US will find GCC too easy to ignore

US will find GCC too easy to ignore

A lecture on human rights abuses from the GCC seems unlikely to bother America.

October 26, 2010 5:12 by shafeer

After the Pentagon said it will not reinvestigate the documents of the Iraq War – publicly released on the whistle blowing website WikiLeaks – the GCC has urged Washington to investigate the “alleged crimes against humanity.” GCC secretary general Abdulrahman al-Attiyah’s statement in Arabic on the GCC’s website read, “The US is requested to open a serious and transparent investigation into the information contained in these documents on the commission of crimes against humanity.”

The request is, of course, referring to the roughly 400,000 US military reports released on WikiLeaks earlier this week. The logs document the apparent use of torture against Iraqi civilians by Iraqi military forces and authorities including electrocution, electric drills and sometimes executions. The logs suggest that, contrary to US army claims, the military did keep a record of civilians killed in the war. As per the logs, there were approximately 109,000 violent deaths between 2004 and 2009, out of which 66,081 were civilians, 23,984 people were classified as “enemy”, 15,196 were part of Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 were coalition troops.

Kipp thinks the revelations from the leaks are both horrific and deserving of investigation. But it seems to us that the US is likely to find a lecture from the GCC easy to ignore, considering countries here come under near-constant international pressure for their contentious track records when it comes to human rights.