SAS man quits over US tactics

[The Sunday Telegraph reports](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/12/nsas12.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/12/ixhome.html) that a long-standing member of the SAS (Special Air Service, an élite British armed service) has quit because he is no longer willing to serve alongside US forces because of their attitudes and methods:

> He said he had witnessed “dozens of illegal acts” by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as “untermenschen” – the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.

Actually, the term is older than Nazism; it probably originates with the philosopher [Friedrich Nietzsche](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche), who also coined its opposite *Übermensch*, though for different purposes too complex to go into here.

>Mr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military’s “gung-ho and trigger happy mentality” and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population. He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and “most probably” tortured.
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>Mr Griffin eventually told SAS commanders at Hereford that he could not take part in a war which he regarded as “illegal”.
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>He added that he now believed that the Prime Minister and the Government had repeatedly “lied” over the war’s conduct.
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>”**I did not join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy**,” he said. He expected to be labelled a coward and to face a court martial and imprisonment after making what “the most difficult decision of my life” last March.