Back to Abu-Ghraib

Well it's all spilling out into the open now. The barbarism that has characterised Imperial rule is turning into a deluge of evidence showing systematic and widespread abuse on a scale unimagined by those Empire Loyalists still clinging to the imagined fig-leaf of respectability they project on to the British State.

It isn't about the Mowgli, Baden Powell and Kate Adie any more, it's about squaddies beating up kids on the streets of Basra having helped to lay waste to their country and murder their families.

Can you call it irony that the teenagers were protesting about unemployment when the British Army targets dole offices for its recruitment drives?

According to the MOD: "The overall cost of operations in Iraq in 2002-03 was £848M. The overall cost of operations in Iraq in 2003-2004 was £1311M. The costs incurred in 2003-2004 include the costs of combat operations from 1 April 2003, the costs incurred in maintaining and supporting subsequent peacekeeping operations and the costs of recuperating operational capability afterwards. The cost for 2004-05 is £910M."

I make that £3069 M. Heres their figures... Whew! And old people are dying of fuel poverty?

As Jasem al-Aqrab writes ('The Basra video should lay to rest a scurrilous lie'):

"The smug superiority of the British over their peacekeeping efforts in Iraq is an insult to those of us who live there. Since April 2003, the people of Basra have consistently been bemused by reports that they and their city enjoy a state of calm and stability under the command of the British forces, in contrast to the north of Iraq and the so-called Sunni triangle. As someone born and bred in Basra, I hope that the recent images of British troops beating young Basra boys to within an inch of their lives will allow such claims to be laid to rest and show a fraction of the reality that has made life throughout Iraq a living hell.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke a couple of years ago, I recall a commentator on the BBC World Service smugly saying that the Americans were heavy-handed and undisciplined when it came to dealing with civilians, while the British were far more restrained, touring Basra in their berets as peacekeepers rather than occupiers. My estimation of the BBC World Service dipped when the other side of the picture was not presented."

Full article here...

Meanwhile the Special Relationship grows warmer every day. The Sydney Morning Herald has the photos the White House doesn't want you to see here... The pictures show guards smiling as they stand beside blood-soaked and hooded prisoners, some of whom are tied to unidentified apparatus.

The release of further pictures of torture makes it impossible for the US to claim that what happened in Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 was isolated and the work of low-level guards acting on their own initiative, which is the spin they've been pitching so far.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been granted access to the images under US freedom of information laws, but the US government is appealing, Dateline said. An ACLU lawyer, Amrit Singh, told Dateline the images were evidence of "appaling and widespread abuse" by American soldiers.