"Undertaking" seems like a job for an undertaker. If today's Iraqi government has its way, the local undertaker will engage in an undertaking of sorts: the taking under of several prominent leaders of Iraq's former government. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker made a statement this week in response to allegations that the U.S. has actively engaged in negotiations with Sunni leadership to grant a death penalty reprieve to Former Defense Minister under Saddam Hussein, Sultan Hashem Ahmed.* Ambassador Crocker's statement deploys the verb "to undertake" in a way ambiguous enough to admit of some hidden truth. Let's explore further...
Several high-profile former Iraqi government officials have been tried and sentenced to death under legitimate Iraqi laws and procedures.** The prisoners are currently being held under the authority of the Multinational Forces (under the leadership of General Patreus). "But U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker says he has investigated the allegations, and insists that 'there were no U.S. undertakings whatsoever to Sultan Hashem concerning immunities or anything like that.'" (Jim Muir's BBC News article dated Nov. 13, 2007).
As I do when examining these statements, I assume the full truthfulness of Crocker's response. However, it is not difficult to detect its highly restrictive phrasing, crabbed phrasing that seriously narrows the scope of the response. Examine the phrase "undertakings whatsoever to Sultan Hashem...." The key word here is the preposition: it acts only on a single individual. Ambassador Crocker merely stipulates that, to his knowledge, the U.S. has not negotiated directly with the prisoner on the topic of immunization or reprieve from the death penalty. I draw your attention to this narrow meaning precisely because it logically permits the possibility that the U.S. has indeed conducted extensive and intense negotiations with key members of the Sunni leadership group who have lobbied fiercely for immunity or reprieve for Sultan Hashem. Because this matter has ruffled so many feathers and is the topic of intense emotional and political wrangling at present, it is reasonable to conclude that Ambassador Crocker simply does not want to draw any more attention to the issue than the truthfulness of his crabbed response will allow. In narrowing the scope of his statement, the Ambassador has most likely stuck to his guns as a seasoned diplomat, one who understands that the message is often more important the messenger.
* Sultan Hashem Ahmed was one of three key figures responsible for conducting the deplorable Al-Anfal Campaign waged against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq during the late 1980's.
** N.B. Some formal procedural requirements for finalizing a legitimate death sentence were not followed, and an active debate is currently raging over the importance and necessity of these procedures. Some say they are mere formalities while others argue for their importance as structural protections to prevent the abuse of basic human rights.
An interesting side issue is the matter of determining which entity does a better job of protecting prisoner's rights. In Iraq, Abu Grahib reminded the world that U.S. treatment of prisoners is not beyond reproach. Yet Amnesty International is fighting to keep prisoners in Afghanistan in NATO custody due to the increasing number of mistreatment and torture allegations against the local Afghani intelligence service, the NDS.
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