This part of the Observer piece today had me getting my rarely-used tinfoil hat out:
Last summer - a few days before the Red Cross evacuated its staff from Baghdad - Nada Doumani, the Lebanese spokeswoman for the ICRC's delegation to Iraq, was sitting in her sandbagged office complaining of the huge difficulties in tracking detainees within the US-administered prison system in Iraq.
Already, as is now clear, her officials were privately concerned over what they were hearing was happening inside the prisons that they were visiting.
These days Doumani and the Iraq delegation is based in neighbouring Jordan, the security situation meaning it still too dangerous for the ICRC to have a permanent, large-scale presence in Iraq.http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1212589,00.htmlI remember wondering at the time why someone would bomb the organization I thought of as bringing aid. Of course, since they also monitor prison conditions, there are people who'd benefit from the Red Cross taking their offices out of Iraq. Like military intelligence.
If there are any conspiracy theorists I rubbished at the time, I apologize (hey, it's in fashion this week).