« Grading Today | Main | Going Home »
منگل 29 جولائی 2003Tuesday, July 29, 2003
I am Speechless
Via Unqualified Offerings, here is an excerpt from the Washington Post.
Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” [Emphasis mine] Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.
No comment.
UPDATE: CalPundit, Atrios, Mark Kleiman, Intel Dump, Matt Yglesias, To the Barricades, The Talent Show, and Fables of the Reconstruction have posted on the topic as well.
UPDATE II: I posted the following in Tacitus’ comments (who thinks that the general’s family were “never hostages” and “no moral or legal oppobrium attaches”).
Tacitus is right; this tactic does seem to work in Iraq. I know that it also works in criminal cases in a number of countries. And we all know what kind of scumbags some criminals can be. So we should go ahead and promote this policy against criminals here in the US. If a criminal has disappeared and cannot be found by law enforcement, we take his family into custody until he gives himself up. If the scumbag then doesn’t confess, we threaten him about his family.
I can assure you that this will have a chilling effect on crime.
Also, read Aziz Poonawalla’s post.
Posted by Zack at July 29, 2003 3:19 AM in International Affairs
Advertisements
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.zackvision.com/mt/zv-trbk.cgi/384
Comments
Post a comment
Note: Disagreements are welcome, but please keep it civil. Any comments full of hatred, bigotry, trolling or spam will be deleted and the commenter banned. Do read the commenting policy.
Valid XHTML: You have to preview your comment to make sure that it is valid XHTML 1.1. You will see the "Post" button on the preview page.
Urdu: To comment in Urdu, include "p[ur](urdu). " (with a space at the end and without the quotes) at the start of every Urdu paragraph. If you want to write an Urdu word(s) in an English paragraph, do it like this: %[ur](urdu)اردو%. If you want to put an English word(s) in an Urdu paragraph, write it like this: %[en](en)English words%.
PGP Signing: PGP-signed comments are encouraged. However, clearsigning Urdu text with GPGshell produces garbage.
MathML: Select the Textile with itex to MathML text filter. What you'll use is itex, which is a superset of WebTeX and differs somewhat from standard LaTeX.
Text Filters: For regular comments, whether in English or Urdu, keep the text filter setting to its default of Textile 2. Change it to Textile with itex to MathML when writing MathML.