It's Getting Worse in Iraq

The political situation in Iraq is in danger of collapse. The revelation that American prison administration in Iraq is so poor that some guards were allowed to run amok there may make it difficult for our current allies to continue their participation. It might also make it impossible to bring new allies (the UN or NATO) so long as Bush is President and continues to insist on this "my way or the highway" attitude.

But now, there is a story breaking that British troops also may have been abusing Iraqi prisoners in their occupation zone. British participation is already unpopular in the U.K. Furthermore, the Blair government has been peppered with criticism that they sent the British army to Iraq poorly equipped and poorly prepared. This new story will only exacerbate the political problems continued participation causes for Blair.

This is the sort of thing people who opposed the war in the first place imagined would happen if we started in Iraq. Think of the costs here. Not only are an unknown number of Iraqis scarred and humiliated by this but the American soldiers who did this stuff will also be scarred for life (hopefully it's limited to the 17 already currently identified). I can only assume that before they got over there, they were perfectly normal people. But now they must live with the memories of the terrible things they did in that prison. And this doesn't count the cost of American and Iraqi lives, limbs and treasure more frequently talked about.

As I think more about this I think there are two problems that arise from this: First, it is very possible that the US forces in Iraq will be even more isolated as another wave of allies backs out. Second, it won't make Iraqi people likely to want cooperate with the rebuilding apects of the occupation. That problem will last until the US forces do something monumentally popular with the Iraqis (I have no idea what could be right now).

Here is another story from The Guardian about the diary of a soldier involved.
Here is a link to the British tabloid/newspaper The Mirror that shows a number of the photos with decent quality.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised there haven't been more comments on this issue from visitors or at least from the other "Citizens." Perhaps we are all too shocked to really figure out what we think about this.