I don't know if I'm beating a dead horse here, but my feeling is that
this needs to be kepted in play. Aside from the Gonsalez hearings starting soon, there are basic governance issues at stake. With basically no Congressional oversight, the only thing standing between Bush becoming the Emporer of America is the media's bottomless appetite for a scoop.
Dec 31, 2004 - An American legal team interviewing men and women formerly held in US-run prisons throughout Iraq says new cases of abuse and torture have continued to stream in since an initial fact-finding mission to the country in August.
Michigan-based attorney Shereef Akeel told The NewStandard that he has not had time to count up each separate allegation of abuse since returning from a December trip to Amman, Jordan, where he met with released detainees, but said there were "absolutely" now at least 100 cases. He said he expected to compile as many as 300 after sorting out survivors' statements and coordinating them with witnesses' accounts.
Appearently, the counterinsurgency, known for its elegance and innovation, has been rounding up the usual suspects, i.e. clerics and doctors.
I'm not exactly sure what their point would have been in rounding up community professionals. Maybe, they assumed community leaders such as clerics or lawyers would be the logical leaders of the local insurgent movements.
The newer cases also appear to substantiate earlier evidence gathered implicating a widespread policy of insult and assault committed against Iraqis charged of no crimes, as well as the systematic targeting of prisoners with particularly strong religious convictions.
Clerics and other community leaders apparently comprise a significant number of the team's documented cases. Akeel said he was surprised by how many Iraqi professionals and clergy were among the detainees interviewed in building the case.
"The stature of these people -- lawyers, doctors, pharmacists -- all they're trying to do is help Iraq," said Akeel, who is particularly concerned with the number and nature of abuse claims brought by imams and tribal leaders. "When you're torturing imams, making naked women serve them food... what do you think they're going to tell their followers about Americans?" Akeel said.
The number of detention centers in which abuse occurred continues rises. Akeel and his group have uncovered even more centers than even I expected, 25. If this is true, the abuse was truly systematic. I'd have a very hard time believing Bush didn't have some idea of what was happening.
One of the team's most unexpected initial discoveries in reviewing the release papers was that former detainees were alleging illegal activities in as many as two dozen different US-run prisons in Iraq, challenging the US government's official position that the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was limited to a single facility. Akeel says they have now documented cases from "over 25 prisons."
"The more people we meet, the more detention centers we find out about," said Alomari, Akeel's partner.
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