Task Force 121 was initially designed to detain individuals suspected of knowing about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction programme. The capture was carried out as part of a wider set of operations by a joint Task Force, codenamed Task Force 121, made up of US and UK forces. #SADDAM HUSSEIN CAPTURE PWNED FREE#The unit was incentivized, however, with on-the-spot bonuses for successful missions, free land just for volunteering and “martyr privileges” such as pensions for families of the deceased.Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali are Pakistani nationals who were captured in a mission codenamed Operation Aston by British forces in the Baghdad area of Iraq in February 2004, following a raid on a building MI6 believed was a safe house for foreign fighters. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told CNN in 2003, when the Iraq War began. “They portray a regime that was about as vicious as any regime could conceivably be,” then U.S. It’s no wonder that the bloodthirsty commandos, who in promotional videos practiced the art of decapitation and, in one instance, ate a live dog, were the most fanatical of Iraq’s forces. Military failings, from simply hesitating to complete one’s duties to cooperating with the enemy, were all punishable by death. These were tactics “meant to terrorize the masses that the formal military loath to conduct,” said Ibrahim Al-Marashi, a history professor at California State University San Marcos. Responsible for the patrol of neighborhoods and anti-smuggling duties, the Fedayeen handed down harsh punishments in Sharia-like fashion - cutting off hands for theft and tongues for lying, tossing people off towers for sodomy and doling out 100 lashes for sexual harassment, even to members of their own unit. This meant combating public vice by using methods that even Saddam’s Republican Guard would balk at. Often recruited from rural backgrounds, the Fedayeen reported directly to the Presidential Palace, not army command, and often carried out the regime’s dirty work. “It’s like they were saying, ‘We’re so tough we’re ready to go and die right now,’” Woods explains. While the black operation uniforms were reserved for the battlefield, the paramilitary unit would often dress in all white, the Middle East death shroud, likening themselves to martyrs for parades, or even stormtroopers. Uday was seen as an “extreme playboy,” Woods says, noting how image was everything for his young guerrilla fighters, some of whom had been recruited as young as age 10 into the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam’s Lion Cubs. The Fedayeen had a macho image and “did a lot to stand out,” says Kevin Woods, deputy director of the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses, who analyzed the Pentagon’s secret study of Saddam Hussein’s regime based on Iraqi documents seized in 2003. Kevin Woods, deputy director, Joint Advanced Warfighting Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses It’s like they were saying, ‘We’re so tough we’re ready to go and die right now.’ His first order of business? Ordering black shirts, black ski masks and black helmets that sloped in the back to make his troops resemble Darth Vader. Put in charge of the so-called Fedayeen Saddam, “Saddam’s Men of Sacrifice,” Uday - whose unhinged brutality made his father look statesmanlike - formed a sadistic team of regime enforcers and killers. Saddam Hussein had a penchant for fantasy and owned paintings by American fantasy artist Rowena Morrill, whose friend and fellow sci-fi illustrator Boris Vallejo created the Empire Strikes Back poster. But it was the dictator’s eldest son, Uday, who took the sci-fi fixation to the extreme. The patriotic procession, broadcast live to millions of stunned viewers around the globe, marked an overlooked and surreal detail of military warfare in Iraq: an obsession with a galaxy far, far away. The Iraqi soldiers passed under the city’s Victory Arch, a giant pair of 141-foot crossed swords resembling Darth Vader’s famous Empire Strikes Back pose with light sabers. On a dusty Baghdad avenue, less than a day before the Gulf War kicked off in 1990, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers marched in sync with Star Wars–themed music - a show of defiance against the American troops who would soon start bombing the country.
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