"Butcher's Work"

mini · July 23, 2006, 5:58pm

"The speaker of the Iraqi parliament criticized the U.S. involvement in Iraq yesterday, likening the invasion and its consequences to the work of butchers and demanding that the U.S. authorities disentangle themselves from Iraqs political affairs.

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Islamist who quickly developed a reputation for provocative public comments after his election in late April, also asserted the American government wanted Iraq to stay under the American boot.

We know there was a corrupt regime in Saddam, but a regime should be removed by surgery, not by butchering, he said during a speech at a U.N.-sponsored conference on transitional justice. The U.S. occupation is butchers work under the slogan of democracy and human rights and justice.

What’s interesting here is that this is just the type of guy the U.S. has been trying to cosy up to. A Sunni, an Islamcist, but strongly in favor of a unity government united against the insurgency. Democratically elected. An opponent of Al-Sadr and Sistani, and the Shiites, but opposed to private militias. This is what our FRIENDS are saying about us. True or not, we know where we stand before we “cut and run”, which the U.S. will, though we’ll give it another name.

"Separately, four U.S. soldiers charged with murder for killing three Iraqi detainees in May were acting on explicit orders to kill all military-age males during a raid on a suspected insurgent training camp, a lawyer for one of the men said yesterday.

Two senior officers who spoke to the accused men a colonel and a captain have acknowledged they gave that order, as have other men in the same company, said the lawyer, Paul Bergrin. The two officers later reviewed the episode and concluded there had been no wrongdoing, Bergrin said."

Meanwhile, back on the ranch:

PRISONERS in US custody in Iraq faced routine torture even after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, with military leaders taking little or no action to curb abuses.

In a report released yesterday, based on first-hand accounts from US soldiers, Human Rights Watch detailed maltreatment of detainees that ranged from severe beatings and sleep deprivation to exposure to extreme temperatures.

The abuses were not just ignored but also organised by the military chain of command, the rights watchdog alleged.

“Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk,” said John Sifton, author of the 53-page report.

“These accounts rebut US Government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorised and exceptional on the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used,” Mr Sifton said.

The report quoted one interrogator who said the leader of his unit at Camp Nama a detention centre at Baghdad airport had encouraged abuse.

“People wanted to go, go, go harsh on everybody,” the interrogator said. “They thought that was their job and that’s what they needed to do, and do it every time.”

In several instances described in the report, detainee abuse was apparently reported to the military leadership in Baghdad and Washington, but nothing was done.

A military police guard at a base near al-Qaim on the Syrian border told Human Rights Watch he had complained to an officer about beatings and other abuse he witnessed but was told to drop the issue.

The US military says 14,000 prisoners are currently held in US-run detention centres in Iraq.

According to the report, detainee mistreatment was an established part of the interrogation process for much of 2003-05, despite the widespread outrage that greeted the evidence of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, which US President George Bush called America’s “biggest mistake” in Iraq.

Human Rights Watch said the report showed that criminal investigations of abuses need to follow the military chain of command, rather than focus on low-level soldiers.

So far, not a single military intelligence officer has been court martialled in connection with abuse allegations in Iraq."

<a href=“http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/19/usint13767.htm[/url]”>http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/19/usint13767.htm</a>

We are making friends, and influencing people.

itstoomuch · July 23, 2006, 10:21pm

Is or will it be like the detentions of the Balkans?

Perhaps the safest place is to be in Detention?

Can we get GWB to also think about Climate Change? But all this War stuff is “hardwork.” I read that even his Texan Energy friends now acknowledge human caused climate change. Damn, its hot in Ore.

I was going to pick my last batch of cherries this morning for arrival of older NYC brother. Cherries held up well this year and I got 60# and got them dried. Not as sweet as other years but there hasn’t been worthwhile cherries the last 3 years. As a side comment on the cherries, there is no collateral after affects and we already have gone thru a bunch of fresh and dried cherries.

originaloog · July 24, 2006, 11:32am

Mini, what we(the USA)have become is a horrible thing. The cost of 9-11 is far greater than the 3000+ lives lost that day.

mini · July 24, 2006, 11:44am

When I lived and worked in Iran, the torture stories I heard on a regular basis were indeed horrible. But while the U.S. trained the torturers (many of them in the U.S. - I learned about Fort Benning from the Iranians themselves), the equipment supplied by U.S. firms, and Americans supervised the operations, the actual acts were committed by Iranian hired thugs of the Shah.

Now the “dirty laundry” is no longer underwear. The amazing thing about al-Mashhadani’s comments is that he represents precisely that part of the Iraqi population that the U.S. is courting. Non-insurgent Sunnis of Islamicist stripes (the non-Islamicists, like Chalabi, etc, are wholly discredited) who are willing to work toward a unity government. And an elected, high-ranking public figure to boot.

The cost to Iraqis - and to the U.S. - is far higher if we stay than if we leave today.

Hanna · July 24, 2006, 1:20pm

My firm recently helped win asylum for a dissident Ugandan journalist who was tortured by the regime in that country. He spoke at a luncheon this month, and he asserted that African dictators have benefited greatly from the U.S. “war on terror” because it allows them freer rein to use the techniques of their choice. During one of his last arrest-interrogations, his jailers told him, “People have been in Guantanamo without hearings for four years. You complain about four days?”

Scary stuff.

driver · July 24, 2006, 1:29pm

The exaggerations and distortions of US “torture” are a big problem, no question. I would check in for a stay at Club Gitmo any day over any third-world prison. The propaganda works here at home, I’m not surprised they’re citing it in Uganda, too.

Allmusic · July 24, 2006, 1:34pm

Of course we will end up “cutting and running”, only it will be carefully repackaged with nice GOP language by their many propaganda minded publicists. Rove and his minions are masterful in this respect, and they have reframed entire social and political concepts with careful rewording so that said concepts are more palatable to the (rather intellectually limited) American pubic (who mostly likes good news anyway, not anything too terribly messy).

"Butcher's Work"

CONNECT WITH US