Anglo – American: Attempts to contain damageWill it work? [Archives:2004/739/Opinion]

By Abdulkarim Al-Hubaishi
For the Yemen Times
The devil is set free from the corked bottle and it seems very hard to bring it back.
The humiliation and torture of the Iraqi people started from day one of the Anglo – American occupation, this was clear crystal from TV news cameras the world has watched, how the Iraqi civilians were manhandled, laid on the ground with the soldiers' boot on his neck, bound with a plastic cords that cuts into the skin and hooded with plastic bags. We have seen these gruesome scenes showing dozens of hooded back tied male being shipped on trucks in front of their horrified wives and children.
What is very hard for one to conceive is why an unarmed person who has surrendered himself is humiliated in the anguishing way we have seen. Anglo – American prisoners of war have fallen in the hands of the Iraqis in both wars in Iraq. In the previous war captured Anglo – American pilots were treated with relative respect. In the latter war, we have seen how dozens of US prisoners were set free and their lives spared despite their aggressive stance. They were never hooded or back bound.
We have seen the sacred human values of the Iraqi people being violated on their arrest in the streets, in their bedrooms among their families, in the dark nights and in the day lights, but little or nothing is known about where they end up. Apart from Abu Gareib prison and other prisons, there are other roofless barbed wired concentration camps to accommodate the rising daily arrests. Even though the number is played down, the Pentagon admits that thirty thousand Iraqi prisoners have been taken, but the actual number could rise to over double the admitted number. The few pictures we have seen are nothing more than the tip of the iceberg, of a yet heinous submerged crime which requires the common effort of the international community to unravel.
The Bush – Blair administration has already staged a deceptive campaign to contain the moral damage of which they stand answerable to the British and American public who feel their image is bedeviled by the two men and their odd teams in the White House and No. 10 Downing Street. The odd couple is well in tune in their smart deceptive steps to evade answerability to their nations and to international law. The gruesome rape pictures we have seen on the internet where Iraqi girls are being sodomized by US soldiers is a gross crime of immense magnitude against humanity, which cannot be contained by using rank and file soldiers as scapegoats. In the middle of this scandal, stands the US Secertary of State for Defence, Rumsfield, and his top brass generals who are the real culprits who should be brought to justice, even though Rumsfield admitted full responsibility in front of the Senate committee of inquiry. Ironically, President Bush praised him “he has done a good job”. It is all up to the American people to retrieve their credibility.
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