対イラク武力行使

E, S' husband, wanted to visit his brother, who lives in a neighbourhood,
which has been the scene of communal violence following the Samara bombing,
which has been seemingly dampened yet the area is apparently
still infested with pro-militias policemen.
The couple's car was motioned to stop at a real police checkpoint
[No, not BOGUS, it was real].
The routine ID check, which has not made any sense to me until the day
I heard S' story, has explained why it has been devised in the first place.
Only now I could visualize how the usual scenario of the severed heads
and bullet-riddled bodies, which are often dumped in abandoned areas,
kicks off.
It's no mystery now.
Sの夫Eはサマラ爆破の後に地域内暴力の現場であった地域に住んでいる
兄弟を訪問しようとしました。
その地域は見たところではまだ民兵擁護の警官がはびこっています。
二人の乗った車は本当の警察検問所で止まるように合図されました。
［偽物ではなく、それは本物でした］
Sの話を聞く日まで私には意味をなさなかった型通りのIDチェックは、
それがなぜ第一に考案されたか説明しました。
ただ今私は、しばしば見捨てられた区域の中に捨てられる
切断された頭と銃弾によって穴だらけにされた体という
いつものシナリオがどのように始まるか思い描くことができます。
それは今謎ではありません。

Taken from the car trunk handcuffed and blindfolded
S found herself in a school building.
I thought that schools were made for education.
But in Iraq they are not.
Saddam used them as weapons caches and now the barbaric militiamen
are using them as prison cells and torture chambers.
S and E were huddled up in a dusty classroom, where she saw a large
picture of the young Shiite cleric, to whom millions of followers
could bow and scrape just to earn his pleasure and blessings;
they would not pee without His Reverence' permission, would they ?
In this classroom, the couple was separated.
The man must go to an adjacent torture chamber, where he was hit
by plastic hoses and cables let alone the jailors' favourite weapon
"electricity", so that his loving wife could hear him scream,
that's the fun of it, torture one and let the other watch,
it's like hitting two birds with one stone.
But why ? They both had no idea.
The kidnappers wanted him to confess to having links to the Mujahideen.
His only problem was he didn't have any.
By the time bombers were busy marveling the carnage they caused
in central Baghdad a few months ago E was busy ferrying the dead and
wounded to nearby hospitals with his car and I bet the kidnappers were
busy spotting and torturing some unfortunate targets.
So why the beating and cursing ?
E was beaten for having a Sunni family name,
whereas S for being a Shia married to a Sunni,
which to the kidnappers seemed like a very unlikely combination.
It's funny that both of them were not even religiously committed.
Who cares, the kidnappers must work;
that was what they were paid and instructed to do.
In that school, S shared a classroom with a number of other people,
young and old, rich and poor, who all had no idea why they were taken
in the first place.
One was a mentally disabled man, who was taken because apparently
the streets were empty not a soul was found to mess with except for him,
and I guess they must have a certain quota to which they are committed.
Despite her plight, S was brave enough to stand up for this poor man.
"Shut up wanton you! He's drunk.
His mother told us to punish him for that," one of the captors said.
A senior man was taken for being an Egyptian national,
another for having a picture of an Iranian religious authority
on his car and another for being a resident of a predominantly Sunni area.