DoD News Briefing - ASD PA Clarke and Maj. Gen. McChrystal Mar.29, 2003
And finally, before I turn things over to General McChrystal, there's been some talk lately and some observations in the early days. People seem to have been surprised at the brutality, at what the Iraqi regime is doing to some of their people. And on the one hand, it's hard to understand that. It has been so well-documented. It has been so well-reported for years what the regime has done to its own people.
And we're going to show you a couple of clips here. The first one is an Iraqi woman whose name is Zainab Al-Suwaj, whose teenage cousin was tortured by the regime. And following that is a small clip from a BBC program about the chemical weapon attack on the town of Halabja.
(Begin videotape.)
ZAINAB AL-SUWAJ: I have a 16-year-old cousin. She was in high school. And one day she wrote in her notes something against the government, "I don't like Saddam." So the teacher saw what she wrote, and so the police came and they took her to prison with her mother, father, uncles, sisters and brother and cousin and her aunt.
This is a letter I received from her after she's been released, and she was telling me about "the day that started the series of my torture."
"It was not enough for them to hit me by their hands and by the sticks until my skin started to break. And they also started using electrical shock on my fingertips and my lips and my nipples. Also they used to hang me from my feet, and they used to make me walk on broken glass. One day they took all of my clothes off and they threatened my parents that they are going to rape me.
"This torture lasted for 11 months. And after that they sentenced me to be in jail for three years. And it was not only me, but because of me, my aunt and her daughter, they sentenced to nine months in jail. My brothers they sentenced to six months. My uncles from my mother's side, they were seven months. And my uncles from my father's side, they've been killed. For my father, he was sentenced for 15 years."
(End of videotape.)
(Begin videotape of BBC program.)
NARRATOR: Halabja was bombed with a cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun and sarin. On that day, up to 5,000 people were gassed. And this was not -- (inaudible). Forty other villages across northern Iraq were poisoned. Cancer and birth defects have shot up since the war crimes, and every home contains its own horror story.
(To village resident.) So what happened to this poor lady?
VILLAGER: She was hit by the chemicals and her face went red. It was itching so badly that she started scratching it and scratching it, which led to this. (Image of woman's scarred face.)
(End of videotape.)
MS. CLARKE: So it is hard to imagine that people don't know, as I said, about the brutality of this regime. It has been going on for decades. It has been well-documented and well-reported.
What I can't imagine is what it must be like to be the Iraqi people now and living in that kind of environment and living under that kind of fear and torture and knowing that if you, for instance, so much as wave at coalition forces when they go by, you will be hung.
So I think it is perfectly understandable why so many of these people are afraid to rise up against the regime at this time. When they are certain, when they are as certain as we are about the end of this regime, I'm confident that they will do so.