ACLU Manufactures a Crisis With Iraqi Detainees

Juvenile Detainees at Camp Cropper (from The Guardian)

The wags at the ACLU are attempting to make mountains of molehills with the issue of juvenile detainees at Camp Cropper in Baghdad. After Abu Ghraib, the U.S. military realized the urgent necessity to be more forthcoming with how Iraqi detainees were treated and the importance of rehabilitation to the overall counter-insurgency campaign as Small Wars Journal explains. The ACLU "broke" this earth-shattering news with a cornball press release yesterday, which made a big stink in the media. From Washington Post:

"Juveniles and former child soldiers should be treated first and foremost as candidates for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not subjected to further victimization," Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's human rights program, said in a statement.

I guess the ACLU doesn't have "Teh Google" at work, because the issue of juvenile detainees in Iraq was already in the news...last year. From the Inquirer:

These juveniles have been involved in something that is perceived as a security threat to Iraq or coalition forces," Nevin told Agence France-Presse during a tour of Camp Cropper. The number of juvenile detainees has skyrocketed since the surge in US troops was launched in February. "In January we had around 100 juveniles. Now we have around 950," Nevin said. Most of the youngsters have been sucked into the insurgency with threats or offers of money from Al-Qaeda, he said. "There is a lot of Al-Qaeda influence on these youngsters."

Similar to the ~100,000 juvenile prisoners in America, the juvenile detainees are taken off Iraq's streets because they are in urgent need of reform and rehabilitation. They have been brainwashed or paid off by thugs to attack security forces by planting IEDs, acting as lookouts, and even acting as suicide bombers. Would it be better to leave these poor kids in the hands of terrorists to be blown up in the terrorist campaign of brutality? This ACLU press release was tastelessly released the same day that there were two teenaged suicide bombers in Iraq. The same statement also goes on, in a drastic leap of convoluted logic, to get all huffy about military recruiters in high schools making phone calls to students, and there's even a video game that encourages military service! The ACLU should probably start making phone calls to the Senate about Halo too, because you get to kill aliens as a space marine, and that could lead kids to be prejudiced and discriminatory against The Covenant. The ACLU is making pathetic attempts to discredit the military in a time of war, and has about as much to do with civil liberties as this blog does with fusion gourmet cooking.