Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country’s first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam’s regime.

‘People are doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse,’ Ayad Allawi told The Observer. ‘It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.’

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq’s escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam’s secret police, he said.

‘We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,’ he added. ‘A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.’

There is a chain of rationales acceptable in the US for the invasion of Iraq. Will they also answer for the process which seems obviously destined to end with another Islamist state in the Middle East?



  1. Pat says:

    What goes around, comes around.

    A small minority of Sunnis held power under Saddam. The Shias were persecuted and tortured by Saddam’s evil cadre. Now that the tables are turned, the Shias are doing the exact same to them. I don’t believe either group to be inherently evil, but that is the system they were brought up under and the only system they know.

    When the “Coalition” forces invaded Iraq, they totally dismantled the civil infrastructure. The vacuum was filled by people appointed by Washington, with no experience in governing. When the Iraqis were told to form their government, there were no political parties, political leaders; there was no one to step forward. The result was what we have today. Massive corruption, illegal detentions, paybacks, torture, and the fear and struggle not to be oppressed by the majority.

    Ed, I agree with you when you close by saying what we have now is what we got into this mess in the first place for. We didn’t create the monster, we just changed its name and head. We also degraded America in the eyes of the world. We stooped to Saddam’s level.

    A last comment. During the 2000 election, Cheney said that Clinton didn’t get enough international cooperation. At that time, there were 11,000 American troops in Bosnia and Kosovo, along with 55,000 troops from other countries. Does anyone wonder why there was was not the same cooperation against Saddam?

  2. JG says:

    When I lived in Arizona years ago, there was a college student from Turkey (I think his name was Afir) my friends and I used to party around with. He was a great guy, smart and funny, and one time I got into a conversation with him at a barbecue. He told me, “You know, you Americans don’t express your political views much to each other, the way we do where I come from. Over there it’s considered a sign of weakness in a person to be that way.” As if to underline it, he then said, “I’m a Social Democrat myself”. I told him I’d always voted Democrat, probably because my parents did.

    The last I heard of Afir, he had gone back to Turkey to take a job as a policeman (procured for him by a relative), carrying a submachine gun.

    Could this be part of the reason why they have so much trouble in the Middle East and places like it? Also little boys being taught to defend their honor at all costs, with violence as an acceptable and desirable way to solve problems, be they interpersonal, intertribal or international. (of course it happens here sometimes, too, but not nearly as pervasively as there).

    I think the Reaganites are making a terrible mistake, thinking they could just go over and force such a huge adult population to quickly become peaceful, 9/11or no 9/11.

    And if I ran into Afir today, I would tell him, “We just got tired of kicking each other in the ass all the time”.

  3. GregAllen says:

    I wondered when we would get to this point.. I’m wondering if a good exit strategy woulbe be to pull-out when the post-Saddam death toll equals the number he killed.

    I live in the general region of Iraq and I can say that MANY people over here think the Americans are as bad or worse than Saddam. I don’t agree but it is a widely-held view.

  4. Jim Dermitt says:

    What you have over there is the people with guns and the people without guns. Even if you took all the guns out of the place, it would end up like Africa and they’d be killing each other with machettes. If the U.S. military leaves, the people with the best arms are going to control things. It seems sort of simple. We arm them and they take over security. This idea that we need to train them on how to kill is flawed. They know how to kill and we can’t control who kills who. They might even know more about killing than we do. Maybe it’s being driven by government contracting. Some company has a fat contract to train Iraqi security people, so we can’t leave the place until they have enough trained killers to take over the place. It doesn’t seem like they lack a proper understanding of warfare and tactics. If we want them to do things our way, that’s another story. You can’t even get most Americans to agree on how to do something. What is this, a war to get everybody to think the same? Once the whole country agrees with us, we will end the war. I think the whole thing doesn’t make much sense, which was what Rep. Murtha was saying. A lot of people agreed. Perhaps because it doesn’t.

  5. Jim Dermitt says:

    Based on Gregs observation, I’ll add that more people believe in themselves and their families than believe in the goodwill of government. We went through this sort of thing before. The entire thing is like a Great Society program. People keep comparing Iraq to Vietnam, which is fair enough since war is war. It is like we are trying to pass the Civil Rights Act all over again in the Middle East. It’s the old road to hell is paved with… you know. The common thread is that these people just don’t trust government. Our top government official must believe they can do no wrong. Thank God everything they have done in Iraq has been perfect.

    I’d hate to see it if they made mistakes. Rep. Murtha addresses the mistakes and they point out how he isn’t one of the perfect ones like they are. We now have a perfect government and Iraq will be perfect once they decide we have their best interests in mind. What a grand illusion.

  6. Awake says:

    Torture in any form is bad (with a very few limited exceptions), but in the eyes of Iraquies the torture that happens now is probably worse than what happened under Saddam. Why? Because it is being either done directly by or directed by or condoned by a foreign occupying power. AT least the torture before was being done by locals, and in the eyes of a local population, there is a big difference.
    It all boils down to this: we need a new commander in chief. Someone with the intelligence, insight, courage and strength to lead an effective plan for the rebuilding of Iraq, so that it does not degenerate into total civil war, the most likely outcome at this time. And that civil war will cause the US to be 100x more unsafe than befor 9-11, since all of the hatred will be directed straight back to the US.
    But we don’t have any leadership, since the commander in chief that we have now is nothing but a hard-headed, ignorant, sniveling, posturing individual, which were it not for his name, would hardly be worthy of ‘dog-catcher’ duties.
    Leadership is what we lack… and that is the first step in the process of at least getting this situation back on the right track.
    If you are a true american, replacing our failed leadership should be a primary goal right now, because 3 more years of this ignorant jerk as a president will just make the long term repercussions for americans that much bigger.

  7. Jim Hoyt says:

    I suppose it could be just Iraqi campaign rhetoric.

    I remember talking to some ex-pats before going to work in Iran for a couple of years in the mid ’80s. I was told that folks in that part of the world tend to “tell you what you want to hear.” In other words, they lie. I found that to be a fact for most of whom I met.

    Just like politicians everywhere.


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