Now if we can get it on the nightly TV News!
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XXX: Here's the type of stuff I have to deal with. This steaming you-know-what was dropped in my lap at the last moment. Fortunately, most of the description/narrative came through me and the story came out pretty balanced. It just underscores the perception obstacles over here.
_________________________________________________________________________ Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0623/p01s03-woiq.html
Headline: In Iraq, a battle for credibility
Byline: Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 06/23/2003
(BAGHDAD)The way Riad Fadel Hamza tells the story, the six days he spent in US military detention were a horror show of abuse.
"They poured water on me and used electricity," Mr. Hamza says, pointing to a graze on his forearm, as a cluster of Iraqis around him nod sympathetically. "They shocked me repeatedly."
US military officials investigating the case at the Monitor's request firmly reject those allegations. "We found absolutely nothing to substantiate that claim," says US Army Lt. Col. Kirk Warner, the deputy staff judge advocate for coalition forces in Iraq.
The conflicting versions illustrate that, as the US tries to crush pockets of armed resistance here, it is also locked in a struggle for credibility. With Iraqis seeing little improvement in their lives so far, and amid Iraqi criticism that American methods are too heavy handed, Iraq is increasingly fertile ground for resentment and rumor.
Three recent examples of alleged torture, alleged execution of an Iraqi in US medical care, and the alleged rape of two Iraqi women - all later proven to be false, or almost certain to be - show how such perceptions take seed, spread and can be believed.
"Because of the tough way Americans are behaving and treating people, Iraqis tend to believe anything they hear about the Americans," says Saad Jawad, a political scientist at Baghdad University. On top of that, the civilian administrator Paul Bremer, "is doing nothing to win over Iraqis," he says. "That's leading to anger - people see no positive sign, and so [they] believe anything."
US officers insist that they adhere to the Geneva Conventions as the occupying power in Iraq. But a preoccupation with security and frequent lethal attacks by anti-US forces have triggered questions of possible abuse, and resulted in civilian deaths.
Applying electric shocks to a prisoner in US custody is not unprecedented - an American soldier was found to have done so to a detainee in Somalia in 1993. But US legal officers in Iraq who investigated the case of Hamza and his fellow detainees say that the claim in this instance is false.
"These folks were not abused," says Warner. "[They] are taken to a pretty sizable detention facility. It's not like they are taken to a back room somewhere."
US forces came under fire last week from human rights watchdog Amnesty International for tough detention conditions in Iraq, though US officers say it never visited a US facility. The International Committee of the Red Cross has twice visited the detention facility at the Baghdad Airport, the officers say, and US officers say they can enter any time.
The US military is investigating whether its troops were responsible for the death of an Iraqi prisoner of war in a detention camp near Nasiriyah. And the British military is looking into the deaths of two Iraqis who were under British control and into allegations of torture or beatings by British troops.
By Saturday, more than 90 raids conducted in a week during "Operation Desert Scorpion" brought in 540 new detainees.
Hamza and four others were picked up in a raid of an Islamic cultural center June 3 in Jubayl, about 55 miles south of Baghdad, by US Marines acting on a tip that the building was being used to prepare anti-US attacks.
According to a narrative compiled for the US military's Baghdad legal office by the US units involved in the arrest and detention of the five Iraqis, a copy of which was provided to the Monitor, the reason for the raid was information that 20 people reportedly linked to Islamic militants were "training to go against coalition forces." During interrogation, the narrative states, one detainee, Assad Tali al-Duleimi, said they were "instructed to collect weapons and await the arrival of a sheikh from Iran who would lead them against the coalition."
While Hamza claims that he was pelted with rocks while handcuffed and that a burning chemical was applied to his eyes, the US military narrative paints a different picture. It describes how detainees were asked if they needed medication, and noted that one was a diabetic, and that they received daily medical checks. Hamza "was caught numerous times faking convulsions" and "observed to attempt to bite his knees and hitting [sic] himself on the head with his knees," the narrative states. He was released June 9, when he was deemed to be of "no further military intelligence value."
Hamza's version of events has convinced his colleagues from the Islamic Cultural Center, however: "I think this was against Islam, because we have nothing to do with terrorism," says Said Mahdi al-Hassani.
Excerpted...