Still, I believe the lidless eye of the "War on Terror", open-ended and limitless in scope - at least ideologically - provides a new spin, a unique mental fuel, for the architects and grunts of Bush style militarism.
Since anyone can be a terrorist, and "The Terrorists" form a class of people, even someone giving an occupation trooper the finger (or perhaps even something not quite that dramatic, merely complaining about the lack of reliable electricity) should be detained as a 'security precaution'. Defining the struggle, as it were, as a "War on Terror" makes this 'total suspicion' behavior all but inevitable.
.d.
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Jailed - for showing dislike of US invaders By Douglas Jehl and Kate Zernike in Washington
May 31, 2004
Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were held in Abu Ghraib prison for long periods even though there was no evidence that they posed a security threat to US forces, a US Army report says.
The unpublished report, by Major-General Donald Ryder, reflects what other senior officers have described as a deep concern among some US officers and officials in Iraq over the refusal of top US commanders in Baghdad to authorise the release of so-called security prisoners.
Some prisoners were held for interrogation at Abu Ghraib.
General Ryder, the army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" towards the US occupying forces.
The report, drafted in November, said the process for deciding which arrested Iraqis posed security risks justifying imprisonment violated the Pentagon's own policies. It also said the conditions in which they were held sometimes violated the Geneva conventions.
General Ryder's report to Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, was obtained by The New York Times. Advertisement Advertisement
Senior military officials also revealed that interrogation experts from the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay were sent to Iraq in the second half of last year and played a big role in training US military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib.
Meanwhile, human rights groups say Iraqi women who were held at Abu Ghraib have complained of rape by US and Iraqi jailers. Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, chief military spokesman for the US-led coalition in Iraq, said the prisons department was "unaware of any such reports at Abu Ghraib".
The New York Times, Agence France-Presse
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from -
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/30/1085855439930.html
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