“…To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we’re ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al-Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale…” President George W. Bush July 12, 2007.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released a report on Wednesday that confirmed reports from last summer that ISIS was committing atrocities against Iraqi children.
“Islamic State militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves, and killing other youth, including by crucifixion or burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog said on Wednesday.
“Iraqi boys aged under 18 are increasingly being used by the militant group as suicide bombers, bomb makers, informants or human shields to protect facilities against U.S.-led air strikes, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said.
“”We are really deeply concerned at torture and murder of those children, especially those belonging to minorities, but not only from minorities,” committee expert Renate Winter told a news briefing. “The scope of the problem is huge.”
“Children from the Yazidi sect or Christian communities, but also Shi’ites and Sunnis, have been victims, she said.”
“CRC, which is composed of 18 independent experts who monitor the implementation of international children’s rights treaties, denounced numerous cases of IS militants torturing and murdering children, especially those from minorities.
“The group has been targeting and attacking schools, executing teachers and subjecting children to systematic sexual abuse, including sexual slavery, the committee said.“Children (are) being used as suicide bombers, including children with disabilities or who were sold to armed groups by their families,” said the report, which also detailed how children were used as “human shields” to protect IS facilities from airstrikes, to work at checkpoints or build bombs for the jihadists.”
Obama withdrew American forces from Iraq against the advice of the generals overseeing US troops there—and against the advice of President Bush.
With the rise of ISIS, Obama reluctantly responded by first giving humanitarian aid, then limited air strikes followed by the deployment of several thousand troops back to Iraq to train Iraqi forces. By then ISIS was committing atrocities against Iraqi children in the western parts of Iraq the group had taken control of and was threatening Iraq’s capital Baghdad and the Kurdish north.
Yesterday ISIS released video showing the burning alive execution of a captive Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, who was captured in December when his F-16 crashed in an ISIS-controlled part of Syria.
