corrente

I wonder how long it will take the cheery courtesans at the Cakewalk News Network (CNN) and MSGOP etc... to fashion the "official script" for this one below. Perhaps as soon as the great Mary K. Letourneau - slash - groping Tigger scare of 2004 passes?

Turning the torture chambers over to the locals: From The Oregonian

Ordered to just walk away | Saturday, August 07, 2004 | MIKE FRANCIS

BAGHDAD - The national guardsman peering through the long-range scope of his rifle was startled by what he saw unfolding in the walled compound below.

From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in plainclothes beat blind folded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.

In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices - metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.

The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions.

But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 - Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S. invasion.

The incident, the first known case of human rights abuses in newly sovereign Iraq, is at the heart of the American dilemma here.

[...]

"There was a tightly bound and gagged prisoner crumpled at the feet of these men," Southall said. "There was a recently eaten tray of food and a nice water cooler that was standing upright in good order. This room was heavily air conditioned, which was a stark contrast to the rooms that contained prisoners."

The men in the room said they had not beaten anyone. They asserted, however, "that these prisoners were all dangerous criminals and most were thieves, users of marijuana and other types of bad people," according to Southall's account.

As U.S. soldiers continued to fan out in the building, they found more bound-and-gagged prisoners, and "hoses, broken lamps and chemicals of some variety," which could have been used as torture devices, Southall said.

Hendrickson radioed up the chain of command in the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, relaying what he had seen and asking for instructions. As the soldiers waited, Southall said, the Iraqi policemen began to get "defiant and hostile" toward the Americans.

It wasn't long before the order came: Stand down. Return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.

Full story, much more, at Oregonian link above.

Off With Their Hands!

Strength is also central to the image of the new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, whom Newsweek described as "Iraq's New SOB," and has been lauded as a ruthless strongman in The New York Times and Washington Post. Locally, he's known as "Saddam without the mustache."

[...]

Before his June elevation, while chairing of the Interim Governing Council's security committee, Allawi is also alleged to have recruited former torturers to serve in a new secret police apparatus while, of late, he has threatened martial law, shut down sections of the media, suggested the government might delay elections, and moved to bring back the death penalty. Sounds more despotic than strong.

Before the Iraq invasion, we heard that the United States needed to oust a tyrant and establish a democracy. Now the argument is that the unruly country needs a tough guy ready to impose martial law, ban protest, and use secret police to "annihilate" opponents. In other words, a tyrant.

-- Published on Friday, August 6, 2004 by United Press International | Saddam Sans Mustache | by Greg Guma - Via Common Dreams.org

Ah, it's the old Jean Kirkpatrick plan afterall. - re: "Dictators and Double Standards" - or, rather, the new tyrant might be a raving despotic homicidal lunatic, but that's ok as long as he's our raving despotic homicidal lunatic. God bless "moral clarity".

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