More than 100 children report being detained by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, according to recent information gleaned from the International Red Cross, including detainment in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
According to Report Mainz, a German television investigative magazine, 107 children were registered held in custody between January and May of this year, in at least six different Iraqi internment centres, Florian Westphal, speaking for the International Red Cross, told the magazine.
“The number of imprisoned children held could be higher,” Westphal said.
The TV magazine reported testimonies in which U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prisons had abused children. Samuel Provance, an NCO stationed in Abu Ghraib prison said specialists harrassed a 15- to 16-year-old girl in her cell.
Military police intervened only when she was already half undressed. Another time a sixteen-year-old was driven into water in cold weather and afterwards covered with mud. The child welfare organization of the United Nations (Unicef) confirms the capture of Iraqi children by coalition forces.
According to an internal U.N. document, written in June 2004, “Children from Basra and Karbala had been arrested because of alleged activities directed against the coalition … (these children) were routinely transferred into internment in Umm Kasr. Concern was expressed as to the classification of children as legitimate detainees, their indefinite internment without contact of family members, and their denial of due process.”
The German arm of the human rights organization Amnesty International demanded the clearing-up of the reproaches and a statement from the U.S.
As a reaction to the alleged torture of children, Norwegian authorities state they will address the U.S. both politically and diplomatically and clearly state that such activities by the U.S. occupation forces would not be tolerated.
Further, based on published reports, the International organization, Save The Children, called on the Danish government to mediate immediately with the coalition forces in Iraq in order to release children detained in Iraqi jails.

l-r, Senators John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Hillary Clinton, Bob Graham, and Gov. Tom Vilsack

With Democratic Party Presidential hopeful John Kerry about to make his decision as to a Vice-Presidential running mate, speculation is running rampant across the U.S. as to who Kerry will choose next week to take the fight to the Republican Bush-Cheney administration come November.
In a precedent-breaking announcement yesterday afternoon, Senator Kerry said he plans to announce his vice presidential running mate in an e-mail to the more than one million subscribers to his campaign Web site.

“The folks who are going to learn first about my choice are going to be the people on JohnKerry.com. They’re the people who’ve helped carry this campaign. They’re the folks who’ve been part of our effort across the nation; they’ll be the first to know what my decision is.”

Craig Crawford, the White House Trail Mix columnist with the Congressional Quarterly adds his thoughts as to whom Kerry is likely to choose, handicapping the five most often mentioned potential nominees (pictured above), as he holds out for a last-minute Hillary Rodham Clinton VP nod.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau, meanwhile, reports that the “with rumours abundant that Kerry could make his choice as soon as Tuesday, the frenzy is near its peak — with at least three candidates, including Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack atop the list of contenders.”
Let’s face it, choosing a vice-presidential running mate is the great blind date of American politics: There’s lots of mystery and anticipation, but the Presidential nominee ends up with someone he swore he already turned down. For nearly three months now, VP hopefuls have been in an endless audition, crossing the U.S. to see who could raise the most money, and who could get on TV most often to say nice things about John Kerry.
You‘d almost think that whoever John Kerry chooses was important.
The idea that the vice-presidential running mate will have a major impact on this year’s presidential race is, really, moot. Over the past century, maybe two VP hopefuls have contributed significantly to their ticket’s victory — Lyndon Johnson in 1960, who reassured Southerners about a Catholic, and Walter Mondale in 1976, who reassured liberals about a Southerner.
Aside from that, the vice-presidential candidate just gets to campaign in the places the presidential candidate can’t get to — or wouldn’t be caught dead in. As a sage political consultant once declared, “a vice-presidential candidate can bring the ticket one of two things — a state or trouble.”
As for John Kerry, knowing that his choice is unlikely to affect the rest of his life, or the outcome of the election, he’ll probably choose someone he gets along with. Which is the best you can expect from any blind date.

Michael Berg, left, collapses to the ground, and is comforted by his son, David, after learning of his son’s death

Nick Berg has already disappeared from the front pages of newspapers. Although many haunting questions remain about Berg, 26, and his odyssey in Iraq, the murky circumstances surrounding the events which led to his horrific execution at the hands of Iraqi militants linger.
Besides being a human tragedy, Nick Berg’s death two weeks ago represented, as well, an ominous development for the Bush administration, which continues to struggle not only with the disastrous impact of the prison scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib detention facility, but with the almost daily Iraqi terrorist bombings which kill innocent civilians, and American armed forces personnel. With the White House trying to curb attacks by insurgents before the June 30 handover to a caretaker Iraqi government, the spectre of Iraqi terrorists ratcheting up the violence endures as more than a dim prospect.
In an essay published in The Guardian this past weekend, Michael Berg places the responsibility for his son’s death — and for the war in Iraq — at the feet of George W. Bush. Mr. Berg calls for an immediate end to the war in the Middle East, and censures the U.S. President as a man who “doesn’t have to bear the consequences of his acts.”
Mr. Berg offers further condemnation of the U.S. Secretary of Defense …

Donald Rumsfeld said that he took responsibility for the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How could he take that responsibility when there was no consequence? Nick took the consequences.
Even more than those murderers who took my son’s life, I can’t stand those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living.

We mourn tragic loss, all the more so when the death of a loved one was as unnecessary and preventable as the death of Nick Berg.

Laura Talkington’s son after he was attacked on Nov. 1, 2003, by another ward in a California Youth Authority facility in Stockton, California. Photos were taken by CYA infirmary staff.

Every parent’s worst nightmare revolves around what harm their child might come to when away from the care and control of the family unit. There is no greater heartbreak for a parent than when a child unleashes familial bonds and harm befalls a loving — if misguided, and even at times obstreperous — child. Imagine, then, how Laura Talkington feels.
In a piece written for the Pacific News Service, Ms. Talkington describes her fear at visiting her son and the horror of watching him lose himself and become another person, at how he has become hard and afraid due to the abuse heaped upon him, by both guards and other prisoners.

I have not been able to be a mother ever since my son went to the California Youth Authority, the state’s system of youth prisons. I have spent the last four years watching him appear in the CYA visiting room with cuts, choke marks and bruises. He has been attacked by other youth or staff more than 40 times. I have seen him lose confidence in himself, become cold and depressed and fearful for his life. And the whole time, I have not been able to do one thing about it. Except lose sleep … What the CYA calls rehabilitation, the rest of us call tortuous abuse.

Mark Martin, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, provides more chiiling details on the abuse these children suffer. And because, as we’ve found most recently with the published pictures and video of the torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. troops that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, VanRamblings offers this disturbing video as graphic testament to the abuse suffered by children at California’s quasi-jails for kids.