The Public Toilet

To Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry

“Tu Hai Agar Be Wafa to Apna Bhi Yehi Tor Sahi

Tu Nahi Aur Sahi Aur Nahi Aur Sahi” (Urdu)

“If you are not sincere, then I am no different

If you were not to be, there are many others to love”

Courtesy: http://modeltownblog.wordpress.com/

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can’t be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Of course they’d probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn’t be humiliated.

And what’s all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It’s time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That’s one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn’t rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it’s just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What’s more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting “stress positions”, which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It’s all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is “unhappy and stressed”.

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her “unhappy and stressed”. She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.

· Terry Jones

Original post: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2046991,00.html#article_continue

One of those 15 Brits: I was blindfolded; I was pushed to the wall with weapons cocked behind me, sniff.

Another one of these: “Some of the Iranian sailors were becoming deliberately aggressive and unstable and scary and my pants got wet.”

Another said: “If we admitted we had strayed, we would be on a plane back to the UK soon and just in time for the Arsenal match. If we didn’t we faced up to seven years in prison”.

First one again: “We had a blindfold and plastic cuffs, hands behind our backs, heads against the wall. Basically there were weapons cocking. Someone, I’m not sure who, someone said, I quote ‘lads, lads I think we’re going to get executed’ and I leaked againâ€?

Just look at what those Iranians have done to these cute little kids who were vacationing in Iraq. What were the poor little things to do except to give in!?! Those treacherous Iranian monsters; they should be bombed for not following the oh-so-holy Geneva Convention.

After doing what they do best in Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo Bay, whining over pushing and plastic handcuffs is extremely childish on the part of these soldiers.

Britain is surely sending kids to Iraq. Apart from these fifteen, four British soldiers were killed on Thursday, three of whom were less than 22 years old; one being 19. As someone rightly said that this was not a gift to Britain from Ahmedinejad, rather, it was the other way around.

This crisis could have escalated into a war, just like the Israel-Lebanon war over the two kidnapped soldiers. The US even offered a score of options to Britain in retaliation to the capture. In the end the master stroke of Ahmedinejad saved the day.

To add insult to injury, the released sailors have now been allowed to sell their stories to the media. This action alone is enough to weaken the sailors’ side of the story. We can expect a movie in three years time; a Bond movie perhaps.

Does he think he is Macho Man or does he really think his witty sarcasm will divert Western attention away from the Iranian nuclear program?

I must applaud Ahmadinejad’s untimely sense of humor though, for releasing ‘the 15 detained British sailors and marines on Wednesday as an Easter season gift to the British people.’ He also jokingly mocks Prime Minister Blair’s government by asking him not to punish the sailors for having recorded the ‘truth’ on taped confessions in Iranian detention. Where will this ridiculous satire get him? But more importantly, where does he want it to take him?

The Western world has not and will not easily forget his childish fun-poking; ‘Satan inspires Bush’, ‘Britain Arrogant’ and ‘Israel acting like Hitler’ are only few of the many blatant name-calling incidents tied to the Iranian President. What makes him think that denying the holocaust and wanting to wipe Israel off the world map will do him any good? All he manages to do is continuously attract more attention towards their nuclear program which is already under the Western World’s critical eyes. His unfaltered belief in upsetting the world’s most powerful lobby is sinking him and his country deeper into the invisible quick sand better known as the “War Against Terror”!

Kudos to his bravado, but nonetheless, he should really watch his back. Afterall, the Iranian nuclear program in its small-scale entirety is ‘ever so harmful’ to the greatest nuclear power on the planet!