IRAQ: TORTURE

ZMAG: The Good Guys by Robert Fisk

Why are we surprised at their racism, their brutality, their sheer callousness towards Arabs? Those American soldiers in Saddam's old prison at Abu Ghraib, those young British squaddies in Basra came -- as soldiers often come -- from towns and cities where race hatred has a home:

Tennessee and Lancashire.

How many of "our" lads are ex--jailbirds themselves? How many support the British National Party? Muslims, Arabs, "cloth heads", "rag heads", "terrorists", "evil". You can see how the semantics break down

Indeed, we now depict Arabs in our films as the Nazis once depicted Jews.

But Arabs are fair game. Potential terrorists to a man -- and a woman -- they must be softened up, "prepared", humiliated, beaten, tortured. The Israelis use torture in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem. Now we torture in Saddam's old jail outside Baghdad and -- for this is where British soldiers beat a young Iraqi to death last summer -- in the former office of Saddam's most murderous chemical warfare fascist, the awful "Chemical"