Mild Mannered Imaad

Via Free Will, Tim Blair analyzes a Washington Post article about a 5th January raid in Baghdad. Both Aaron and Tim will, I hope, forgive me for reprinting their edits of the original article (available as a link on Tim's site) in its near entirety (with my own commentary tossed in where necessary).

By all accounts, Imaad, 32, was a typical, mild-mannered college graduate who spoke English well and had quietly supported the U.S. presence in Iraq—until Jan. 5, the night the soldiers came.

His story about that night, told days later in his small living room, is the story of how the U.S. military made an enemy of one man during a 20-minute encounter.

On the night of Jan. 5, Imaad and his mother, Um Imaad—both of whom declined to give their full names for fear of retribution—were watching a movie in the living room. Imaad said they were startled by a loud banging at the door. He went quickly to open it. When he did, Imaad said, there were about a dozen U.S. soldiers standing with their guns pointed at his head.

Imaad and his mother said the soldiers rushed in, ordering them to sit together while they searched the house. “You look poor,” Imaad recalled one of the soldiers saying. “Why?"

Imaad answered in English: “I have not been able to find a job, although I’m a graduate of the College of Arts.” His heart was pounding, Imaad said.

I wish I could fabricate dialogue that believable. Imaad has my sympathy, though; I'll graduate with a history degree in June, and I'm all but unemployable with it, too. As Tim Blair notes, perhaps this soldier was a sociology commando.

The soldiers went to search his bedroom. He heard laughing, and then they called for him, he said. Imaad went to his room and saw that the soldiers had found several magazines he kept hidden from his mother. They had pictures of girls in swimsuits and erotic poses. Imaad said the soldiers spread the magazines on his bed and put his Koran in the middle.

"It was a nightmare,” he said. “I will never forget those bad soldiers when they put the Koran among the magazines."

Within 20 minutes, the soldiers left without arresting him or his mother.

While the soldiers went next door to search his neighbor’s house, Imaad began to slap his mother, he said. “The American people are devils,” Um Imaad recalled her son repeating.

I'll point out, folks, that the only violence in this article comes from Imaad slapping his mother. That's right, folks. An unemployed thirty-two year old who was hiding porn from his mother gets physically violent with her, and it's the Americans who are devils.

He left her and went to a mosque to spend the night. “I asked God to forgive me,” Imaad said, “because I could not prevent American sins."

Yeah, you might want to talk to Allah about the porn and the parental abuse, too.

Army Lt. Col. Daniel Baggio, another military spokesman in Baghdad, said he also could not confirm a raid took place that night. “That sort of behavior is not condoned by the U.S. military, and I find it hard to believe U.S. soldiers would do that,” he said. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen. It just seems odd."

Um Imaad brought Imaad pills from the doctor to try to calm him. He looked at the yellow ones, then the red ones and refused to take them. “All these belong to Jewish people,” he said, pushing one set aside. “And these others are from bad or foreign people."

Strangely reminiscent of the South Park movie...

Kyle: Let me have some candy, Cartman!
Cartman: Oh, let's see.....uh.....Nope, I don't have any Jewish candy!
Kyle: Like you need all that chocolate, fat boy!

"I can't take those pills! Those are Jewish pills! And these other pills are from bad people!" This guy sounds like a real rocket scientist, let me tell you. Anyway...

Imaad said that two weeks after the raid, he was still struggling to return to normal. He was no longer hitting his mother, but he still would not allow her to watch foreign television or buy products made outside Iraq.

Imaad said he was embracing his Muslim faith as never before. He spends most of his time at the mosque praying or reading the Koran. He is also looking for a job.

"I used to have a good opinion of the Americans,” Imaad said. “But they are the enemy. They are bad."

Funny, I would have been looking for a job all along. Maybe they had some want ads in those lad rags he was reading!

Luckily, I get the impression from the guys I talk to who have come back from deployments in Iraq that most Iraqis are more grateful than this bottom feeder.