``...One of the key features of US-backed throughout the third world was the institutionalisation of torture against perceived enemies with torture practised routinely and on a wide scale by US-backed counter-insurgency forces.6 The use of coercive techniques as part of the overall counter-insurgency effort were advocated by US trainers and physical and mental coercion was openly advocated as a legitimate part of the counterinsurgents arsenal...''
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I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but while all of the above is obviously true, there is one very significant and critical difference in Iraq. And that difference makes Abu Ghraib relevant. In all other cases, there was a indigenous government in place with legal authority over its citizens. No matter how much the US was manipulating this government and its institutions, it was a government.
There is literally no such thing in Iraq. There is only the US as a military occupation force, pure and simple and it is the only authority. There is no Iraqi authority. At this point Abu Ghraib is purely a US creation.
In previous cases in SE Asia and Latin American for example there was always an in-country government, against which rural and urban guerilla and militias were fighting. The US was propping up the native government armed forces against its enemies.
The consequence of the difference is important because ordinary crimes, civil disputes, marriages, births, and other judicial matters were routinely handled by existing courts or magistrates following whatever were the traditional laws and customs of the country.
In Iraq there is no such legal system in place that I know of. I have no idea how you report a minor crime, get a passport, or get married, settle an estate, record a birth or take care of the other legal matters that are routine parts of social life. The only alternative for most of these I can see is to go to the local Mosque. In other words revert to feudal theocracy.
What the US is trying to do is creat a puppet government it can hide behind and continue its occupation with the excuse that the majority of Iraqis approve of such a sham. The logic then follows that the US is supporting freedom and democracy of a legitimate government and can then proceed to transform its occupation position into something more or less equivalent to the US position in South Vietnam or pre-Sandanista Nicaragua, i.e. an external stabilizing support role of an existing government. The US will then get the UN to seat the US hand picked ambassador who will just be a US mouth piece. Meanwhile the US will hand over its military police state model like Abu Ghraib over to a sham Iraq government, which will do exactly the same thing as the US is doing now---rounding up all opposition off the street, interrogating them, breaking down the resistance and conduct an endless war of repression---following the CIA manuals cited above. In that context then torture resumes its proper role as an adjunct to totalitarian terror.
In other words the US will try to achieve the Iraq sham of something like the former South Vietnamese government under Diem as its end goal and so-called exit strategy.
The Iraq anti-coalition forces are completely correct to fight tooth and nail against establishing such a sham government, attacking US forces, its civilian mercenaries and attempting to keep any UN mission out.
If anyone recalls Vietnam history, they will remember the division of Vietnam into north and south with a DMZ, and the establishment of a South Vietnamese government was a product of negotiations between the French and the Vietnamese at the UN. What followed was the French colonial puppet of the South was pitted against the anti-colonial and communist North. Both sides were seated in the UN. And of course there were promises of full country wide elections in some future date---that never happened.
The exit strategy of the US will be to establish an Iraqi puppet with no legitimate opposition, contra the north-south Vietnam model, and will only support one UN recognized government---its own---which will exclude all opposing elements.
I say the Iraqis should no let this happen. And as a consequence I do not support handing Iraq over to the UN. The US out now, period.
If there is any UN involvement, it has to occur after the US has completely withdrawn its military occupation and all of its private contractors. The UN could without at any direct US involvement, set up a mission of assistance as invited with which the Iraqis engage an international community directly, minus all US-UK intermediaries.
This poses a real problem for Iraq because it must put together a coalition on its own, against the US, in the middle of a US occupation and keep its own in-fighting to a minimum. It would seem to have to be dominated by religious clerics in conjunction with whatever is left of the former secular government because these are the only political authority left. It would be a very nice touch if such an anti-US coalition could manage to bring some of the current CPA in, after those members openly resign in protest against the US. This would lend at least some geo-political legitimacy to an anti-US Iraq coalition.
Iraqis need to get their shit together in a hurry and some how make their way to the UN as an ad hoc mission. This is what the north Vietnamese under Ho Chin Minh tried at Versailles after WWI with the League of Nations and finally got with the UN in 1954(?). Of course this is also how Israel under Ben Gurion and others was established under British Provisional Authority in the League of Nations.
The Algerians (FLM) had a UN delegation during the last phase of the French colonial occupation in the late fifties. The PLO gained access to the UN through a General Assembly vote to establish the PLO as observer status in the Assembly.
So, some sort of similar resolution has to be put together by Arab states like Jordan, Iran, Syria (minus the Saudis) plus, perhaps the French, Germans and Russians minus the US-UK to seat some alternate Iraq mission. It won't be pretty whatever it is. But that's the starting move to really isolate the US and circumvent any US manipulation of Iraq through the auspices of the UN.
At this point there is absolutely nothing I would trust about the United States government in any form or in any capacity. And furthermore, I would not trust Kerry any more than I trust George Bush. Kerry will proceed to set up exactly the same UN sanctioned bullshit Iraqi puppet that George Bush will. Kerry may try to make it a little more representative, maybe with more democratic trappings, maybe a few less run-amok contract-mercenaries and corporate rip-off artists, but he will end up with the same thing: a US puppet police-state in which Abu Ghraib is the norm for dealing with political opposition.
CG