That there was widespread torture during the "insurgency" in Iraqi prisons is hardly news. Everyone in his right mind also at least assumed that the US leaders were aware of it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...e-centres-link

What is new are the details and the planning behind it. The BBC and the Guardian reveal direct links between the torturers, Paetraeus and even Rumsfeld. In principle does the report claim that the US funded an Iraqui commando unit of 12.000 men who happened to be predominantly shiite extremists and let them loose on the Sunnies (who supported Saddam) and were fighting US troops.

Or even more blatantly put - most people in Iraq did not die during the invasion but during a bloody civil war. Allowing one side of Iraqis to torture the other one and use their "police" power for death squads... that is exactly what triggered the worst fighting by guys like al Sadr. Allowing the torture is in itself a war crime. Driving it is a magnitude worse. After WW2 were generals in war crime trials sentenced to death for less.

Gen Petreaus, just like Mr Eichmann, did "his duty". But Mr Rumsfeld according to his own statements, enjoyed what he did and was proud of it

that's because they were on the losing side. different rules for the winners...

You know when you read stuff like this it makes you wonder if humans will ever learn to understand that there is no glory in abusing power? People who inflict torture or other acts of violence against defenseless victims are made with the same flesh and blood as the rest of humanity, but somewhere inside their flawed thinking brains, their desire to hurt others "for the greater good" runs against every programed morality circuit breaker that we all possess.

People - where is the love, where are the feelings, the positive energy? And you know what, they glorify the torturers in movies because they're beating up on the "bad guys". The demarcation lines have long since become nothing more than a fuzzy parallax, I don't know who's meant to be riding their moral high horse this month.

Meanwhile in Syria:

Harkens back to Edward Said's interpretation of Orientalism shaped by the Imperialism of past centuries - criminally destructive policies to maintain instability & prop up Western friendly dictatorships

Well, no. It does not make sense in this straight forward way to me:

1. The US has a number of "friends" in the region, all of which are not only not much better than Saddam, but happen to be Sun. Muslims. Reading that the US not only allowed, but trained and equipped the Shiites to kill their brothers must be raising more than an eye brow in the region right now.

2. You want the instabillity between nations. So you can sell them both a lot of arms... you do not want a civil war in a nation you already occupy. That only costs yourself money and lives...

3. The militias they supported are pretty openly pro-Iranian and therefore not exactly "Western friendly".

That's the worst part of the story - the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever. It seems way more that history might be repeating itself - like the Mujahiddin who were trained in guerilla warfare by the CIA to kill soviets and later decided to call themselves Taliban. Or the brave Iraqi allies that stopped the religious extremism spreading from Iran in the late 70s...

what makes you think that the US' Sunni allies didn't know about it and are just finding out? the US knows that the Saudis finance a lot of terrorists, and yet, the Saudis are one of the US' best allies.

Or that Israel is re-selling US weapons to the US' enemies like China?

you are projecting your value system on a bunch of psychopaths.

Macchiavellian =/= psychopathic

Well, actually I think it does. More instability - more work for blackwater (or whatever their name is), and similar contractors. Security contracts are handled by mostly private firms, who have incredibly strong lobbies in Washington. If I were them, I would push for as much instability as possible in the region where they already have "contracts"....