Fuck Iraq, part VI

And so we return to where we began. Over a year ago, soldiers from the Oregon Army National Guard raided a compound in Baghdad run by the new Iraqi Interior Ministry and discovered dozens of detainees who had been beaten, tortured, and starved. That time, they were ordered to return the detainees to their abusers and just walk away. On Sunday, US soldiers searching for a missing 15-year old raided another Interior Ministry site, and made a similar discovery: 170 detainees locked in a basement, malnourished and showing signs of torture. According to one witness, the injuries included

...signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies.

Unlike last time, the soldiers were actually allowed to do something about it, and the Iraqi government has now begun an investigation (though whether it will be anything more than a whitewash remains to be seen). The US has also said it is "troubled" by the incident - which while an improvement on their normal non-response to evidence of torture by their Iraqi proteges, is still a long way from what they should be saying. When Saddam Hussein was doing things like this, they called him a monster. Surely Iraq's new torturers deserve the same label - and the same treatment?

Again, it has to be asked: was this, the replacement of one group of brutal torturers with another, really worth the deaths of 30,000 civilians? And when are the "liberal hawks" who pushed for war to end Saddam's torture going to admit that their good intentions have led us straight to hell?