US: Seized Videotapes Show Al Qaeda In Iraq Training Young Boys

CBS News:

Videotapes seized during U.S. raids on suspected al Qaeda in Iraq hide-outs show the terror group training young boys to kidnap and assassinate civilians, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Footage aired for reporters showed an apparent training operation with black-masked boys - some of whom appeared to be about 10 years old - storming a house and holding guns to the heads of mock residents. Another tape showed a young boy wearing a suicide vest and posing with automatic weapons.

But U.S. and Iraqi officials said they could offer no estimate on how many children have fallen under the terror group's control. They named just a handful of attacks blamed on women or children.

The American military said some of the tapes were found in December during a U.S. raid in Khan Bani Saad, northeast of Baghdad, and said it indicated a pattern that al Qaeda in Iraq was increasingly using children for sinister means.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters Wednesday inside the heavily guarded Green Zone. "It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen," he said, using the Arabic term for holy warriors.

"We believe this video is used as propaganda to send out to recruit other boys ... and to send a broader message across Iraq to indoctrinate youth into al Qaeda," he said.

Read the whole story: CBS News

Comments

[SaintN]

09:12 PM on 02/07/2008

This is just more lame "Propaganda" from the retarded-psychos at the C.I.A.!

[bronceye]

10:11 AM on 02/07/2008

If a foreign power were occupying my country, I would be teaching the next generation how to defend themselves, also. With bush calling it a generational sacrifice (he did, he did) and pres. hopeful mccane saying 100 yrs of war, this seems rational. We could parallel VMI, Citadel, ROTC and the like. Yes, people at war tend to try to defeat the invaders. Why are we surprised? Possibly, since Muslims really, really detest gays these children are being raised to protect the sanctity of marriage.

[doctordawg]

05:11 PM on 02/06/2008

Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? This is what we're spending trillions of dollars to defeat? Really?

God help us all.

[StuCop]

03:27 PM on 02/06/2008

what did they expect to happen to all the children who's parents and families we've killed? did they think they'd be pro-american?

we've devasted families, neighborhoods, schools, any and all infrastructure for a generation of young iraqis.

this has provided a ripe recruiting ground for al qaeda...we've created a recruiting ground and a generation of recruits and provided them ample reason to hate america

they don't hate us for our freedoms anymore...because really the bush adimistration has thrown most of our constitution and bill or rights in the garbage...they hate us now b/c we've destroyed their homes and families.

we'll have decades and decades and decades of work to undue the damage that the bush administration has done with their unjustified war of aggression

[HowardRoarke]

02:35 PM on 02/06/2008

My God. Young boys.

Now we know the Republican Congressmen will be all over them.

;)