Former U.S. and Iraqi officials have implicated Gen. David Petraeus and his two top civilian police advisors in the operations of Shiite death squads and secret torture centers.
“A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centers in Iraq,” the Guardian reported Wednesday in print and an hour-long video.
“Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organize the Iraqi security services,” the Guardian continued.
Jerry Burke, chief policy advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in 2003 and 2004, says in an on-camera interview that Petraeus, who went on to become the top American commander in Afghanistan and then CIA director before resigning in a sex scandal, “had to have known” that organized Shiite militias dominated the Iraqi police commando service.
“He had to have known,” Burke says. “These things were discussed openly, whether in staff meetings or before or after staff meetings or general conversation.
“Pretty much the whole world in Iraq knew that these police commandos were the [Shiite] Badr Brigade,” Burke added. “And he must have known about the death squad activities. Again, it was common knowledge across Baghdad.”
For the Shiites, Burke said, “It was their time in power and opportunity to take revenge” against in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime.
Mowaffak al-Rubaei, Iraqi national security advisor from 2004 two 2009, also named Steele, who ran counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador during the heyday of death squads, as Petraeus’s top police advisor.
Ahmed Khadhom, Baghdad’s “more conventional” police chief in 2003-2004, told the Guardian that Steele virtually exiled him to the Iraqi mission to the UN to get him out of the way.
Petraeus had previously told PBS Frontline that he ‘did not see these militia groups in the special police units in the time I was there.”
“A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centers in Iraq,” the Guardian reported Wednesday in print and an hour-long video.
“Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organize the Iraqi security services,” the Guardian continued.
Jerry Burke, chief policy advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in 2003 and 2004, says in an on-camera interview that Petraeus, who went on to become the top American commander in Afghanistan and then CIA director before resigning in a sex scandal, “had to have known” that organized Shiite militias dominated the Iraqi police commando service.
“He had to have known,” Burke says. “These things were discussed openly, whether in staff meetings or before or after staff meetings or general conversation.
“Pretty much the whole world in Iraq knew that these police commandos were the [Shiite] Badr Brigade,” Burke added. “And he must have known about the death squad activities. Again, it was common knowledge across Baghdad.”
For the Shiites, Burke said, “It was their time in power and opportunity to take revenge” against in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime.
Mowaffak al-Rubaei, Iraqi national security advisor from 2004 two 2009, also named Steele, who ran counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador during the heyday of death squads, as Petraeus’s top police advisor.
Ahmed Khadhom, Baghdad’s “more conventional” police chief in 2003-2004, told the Guardian that Steele virtually exiled him to the Iraqi mission to the UN to get him out of the way.
Petraeus had previously told PBS Frontline that he ‘did not see these militia groups in the special police units in the time I was there.”
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"Army interrogator Spc. Alyssa Renee Peterson, 27, assigned to C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky., was an Arabic linguist who reportedly was very concerned about the manner in which interrogations of detained Iraqis were being conducted. She died on Sept. 15, 2003, near Tal Afar, Iraq, in what the Army described as a gunshot wound to the head, a noncombat, self-inflicted weapons discharge, or suicide. Peterson had reportedly objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners in Iraq and refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as “the cage.” Members of her unit have refused to describe the specific interrogation techniques to which Peterson objected. The military says that all records of those techniques have now been destroyed. After refusing to conduct more interrogations, Peterson was assigned to guard the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was also sent to suicide prevention training. Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle on the night of Sept. 15, 2003. Family members challenge the Army’s conclusion" -Colonel Ann Wright (excerpted from her documentation on the numerous suspicious deaths of women soldiers assigned to General Patraeus command)
Nothing to add to that. Harrowing.
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