From: Wendell Steavenson
Subject: The U.S. Army Goes to High School
Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003, at 1:13 PM PT
Ibrahim Ahmed Hakmet is 16, a cocky, engagingly arrogant kid; slim, with close-cropped hair, a little acne on his temples, and a tendency to giggle at me, because apparently I remind him of his aunt.
A few days after Saddam's capture, he was arrested by the Americans. About a hundred soldiers in armored Humvees and tanks surrounded the Amriyeh High School (a school for boys aged between 16 and 19). With the Iraqi police in attendance, they went from classroom to classroom matching faces to photographs and names to a list. They were looking for boys who had been at a pro-Saddam demonstration the day before.
"It's against the law," explained Lt. Col. Leopoldo Quintas, commander of the 2-70 "Old Ironsides" Armored Battalion, which carried out the operation. "And they were displaying pictures of Saddam."
"It's subversive," added his public affairs officer.
Ibrahim said he was the first to be caught because he was on his way out of school to get a doctor's note; it was midmorning, and he was the only student on the front entrance path.
"An American officer shouted at me: 'Sit down! Sit down!' and indicated that I should kneel, pointing with his gun. Then he said, 'Get up!' I didn't understand what he wanted me to do, so I put my hands on the wall. He kicked me twice on the leg. He was very big. He checked me roughly, even behind my ears, and threw my English and Arabic books away. He cuffed my hands with wire, roughly. He sprained my wrist. And later, when he was taking the wire off, he cut me when he was cutting it with a knife."
Ibrahim and several other detained boys (Ibrahim says nine or 10, the Americans say five or six) were put in the back of a truck. The truck broke down and had to be towed by a tank. An outraged crowd had gathered: parents, passers-by, kids from neighborhood schools, shouting and yelling.
Ibrahim was rather enamored of his adventure.
"We were laughing," he said, all tough and unconcerned, wearing his bandaged wrist like a trophy and using a single crutch to support the leg he said was kicked and beaten with a stick. "We knew we hadn't done anything. One of the Americans said in Arabic, 'Incheb!' Shut up!" Ibrahim was full of himself, laughing at the Americans to their faces, getting beaten for his defiance, and then asking for more. "The more I laughed, the more he hit me. It shows what kind of a weak man he was to hit a boy," he sneered
(continued at: http://slate.msn.com/id/2093154/entry/0/ )