When will it end?
Will any new report of lies, horrors, duplicity, hypocrisy, and flat out war crimes finally lead to true accountability for the president’s Gestapo-like program in Iraq?
If we had not acted, the torture chambers would still be in operation.
Vice President Dick Cheney
For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, the capture of Saddam brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.
The capture of the former Iraqi dictator is crucial to the rise of a free Iraq. It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name.
White House Press Release
Because our coalition acted, Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers are closed.
President Bush
Stock 2004 campaign phrase used frequently both before and after the Abu Ghraib photos hit the media in late April.
Despite the horrific acts of the terrorists in Iraq, there are going to be free elections in Iraq in January. And think how far that country has come from the days of torture chambers and mass graves. Freedom is on the march, freedom is on the move around the world.
President Bush
Stock campaign phrase, October 2004
Twenty months after Saddam Hussein’s government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.
Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are “committing systematic torture and other abuses” of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.
Torture in Iraq Still Routine, Report Says
Detainees Beaten, Hung by Wrists, Shocked by Security Forces, Rights Group Finds; Doug Struck, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A10
January 27th, 2005 at 01:58
Are you going to be glad when Iraqis come out in huge numbers and vote? Please be.
January 27th, 2005 at 04:51
Thanks for the comment, Toby. I’ll be glad when Iraqis are allowed to take control of their own country and make their own history. Their prospects for achieving that in the upcoming election are nil at best. There is a better chance that American dominance of their political process and control over development of their “Constitution” will become even more entrenched under the cloak of legitimacy the election provides. If I’m right, you’ll see Bush’s Saddam clone Allawi retain power. His Baathist hires already are responsible for recreating Saddam’s “torture chambers” — see link to HRW report in the post. If Abdul Aziz al-Hakim acquires any power, I’ll be surprised. Bush intends to attack Iran, not allow Iran-sympathetic clerics to take power in Iraq.
January 27th, 2005 at 05:10
I should add that nothing I’ve said suggests there should not be an election. It’s long overdue. This one, as flawed and unlikely to wrest control from the Americans as it is, is better than none at all. There should have been an election and constituent assembly within 60 days of April 9, 2003. But the Americans and its CPA had a country to loot before allowing that.
January 28th, 2005 at 02:00
We’d be fools to invade Iran right now or even in the forseeable future. We have too many young people there who look to us to provide only the anvil for their own hammer. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more likely Iran will fall from the inside. That “fall” would actually mean the ascendancy of a far more secular democratic government.
Stay tuned. Stay hopeful.
January 28th, 2005 at 21:25
I completely agree with you that a full-blown invasion of Iran would be foolish. It’s highly unlikely, even with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Wolfowitz in charge. But if Seymour Hersh is right, and I tend to think he is, the US will rain bombs at some point while trying to foment the “inside fall” you suggest.
The inside fall of Iran is the neocon scenario outlined in Wurmser’s Tyranny’s Ally. The flowers and chocolates thing in Iraq didn’t come true, but why should that hold back the rest of the plan?
But Hersh quotes some pretty-connected people saying that the neocons are wrong, wrong, wrong on this point too.
“The idea that an American attack on IranÂ’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration.
“You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation thatÂ’s technologically sophisticated….”