Hopeless Captives of the New Iraqi Imperium

STILL let my tyrants know, I am not doom'd to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty. -- Brontë, 'The Prisoner'


When Iraq's newly appointed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made the decision to order the release of more than 2500 prisoners from U.S.- and Iraqi-run prisons this week, he must have been worrying over the looming dilemma of his expected U.S. withdrawal next year, which could leave his government with responsibility for an estimated 28,000+ detainees languishing indefinitely without any benefit of an amnesty that usually follows an armistice.

Despite the apparent killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an alleged orchestrator of violence in Iraq, the prospect for Iraq's foreseeable future is one of continued conflict and armed, bloody resistance to the new authority. No matter what victory speech Bush contrives for our troops' inevitable staged exit, the chaotic Iraq he leaves behind won't indulge any rhetoric from him about 'defeating terrorism' or 'ending the insurgency'.

With more 'anti-insurgency' raids forecast by Maliki for the near future, backed by an escalation of the U.S. force by as many as 5500 more soldiers transferred in from Kuwait and Germany, there will be an almost certain increase in the numbers of those captured and held. Releasing just 2500, out of over 28,000 detained shouldn't provide any relief to the prison population at all.

What will happen to the remaining prisoners of our manufactured war? Who will account for these Iraqis' desperately broken lives?

The majority of these prisoners - many initially captured by the Iraqis and turned over to the U.S. - have reportedly been held without charges or counsel for a year or more. Media accounts and interviews have revealed several cases of mal-nourishment and ill-health among those released. Although some say they were well-treated at the hands of their foreign captors, many Iraqi detainees have made accusations of torture and harassment, which mirror the past abuses at Abu Ghraib, and mesh with the Pentagon's deliberate omission from the Army training manual of a Geneva Convention ban on "humiliating and degrading treatment".

Rumsfeld's Nov. 27, 2002, memo approved several methods which apparently would violate Geneva Convention rules, including:

Putting detainees in "stress positions," such as standing, for up to four hours.

-Removing prisoners' clothes.

-Intimidating detainees with dogs.

-Interrogating prisoners for 20 hours at a time.

-Forcing prisoners to wear hoods during interrogations and transportation.

-Shaving detainees' heads and beards.

-Using "mild, non-injurious physical contact," such as poking.

According to a Red Cross report in 2004 quoting coalition intelligence officers, up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake." The report cited abuses at the hands of their U.S. captors of brutality, hooding, humiliation, and threats of "imminent execution."

The report stated: "Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,"

"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."

A March 2006, Amnesty International report entitled, 'Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq,' stated that, despite the images which were uncovered and revealed in April 2004 and February 2006 showing inmates being tortured and humiliated by US guards at Abu Ghraib, "the same failure to ensure due process that prevailed then, however, and facilitated - perhaps even encouraged such abuses – is evidenced today by the continuing detentions without charge or trial of thousands of people in Iraq who are classified by the occupation force as 'security internees'."

When should a great nation such as ours be expected to actually exercise some of the justice, due process, and freedoms that this administration claims to be defending with its "war on terrorism"? How long will the Bush regime be able to claim immunity from international law in their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially since they now insist that the elections in both countries were about transferring authority in those countries out of U.S. hands?

There is no more immediacy to be pointed to in the U.S. claims of impunity. It's hard to see how they will be able to insist they're still at war and require some buffer between our forces and those detained who they've decided are against them. Every day that the new Iraqi authority reigns, the duplicity and imbalance of our forces becomes more and more apparent to Iraq's citizens and to the world. Every time we exercise our heavy hand there, our nation becomes more complicit in the continued unrest, violence, and subsequent killings.

The continued, unwarranted detention of rounded-up Iraqis has become a self-serving paradox: the prison population increasing as a result of the heightened violence; the violence heightened by our continuing occupation, and by the escalation of our forces in response to the increased violence.

Doesn't Bush and his posse eventually have to prove the guilt of those they have detained?

There is an unprecedented brinkmanship being played out by the Bush regime in regard to their accountability, which will either exaggerate or serve to define the limits of the authority of this Executive branch. The upcoming congressional mid-term elections will almost certainly be the final arbiter of how long he can continue to ignore the laws of the land which don't suit his dominating agenda at home and abroad. The republican Congress has refused to reign him in and will have to be replaced - if Bush isn't - in order to hold his administration responsible and accountable.

Those still held in the military prisons in Iraq deserve our attention. Those of us in the U.S., outside of the Bush regime need to exercise our responsibility to vigilance, and demand accountability of what our military and the Iraqi authority intend to do with the prisoners who are still being held.

There should be no more signal-sending torture and humiliation. That should be declared immediately and the Geneva ban on humiliation should be adopted and published in the military training manuals so that all soldiers will take heed and end the practices once and for all.

They should make every effort, public and otherwise to investigate and prosecute reported abuses, immediately and completely. Anyone found guilty of these should be immediately dismissed and charged. Reparations should be provided where appropriate.

Amnesty lists their own concerns about the protection of detainees and prisoners:

* End indefinite internment of persons in Iraq.

* Ensure that all detainees are informed promptly of the reasons for their detention.

* Ensure that all detainees are brought promptly before a court in order that the court can assess the lawfulness of their detention and order the release of individuals whose detention is found to be unlawful, in accordance with rights set out in Article 9 of the ICCPR.

* Ensure that all detainees are released or charged with a recognizable criminal offense promptly and provided a fair trial in accordance with international law and which excludes the death penalty.

* Ensure that all detainees handed over to the Iraqi authorities are not at risk of being subjected to torture and ill-treatment and where there is such a risk to hold the detainees on behalf of the Iraqi authorities, while criminal proceedings are ongoing and until such time as sufficient safeguards are put in place to prevent torture and ill-treatment.

* Ensure that relatives and legal counsel have prompt access to detainees.

* Ensure that accurate information about their arrest and whereabouts is made immediately available to detainees’ relatives and lawyers.

* Ensure that all detainees are held only in officially recognized places of detention and prohibit the holding of persons without record as "ghost detainees" and any transfer of detainees outside Iraqi territory.

* Ensure that conditions of detention conform to international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Make provision for there to be regular, independent, unannounced and unrestricted visits of inspection to all places of detention by an independent body with appropriate expertise in assessing detention conditions and the treatment of prisoners.

* Provide unhindered access to all places of detention, their installations and facilities, and detainees by relevant international organizations and bodies, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and by Iraqi human rights organizations.

Our nation's political and military should leaders follow the law, and follow the dictates of our own constitution when dealing with the citizens of the fractured nation of Iraq, even more so, as they continue to prosecute this contrived conflict in the name of liberty and Iraqi self-determination.

Our soldiers actions as they detain these Iraqis under command from their superiors, is a part of a larger injustice against the sovereign nation. Most of the actions of the soldiers in pursuit of this imperialistic scheme may yet be accountable, but these agents of America should be considered as operators working within a flawed motive; designed and mandated from the president down, and left to chance and a pipe dream.

We all deserve, and should demand better.



*published tomorrow at http://www.opednews.com/

The Prisoner

STILL let my tyrants know, I am not doom'd to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

He comes with Western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars:
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears:
When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm,
I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

But first, a hush of peace—a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends.
Mute music soothes my breast—unutter'd harmony
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels;
Its wings are almost free—its home, its harbour found,
Measuring the gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound.

O dreadful is the check—intense the agony—
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb—the brain to think again—
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,
If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.

-- Emily Brontë


I'm going to go outside . . . and move on.

Iraqis get off a bus shortly after they were released from a prison in Baghdad June 7, 2006. More than 500 Iraqi prisoners were released from several prisons



A man (R) embraces his brother who was among prisoners released from a jail in Baghdad



Iraqis bow their heads on the ground shortly after they were released from a prison at a bus station in Baghdad





Iraqis embrace each other shortly after they were released from a prison in Baghdad

An injured detainee is helped off a bus, as 594 detainees are released from U.S. and Iraqi run prisons around Iraq, including Abu Ghraib



An Iraqi detainee gestures toward U.S. soldiers through bars of his cell at Abu Ghraib



Iraqi detainees stand in line to be processed for release from Abu Ghraib



Iraqi detainees stand behind razor wire at Abu Ghraib

Ron Fullwood: Hopeless Captives of the New Iraqi Imperium

With more 'anti-insurgency' raids forecast by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki for the near future, backed-up by an escalation of the U.S. forces by as many as 5500 more soldiers transferred in from Kuwait and Germany, there will be an almost certain increase in the numbers of those captured and held . . . more:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_060609_hopeless_captives_of.htm

withdrawl next year? I haven't heard a thing about this until now . . .

I liked the post, btw :)

I cleaned it up in the final:

When Iraq's newly appointed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made the decision to order the release of more than 2500 prisoners from U.S.- and Iraqi-run prisons this week, he must have been worrying over the possibility of the U.S. bugging out next year, as he has predicted . . .

Thanks for reading :hi:

there's oil in the ground that American companies can make money on . . .

And the only thing insuring that are the presence of American troops.

to actually pull our asses out of there, but if we get enough political momentum behind the midterms, I think we can effect some form of retreat, likely a partial one which will, however, leave the remaining troops more vulnerable.

The more the land the oil lies under gets dispersed to Iraq's neighbors, the less opportunity the U.S. has in gaining any corporate leverage on the resources. Much of the oil money that existed before the invasion has vanished into the coffers of the interim authority and their agents. As it stands today, Iraqis haven't been able to extract enough to even fund their own country, much less provide for the profits of any other. The security situation could change, but our forces haven't been able to stop the sabatoge yet. It'll probably get much worse in the near future. That's not to say these idiots won't try . . .

Of course, if we fail to achieve the majority, we can count on the Bush regime attempting to use these soldiers as the military point of their political assault on Iran.

we shouldn't vote for Democrats and pressure both parties to pull out now.

BTW, by "poor deluded bastard" I meant the Prime Minister of Iraq who thinks the US will just leave if they have a stable government, not anybody else's comments.

We didn't go in with force to leave. We went in to stay and control the oil. That's perfectly obvious. Now the question is can the American people exert enough influence on their own government to get the ruling junta out of power?

by becoming the terrorists.

Bush has already declared that troops will not be withdrawn on his watch, although I would suspect to see some victory speeches and meaningful withdrawls closer to November 2008. My only hope is that his predecessor, be they Republican or Democrat, will succeed in bringing some kind of peace to the region. If there is any justice in the world, let somebody else get the glory Bush so desperately craves. Let that person get the Nobel Peace Prize. Let that person be honored with boulevards and arenas in Iraq named after them because they chose peace over war.

I already knew that to hand the presidency to Bush was a terrible act by the Supreme Court. I had hoped that Congress would stand up to him, especially when we still had control of the Senate. My worst fears not only came true, but things have happened since that I would never considered possible. Preemptive war, torture, ghost prisoners, Gitmo, spying on the American people, all of it, and perhaps the worst of all, our country coming to stand for brutality, cruelty, and breaking treaties, all of these things that the Bush administration has come to be known for.

It goes without saying that Saddam was a ruthless, cruel dictator, but the Iraqi people have seen their country destroyed, their loved ones killed, or maimed, by a man equally as cruel. We had no right to invade Iraq, and have no right to remain there now. To claim that we are fighting a "war on terror", as Bush has done, then terrorize the Iraqi people ourselves is so hypocritical that it could only come from an administration as thoroughly corrupt as the current one.

The majority of prisoners might be freed, but we have eliminated any chance of reducing acts of terror throughout the world by our huge blunders in Iraq. We are the terrorists, now, in the eyes of most of the world.

very sad. All of our worst fears come true, indeed.