I think the America YOU see is a figment of your imagination, stoked by vermin like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin and Michael Savage and the other extreme right-wing toxins who gullible people seem to just lap up, even though their world views are reprehensible and scary.
Regarding torture in Iraq, the U.S. government is not going to admit that its policies have changed. But here are a couple of good articles about America, its torture policies, and Iraq. Here's the first one:
Iraq's parliament: Another farce
By Ghali Hassan
Online Journal Contributing Writer
March 26, 2005—Despite calls to demonstrate independence, the so-called Iraq's 'national assembly' met inside the fortress of the "Green zone." Western media hailed the first meeting as another "historic" moment in Iraq's road to 'democracy.'
In Iraq, the story is of widespread dismay and anger that the elections have not produced any change on the ground or even a new "government." The same expatriate quislings, just more divided on sectarian lines than before the elections, are gathered to discuss their new positions. They met in the shadow of US forces to announce that their symbiotic relation with the Occupation will continue, and that the US forces will stay in Iraq to protect them and terrorise the Iraqi people. It was anything, but a democratic parliament. It was a US theatrical show with Iraqi puppets as actors.
The US is slowly achieving its original aim of dividing Iraqis in order to justify prolonged occupation of Iraq and siphoning its resources. The New York Times reported on March 17 that interviews of Iraqis "indicated in particular a striking sense of disillusionment among [Iraqi] Shiites . . . [and] suggested a hardening of the sectarian divisions that were visible in the election." From the beginning the US played the sectarian card to destroy the unity of the Iraqi people. The Kurds, who have been used by foreign powers time and again, are the tools for this deliberate policy.
With new veto power granted to the Kurds under the US-crafted and unconstitutional Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), the law laid down by former US Proconsul Paul Bremer, Iraq has been divided into one small Iraq in the north and a bigger Iraq to the south. The TAL gave the Kurds, who comprise less than 12 percent of the Iraqi population, 27 percent of the seats in the new 'national assembly.' The US-crafted power allows the Kurds to derail any democratic solution, let alone an end to the occupation in Iraq. So, the Kurds veto in Iraq is the US card. It can be accurately compared with the US veto in the UN. Further, the TAL also forms the blueprint for any new Iraqi constitution. In other words, Iraq self-determination is the hostage of the US. The Iraqi people have no say in the affairs of their country. This is the reason for the ongoing wrangling and haggling over the forming of the new fictitious "government."
The Kurds, led by their opportunistic and self-serving warlords, are aiming at an ethnic cleansing the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and incorporating it into their mythological country of "Kurdistan." The Kurds have never been a majority in Kirkuk. They remain a small minority with a US-armed militia, the Peshmerga. According to the 1957 Iraqi census, the majority of Kirkuk's population was Iraqi Turkoman and Iraqi Arabs (Christians and Muslims). The Kurds' numbers in Kirkuk have declined since 1977, especially during the 12 years (1991-2003) of the genocidal sanctions against Iraq, when many Kurds moved to the North and Northeastern regions of Iraq that were effectively less embargoed than the rest of the country.
It is important to remember that the Kurds, despite their small number in Iraq, have enjoyed better treatment than in Iran and in Turkey, where their numbers are much larger than in Iraq. In Turkey, more than 14 million Kurds live in despair, poverty and military repression, and until recently speaking Kurdish in the public was illegal in Turkey. Compare this with Iraq where schools, hospitals and well-known universities, built by former Iraqi governments, serve all Iraqis in the North. It is easier for Western mainstream media and Western governments to look the other way and ignore realities. Western mainstream media have no problem selling democracy with illegitimate elections than providing the public with honest and independent information.
Furthermore, evidence from Iraqi sources obtained by Scott Ritter, former UNSCOM weapons inspector, suggests that the Bush administration and its Allawi's gang tampered with the elections results and lowered the Shiites votes from '56 percent of the vote to 48 percent,' through a 'secret vote count' and by 'reengineering the post-election political landscape in Iraq dramatically' to fit with the US-designed so-called democracy for Iraq.
The elections were 'the farce of the century.' The US-based Carter Centre, which monitors elections around the world, did not participate in Iraq's elections because they did not meet proper elections' criteria, such as a free and safe environment, and the ability of candidates to move freely. All independent voices in Iraq, regardless of ethnicity, boycotted the elections. As I pointed out earlier, the elections have divided Iraqis and reinforced sectarianism.
The elections were 'demonstration' elections aimed at American and Western citizens at home. In other words, it was a PR exercise to promote a new form of colonialism and illegal armed conquest. The US-crafted elections were designed to legitimise the occupation of Iraq and promote US influence around the globe through ongoing military aggressions. 'Democracy under Occupation' is the new motto of the White House.
It isn't 'democracy,' 'freedom' or human rights that the US is promoting; the US is promoting its own corporate interests. The most brutal and dictatorial regimes in the world, including the Middle East, are the closest allies of the US. A fact the US supports wholeheartedly. The brutal and dictatorial regime in Egypt is the second largest US aid recipient after Israel. The corrupt dictators of the Gulf States, led by Saudi Arabia, have been the closest US allies for over half-century. Further, the US encourages and supports the abuses of human rights in these countries by the outsourcing of torture. The policy, which called is 'extraordinary rendition,' is the practice by which innocent prisoners and detainees in US custody are sent for interrogation in foreign countries that practice torture, such as Egypt Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Arab leaders should be ashamed for associating the Arab World with such an appalling practice that should be the trademark of the US alone.
The US did not invade Iraq for the sake of 'democracy,' 'freedom' or to safeguard human rights, these are the pretexts for domestic consumption and war. It should be remembered that the original pretext for the war was that Iraq possessed a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which was proved to be a lie. The Bush's Doctrine of 'pre-emptive' illegal wars of aggression is designed to impose US hegemony on defenceless people, using all kinds pretexts to justify its aim. Since the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Iraqi people are the most abused and unfree people on the planet today. The destruction of the city of Fallujah and the slaughter of thousands of Iraqi citizens by US napalm and chemical weapons amount to war crimes and are in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions.
In the US, returned soldiers are telling horrific stories of what it is like for Iraqis to live under occupation. US soldier Camilo Mejia, who refused to return to Iraq after taking leave in October 2003, said recently; "I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army . . . And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true . . . I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, [and] a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq." [1]
After his return from Iraq, ex-Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey sums up the war in a recent interview; "[What we are doing in Iraq] sickened me so that I had actually brought it up to my lieutenant, and I told him, I said, 'You know, sir, we're not going to have to worry about Iraq - you know, we're basically committing genocide over here, mass extermination of thousands of Iraqis.'" [2]
Self-censored media shields the government from any wrongdoing and keeps the public entertained and in place. As Professor William Cook of the University of La Verne in southern California noted, "None of the Iraqi 100,000 dead have a voice to cheer Bush's Doctrine; none of their family members have been asked about its benefits; no one concerned about the ensuing years' invisible companion, depleted uranium, has a voice; none of the maimed—the blind, the limbless, the sick and dying—have a voice; no one has been asked about America's 14 military bases being a permanent part of the Iraqi landscape; no one has been asked about America determining that Iraqi resources should be sold to the most favored private bidder, primarily non-Iraqi; and none of the [innocent, men women and children] prisoners subjugated to [abuse and] torture at Abu Ghraib [and other expanding US prisons in Iraq] has been asked about America's virtues and its democratic ways."[3]
The war was a murderous crime and those who are responsible for it, and for the destruction of Iraqi civil society, should face war crimes trials like the leaders of Nazi Germany.
A farce parliament produced by illegitimate elections in the shadow of a war of aggression and occupation does not make a nation democratic, free and sovereign. It makes a colonial dictatorship. The US-led foreign forces have no business in Iraq. Iraq's liberation and self-determination from foreign invaders are the unquestionable legitimate rights of the Iraqi people.
Resources:
[1]. Camilo Mejia, Regaining My Humanity.
[2]. Amy Goodman interviews Jimmy Massey.
[3].William Cook.
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