I really want to believe this story is true, but my liberal pessimism (which at this point is more like playing percentages) tells me not to count my eggs before they’ve been tortured. After being seen as a house of torture under two separate leaderships, Saddam’s and then ours, the Iraqi government has re-opened Abu Ghraib, given it a new name, and determined to make it a human and reputable place of corrections.
Rooms have been transformed and renovated. CNN was told, but not shown, that a few hundred prisoners are here already, in a revamped part of the facility that can hold up to 3,000 prisoners. The capacity is critical to help deal with overcrowding at Iraq’s other facilities and the potential security threat.
The Iraqi government is going to great lengths to try to change the image this facility has. It organized a tour for journalists, very carefully orchestrated by the Ministry of Justice.
Murtada Sharif, the only Ministry of Justice official to speak to CNN on camera about the prison, admitted Abu Ghraib is synonymous in people’s minds with the inhumane acts that took place there both before and after the fall of Saddam in 2003.
“We want to change its image, to make it a place of justice,” he said.
A wing that used to hold a thousand prisoners In Saddam Hussein’s time now is ready for 160. Cells that used to hold between 30 and 50 people now have a capacity of eight.
Prisoners and their families actually get to see each other — the prisoners behind a cage-like structure, the families on the other side of the fence, in a courtyard with a playground for the children. Again, it is part of the whole effort to create a different atmosphere.
More than any other name, “Abu Ghraib” can cause a heck of a shudder when it strikes the ears of those who’ve watched Bush’s war develop. When CNN says it’s going to take a lot more than some new decorations to fix the prison’s image, they’re partially right. I don’t think there’s anything to change the stain that Abu Ghraib has left on our tenure in Iraq. But in changing it to Iraqi control, giving it a new name, and transforming it for the better, the Iraqis can prove that they’re ready to move forward.
