{"id":24808,"date":"2015-01-26T15:03:30","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T23:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=24808"},"modified":"2015-02-11T10:58:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T18:58:58","slug":"the-real-head-drilling-butchers-of-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/26\/the-real-head-drilling-butchers-of-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Head-Drilling “Butchers” of Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most harrowing scene in American Sniper<\/em> involves an Iraqi character nicknamed\u00a0“The Butcher” torturing and executing an Iraqi child by taking a power drill to his skull.\u00a0The scene\u00a0lends credibility to the narrative\u00a0of\u00a0Chris Kyle as basically a hero facing\u00a0villains. In the film, “The Butcher” is a lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Sunni insurgent, terrorist, and founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later became ISIS.<\/p>\n

However, in the Iraq of the real world, power drilling human heads is\u00a0more of a predilection, not of Sunni insurgents, but of their enemies in the\u00a0Shiite militias.<\/p>\n

\"Abu

Abu Deraa<\/p><\/div>\n

For one, there is the\u00a0warlord Abu Deraa, nicknamed “the Shiite Zarqawi,” who according to the UK’s\u00a0Sunday Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(emphasis added):<\/p>\n

“…is thought to be responsible for the murder of thousands of civilians, mostly Sunnis, and\u00a0is said to take personal delight in killing \u2014 sometimes with a bullet to the head, sometimes by driving a drill into the skulls of his victims.<\/strong> On other occasions, Iraqis say, he gives them a choice of being shot or battered to death with concrete building blocks.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AQI\/ISIS falsely claimed to have killed\u00a0him in 2006, but after years of hiding in Iran, he recently\u00a0reemerged<\/a> in Baghdad once again leading a militia.<\/p>\n

\"Hadi

Hadi al-Amiri<\/p><\/div>\n

Then there is\u00a0Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Iran-backed Badr Brigade. According to The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, “A leaked 2009 State Department cable said sources had indicated that Amiri may have personally ordered attacks on up to 2,000 Sunnis.” The\u00a0Post<\/em> continues (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

“…in 2005 and 2006, sectarian killings in Iraq surged as Badr death squads worked under the cloak of the police force.<\/p>\n

The 2009 State Department cable, referring to that era, said that ‘one of [Amiri\u2019s] preferred methods of killing allegedly involved using a power drill to pierce the skulls of his adversaries.<\/strong>‘”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Electric\u00a0Drill Amiri is now, according to the Post<\/em>, effectively the head of security in Iraq:<\/p>\n

“Iraq\u2019s parliament voted Saturday to put an affiliate of an Iranian-backed paramilitary group in charge of a key security ministry, a move that could strike a serious blow to efforts to unite Sunnis and Shiites to wrest back their country from Islamist extremists.<\/p>\n

The new interior minister is Mohammed Ghabban, a little-known Shiite politician with the Badr Organization. But there is little doubt that Hadi al-Amiri, head of the party and its military wing, will wield the real power in the ministry.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both of these Iran-sponsored real-life\u00a0head-drilling “butchers” of Iraq rose to power thanks to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and are now commanding forces\u00a0either in the US-backed Iraqi government, or under its protection, fighting alongside the US military against the now ISIS-led Sunni insurgency.\u00a0At the end of the day, the American Sniper was not the enemy of the Iraqi Butchers, but their\u00a0benefactor.<\/p>\n

As radio host\u00a0Scott Horton never tires reminding his listeners, the chief role of the American troops in Iraq was to fight a bloody civil war on behalf of the Shiite side and to install Iran-backed Shiite militias in power. These militias\u00a0used death squads to ethnically cleanse Baghdad and other cities of Sunnis, and, as Will Grigg never tires reminding his readers, imposed a Sharia-compliant constitution over a once-secular country. This Shiite jihad was, in effect, Chris Kyle’s true mission, for which millions of American Christians now lionize him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most harrowing scene in American Sniper involves an Iraqi character nicknamed\u00a0“The Butcher” torturing and executing an Iraqi child by taking a power drill to his skull.\u00a0The scene\u00a0lends credibility to the narrative\u00a0of\u00a0Chris Kyle as basically a hero facing\u00a0villains. In the film, “The Butcher” is a lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Sunni insurgent, terrorist, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":24811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414],"tags":[663,664],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hollywood","tag-american-sniper","tag-chris-kyle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/c6f7622f-f65d-481e-85cf-6b615795fa19_16x9_600x338.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24889,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24808\/revisions\/24889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24808"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}