After the prison amnesty last week several hundred protesters surrounded the secret police headquarters in Baghdad for two days, demanding to know about sons and fathers who were arrested years ago and have not been released ...It is unclear how many prisoners were freed and how many remain in jail. Although the social affairs minister said all the prisons were empty, officials refused to allow journalists into the vast Abu Ghraib compound, 20 miles from Baghdad, where many political prisoners have been held.
The Guardian
October 28, 2002
Remarkably, the Americans have also set up another detention camp in the grounds of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad ... Every day, relatives scuff their way along the dirt track to reach the razor wire barricades surrounding Abu Ghraib, where they plead in vain for information about the whereabouts of the missing.The response from impassive American sentries is to point to a sign, scrawled in red felt-tip pen on a piece of cardboard hanging on the barbed wire, which says: “No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave.”
The Times of London
July 9, 2003
Too much.
These American fascists must be stopped. The best thing is to the get the word out. Thanks to all who do so.
And, by golly, isn't that the Americans moving into Saddam's palace and even, yes I do believe, celebrating July 4th by his evilness' swimming pool? Can we even call this irony anymore?
Meet the new boss...
But we're going to stick around and finish this mission, right? God in heaven help us if that mission leads where these signs point.
Yeah. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Sometimes I think I *ought* to be able to pinch myself and just wake up. (But, no.)
Excellent wielding of irony, Billmon -- don't get me wrong. But this whole damn situation is just getting depressing as hell. The lunatics have definitely taken over the asylum, only in this instance they've gone so far as to declare everybody *else* "insane".
But wait, don't you guys understand? Saddamwasaverybadman! We did the right thing. Hewasaverybadman.
"He's following his Sergeant's order"
Wasn't "I'm just following orders" ruled not a defense a few decades back?
Are they casting the huge bronze statue of Bush to put up in Baghdad yet? I am thinking thumbs up and a cod-piece. I guarantee it will inspire the Iraqi people. To what? - well...
If they were to make a statue, it would be a gilded 2x size version of Queen Bremer, Her Royal Majesty.
Just another example of our unilateral PR disarmament. So many people in charge of the US occupation suffer from tone deafness & peculiar blindness to the theatre of symbols.
Despite so many hopeful signs in the beginning we seem to have abandoned every thing that would help us. WE know that the occupation government wont torture people (as much) or use secret police (as much). WE know they are desperate to get utilities working and make ther streets safe. The Iraqi people do not see that because it is not being done and the cultural divide is not being bridged. They wopnt just vote with their feet, they'll vote with their AKs if this keeps up.
-thomas
More of the same type of thing here:
Iraq row over fate of seized scientists
... Helma al-Saadi, a German who cuts an elegant figure sitting in her Baghdad home, last saw her husband Amer more than three months ago. She has written two letters to Paul Bremer, Iraq's US administrator, but her pleas for a visit have been ignored and she has been given no official word of his whereabouts or condition.
Under Saddam, Iraqi wives all too often saw husbands taken to unknown detention centres and held indefinitely and without visiting rights. While secret detentions are not so frequent under US rule, the anxious wait is no less grim. 'I don't want to aggravate the Americans or make them feel provoked, but I've had no official notification of why he is being held or what charges he's facing,' Helma al-Saadi said. ...
The sad fact of the matter is that sentry is only doing what he's told. He's following his Sergeant's order, who is following his Lieutenant's orders, who is following his Major's orders, on up past the Colonel, the General, straight to good ole Rummy and the White House's fabulous ideas of how to ruin..I mean run...Iraq. But when the shit hits the fan and Iraqis start lobbing grenades, who do you think takes the shrapnel? That lonely Lance Corporal standing post, wishing he could go home to his family and his girlfriend. It must be nice sitting up in Washington throwing people's lives around like dice. Makes me wanna take daddy's offer to run the oil company, maybe I can be in the White House one day.