Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

U.S. Forces Prepare Martial Law for Iraq:

“The U.S. cannot take over the mantle of law enforcement for the Iraqi people,” said Lt. Col. Richard Vanderlinden, commander of the 709th Military Police Battalion. “The expectation is that the Iraqi law enforcement structure will remain intact.” …

“Any riots and we are going to put them down. We’re going to send in the infantry. Restoring civil authority and peace is the highest priority. We are not going to let people run riot and rampant,” said Capt. Jim Wherry of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the army’s legal arm.

Offenders, Wherry said, could then be tried under the U.S. Code of Military Justice, detained for post-war trials by civil authorities or face punishment meted out by the Americans under Iraqi laws. The entire Iraqi judicial code has been translated into English and made available to the U.S. military. …

How the coalition will establish the boundary between U.S. military and Iraqi laws remains a “work in progress,” Wherry said.

“We’re still making it up as we go along and hope for the best,” Wherry, of Rock Island, Ill., said. “We are trying to have as little to do with this country as possible while, in effect, taking it over.”

Still, Saddam’s vast security apparatus is expected to be purged of loyalists and those suspected of torture and other human rights violations. Some supporters of the regime, however, will have to be kept in place.

“After World War II, we got rid of all the Nazis in six months and then found out we could not run the country without the Nazis,” Wherry said.

A nightmare scenario would be a postwar, revenge-based bloodbath, with the police and judiciary melting away and the United States having to become cop, judge and jailer.

You are seeing that the United States believes more in power than liberty, subjugation than freedom. The tactic of replacing only the topmost layers of authority is not new. The Mongols were very successful in doing so, removing the emperors and local rulers and replacing them with their Mongol chiefs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2003 at 10:01 am and is filed under Military and defense. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.