Two stories.
First is from Times Online titled…“Rape, beatings and bribery: Iraqi police out of control.” It opens with:
The brief film is deeply disturbing, even in a country famed for its al-Qaeda
beheading videos and sniper snuff movies. The young woman, evidently
drugged, vomiting and occasionally calling for her mother, tries weakly to
stop the grinning man in a white T-shirt and boxer shorts from pulling off
her underwear.
She fails. The man, instructing the cameraman to shoot the scene with his
mobile phone from various angles, rapes her.
That is not the only shocking aspect of the film, according to Jassim
al-Bidawi, former Mayor of Fallujah and now a human rights activist. He has
identified the rapist as an Iraqi police officer, and says that the
cameraman is one, too. They are thought to have drugged the woman as she
visited her husband in a detention centre in Ramadi. Since the rapist’s
uncle is a senior policeman in the city the attacker is all but untouchable,
Mr al-Bidawi says.
The second story is from McClatchy and titled…“Islamic Insurgents advance closer to Pakistani capital.” It opens with:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Islamic extremists killed a paramilitary
officer, set up checkpoints and ransacked homes Thursday as they
enforced their control over a district 60 miles from Pakistan’s
capital, while other reports said they were infiltrating districts even
closer to Islamabad.
The White House called the growing crisis in the nuclear-armed South
Asian nation “deeply disturbing,” and several key U.S. lawmakers told
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Obama administration’s new
$7.5 billion plan to help stabilize Pakistan could be doomed by the
failure of its government and military to battle the insurgents.
Failure
in Pakistan also would doom the U.S.-led effort to defeat the Taliban
and al Qaida in Pakistan, and could lead to new tensions between
Pakistan and India.
Disturbing that we are so far from success and so close to failure in that region.