The Associated Press Released a story today about the United States practice of detaining/abducting the wifes of suspected insurgents/citizens in Iraq. Recent documents released by the Pentagon under and ACLU freedom of information court order describe this disgusting and illegal practice.

One memo dated May 9, 2004 from a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer tells a tale that should make you sick to your stomach and ashamed of the United States government and our armed services. In the memo, the civilian writes that on a raid for insurgents the army detained a 28-year old women the wife of a suspected insurgent as "leverage". If this is not sick enough for you yet, hold on. The women was the mother of three young children who were also in the house, one as young as six months old and still nursing. The women was held for two days. Now close your eyes and picture that army or marine commercial you see on tv in your head: be an army of one, the few the proud. Now open your eyes and envision a mother being ripped from her three screaming children, this is the real United States war machine.

Not only is this practice barbaric and illegal, another problem is the carefree way this information is released to the American public. The story breaks on a Saturday which will avoid the news frenzy of normal weekdays and it's not even news. Anyone out there who actually pays attention to world events and gets their news from somewhere other than Fox, or CNN would know that practices like this and others are carried out by our forces all the time in Iraq, people like Dahr Jamail have been opening our eyes to things like this unfortunatly, for years now. Even if you read this blog, you would have heard of detaining innocent family members of suspected insurgents when I wrote about it in part2 of a series of posts last July titled: Is Iraq Better?

What would you do if while you were out armed men burst into your house and kidnapped your wife, ripping her from the arms of a nursing child while your other two children look on (future terrorists)? Is this the American Way?