I don’t think it’s a big surprise to people that people in the US Armed Forces have tortured people. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that some of the Iraqi polics units have tortured people. But what is surprising is an internal review by the State Department into monies given to Iraqi police forces without proper checks. The Chicago Tribune reports:
U.S. officials are doling out millions of dollars of arms and ammunition to Iraqi police units without safeguards required to ensure they are complying with American laws that ban taxpayer-financed assistance for foreign security forces engaged in human-rights violations, according to an internal State Department review.
The previously undisclosed review shows that officials failed to take steps to comply with the laws over the past two years, amid mounting reports of torture and murder by Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces. The review comes at a time when the U.S. military emphasis in Iraq has switched to training and equipping Iraqi forces to replace American troops.
I’m not so naive to think that the US doesn’t give money to people who routinely commit human rights violations. But I wasn’t aware that there was an actual law stating that US taxpayer money couldn’t be used as aid to those people.
The man behind the law is Sen. Patrich Leahy (D-VT) and came about over a decade ago:
Leahy crafted the restrictions after disclosures in the 1990s of abuses by U.S.-supported forces in Latin America. The disclosures included the public release of training manuals that advocated abusive techniques and were employed to train Latin American officials in their home countries and at the former U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Ga.
Procedures for implementing the Leahy restrictions are adopted and taken seriously at major U.S. posts worldwide, including in Colombia and Guatemala, where the performance of military and security forces long has been an issue. The U.S. posts are guided by a cable of more than 4,000 words sent periodically from the secretary of state’s office in Washington to all U.S. embassies, in addition to special measures that are supposed to be put in place locally, records show.
I can see the headlines now: Democrat, Soft on War, Wants to Take Arms Away from Trained Iraqi Police Units: He’s an Anti-American, Anti-Free Iraq Liberal Bastard.
How does America get out of Iraq, train a proper polics force [if that is to be a part of the exit strategy] and not condone human rights violations? Or are we waaay beyond worrying about all that and just need to get out ASA-fucking-P.
