Posted on 04/07/2003 11:46:52 PM PDT by GLDNGUN
Bob Arnot, currently reporting live on MSNBC says Coalition forces at his location are battling the Fedayeen and a group he said he WAS NOT ALLOWED TO IDENTIFY. Al Qaeda? Any other guesses? He did indicate that these are highly skilled fighters, especially in regards to sniping.
Then where the chemical drums were found. It's reported it had a nearly 5 point rating, which means not just a tidbit or trace, it is alot! The drums above ground (pesticides) tested negative. What I find most fascinating is that there are flies and bees buzzing around those underground drums and they seem fine.
I guess ole' Bob got a promotion recently because he is now being billed as Chief Correspondent ;)
Saddam's Lion Cubs are an organization of boys, forced by the Iraqi government to learn the arts of war. Now, coalition soldiers may face the nightmare of confronting armed children.
We see them as children.
But Saddam Hussein sees them as soldiers.
By the time some of the boys are 10-years-old their childhood will be over.
"There is nothing to which he will not stoop," says Jim Bond, a former Army JAG Captain Jim Bond says he is appalled that Iraqi boys have been trained to kill since the end of the Gulf War.
They're called Saddam's Lion Cubs.
The children are trained in infantry tactics, ambush techniques and terrorist operations.
A series of photos from Iraqi News.Com shows children forced to brutalize chickens to desensitize them to violence and death.
Experts say there may be as many as 8,000 Iraqi child soldiers waiting for U.S. troops.
"One's instinct is not to shoot, I mean you don't kill children." That's the psychological dilemma U.S. soldiers may encounter says Seattle University law professor Jim Bond and co-author of the new Military Code of Conduct. "When you are a soldier and someone has a weapon on you, you can't discuss the matter, you can't think of what your options are," says Bond.
It's kill or be killed. Bond says that's a win-win situation for Saddam Hussein."If the kid succeeds in killing the soldier. Great. If the soldier kills the child in self-defense than he has propaganda to spread all over the Arab world."
Children have gone to war before. The Hitler Youth brigades fought for 6 years during WWII. American troops reported capturing boys as young as 8 years old.
A report, entitled, "Facing Saddam's Child Soldiers was published by the Brookings Institute - a public policy think tank. It says American soldiers must prepare to face Iraqi child soldiers. The report's author, Peter Singer, told KOMO 4 News if Saddam Hussein deploys children the most likely scenario is when allied forces reach Baghdad.
Singer says their specialty is urban warfare.
Saddam's Lion Cubs are a feeder unit to the fedayeen - an Iraqi para-military force - fanatically loyal to him, and known as Saddam's men of sacrifice.
A U.S. military spokesperson says U.S. troops are prepared for child combatants - but stresses the best scenario if possible is to disarm them, secure them, and remember--they are victims of Saddam.
They're all over the place. Like this one at a base in the south:
A U.S. Marine from the 15th Expeditionary Unit walks past a building at a Iraqi
military base in the desert near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah Tuesday,
April 1, 2003. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)
American troops threatened by chemical weapons and suicide bombings face another danger when they reach Baghdad - Saddam Hussein's army of children.
Well-trained, ferocious and 8,000-strong, the Ashbal Saddam - Saddam's Lion Cubs, - are waiting in the capital for U.S. forces to arrive, said Peter Singer, a fellow with Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The Cubs are a junior Fedayeen Saddam - the militia directed by the Iraqi dictator's oldest son, Uday - whose fake surrenders and ruthless tactics in southern Iraq surprised U.S. war planners.
"Whatever the Fedayeen has been willing to do, you can extrapolate that these children will do the same," said Singer, author of the forthcoming book "Caution: Children at War."
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Saddam's security police began forcing boys as young as 6 from their families and into intensive boot camps. There, they are beaten, forced to kill animals and indoctrinated with Baath Party propaganda.
They emerge about age 10 schooled in the use of small arms and basic infantry tactics, clad in black trousers and shirts bearing the inscription "Ashbal Saddam," said the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights.
U.S. soldiers have battled children before, in Vietnam, Somalia and Afghanistan, where the first American killed in action died from shots fired by a 14-year-old boy.
But experts said U.S. forces can expect more organized and dogged resistance from the Cubs, similar to the Hitler Youth in the waning days of World War II.
"Ambushes, sniping, hit-and-run tactics are the most likely things we'll see," Singer said.
Guesses?! Oh, and the reporter said "snipers" from what I could gather, but it was bleeped during the 5 second delay apparently.
Well, let's start by identifying non-allied nations known for their snipers.
1. Serbia
2. Irish Republican Army (Northern Ireland's IRA)
Now, would *either* of those groups have a motive to send in snipers to Iraq against Americans and British (e.g. revenge, money, pro-Iraqi alliances, propaganda, etc.)?
Oh, and *where* are President Bush and Prime Minister Blair meeting this week, and what topics are they discussing?
Old enough to fight, old enough to die. And old enough to kill our guys if they hesitate.
The anti-war protesters will go ape-$h*t over any news that coalition forces are "babykilling".
Catching ’Em Young Iraqi Kids Train as Saddam’s Soldiers — But Will They Put Up a Fight?
Jan. 22 — In the blazing heat of the Iraqi summers, when most people keep their daytime outdoor activities to a minimum, thousands of young boys have been undergoing arduous military training to emerge as potential foot soldiers in the vast security apparatus that has propped up Saddam Hussein's regime.
Burdened under the weight of Kalashnikov rifles, sweating — and often fainting — under the scorching sun in their all-black uniforms, the lads go through three-week training courses in light weapons training, hand-to-hand combat and basic soldiering, accompanied by a shrill political indoctrination that pledges absolute loyalty to their leader.
They are the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs. These cadres of Iraqi boys, aged between 12 and 17, are trained along the lines of the Hitler Youth, the Nazi movement founded in Germany in the 1920s that remains one of history's most disturbing examples of organized youth indoctrination.
Founded in 1998 to "arm the child with an inner light," the Ashbal is arguably the first rung of a complex labyrinth of Iraqi military and civilian organizations ostensibly formed to maintain Iraqi security at home and abroad. But most experts and Iraqi exiles say the main function of the often competing security units is to ensure the protection of the president and his family.
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