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Jakanden
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Nov 2003
Posts: 5334
Location: Fuck if I know - I am always lost
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 Posted: 09/20/05 - 04:32 Post subject: British Soldiers Free Two From Basra Jail
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5288948,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704
| Quote: | BASRA, Iraq (AP) - In a dramatic show of force, British soldiers used tanks to break down the walls of the central jail in this southern city Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen. The Basra governor called the rescue a ``barbaric'' act of aggression.
About 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled as British commandos stormed inside and rescued their comrades, said Aquil Jabbar, an Iraqi television cameraman who lives across the street from the jail. Earlier Monday, demonstrators hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at British tanks, and at least four people were killed.
While the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq, where 8,500 British troops are based, has been far quieter than Sunni regions to the north, Britons have come under increasingly frequent attacks in recent weeks. The British military has reported 96 deaths since the war began in 2003.
That compares with the deaths of 1,899 Americans who are stationed nearer the violent insurgent regions around Baghdad and stretching west to the Syrian border.
The fighting in the oil city of Basra, 340 miles south of the capital, erupted after British armor encircled the jail where the two Britons were being held. During the melee one British soldier could be seen in a photograph scrambling for his life from a burning tank and the rock-throwing mob.
Press Association, the British news agency, reported that three British soldiers were hurt during the violence, but said none of their injuries was life-threatening, according to Ministry of Defense officials in London.
Arab satellite television stations showed pictures of two Western men sitting on the floor of the jail building with their hands tied behind their backs.
One of the men had a bandage covering most of the top of his head, the other had blood on his clothes. Television commentary identified them only as Britons.
British military officials had declined to comment on reports the two arrested men were soldiers operating undercover, but the Ministry of Defense told Press Association that ``two military personnel were detained by Iraqi authorities earlier today.''
Mohammed al-Waili, the governor of the province, said British raid was ``barbaric, savage and irresponsible.''
``A British force of more than 10 tanks backed by helicopters attacked the central jail and destroyed it. This is an irresponsible act,'' al-Waili said, adding that the British force had spirited the prisoners away to an unknown location.
This past summer, freelance journalist Steven Vincent wrote a column in The New York Times accusing Basra police of being infiltrated by Shiite militiamen. Shortly thereafter, on Aug. 2, Vincent was abducted at gunpoint and his body was discovered that night on the side of the highway south of Basra. A senior British official said Islamic militants - and not Iraqi police - probably killed Vincent.
To the north Monday, an estimated 3 million pilgrims - some carrying signs reading ``We welcome martyrdom'' - jammed the holy city of Karbala for a major Shiite festival in defiance of insurgent declarations of all-out sectarian war.
And an Iraqi court in Baghdad sentenced one of Saddam Hussein's nephews to life in prison for funding the country's violent insurgency and bomb-making after a previously unannounced trial. It was the first known trial of any of the former leader's family.
Elsewhere Monday, militants continued bloody attacks, killing 24 police and civilians and wounding 28 others.
But there were no attacks in Karbala, where security was so tight that authorities had banned vehicles from entering for several days before the holiday. Pilgrims were forced to pass through seven checkpoints inside the city before reaching holy shrines. About 6,000 policemen and Iraqi army troops were deployed in and near Karbala, and two leading Shiite militias provided additional security around the shrines of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas.
As the festival continued, al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi purportedly issued a new vow, promising he would not attack followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite leaders opposed to Iraq's U.S.-backed government.
Last Wednesday, after insurgent forces were routed from their stronghold in the northern city of Tal Afar, al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni Arab, declared all-out war on Iraq's majority Shiites.
In an Internet statement which appeared Monday night on a Web site known for carrying extremist Islamist material, al-Zarqawi now appeared set on trying to split the Shiite community.
``Any Shiite group that condemns the government's crimes against the Sunnis in Tal Afar, and which doesn't provide help to the occupation by any means, will be exempted from the attacks of the mujahedeen,'' said the statement, which could not be immediately authenticated.
The statement singled out three radical Shiite clerics and their followers who were exempted from the declaration of war: al-Sadr and Baghdad-based anti-U.S. religious leaders Jawad al-Khalisi and Ahmed al-Hassani al-Baghdadi.
The Karbala festival marked the 868 A.D. birth of Imam Mohammed al-Mahdi, whose unexplained disappearance in the 9th century has led Shiites to believe he will reappear on doomsday to lead believers to a just Islamic state.
Stomping on pictures of al-Zarqawi that were thrown onto the streets of Karbala, many pilgrims chanted praise for their own religious leaders while others rejected the al-Qaida threat.
``Even if there were a million al-Zarqawis, we would come to visit the Imam Hussein (shrine),'' a Shiite holy place named for the grandson of the prophet Muhammed.
Police said they seized weapons caches near the city, and arrested three ``non-Iraqi Arabs'' and a man armed with several hand grenades as he walked in the procession of pilgrims |
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 7044
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 08:00 Post subject:
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Lol, rule of law my ass 
I wonder how many coalition forces and civilians the 150 prisoners they allowed to escape will kill.
I suppose they were worried that since the arrested guys commited murder while dressed in civilian clothes, the Iraqi's might not consider them to be protected by the Geneva convention, although Iraq is probably more civilized than that.
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euphonious
Toomuchtimeonhands
Joined: 03 Feb 2003
Posts: 893
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 08:25 Post subject:
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| sinrakin wrote: | | I suppose they were worried that since the arrested guys commited murder while dressed in civilian clothes, the Iraqi's might not consider them to be protected by the Geneva convention, although Iraq is probably more civilized than that. |
They string wire around our HMMVW gunners' neck levels so they'll be decapitated as they drive by. Personally, I think an American's life is worth 200 British lives, and the Brits probably think vice versa. I would've done the same thing if it was my battle buddy in that jail.
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 7044
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 08:27 Post subject:
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| euphonious wrote: | | sinrakin wrote: | | I suppose they were worried that since the arrested guys commited murder while dressed in civilian clothes, the Iraqi's might not consider them to be protected by the Geneva convention, although Iraq is probably more civilized than that. |
They string wire around our HMMVW gunners' neck levels so they'll be decapitated as they drive by. Personally, I think an American's life is worth 200 British lives, and the Brits probably think vice versa. I would've done the same thing if it was my battle buddy in that jail. |
Of course you do. All criminals think that they and their friends' lives are worth more than anyone else. That's why we have laws.
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Mugaaz
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 3576
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 11:37 Post subject:
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| sinrakin wrote: | | euphonious wrote: | | sinrakin wrote: | | I suppose they were worried that since the arrested guys commited murder while dressed in civilian clothes, the Iraqi's might not consider them to be protected by the Geneva convention, although Iraq is probably more civilized than that. |
They string wire around our HMMVW gunners' neck levels so they'll be decapitated as they drive by. Personally, I think an American's life is worth 200 British lives, and the Brits probably think vice versa. I would've done the same thing if it was my battle buddy in that jail. |
Of course you do. All criminals think that they and their friends' lives are worth more than anyone else. That's why we have laws. |
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kbarr
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 11239
Location: New York, now go fuck off...
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 16:18 Post subject:
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| sinrakin wrote: | Lol, rule of law my ass
I wonder how many coalition forces and civilians the 150 prisoners they allowed to escape will kill.
I suppose they were worried that since the arrested guys commited murder while dressed in civilian clothes, the Iraqi's might not consider them to be protected by the Geneva convention, although Iraq is probably more civilized than that. |
I knew your cunty liberal ass would show up here.
Now the Brits are commiting "murder". What scum you are, you so need a good beating.
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 7044
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 17:02 Post subject:
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| kbarr wrote: | | Now the Brits are commiting "murder". |
Well, let's see. They were in traditional civilian dress, in an unmarked civilian car, which later turned out to filled with weapons and explosives. A legitimate Iraqi police officer felt they looked suspicious and approached to question them and they opened fire and killed him, and were then arrested by additional police forces. You don't consider the unprovoked killing of a policeman to be murder?
Have another donut and think about it, f****s.
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Samiam
Luke Warm
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
Posts: 319
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 17:19 Post subject:
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| kbarr wrote: | cunty liberal ass
What scum you are, you so need a good beating. |
whoa. And the closet door blasts open....
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kbarr
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 11239
Location: New York, now go fuck off...
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 18:22 Post subject:
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| sinrakin wrote: | | kbarr wrote: | | Now the Brits are commiting "murder". |
Well, let's see. They were in traditional civilian dress, in an unmarked civilian car, which later turned out to filled with weapons and explosives. A legitimate Iraqi police officer felt they looked suspicious and approached to question them and they opened fire and killed him, and were then arrested by additional police forces. You don't consider the unprovoked killing of a policeman to be murder?
Have another donut and think about it, f****s. |
Wow, I had NO idea you were on the scene.
Give us your eye witness account.
You idiot.
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kbarr
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 11239
Location: New York, now go fuck off...
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Posted: 09/20/05 - 18:25 Post subject:
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| Samiam wrote: | | kbarr wrote: | cunty liberal ass
What scum you are, you so need a good beating. |
whoa. And the closet door blasts open.... |
I don't mind handing out my special treats to idiots I used to play the game with , but you are just a socialist.
I forget what breed of socialist you are, not that it matters. I wonder, do you now or did you ever play EQ?
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