Topic: Iraq
Addendum - A little more detail...
In the "Tinkerbell" item below you will find a discussion of the CBS 60 Minutes Two broadcast this week detailing allegations of our of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners inside Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq - numerous cases, as it were.
One minor detail has been added to the text below.
You will see here that a British newspaper adds a detail the domestic press and CBS disregarded, or just missed:
You see, we are not really responsible for all this nasty stuff. Sometimes when you outsource labor-intensive work, well, the subcontractor you engage screws up - disappointing, but this is not something we actually did, not something for which our government employees (our armed forces) can really be held responsible. This simply calls for changing to another subcontractor. (For a discussion of privatization and mercenaries see this from last weekend's Just Above Sunset.)A military report into the Abu Ghraib case - parts of which were made available to the Guardian - makes it clear that private contractors were supervising interrogations in the prison, which was notorious for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein.
One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young, male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.
In addition, this from the BBC - CBS News said it delayed the broadcast for two weeks after a request from the Pentagon due to the tensions in Iraq. I suppose that's a good thing. We are generating a lot of mistrust and animosity among the locals at the moment, and adding fuel to the fire with the release of this torture-and-humiliate-the-towelhead-losers report is probably best managed very carefully.
Posted by Alan at 08:39 PDT
|
Post Comment |
Permalink
Updated: Friday, 30 April 2004 09:06 PDT
home