The daily politics November 9th 2010

Iraq:

• See yesterdays link re: current court case taken by 200 detainees alleging systematic abuse by British forces in the  detention facility near Basra run by the Joint Forces Interrogation team - allegtions include starvation, sensory deprivation, electric shocks, threats of execution and sexual humiliation.
• For an insightful account of the early days of the occupation - read Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart. ( Picador 2007) Stewart was a British diplomat given control of an Iraqi province after the invasion. Despite his good intentions his account portrays the failure to achieve any of the allies' stated goals - peace, democracy, freedom, economic development. Stewart concludes: " Iraqis are the only people who can rebuild their nation. We cannot. we have done what good we can do. It is not now our tactics but the very fact of our presence that is inflaming the situation. Our institutions are fundamentally unsuited to nation building, we do not have the personnel, the training or the political culture to do it, nor the sympathy for local politics. We are too unpopular to defeat the insurgency, stop a civil war, or create security. you cannot predict which policy will work but you must recognise when your policy has failed".