Iraqi Interior Ministry orders police to round up beggars, mentally disabled to foil al-Qaida

[sabra]

Source: AP

BAGHDAD (AP) - The Iraqi Interior Ministry has ordered police to round up beggars, vagabonds and mentally disabled people from the streets in Baghdad to prevent them from being used by insurgents as suicide bombers, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The decision came after a series of suicide attacks, including two female bombers who struck pet
markets in Baghdad on Feb. 1, killing nearly 100 people. Iraqi and U.S. officials have said the women were mentally disabled and apparently unwitting bombers.

The people detained in the Baghdad sweep will be handed over to governmental institutions that can provide shelter and care for them, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

«This will be implemented nationwide starting from today,» Khalaf told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
«Militant groups, like al-Qaida in Iraq, have started exploiting these people in a very bad manner to kill innocents as they do not raise suspicions,» Khalaf said. «These groups are either luring those who desperate for money to help them in their attacks or making use of their poor mental condition to use them as suicide bombers.

Khalaf was not more specific about who would be targeted. Police officials at at least two stations in western Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release information to the media, said they had received the orders but had not yet acted on them.
The U.S. military offered no immediate response to Khalaf's comments.

Read more: http://www.pr-inside.com/iraqi-interior-ministry-orders-police-to-r444704.htm

[tanyev]

1. Somehow the words "round up" and "detain" don't seem to match up

with "provide shelter and care".

[thecrow]

2. This could be good if only

"governmental institutions that can provide shelter and care for them"
doesn't mean a prison or other form of incarceration.

The US should start this... so the terra-ists don't recruit our homeless soldiers.
Seriously, though, it is a good thing if these people are truly "being cared for".
Tragic that it took Al-queda recruitment to effect this change.

[Tempest]

3. So the government found a reason to care for them

It seems the Iraqi government is a model of the GOP.

[ck4829]

4. I seriously doubt this will end well

Human warehousing and chaining people to beds is unfortunately what pops up in my mind.

[zonmoy]

5. something else comes to mind for me.

something far worse.

just say that the first people eliminated by fascists tend to be the disabled.

[Barrett808]

6. This is the Interior Ministry, after all: home of the Shi'a death squad

I mean, "governmental institutions that can provide shelter and care"? There are no such institutions in Iraq. It looks like the destination for these people is gulag at best, mass grave at worst.

[sattahipdeep]

8. Resentful and rebellious, especially against authority

something far worse?

ROCKEFELLER: And I understand that. What I'd like to get you to focus on
for a minute or so is that which is carried on by people who have become
disaffected, either through unemployment, which now presumably will grow,
through the example of a cause, the attraction to a cause, and it may not be
that they actually go to al Qaeda or they get their training in Afghanistan,
but they simply decide to create malevolent actions within the United States
for purposes which can either be twisted or which reflect their fundamental
unhappiness within the American society as it's held before them in many
ways.

Yes something far worse.

http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080205_transcript.pdf

Good luck....

[zonmoy]

10. thinking more of concentration camps and further by the cabal

that includes many that are descended from ones who supported such great evils.

[NOLALady]

9. Abu Gharib popped in my mind.

A special wing for special people.

[MetaTrope]

7. Apparently it's time to hose down Abu Ghraib again for a new set of residents

Handy to train CIA interrogators though.

[bemildred]

11. Send them to Washington DC. Lot's of beggars and mentally disabled running around there. nt