US troops 'encouraged' Iraqi looters

US troops 'encouraged' Iraqi looters
by Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Online, in Nasiriya

General Tommy Franks is threatened with a Belgian war crimes trial alleging US troops failed to prevent looting in Iraq. BBC News Online uncovers evidence suggesting his soldiers even egged on some looters.

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Its amazing how different viewpoints can seem relevent with the same situation.

I read that the iraqi leadership themselves stripped the museums etc and shipped the stuff overseas.

Sadly I don't have an sympathy for the iraqi's over hte looting, just goes to show how mercanery they are over their own heritage in the end.

You can blame the amerians for incompetence over it but not for collusion..

Well looting is human nature. It's taking advantage of a situtation. Look at the L.A riots. how many people out there were looting because of Mr. King or were looting because of the opprotunity

chaos is a pretext to stay longer in Iraq...........
it legitimate the ground occupation by a foreign army, no?

In defense of the American soldiers, i cannot condemn them totally for a lack of action. For one, encouraging the looting of presidential palaces I could see. When i watched Iraqis on TV looting saddams old pimp pads, i actually in my mind waved them on, after all, all that wealth and luxury, it felt good to see the Iraqis getting back what thier govornment squandered. So the troops are seeing the same thing, its like, well, hell, let the people have it, buerocrats will just stuff it all in warehouses and not give it to the people anyway. And the story does wash about not helping college guards, with the #ty communications in the military, many of the soldiers are kept in the dark about whats going on. So, they might have thought, based on what they were told, the college was an outpost of the old regime, and all those Iraqis wanting to break in and take #, they figured, we aint gonna help Saddam lovers. Even encouraging, I can see that too. Soldiers are human too, and many come from lower class families: when they see all those poor war battered Iraqis, a certain sympathy arises, and they say, these people have nothing, why should i keep them from taking stuff from the rich? If I was over there, and I saw some half starved guy trying to break in and get some shampoo and soap for his wife or mom, and some food too, id probably help him batter the door down, instead of trusting and waiting on humanitarian aid.

The looting of national treasures, tho, thats different. thats thier culture, thier history. I cant cry over an arab stealing an airconditioner to keep his family cool, or stealing a golden chandelier from a palace, but national history? No, thats a true shame.

The problem is not with the US soldiers. They truly are only trained to fight, not to police. they have no idea how to do it. We are drilled with combat and agressive force, not how to occupy and keep peace. The MP's are the only ones capable of that, and it seems they got em all in the rear guarding POW's. Most soldiers dont want to police because we are still fuzzy on geneva conventions, and are not briefed on whats allowed in policing and whats not, and fear violating the conventions, so they stand by and busy themselves doing what they know how to do: guard , patrol for bad guys, ect. The blame is with Bush, again, because he should have been able to see the need, and sent far many more MP's over to Iraq than he did to deal with the problems.

Looting is sad and such but has the great iraq debate come down to looting?