THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The AP has a detailed piece on various elements of the US extraterritorial prison system established since ODEL began his wars of conquest. What they report is truly vile and disgusting to any true American.

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release - without charge - last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

70 to 90% are "mistakes"? So we grab the wrong people, treat them like the worst people and then throw them back on the street as if they weren't people. You have to love the way the Bushoviks win friends and influence people.

And there is no way to know how many people released have since joined the insurgency because of their treatment. We will never know, but we can be sure that others have died because of it.

As with others, Karim's confinement may simply have strengthened support for the anti-U.S. resistance. "I will hate Americans for the rest of my life," he said.

ADDENDUM: The AP also has a lengthy piece on the fate of one of its photographers in Iraq, held by US troops for 5 months without any charges or hearings.

Executives said it's not uncommon for AP news people to be picked up by coalition forces and detained for hours, days or occasionally weeks, but never this long. Several hundred journalists in Iraq have been detained, some briefly and some for several weeks, according to Scott Horton, a New York-based lawyer hired by the AP to work on Hussein's case.