Torture Prisons in Iraq

Yesterday I was speaking with someone who was involved in the pre-war, 2002-2003 planning for Iraq, and he told me of the exact moment at which some of his colleagues realized that the United States was proceeding with a policy that would turn Iraq over to a horde of Shiite crazies. By the end of 2002, many U.S. policymakers knew full well that post-Saddam Iraq would be run by the likes of the SCIRI Badr Brigade and the terrorist party Al Dawa. But we went ahead anyway. This was not an intelligence failure. This was a deliberate decision.

For months I have been writing (nearly alone, I will say) about the operations of Shiite death squads in Iraq, on the TomPaine.com site and elsewhere. In early 2004 I wrote a piece for the American Prospect about Phoenix-style death squads aided by U.S. forces. Now we see that these death squad-linked gangsters have been running torture prisons in Iraq.

We are reaping the results of what we have planted in Iraq. I've written a book about the background to all of this, as some of you know. We made horrible mistakes in the Middle East for decades, including a pattern during the Cold War of supporting the Islamic right. We're doing it all over again in Iraq. And if we don't watch out, the Muslim Brotherhood will take over Syria and Egypt and the Shiite radicals will spread their influence in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. It's the Sorcerer's Apprentice gone wild.