Of this episode, Johnson said, “It is clear the unit believed the
females detained had substantial knowledge of insurgent activity and
warranted being held.”

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