Nicole Choueiry, of Amnesty International, said: “I do not think it is the first time. It is against international law to take civilians and use them as bargaining chips”. U.S. officials do not admit to any female inmates, but evidence shows that women imprisoned in U.S-run prisons including Abu Ghraib and were subjected to abuses including evidence of sexual misconduct and psychological torture against women.

“Overall, 90 women have been held in various detention facilities in Iraq since August 2003”, Barry Johnson, a public-affairs officer for detainee operations with the U.S. told McKelvey. “More women may be in captivity”, he added, “[U.S. Army] units can capture and keep them up to 14 days”. In addition, “approximately 60 children, or ‘juveniles’, are being held”, noted Tara McKelvey.

There were nearly 625 women prisoners in Al-Rusafah and 750 women prisoners in Al-Kazimiyah alone, including girls of twelve and women in their sixties. Besides, Iman Kamas head of the Occupation Watch Centre affirms that there are five unknown U.S-run prisons in Iraq apart from the well known ten, which include Abu-Ghraib, Al-Kazimiyah, and Al-Rusafah prisons in Baghdad and Um-Qasir and Al-Nasiriyah prisons. The number of innocent Iraqi prisoners and detainees are increasing every day, together with dramatic increase in the abuse, torture and rape of Iraqi men, women and children.

As usual, the brutality of U.S. soldiers against the Iraqi people continues despite the fanfare of “sovereignty” and “democracy”. According to Amnesty International, there are new reports of torture carried out by U.S. soldiers and the new U.S-trained Iraqi security forces, or the ‘Occupation dogs’ as Iraqis call them, shifting away the abuses from the U.S. soldiers and onto Iraqi police officers and soldiers.

“The characteristics of colonial war are usually arrogance on the part of the occupiers, who believe that they belong to a superior race (more civilised, more advanced), are contemptuous of the colonised and sometimes refuse to admit that the colonised are even human”, wrote Ramonet, editor of the French monthly, Le Monde Diplomatique. Reports from Iraq show that racism by U.S. soldiers fuel their violence against the Iraqi people. It is just the Western mainstream media complicity in the crimes prevents reporting them. It should be borne in mind that, Western mainstream media is the second front of the war on Iraq.

Western mainstream media, led by the Washington Post, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitors and CNN in the U.S. and the BBC in Britain, not only failing to honestly report the horrific crimes against Iraqi women, but also continues to publish false stories depicting the rape crimes as “hoax” or “conspiracies” which led many people in the West to accept torture as an established policy. With hundreds of newspapers subscribing to these “News Services”, the distortions become replicated and amplified throughout the U.S. and the world.

Moreover, stories of cultural differences were deliberately distorted to cloud the crimes of U.S. soldiers committed against defenceless Iraqi women and girls. Western mainstream media, American in particular, is full of misleading stories such as; “Arab-Muslim patriarchy” culture with its “honour killings” is worse than rape”. Although it is very rare and unheard of in Iraq, “honour killings” is amplified and used to justify the abuse and rape of Iraqi women and girls by U.S. soldiers. The media provides ‘a diversion and an attempt to blame the victims by finding the locus of the problem in the victim’, to use Ward Churchill analysis. In other words, the mainstream media close ranks with the U.S. government and deliberately shifting the blame on the victims with increasing sophistication.

The new wave of so-called “true stories” of “honour killings” has been proven to be fraudulent . The trends of dehumanising the ‘others’ are aimed at a receptive (Western) audience, who shares the perpetrators frame of reference, to exploit an overarching climate of fear and prejudice, and in the process encourage more racism and Islamophobia. For example, “Burned Alive” and “Forbidden Love”, to mention just recent two, were proved to be fabricated lies and removed from sale. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done to an already victimised Muslim community. The sad thing is that the perpetrators have been rewarded handsomely. They were not only escaped criminal libels; they became celebrities within the anti-Muslim publishing industry in the West.

Meanwhile, violent crimes against women are increasing in the Western World and hardly published in mainstream media. “It should be not forgotten that in America, not in the Muslim world, between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of women killed, are killed by their husbands and boyfriends, but such murders of course are no longer even called ‘passion’ crimes, much less ‘honour’ crimes”, wrote Professor Joseph Mossad of Columbia University. “For European women aged 16-44 violence in the home is the primary cause of injury and death, more lethal than road accidents and cancer…. Between 25%-50% of women are victims of this violence”, wrote Mr. Ignacio Ramonet.

It is this Islamophobic trait of imperial American-Western culture and its anti-Muslim racism that propels the abuse and torture of innocent Iraqi men, women and children in U.S-run prisons in Iraq. The obsession of Western society with sex and sexual exploitation of women as sex objects, further substantiate the crimes of torture and sexual violence against women in Iraq.

We know now that “Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg”, said Reed Brody, special counsel for the U.S-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), because Abu Ghraib is not the only prison in Iraq, and there are hundreds more. The “crimes at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger pattern of abuses against Muslim detainees around the world”, added Mr. Brody.

The number of prisoners in Iraq today is far greater that that under the former regime of Saddam. The level of sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners and detainees by the former regime was just a fraction in today’s Iraq. Prior to 2003, Western human rights organisations were very vocal and continued to monitor and report the situation in Iraq under the former regime. Iraq was portrayed as a pariah state. But since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, they follow the U.S. orders and stop their human rights work.

When asked about investigating U.S. crimes against Iraqi civilians, Hania Mufti, an investigator with HRW told Phillip Adams of Australia’s Radio National on Tuesday 26 April 2005, that: “The Agency is not concerns to investigate U.S. crime against the Iraqi people, because U.S. crimes against Iraqis are happening now in front of our eyes. The Agency is more concerns to investigate crimes committed by the previous regime which took place in 1990s so we can pursue the ‘genocide’ charges”. Her allegations against officials of the previous regime are supported by “evidence” collected from refugees in Jordan, Iran, Turkey, and Britain. The refugees were enticed to make allegations. She also admitted that U.S. forces in Iraq and Iraqi expatriates are assisting the agency in making a case of genocide against the former Iraqi officials.

The most disturbing and misleading allegations of Hania Mufti’s is; “The majority of Iraqis welcomed the invasion”. Of course this is a falsehood. Most Iraqis (92-98 per cent) opposed the invasion and occupation of their country. The immediate uprising of Iraqi Resistance against the Occupation was a guide. According to Iraqi pollster Saadoun Al-Dulaimi of the Iraqi Institute of Strategic Studies, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis (+85%), favours the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. A U.S-sponsored poll in May 2004 shows that 92 per cent of Iraqis viewed the invaders as “occupiers” rather than “liberators”, 85 per cent wanted them to leave immediately, and only 2 per cent (2%) of Iraqis viewed the U.S. as “liberators” . The Washington Post survey revealed that; “Public opinion polls show 80 per cent [of Iraqis] want the Americans out of their country. In the election campaign, one common theme among candidates was the withdrawal of occupying forces”. The Iraqi people have rejected this U.S-imposed form of colonial dictatorship.

The miseries of the Iraqi people have more than doubled in the last two years, and Iraqis viewed the Occupation as the cause of their miseries. In addition to the crimes of sexual abuse, torture and rape committed by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi women, all other aspects of Iraqi women’s rights have also deteriorated. Women health and women education have fallen significantly. Unemployment, prostitution and malnutrition, have increased dramatically, and are now widespread among Iraqi women today.

A report by Women for Women International reveals that 57 per cent of Iraqi women and their families do not have adequate healthcare, and that the maternal mortality rate have tripled when compare to the period between 1989 to 2002. Iraq’s infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. The health care services and the education system are on the brink of total collapse. Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East’ prior to U.S. war and sanctions. Under U.S. Occupation at least 200 children are dying every day. They are dying from malnutrition, a lack of clean water and a lack of medical equipment and drugs to cure easily treatable diseases. This traumatic situation has significant psychological effects on the health and welfare of the children’s mothers. Electricity blackout is as long as 15 hours a day, much longer than that of pre-war level.