What Is The Difference Between Iraq And America?

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First Saddam Hussein, Then George Bush, Now US Created Prime Minister Alyad Allawi Ordered Iraqi Prisoners Tortured. What Is The Difference Between Iraq And America?
Marc Krug
February 01, 2005

Over the years, Iraqi prisoners have found themselves ensnared in an inescapable trap. They have been subjected, without change or respite, to a seemingly unending succession of torture and abuse.

What has changed, however, has been the identity of those inflicting this torture. First, it was Saddam who tortured other Iraqis with a malevolent madness rarely matched in modern times. Then it was the Americans who tortured Iraqi prisoners, although on a less extensive and more temperate scale. Lately, it’s been the Iraqi police and intelligence forces who administer what has now become the customary inhumane mistreatment.

Consequently, the tragic cycle of savagely abusing prisoners has come full circle: Iraqis are now once again torturing their fellow Iraqis.

How this situation came about is quite simple. With the June 28th transfer of sovereignty, the Iraqi Interim Government was given the responsibility of detaining and prosecuting the criminal suspects and insurgents that its security forces apprehended.

Unfortunately, this largely American-trained Iraqi police force did not learn one of the basic principles: torture rarely produces true, useful intelligence. Victims undergoing torture will say whatever they believe the enemy wants to hear so that the pain will stop.

And pain seems to be the primary end sought by the Iraqi guards. According to a 2004 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report, the Iraqis “whipped persons on the back with cables [and] kicked them in the lower parts of the body, including the testicles.” The guards also left prisoners “handcuffed and hanging from the iron bars of the cell windows or doors for several hours at a time, and burned them with cigarettes.”

This ICRC quotation comes from a much larger Human Rights Watch report issued January 25th. The Human Rights Watch organization had been in Iraq between July and October 2004, interviewing 90 prisoners — 72 of whom claimed to have been tortured or mistreated.

According to the interviewed prisoners: “Methods of torture included routine beatings to the body using a variety of implements such as cables, hosepipes, and metal rods. Detainees reported kicking, slapping, and punching.”

Consequently, the physical abuse of prisoners, which Bush promised would never happen again following the defeat of Saddam, has indeed happened again — only this time, it is the Iraqis, not the Americans, who are the main perpetrators. In the short period of time that Prime Minister Alyad Allawi has been in office, Iraq has apparently returned to practicing the same inhumane abuses on prisoners that characterized Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime.

And much like Saddam, Allawi cannot profess total ignorance or innocence of this torture. According to the Human Rights Watch report: “The Iraqi Interim government appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights.”

So should Bush want to express his distaste for tyrants — a desire he stressed so often in his Inaugural Address — he may not have to look much beyond his circle of friends for a suitable target. At least, Bush would not have to go to the same extensive lengths to justify labeling Allawi a tyrant as he did to justify the war in Iraq.

Bush initially justified the war on the basis of Iraq’s alleged storehouse of weapons of mass destruction, its alleged collaborative relationship with Al-Qaeda, and its alleged fledgling nuclear program. Since all of these claims have since been proven false, Bush has lately taken to justifying the war by saying that removing Saddam from power has resulted in a safer America and a more humane Iraq.

Unfortunately, these last two justifications are as false as all those that preceded them. As it turned out, the Iraqi war provided the most effective recruitment device for terrorists conceivable. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the war spurred a sharp increase in the number of al-Qaeda trained terrorists, who now total approximately 18,000 worldwide. Unfortunately, when the war in Afghanistan caused them to disperse, scores of these terrorists may have found their way to our shores.

So the war which Bush undertook to remove Saddam has not left America safer. Quite the contrary; it has left it more vulnerable to the attacks of an even larger and more emboldened cadre of terrorists, who, because of our invasion of Iraq, now have “proof” that America is Islam’s chief enemy.

And with the release of the Human Rights Watch report, it seems clear that Iraq is not more humane. No country that viciously tortures its own prisoners can support any justifiable claim to being considered even remotely humane.

The net result: Bush no longer has any justification for the war in Iraq. So let’s truly start supporting our troops by bringing them home.