advances in Iraq

Iraq's Human Rights Abuses Worse Than Under Saddam, Says Allawi

Bush wants to claim victory and get the hell out, but Iraq's first Prime Minister says the country is rife with death squads and torture centers and could soon eclipse Hussein's reign of terror. Bush's one-time ally Ayad Allawi is making it very difficult for the President to pretend everything is hunky-dory, thanks to this interview with UK's The Observer. Read it. It's a bombshell. Allawi is a secular Shiite who has been reaching out to Sunnis. Some highlights:

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison.''

We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

And how's this for a kicker?

[Allawi] added that he now had so little faith in the rule of law that he had instructed his own bodyguards to fire on any police car that attempted to approach his headquarters without prior notice, following the implication of police units in many of the abuses.

(Americablog)