Iraq war logs: "they are devastating"

Creating hate thus enemies from the innocent, added to the devastating terror wrought daily from death and destruction!

The truth for Hanaan Hamood Matrood

The stomach-churning torture revealed by the Iraq war logs is our problem as much as America's

24 October 2010 - Six and a half years after the "shock and awe" of the first days of war in Iraq come the Iraq war logs. For the Pentagon, they are devastating, documenting in fine detail the indifference with which Iraqi human life was viewed. For the British people, they ought to raise important questions as to what our forces knew.

Aside from questions of complicity, however, the logs also provide an opportunity to properly interrogate a more salient question: how did we treat the Iraqi man, woman and child?

The stomach-churning, systematic torture meted out by the Iraqi police and military is our problem as much as it is America's. In many of the 142 cases in which Public Interest Lawyers acts, UK forces are alleged to have handed over detainees to the Iraqi authorities. This was despite the clear indications that many Iraqi police stations were effectively torture chambers that the national authorities were free to run with impunity. Their cover was provided by Fragmented Order 242, which not only allowed but required coalition forces to turn a blind eye where their own forces were not "responsible".

The problem is that they were, and are, responsible. Across the spectrum of human rights, one freedom has always been accorded a special, peremptory status. The prohibition of torture is incapable of restriction. International law and UK domestic law have long buttressed this absolute prohibition by imposing upon the state an obligation to effectively investigate torture where there are clear indications that it may have taken place. {read rest}