A teenage girl waved at our troops... she was hanged within the hour
By Ian Kirby, Political Editor
A SMILING teenage
girl who waved at patrolling British soldiers and accepted a
big-hearted squaddie's gift of chocolate was HANGED by agents of
Saddam. The butchers of the dictator's
corrupt Ba'ath party had spied on the Moslem youngster from an
alleyway in Az Zubayr near Basra.
Battle-hardened troops
of the 1st Batallion, The Royal Irish Regiment choked back tears
when they later saw her limp beaten body swaying from a lamp-post
in the ramshackle south Iraq town held by Allies. And yesterday
their grim-faced commander, Lt Colonel Tim Collins chewed on a
cigar and confirmed: "A teenage girl who waved at my troops
was hanged within the hour.
"These daily outrages have made us more determined than ever
to crush Saddam's evil regime. There's still much fear among the
people we're meeting "Our mission is to assuage it, to fill
the power vacuum left by the decapitation of the Ba'ath Party.
You have to understand that nobody under the age of 45 has ever
known life without it. They have no concept or inkling of
freedom—and that's a heavy weight on our shoulders.
" We came into this area hard and at no little risk. We've
had great success in cutting off the Ba'ath Party here. "
Its chief who was Lord God On High in these parts is currently
considering his options in a Prisoner of War cage. " I'd
reserved judgment on him—and then I found the knuckleduster
in his drawer.
" One of the few good things I can say about the party is
that they keep meticulous records. " We established all the
names of local members. We knew they were threatening people
co-operating with us, so we paid some of them a visit overnight.
" It's not straightforward but it works. One man found a
shot through his kitchen floor helped him remember where his
weapon was hidden."
Belfast-born Lt Col Collins (pictured above) wears trendy Ray-Ban sunglasses and a kukri—the blade he is entitled to carry as a Gurkha commander. His troops are distributing food and medical supplies and restoring water and power while Ba'ath thugs terrorise the population. The soldiers have seen the mass graves Saddam's henchmen dug for their countrymen murdered for co-operating with US troops during the last Gulf War in 1991.
This time round, in an unspeakable act of barbarism, children had their throats slit. And yesterday families fleeing Basra were fired on by Iraqi troops. Compassionate US marines picked up children and took them to safety. Royal Irish Regiment soldiers foiled a plot by the Ba'ath monsters to assassinate one of their comrades as ‘reprisal' for their liberation of the town.
Lt Col Collins, who gave a rousing speech to his men at the start of the war, stormed: "There will be no murders on my watch. We came into this area with excellent intelligence and have since made first-class local contacts. At the risk of their lives local people offered information to my patrols and it was spot-on. It saved the life of one of my men."
Lt Col Collins based himself in the Ba'ath party HQ as a psychological move. On the front door, one of his men has defiantly scrawled: "Welcome to Free Iraq."
20 Jun 2006