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Two Britions release from Guantanamo Bay have written an open letter to US President George W. Bush to say that they were also abused during their detention. They have said that the abuses inflicted on them were similar to the types of abuse that was inflicted in prisoners in Iraq.

So you could conclude that this type of behaviour is not the type of behaviour that is conducted by rogue individuals. It is the type of behaviour that at least had some sort of instruction or training. For Bush to state that these abuses were actions of rogue individuals is unbelievable.

How should soldiers act

I think the US military needs to undergo a review and increase their training standards and train their soldiers to accept that international law overrides national law, then accept that soldiers can refuse orders. I know that Australian pilots involved in the "Major Combat operations" had refused to fire upon some targets because of civilians in the area, despite being ordered again to release weapons.

Use experienced soldiers

Part of the problem for the soldiers in the Iraqi prison is that they are reservists that were called up and put straight into duty. So one day they were flipping burgers or selling insurance, the next they are running a prison in another county with totally different morals. They can't help that half the time they don't understand the culture and realise the full extend of the issues, but who put them there.

Different people have different cultures

The hand over to self government has to happen as soon as possible as the American are unable to force their culture onto the Iraqi's. To help deal with this the military has a ban on sex and pornography, however some sources have said that the pictures taken of prisoners in sexual positions have attracted a premium because of the bans. The US should never have gone it alone.

logged by Anthony at 5:38:36 PM Link

The local paper had an article about interviews with ex-POW's. From only a few people that had been interviewed it appeared that those that had been captured by Germans thought that was is happening in Iraq currently was horrible. People that had been caught by Japanese, agreed that the abuses should not be tolerated in Iraq, but that the abuses were a "beat up" by the media compared to what they endured in World War II.

At least the Iraqi prisoners were being fed and not used as slave labour as they had been in Japan or South-East Asia. Indeed one POW described an event just after the defeat of Japan as an example of what should be the standard.

Some of the Japanese were employed as labours to help load ships and some people would overload the Japanese workers. The ex-POW would order them to stop and would not let that abuse happen, despite being only a private in the Army. He would never allow us to be drawn down to the level that the enemy had used.

logged by Anthony at 4:09:40 PM Link