Mind The Gap

Digby opines on the much-touted "religiosity gap" in American elections. It's a really good read. It's too bad that writing like that doesn't get into newspapers in this country.

While at that site, I found a link to this article in the Guardian about goings-on in Iraq.

The thrust of the story is that US troops raided a building in which Iraqi police were beating the hell out of some prisoners (plus ca change...). In a minor "oopsie," this raid seems to violate even the half-assed "sovereignty" that L. Paul Bremer threw at Ngo Dinh Diem Ayad Allawi while running out the door the other day. Anyway, the Iraqis responsible have admitted that, yes, they were beating the hell out of those men.

A bodyguard for the head of criminal intelligence, Hussein Kamal, admitted that the beatings had taken place.

Nashwan Ali - who said his nickname was Big Man - said: "A US MP asked me this morning what police division I was in. I said I was in criminal intelligence.

"The American asked me why we had beaten the prisoners. I said we beat the prisoners because they are all bad people. But I told him we didn't strip them naked, photograph them or fuck them like you did."

Boy, once you lose that moral high ground, it's a bitch to get back up that hill, ain't it?

The tactics and reality of life under of US-backed strongman Ayad Allawi are just going to be more of the same that we've always gotten out of third-world puppet dictators--brutality, corruption, nepotism, oppression, and the rest of that devil's cornucopia of delights.

This guy will end up being Saddam Lite (tm), without the berets and the fatigues. This fact, of course, is not lost on the people who have to live under the new regime--nor is it lost on one of the Western (most likely British) police advisers: "It sounds rather like the bad old days."

Indeed.