Mandatory Retina scans and ID cards for Fallujah refugees.

I just watched a clip from NBC News that says some of the refugees who had to flee Fallujah because of the US offensive will be let back in. One thing that really caught my attention was the mention of retina scans on those persons allowed to return plus ID cards. They wont be allowed away from their homes or aid centers that haven't even been built yet and the people who break the rules may be subject to 'deadly force'. How long will it be before the US says they have to be 'chipped'?


2004-12-01 NBC: What's next for Fallujah? (streaming media)

Here's a partial transcript I typed up because I can't find a web link yet:

"On every block at least one building is completely damaged, many others are badly damaged.

So far the plan is for most of the city's 250,000 residents to return in stages. At first only a few thousand will be let in.
They will be fingerprinted, given a retina scan and then an ID card which will only allow them to travel around their homes or to nearby aid centers which are now being built.

The Marines will be authorized to use deadly force against those breaking the rules."

Well, it's good to see some of them being able to return to Fallujah. Naturally, any sane person would want to make sure that the city does not revert to being a haven for terrorists with their attendant murder/torture rooms, and caches of weapons in mosques, schools, and hospitals. So the need for control is obvious. If there are those who object to the necessary controls, then they can just stay out of Fallujah; that could speed up the return for other law-abiding citizens.

These people are not US citizens, Iraq has no laws against this, and indeed as far as I am aware there are no international laws against this. Since the US is fighting an insurgency that blends in and out of the non-insurgent population its going to have to do something like this, whether its biometric identification or typed papers with photos and signatures. The sooner the US leaves the better no? The sooner the insurgents stop the sooner the US leaves the better right?

This is interesting too, since the US is apparently also rolling out robotic battle machines into the iraqi theatre of war. Biometric eye scans, terrorists looking for nuke weapons, old stockpiles of chemical weapons, battle robots, unmanned drone spy planes, orbital satellites, yikes.

Looks like they won't be allowed to have cars and won't be able to congregate.
I'll bet they just love their new freedom over there in Iraq

2004-12-02 Rebuilding Fallujah, Iraq (NBC).asf (streaming media)

No link to the story, I typed this up myself from the video clip:

Engel: A new mission in Fallujah, the same Marines who fought last month to rid the city of insurgents, now rebuilding it. For 10 days in November Marines and soldiers attacked the city.
This week NBC news joined the Marines in Fallujah.
We found it eerie, deserted, the only sign of life, stray animals.
It smelled rotten with decomposing bodies and trash, broken sewers and dust.
Images of violence frozen in time.
A barber shop interrupted, a candy store ransacked.
There are streets in downtown Fallujah where every building has been condemned and must be torn down before people are allowed to return.
Some commanders estimate it will be six month before basic services are restored.
Today there is no power, water pipes are broken, this school flooded.
Marines say only 5,000 people remain in the city.
We met some taking refuge in a mosque.
Old Iraqi Man: "My family is gone. I stayed to protect my house, now my house is gone. Why should I stay now?" asked the man.
Engel: Already, the Marines have teams out surveying the damage. They brought these Iraqi engineers to salvage what they could at the main power station.
It's a priority with 250,000 people waiting to leave refugee camps and return to Fallujah.
When they do, Marines will pay them up to $2,500 for damaged property or deaths and they'll find new rules in the city.
Identity card checks, a curfew, no cars and no congregating.
Marine: "Those rules will be carried by every single male who receives an identification card. It is a Martial Law environment, there will be deadly force authorized for certain infractions."
Engel: An environment unlikely to sit well with already resentful refugees.
Iraqi Man: "How will we greet the Americans in Fallujah?" he asked. "With guns and Rockets"
Engel: November's offensive did root out Insurgents but in a place where emotions run high, the question tonight is will the refugees come back bitter or see their return as a new beginning?

Richard Engel, NBC News, Fallujah.

[edit on 3-12-2004 by AceOfBase]

Since the fallujans are the ones supporting and quartering the insurgents there is good reason however to have martial law installed. In the Boer War, the british burnt the farms and confiscated the property of Boer civilians who had given supplies to the Commandos (or had even had supplies taken from them) In fact the British relocated the civilians to this great new 'concentration camp' idea that they apparently got from the spanish.

Whao Ace of base Freedom does sound great in the new Bush state of Iraq, I wonder if they have to carry papers like in Europe during Hitler rule. Oh I forgot they will have ID cards.

Freedom does come with a price when is force on others.

IRAQ is beginning to sound like a laboratory for testing new methods of government control of civilian populations.

BTW, what better way could there be to instill the love of democracy in those poor people. More likely, the effect will be to turn every citizen of Fallujah into a hater of the US. This sounds like a close parallel of what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians for years (sans retinal scans and ID cards).

Originally posted by dubiousone
IRAQ is beginning to sound like a laboratory for testing new methods of government control of civilian populations.

You know what you may be right, they probably will even try the chips under the skin to see how it works, all that before they force it on us here in the US.

And for the democracy if is given in this type of way no Iraqi is going to love anything, more enemies of the US will be born.

I tell you civil war in that country to expell the poppet government and the invadors is getting near.

Sunnis will never agreed with the new US form of tracking.

So, marg, dubiousone, AceofBase and Nygdan..

The American troops should just let anyone move back into Fallujah immediately without any checks or security concerns?

Please, no sidetrack issues. Should anyone be allowed to move back into Fallujah with no concerns or restrictions for security?

A simple Yes or No is what I am asking you for.

Originally posted by jsobecky
So, marg, dubiousone, AceofBase and Nygdan..

The American troops should just let anyone move back into Fallujah immediately without any checks or security concerns?

Please, no sidetrack issues. Should anyone be allowed to move back into Fallujah with no concerns or restrictions for security?

A simple Yes or No is what I am asking you for.

No.
Those people who are returning should be checked for weapons but that's about it.
You shouldn't impose the type of rules they are saying they will impose.

You already destroyed their city and killed their relatives and now you're trying to impose one of the most strict dictatorships ever. That's just wrong.

Should be let in as it is THEIR city not your Troops!
I can understand a weapon check, but fingerprints etc.??
WTF is USA doing? Trying to get the whole friggin world in a database or something?
I think there is enough to worry about in the USA so why don�t they just make a start there? There�s enough murders, drugdealing and other **** going on. Take care of that instead of trying to control the world.
This is really getting out of hand and ridiculeous!
I don�t believe it.

Originally posted by Calibre
I think there is enough to worry about in the USA so why don�t they just make a start there? There�s enough murders, drugdealing and other **** going on. Take care of that instead of trying to control the world.
This is really getting out of hand and ridiculeous!
I don�t believe it.

Yeah! Take care of business here at home! I mean, why are we sending food and medicine and doctors to Sudan when we have hungry, sick people here? Why are we helping people devastated by typhoons in India when Florida is still such a mess after the hurricanes?

You really set me straight, pal. Thanks a lot!

jsobecky the security of the people in fallujah is top priority but subjugating their citizens to all these things is not a good example of democracy and not the way to win the "hart and minds" of the people of a nation that US "was liberating" these people are not under educated they know about history they know about what happened with the Germans and the Jews.

They can be mislead with this actions into believing that is some type of agenda on their ethnic group with all this things going on this is not good for the American liberation image that US was portraying to us about this invasion, unless it was all a lie after all.

Originally posted by dubiousone
IRAQ is beginning to sound like a laboratory for testing new methods of government control of civilian populations.

BTW, what better way could there be to instill the love of democracy in those poor people. More likely, the effect will be to turn every citizen of Fallujah into a hater of the US. This sounds like a close parallel of what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians for years (sans retinal scans and ID cards).

I disagree.

"Retina scan is actually one of the oldest biometrics as 1930's research suggested that the patterns of blood vessels on the back of the human eye were unique to each individual. While technology has taken more time than the theory to be usable, EyeDentify, founded in 1976, developed The Eyedentification 7.5 personal identification unit, the first retina scan device made for commercial use, in 1984. At this time, they are still the primary company for retinal scan devices though they do use resellers."

Further by the end of 2005 all US passports are expected to include retina scan technogly stored on a chip.

As you pointed out Isreal has been using it for sometime, Japan has also been using it on some of their ATM machines. Want more expamples?

As you can see they are not the first and hardly a laboratory for testing.

You still did not answer my question with a simple yes or no, marg.

This procedure although more modern seems to ring a bell. If memory serves, Saddam employed mandatory national id cards to be carried on Iraqis at all times. Failure to do so led to just about the same penalties outlined in this thread. In fact, thousands of ID cards were found as the coalition forces made their way into some of the buildings, presumably from citizens liberated of their lives.

It is obvious that Bush and Blair are having to incorporate the very same tactics Hussein used to keep the masses subjugated and repressed, which makes them no better than teh tyrant himself. How anyone cannot possibly see that this style of liberation and freedom is no change, in fact is being made worse and therefore can still condone the war and continued occupation is a puzzle to me.

Actually I am not against IDs, in the senses that the people of Iraq needs to keep population tabs. US don't even know how many people has died in that country.

Every thing that US wanted to do to control the people should have been done immediately after the invasion.

But creating and atmosphere of mandatory seclusion of people in one city is wrong, Iraq belongs to the Iraqis and they have the right to be free in their country after all the reason for US to be in Iraq was to bring freedom to Iraq, Right? Anything else will look hypocritical.

I think ID-ing the locals is a great idea, the 2 alternatives are go on with the present problems or get brutally tough. The latter would have been easier to do with Saddam in place to be the heavy.

The Boston Globe has a story on the new police state in Fallujah:

Boston.com
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised.

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned...

...One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

They are saying that they intend to make Fallujah a "model city".
Does this mean they want to place other cities in Iraq under these same rules?
Do they want all of Iraq to have this new 'freedom'?


[edit on 5-12-2004 by AceOfBase]

Originally posted by AceOfBase
The Boston Globe has a story on the new police state in Fallujah:


Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned...

...One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

[edit on 5-12-2004 by AceOfBase]
I like the idea of buses instead of cars. Take one more vehicle of destruction away from the terrorists (no pun intended). Plus it could be the beginning of a model city with less air pollution and traffic congestion. I have to think that parents would welcome the opportunity for their children to go to school and play in relative safety, instead of being a target for car bombers.

And having the men work is also a good idea. It gives them a stock in their homeland, and less idle time on their hands to get into mischief.

And applying the same restrictions to other cities in Iraq might not be such a bad idea, either. Park all cars outside of town, and use shuttle buses, sort of like we do at the airports today.

These rules may sound tough but they are necessary to control the violence. Then we can get a start on rebuilding Iraq. Remember the old adage, "It's hard to remember that your objective is to drain the swamp when you're up to your a$$ in alligators."

The more I think about this idea, the more I like it.


EDIT Typos

[edit on 5-12-2004 by jsobecky]