| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
22 Sep 2006 03:38:32 PM |
| Object: |
Well, Waddya Know, Torture in Bush's Iraq Worse Than Under Saddam |
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick09222006.html
September 22, 2006
Torture in Bush's Iraq Worse Than Under Saddam
Republic of Fear
By PATRICK COCKBURN
The republic of fear is born again.
The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam
Hussein.
Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule,
the United Nation's special investigator on torture said yesterday.
"The situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally
out of hand," said Manfred Nowak.
"The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had been
in the times of Saddam Hussein."
The report, from an even-handed senior UN official, is in sharp
contrast with the hopes of George Bush and Tony Blair, when in 2003
they promised to bring democracy and respect for human rights to the
people of Iraq.
The brutal tortures committed in the prisons of the regime overthrown
in 2003 are being emulated and surpassed in the detention centres of
the present US- and British-backed Iraqi government.
"Detainees' bodies show signs of beating using electric cables, wounds
in different parts of their bodies including in the head and genitals,
broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns," the
human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq says in a new
report.
The horrors of the torture chamber that led to Saddam Hussein's Iraq
being labelled "The Republic of Fear", after the book of that title by
Kanan Makiya, have again become commonplace.
The bodies in Baghdad's morgue " often bear signs of severe torture
including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical
substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing
eyes and wounds caused by power drills or nails", the UN report said.
Those not killed by these abuses are shot in the head.
Human rights groups say torture is practised in prisons run by the US
as well as those run by the Interior and Defence ministries and the
numerous Sunni and Shia militias.
The pervasive use of torture is only one aspect of the utter breakdown
of government across Iraq outside the three Kurdish provinces in the
north. In July and August alone, 6,599 civilians were killed, the UN
says.
One US Army major was quoted as saying that Baghdad is now a Hobbesian
world where everybody is at war with everybody else and the only
protection is self-protection.
Iraq is in a state of primal anarchy.
Paradoxically, the final collapse of security this summer is masked
from the outside world because the country is too dangerous for
journalists to report what is happening.
___________________________________________________
Well, that's what Bush meant when he said he wanted to bring
"democracy" to Iraq. His kind of democracy. Ain't you surprised? Of
course you are.
Harry
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