If true, this changes the whole complexion of events.
It will take courage for normal Iraqis to blow the whistle on the insurgents among them. Take Haditha, site of the alleged Marine massacre that global publicity has made a household name for moral collapse. But how about this for moral collapse: Haditha is mined with IEDs, the remote bombs that kill U.S. soldiers. A source with contacts among the Marines there called this week to explain how this works: Insurgents offer Haditha residents $100 to plant an IED; if they decline, the insurgents promise to murder them and their families, and they do murder non-collaborators. These are villages where everyone knows everyone, not Paris in 1942. As a result of the insurgents' Satanic kill-or-die policy, my source said, any conceivable bond between U.S. troops there and the local population has been broken. |