Steele set about working with Iraqi officers to organize "special
police units" under military control, as the notion of a civilian police force
faded. By April 2005 there were
nine battalions of these police commandos operating in Iraq, with some 5,000 in
Baghdad alone.
When The Body Count Rises, the
New York Times Notices
With more and more bodies left on the streets during the night, with
secret prisons spreading across the country, with reports of disappearances and
torture proliferating, the New York Times took notice, at least to the extent
of publishing a Sunday magazine cover [5]story[5] on May 1, 2005, by Peter Maass titled, "The Salvadorization of
Iraq." By then, anyone who wanted
to know the level of American-sanctioned brutality in Iraq would have had little
difficulty doing so.
Conditions worsened and reports kept coming throughout 2005 and
2006.
On October 2005, one of the Iraqi generals involved in the secret
prisons fled Iraq and spoke out publicly from Jordan about what was happening
in his country. Steele came to
visit the general in Jordan, the general recalled, apparently to see if the
general had any evidence -- pictures, documents, tapes that could give Steele
cause for concern. None have yet
appeared.
Of course American media did not pursue the terror-fighting-terror story
very hard, and the U.S. government denied most bad news. At a news conference on November 29,
2005, a reporter asked a timid question about the killings and Sec. Rumsfield
said he had not seen any reports.
Following a week follow-up question, he said he had no data from the
field -- even though the truth was that Steele had reported six weeks earlier
that the Shia death squads were operating effectively from his
perspective.
U.S. Was Cold, Heartless,
Ruthless, and Finally Fruitless
In the documentary, Steele is described as a cold and ruthless man by
an Iraqi who knew him. "He lacks
human feeling," the Iraqi general says, "his heart has died."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
