Tuesday, December 16, 2008

US military states it no longer holds female Iraqi prisoners

Today the US military announced:

Multi-National Force -- Iraq’s Task Force 134 -- Detainee Operations, transferred custody of the last of its female detainees to the Government of Iraq, Monday, Dec. 15.
The final 10 female detainees were all transferred from the Coalition theater internment facility at Camp Cropper in Baghdad, to an Iraqi controlled women’s prison in Baghdad. These women are all either already convicted or scheduled to stand trial in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.
While these women were in the custody of Coalition forces, they received care well above the standard of the Geneva Convention. They received first-class medical care, visits from family members and education.
Currently, there are about 15,500 detainees in Coalition theater internment facilities; down dramatically from the high of about 26,000 in November 2007. Since the start of 2008, nearly 18,000 detainees have been released to their families and communities throughout Iraq.


A visitor e-mails to note Sandra G. Boodman's "Deployments Disrupt Kids" (Washington Post) which examines a new study whose findings indicate the children of parents serving in Afghanistan or Iraq are under additional stress. We're not interested in tea leaf readings of politicans so we'll skip the Dorothy Dixer bit and head over to this section:


The study, published last month in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, involved 169 children ages 18 months to 5 years who were enrolled in 2007 in a day care center on a large, unnamed Marine base in the United States. Researchers led by Air Force Lt. Col. Molinda M. Chartrand asked the remaining parent (nearly always the mother) and a day care teacher to independently complete two widely used behavioral checklists. After controlling for the mother's depression and stress, Chartrand and her colleagues from the Boston University School of Public Health and the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center found that children between 3 and 5 with a deployed parent showed significantly more distress than military children without a parent overseas.
More than 2 million children have a parent who has been or is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan; 40 percent of these children are younger than 5, the authors note.

Related, the Washington Post's health section includes "A New Source for People Coping With Brain Injury:"

More than 5 million Americans have suffered a traumatic brain injury. A new Web site, brainline.org, offers these people and their families a user-friendly source of information.
The site was created by public television and radio station WETA, with funding from the government's Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.
Brainline offers such online tools as webcasting, videos, a Facebook page, font enlargement, a glossary that can pop up inside text and a one-click option that translates all text into Spanish.

Last night Stan's "Barack and the dog" went up as did the following community posts:

Mikey Likes It!
Isaiah, Third, etc.
8 hours ago

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude
blagojevich
8 hours ago

SICKOFITRADLZ
Woman of Color for Hillary's seat
8 hours ago

Thomas Friedman is a Great Man
Quick Post
8 hours ago

Ruth's Report
Trashy Caroline
8 hours ago

Like Maria Said Paz
Chicago's leaky sewer
8 hours ago

Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)
Mixed bag
8 hours ago

Cedric and Wally are posting at some point this morning. I'm dumping this on Elaine (who said it was fine) but the snapshot might not be very lengthy this afternoon. Check her site this evening. By the way, e-mails are asking about this 2008's year-in-review. I was thinking we'd have it up January 1st -- allowing me to write it at some point after midnight on New Year's Eve but that's not set in stone. (And I could actually write it today if I didn't have to speak and also do the snapshot.) Ruth is planning to do a report on public radio for 2008 (and, again, I'm the reason she no longer does weekly reports here -- she has her own site and that is time consuming when you add in that she's also working each weekend with Third she really doesn't need to knock herself out by also doing a weekly report here). Martha and Shirley will note books in 2008 and Kat will do a 2008 review in music. Kat says she is planning her review "for the last day possible, January 1st!" There are a number of ways to go with the 2008 year-in-review and I appreciate the wonderful suggestions in e-mails. But last night, while dreaming, I came across the framework and the title. If there's an incident in particular that stands out, e-mail on that but I'm probably sticking with the framework from last night's dream. It'll be the most enjoyable for community members. Trust me (and that's a clue). Also be sure to check out Trina's "Bacon & Tomato Soup in the Kitchen " from Saturday.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.








thomas friedman is a great man






oh boy it never ends
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