Smithereens

"The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
--Winston Churchill

An Iraqi police station was recently assaulted by British and Iraqi soldiers in Basra, after charges of torture surfaced, reports the New York Times.

U.S. policy in Iraq is to bequeath a strong police and army to the Iraqi nation (there's two words that twist the tongue.) So, on Monday, the Iraqi army conducted combat operations against the police. This warms the soul on a cold day. In the process of the assault, the police station that was probably built with U.S. taxpayers funds, was destroyed. For sure, U.S. funds will rebuild this monument to democracy.

The article indicated that this military action "was an essential step in any plan to re-establish security in Basra." Actually, re-establish is an overstatement, since it's questionable if there ever was any security to begin with.

The two-story building was demolished, "in an attempt to remove all traces of the serious crimes unit," Major Charlie Burbridge, British military spokesman, said. “It had simply gone beyond the pale and it was clear it was time for the serious crimes unit to go.”

Well, it's nice to know that someone has at least defined what the pale is in Iraq. Unfortunately, smashing the structure to smithereens won't eradicate the "serious crimes unit," all of whom escaped the structure prior to its demolition.

In a larger sense, how can anybody in the U.S. criticize the torture of Iraqi citizens by the Iraqi police when U.S. policy embraces torture in the execution of its War on Terror?

Everybody needs to get on the same sheet of music, or the conductor needs to be thrown out of the hall.