Antiwar.com Blog

Army platoon arrested for refusing “suicide mission”

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a “suicide mission” to deliver fuel, the troops’ relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered “deadlined” or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.

The platoon could be charged with the willful disobeying of orders, punishable by dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and up to five years confinement, said military law expert Mark Stevens, an associate professor of justice studies at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C.
[…]
The 343rd is a supply unit whose general mission is to deliver fuel and water. The unit includes three women and 14 men and those with ranking up to sergeant first class.

“I got a call from an officer in another unit early (Thursday) morning who told me that my husband and his platoon had been arrested on a bogus charge because they refused to go on a suicide mission,” said Jackie Butler of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Michael Butler, a 24-year reservist. “When my husband refuses to follow an order, it has to be something major.”

The platoon being held has troops from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina, said Teresa Hill of Dothan, Ala., whose daughter Amber McClenny is among those being detained.

McClenny, 21, pleaded for help in a message left on her mother’s answering machine early Thursday morning.

“They are holding us against our will,” McClenny said. “We are now prisoners.”

Of course, we are only hearing about this because some soldiers managed to alert their families in the States.

Patricia McCook said her husband, a staff sergeant, understands well the severity of disobeying orders. But he did not feel comfortable taking his soldiers on another trip.

“He told me that three of the vehicles they were to use were deadlines … not safe to go in a hotbed like that,” Patricia McCook said.

Hill said the trucks her daughter’s unit was driving could not top 40 mph.

“They knew there was a 99 percent chance they were going to get ambushed or fired at,” Hill said her daughter told her. “They would have had no way to fight back.”

Another ominous item in this story:

Harris said conditions for the platoon have been difficult of late. Her son e-mailed her earlier this week to ask what the penalty would be if he became physical with a commanding officer, she said.

Larry Diamond, former senior adviser to the CPA in Baghdad, has a long, wonkish piece up at Foreign Affairs on “What Went Wrong in Iraq.” It’s supposed to be a how-to on occupation, not an argument against the war, but it does (unwittingly) illuminate the futility of nation-building – even as it endorses more vigorous nation-building in Iraq. Typical Council on Foreign Relations fare. Anyway, here’s the clearest articulation yet of what these folks mean by “staying the course”:

Because of the failures and shortcomings of the occupation – as well as the intrinsic difficulties that any occupation following Saddam’s tyranny was bound to confront – it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq. The post-handover transition is going to be long, and initially very bloody. It is not clear that the country is going to be able to conduct reasonably credible elections by next January. And even if those elections are held in a minimally acceptable fashion, it is hard to imagine that the over-ambitious transition timetable for the remainder of 2005 will be kept.

Does anyone seriously think the “construction” of a “viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq” will be complete a year from now?

Justin Raimondo delivers his Friday column early, assessing last night’s final Presidential debate.

Fallujah negotiators deny that al-Zarqawi is in Fallujah:

Iyad Allawi told Iraq’s interim assembly that Fallujah must surrender Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America’s top enemy in Iraq, or face military action.

“We want to know what proof there is that Zarqawi is in Fallujah,” Hatem Maddab, a member of a Fallujah negotiating committee, told Arabic Al Jazeera television, adding that the government had now halted peace talks.

US warplanes have repeatedly struck at targets the military says are hideouts used by Zarqawi and his followers in the Sunni Muslim city 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.

“Zarqawi is like the weapons of mass destruction that America invaded Iraq for,” Mr Maddab said, alluding to Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of banned arms that proved not to exist.

“We hear about that name (Zarqawi), but he is not here. More than 20 or 30 homes have been bombarded because of this Zarqawi and his followers but only women, children and the elderly have been affected,” the negotiator added.

He said the fate of Zarqawi had not been raised in talks with the interim government aimed at restoring state authority in Fallujah before nationwide elections due in January.

“At this point in time, the negotiations are halted for the sake of consultation. We did not suspend any negotiations … they were stopped by the government,” Mr Maddab said.

The Rolling Stones 1966 hit, “Mother’s Little Helper,” was a warning about addiction to Valium, a tranquilizer used by a legion of western women “…to get her through her busy day.” Of course, there is no comparison between the relatively placid suburban existence of the 1960s and the nightmare of Baghdad at war today. According to Riverbend, Valium is in the emergency first-aid kit of most Baghdad families to help them them make it through their day, and through the night.

Drug addiction is growing in Iraq, but as Riverbend remarks, Iraqis have other concerns which are more pressing; like protecting their children from kidnappers and bombs in this continuing disastrous war and occupation. As she puts it so well, it’s “like discovering you have cancer while you’re fighting off a hungry alligator- you’ll worry about the disease later.”

Read more…

Eight people are dead and four wounded in two explosions in the Green Zone. At least two Americans are among the casualties.:

It is believed to be the first time that insurgents have struck from within the heavily guarded compound that is home to the US and British embassies as well as Iraqi government offices.

Initial reports said that six people were killed and three wounded at the zone’s bazaar, while two were killed and an unspecified number were wounded at the Green Zone Café, but later reports amended the death toll to seven, including two Americans.

The blasts sent a large plume of thick, black smoke rising from the zone, home to about 10,000 Iraqis alongside US troops and international officials and contractors.

• One US soldier killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb in east Baghdad.
• ……an Iraqi female TV reporter was killed by gunmen in a morning drive-by shooting in Baghdad today.

  Zeina Mahmoud, who worked for Kurdish-run Al-Hurriya TV, was shot by three assailants driving by in an Opel car, said officials.

• In an apparently unrelated shooting that took place less than a half mile away, a judge was shot dead just minutes earlier.
• RFE is reporting five assassinations: Iraqi police say five people have died in a series of assassinations today in Baghdad, and the town of Baquba. They include two army officers, a judge, and a woman journalist, who were shot by gunmen.
• Update: Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid wal Jihad claims responsibility for the Green Zone attack, “Two lions from the `Martyrdom-seeking Brigade` (suicide bombers), which is affiliated to the military wing of Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, managed to enter the US embassy compound inside the Green Zone in the capital Baghdad,” said the statement posted on the Internet.

Update: AP reporting ten dead in the Green Zone bombings.

Suicide bombers today penetrated Baghdad’s heavily-secured Green Zone for the first time, setting off bombs at a market and cafe that left ten dead.

The victims were four Americans and six Iraqis.

The U-S military says the bombs were carried by hand into the fortified zone that houses American and Iraqi government headquarters.

Witnesses say they saw two men carrying backpacks sitting in a cafe full of Americans, chatting and drinking tea. They say a blast was heard after one man left — and that the second man then set off his bomb.

They say neither man was wearing a required I-D badge.