Some liberation.
"Iraq prepares to take control of last US-run detention facility; Milestone reached in nation’s path to full sovereignty" by Sameer N. Yacoub and Barbara Surk, Associated Press | July 15, 2010
BAGHDAD — The US military has handed over Tariq Aziz and dozens of other members of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle to Iraqi authorities, who will assume control today of the last American-run detention facility in the country.
Although the Americans will continue to hold 200 problematic detainees, the changing of the guard at Camp Cropper will mean the end of a mammoth US prison system that has processed more than 100,000 Iraqis in the seven years since the fall of Baghdad.
It will also close a chapter on one of the most bitter legacies of the war, the shocking images in 2004 of prisoners being abused by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
As if that were the one and only time.
It was and is POLICY, people!!!
For Iraq, the transfer of detainees marks a milestone on the road to full sovereignty. But it also puts to the test a democratically elected government that many believe has learned few positive lessons from the abuses of Hussein’s regime.
Despite Abu Ghraib — or perhaps because of reforms in its wake — prisoners have more recently said they receive far better treatment in American custody than in Iraqi jails.
And here we are leaving.
You just never got this Iraq thing quite right, did you?
Ah, that's what happens when you tell lies so you can murder millions over oil and Israel.
The revelation this year of a makeshift Iraqi prison where Sunni detainees were allegedly tortured damaged the Shi’ite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Prisoners in other facilities have repeatedly complained about torture and beatings by the police, and overcrowding and poor conditions.
But he's an ally so AmeriKans like to look the other way.
Camp Cropper, which houses about 1,800 inmates on the southwestern outskirts of Baghdad near the international airport, is the last of three US prisons handed over to Iraqi control....
Former members of Hussein’s regime have been housed in separate quarters from the other prisoners, with a communal TV and a vegetable garden that some of them use to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs.
A fluent English speaker and the only Christian in Hussein’s mainly Sunni regime, Aziz, 74, became internationally known as the dictator’s defender and a fierce American critic as foreign minister after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and later as a deputy prime minister who frequently traveled abroad on diplomatic missions.
He was a Christian, you say?
Also see: Occupation Iraq: The New Mandaeans
Saddam protected Christians?
His meeting with Secretary of State James A. Baker in Geneva in January 1991 failed to prevent the 1991 Gulf War.
As if Aziz could have stopped what Bush wanted to do.
Years later, Aziz met with the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican weeks before the March 2003 US-led invasion in a bid to head off that conflict.
As if Aziz could have stopped what Bush wanted to do (wow, deja vu).
And methinks that is one reason the Catholic Church is being dragged through the mud by the Zionist AmeriKan MSM (not that I approve or endorse pooper-pumping by anyone. I don't -- unless, of course, that's the choice of two consenting adults in the privacy of their own abode. Just keep it behind closed doors, please. Thank you).
Aziz, who surrendered to US forces about a month after the war started, was acquitted in one trial but was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for his role in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants found guilty of profiteering.
Maybe AmeriKa could get some pointers from him.
His son, Ziad, expressed fear for his father’s life, saying the Shi’ite-led government was bent on revenge.
“I’m surprised,’’ he said. “The Americans have a moral responsibility toward my father and the others. He turned himself in to US custody, unlike the others who were hunted down.’’
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!
First of all, we are an immoral empire, but beyond that we always shirk our responsibilities.
History has shown that we betray people time and again; it's all how useful they are at a certain point in time. Once you are used up, AmeriKa tosses you away.
You know, the SAME WAY WE TREATED Saddam!!!
He was GREAT when he was MASSACRING IRANIANS for us!
Actually, now that IRAN is the THREAT that was kind of a DUMB MOVE, 'eh, America?
Funny how IRAQ was the GRAVE THREAT to ISRAEL seven years ago, but now the threat is IRAN!!
He also worried about his father’s health, saying the Iraqi wardens might not give the former diplomat, who has suffered a series of strokes, the proper medicine.
He's a sick old man.
Aziz’s lawyer, Badee Izzat Aref, said he was trying to ask the Vatican to intervene on behalf of Aziz, who he said had been transferred to a detention facility in Baghdad.
The concerns about the safety of the detainees stem largely from the sectarian nature of Iraq’s politics.
The Shi’ite majority once persecuted under Hussein is seen by many Sunnis as seizing on the power they secured following the US invasion to exact revenge under the guise of the judicial process.You know, that is so very interesting for so many reasons:
"Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Christians lived side by side; many intermarried"
Yeah, and they weren't blowing up mosques and churches that had stood for centuries.
--more--"
Also see: Occupation Iraq; Mixed Marriages
Memory Hole: The Dream Vacation
Memory Hole: The Uniters of Islam
Occupation Iraq: Sectarian Saviors
Are we CLEAR, readers?
Also see: Occupation Iraq: Tortured Logic
Occupation Iraq: Up and Down "Al-CIA-Duh"
Yeah, CUI BONO from "sectarianism," readers?
Remember, readers, the same crew that front-paged the lies that led to this atrocity and has lied ever since is telling you that "sectarianism" is to blame.
