Posted on 05/23/2003 8:08:27 AM PDT by kattracks
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The overall U.S. commander in Iraq, General David McKiernan, said on Friday U.S. troops planned to reduce the number of heavy and small arms in the hands of Iraqis as part of a drive to restore law and order.
McKiernan said the plan, including am arms amnesty, would be implemented as soon as Washington approves the plan "within a matter of days."
Iraqis are armed to the teeth and after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government on April 9, looting of public and private institutions and homes swept the country and stolen weapons were sold on the streets at low prices.
More than a month on, Iraqis are complaining that with such anarchy and the abundance of weapons, the crime rate has reached unprecedented levels and the security situation is the worst in Iraq's modern history.
"The purpose of the program is to reduce the threat posed by automatic or heavy weapons and small arms carried in public," McKiernan told a news conference in Baghdad.
"The intention is not to completely disarm the Iraqi population. That is neither practical nor necessary," he said.
McKiernan said he would offer Iraqis a 14-day amnesty to turn in weapons to designated locations and those wishing to possess arms could come to the U.S. troops to apply for permits.
He said small arms could be kept for protection in businesses and in homes but could not be carried in public.
"We're going to establish limitations on caliber and type of weapons kept in businesses and in homes. There's got to be immediate reduction of weapons. The aim is to keep arms in the hands only of those who need them," McKiernan said.
He said there would also be limitations on weapons carried by the personal security guards of senior Iraqi political figures and that each case would be studied individually.
He said in the independent northern Kurdistan, the Peshmerga Kurdish militias that fought alongside the U.S.-led forces during the war would be allowed to keep some weapons, but it was not decided which heavy arms the Kurds would be allowed to hold.
McKiernan said the security situation was "improving steadily" as U.S.-led forces and Iraqi police intensified efforts to curb crime and crackdown on arms.
General William Wallace, commander of the Fifth Corps, said the numbers of coalition-supervised Iraqi police had risen to 7,000 with 18 police stations open 24 hours and some 1,800 U.S. military police patrolling the streets.
Worse than the hundreds of thousands Hussein and his government killed? I think not. This sounds like the liberal propaganda we hear here.
My guess is that the opposite is true ... that with the peace loving Iraqis armed after the fall of Sadam and the Ba'ath party, that the criminal element is being subdued and held at bay. Common sense tells one that this is so and is at least (if not more so) responsible for the reduction in looting.
I believe the people should be able to keep their small arms, meaning any law-abiding citizen and meaning their sidearms, shotguns and rifles...without a permit. I hope that is what this ultimately boils down to.
Part of the old 1960's era State Department document that speaks of disarmament in a peacful world extends that disarmament to small arms. The UN and other international and domestic organizations and agencies, as you know, constantly seek control of small arms...meaning total control of the people of course.
Gun grabbers here in the states are always throwing the term around ... trying to start at the full auto and the so-called assault weapons ... but what they really want are all large caliber rifles and sidearms. That's what they want. They will have a fight on their hands, a literal, physical one if they try,
The talk in this article, as I stated above, sounds a lot like their dogma. I believe the peaceful and law abiding citizens in Iraq shuld be allowed to keep all of their small arms. The ones who abuse the right and are unlawful, trying to destroy the peace, steal, loot, terrorize are then the opnes you focus on ... and the people themselves will do so most of the time before we even arrive. It will be the best and quickest deterrent to looting, crime in general, terrorist cell, resurgant Ba'aths, etc.
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