RUMMY PLAYS VIOLIN; IRAQ BURNS

Justice Joke

I have been to many of them. But there is no evidence even that a single British or US forensic officer has visited the sites to sift the wealth of documents lying there or talk to the ex-prisoners returning to their former places of torment. Is this idleness? Or is this wilful? Take the Qasimiyeh security station beside the river Tigris. It's a pleasant villa - once owned by an Iranian-born Iraqi who was deported to Iran in the 1980s. There's a little lawn and a shrubbery and at first you don't notice the three big hooks in the ceiling of each room or the fact that big sheets of red paper, decorated with footballers, have been pasted over the windows to conceal the rooms from outsiders. But across the floors, in the garden, on the roof, are the files of this place of suffering. They show, for example, that the head of the torture centre was Hashem al-Tikrit, that his deputy was called Rashid al-Nababy.

And

Now I'm sure the marine was not being facetious or dishonest - should the Americans not believe this story, he was Corporal Ted Nyholm of the 3rd Regiment, 4th Marines and, yes, I called his fiancée, Jessica, in the States for him to pass on his love - but something is terribly wrong when US soldiers are ordered simply to watch vast ministries being burnt by mobs and do nothing about it. Because there is also something dangerous - and deeply disturbing - about the crowds setting light to the buildings of Baghdad, including the great libraries and state archives. For they are not looters. The looters come first. The arsonists turn up later, often in blue-and-white buses. I followed one after its passengers had set the Ministry of Trade on fire and it sped out of town.

Just what the hell is going on here? I thought we were supposed to "liberate" the Iraqis. It is clear, given the looting, given the burning, given the curfews, given the US protection of the Iraqi oil ministry to what seems to be the exclusion of everything else, that this is not true. Naive little me. I thought that Rummy and Company would at least try to make their lies more convincing. Bastards.

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