Here’s a story that got my attention today:
US Troops in Baghdad Make Fishing a Tradition (NPR RADIO)
“While U.S. troops in Iraq spend much of their time searching for high level insurgents, some soldiers at Baghdad's Camp Victory try to catch another type of "big one." They fish in the lakes surrounding Saddam Hussein's palaces. After five years, it's become a tradition — soldiers on their way out hand fishing rods to newcomers.”
Click Here to Listen to the NPR Story
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But here's the SCARY PART that the US military and NPR may not know about: (read full story below)
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Besides telling us what some of the US troops have sometimes for dinner in Camp Victory, this story is a real eye opener on how lax the discipline has become among the US military in Baghdad.
The report clearly demonstrates that the officers-turned-fishermen knew that at least some of that fish may have had human body parts as food under Saddam’s watch. Saddam’s henchmen were reportedly in the grisly business of water-boarding political prisoners in that same fish pond before throwing them to the hungry fish after they had finished torturing the prisoners to death.
As macabre as it sounds, this account did not seem to bother the US troops who have clearly developed a fondness for fat bass meat. But even more disturbing are some of the accounts I had heard during my stay in Iraq, right after the fall of Baghdad in 2003.
Of the scores of witnesses who came to volunteer stories and leads in the hope of getting media attention, I particularly remember one man who had presented himself to me as the former officer in charge of the infamous Abu Ghuraib prison (he had an ID and several photographs to prove that). At that time, I was looking for information that could lead us to locations where one could find evidence of mass graves, or to places where political prisoners could still be found alive. The man was of no significant help to me on that score, but he sat down and began telling me about some of Saddam’s novel techniques to rid his regime of political foes.
As I recall, one of Saddam’s original ideas, according to that eyewitness,involved using fish to kill his nemeses. And here’s how the story went:
Saddam, with the help of a wealthy guy from Al Saadoun family, according to the man's account, had devised a technique by which he would allegedly feed the fish some kind of chemically treated chicken droppings. This would take several weeks before the fish is ready to be taken out of the pond, cooked, and served to a particular political prisoner for lunch or dinner. The man told me that this dish would be served only once a week. Over a period of five to six months, the prisoner begins to slowly fade away, but with no symptoms, no detectable illness.
The prisoner, after he becomes weak and wasted, is then released from prison, supposedly for humanitarian reasons, and handed back to his family to take care of him, the man said. The prisoner is then allowed to have all sorts of medical exams and blood work, but Saddam allegedly knew all too well that no physician would be able to diagnose his illness. The prisoner would ultimately die in his home, and the victim’s family would even get a letter of condolence from Saddam, according to the man. This way, the man said, Saddam gets rid of his enemy, without the bad press that usually comes with killing a foe in cold blood.
My question to the man at that moment was: “But why would Saddam go to such lengths, knowing that he could just have his men shoot the prisoner?”
The man’s answer was that Saddam did it this way only to prominent political foes who had some clout or popularity in or outside Iraq. "He simply didn’t want to be blamed for their deaths,” the man said.
His answer was convincing, but I still had my doubts as to the credibility of that man. Since then, I haven’t come across any story regarding Saddam’s fish ponds, until today. I couldn’t help making the link. In hindsight, I believe the man was telling me something that deserved attention.
If the US soldiers are shrugging off the likelihood that they may have been eating human-fed fish, they should take a harder look at what they are fishing, it may just be the same fish with which Saddam used to treat his best enemies.
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