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US detains some 96,000 Iraqis - in Iraq!

Now this news will come as something of a surprise. Not previously reported,truthout.com reports in "Detention Has a Wide, Destructive Impact in Iraq: Two Million May Be Affected" on the some 96,000 at any one time, Iraqi detainees held by the US in Iraq:

"Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military reports it has captured about 200,000 Iraqis, with some 96,000 of these being held at one time or another in US prisons in Iraq.

This information, which we believe is the first such documentation offered by the US, was provided to Consumers for Peace by a spokesperson for Task Force 134, the command responsible for US prisons in Iraq, in the course of a three-month exchange of questions and answers about the US holding of Iraqi citizens.

TF-134 provides the following on "the numbers (of Iraqis) that have actually processed to the point of being issued an Internment Serial Number. The 2008 number is an approximate, as we still have a few months left of the calendar year."

2003 - 15,685
2004 - 11,197
2005 - 16,570
2006 - 14,570
2007 - 19,151
2008 - 7,800

"This equals approximately 96,000," the TF-134 spokesman said. "With only about 50 percent of those captured making their way into actual detention, you wouldn't be wrong by saying that about 200,000 (have been detained by the US since the invasion). Because some people are released at the point of capture, there's a small percentage that don't make it into the counts."

The statistics illustrate that "detention" or "internment," terms commonly used by officials to describe imprisonment, has been an essential and continuing element of the US occupation, rising with the US military "surge" in 2007."

Read on here.

Part II of the piece can be read here.

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