edit: Sassaman is the Lt Col of the unit that threw Marwan and Zaydoon Fadhil into the Tigres. There's some incredible reporting in this piece. Soldiers were ordered to increase the kills, as well as encouraged to increase "non-lethal" tactics (not nearly as benign as they sound)
This guy, Sassaman, held his own elections- it sounds like everyone is doing something different. Everyone is making it up as they go and nothing is working.
A tribal leader tells the journalist, "There is no explanation except to humiliate. I really hate them."snip>
Sassaman detained Sunni sheiks, holding them responsible when his troops were attacked. When Iraqis gave him bad intelligence, he detained them too. When locals scrawled graffiti on a wall, denouncing President Bush or calling on the Iraqis to kill Americans, Sassaman asked local leaders to paint it over, and if they did not, he ordered his men to destroy it. If kids threw rocks, his men threw rocks back. If they caught an Iraqi man out after curfew, they piled him into a Bradley, drove him miles outside of town and told him to walk home. "All I was getting at was, If grown-ups throw rocks at me, we're throwing them back," Sassaman said. "We are not going to just wave. We are not driving by and taking it. Because a lot of the units did."
On a mission in January 2004, a group of Sassaman's soldiers came to the house of an Iraqi man suspected of hijacking trucks. He wasn't there, but his wife and two other women answered the door. "You have 15 minutes to get your furniture out," First Sgt. Ghaleb Mikel said. The women wailed and shouted but ultimately complied, dragging their bed and couch and television set out the front door. Mikel's men then fired four antitank missiles into their house, blowing it to pieces and setting it afire. The women were left holding their belongings.
....
That same winter in Samarra, Sassaman's men moved through a hospital and pulled a suspected insurgent from his bed. When a doctor told the Americans to leave, a soldier spat in his face. Another time, an officer told Spanner, one of Sassaman's soldiers threw a wounded man into a cell and threatened to withhold treatment unless he told them everything he knew. "We've told him he's not getting medical attention unless he starts to talk," Capt. Karl Pfuetze told Spanner. The man's fate was unknown. (Pfuetze now denies the withholding of treatment. Sassaman insists he never condoned beatings or denial of medical treatment.)
The best explanation for such tactics was offered by an officer in the Fourth Infantry Division. Echoing the private comments of many American officers, he said that the Iraqis seemed to understand only force. "To an American, this might upset our sense of decency," he added. "But the Iraqi mind-set was different. Whoever displays the most strength and authority is the one they are going to obey. They might be bitter, but they obey."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/magazine/23sassaman.html?pagewanted=print
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