The British Army has released a report claiming that Iraqi prisoners suffered no systematic abuse in the hands of British occupation forces, concluding instead that there were “individual instances where people behaved disgracefully.”
Human rights organizations and the lawyers and families of Iraqi detainees immediately denounced the report. British military abuses, including the asphyxiation of 26-year-old Baha Mousa and the drowning of 16-year-old Ahmed Jabber Kareem, forced to swim across the Shatt al Arab waterway, have drawn significant protests in Iraq and Britain.
Having the British Army judge its own violations is as ludicrous as having the mafia judge its own crimes. Much like the Pentagon’s internal investigation of the Abu Ghraib tortures, the British Army’s report amounts to nothing but a whitewash of the inhumane atrocities inherent to imperialist wars.
