Unqualified Offerings

Hesiod, obeying the strictures against off-topic comments to the letter, e-mails the link to an International Herald Tribune story about the torture of prisoners in Iraq. I suppose the good news is that it’s not by us:

The Iraqi government’s unprecedented admission that its police officers tortured and killed three Shiite Muslim militiamen while they were in custody has set off angry complaints from newly elected Shiite legislators who are engaged in a political battle for control of the police.

Shiite leaders have beamed gruesome images of the dead men to Iraqi television sets, displaying their bruised, scarred bodies as an argument for radically reshaping the police force, which is crucial to the fight against the country’s bloody insurgency.

In a series of steps rarely seen in Iraq, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s interim government has acknowledged the men “died under torture by police,” arrested six police officers in the case, initiated a high-level investigation, and paid the men’s families about $2,000 each plus a $500 monthly stipend.

Yet the debate over the deaths last month is only beginning.

I could make some crack about the School of the Americas here, but it would be an imperialist fallacy to imply that Iraq needs any lessons in how to torture people.