June 17, 2004

ABUSE REPORTS NOTED

The Sydney Morning Herald reveals:

A stream of regular reports to Canberra detailed concerns, including from the United Nations, about US forces mistreating and abusing Iraqi prisoners as far back as June last year.

Reports of mistreatment and abuse were streaming in from Iraq a lot earlier than June 2003. Never made the front pages, though. The peacenik left told us back then that we shouldn’t do anything about them.

Posted by Tim Blair at June 17, 2004 05:17 AM
Comments

Spot on, as always, Tim.

/scrawlville.com

Posted by: Gabe Posey at June 17, 2004 at 05:23 AM

Ah, but back then it wasn't the American's (hi margo!) prison. Wog-on-wog violence, torture and death are simply what one must expect from those sorts of people, you see...

Posted by: mojo at June 17, 2004 at 06:29 AM

What is the story here? Who gives a monkey's left testicle about when our politicians knew about the "abuse"? The ALP is digging iotself into a grave worrying about such a trifling issue.

Ain't it grand?

Posted by: Toryhere at June 17, 2004 at 11:24 AM

Maybe if Tim had read a little further into the SMH he'd have found this .

Posted by: Do-baman at June 17, 2004 at 12:07 PM

Way to continue to make Tim's point, Dufous-man: the article is more whining about alleged coalition abuse of Iraqi prisoners, not the abuse of all Iraqis by Saddam and his henchmen that we were supposed to "do something" about as long as it the "something" consisted of frowning fiercely, issuing disapproving statements, and "more sanctions -- they're working!" Sure they were working. In another few years all the Iraqis except Hussein and his family and closest cronies would have been dead of starvation and we could then, I presume, had him arrested and slapped on the wrist. I'm sure he'd have had to spend at least a week in a small yet air-conditioned prison cell before being whisked off to exile in Switzerland or someplace.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at June 17, 2004 at 12:20 PM

I suppose you'd rather we did nothing about these cases of torture and abuse as well, Tim.

Posted by: Tom at June 17, 2004 at 08:10 PM

Tom, mate, you seem to have missed the point. Just what was the Australian government supposed to do about them?

The individuals involved were undergoing disciplinary charges long before the media got hold of the story. Secondly, it was Americans involved.

Why is that an important issue to be debated in Australian parliament?

Do we discuss human rights abuses committed by UN troops in Somalia?

Posted by: Quentin George at June 17, 2004 at 09:33 PM