Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, […]
Now, therefore,
The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. […]
Article 3
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. […]
Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
(cont.)
Insurgents shot down eight helicopters during a month-long period earlier this year, killing 28 people, mainly American soldiers. Six of those aircraft were US military helicopters and the other two belonged to a private American security company.
Earlier yesterday, a suicide car bomber killed at least 40 people and wounded scores at a crowded bus station near a Shiite shrine in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala yesterday.
In Baghdad, police said a suicide car bomber detonated his device near a checkpoint at the southern Jadriyah bridge, killing 10 people and setting fire to cars in the second attack on a bridge in the capital in the past three days.
Television footage of the aftermath in Karbala showed a distraught man cradling the charred body of a small child.* As US helicopters buzzed over Karbala, 110km southwest of Baghdad, authorities imposed an indefinite curfew.
* New Zealand television, not American.
And this too:
U.S. forces killed three Iraqi police officers Monday in a case of friendly fire during a raid near Ramadi, the military said.
The incident occurred during an operation targeting alleged al-Qaida in Iraq members northeast of Ramadi, which lies 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad.
Hussein, who left three months back, described Baghdad as a “city of ghosts” where black banners of death announcements can be seen hanging on most streets. The city, he said, lives on an hour of electricity a day, and there are no jobs to be had. […]
“Most of the deaths are due to the Iraqi politicians and their militias,” he added.
Security, electricity and potable water supply, healthcare and unemployment are all much worse than during the reign of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, refugees say.
“The Americans are detaining so many people,” Ali Hassan, a 41-year-old man from the Hay Jihad area of Baghdad told IPS. “My brother was killed by Shia militiamen after he refused to give them the keys to empty Sunni houses we were looking after.”
And this:
The training range is Army, as is the duty itself — one of the most dangerous in Iraq these days. But the young men and women clad in camouflage and helmets training to run and protect convoys are not Army; they’re Air Force.
They are part of a small but steady stream of airmen being trained to do Army duty under the Army chain of command, a tangible sign the Pentagon was scouring the military to aid an Iraq force that was stretched long before President Bush ordered 21,500 additional U.S. troops there.
And this as well:
The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, is asking the law lords to overturn rulings by the High Court and the Court of Appeal that there should be an investigation into the death in 2003 of Baha Mousa, 26, a hotel receptionist who was allegedly tortured at a British military prison in Basra.
Mr Mousa was among a group of detainees arrested following a counter-insurgency operation. A court was later told that 93 injuries were found on his body.
And one more:
In early 2005 Human Rights Watch reported that torture and abuse by Iraqi authorities were “routine and commonplace.” The Al-Maliki government promised reforms, but in July last year the Los Angeles Times reported Iraqi Interior Ministry investigations revealed over 400 incidents of police misconduct, which included “the rape of female prisoners, the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes, assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings.” Most went unpunished.
In an apparent step towards addressing the problem, the Iraqi government in November filed charges for the first time against 57 members of the police force. They are charged with torturing hundreds of detainees at a prison in eastern Baghdad.
However, in more recent events, Mr. Al-Maliki dismissed an investigation in less than 24 hours after Iraqi security forces were accused of rape in February. Instead, the government then charged that the woman, Sabrine Al-Janabi, was a wanted criminal and issued an arrest warrant against her and would “reward” the officers. Al-Janabi was arrested in mid-March and there have been no reports of her since.
Also in March, when Iraqi Special Forces and British forces discovered an Iraqi intelligence facility in Basra used to torture detainees and produce bomb-making equipment, Mr. Al-Maliki criticized the operation for lacking authority. Instead of investigating the alleged crimes, he ordered an investigation into the forces “who have carried out this illegal and irresponsible act.”
And so it goes. We have become that we which swore to oppose in the aftermath of last Century’s most horrific war. We have adopted war and threats of war as the primary foundation of our foreign policy. We have tortured, raped and murdered, and allowed those in the government we installed to rule Iraq to do the same, or worse. We use our warplanes to bomb heavily populated urban areas. We use fiendish weapons to propagate fear and terror. We have unleashed the four horsemen of the apocalypse on the Iraqi people. We have become death itself, even as the bodies of the dead for whom we are responsible are hidden from view:
It is ironic that, in our culture, the level of bloodshed and dead bodies has risen to new heights in our cinema and video games, even as our real life exposure to the dead has diminished. We are free to witness the death throes of numerous actors, and we are encouraged to examine in great detail heads being cut off and bodies being mutilated, blood oozing from artfully crafted wounds, as long as it what we view is a work of fiction. After all, there is profit to be made by it.
Yet, when real life offers us the same deadly visual effects, only this time with real corpses, our media and our government shield us from bearing witness, putatively on the basis that we will be unable to bear the emotional traumas that such dead bodies will present us. We are protected from these dreadful images of the dead in the interest of protecting our children, or common standards of decency, or some other honeyed platitude that falls falsely from the mouths of our media minders. We hear them describe the terrors, the atrocities, the dead bodies, but we are kept behind the curtain, while the grown-ups among us perform the rituals of modern mass media reportage in 21st Century America.
Think of it. What bodies (or body parts) do you remember seeing from all the 9/11 coverage? We saw our President in his bullhorn moment atop the rubble, we saw the airplanes crash into, and the fall of, the Two Towers in endless replays, and we heard the names of the dead spoken in solemn proceedings accompanied by the single striking of a bell, but when did we ever see any bodies?
Instead, we were told what to think and what to feel. Great paeans were sung to the need to rally round the flag, to love of country, to seeking justice against the evildoers. We were told that that this was all on behalf of the dead, those courageous sacrificial heroes (never victims) who surely would want us to do what our President demanded. All while any image of the dead was kept off our television screens and the pages of our newspapers.
[T]hink … of … Iraq, that central front in the War on Terror. Here, again, the images of bodies are few and far between in our mainstream media. We are told we are winning the war. We are shown beautiful pictures of awe inspiring explosions, and the aftermath of that destruction, the rubble of collapsed buildings. But bodies? They are hard to find in our news shows and news magazines (though not in foreign media), whether bodies of Iraqi children, women or men, or those of our own troops. For a time we were at least shown portraits of our dead soldiers as they appeared in life, spiffy and handsome in their dress uniforms, pictures taken before they met their fate in Iraq, but after a few months that came to an end as well.
The government did its part, as well, to shield us from the dead in Iraq, even prohibiting the showing of photos of flag draped coffins returning to the states for burial. Imagine. Not just the bodies of the dead, but the symbolic totems of their deaths were removed from our eyes. Even that was considered too revealing! Yet no one in the media questioned it, and no one questioned the absence of our leaders from the military funerals of those who gave their last full measure of devotion to advance the cause of . . . what exactly? No one questioned that either.
There is only one answer. We need to stop. We need to leave Iraq. Sooner, not later. Otherwise we will destroy ourselves along with the Iraqis.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
