Robert Dreyfuss, one of the original commentators on the Iraqi government-run torture squads, is writing again, now amid the widely-informed ire raised by the uncovering of torture facilities last Sunday. At TomPaine he gives a round-up of new coverage on evidence of torture and America's belated reponse to unsettling knowledge such as this:
Iraq's interior ministry, whose top officials, strike forces and police commando units (including the so-called Wolf Brigade) are controlled by paramilitary units from Shiite militias, maintained a medieval torture chamber; that inside that facility, hundreds of mostly Sunni Arab men were bestialized, with electric drills skewering their bones, with their skins flayed off, and more; that roving units of death-squad commandos are killing countless other Sunni Arab men in order to terrorize the Iraqi opposition.The US government is rigorously condeming the treatment inflicted by the Iraqi-run government but the moral castigation is politically complicated. While American officials have promised more robust investigation, as the NY Times notes, the underlying assertion of control of the Iraqi government belies previous statements by the US that Baghdad is now an independent actor.
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