it's a slaughter house. is it. hell i'm so tatton and london with the top stories are an al-jazeera u.s. president donald trump has defended russia against claims of collusion in the twenty sixteen presidential elections speaking after holding face to face talks with russian president vladimir putin in hell thinking some said there had been no reason for russia to meddle in the vote and the leaders would now begin a new era of engagement there was no collusion with the campaign and every time you hear all of these twelve fourteen it's stuff that has nothing to do and frankly they admit these are not people involved in the campaign but to the average reader out there they're saying well maybe that does it doesn't and even the people

involved some perhaps told mr henri's old though in one case the f.b.i. said there was no lie there was no somebody else said there was. we ran a brilliant campaign and that's why i am president acceptable to catch a james bay it has been following developments from helsinki. you might think that if you have the most sioux most powerful people in the world meeting and they reach broad agreement on an important issue then then the world should be rejoicing but this most important issue is the most toxic issue in the united states and we saw president putin coming up with some new suggestions following the indictment of those twelve russian hackers that the special counsel robert miller say were members of russian intelligence and president trump said that they were great ideas suggesting perhaps that he would suggest that they should be pursued but these ideas i don't think are going to go anywhere with regard to much of the political

establishment in washington or with special counsel because what president putin is suggesting is that either he can investigate those twelve suspects his own or thora says but of course they are accused of hacking on behalf of president putin or remarkably there could be a joint team from the u.s. and russia who could come investigate this and speak to those twelve that sounds good but then president putin said a condition for that would that team would be able to go to the u.s. as well and investigate people there and proceedings then got even more unusual when president trump was asked whether he believes president putin that there was no hacking and no collusion or whether he believes the u.s. intelligence agencies and he completely dodged the question and started saying we've got to find the servers referring to hillary clinton's e-mail service he then

went on about the twenty sixteen election even though it's twenty two months on saying i beat hillary clinton easily relate to gating a race and trying to reassert his legitimacy most. unusual news conference which is already seeing john brennan the former head of the cia take the amazing step on twitter of accusing a sitting president in a news conference with the russian president of treason. france's victorious footballers are back home from the world cup in russia hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in the show wasn't anything to celebrate their success speak croatia for two and sunday's final to become world champions for the second time. eritrea has reopened its embassy any theo peer in the latest sign of improving

relations between the former east african foce president as c s f wacky chuckle to add this about for the ceremony which come came just a week after the twenty year state of war was officially ended at least eight people have died in protests in southern iraq where anger is growing over the lack of basic services and high unemployment about two hundred protesters have rallied outside the main entrance to the civil natural gas field people are angry about poor services as well as a failure to form a working government following major general elections those are the headlines searching for stale is coming up next.

there's a new political. you take my. word against. everything that american troops have done in iraq all the fighting all the dying the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering. all of it has led. to this moment.

you deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torturing. you deserve to live as free people and i assure every citizen of a wreck your nation will soon be fully. back. it's ten years since america invaded iraq. ten years and over one hundred twenty thousand dead among them over four thousand four hundred american soldiers. this documentary tells one of the great untold stories of the iraq war how the us administration funded a deadly sectarian paramilitary force to fight those threatening the american presence. it was a decision that had field

a sectarian civil war has ripped iraq apart. at its high. three years later three thousand bodies a month was showing up on the streets of iraq. this is also the story of the nam the pentagon sent in to organize and train those paramilitary squads. he's a veteran of the america's so-called death the wars stretching back to vietnam and salvador. this man was so important to the pentagon that then defense secretary donald rumsfeld still fit to forward his past now memos to the president and the vice president to president george w. bush c. c. vice president richard b. cheney from donald rumsfeld the attached memo is from a person we have sent into iraq from time to time but centrally to work with the

iraqi police. he is smart tough and a keen observer none the less you have said you like texture and this is texture. he did have much higher clearance than the rest of us did and he would make regret for instance two meetings with the secretary defense and meetings in the white house. who were shot. by the. way in a room in the library interviewing studio and i looking around i see blood everywhere . so who is james steele and why did the pentagon choose him to go to iraq. the conflict in which over fifty eight thousand u.s. soldiers died is where james deal was first introduced to country insurgency as an

alternative way of combating a guerrilla uprising. still served in the vietnam war in the black course regiment from one thousand nine hundred sixty eight to nine hundred sixty nine he was described by general george patton jr as the best troop commander in his regiment. but a vietnam shaped his formative military career it was in the war against leftwing insurgents in el salvador that james dear secured his reputation as the country insurgency specialist. steel arrived in el salvador in one thousand nine hundred four as the leader of the us mil group a group of u.s. military advisors to the salvadoran army. todd greentree got to know james steele when he was working in the u.s.

embassy in el salvador at the time. colonel steele as the no good commander was in charge of the special forces teams the training teams that were out of brigade headquarters. the u.s. was trying to defeat a guerrilla insurgency and american ex-pats strange this of a drawer in security forces in the dark arts of counterinsurgency some of these were drawn paramilitary units where effectively death squads. celery in a case deal was a u.s. drug enforcement agent who was involved in training these paramilitaries. he was widely acknowledged for his efforts. james steele in salvador. very military guy very disciplined his decorations. medals and that was given to him by the u.s.

military and the salvadoran military were surrounding his office so i was very impressed with colonel steel. dr george because i got to know and like james when he visited salvador to write a ph d. thesis on u.s. military strategy in central america. he was totally committed to defeating the guerrilla insurgency in el salvador he used to discuss how he traveled around to the military bases where u.s. trainers were based he talked about the importance of building human intelligence information as opposed to just technical information i don't think he had any hesitations about obtaining information by very rough forms that were being carried out by the salvadoran armed forces under the eyes of u.s. military trainers. steele was the chief american country insurgency expert on the ground in el salvador a figure of

a new almost authority to the door in military heroes the mill group commander in el salvador nothing moves with his authority. and their objective was to eradicate the guerrilla movement it's very well written through history that there were major massacres being conducted. we put these allegations to retired colonel steele and have received no reply. by the end of the civil war at least seventy five thousand salvadoran civilians have died and one million refugees have fled the country the salvadoran military. who are to the advance of the guerrilla is leading some in washington to believe the u.s. advisory role was a success. so much so that even david petraeus then an ambitious thirty three year old major visited the door to study this country insurgency campaign the young

portray us even reportedly stayed in steele's house while their. eighteen years later in baghdad but now general petraeus would use steele's expertise to fight the iraqi insurgency. the architects of the iraq war did not expect a violent uprising so they started training a regular police force for what they thought would be a mostly peaceful transition to a western style democracy they brought in retired police men like douglas and jerry back to teach the basics of good civil policing. we were going to two thousand and three with six policemen six american police officers this small group was an equal to the enormous task they were given. to train frost downs and policeman it was

a sort of five to seven year project but they wanted it done in. the man seen here in the navy bullet proof vest cardroom was installed as the iraqi leader of this new civic police force. hovering in the background is the mysterious figure of james steele observing and evaluating the situation sending his justified reports back to u.s. defense secretary donald rumsfeld. still had arrived in baghdad in two thousand and three just after the invasion describing himself as an energy consultant. this is the only known video footage of james steele as a civilian he had no place in the military chain of command yet he exercised enormous power in iraq. the man on his left is the special forces colonel

james coffman he reported directly to general petraeus. up initially the security situation in iraq was relatively stable and the task of training the police continues but then everything changed. the intensity of the sunni insurgency surprised the americans. and us so this started being killed in increasing numbers. the flag draped coffins were being shipped home with a nominal regularity. the war was becoming unpopular in the united states. george bush. two thousand and four reelection was being threatened by the crisis in iraq. american

law so jazz were dying at the hands of sunni muslims who had lost the most from the fall of saddam. decided to the old enemies of saddam and his sunni supporters as the shia militias. saddam had killed tens of thousands of shia during his rule and now the shia militias were only too happy to help the americans put down the sunni uprising. it was classic counterinsurgency. paul wolfowitz and not the policy change before a senate committee. approach to those militias is to try over time to integrate them into new iraqi security forces shia militia from all over the country came in truckloads to baghdad to join the new special police commandos they were enraged by suicide bombings of shia civilians under stress nations and kidnappings by sunni

insurgents and militants it was their time in power and opportunity to take revenge upon former regime elements that. iraq was on the path towards a sectarian civil war. the u.s. defense secretary donald rumsfeld confirmed the new policing strategy in may two thousand and four reading about how they were trying to make efforts placing iraqi militia to handle insurgents interacting had discussions with general petraeus yesterday i had a briefing today from a man named steele who has been out there working with the security forces and doing a wonderful job civilian as a matter of fact james steele the counterinsurgency ex-pat was not the man of the moment his job would be to build a police commando force. the police units would increasingly be made up of members

of shia militias like the badr brigades. that job was to hunt down sunni insurgents and their sympathizers like out salvador it would be a bloody and brutal business. there was no place in this new regime for a conventional police chief cardroom. he was offered a new posting at the united nations in new york. james steele was clearing house. each employee of the joe. klock oh well. and why do you work on. uk. it was also the end of the line for douglas brand and rumsfeld decided that police training in the future would be dealt with by military people. that was a direct instruction from rumsfeld.

and we had a need for some group on the street to restore order and this is where that third force concept came from this paramilitary special police commando unit. they operate on for more under the rules of engagement which is a military term. rather than the rule of law. the last time i saw stews when rumsfeld visited and then he was. rumsfeld's choice to take over all command of this new policing strategy was a military star in the making. general david petraeus was much admired by the american media. the commandos would become the cutting edge of this ambitious generals war against the insurgents you know i've spent

a little bit of time at the where you were training the police commandos and i got the strong impression that you're putting a lot of priority on the police force today well that helped them develop these special police units some of them or their own initiative initially and great initiatives like the special police commandos which they now have nine battalions of those forces eight of which are in active operations right now. who are dark but the gist of what that was just good to be i was been and. it was the shot or you mr. talbot seen here with james steele was a sunni iraqi general who had been imprisoned by saddam. he now headed the special police commandos which were financed from a two billion dollars fund controlled by general petraeus.

there with. the reports america. are doing or. should be. but. why do you view your. call when. it was the first time the americans could work with a significant iraqi force that knew the lay of the land and where to find the insurgents senior advisers studio and kaufman directed the sects for the insurgents . with james t. or actually side on topics commandos grew into a five thousand strong force with a fearful reputation on the streets of iraq. still made

a strong impression with the high level even battle hardened iraqis who worked with . us and also to learn the whole. and the mashad and so on. because of that horrible leash afterward was that he believes to . one kind of. multiple that it was just eliminate or what i learned. general moon. is a former general in the iraqi army after the invasion he worked with the americans to rebuild the police force but muntadhar was very disturbed by the abuse and torture he witnessed being committed by the police commandos he tried on a number of occasions to stop each. he has never spoken before about the pot the u.s. played in running the special police commandos. zone and was out of the day after the. government was possible. that

a lot of them. don't you know. that a shot. that i missed. by sadr and that i would but it would be a general muntadhar alleges that jane steele had access to all of these prisons and that he visited one in baghdad with him. all the dentists you. are all found in the car and one of the components more. than the injured is going into the. hundred. and they said this in the. dr mo fact i was iraq's national security advisor through the west years of the war . he met james taylor's high level security meetings.

jim still for me was a mysterious guy. who sat in the meeting and he came. and sat there. he did not introduce himself to me you don't get anybody in these meetings there were only only sciences. grama. myself the minister of defense and mr interior and had full stop. who was very respected by them and they listened to what he has to say. one of the main bases of operation for the commandos was the ancient city of samarra the area was a center for the iraqi insurgency. it was also adnan talbot's hometown and he was determined to inflict a major defeat on the insurgents and their sympathizers. with jane

steele advise him adnan talbot's commandos flooded the city going door to door taking hundreds of men from their homes to the interrogation center. u.s. army medic neil smith was in somalia during the months long struggle to control the city. we're like in the government. and where the police station was was actually right across from where the commandos were headquartered so there are always special commandos there and they warn them of like pretty much every. military unit in the world does. their world quipped. and more commandos on these brand new dodge ram pick that were painted in camouflage and they all look like they have new weapons and new uniforms.

some are i was the first place that the connection between james steele and the activities of the police commanders was made known to the outside. new york times journalist peter maass convinced general petraeus to allow him and photographer to paraphrase to visit the commanders in somalia their host was james steele. what i heard. screaming all lifelong. parries stark black and white photographs capture i had the commandos worked in samarra. jamie still crops up in these photographs repeatedly. i was staying at the base and some are an american base and i overheard soldiers american soldiers of the space talking about having watched prisoners be kind of

strong up like animals after all hunched over a bar having watched prisoners be actually tortured. bit and the american military made the joint decision she set up the commando headquarters and interrogation center in the city's main library. we spoke to two men from somalia who were imprisoned in the library still fearful they asked us to conceal their identities. she. should be. the one you could go to the water water watch all those. little good ball you go watch some of the. but you look. at the. interrogation center was the only place in the kind of mini green zone in somalia

that i was not allowed to visit however one day jim steele said to me hey they just captured a saudi jihadi. would you like to interview him. and we're about to get an unprecedented glimpse into this. building a new life on an entirely beach living off the sea and the last. a dream shared by so many but so few make it a reality. of family business led by a mark of a woman with a flair for cooking and desist. yeah i didn't catch it on al-jazeera. when people need to be heard.

but it's been for a few jomo stoller's life it's not a normal life show and the story needs to be told to do stories that in fact all suspect. in the court of law to make sure that the bad guys behind al-jazeera has teams on the ground to bring new documentaries and live news on air and on. the world's primary could train producing nation is at the forefront of the war on drugs we're talking about serious organized crime as a country where reaching a critical point while some have made fortunes many others have suffered at the hands of this multi-billion dollar industry the author of this business will go on forever it will not change almost global policies of the who are the winners and losers of this illicit trade snow of the andes on al-jazeera.

hello i'm suited and on with the top stories here on al-jazeera u.s. president donald trump has defended russia against claims of collusion in the twenty sixteen presidential elections speaking after holding face to face talks with russian president vladimir putin in helsinki some said that had been no reason for russia to meddle in the vote and the leaders would now begin a new era of engagement former cia director john brennan has described as comments as treasonous while lawmakers say he missed an opportunity to hold russia accountable it was no collusion with the campaign and every time you hear all of these twelve fourteen stuff that has nothing to do and frankly they have these are not people involved in the campaign but to the average reader out there they're

saying well maybe that does it doesn't and even the people involved some perhaps told mysteries or the one case the f.b.i. said there was no lie there was no or somebody else said there was. we ran a brilliant campaign and that's why i am president eritrea has reopened its embassy in ethiopia and the latest sign of improving relations between the former east african fires president assayas of wacky travel to at this hour of up for the ceremony which came just a week after the twenty year state of war was officially ended france's winning footballers are back home from the world cup in russia hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in the show's elisei to celebrate their success front's beat croatia for two and sunday's final to become world champions for the second time. at least eight protesters have died in protests in southern iraq growing over the

lack of basic services and high unemployment about two hundred protesters have rallied outside the. natural gas field on sunday hundreds of people. government building. six children. have suffocated to being trapped inside a shipping container. found in a critical condition in the same chalk it's unclear how long i was stuck in. the headline stay with. searching for continues.

well. the interrogation center was the only place in the kind of mini green zone in somalia that i was not allowed to visit however one day jim steele said to me hey they just

captured a saudi jihadi would you like to interview him and we kind of walk into the entrance area and the first thing that i see is one of the iraqi guards beating up one of the iraqi prisoners and then i'm taken not into the main area kind of the main hall although out of the corner of my eye could see there were a lot of prisoners in there with their hands tied behind their backs i was taken to a side office where the saudi was brought in and there was actually blood dripping down the side of a desk in this office away in a room in the library into ewing studio and i. you know. and while this interview was going on me in the saudi with jim steele also in the room there were these terrible screams there is somebody shouting allah but it wasn't you know kind of religious ecstasy or something like that these were these were screams of pain and terror. we asked general why he thought the prisoners were screaming. go on and. join in with their own and.

they were so loud and they were so disturbing that steele left the room to go find out you know what was going on because it was breaking up our interview and while he was gone the screaming stopped and then he came back into the room and the interview continued. with the radio. for. me and. that's ok i didn't want any other kind of i thought of it when just. looked at the look at the right. like effort millwood it left a little of my view a list of all the matter. in the so i look at the plan that units already on.

general adnan had his own explanation for the bloody desk witnessed during mass and terry's interview with james steele in the library. what is either going to begin soon and you got a new home. i don't malard gotta. go but. then you can have too little what good happens and i'll quit you know what i'm up out of and they will find out we had a monopoly it up when my name might have it how do i feel mazed without a cuppa. have you for. although james steele did not respond to our requests for an interview about his activities in somalia he did tell the new york times that he opposes human rights abuses.

one american soldier in somalia i was deeply affected by what he saw. at the time i just felt like everybody knew and nobody cared that there is torture going on. me medic neil smith remembers just have frightened iraqi civilians in some are aware of the special police commandos what was pretty widely known in our but talian definitely in our pool tune is that they are pretty violent with their interrogations that they would be people shock them with you know electrical shock stab them. i don't know what you know sounds like pretty awful things if you sent a guy there who is going to get tortured and perhaps raped. or whatever humiliated and brutalized by the special commandos in order to get whatever information they want to go i don't know about boston.

they learned. about city to the hit but it's very full do it. like. give all of them a little bit of a clear priority at that time in iraq was to not have this incredibly shaky provisional government defeated by the insurgency that was priority number one to which every other priority democracy human rights. it's etc was aboard. the trails defended his record with the police commandos to p.b.s. frontlines martin smith he says he was aware of individual militia members in the commanders but not militia groups. i did not see militia groups in the

special police during the time that i was there did you feel. different. to have prevented the development of these militias that were developed by your lie again don't i have not seen you know we heard we kept hearing this all the time martin that this or that to find the absolute evidence of this has actually been quite difficult but jerry buck who is a senior advisor in police affairs to the iraqi interior ministry says that the trace must have known that organized shia militia were dominant in the police commandos he had to have known these things were discussed openly whether it was staff meetings or you know before or after various staff meetings and general conversation. pretty much the whole world in iraq knew that the police commandos were about a brigade and he must have known about the death squad activities and yet it was common knowledge and across baghdad even to trace his own special adviser in the

military chain of command colonel james coffman was according to many witnesses working side by side with james steele in the detention centers where torture was taking place. kaufman declined to be interviewed by us. about general petraeus his relationship with james steele the official speaking for the general said steele was one of thousands of advisors to iraqi units working in the area of the iraqi police. journalist peter mass who interviewed patris at the time remember. the relationship being a lot closer than the patris statement would indicate. it was very clear. that they were very close to each other in terms of their command relationship and also in terms of their ideas and ideology about what needed to be done to try to explicitly told me that he believed very very strongly in the commandos thought the

commandos were successful and wanted them to become bigger stronger and even more prevalent in the fight against insurgency. international humanitarian law imposes obligations on those engaged in armed conflict regarding the treatment of prisoners not only must prisoners not be abused but those detaining prisoners also have an obligation to ensure respect as well it is not acceptable to turn a blind eye. because absolutely responsibility of every u.s. service member if they see in your main treatment. to intervene to stop it i don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it's to report. if you're a physically present when in your main treatment is taking place or they have an obligation to tours. but the masses of secret iraq war communiques released by wiki

leaks showed that u.s. soldiers were routinely handing prisoners over to the iraqi police force even before the police commandos were officially launched. the top u.s. military knew from the soldiers' daily logs that torture was going on inside detention centers they even issued a new official military order in june two thousand and four it was called frog zero two four two it directed u.s. troops to note but not investigate torture of iraqis by iraqis unless ordered to take action by. headquarters. but later that month members of the oregon national guard was so disturbed by the abuse they witnessed at a police detention center that they intervened to try and stop it. saw some horrific things. saw one room that

had. seventy five prisoners are crammed into one one small space and they asked for food they asked for help and they asked for medical way we gave them every bit of scrap of food that we had every bit of water and you could see evidence of a torture chamber where they had a broken lamp where they used a logical shot and it was quite evident what they had been doing to these fellows. said the commander approached the man who appeared to be in charge of this torturous and according to the man immediately got on the telephone to us military headquarters right after he made that phone call the order came that we were to stand down we were ordered to pull away right now. i know that that order came from someplace very high. we went directly back to our compound and the commander called us all in there together and told us that what we saw didn't

happen to forget about it but the oregonians didn't forget they went to the american press and blew the whistle a high level u.s. military investigation followed and the top just stopped that. there is no evidence that steel was involved in this incident but a year later the special commandos took over the facility and used it for interrogation and torture. there's great continuity. and really if you go back to the to the nature of the regular warfare in the. dark side it's not called dirty war for nothing so it's no surprise to see individuals who are associated in a sort of know the ins and outs of the kind of war reappear at different points in

these conflicts. after a few months in the studio and also to i didn't have any contact with them whatsoever so i saw their peter maass article and saw that oh he's in iraq it was not surprising there's a warrior like james steele would appear again he had been sidelined by the u.s. military after a congressional committee decided that he had lied about his role in all of the north's illegal gun running operation against the leftwing government in nicaragua . however his work in el salvador had not been forgotten by powerful washington insiders like vice president dick cheney who knew steele cheney was the first senior american politician to draw parallels between el salvador and iraq. because we don't free elections of palmer the concept is enormous and will apply in afghanistan and as well in iraq. dick cheney as a congressman made any number of visits to central america did members of the

reagan administration who were in the four runners of the neoconservatives come into office and really take the whole approach to its next level in iraq. they opened a cover story in the new york times magazine that and saw that it described the creation of this new police commando unit within the iraqi interior ministry and mentioned that the the u.s. military adviser in charge of this was jim steele. was probably more alarmed when i started to hear reports a few months later that that particular unit was carrying out death squad activities in iraq the publication by wiki leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables show that by july two thousand and five the u.s. embassy in baghdad was telling washington about the abuse being committed by the

commandos. we also learned that adnan was a guest at the american embassy in baghdad he met the u.s. ambassador for counterterrorism and talked about his approach to police in this is an extract from what he's reported to have said summary fight terror with terror major general tab it who created in command special police forces is a sunni officer who served time in prison for attempting to overthrow the saddam regime they expressed the view that it is necessary to fight terror with terror and that it is critical that their forces be respected and feared as this was what was required in iraqi society to command authority. we asked embassador cramton if he had been aware that adnan talbot's commandos were engaged in torturing detainees. although i assure you if i knew there was torture going on. at that time with the people i was talking to my. i would have raised it in the end discussed it. here

you're employing that i don't know that and i resent that question the way you phrased it frankly. but there are indications that the u.s. government knew what the commanders were doing. we remain troubled by the indications that at times units commanded by target crossed the line despite these concerns adnan tarbet remained officially in charge until the middle of two thousand and six he told us that the american officials he dealt with were aware of what his men were doing. you know how more are wired in every county or born in the wild wild thing never drawn in more but more. retired woman and with the army unit with them and where i want them were drug. because. the police commandos were growing in numbers and importance they

had a national headquarters in a source square in baghdad it could hold around one thousand detainees at any one time and was the nerve center of a national network of interrogation center as. this notorious detention center was situated just outside the fortified green zone and less than a mile from the american and iraqi joint command. major general remembers that james steele and portrays his military advisor james kaufman were a constant presence here. he says they were there to receive the high value detainees from the so-called intelligence committees that operated at each regional command center. one of them walk on the other. the anemia sort of. saw the foot or. just a. gun. and it wasn't even. if it had.

a leg. and that it's. the that. the colonel most of the b.s. that that was what i. got but little. to iraqi generals who worked with steel say that one of steele's responsibilities was to give the commandos lists of people that the americans wanted picked up the steel would then allegedly arrange to transfer the. to a u.s. run interrogation center near baghdad airport. one man who. is to a square says that the police commandos lied about the fate of some of his fellow detainees. with the. water. became very obvious that this was criminal

activity by the special commandos they were written eliminating their own opposition and terrorizing citizens from the sunni community we lost the support of a lot of iraqi citizens who became very cynical and very anti-american even the ones who were friendly with us couldn't understand why we were allowing this to happen. good afternoon folks. are you concerned over and in fact if united states looking into growing reports of uniformed death squads in iraq perhaps assassinating and torturing hundreds of cities and if that's true over the stability on record. hypothetical questions i've not seen reports hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all i'm not going to get into the speculation like their next not a hypothetical i don't believe of the series i'm sick of the charging that hundreds

have been there's a native people shot in the head found a valid. if you're talking about unverified to my knowledge at least on her comments i just don't have any data from the field that i could comment on in a specific way but donald rumsfeld should have known about the death squad activities james steele had written to rumsfeld six weeks earlier warning him that the police commandos and financed by the u.s. were effectively a shia militia engaged in death squad activities. memo. don rumsfeld and jim steele. thought it was like the commander of the wolf brigade who has been involved in death squad activities extortion of detainees and a general pattern of corruption nearly all of the new recruits within the commandos are shia many of them are barred or members. general

muntadhar resigned from the interior ministry he had come to view the commandos as death squads. to close colleagues were killed following a summons to the ministry their bodies were found on a rubbish tip. he got out of iraq and fled for his safety to jordan. despite the risk he decided to speak out about what was happening inside the ministry of the interior. plant when i was father of the woman but by the route of property. we were warm and all. that but. a few days after the broadcast general on one charge i was contacted by james steele. it seemed that for mcconnell still had made an unexpected trip to jordan he was very anxious to meet with muntadhar. james steele was staying at the luxury sheraton hotel in the man.

he asked if they could meet about seven pm that night. when tiger greet and went to the hotel. but i wouldn't want to start and jim says there is an honest. woman and it's and. it's a simple truth honest little. door. in the cut that bit hard. for them. but. it's the law of the law but with. the know how of the good. of the. for sick at my luck one draw better idea of the hell i live at she didn't sit still on the bit i saw what i did

i thought i'd hear that she could have a. guardian of her. father with us and take it on and they said. they were the. officer. was still way out in the. gents. and. with. her. but than most that could be other. people should know about what was going on because i was shocked when i came back to the states and found out that. most people didn't even know they were involved in quarter over there. there is little chance that james steele will be investigated within months of entering the white house president obama issued a statement saying we've been through a dark and painful chapter in our history nothing will be gained by spending our

time and energy lang blame for the past. james steele and david petraeus left iraq in september two thousand and five. the ranks of the police commandos increased to over seventeen thousand and the allegations of abuse against them sought. a year later the country was in the grip of a bloody sectarian civil war. at its height the civil war was claiming the lives of three thousand people a month some were so badly tortured they could not be identified. many victims found a final resting place in desolate dumps like this one. a rusty tin can mox each grave. non-target has now retired on an iraqi government pension and lives in jordan. donald rumsfeld resigned as

defense secretary at the end of two thousand and six he never replied to any of our questions. rumsfeld had presented james' deal with the distinguished public service medal for his extraordinary service in iraq. steele is now living in bryan texas and gives occasional lectures on contra insurgency. he did not respond to our many requests to be interviewed for this documentary.

hello the cold and frosty nights continue in new south wales southern queensland but a cloud crossing it makes little difference it's the heart of winter that by day the sun briggs attempts up to fourteen or fifteen adelaide runs through melbourne up through a.c.t we're up to twenty one in sydney of course we should be about the same in person getting there slowly but if i gotta see by the look of it in the forecast and it's going to drift or i'm sure every now and again quiet but cold with a general story which is also true largely of news in the story was going through there was some flooding around or clint but the clouds disappeared and so it should be sunshine by day again you have cold nights of course full crosswise fifteen round runabout after all it represents any major connotation of which there are only a few in new zealand the clouds increasing getting north out and come wednesday and it's fairly quiet all the western side of the pacific at the moment the action

being really overland and here is i suppose you could argue some of the monsoon fronts to some a rain front is a long way north through whole carded through a lot of us talk if you're lucky in beijing keeping charges run about the thirty mark and cleaning the air otherwise the sunshine for most of japan and all of the korean peninsula. building a new life on an entirely beach living off the sea and the last. a dream shared why so many but so few make it a reality. of family business led by a remarkable woman with a flair for cooking and desist. i didn't catch it on al-jazeera.

this is zero. hour i'm certain this is the news out live from london coming up the question of russian interference in the u.s. elections dominates this president as a highly anticipated one on one meeting with vladimir putin and another step towards paying off to twenty years of conflict eritrea reopens its embassy in a fear. and welcoming home the world cup paris france is triumphant football team parade.