by James Glaser
May 6, 2004

Ann Clwyd, is Prime Minister Tony Blair's Personal Human Rights Envoy to Iraq. Today she has told the world that after making her own investigation, she has found that it is true that US Soldiers detained an elderly Iraqi woman, placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours, and rode her like a donkey.

Our troops kept this old women in detention for six weeks, made no charge against her and then let her go. Ms. Clwyd said the the woman has recovered physically, but still suffers emotionally from the experience.

Now this isn't some charge made up by an Arab News Group, no, this comes from the Executive Branch of the British Government.

Today the President of the United States had to get on Arab Television and apologize to the whole world for our treatment of prisoners in Iraq. Now we find out that it wasn't just bad treatment, but our government is looking into the deaths of twenty five prisoners.

We admit that we killed some of those prisoners, murdered them, and we also admit that we now allow torture to be a tool in interrogations.

What really bothers me is the fact that the Pentagon knew these crimes were going on in the Iraqi prisons they ran for months and months, but the President only found out about it when CBS News broke the story.

What else has happened over there that we don't know about?

We now know that we hire mercenaries to do our interrogations. That way we have some one other than our government to blame. We don't know how much these people get paid, but if mercenary guards in our employ get a thousand dollars a day, I would bet those we hire to inflict pain get way more than that.

Just where the hell is George Bush taking this country? George Bush has destroyed the reputation of the United States and just like an individual, once you lose your good name, it is a hard thing to get back.

The United States of America and countless individual Americans will be paying for this President's screw ups for years to come.