body#layout #main-top { display:none; } -->

Friday 17 July 2009

Iraq government faces claims of prisoner abuse

Iraqi officials outraged by the abuse of prisoners at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison are trying to contain a scandal of their own as allegations continue to surface of mistreatment inside Iraqi jails.

Accounts of Iraqis being beaten with clubs, blindfolded and coerced into signing false confessions are attracting increased attention partly because the United States is getting out of the prison business in Iraq. The US has transferred 841 detainees into Iraq's crowded prison system and more are on the way. (AP)

Iraq, the world's oil pump
Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq's fate.