It was disheartening to see The Laredo Times’ front page with a photograph of Georgia-born, Florida transferee, Tea Party member, Texas GOP Chairperson Allen West — a fear-monger who, according to The Boston Globe, was removed from military command for torturing an Iraqi detainee. Why did Laredo’s Republican Party invite him and his ilk to stage a rally full of discord and lies in our city? Are they not vetting who joins their ranks? Not only was this an extreme and deliberate political publicity stunt, it was an embarrassing show of falsehood and hatred.
The 2003 Boston Globe archive tells how West suspected an Iraqi to have information of a pending attack on his unit near Tikrit, Iraq. He ordered four soldiers to beat the Iraqi police officer, and then he proceeded to scare information out of him by pretending to prepare the man’s execution. He discharged his Army-issued sidearm next to the pummeled man’s head. According to a May 27, 2004 New York Times report, West told his soldiers “This could get ugly. This man will not be injured and he will not have to be repaired. There will be no blood and no breakage of bones.” Yet “Colonel West wanted the Iraqi policeman, Yehiya Kadoorie Hamoodi, to think ‘this was going to be the end if he did not divulge what he knew.” So, the account read, “Colonel West presided over what he considered a time-sensitive interrogation that grew steadily more abusive until he himself fired a pistol beside Mr. Hamoodi’s head.
Colonel Allen West deliberately disregarded Army rules and regulations, gambling – and eventually losing – a successful 22-year military career. Expressing concern that his behavior could send the signal that abuse was acceptable as a means to an end, the Army relieved Colonel West of his command and contemplated court-martialing him on assault charges.”
The New York Times report asserted “conservative media personalities and Web sites…raised money for his legal defense and portrayed a military hamstrung by concern for the human rights for Iraqi detainees.” Most Republican Congressmen signed a letter expressing support for Allen West. Further investigation showed that no information about the pending attack at Tikrit was ever determined.
Hamoodi said in an interview after the torture that he knew nothing. “Mr. Hamoodi is a Shiite Muslim, and most attacks against Americans were carried out by Sunnis loyal to Saddam Hussein. In an interview in Baghdad, Mr. Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, said aides to Colonel West stopped by his police station and asked him to join them on patrol. Mr. Hamoodi climbed into the open Humvee. He said that one soldier punched him several times, and that he was handcuffed, shackled, and blindfolded.
At the base they threw him, still bound, off the Humvee, then led him into the jail and eventually into an interrogation room. During the interrogation, he said, the translator kicked him in the shin and told him he needed to confess before Colonel West showed up to kill him. Mr. Hamoodi felt relieved to hear the colonel was expected. He considered Colonel West to be “calm, quiet, clever, and sociable.” When the colonel first entered the room, Mr. Hamoodi said he thought, “Here is a man who will treat me fairly.’ Then, he said, Colonel West cocked his gun.
Eventually, the colonel and his soldiers moved Hamoodi outside, and threatened him with death. Colonel West said he fired a warning shot in the air and began counting down from five. He asked his soldiers to put Mr. Hamoodi’s head in a sand-filled barrel. At the end of his count, Colonel West fired a shot into the barrel, “angling his gun away from the Iraqi’s head”, he testified. Hamoodi was detained for 45 days and released without being charged.
West was “stripped of his command after pleading guilty to assaulting an Iraqi detainee during interrogation… A disciplinary proceeding found that the actions by Lieutenant Colonel Allen West were serious enough to ‘merit a court-martial.” This prompted the Army to relieve West of his command, fine him $5,000, and order him back to the United States, where he was allowed to retire. So technically, he tortured a detainee but is not officially designated a war criminal. “During a closed-door tribunal…in the town of Tikrit, West was found guilty of three counts of aggravated assault and a single count of communicating a threat. The ruling was issued after West pleaded guilty to misconduct. He is the most senior officer to receive disciplinary action since the start of the war.” West was confined to base for several months before being sent back to the United States. This was the person photographed addressing a crowd yesterday at San Agustin Plaza.
It does not matter how much lipstick one puts on a pig. Christie Hutcherson (Women Fighting for America) and Pastor Jorge Tovar (Jordan River Church, Laredo) should be careful with whom they associate, especially in light of the last four years of constant lying from the highest office of the nation. They all hypocritically referred to Christian values. They should remember that they will be judged by the company they keep.
This is yet one more example of the lack of accountability and single-mindedness of today’s Republican Party. Allen West is a walking poster child for everything that the once respected Republican Party has become. In four years of Trumps’ inhumane and inhospitable treatment of immigrants, the Allen West’s of the world were silent at the treatment and separation of families along our border. Today they have found their voice in opposing what they refused to oppose while their despot was in the White House. To be sure these “carpetbaggers” are for a border wall, for ignoring our asylum laws, for voter suppression, for gerrymandering Texas and for storming the US Capitol to; by their own words and deeds “lynch Vice President Pence, and harm Speaker Pelosi.” It is the neo-patriotism of the Trumpista Party endorsed by these “outsiders,” coming to the border to tell us about their crisis that was created by them. Thanks to the No Border Wall Coalition for standing tall and projecting the city of Laredo from the “invaders,” and their small cadre of supporters from the local Republican Party.
Very good read… Well done mi estimado Carlos.