Iraq - Losing Faith

Iraq - Losing Faith Those who survived Saddam's torturers remain haunted by their experiences. But the pain of a year's occupation is already overshadowing three decades of brutality.
Exclusive video footage shows a scalpel slicing through a man's wrist. The cuts are slow, surgical and deliberate as Saddam's torturers punish their victim for illegally exchanging dinars on the black market. Iraq is still traumatised from decades of oppression. When Saddam was deposed, many Iraqis thought their nightmare was over. But the cruellest twist was still to come. "What happened at Abu Ghraib really disturbs us," states former prisoner Jasem Rashim. "Now when I see an American, I want to drink his blood." Jasem lost a testicle to one of Saddam's torturers but it is the torture he suffered at the hands of the Americans that makes him most angry. "When I go back to my home town I will join the resistance," he vows. Trader Radh al-Fatkawi agrees: "If I hadn't been imprisoned and seen things with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe the Americans are capable of such atrocities." Anger is so intense that few people like to remember how bad it was before. But unless Iraq confronts its past, the country cannot begin the process of recovery.
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