Those accused of the prison abuse in Iraq did not just decide to do this out of the blue. I do not believe the "few bad apples" defense. Where did they get the leashes, hoods, electrocution equipment, etc..? Was this some of Saddam's leftover torture equipment? The post 9/11 propaganda is the cause. As you will see this administration has since then tried to use 9/11 to say the United States is above the law. Also to make sure that anyone or country that is on our hit list, Axis of Evil, is dehumanized. It is now undeniable that the abuse was systemic.

The people of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The people of Iraq had and still have not conspired with Al Qaeda. What do you think most of the soldiers thought they were going to Iraq to do? Liberate the Iraqi people or get revenge for 9/11? If a majority of the American sheeple thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11 what percentage of the military was brainwashed into believing this lie? Their superiors taught them this, systemic. So now that the military is clear that all Iraqis are terrorists and have been dehumanized enough what do you think will happen to those that are imprisoned? Exactly. Of course there was a very strict policy in place to determine who was taken into custody, Up to 90% of Iraqi detainees arrested by mistake, Red Cross says:

The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.

''Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people,'' it said.

It was unclear what the Red Cross meant by ''mistake.'' However, many Iraqis over the past year have claimed they were arrested by American forces because of misunderstandings, bogus claims by personal enemies, mistaken identity or simply for having been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't forget though, they hate us because of our freedom. Stan Goff, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, writes this:

When one uses the term "systemic," (s)he is saying that the source of this abuse is not individual moral failure, but a predictable expression of the system and its structures.

The abuses of detainees, by US troops, by CACI International and Titan Corporation mercenaries, and by the CIA in Iraq, is "systemic."

There is that word again, systemic. All the way from the top down, from the President and Secretary of Defense. Here is the President speaking of the International Criminal Court (ICC):

"The International Criminal Court is troubling to the United States," Bush told reporters following a tour at a Milwaukee church. "As the United States works to bring peace around the world, our diplomats and our soldiers could be drug into this court, and that's very troubling -- very troubling to me."

Here is your Secretary of Defense trying to justify why "our" war is different:

Precisely because murder and rape and torture are more common during wartime, past U.S. governments have ratified the Geneva Conventions, which were designed to enforce the rule of law, however badly or weakly, during wartime. But although these particular international laws have never been controversial, it has nevertheless became fashionable, in some Washington circles, to argue that America is now somehow above them and to suggest that they need not be taken quite so seriously as in the past. Back in February 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay were not even entitled to a hearing establishing whether the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war applied to them. Perhaps it didn't, but Rumsfeld wasn't willing to prove the case in a court: "The set of facts that exist today with the al Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Convention was fashioned," he claimed.

As these two instances show the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of Defense are saying that the United States is above reproach. Remember this?

Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are."

Now we know where the boy gets it. So to wrap up. This is a systemic problem. From the top down, including the whole chain of command starting with the President. He likes to kill, he has a history of it. Besides I'm sure the soldiers believe they are only getting even for what was done to us on 9/11.



This is a repost of a Stan Goff letter to the troops from about 6 months ago
Hold On to Your Humanity
Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,

I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you--some more extreme than others--are changes I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.


- posted by Mom/Dad @ 7:47 AM