In the ever-continuing battle to win hearts and minds in Iraq the Army is working to control looting. PBS’ Frontline followed a group of American tankers through Iraq to make one of its famous documentary programs.
A video clip (it’s 3 megabytes, Windows Media format) from Frontline is available showing how the US Army combats looting. This is, by the way, a fairly old clip — it comes from the pre-uprising time period. The steps to combat looting, for those without Windows Media Player:
1. Yell at the Iraqis, then complain that they “don’t understand”.
2. Empty two clips worth of pistol rounds into the Iraqis’ car
3. Run over the car with a tank not once but twice to make sure that it is completely destroyed
4. Yell “Tankers! Hooah!” to celebrate
5. Realize that the Iraqi whose car you just destroyed was (until you destroyed his car) a taxi driver, and now has no way to support his family. You can see the video here
(By the way, the valuables the taxi driver was looting was a stack of wood.)
