More "Fog of War"

Robert Fisk writes about the death of an Iraqi citizen in British custody:

Baha Mousa, 26, was working as a hotel receptionist in Basra 14 months ago when British troops surrounded the building and arrested seven men. They were taken to a British base and were reportedly hooded and beaten. Two days later, Mousa was dead. His family was given $3,000 in compensation and rejected a further $5,000. What they wanted was justice. Yesterday, after more than a year of official stonewalling, his relatives won a 'historic' ruling to force the MoD to hold an independent inquiry. Will the truth now be known?

Yesterday's ruling offers Mr Mousa's family the prospect of a proper investigation into the shameful, outrageous death of their 26-year-old son, who was arrested in front of his Iraqi police colonel father. Documents obtained by The Independent show beyond any doubt that Mr Mousa was killed in British Army custody. He was one among many whose deaths the British Ministry of Defence has tried to forget.

British soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment surrounded a Basra hotel in September last year following information that weapons were being kept in the building. One of the owners was later arrested. When Daoud Mousa, an Iraqi police colonel, turned up at the hotel, he discovered his son lying on the ground with his hands tied behind his back. He told The Independent his son had seen British soldiers looting the hotel safe and that a British officer had later ordered the soldiers to hand the cash back and that they should be disarmed. Baha Mousa's father later claimed the British troops involved decided to revenge themselves upon his son because he had revealed the theft...

Other Iraqi detainees were also reported to have been cruelly beaten. When Baha's father, Daoud, and brother, Alaa, went to see another of those arrested, Kifah Taha, they did not know Baha had been killed.

"Kifah looked like half a human, he was so badly beaten,'' Alaa said. "When we asked him about Baha, he said he didn't know. Then he said: 'I hope God will not show any human what I witnessed.'''

Colonel Daoud Mousa told The Independent after his son's death that a British officer, a 2nd Lieutenant, promised that his son would be protected after his arrest. "Three days later, I was looking at my son's body,'' the colonel said. "The British came to say he had 'died in custody'. His nose was broken. There was blood above his mouth and I could see the bruising of his ribs and thighs. The skin was ripped off his wrists where the handcuffs had been.''

Baha Mousa left two small boys, five-year-old Hassan and three-year-old Hussein. Both are now orphans, because Baha's 22-year-old wife had died of cancer just six months before his own death...

Not one of the prisoners taken at the hotel said he had been questioned about the alleged discovery of weapons in the building. The arrested men were taken to the former Iraqi secret service headquarters of Ali Hassann al-Majid, Saddam Hussain's brutal cousin, known as "Chemical Ali'' for his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja, which was now part of a British military compound.

One of the detainees was to recount to The Independent an appalling story of cruelty: "We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags over our heads.

"But I could see through some holes in my hood. Soldiers would come in, ordinary soldiers, not officers--mostly with their heads shaved, but in uniform--and they would kick us, picking on one after the other.

"They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming. They set on Baha especially and he kept crying that he couldn't breath in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said he was suffocating.

"But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: 'Stop screaming and you will be able to breathe more easily'

"Baha was so scared. Then they increased the kicking on him and he collapsed on the floor. None of us could stand or sit because it was too painful.''

Not that it would be worth it, but hopefully a lesson will be learned from the Iraq war, one that I and I'm sure a lot of more important people have said--that because war is a complete breakdown of civil society, you can EXPECT this sort of tragedy to occur. Therefore, you DON'T GO TO WAR IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO. And, before going to war, it is not a bad idea to ask a question along the lines of "would the war be worth it if it meant that a close friend or relative would be murdered?" If you DON'T ask that question, you're on a river in Egypt.

I continue to be amazed by people who somehow think that Iraqis will understand if a family member is blown away, either by accident or by deliberate action. They think Iraqis will understand when they lack electricity to light or aircondition their homes, gasoline for their automobiles, kerosene for their heaters, and so on. They think Iraqis will understand when we come in completely ignorant of the social structure that's been in place FAR longer than the punk dictator Saddam Hussein, and wreck havoc with it like a bull in the china shop. They think Iraqis will understand when we promise reconstruction, then fail to deliver.

Right now, the United States presence in Iraq isn't merely on thin ice. We're treading water the way the last folks on the Titanic were before it plunged into the depths.