Proof CIA still using secret prisons

Photo by Trevor Paglen

Last September, the Bush administration made noise announcing that no more secret prison facilities would be used by the CIA to hold prisoners seized in the "war on terror." Since then, sporadic reports have questioned the truth of this assertion.

Now, with the handover of Al-Qaeda suspect Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi to Guantanamo, it becomes clear he was held in detention in a secret place for months prior.

Why are secret prisons necessary, especially when they have been declared closed by the President? Why must this Administration constitently flaunt the rule of law? And who will hold them accountable?

According to the New York Times:

The Pentagon announced the transfer, giving few details about his arrest or confinement.

Mr. Iraqi’s case suggests that the C.I.A. may have adopted a new model for handling prisoners held secretly — a practice that Mr. Bush said could resume and that Congress permitted when it passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Unlike past C.I.A. detainees, including the Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was held by the agency for several years after being seized in Pakistan in 2003, Mr. Iraqi was turned over to the Pentagon after a few months of interrogation. He appears to have been taken into C.I.A. custody just weeks after Mr. Bush declared C.I.A. jails empty.[...]

Intelligence officials said that under questioning Mr. Iraqi had provided valuable intelligence about Qaeda hierarchy and operations. It appears he gave up this information after being subjected to standard interrogation methods approved for the Defense Department — not harsher methods that the C.I.A. is awaiting approval to use.

A debate in the administration has delayed approval of the proposed C.I.A. methods.

Military and intelligence officials said the prisoner was captured last fall on his way to Iraq, where he may have been sent by top Qaeda leaders in Pakistan to take a senior position in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. That group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing last year of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Tenet Denies CIA Torture

"Journalist" allowing the Administration to manhandle him.

"Listen to me."

"I want you to listen to me!"

Tenet sounds like a stupid Hollywood character, not the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

"There was so much we did not know!"

This kind of bluster is typical of the Bush Administration, which combats solid questions with bullying. They refuse to prove any of their own supposed accomplishments or disprove charges of torture on the grounds that this proof would "threaten our security" ("I can't talk about techniques").

To see the full interview, and see if CBS' journalist actually challenges this nonsense (don't hold your breath) tune into 60 Minutes on Sunday April 29.

Ex-commander at Camp Cropper accused

Lt Col. William Steele, ex prison commander at Camp Cropper, the US' second largest detention facility, is being charged on multiple misconduct charges. The Army says he "mishandled" information, keeping classified information in his personal quarters, and accuses him of inappropriate relations with his interpreter, and of "fraternizing" with the daughter of a detainee. He also allegedly allowed certain detainees to have unmonitored cell phone conversations. He was also accused of possessing pornography. (How many servicemen are innocent of this "crime"?)

Steele will face an "Article 32" hearing to determine whether he will face court-martial.

According to the LA Times:

Steele, whose age was not released, was the commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment. In that role, he was one of a handful of senior officers who reported to the commander of Camp Cropper, Aberle said.

In October, Steele moved to Camp Victory in Baghdad to work with the 89th Military Police Brigade, the Associated Press reported. Some of the charges stem from that period. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum sentence for aiding the enemy is death. U.S. military officials did not say when or where the Article 32 hearing would take place.

Iraqis "do the dirty work" (torture)

The New York Times revealed again in detail, as it has often over the past years, the ways in which the US military allows Iraqi security forces to torture and abuse detainees to gather information. In West Baghdad, Alissa Rubin quotes Iraq security forces bragging about how they whipped a detainee before his two colleagues, and after this the detainee led American forces to their safe house and IED supplies.

What is amazing in this article is the use of loaded words like "culture," "civilization," and "conscience" by both sides. To the US military abuses in Abu Ghraib were a terrible aberration and the whipping of detainees is merely "part of their culture." According to them, it's not "civilization." But then according to the Iraqi Captain, he was simply acting according to his "conscience."

The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that before handing over the detainees to the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front of the other two. The stripes on the detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of whipping with electrical cables, were later shown briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to take a picture.

To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and necessary. They were proud of their technique and proud to have helped the Americans.

"I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession,” Capt. Bassim Hassan said through an interpreter. "We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate." [...]

The Iraqi soldiers were ecstatic. They had delivered. They snapped photos of each other in front of the cache with the blasting cords in their mouths, grinning. The Americans were nervous. "One spark will blow this place up," said First Lt. Michael Obal as an Iraqi soldier flicked a lit cigarette butt within inches of one cache of explosives. "It’s highly unstable TNT."

Later, the Americans plotted into their computers the location of each of the Al Qaeda safe houses that [detainee] Mr. Jassam had pointed out. “He was singing like a songbird,” said First Lt. Sean Henley, 24.

After the prisoner was returned to the Iraqis, Captain Fowler was asked whether the Americans realized that the information was given only after the Iraqi Army had beaten Mr. Jassam. "They are not supposed to do that," Captain Fowler said. "What I don’t see, I don’t know, and I can’t stop. The detainees are deathly afraid of being sent to the Iraqi justice system, because this is the kind of thing they do. But this is their culture."

Lieutenant Obal, the captain’s deputy, was distraught at the thought that the detainee had been beaten. "I don’t think that’s right," he said. "We have intelligence teams, they have techniques for getting information, they don’t do things like that. It’s not civilization."

About 30 yards away, on the other side of the wall, the Iraqi soldiers suggested that the Americans were being naïve. The insurgents are playing for keeps, they say, and force must be answered with force.

"If the Americans used this way, the way we use, nobody would shoot the Americans at all," Captain Hassan said. "But they are easy with them, and they have made it easy for the terrorists."

"I didn’t beat them all, I beat Mustafa in front of the others. We tell him we’re going to string him up." He demonstrated his arms spread wide. "And, I made the others see him," he said.

Captain Hassan and his colleagues said they knew the Iraqi Army has rules against beatings, but "they tell us to do what we have to do," he said.

"For me it’s a matter of conscience, not rules," he said.

Priests on trial for Arizona torture protest

Two California priests, Fransiscan Father Louis Vitale and Jesuit Father Steve Kelly, related to the Catholic Worker movement, were arrested in November 2006 for trespassing at Ft. Huachuca military base in Southern Arizona. They knelt in front of the entry gates to the base to pray, with 120 other protesters, and asked to deliver a letter to the former Chief of Military Intelligence in Iraq. Both have served time for Fort Benning "School of the Americas" protests. They were arraigned April 3 and are awaiting trial in June. From the group Pace e Bene and Redwood City Catholic Worker House respectively, the two are seasoned advocates of non-violence. According to the California Catholic Daily:

Vitale and Kelly were among 120 protesters at Ft. Huachuca. They claim U.S. military intelligence teaches torture interrogation techniques at Ft. Huachuca -- the same techniques used at Abu Ghraib and, allegedly, at Guantanamo.

It was at Ft. Huachuca that Vietnam-era manuals advocating torture techniques were translated into Spanish for use at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia -- a center that, critics have long said, has trained police and military officers who tortured and killed political enemies of repressive Latin American governments.

In November, Vitale and Kelly were arrested for kneeling to pray on the road leading to Ft. Huachuca’s gate. They face federal and state charges for refusing to follow police orders and for trespass. The priests attempted to speak to enlisted soldiers and to deliver a letter to Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast. “Nothing justifies the inhumane treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters,” said the priests’ letter. “Torture is a useless and unreliable tool that leads to an accepted practice of terrorization and the rationalization of wrongdoing.”

Fast had been chief of intelligence in Iraq, responsible for overseeing Abu Ghraib at the time of the tortures there. Exonerated of wrongdoing by military investigators, she was given command of the military intelligence center, located at Ft. Huachuca, in 2005.

Both Vitale and Kelly have been imprisoned before for anti-war and anti-torture civil disobedience. Vitale served time in 2002 and 2006 for protests at Ft. Benning and, in 2003, for obstructing traffic in San Francisco and blocking the entrance to the British Consulate there in protest of the Iraq War. Kelly has served time for attempting to disarm nuclear weapons delivery systems.

“I believe it is a way to raise consciousness,” Vitale told the San Francisco Faith in 2003. “I’m a strong a believer in something Martin Luther King called the ‘theology of stepping off the curb,’ as when he went to Selma and places like that. It’s putting your body there in a non-violent way.”

If convicted in June, Vitale and Kelly could be sentenced to up to ten months in prison.

It is a small victory that the priests will remain free during the pre-trial period. Here is the text of the letter they attempted to deliver to Major General Barbara Fast:

To: Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast -
We are here today as concerned U.S. people, veterans and clergy, to speak with enlisted personnel about the illegality and immorality of torture according to international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions.

We condemn torture as a dehumanization of both prisoners and interrogators, resulting in humiliation, disability and even death. In addition to the hundreds of detainees who have died, we are also concerned about U.S. military personnel. Alyssa Peterson committed suicide after participating in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Lynndie England and others have been imprisoned for their illegal activities.

We are here today at Ft. Huachuca in solidarity with tens of thousands of people at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Ft. Benning, Georgia (formerly known as the School of the Americas) to say that the training of torturers must immediately stop. Nothing justifies the inhumane treatment of our fellow brothers and sisters. Torture by U.S. military personnel has reached alarming proportions and has horrified people around the world.

We are convinced that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is unconstitutional. We totally reject its conclusions. Torture is a useless and unreliable tool that leads to an accepted practice of terrorization and the rationalization of wrongdoing.

We are here today to repent and clearly state that because of our sense of moral and human decency we condemn torture. NOT IN OUR NAME.

Signed this 19th day of November, 2006 -

Louis Vitale,OFM
Steve Kelly, SJ

Biographical data on Vitale and Kelly:

Fr. Louie Vitale is a member of Pace e Bene, whose mission is "to develop the spirituality and practice of active nonviolence as a way of living and being and as a process for cultural transformation." Fr. Vitale is also a co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based organization that has opposed nuclear weapons testing for a quarter of a century. Fr. Vitale recently served six months in jail following his arrest at the Ft. Benning vigil in November, 2005, and was ejected from congressional hearings in September after speaking out against the Military Commissions Act.

Fr. Steve Kelly is a member of the Redwood City Catholic Worker community and has served time in federal prison for the nonviolent direct disarmament of nuclear weapon delivery systems. In December, 2005, Kelly served as chaplain for Witness to Torture, a delegation of over two dozen U.S. anti-torture activists who defied the U.S. embargo of Cuba with a peaceful march through that nation to the gates of the Guantanamo Bay navel base and prison camp.

AP Photographer still in prison 1 year later

Bilal Hussein, an AP photographer who was detained last April by American forces in Ramadi is still in American custody at Camp Cropper one year later. US spokesmen claim Hussein is "still a security threat."



The US military has provided no credible evidence to this effect, claim Hussein's lawyers. Quoting the AP:

Dozens of journalists - mostly Iraqis - have been detained by U.S. troops or Iraqi security forces during the war, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most were released without a trial after short periods, and Hussein is the only one currently being held on such a long-term basis, according to CPJ executive director Joel Simon.

"It's unfathomable to me why, after an entire year, there has been no progress in terms of the legal process moving ahead," Simon said. "If the U.S. government is affirming that they need time to develop evidence ... a year is plenty of time."

Hussein, 35, is allowed one-hour visits from family members once a month. His attorney and AP colleagues also are allowed to see him.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, in a written response Tuesday to AP inquiries, said the case against Hussein has been reviewed four times - most recently in November - by three separate entities in Iraq, among them a review board that includes representatives of the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition.

"Each of these independent, objective, fact-finding reviews considered all available evidence and determined Hussein represented an imperative threat to security and recommended continued detention," Whitman said.

Gardephe dismissed the idea that such hearings constitute due process. He pointed out that Hussein was not present and had no legal representative at those reviews, and had no chance to confront any witnesses against him or call witnesses on his own behalf.

AP executives went public with news about Hussein's detention in September after months of behind-the-scenes negotiations. They said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work for the AP found no inappropriate contact with insurgents.

Cropper as insurgent recruitment center

The LA Times reports that islamic militants are recruiting and operating within Camp Cropper, one of two large US prison camps in Iraq. Camp Cropper's population has swelled to 18,000 with the "surge" operations of 2006-7. The Iraqi government's Human Rights Liaison to the US prisons claims he has warned the US of these growing problems for over a year now. Militants have attempted to control life in the camps, stoked tensions between Sunni and Shite detainees, and have brutally killed suspected informers in the Camp. The Times story quotes a handful of ex-prisoners, and the Iraqi government's Human Rights Liaison. From the Times' Ned Parker:

Extremists conducted regular indoctrination lectures, and in some cases destroyed televisions supplied by the Americans for use with educational videos, banned listening to music on radios, forbade smoking and stoked tensions between Sunni and Shiite detainees, they said.

Iraqis swept up in security operations and held indefinitely while the Americans try to determine whether they have any links to the insurgency are susceptible to the extremists' message, former detainees said.

Their accounts of life in Camp Cropper, the main U.S. detention center at the Baghdad airport, indicate that three years after the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison, the U.S. is still struggling to find a balance in the way it runs its detention system.

Prisons have long served as an incubator for radicals, and mass roundups by the U.S. military after the 2003 invasion are now blamed for antagonizing Iraq's Sunni Arab population and feeding the insurgency.

[...]

U.S. military officials acknowledge that they are battling militants for the hearts and minds of detainees, but deny accusations that they have lost control inside the prisons, or that detainees are treated harshly. They say they have instituted counterinsurgency and educational programs, and are gearing up to launch a more direct effort to confront extremists next month.

Iraqi officials also struggle with a crowded system where prisoners can languish as long as two years before getting a trial. But they say the Americans have allowed militants to flourish in their facilities.

"It looks like a terrorist academy now," said Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry's liaison to U.S. and Iraqi prisons. "There's a huge number of these students. They study how they can kill in their camps. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care.

"The Americans have no solution to this problem," he said. "This has been going on for a year or two, we have been telling them."

A former detainee at Camp Cropper, where Hussein and other high-profile prisoners have been held, said he once watched Sunni militants attack a former police officer they suspected of being an informer. He said six men, their faces hidden by towels, gathered around the victim in a dormitory at 2 a.m.

Two kept a lookout for U.S. soldiers while one man swung a sock stuffed with rocks at the inmate's head, he said. The man tried to get up, but another pressed him down with a foot to the chest. The attackers pummeled his head, spattering themselves with his blood, until he lost consciousness.

Other prisoners then dragged the victim to the front of the hall, where the U.S. guards would find him.

[...]

Abu Tiba said he felt caught between the militants and the Americans.

"It was a psychological war from both the Americans and the religious extremists," he said. "It was terrifying." He said he worried about the U.S. soldiers who shouted at him, and the militants who stowed razor wire to use in fights.

The most powerful figure was a young imam known as Abu Hamza, who they said had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. The Americans had allowed a dangerous cleric to stay in a barracks with ordinary Sunnis, they said.

"He used to give lectures in the morning and night," Abu Usama said. "Anyone who didn't attend the lectures would have a mark against him."

In his lectures, the young radical denounced the Iraqi government, U.S. soldiers, and the entire political process, he said. He also banned smoking in the hall.

"The problem was the Americans didn't know what was going on. They allowed him to preach because they believed in religious freedom," said Abu Usama, 43. The preacher's core supporters were young men who had been radicalized in the ferment after Hussein's ouster.

"Abu Hamza's followers tried to win people over by offering them money and cars when they got out of camp," he said, adding that he had used the prestige his age gives him to rebuff a recruitment effort from a younger member of his tribe, the powerful Dulaimi clan.

The radicals preyed on men who were being held indefinitely, without knowing whether they would be charged. "You'd spend three months not charged with anything and you were innocent — they could get you," Abu Usama said.

Adnan Nabi, a 42-year-old cleric loyal to radical Muqtada Sadr, presided over the Shiite side of the camp, said another of the ex-detainees, who identified himself as Abu Mustafa. He said Nabi banned listening to music on radios and forbade Shiites from talking to Sunnis.

At prayer services, he said, the cleric urged detainees to join Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which has fought U.S. forces on several occasions. When the Americans transferred Nabi to Camp Bucca, a riot broke out and U.S. guards had to use rubber bullets and tear gas, he said.

Abu Mustafa said he and the other Shiites slept in shifts to guard each other after word spread that they had worked for a secular political party. They were forced to swear on a copy of the Koran that they had only been gardeners on the grounds of the party headquarters, he said.

"Prison is the best place to organize an army to destroy the country," Abu Usama said. "Even someone who is innocent … they will brainwash him to do whatever they want, including becoming a suicide bomber."

British TV pulls Iraq abuse drama

Using the unfolding "Iran situation" of the captive British sailors as an excuse, British TV Channel 4 canceled its April 5 airing of the powerful drama "Mark of Cain" about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by British soldiers. "The Mark of Cain" is a complex portrait of the British military presence in southern Iraq. The story involves three soldiers accused of abusing detainees after suffering losses in an ambush. The soldiers are found out when an angry ex-girlfriend denounces them after seeing trophy photos of the abuse. The soldiers are then put on trial. According to the film's press release:

THE MARK OF CAIN is inspired by real life events Iraq. The now notorious pictures and footage that emerged from the prisons of Iraq, showed British soldiers abusing and humiliating prisoners of war. The revelations rocked the army, an institution that prides itself on ‘fair play.’ It placed the role of the British army in Iraq in danger; appearing as the occupiers they had long sought not to be. It left the position of the British army exposed, leaving them vulnerable to further reprisals. Why did the soldiers behave in this way?

Teamed with the reported lack of essential supplies, it led people to question whether the British army was emotionally and physically equipped for such military action, or is this the way soldiers will be led to behave under such extreme pressure?

So controversial is THE MARK OF CAIN, that the release was postponed until the current trial of the British soldiers is concluded.

The film won the Movies that Matter at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. According to the Festival's site:

“It’s a fictional story, but it was triggered off by a small newspaper story [screen writer] Marchant saw about a young soldier who’d taken his camera to develop at a high street store in 2003,” director Marc Munden says. “The guy processing the film immediately phoned the police because the photos were of prisoners being humiliated. The soldier was totally naïve; he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. So Tony started interviewing returning soldiers and their families. It’s completely fictional, but all the elements that occur in the film have taken place in real life.”

The result is a fierce, angry film that probes the events leading up to the British soldiers’ torture of their terrorist ‘suspects’ (arrested on the flimsiest of evidence following an ambush on the squad that leaves two British soldiers dead), and exposes the way senior officers turned a blind eye to the abuse. “He’s a very committed, political writer – there’s not that many like that any more,” Munden says of Marchant. Asked what he looks for in a screenwriter, Munden says: “You’ve got to be completely in love with what they’re trying to say. But it’s really important that I can stamp some kind of authorship on the film.”

Channel Four claims that the airing of the film depicting abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers could have put the British prisoners in Iran at risk. The Channel has rescheduled the film's airing for May 17.

Flannery O'Connor and Abu Ghraib

One of a couple of books receiving attention this year about the deeper meanings of the scandal of Abu Ghraib, and the reaction of Americans to it, is "A Good War is Hard to Find," by David Griffith. He was inspired by some of the themes contained in the American fiction writer Flannery O'Connor, who brutally represented some of the deepest hypocrisies and contradictions, or 'discrepancies,' in the American soul. The New York Times reviews the book, and provides the first chapter. Quoting from it:

CATHOLIC WRITER FLANNERY O'CONNOR would have considered the images of the prison scandal grotesque, but not in what she called "the pejorative sense"-of just plain images of ugliness and ignorance. For O'Connor-whose characters are some of the most memorable grotesqueries in American literature-the grotesque makes visible hidden "discrepancies" between character and belief. Such images "connect or combine or embody two points; one is a point in the concrete and the other is a point not visible to the naked eye."

Take Cpl. Graner, for example. His pick-up truck still parked in the driveway of his Uniontown, Pennsylvania home at the time the pictures broke into the news, bears a license plate with the word Jesus and a picture of a cross. There is also a smooth stone in, appropriately enough, a "weed-choked" flower bed in front of his house, painted with a verse from the book of Hosea: "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to see the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you." [Hoses 10:12 NIV]

This stone is mentioned in most of the early news coverage of the scandal, treated as a bit of profound irony, the kind of coincidence newspaper reporters salivate over. How could a man with this bit of scripture displayed in his "postage-stamp" of a front yard, as one Pittsburgh news weekly described it, commit such atrocious acts? It's an irony the media isn't equipped to engage at any depth.

Such ironies were the stuff of O'Connor's stories. Her characters think of themselves as Christians or otherwise "good people," but their actions or attitudes reveal otherwise. Their pride blinds them to their own flaws, and only violence-usually from an unlikely source-opens their eyes, and offers them a chance at redemption.

Griffiths continues this same passage in an earlier article at Godspy magazine, and I find his viewpoint provocative and different, and I also love O'Connor, so:

For O'Connor, her native American South was the perfect landscape against which to paint her grotesque figures. But to Catholics in the 1950's O'Connor's fascination with bizarre characters from the nation's most Protestant region was unsettling. She addressed their "certain impatience" with her work in 1963 at a speaking engagement at Georgetown University, in a speech titled "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South":

The American Catholic trusts the fictional imagination about as little as he trusts anything. Before it's well on its feet, he's busy looking for heresy in it. The Catholic press is constantly broken out in a rash of articles on the failure of the Catholic novelist. The Catholic novelist is failing to reflect the virtue of hope, failing to show the Church's interest in social justice, failing to show life as positive good, failing to portray our beliefs in a light that will make them desirable to others.

O'Connor accounts for this by accusing the Catholic reader of being "more Manichaean than the Church permits... by separating nature from grace."

"Manichaeism"—or Dualism—was a third-century religion inspired by a Persian, Mani. It claimed the universe was governed by two eternal, separate—and equal—forces: Good and Evil. Dualism has a certain attraction for Christians. In fact, in his Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said, "I personally think that next to Christianity, Dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market." But, Lewis continued, "It has a catch to it." Lewis, drawing from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, does his usual brilliant job of refuting Dualism, and showing why Christianity is not dualistic—that the one eternal principle in Christianity, God, is good, that everything God made is good, and that evil is merely a perversion of the good:

"And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel? That is not a mere story for children. It is a real recognition of the fact that evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers that enable evil to carry on are power given to it by goodness. All the things which enable a man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things—resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself. That is why dualism, in a strict sense, will not work."

How to account for evil, then? Lewis continues: "God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right." Evil is the pursuit of good things—pleasure, money, power, etc., "by the wrong method."

That's O'Connor territory. Her stories reveal the hidden evil residing in the human heart, the pursuit of good that masks a secret pride.

Some have questioned her preoccupation with the sins of upright, decent people. But there's a significant precedent—in the Gospels. Consider the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:

"Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.

The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.'

But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'

"I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted." [Luke 18:10-14]

The parable seems overly harsh on the Pharisee. But that's only because we've forgotten what pride is. Lewis reminds us: Pride is "the essential vice, the utmost evil... it is the complete anti-God state of mind." Then there's St. Thomas Aquinas: "Pride extinguishes all the virtues and destroys all the powers of the soul, since its rule extends to them all."

Pride sets us against each other, and, most important, against God. To cure us of it, God allows us to sin. Again, St. Thomas: "the gravity of sins of pride is shown by the fact that God allows man to fall into other sins in order to heal him from pride."

For O'Connor, God's providence was realized not despite our sins, but through them. Removing sin from life—or fiction—meant essentially cutting yourself off from the possibility of grace. Life—or literature, becomes either sentimental or obscene, and while "preferring the former, and being more of an authority on the latter," the Catholic reader fails to see their similarity. "He forgets," she continues, that:

sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence and that innocence whenever it is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite... Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

The opposite of innocence? Abu Ghraib, maybe? When we consider the United States, was there ever a country more naively, optimistically moral? But by separating sin from nature, we forever see ourselves as innocent and exceptional—a chosen people ordained by God to rid the earth of evil. Was there ever a greater occasion for pride? Is this the real meaning of the Abu Ghraib photographs? Are these images evidence of the subterranean flaw beneath our benevolent, Christian surface?

For Flannery O'Connor, such contradictions explained Southern literature's tendency toward the violent and grotesque.

The South is struggling mightily to retain her identity against great odds and without knowing always, I believe, quite in what her identity lies. An identity is not made from what passes, from slavery to segregation, but from those qualities that endure because they are related to truth. It is not made from the mean average or the typical but often from the hidden and most extreme.

According to O'Connor, the South was not so much "Christ-Centered" as "Christ-Haunted." She believed that the most challenging images of Christ were pushed aside in the South in favor of more palatable ones, ones that would allow for the continued separation and inequality between the races. However, these sublimated images eventually return as "fierce and instructive" ghosts, to cast menacing shadows across the landscape. These menacing shadows are the raw material of much Southern literature, from the well-mannered, sober Eudora Welty to the drunken tortured genius of Faulkner. And as Susan Sontag pointed out in her New York Times Magazine essay about Abu Ghraib, "The Pictures Are Us," those same ghosts can be seen in the lynching photos of the late 19th and early 20th century.

And so we see America, 2004, also as "Christ-Haunted." Tom Junod's article "Jesus 2004," which appeared in the May issue of Esquire, reports that 80% of Americans believe in Jesus Christ and consider themselves Christian. What differs wildly, however, is exactly who these 80% think they're believing in. Junod's piece reveals there is no consensus, but in general Christ is a good guy, he's there for us when we need him, he's personable, even handsome. Ultimately, Junod's piece suggests the personalization of Jesus, the recasting of Jesus in our own (inevitably disordered) human image. This is a phenomenon O'Connor was witnessing even in the early sixties. Our concept of Christ has, O'Connor wrote, "gone underneath and come out in distorted forms."

Griffith's blog is a good read too.

The Prisoner or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair

The film had a "limited release" in the US in March after debuting at the SWSX Festival in Austin. I would like to see this in a theater and not on DVD!

Two Iraqi prisons "crammed"

The New York Times reports today that two Iraqi detention centers designed together to hold just over 100 people are now holding nearly a thousand.

In one of the detention centers, in the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, 705 people were packed into an area built for 75, according to Maan Zeki Khadum, an official with the monitoring group. The other center, on Muthana Air Base, held 272 people in a space designed to hold about 50, he said, and included two women and four boys who were being held in violation of regulations that require juveniles to be separated from adults and males from females.

In an interview, Mr. Khadum said a majority of the detainees at the two detention centers had been picked up while the security plan, which began in mid-February, was being put into effect.

He said the detention system had been suffering from a problem of “fast detention and very slow release, especially for those who are not guilty.” His group includes 17 lawyers and is working under a government committee run by the Shiite politician Ahmad Chalabi.

The prison slop (spoils) of war

Prison food is more important than it sounds. After all, the riots in Abu Ghraib which MPs allege led to the most heinous prisoner abuse were spurred by rotten, infested food served up by contractor American Service Center (ASC), based in Qatar.

One Australian catering firm that succeeded ASC, called Morris Corporation, is back. In 2004, the firm lost a $100 million contract for food provision in US prisons in Iraq in 2004 due to a shady decision and what appears to be corruption by Pentagon darling Halliburton. Cheney's favorite corporation was subcontracting the meal service to Morris and a Kuwaiti partner, who apparently did not appreciate being asked for 3-4% kickbacks as penalties for lateness. (Halliburton was also stealing from the meal-allocated funds.)

Morris later won $20 million in damages from Halliburton after an acrimonious legal battle.

This week, Morris won the $65 million contract to supply meals to the 5,000 prisoners in Camp Cropper.

None of the food will come from Iraq, neither will local Iraqi staff be allowed to prepare the food. The company's chief executive was reached by The Age in Romania, where he was recruiting "third country nationals" to work in Iraq.

Morris Corp chief executive Robert McVicker, who is in Romania on a recruitment drive, said last night the company was "bidding aggressively" for work in Iraq, tendering for contracts totalling more than $200 million.

Mr McVicker said its previous catering deal, in which it was subcontracted by Halliburton, became "messy" because of the company's reliance on a joint venture partner. Its latest contract was with the US military.

As part of the deal, Morris Corp is expected to build accommodation for its workforce of Australians, Americans and other third country nationals, numbering about 250, within Camp Cropper. Its workers would be confined to the compound. "Staff won't leave the facility at all," Mr McVicker said. "That's the nature of working in war zones. You can't wander down to the corner shop and buy an ice-cream …

"Some people who come and work in these places love it. Others arrive, hear a mortar in the distance and want to get straight back onto the plane and go home. That's where the selection process has to be pretty careful."

In it together: Anglos dodging responsibility, spending (and earning) a fortune

In the UK, the acquittal of two British officers in the killing of Baha Mousa in Basra in 2003 led many to question the use of military trials. The proceedings against a number of officers involved in the death of Mousa all led to acquittals, an apparently cost the British taxpayer over £20 million. The judge who acquitted the men said there was no evidence against the men because there was an obvious, inpenetrable code of silence among those involved. And just today, we learn that 10 British detainees in Basra pulled a quite simple escape.

In Canada, the controversy over the investigation of the "handing over" and disappearance of a Taliban soldier captured on the battlefield to the Afghan Army rages on. Meanwhile, miltary lawyers appointed to defend Canadian Omar Khadr, the only juvenile brought to Guantanamo from Afghanistan, say the cards are stacked against him. The US has used coercion and torture to gather the majority of "admissable evidence." His lawyers also claim the Canadian government is abandonning the now 20-year-old Khadr.

In the US, the beginning of a hearing to determine whether the only officer charged with Abu Ghraib abuses shall face court martial hearings revealed that Sgt Steven Jordan plans to dispute the legality of evidence against him. He claims that investigating Generals Fay and Taguba did not properly inform him of his rights.

Also, Staff Sgt. Ray Girouard was found guilty of negligent homicide in relation to the killings of three prisoners north-west of Baghdad in May 2006. The maximum sentence for this is three years, whereas premeditated murder carries up to life without parole. He was also convicted of covering up the crimes. His attempts to prove he was under orders to "kill at military-age men" and pass responsibility up the military command seemed to have failed. But he raised significant questions about the orders he was given.

Australian Prime Minister's surprise visit to the troops in southern Afghanistan reminds that Australian David Hicks, captured in Afghanistan in 2001, is awaiting his military commission trial. His lawyers are attempting to delay the proceedings, challenging the his very detention in US courts. He will in any case appear in a hearing on March 23, the first time he will have seen his family in 2 1/2 years. Meanwhile, an Australian firm Morris Corporation, won the $65 million contract to supply meals at US Detention facilities in Iraq.

Command responsibility defense in Iraq detainee killings

The trial of 101st airborne Staff Sgt. Ray Girouard, who is being blamed for ordering the killing of three detainees in Thar-thar, northwest of Baghdad, in May 2006 is already cutting straight to the issue of command responsbility. The LA Times provides coverage of the trial in Ft Campbell, Kentucky. Girouard claims that he had orders to "kill every military-age male" and that he was screamed at by his superior Sgt. Eric Geressy after Girouard reported they had taken prisoners. Here is a video of Geressy talking about a counterinsurgency raid in Samarra. For background, see the site Expose the War Profiteers.

FT. CAMPBELL, KY. — A senior enlisted man testified Wednesday that he had angrily asked over a military radio why his soldiers had not killed several Iraqi men they had taken into custody during a combat sweep in Iraq last May.

Minutes later, three detainees were shot dead. A 101st Airborne Division squad leader, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, is charged with ordering his soldiers to kill the Iraqis.

"I don't understand why … we have these guys alive!" 1st Sgt. Eric Geressy testified he shouted over the radio shortly before two soldiers in Girouard's squad shot and killed the unarmed Iraqis.

Testifying at Girouard's court-martial, Geressy said he believed the Iraqis had been shooting at his men during a firefight and thus should have been killed. In fact, the men had been detained without incident after a May 9 air assault by Girouard's squad on a marshy island 60 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Geressy's radio comments were significant for Girouard's defense team, which maintains that top commanders gave orders to kill every military-age Iraqi male on the island. A soldier who admitted killing the detainees testified Tuesday that he believed that Girouard, in telling his men to kill the detainees, was responding to Geressy's outburst.

"That's what [Geressy] wanted. That's why I proceeded," Pvt. William B. Hunsaker testified during Tuesday's opening session.

Asked by defense lawyer Anita Gorecki whether killing the detainees was what "higher" — the unit's higher command — wanted, Hunsaker replied, "Yes, ma'am."

Girouard, 24, is the highest-ranking of four squad members charged with murdering the detainees. Hunsaker, 24, and two others have pleaded guilty under agreements that require them to testify for the government.

Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, 22, testified Tuesday that they killed the detainees after Girouard told them to cut off their plastic zip ties, let them flee and then shoot them. Hunsaker and Clagett have been sentenced to 18 years in prison; they originally faced life without parole if convicted.

US' growing Iraq prison-industrial complex

It was recently reported that the Pentagon would be calling up 2,200 more MPs to serve in Iraq to accompany the "surge" in troops. Now the Washington Post reports they are making plans to allow for at least a 30% increase in the number of US detainees at Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper. The total number at Camp Bucca is currently over 13,000. Cropper only has 3,300 but expects to grow by 5,000 detainees over the next couple of months.

This would bring the total numbers to over 21,000 -- the highest yet. What is the end game, especially given the growing evidence that the Iraqi justice system abuses, neglects and tortures prionsers?

The story reveals some interesting details. Attempts to build Iraqi capacity within are stymied by bureaucratic and security-related regulations. And none of the food served to the over 16,000 people comes from within Iraq. Also, the prison workforce is comprised of "third-country nationals." Where are they from? What are they paid? What about the insurance and health care? (See the story of TITAN interpreter Mazin Al Nashi.)

The Camp Cropper contract proposal, reviewed by The Washington Post, underscores the detainee increase and offers insight into U.S. detention practices in Iraq -- including a ban against hiring local staffers and an emphasis on meal practices sensitive to local traditions.

According to the food contract, local Iraqis and Iraqi companies are prohibited from preparing and serving food for the detainees. Neither the U.S. government nor Iraqi government "presently has a vetting process which would accommodate Iraqi employees while ensuring adequate security," according to the contract proposal.

Instead, the contactor is to use "expatriates and third-country nationals." Any third-country nationals hired must live in trailers or tents provided by the contractor on a U.S. military base near the food facility. "This was done for the security and safety of the installation and the workers" and at the request of the U.S. military police battalion on the base, Siegfried said.

The Iraqi guards at the facility are employees of Iraq's Ministry of Justice, which supposedly vets them. Nonetheless, while working at the Camp Cropper detention facility, the guards must be matched with U.S. soldiers, escorted by U.S. units as they travel to and from work, and housed in a compound on the base guarded by U.S. forces, Siegfried said.

However, the guards receive some benefits: Their meals on the base include a wider selection of food and "shall consist of 25% larger portions" than detainees' meals, according to the contract.

All food consumed at the Camp Cropper prison must be purchased outside Iraq and convoyed into the country by either U.S. or Iraqi military forces, according to the contract. That is because food vendors must be inspected by U.S. officials and "currently there are no Iraqi-approved sources for food contracts," said Siegfried.

British judge lets off senior officers

In relation to the Baha Mousa homicide in Basra, it appears that command responsibility weighed into a judge's decision to drop charges against five officers blamed with the abuse that led to the Hotel receptionist's demise in 2003. He said in relation to the 36 hours of abuse that led to Mousa's death, some of the "techniques" were approved by the officer's superiors. Those techniques included "conditioning" the detainees for questioning by putting them in stress positions and requiring them to wear hoods. One wonders is the beatings sustained by Mr. Mousa were also approved.

Another officer, Col Jorge Mendonca also was recently acquitted for responsibility in the Mousa homicide.

Now the big question: will prosecutors move up the chain of command?

Court-martial hearing for Abu Ghraib officer

The only officer to be charged for offenses relating to the heinous torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003-4, Lt Col. Steven L Jordan, will face another hearing to decide whether or not he should be court martialed. The military's own Fay Report concluded that he failed to control the situation at Abu Ghraib and failed to adequately train his soldiers. His "Article 32" hearing in October, he claims, was unfair because the presiding officer unfairly admitted written witness statements that were not evidence when ruling.



If the presiding officer in this hearing today decides Lt Col. Jordan should face a court martial hearing, it will tentatively be scheduled for July, according to MSNBC.

Some ironic advice for wardens in Iraq

For a rare taste of detention from the warden's side, this op-ed in the LA Times. Carlson served in the Fallouja detention center in much of 2006, and is currently pursuing a Masters in creative writing.

The warden of Fallouja
Taking charge of a detention center in Iraq? Here's what you need to remember. By Mike Carlson


[ 1 ] They're not prisoners, they're "detainees."

It sounds better, as if they're merely inconvenienced rather than shoehorned into cinderblock cells, thumbing their military-issued Korans and waiting to be interrogated. One-third are innocents caught up in sweeps; one-third are jihadists who will slit your throat, and one-third are opportunists who will rat out their neighbors. You will hold them for 14 days, no more, while the interrogators try to figure out who is what. Each gets a CF, for Camp Fallouja, and a four-digit number. No names will be used, mainly because numbers fit more easily onto spreadsheets. They will be forever known as entas. "Enta" means "you" in Arabic, and that's what you call them day after day, meal after meal, port-a-potty call after port-a-potty call. "Enta, ishra mai," you say, and the enta drinks his water, and if you say, "Enta, ishra mai kulak," he drinks all of his water, every drop, and holds the bottle upside down to prove it.


[ 2 ] It's not personal.

The enta who screams "meesta!" every 10 seconds for 48 hours straight isn't doing it to infuriate you, his captor. What it boils down to is that he can't pronounce "mister," and he was carrying that 155-millimeter round in the back of his pickup, and he was going to try to blow you up, and the reason he was picked by the insurgent leaders to haul the shell is that he's soft in the head, which is why he cannot stop screaming "meesta!"

The major who watches NASCAR races on satellite TV in his air-conditioned office at the battalion headquarters while you and your Marines march entas to and from the latrines in 120-degree heat isn't doing it to antagonize you, his subordinate. Frankly, he's just over here for the retirement money, and he didn't want to be in charge of four regional detention facilities in Al Anbar province any more than you wanted to end up as the warden in Fallouja. He wants to keep his head down and forget about the fact that if one, just one, of your Marines snaps and goes Abu Ghraib on a detainee, his pension is out the window.


[ 3 ] You won't fire your weapon in anger.

You'll fire plenty of training rounds. You'll be awakened nightly by outgoing artillery shells being blasted into the ether a mere 400 meters from your tin-can hooch, where you fall asleep to the drone of your air-conditioning unit and the faint yelps from the sergeant-next-door's porn videos.

Your fingers will ache from absently squeezing the grip of your M16A4 during endless nighttime convoys, transporting detainees from Fallouja to Abu Ghraib or Camp Cropper. The only illumination in the back of the truck will come from the red-lens flashlight you pan across the entas to make sure none of them have wormed loose from their flex cuffs and hatched a plot to kill you.

Your truck will stop one night outside Abu Ghraib. You will wait for explosive ordnance techs to clear a suspicious burlap bag. Because there are so many bombs, you never know how long you'll sit exposed on the road. During the second hour, CF-4562 will ask you in perfect English if he can pee. You will escort him to the edge of the road. When he thinks you aren't looking, 4562 will slink away from you and your rifle. You will immediately see through such a feeble escape attempt, and here, outside the site of America's shame, this enta will be one sandal step away from giving you an absolutely justifiable reason to finally click your weapon's selector off of "safe."

You will raise the muzzle slowly with muscles that ache from humping 60 pounds of body armor and ammo and water and Quick-Clot coagulant, but before your thumb moves over the safety, you will automatically say "kiff," Arabic for "stop," because it's been drilled into you as part of the rules of engagement. You will want to shoot, and 4562 will hear that in your voice. He will stop. He will manage a feeble stream of urine before you shoo him back aboard the truck.


[ 4 ] You will be a constant target outside the wire.

A green beam of light will dazzle you through the Cyclops lens of your night-vision goggles as it streaks toward the armored sides of your truck. You will grit your teeth, and the rocket-propelled grenade will hit, and then, by the grace of some malfunction, it will only gouge out a divot from the big green plates, an errant golf swing's worth of metal. You will pan your rifle barrel across the garbage-strewn fields and pockmarked buildings, but you will see nothing, just a stray dog scurrying away from the tiny blast. A feeling of anticlimax will wash over you, of one beer short of the perfect buzz and a throw just wide of the catcher's mitt. You are a Marine and trained to kill, but you can never find any insurgents to shoot.


[ 5 ] You will tell yourself lies about how being shot at will change you.

You won't be able to tell your wife about the near-miss when you call home because you know she'll be worried, and when she worries, she cries, and you cannot, absolutely cannot, have her cry, mainly because it will make you cry, and you're a captain in a crowded phone center surrounded by junior Marines. Your neck will cramp up for two weeks, as if all your fears have been concentrated into a small kernel of misery somewhere north of your shoulder blade. Then, one day, the pain will be gone, and you will walk up to the side of the truck and place your fist inside the divot to remind yourself that it really happened.


[ 6 ] You will screw up.

A sergeant will push one of your female Marines too hard during physical training, and she will turn on the waterworks and accuse him of sexual harassment. You will chew out the sergeant, but later discover that she is simply angry with him for forbidding her to visit her boyfriend in another unit.

You will apologize to the sergeant, but the incident will have cost you some of the platoon's trust, and you will find yourself hating her. She will hate you too, until she goes home early, knocked up by the very same boyfriend she was forbidden to see. You will feel a quick self-righteous high, followed by a prolonged low; your neglect of your own rule — don't take it personally — means you failed her as a leader.


[ 7 ] You will drink water until your urine is clear.

You will drink and drink and keep drinking until you've drained more than 800 bottles of water during your stay in the Iraqi desert.


[ 8 ] Your interpreter will be your greatest hidden ally.

Ali is rotund, aged and bearded, a prototypical Islamic authority figure. He reads the facility rules to all new detainees, his face hidden behind dark glasses and a ball cap. Your understanding of Arabic progresses to the point where you know he's adding regulations. You take him aside, and he explains that he tells the new arrivals that there are snipers in every tower, that trapdoors lurk beyond the borders of each gravel path and that attacking a Marine in the facility would result in a coward's death, voiding the promise of 72 virgins. You allow him to continue.


[ 9 ] You won't abuse any detainees.

Your property room will hold a sniper rifle that killed a Marine and bears the fingerprints of the man inside Cell 4A. Evidence photos will show a bomb crater and bloody boots with shinbones still laced inside, and wires that lead from the crater to the home of CF-7634. As you perform your daily cell checks, you will occasionally want to smash and kick and eye gouge and palm-heel strike. But you won't. You will need to look in the mirror tomorrow when you shave.


[ 10 ] You will get by with 20 words of Arabic.

When your prisoner-release convoy is waved into a field strewn with basketball-sized boulders by an Army lieutenant too new to speak Arabic, that will be just enough to get the entas to stop washing their feet and shouting blessings to Allah and to herd them into the civil affairs compound. Later, an 18-year-old lance corporal will fall asleep at the wheel and swerve off the Fallouja cloverleaf. As the 7-ton rumbles down the embankment, the entas will fling themselves off the truck. One enta will break his arm, and, again, your 20 words will coax him into medical treatment. Through it all — the bungled release, the accident, the medevac — you will not be attacked. Two days later, a similar convoy traveling the exact same route will be blown up by an IED, and the ache in your neck will return for another two weeks.


[ 11 ] After seven months, you will fly home.

On the way back to the U.S., your Marines will be told by Maj. NASCAR that they can drink, and they will — to excess. You will resign yourself to breaking up the inevitable fights, and as you step between two Marines about to swing, you will realize that this has been your purpose. You set limits.


[ 12 ] You will return to civilian life.

You will be jumpy and vaguely unsatisfied, disconnected from the civilians around you who care only about text messages and gas prices and catty e-mails. Navy doctors will find Iraqi sand trapped in the innermost pathways of your ear canals. Your wife now snores, and all her unfamiliar noises combine to drive you from your bed.

On one such night, you will turn on the television news and see that Anna Nicole Smith's death has trumped the coverage of America's 3,118th fatality, 31-year-old Petty Officer 1st Class Gilbert Minjares Jr. You will note that, at 39, Smith was younger than most of the helicopters flying in Iraq. You will turn off the TV and sit in the dark and feel your eyes water as you think about how you took 55 Marines and sailors into a combat zone and brought all 55 back home, and that no one in America besides you and those 55 really cares or understands what you went through.

You processed 1,230 detainees, without a single incident of abuse, while America sat on the couch and watched girls go wild. As far as you know, you killed no one. This used to bother you, because killing is what Marines are trained to do. But now, after viewing documentaries and reports that paint American forces as Redcoat invaders, you take some comfort in the fact that you never pulled the trigger.

Those numbers — 55, 1,230 and 0 — will allow you to sleep tonight, and the next night, and the next. But each night you will insert a mouth guard made of silicone before you go to sleep, because your dentist informs you that you are always, always, always unconsciously grinding your teeth.

The Prisoner

Another documentary on Abu Ghraib, featured in this month's Vanity Fair, is sure to make waves in the US in March. "The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair" is a surreal film about the arrest of journalist Yunis Khayater. His arrest, caught on tape by documentarist Michael Turner who included the footage in his awarding-winning Gunner's Palace. After the release of this documentary, Turner received an email from a "friend" of Yunis' -- Benjamin Thompson, an American who served at Abu Ghraib. He wanted contact Yunis, saying, "I felt that these people were my good friends and that we survived that hell together with support from one another. I truly love these people."

The story has a number of surreal elements, starting with Yunis' arrest for an alleged, far-fetched accusation that the journalist was plotting to kill Tony Blair. He was plunged into the nightmare world of Abu Ghraib where he met Thompson.

Read more in Vanity Fair, visit the film's site, or see the trailer here.

Blunder #3: Prisons and prisoners

From the Talking Points Memo Cafe (a progressive forum for debate), by Marshall Adame, the former director of the Basra airport, "Six Blunders we made in Iraq we can still fix":

3. Prisoners and Prisons

Problem: From 2003 until today our coalition forces have captured or killed some of the most dangerous people in the world. These people will never have the opportunity to hurt anyone else in Iraq or anywhere. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in the process of combing Iraq for bad guys, field commanders, for one reason or another, and at times indiscriminately, have confined many men and women without any specific charges or reasons that can be remembered or recorded. We have, in essence, deprived many people of their liberty with out any real reason or purpose. As a result the coalition now faces the problem of building more prisons even with the knowledge that a very large percentage of the detainees are most likely not ever going to be charged with a crime and may in fact be not guilty of any crime other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time or having the wrong friend or relative. The possibility here is that we may have separated innocent fathers from their wives and children, sons from their families, daughters from their only source of protection and support and in the process created many more enemies. Consequently the coalition has, without charge or specific reason, confined many innocent people and deprived them, without cause, of the very liberties we came here to preserve. Even in war, the principles of due process, within reason, must be upheld.

The most viable fix: The New Iraqi Prime Minister should announce an immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners that fall into certain categories (not including those captured in hostilities or known to be involved in hostile activities).

Categories: All Handicapped * All prisoners over 50 years old *

All only sons * All women not specifically charged but have been confined for over 60 days * All confined persons under the age of 16 * All detainees in any juvenile facility in Iraq * All females under the age of 18 not specifically charged with a violent crime against Iraqi or Coalition forces.(Not to include the charge of “throwing rocks”) *

All Imams, Sunni and Shia, not specifically charged with a violent crime, conspiracy to commit a violent crime, or aiding and abetting the enemy * All persons confined for misdemeanors or petty theft or confined for the reason of failure to pay a debt.

(The June 2006 announcement by PM Maliki of the planned release of 2,500 detainees in Iraqi and Coalition prison facilities was a great start and better late than never, but the numbers of prisoners remaining is staggering, many of whom still having not been told why they were detained. The Coalition, being responsible for the vast majority of the detainments, should be concentrating on a means to provide the process by which the rest can be either charged and held, or simply released and compensated for having their liberties violated without cause. The planning effort should not be on building new prisons to hold people who will ultimately be released with out charge. This equates to simply leaving the problem to the new government). Any release schedules should not be conditioned on political timing as those recently announced. Depriving anyone of his or her liberty, even for a short time for a political advantage, should be unconscionable to those of us who enjoy protections from that very thing.

Every person in these release categories and never charged should be released with a letter of assurance that they are not considered criminal or enemies of Iraq, $500US or $15US per everyday of confinement (which ever is greater) and assured transportation home. They should not necessarily be required to sign any renouncement of violence since the only violence having occurred may have been our violence against them in the process of arrest and detainment. They should be asked to sign an acknowledgement that they may have been detained wrongly due to unpredictable circumstances brought on by the hostilities occurring in Iraq and that they understand that the county if Iraq does not classify them as having a criminal record of any kind as a result of their arrest and confinement.

(Two of my soldier sons came to Iraq and one was wounded during a battle in Baqubah. I would like them to believe we all serve for the preservation of very specific principles and rules of behavior regarding other human beings, even during war. We do not herald our principles of liberty because we are strong, rather we are strong because of our belief and respect for these principles. If we sacrifice the very principles of inalienable rights that define who we are, then we sacrifice our right to defend the helpless. We will have surrendered our banner of hope and liberty).