Posted on 06/09/2006 9:00:56 AM PDT by pabianice
Hopeless Captives of the New Iraqi Imperium
When Iraq's newly appointed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made the decision to order the release of more than 2500 prisoners from U.S.- and Iraqi-run prisons this week, he must have been worrying over the looming dilemma of his expected U.S. withdrawal next year, which could leave his government with responsibility for an estimated 28,000+ detainees languishing indefinitely without any benefit of an amnesty that usually follows an armistice.
Despite the apparent killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an alleged orchestrator of violence in Iraq (itals added), the prospect for Iraq's foreseeable future is one of continued conflict and armed, bloody resistance to the new authority. No matter what victory speech Bush contrives for our troops' inevitable staged exit, the chaotic Iraq he leaves behind won't indulge any rhetoric from him about 'defeating terrorism' or 'ending the insurgency'.
With more 'anti-insurgency' raids forecast by Maliki for the near future, backed by an escalation of the U.S. force by as many as 5500 more soldiers transferred in from Kuwait and Germany, there will be an almost certain increase in the numbers of those captured and held. Releasing just 2500, out of over 28,000 detained shouldn't provide any relief to the prison population at all.
What will happen to the remaining prisoners of our manufactured war? Who will account for these Iraqis' desperately broken lives?
The majority of these prisoners - many initially captured by the Iraqis and turned over to the U.S. - have reportedly been held without charges or counsel for a year or more. Media accounts and interviews have revealed several cases of mal-nourishment and ill-health among those released. Although some say they were well-treated at the hands of their foreign captors, many Iraqi detainees have made accusations of torture and harassment, which mirror the past abuses at Abu Ghraib, and mesh with the Pentagon's deliberate omission from the Army training manual of a Geneva Convention ban on "humiliating and degrading treatment".
Rumsfeld's Nov. 27, 2002, memo approved several methods which apparently would violate Geneva Convention rules, including:
Putting detainees in "stress positions," such as standing, for up to four hours.
-Removing prisoners' clothes.
-Intimidating detainees with dogs.
-Interrogating prisoners for 20 hours at a time.
-Forcing prisoners to wear hoods during interrogations and transportation.
-Shaving detainees' heads and beards.
-Using "mild, non-injurious physical contact," such as poking.
According to a Red Cross report in 2004 quoting coalition intelligence officers, up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake." The report cited abuses at the hands of their U.S. captors of brutality, hooding, humiliation, and threats of "imminent execution."
The report stated: "Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,"
"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."
A March 2006, Amnesty International report entitled, 'Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq,' stated that, despite the images which were uncovered and revealed in April 2004 and February 2006 showing inmates being tortured and humiliated by US guards at Abu Ghraib, "the same failure to ensure due process that prevailed then, however, and facilitated - perhaps even encouraged such abuses – is evidenced today by the continuing detentions without charge or trial of thousands of people in Iraq who are classified by the occupation force as 'security internees'."
When should a great nation such as ours be expected to actually exercise some of the justice, due process, and freedoms that this administration claims to be defending with its "war on terrorism"? How long will the Bush regime be able to claim immunity from international law in their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially since they now insist that the elections in both countries were about transferring authority in those countries out of U.S. hands?
There is no more immediacy to be pointed to in the U.S. claims of impunity. It's hard to see how they will be able to insist they're still at war and require some buffer between our forces and those detained who they've decided are against them. Every day that the new Iraqi authority reigns, the duplicity and imbalance of our forces becomes more and more apparent to Iraq's citizens and to the world. Every time we exercise our heavy hand there, our nation becomes more complicit in the continued unrest, violence, and subsequent killings.
The continued, unwarranted detention of rounded-up Iraqis has become a self-serving paradox: the prison population increasing as a result of the heightened violence; the violence heightened by our continuing occupation, and by the escalation of our forces in response to the increased violence.
Doesn't Bush and his posse eventually have to prove the guilt of those they have detained?
There is an unprecedented brinkmanship being played out by the Bush regime in regard to their accountability, which will either exaggerate or serve to define the limits of the authority of this Executive branch. The upcoming congressional mid-term elections will almost certainly be the final arbiter of how long he can continue to ignore the laws of the land which don't suit his dominating agenda at home and abroad. The republican Congress has refused to reign him in and will have to be replaced - if Bush isn't - in order to hold his administration responsible and accountable.
Those still held in the military prisons in Iraq deserve our attention. Those of us in the U.S., outside of the Bush regime need to exercise our responsibility to vigilance, and demand accountability of what our military and the Iraqi authority intend to do with the prisoners who are still being held.
There should be no more signal-sending torture and humiliation. That should be declared immediately and the Geneva ban on humiliation should be adopted and published in the military training manuals so that all soldiers will take heed and end the practices once and for all.
They should make every effort, public and otherwise to investigate and prosecute reported abuses, immediately and completely. Anyone found guilty of these should be immediately dismissed and charged. Reparations should be provided where appropriate.
Amnesty lists their own concerns about the protection of detainees and prisoners:
* End indefinite internment of persons in Iraq.
* Ensure that all detainees are informed promptly of the reasons for their detention.
* Ensure that all detainees are brought promptly before a court in order that the court can assess the lawfulness of their detention and order the release of individuals whose detention is found to be unlawful, in accordance with rights set out in Article 9 of the ICCPR.
* Ensure that all detainees are released or charged with a recognizable criminal offense promptly and provided a fair trial in accordance with international law and which excludes the death penalty.
* Ensure that all detainees handed over to the Iraqi authorities are not at risk of being subjected to torture and ill-treatment and where there is such a risk to hold the detainees on behalf of the Iraqi authorities, while criminal proceedings are ongoing and until such time as sufficient safeguards are put in place to prevent torture and ill-treatment.
* Ensure that relatives and legal counsel have prompt access to detainees.
* Ensure that accurate information about their arrest and whereabouts is made immediately available to detainees’ relatives and lawyers.
* Ensure that all detainees are held only in officially recognized places of detention and prohibit the holding of persons without record as "ghost detainees" and any transfer of detainees outside Iraqi territory.
* Ensure that conditions of detention conform to international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Make provision for there to be regular, independent, unannounced and unrestricted visits of inspection to all places of detention by an independent body with appropriate expertise in assessing detention conditions and the treatment of prisoners.
* Provide unhindered access to all places of detention, their installations and facilities, and detainees by relevant international organizations and bodies, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and by Iraqi human rights organizations.
Our nation's political and military should leaders follow the law, and follow the dictates of our own constitution when dealing with the citizens of the fractured nation of Iraq, even more so, as they continue to prosecute this contrived conflict in the name of liberty and Iraqi self-determination.
Our soldiers actions as they detain these Iraqis under command from their superiors, is a part of a larger injustice against the sovereign nation. Most of the actions of the soldiers in pursuit of this imperialistic scheme may yet be accountable, but these agents of America should be considered as operators working within a flawed motive; designed and mandated from the president down, and left to chance and a pipe dream.
We all deserve, and should demand better.
Jeeeeez....what a bunch of bad fictions. Is there anything but rehtoric in that diatribe of lunacy?
They sure thought he was one bad dude when they used to accuse President Bush of dereliction of duty for not being able to capture or kill him.
I liked tha part where the Iraqi government was worried about being stuck with all those people in jail.
Another chance for konspiracy kooks to provide more entertainment. The of 9/11 conspiracies are laughable lunacy.
And they wonder why they can't win elections?
I went to my local watering hole to celebrate last night and one of the leftys there was saying that Zarqawi was not dead or that he even existed in the first place. He said it was a plot to get the President's numbers up.
I am convinced that America suffered a dibillitating head injury sometime around 1990, that the rendered the left-half of our brain retarded.
He's pining for the fjords.
Apparently "Bush and his posse" can be convicted without trial, but not Zarqawi.
Get your Zarkman Tee Shirts at the DNC!
That will give the lefties something to wear when their Che T shirts are in the wash.
"He's pining for the fjords."
"How do we know that he's not just resting? Or, like the film actor Charles Norris,
just `waiting'? Are my eyes bugging-out again? I could use some spackling please."
Nancy "Color Me Confused/Morose" Pelosi
Maybe he never existed. Maybe the NSA just made up a fictitious enemy to focus our attention and distract us from all the phone calls they were eavesdropping based on phone numbers in the fictitious laptops of those fictitous terrorists.
We can always check his feet for nails.
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