"This used to be a jihadi university that was just breeding more terrorists," said Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, who ran the detention system until this summer. "Now we are engaging the detainees and using detainee operations to teach the Iraqis here and improve their perception of Americans."I didn't know you could get to be a two-star general by being as impervious to reality as George W. Bush, but anything is possible, I suppose. If you are running a prison, no matter how nicely you treat your prisoners, at the end of the day, they are prisoners. They are not free and they know it.
Worse, there is no real due process and no understanding of the realities on the ground. They will snatch up a man who is in the Mahdi Army, which is virulently Shiite, and accuse him of being a member of al-Qaeda, which, in Iraq, is Sunni. That is roughly the same as arresting a member of the Black Panthers and accusing him of being in the Klan.
In the words of one man recently released from an American prion in Iraq: "Even if they turn the place into a paradise, it is still a prison full of innocent men."
With the new Status of Forces Agreement, the Iraqi's will get to treat our people like we have been treating their people for 7 plus years.
ReplyDeleteIronic no?
Iraq court systems have virtually no due process..kinda like Gitmo! Imagine that.
... you could get to be a two-star general by being as impervious to reality as George W. Bush ...
ReplyDeleteIt's a requirement to reach the flag ranks.