US Military Destroy Farmers' Crops in Iraq?

[Oktberfest]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=452375
Is the US really doing what is described in the link?

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: “They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn’t capture anything. They didn’t find any weapons.”

Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.

[Tuckerfan]

I don’t see anything on CNN on mentioning it, and I have to think that if we were doing something like that, the various human rights groups would be blasting that from the rooftops and it’d be all the news.

[Diceman]

I just checked Amnesty International’s website (www.amnesty.org) and I didn’t see anything about it. I’d think that something like that would be their top story if it were happening.

[MaryEFoo]

The story is dated today, so presumably we will shortly see confirmation or denial elsewhere.

Lazily hoping someone else has the time/interest to search on the writer, Patrick Cockburn, or browse through news.independent.co.uk, or search on Lt.Col. Springman, or ask their rep(s) in Congress to look into this, or ask their news media if this can be verified. Or write the publication.

In an attempt to get a feel for the reliability of the source, I browsed as far as Iraq, 6 Months On
which gives some numbers on various subjects.

I hope we’re not doing this. I hope it’s resistance propaganda.

[leenmi]

I really doubt this story. It is dated today, but describes an event that took place almost a month ago. The article doesn’t even mention the US military’s response. It’s not even clear if the journalist asked the US about the event.

[Rashak_Mani]

I googled the name of the city mentioned Dhuluaya and it does exist. Apparently an episode where an informant was killed by his own family happened there… it was the most common article.

Link

Further google didnt find any other stories about those tractors destroying farms.