CE has posted remarks drawn from an interview with a Swedish citizen who was in Iraq. The interest in his comments lies in the way he contradicts Western media reports about the behavior of American troops. As far as I can tell, this is the first time I've seen or heard these views expressed.
She asked for opinions on these remarks. There is absolutely no indication in her post that she supported these views. I don't even see a shadow of propaganda intent in her comments, just a desire to get the opinions of people outside Sweden on what this guy said.
Feel free to take on the gent's remarks, but please, show the same courtesy and respect for the poster that you would desire, yourselves, at any time. And for goodness sakes, read what she actually writes, instead of putting entirely new paragraphs down in place of what she's written.
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@CE, IMO, the person who gave that interview lost a degree of credibility right away because of inherent bias. If he was a human shield in Iraq, he has some spadework to do to regain any reliability on the factual reporting of matters, there. For that matter, I would have expected the newspaper that printed his diatribe to give us considerably more background on the man. There are some extremely serious charges there, and I would have liked to know his own current and previous political and social affiliations. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. Not when you say what he did.
As for the content: I don't buy it for a minute. First, it runs counter to all the information received from a host of reporters on the spot, even those who are not friendly to US interests. This includes by representatives of Deutsche Welle, and Agence France Presse. Had the student's remarks been accurate, the news services would have had a field day. Even the US services would have certainly picked it up, given the sheer ratings value that would have overweighed everything else in their cynical little minds.
Second, it runs counter to US military policy. I am by no means a great fan of this Iraqi invasion, as you may have noticed.
But the US has a good record post-Vietnam when it comes to staging false events for the media. They learned their lesson about vanished credibility.
As for American troops looting, that's ridiculous. The US military is extremely well-disciplined, and US military courts are extremely strict. Looting is a crime that would earn the looter a very nice, long sentence in a military prison. The idea of rampant US troops looting widely is utterly beyond the comprehension of a well-trained, Western military force, and I can only suspect that the student who claimed this had never observed such a force active in the field. If he had, he would have couched his misinformation more subtly.