01 Jul 2008

CACI sued for torture by former Abu Graib inmates

One of the big UK public-sector suppliers, CACI, is in the news for the wrong reasons again....

Four Iraqi men say they are suing US military contractors for torturing them while they were detained at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The allegations are pretty unpleasant. CACI says the charges are baseless.

But the question of to what extent we want companies steeped in the culture of military control to design and operate the systems in which British people are supposed to enjoy freedom and public services remains a weighty one. The militarists forge a lot of new ground and do a lot of new thinking, largely uninhibited by considerations of equality and respect for human dignity. The possibilities they envisage can impress naive central policy makers who often have a bossy tendency, uncluttered by direct experience of front line services such a teaching or nursing.

Just like we had an Entnazifizierung programme before rebuilding Germany after the war, perhaps we need a cultural demilitarisation programme before arms suppliers are invited into the UK market for outsourced public services such as running our censuses. We could test their vocabulary, run polygraph tests to see whether they revel in violent images, and measure they weren’t excessively punctual, or their shoes obsessively shiny.

Wibbi both government and all military contractors had to prove they had a credible 30-year plan for switching to non-violent techniques for sustainable security before they were permitted to undertake any projects intended for normal civilian life?

UPDATE:

Iraq says the US has - finally - agreed to waive immunity from prosecution of the trigger-happy mercenaries working for contractors in Iraq, says the Beeb.

Wrap up...

Posted by William Heath on 01/07/08 at 9:25am
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust
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Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

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