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LONDON, March 12 (AFP): An elite British soldier revealed on Sunday that he quit the army after refusing to fight in Iraq anymore on moral grounds because of the "illegal" tactics used by US troops on the ground.
Ben Griffin, a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) described in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph the experiences that led him to end his impressive army career after just three months in Baghdad.
The 28-year-old, who was discharged last June, is believed to be the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat and to quit the army on moral grounds.
"I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that were illegal or just wrong," Griffin told the weekly newspaper in his first interview since leaving the SAS.
"I knew, so others must have known, that this was not the way to conduct operations if you wanted to win the hearts and minds of the local population.
"And if you can't win the hearts and minds of the people, you can't win the war."
Griffin, who worked in the SAS's counter-terrorist team, recalled joint operations to tackle insurgents with his American counterparts.
"We would radio back to our headquarters that we were not going to detain certain people because, as far as we were concerned, they were not a threat because they were old men or obviously farmers, but the Americans would say: 'No, bring them back'," Griffin said.
"The Americans had this catch-all approach to lifting suspects. The tactics were draconian and completely ineffective."
The SAS soldier spoke of another operation which netted a group of innocent civilians who were clearly nothing to do with the insurgency.
"I couldn't understand why we had done this, so I said to my troop commander: 'Would we have behaved in the same way in the Balkans or Northern Ireland?' He shrugged his shoulders and said: 'This is Iraq', and I thought: 'And that makes it all right?'"
Griffin said he believed US soldiers had no respect for Iraqis, whom they regarded as "sub- human".
"You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the army was going to pay their college fees," he said.
"They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren't isolated cases, this was from the top down.
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