438 • 21 THE WAR ON TERRORISMcountries. What everyone did learn in May 2004 is that thousands of Iraqis
had been rounded up and jailed without charges, and that in Abu Ghraib
(one of the largest and most feared of Saddam's prisons) US troops tor¬
mented and humiliated some of the detainees. Subsequent independent
investigations as well as government investigators have determined that pris¬
oner abuse has occurred not only in Abu Ghraib but also in US-managed fa¬
cilities in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo in Cuba. The "outsourcing" of
some prisoners to countries that practice torture has also been used by the
Bush administration. The US government has admitted that thirty-nine
prisoners were murdered while in American custody. All these practices are
contrary to international law. In the meantime, the Sunni Triangle of cities
and towns northwest of Baghdad became an insurgent stronghold. After a
failed attack in May, coalition forces invaded Falluja in November 2004, ex¬
pelling most of its civilian inhabitants and killing thousands of insurgents
amid heavy destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, shops, and homes.
Elections were held on 30 lanuary 2005. Although most Arabic-speaking
Sunnis boycotted them, Shi'i and Kurdish voters turned out in large num¬
bers to elect a National Assembly whose members, not surprisingly, were
mainly Shi'is and Kurds. It took several months of posturing and negotiating
for the various parties to choose their leaders: a Kurdish president, two vice
presidents (one Sunni, one Shi'i), and a Shi'i prime minister. Meanwhile, vio¬
lence continued in the country, and control over security forces and oil
resources remained in American hands. The assembly's main task would be
to write a permanent constitution, and this work seemed likely in April 2005
to proceed very, very slowly.
Nearly all Arab peoples opposed the Anglo-American occupation of
Iraq, even if some of their governments continued to facilitate troop move¬
ments and overflights. Many wondered if Israel, with its close ideological
ties to the neoconservatives in Washington, was behind the war. Had Iraq
become a new front in the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians?THE CONTEST FOR PALESTINE (REDUX)Although the 1990s marked a time in which many outsiders and some
Middle Easterners hoped for a settlement to the century-long Jewish-Arab
contest for Palestine, events of the twenty-first century have dashed these
hopes. Both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered from the resumption of
the fighting. Professor Goldschmidt believes that both parties bear a share
of the blame for what Israelis call "the situation" and Palestinians "the al-
Aqsa Intifada." He argues that responsible leadership has broken down on