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Robert Fisk: It's not the brutality that is 'systematic'. It's the lying about it

Shake your head as you read this. Remember, that "they" are always the villains and barbarians. "We" are always the "good" ones. Oh yeah?

"It was Baha Mousa's dad I will always remember. On an oppressively scorching day in Basra, Daoud Mousa first spoke of his son's death, telling me how the boy's wife had died of cancer just six months earlier, how Baha's children were now orphans, how – not long after the British Army had arrested Baha Mousa and beaten him to death, for that is what happened – a British officer had come to his home and stared at the floor and offered cash by way of saying sorry.

"What do you think I should do?" Daoud asked me. Get a lawyer, I said. Tell Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Let me write about it. When I called at the British base at Basra airport, one officer laughed at me. "Call the Ministry of Defence," he said dismissively. He didn't care."

Continue reading Robert Fisk's piece, in The Independent, here.

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