Your Tax Dollars At Work: "COPS", Iraqi Style - Please read it all

[MrScorpio]

" The Police Commandos have been supplying suspects who confess their crimes to the TV show, “Terrorism in the Hands of Justice.” Described as the Iraqi government’s “slick new propaganda tool,” the program runs six nights a week on the Iraqiya network, which was set up by the Pentagon and is now run by the Australian-based Harris Corporation (a major U.S. government contractor that gave 96 percent of its political funding, more than $260,000, to Republicans in 2004). According to the Boston Globe, camera crews are sent “wherever police commandos make a lot of arrests.”

The show features an unseen interrogator haranguing alleged insurgents for confessions. Virtually every press account notes that the suspects appear to have been beaten or tortured, their faces bruised and swollen. The London Guardian states, “Some have…robotic manners of those beaten and coached by police interrogators off-camera.” The Boston Globe observed, “The neat confessions of terrorist attacks at times fit together so seamlessly as to seem implausible.” Then there’s the nature of the confessions. Many suspects admit to “drunkenness, gay orgies and pornography,” according to the Guardian. The Financial Times reported, “One long-bearded preacher known as Abu Tabarek recently confessed that guerrillas had usually held orgies in his mosques.” Another preacher giving a confession said he was fired for “having sex with men in the mosque.” The Globe account stated that suspects “frequently admit to rape and pedophilia.”

The show is said to be popular, particularly among many Shiites and Kurds, which causes concerns that depicting Sunni Arab nationalists as “thieving scumbags” could deepen communal strife. Political and religious leaders from the Sunni Arabs have denounced the show, calling for it to be pulled off the air. The show has explicitly promoted sectarian tensions, in one case airing the confession of a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni-based grouping, saying he drinks alcohol and doesn’t pray.

The Police Commandos’ penchant for tall tales caused them considerable embarrassment after they crowed about a major operation that killed more than 80 insurgents at a training camp along Lake Tharthar in Al Anbar on March 22. Within a day many discrepancies emerged—how many insurgents were killed, reports of more than 20 prisoners versus none, a number of different locations cited, many miles apart. The story fell apart after an AFP reporter visited the camp and found 40 to 50 insurgents camped there. "

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/gupta0505.html

[leveymg]

1. A universal message of hope and freedom. Coming to the Fox Network.

:eyes:

[Swamp Rat]

2. Wow! Thanks MrScorpio! More...

(snip)

Ironically, Allawi—with U.S. encouragement—has put a network of former Baathists in charge of various security services to fight what the U.S. claims are other Baathists who form the core of the insurgency. They include Thavit’s nephew, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, the son of a prominent Baath official. The Minister of Defense is Hazem al-Shaalan, a former Baathist from al-Hillah, and Brig. Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, an old-time Baath officer, now head of the Iraqi secret police, according to author and analyst Milan Rai.

This policy of “re-baathification” is actively supported by the Bush administration. The Washington Post reported on December 11, 2003 that the CIA met with Allawi and another member of his Iraqi National Accord party to create “an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government.” The plan was to “screen former government officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory.” Evidence of this role comes from Thabit who told the Armed Forces Press Service that former regime personnel in his force “were efficiently chosen according to information about their background.”

Even before he officially assumed the post of interim prime minister, Allawi announced a reorganization of security forces at his first press conference on June 20, 2004. According to a Human Rights Watch report on torture in Iraq, Allawi mentioned, “Special police units would also be created to be deployed ‘in the frontlines’ of the battle against terrorism and sabotage, and a new directorate for national security established.” Human Rights Watch also noted that Al-Nahdhah, an Iraqi newspaper, reported on June 21 that the Interior Ministry “appointed a new security adviser to assist in the establishment of a new general security directorate modeled on the erstwhile General Security Directorate…one of the agencies of the Saddam Hussein government dissolved by the CPA in May 2003.” That security advisor was “Major General Adnan Thabet al-Samarra’i.”

On July 15, 2004, two months before the Police Commandos became public, Allawi said the government would establish “internal intelligence units called General Security Directorate (GSD) that will annihilate those terrorist groups.” Jane’s Intelligence Digest commented that the GSD, “will include former members of Saddam Hussein’s feared security services, collectively known as the Mukhabarat. These former Ba’athists and Saddam loyalists will be expected to hunt down their colleagues currently organising the insurgency.”

(snip)

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/gupta0505.html

[DrDebug]

3. So the news is censored

But reality TV isn't. Maybe it's time for Fox to start a 'day in the life of a suicide bomber' series.

:puke:

[MrScorpio]

4. Of course, you'll never see this on Fox

You've got "Bad Boys" on all sides