Torture: big deal!

Aunty Beeb thinks it's big news, I mean big news, that Iraqi security forces have been (are) committing abuse in a systematic way against prisoners.

The Beeb's presentation is breathless (as in fact has been their presentation of every last bomb that's exploded, shock, horror, 'just days from elections etc')

So let's take that breath the BBC deny us and think instead. What we are dealing with in terms of human rights abuse in Iraq is a cultural issue exacerbated by circumstances. (The BBC in fact spent a long period trying to convince us that the US were the only torturers in Iraq -oh, apart from Saddam who they mentioned occasionally. Now, handing the job of oversight of prisoners over, amazingly we find that abuse is 'systematic'- which is hardly a term behaviour like Charles Graner's deserved, much as the Beeb huffed and puffed to make it so.)

It's cultural because oppressive regimes are the norm in Iraq (as elsewhere in the region), and all such have oppressive apparata. That's a culture that is assumed and easy to add to almost unwillingly or unwittingly.

It's due to circumstances because the guys that have been imprisoned were likely viewed as torturing Baathists, or vicious terrorists- or scum rising up amidst chaos, and naturally were not very popular with their captors.

So the BBC, teaming up, as is habitual for them, with Human Rights Watch, want to tell us things are as bad now as they were then (then being the time when Iraq had a legitimate ruler like Saddam). Well, they're not. The truth is all we were doing was removing the biggest thief and torturer in Baghdad- and his friends. It doesn't make angels of anyone, just vanquishes the devil within. Plus, of course, it's difficult really to imagine an elected devil- at least on this planet.