A lesson for the Arab world in accountability and Western justice is just beginning to unfold. With about a dozen Iraqi and other Arab reporters taking notes, Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits pleads guilty to four charges in the first court martial proceeding against American soldiers involved in the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

A telling part of Dexter Filkins' NYT dispatch won't be much appreciated by the Hate-Bush, Hate-America Left, but must be acknowledged by all:

'I think this could have been seen on television,' said Baktiar Amin, the Iraqi Human Rights Minister, after he watched the court-martial.

Mr. Amin, who described the crimes committed by Americans at Abu Ghraib as 'awful, horrible,' recalled that much greater ones had been carried out by Iraqis in the same prison under Saddam Hussein. Mr. Amin mentioned one incident that took place in the 1980's, in which, he said, 281 Iraqi Shiites were shot to death in the camp for complaining about the conditions.

'There are no images of this,' Mr. Amin said, referring to the massacre. 'That there can be a trial for criminals who perpetrate these kinds of things is new in this country. It's a lesson in democracy.'

Sivits was actually a mechanic at Abu Ghraib who escorted a prisoner to a cell, saw abuses and failed to report them. Three other, more central figures were arraigned Wednesday and face court martial proceedings. We're also facing up to chain-of-command failures that allowed early reports from the Red Cross of Abu Ghraib abuses to be ignored.

Can you imagine any of this happening if an Arab nation had made the same mistakes?

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 19, 2004 06:26 PM

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