The Rag Blog

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Thousands of Iraqis are dying from shortages of medicine, vital equipment and qualified doctors, despite an infusion of nearly half a billion dollars from U.S. coffers into the country’s health-care system, said Iraqi officials and American observers.

Raging sectarian violence — as well as theft, corruption and mismanagement — have drained health resources and made deliveries of supplies difficult. Exacerbating the crisis, hundreds of doctors have been killed and thousands have fled the country. The child mortality rate — a key indicator of a nation’s health — has worsened since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to Iraqi government figures.

In the most sinister development, provincial Sunni Muslim doctors charge that Shiites who control the Health Ministry deliberately withhold medicines and other vital supplies.

Once, Iraqi health care was first-rate. Medicine and hospital care were free; doctors well-educated and respected. But neglect by Saddam Hussein and years of United Nations sanctions laid waste to the system.

Across Iraq, many hospitals have neither computers nor meaningful patient files. Working X-ray machines and MRI scanners are few and far between.

JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, I think it’s a critical point and certainly important in the discussion, because I was responsible for 17 prison facilities in Iraq, and they were spread all over Iraq. And they were in various stages of disrepair. And our purpose was to assist the prisons experts under the Coalition Provisional Authority with the rebuilding of these and re-opening of these prisons. We never wanted to use, and we never planned to use Abu Ghraib for any long-term detention operation, because it was, number one, in one of the most dangerous locations in all of Iraq, in the middle of the Sunni Triangle, and it had a notorious history of abuse and torture under Saddam Hussein. So we were moving in the direction of transferring all of the Iraqi criminals being held at Abu Ghraib to other facilities, as they became open and operational. And our Iraqi criminal population was very limited at Abu Ghraib. Again, we were moving towards closing it completely.

And then, they — the Coalition Provisional — excuse me, the CJTF-7, the coalition forces, undertook these raids and roundups, as they would come to be called, in the different sectors, so that the combat divisions would put together plans to go out and apprehend targeted individuals. But with very little description of the individuals they were attempting to capture and apprehend, very often these operations would take place in a location where there would be 20, 30, 50, 100 people meeting for some reason. And when the operational force arrived there, they would see that there were, not two or three individuals, but 50 or more, so they would arrest everybody. And they started to turn these new security detainees over to Abu Ghraib, contrary to what our plans were of closing it completely. Now we have an enormous growing population.

But in November of 2003, the prison responsibility for Abu Ghraib was transferred from the Military Police Control, my control, to the Military Intelligence Control, making it an interrogation center for all of Iraq, as General Miller planned and directed during his visit in September of 2003. So, I had 16 other prison facilities to be concerned with and to focus on. In fact, in January of 2004, when I first heard about this ongoing investigation at Abu Ghraib, I couldn’t find out from anybody any information or any details of what this investigation really encompassed.

And it wasn’t until the 23rd of January, when I saw the pictures for the first time. And I asked — when I saw the pictures, I asked the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division, “Where is the military intelligence in all of this?” And seeing one of the contract people in some of the photographs, I said, “Why are the translators in any of these photographs?” And I was told, “Ma’am, those aren’t translators. Those are contract interrogators.” So, it was first time not only seeing the pictures, but the first time I was receiving details of contract interrogators actually working out at Abu Ghraib.

Lest people think that protest against the madness of the Bush Regime is just for college kids, some youthful folly they’ll abandon as soon as they get a taste of The Real World, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Kim, over-the-road truck driver and Mom, your emissary from beyond the walls of academe. My world is the world of boneweary drivers plying pitchdark roads slapping their own faces to stay awake through an eleven hour driving shift, of forklifts pirouetting in warehouses in the wee hours, all so we the people may obey the Regime’s one true mandate: Shut Up and Buy. Never fear, when you open the case at the Convenience Store and reach for that can of Assault Energy Drink; it’ll be there, thanks to folks like me.

“Were you in Iraq?” I asked.

“Yes.” I held my tongue and waited, not knowing what I would hear next. The waiter hung his head and clasped his hands in front of him. He was built like a weightlifter; I could see the veins in his arms. He said he’d been there when the Marines went in to Kuwait City and Fallujah. “I’m not proud of what I did,” he said softly, and he repeated that statement over and over throughout the conversation, as someone might say “um,” or “ok.”

“In Fallujah, it was like in the Bible,” he began slowly. “When they marked the houses with lamb’s blood, and the Angel of Death flew over and killed the firstborn sons in all the houses that weren’t marked. They marked the houses…and the ones that weren’t marked, they had us go in and open fire and…” He stopped speaking and only made gestures.

“The kids?” asked my co-driver.

WASHINGTON – Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.

Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an “enemy combatant,” a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

ZAGARIT, Iraq, Nov. 9 — Hashim al-Menti smiled wanly at the marine sergeant beside him on his couch. The sergeant had appeared in the darkness on Wednesday night, knocking on the door of Mr. Menti’s home.

Sgt. Michael A. McKinnon talked with Mr. Menti on Wednesday.

When Mr. Menti answered, a squad of infantrymen swiftly moved in, making him an involuntary host.

Since then marines had been on his roof with rifles, watching roads where insurgents often planted bombs.

Mr. Menti had passed the time watching television. Now he had news. He spoke in broken English. “Rumsfeld is gone,” he told the sergeant, Michael A. McKinnon.

“Democracy,” he added, and made a thumbs-up sign. “Good.”

The marines had been on a continuous foot patrol for several days, hunting for insurgents. They were lost in the hard and isolating rhythms of infantry life.

They knew nothing of the week’s news.

Now they were being told by an Iraqi whose house they occupied that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, one of the principal architects of the policies that had them here, had resigned. “Rumsfeld is gone?” the sergeant asked. “Really?”

Mr. Menti nodded. “This is better for Iraq,” he said. “Iraqi people say thank you.”

The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.

“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.

Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany’s top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called “20th hijacker” and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a “special interrogation plan,” personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.

Re-elected Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul joined Alex Jones on air last week to discuss the fallout of the midterm elections and what he sees transpiring over the next two years. He ended by ominously warning that if something is not done soon to overturn legislation such as the Military Commissions act, the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities.

Beginning with the positives to come out of the election, Ron Paul stressed that it has provided an important indication to the rest of the world that the people of America are unhappy with the usurpers that have seized control of their government and are trying to initiate change. The Congressman was quick to point out that this may not be carried into policy however:

“Not a whole lot will change because the leadership on the Democratic side, even if they had their way, don’t have a different foreign policy. They have been supportive of an interventionist foreign policy in the middle east, and they are not about to back away from that… They are willing to criticize the policy but only as a means to get power.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government believes Fidel Castro’s health is deteriorating and that the Cuban dictator is unlikely to live through 2007.

That dire view was reinforced last week when Cuba’s foreign minister backed away from his prediction the ailing Castro would return to power by early December.

“It’s a subject on which I don’t want to speculate,” Felipe Perez Roque told The Associated Press in Havana.