One of Ours

Want proof that a picture is worth a thousand words? Or in this case, more like a million. Check out this story from CNN:

U.S. soldiers reportedly posed for photographs with partially unclothed Iraqi prisoners, a Pentagon official told CNN on Tuesday.

A second source confirmed that the Army's Criminal Investigation Division has focused on these pictures, which may depict male and female soldiers.

....In addition, a senior Pentagon official said the investigation is focused on Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, which had been notorious for torture of Iraqis during the regime of captured Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

....The official that the Army is deeply concerned about possible problems of "poor discipline, poor leadership, and a need for re-training," in the military police community.

That was written three months ago, on January 21. Nobody picked it up. Nothing on 60 Minutes, nothing in al-Jazeera, nothing in the blogosphere.

But throw in a few pictures...

Cinco de Mayo celebrates the day that Mexico kicked France's ass. Do you know if the following countries have similar holidays?

...2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent--and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls--such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November--it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout...

A university professor has decided not to appeal a reinstated death sentence, effectively challenging Iran's hard-line judges to execute him for criticizing clerical rule, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The original sentence handed down to Hashem Aghajari in 2002 provoked massive student demonstrations and street battles with hard-line vigilantes. The uproar highlighted the power struggle between reformists and conservatives in Iran.

The Supreme Court overturned the death penalty last year. But the original court in the western province of Hamedan province has reinstated it...

...Aghajari was determined to challenge the judiciary to carry out the sentence, Nikbakht said. "If not appealed, the sentence will be final and the judiciary will have to carry it out," he said.

In 2002, Aghajari had also instructed Nikbakht not to file an appeal, but the lawyer did appeal to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, Nikbakht said this time he would heed Aghajari's instructions....

..."Sherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. 'Beyond the obvious facts that he has at no time done manual labor, that he takes drink, that he is a West African-born diplomat of some stature, that he has been bribed by a ruthless and since deposed dictator, and that he has done a considerable amount of lying lately, I can deduce nothing else.'

"Mr. Kofi Annan started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

"'How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?' he asked...

..."Mr. Kofi Annan lauged heavily. 'Well, I never!' said he. 'I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all."

"'I begin to think, Watson,' said Holmes, 'that I make a mistake in explaining. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico," you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid.'

"'I am sorry,' replied Mr. Kofi Annan, clearly confused by my companion's obscure reference. 'But my Latin is not as it should be, having eroded from years of thinking in nothing but diplomatic speak.'

"'It means, Sir,' I told him, 'something like, "Oh yeah? Well then let's see you do it, bitch --'

"'-- Well,' Holmes was quick to interject. 'That is a very loose translation, Watson...'" [...]

North Korea is reported to be building two underground launching sites aimed at deploying an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a target distance of up to 4,000 kilometers following successful development last year.

The missile is capable of reaching U.S. military bases in Guam or possibly Hawaii, the new report said.

"Two missile stations in Yangduk in western Pyeongan Province and in Heocheon in northeastern Hamgyeong are under construction with 70 to 80 percent completed," the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified South Korean official.

The source said a U.S. spy satellite has detected about 10 new ballistic missiles and mobile launching pads at these bases...

...A first working group meeting will be held in Beijing May 12 under the six-nation talks that have been struggling to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue since the fall of 2002.

Although shorter in range, these missiles are similar to these Russian missile systems. These Transporter Erector Launchers (TEL) can hide in bomb-proof underground bunkers, and then drive out via road or rail to a simple concrete luanch pad for firing. This is much cheaper and easier than building underground silos.



One way or another the Bush administration is going to have to do something about these sites before they are finished, at which point it will be too late. Kim Il Jong will be able to blackmail every country in the region, not just South Korea.

...the new Iraqi ministry of education is allowing private and foreign schools in Iraq which was prevented before… made me think about our need to put serious programs for education in Iraq including schools, education staff and strategy of building a pure society with out terrorism, racial, fanatic problems, an open mind society that we need……….We must admit with that such problems are available deep in our society and many of our educational staff are involved in such problems and a real fast solutions are needed.

The decision of the ministry of education is right but such schools must not be opened for money only. At least some must be opened for all the people financially capable or not, to insure planting the seeds of reason, logic and open mind mentality in all society levels.

I remember that I was in private school in Basra run by nuns till 1972, after that all private schools were nationalized just like the oil, and now I am sure it was to close our society against what the Bath government used to call “foreign invasion”.

That gave me an answer for a question that I kept ask my self “If I had the money, time and capability to help Iraqi people. What would I do?”. To answer my self or any other person asking, I would say “open a school with modern programs for Iraqi children”.

Representatives of Iraq's most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.

The Shiite leaders also called, in speeches and in interviews after the meeting, for a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq's political future. The negotiations have been sidelined for weeks by the upsurge in violence associated with Mr. Sadr's uprising across central and southern Iraq and the simultaneous fighting in Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad...

...Several Shiite leaders acknowledged that they had delayed issuing their statement until there were clear signs that public opinion among Shiites had moved strongly against Mr. Sadr. Reports in the past two weeks have spoken of a shadowy death squad calling itself the Thulfiqar Army shooting dead at least seven of Mr. Sadr's militiamen in Najaf, and several thousand people attended an anti-Sadr protest meeting outside the Imam Ali shrine in the city on Friday...

..."He's 100 percent isolated across most of the southern provinces; he's even isolated in Najaf," he said. "The people there regard him as having taken them hostage." He said Mr. Sadr had also been criticized by his most powerful religious backer, Grand Ayatollah Kazem Hossein Haeri, based in the Iranian city of Qum, who had urged Mr. Sadr to pull his militiamen out of Najaf and Karbala and to stop storing weapons in mosques...

...the strongest murmurings of the meeting came when Taqlif al-Faroun, a tribal leader from Najaf, said Shiites should give the American forces a green light to go after Mr. Sadr in the holy cities. "Najaf is not Mecca," he said. "The Americans don't want to go into the shrines. They want to get rid of criminals and thieves. So what if they enter the city?" Across the roof, dozens of men responded approvingly. "Yes, yes!", they said.

The shame is so deep that Hayder Sabbar Abd says he feels that he cannot move back to his old neighborhood...But now the entire world has seen the pictures, which Mr. Abd looked at yet again on Tuesday, pointing out the key figures, starting with three American soldiers wearing big smiles for the camera.

"That is Joiner," he said, pointing to one male soldier in glasses, a black hat and blue rubber gloves. His arms were crossed over a stack of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners.

"That is Miss Maya," he said, pointing to a young woman's fresh face poking up over the same pile.

He gazed down at another picture. In it, a second female soldier flashed a "thumbs up" and pointed with her other hand at the genitals of a man wearing nothing but a black hood, his fingers laced on top of his head. He did not know her name. But the small scars on the torso left little doubt about the identity of the naked prisoner.

"That is me," he said, and he tapped his own hooded, slightly hunched image.

Mr. Abd, 34, is at the center of an explosive scandal over American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, but he remained calm in a detailed, two-hour account of his time at the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison...

...Mr. Abd spoke with no particular anger at the American occupation, though he has seen it closer than most Iraqis. In six months in prisons run by American soldiers, in fact, he said most of them had treated him well and with respect.

"Most of the time, they wouldn't even say, `Shut up,' " he said.

That changed in November — he does not know the exact date — when punishment for a prisoner fight at Abu Ghraib degenerated into torture. That night, he said, he and six other inmates were beaten, stripped naked (a particularly deep humiliation in the Arab world), forced to pile on top of one another, to straddle one another's backs naked, to simulate oral sex...

... a military official here said the prisoner number that Mr. Abd gave, 13077, matched that of a former prisoner who submitted a sworn statement alleging abuse by American soldiers. He also said the man's account was consistent with those verified by a military investigator. Several episodes that Mr. Abd recounted also matched, in some detail, testimony given by other American soldiers horrified by what they saw...

...He was arrested in June at a military checkpoint, when he tried to leave the taxi he was riding in. He was taken to a detention center at the Baghdad airport, he said, and then transferred to a big military prison in Um Qasr, near the Kuwaiti border. He said he had stayed for three months and four days.

The treatment in Um Qasr, he said, "was very good," adding: "There was no problem. The American guards were nice and good people."

After the three months, he said, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib...

...Mr. Abd said he and the other men had been handcuffed and taken inside the prison to a cellblock called "the hard site," reserved for the most dangerous prisoners. There he saw, for the first time, an American soldier called "Joiner or something." (Mr. Abd does not speak English. The man he pointed out in the picture as Joiner has been identified in other reports as Specialist Charles A. Granier, of the 372nd Military Police Company.)...

...The seven men were all placed in hoods, he said, and the beating began. "They beat our heads on the walls and the doors," he said. "I don't really know: I couldn't see." He said his jaw had been broken, badly enough that he still has trouble eating. In all, he said, he believes that he received about 50 blows over about two hours.

"Then the interpreter told us to strip," he said. "We told him: `You are Egyptian, and you are a Muslim. You know that as Muslims we can't do that.' When we refused to take off our clothes, they beat us and tore our clothes off with a blade."...

...after an ordeal of what Mr. Abd believed to be about four hours, it was over...

...But the next morning, he said, doctors and dentists arrived to care for their injuries. Beds and pillows were brought back in. They were fed. Everyone was nice, Mr. Abd said. Then at night, the same crew with "Joiner" would return and strip them and handcuff them to the walls...

...About 10 days after it started, the nightly abuse ended, for no explained reason. "Joiner" just stopped coming to the cell block, and about a month later, Mr. Abd and two others among the seven were transferred to a civilian Iraqi prison in Baghdad.

Two weeks or so after that, an American military investigator came to visit him. He showed Mr. Abd the pictures and said he needed him to make a statement against the military police who had mistreated him. Mr. Abd trusted him.

"He said, `Don't be afraid. Tell us what happened. We are on your side,' " Mr. Abd remembered. " `Tell us everything they have done.' "

Mr. Abd was released in mid-April. Looking back, the only explanation he can imagine for the mistreatment is that "Joiner" had been drinking.

"Americans did not mistreat me in general," he said. "But these people must be tried."

"I can't tell you my feelings," he said. "The Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein. They told us about democracy and freedom. We are happy about that."

But then he tapped the photos again.

"Then this man did this to the seven of us," he said. "I am asking: Is that democracy? Is that freedom?"

On Tuesday, he said, he would travel, finally, with his family back to his home in Nasiriya, though he said he could not stay. He said he would be too ashamed. He wants the American government to pay compensation. He said he felt he needed to move out of Iraq, and despite it all, he said he would not refuse an offer to move to America.