Abu Ghraib's Torture Museum = Pure Propaganda

[marmar]

from AlterNet's PEEK:



Abu Ghraib's Torture Museum = Pure Propaganda

Posted by Fatih Abdulsalam, Azzaman at 6:30 AM on September 4, 2008.

The Iraqi government's plan to reopen Abu Ghraib, including a museum of crimes committed under Saddam is revisionist history.



The turning of Abu Ghraib prison into a museum chronicling the crimes of the former regime is seen as a feat by the current government.

But it will be merely a propagandist showcase if it does not chronicle the crimes the U.S. committed there as well as the atrocities perpetrated by the government itself.

The former regime has a legacy of 35 years of torture. But that long and dark history dwarfs the scale and horror of the atrocities that have taken place in the country in the five past years.

The prison on Baghdad's western outskirts has not been used since 2006. But in the years since the coming of Americans in 2003 horrendous crimes were committed there as well as in other U.S. and Iraqi protected jails.

I cannot understand why the government will not include the notorious and disgraceful page of what the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib when the Americans themselves have admitted it.

Abu Ghraib prison is not the only dark page in Iraq's history. Today's prisons and dungeons, whether run by the U.S. or the government, demonstrate that the atrocities the government wants to document have not ended but in fact have mushroomed.

Perhaps there are now more prisons in Iraq than factories, churning out new forms of torture and human rights abuses which the former regime was probably not aware of.

There are about 100,000 Iraqis languishing in Iraqi and U.S. jails on suspicion of "terrorism" or "violence." Almost all of them have been jailed without trial.

The power holders in Iraq -- whether the U.S. or the government -- would only talk about the fascism that was once there and are not willing or prepared to talk about their own fascist practices.


http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/97540/abu_ghraib%27s_torture_museum_%3D_pure_propaganda/