The Iraq Solidarity Campaign - December 27, 2006

Christmas day saw the destruction of the Jamiat police station in Basra, with an estimated 1,000 illegal immigrants storming a so-called bastion of US/UK democracy.

Claiming they were liberating "dozens of prisoners", who "were being tortured and faced imminent execution", the 1,000 British soldiers, managed to kill seven people in the process of destroying the building.

They were, according to the Independent of the 26/12/2006 attacking a "small rotten core" of police officers, who according to Sunni leaders are part of the "Shiite militia" and are allegedly turning a blind eye to the workings of death squads.

Apparently "the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said: "They say the killings and kidnappings are being carried out by men in police uniforms and with police vehicles, but everybody in Baghdad knows the killers and kidnappers are real policemen."

"The Baker-Hamilton report released by the Iraq Study Group earlier this month was also heavily critical of the Iraqi police force, which, it said, "has neither the training nor legal authority to conduct criminal investigations, nor the firepower to take on organised crime, insurgents, or militias.

"Iraqi police cannot control crime, and they routinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture, and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians."

"The Interior Minister, Jawad Bolani, revealed on 26/12/2006 that 12,000 Iraqi police officers have died in the line of duty since the US-led invasion in 2003 - one death for every 16 of the 190,000 officers in the country."

How ironic, that US/UK established Iraqi courts should uphold the "death sentence" upon Saddam Hussain for his alleged role in the Dujjail massacre of 1982 and could see the former President hang within thirty days.

According to an Agencies article on 26/12/2006,"Jalal Talabani, Iraq's head of state, must ratify all capital sentences." "He has previously said he would leave such a job to his vice-presidents because of his personal opposition to the death penalty."

The verdict was probably met with limited joy from the Green Zone, who have now cried out their usual bleat of human rights abuses, when the US detained two Iranians "who were invited by the president to Iraq".

They "have now been apprehended by the Americans," and apparently "the president is unhappy with the arrests," said Talabani's media adviser on Monday.

It should come as no surprise then, that military officers who were sacked from their posts after the 2003 invasion, should "hold no trust" in Malaki’s government and express no interest in returning to work for the current Iraqi regime.

According to the Iraq League, officers "say that the current government in Iraq is not only sectarian in its nature, but also actively involved in the liquidation of the military and scientific high-calibre cadre which was thriving in the country before the invasion."

People in the West may remember their grandparents reminisce, whenever a disaster befell a country or things took a turn-for the worst, "it didn’t happen in my day" they would proclaim. Very soon we are probably going to hear similar words falling from people’s lips, words spoken in Arabic in relation to hazards brought by the occupation - "it didn’t happen under Saddam!"