Informants Decide Fate of Iraqi Detainees

WaPo reported U.S. Military Relies on Guidance of 'Sources' in Tall Afar

If they are good sources, this is good news. We have been lacking in the HumInt department.

A masked teenager in an Iraqi army uniform walked slowly through a crowd of 400 detainees captured Monday, studying each face and rendering his verdict with a simple hand gesture, like a Roman emperor deciding the fate of gladiators.

Not exactly like a Roman emperor, since the ones that did find favor with the Roman emperor would immediately be killed; the ones the masked teenager flagged would just be taken for interrogation.

A thumb pointed down meant the suspect was not thought to be an insurgent and would be released by U.S. soldiers. A thumb pointed up meant a man would be removed from the concertina wire-encased pen, handcuffed with tape or plastic ties and taken by truck to a military base to be interrogated. "Another bad guy right here," an American interpreter shouted when the masked Iraqi singled out a man in a yellow dishdasha , or traditional gown, who shook his head and protested in Turkish. A captive who was spared exhaled with relief and placed his hand on his heart. This is how the 10-day-old invasion of Tall Afar unfolded Monday. After two days of relatively uneventful patrols in the abandoned neighborhood of Sarai, where commanders had expected insurgents to be massed for a fight, U.S. and Iraqi forces turned north in the morning, to neighborhoods they had already cleared, and found hundreds of men who appeared to be of military age and fighters believed to have slipped through their cordons.

Glad they went back. If they found the insurgents, interrogation may show how they slipped out.

Eventually, 52 men were placed in the open backs of flatbed trucks bound for Camp Sykes, about seven miles south of this northwestern city. During the attack on insurgents here -- the largest urban assault in Iraq since the siege of Fallujah in November -- the only significant clashes came in the early days, when thousands of American and Iraqi troops stormed the city and U.S. jets waged a relentless bombing campaign.