Manfred Nowak, the UN’s chief man on anti-torture, said today that torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under Saddam.

“What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand,” Mr Nowak said in Geneva.

“The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”

The State Department is outraged about this, taking the comment as hypbole and moral relativism.

A State Department official in Washington, asked about Professor Nowak’s comments, told The Times: “How anyone could compare state-sanctioned torture under a dictator to the situation today is beyond us.

“We definitely don’t agree with his remarks. We don’t agree with his assessment of the situation at all.”

My personal dislike of the United Nations aside, the State Department’s main concern is where the blame is to be laid. Philosophically speaking, we Americans tend to view violent acts such as torture sponsored by the state as much more reprehensible than those committed by others. It is a mentality ingrained in us since the beginning of this country. So when we think of what happened under Saddam — the rampant torture, genocide, etc. — it is hard to believe that such a thing can happen when the dictator is behind bars.

I don’t think that Nowak was inherently placing blame on the United States for torture that goes on. Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, and the current Iraqi government is nowhere near as brutal as Saddam Hussein’s regime was.

The torture that is happening in Iraq right now, though, is of a completely different nature. It is decentralized. Sunni insurgent groups and private militias connected to Shia political parties have usurped state power, effectively taking the law into their own hands. If we actually take a look at what Nowak said without being offended by it, we can see that in fact torture is rampant. It’s just being done differently.

According to the UN report, torture is rampant in Iraqi detention centres and in sectarian killings across the country.

Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue “often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones – back, hands and legs – missing eyes, missing teeth and wound caused by power drill or nails,” the report said.

“You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed,” Mr Nowak said.

“It????????s not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you????????ll find by private militias,” he added.

The problem of torture is exactly that — the militias. People like Moqtada al-Sadr doing as they please. This torture is not happening because the government is too strong, but because it is too weak to stop this from happening. They have been able to infiltrate the government and police forces, setting up torture chambers at times in the Interior Ministry itself. But most of the time it’s just done on the streets.

Everyday there is a new story about dozens of people being found tied up and shot dead in dark alleys. The numbers are staggering: violent civilian deaths in Baghdad reached over 100 a day in Baghdad during July. The ramifications of such brutality at the hands of these militias is disastrous. Society is being torn apart.

Fuck the blame. Whether it is Saddam committing torture or Moqtada al-Sadr’s men, it doesn’t matter. It’s still happening, and the impact is the same. Only now nobody knows who is doing what, and the cycle of revenge killing will go on until Iraq is no longer a country.

If it is to be a stable, democratic, and whole country, it is time to recognize the problem. Stop wasting time making stupid public statements about this and that when Saddam is no longer even an issue. If the State Department is going to talk, it needs to talk about what it can do to stop the rampant torture. Otherwise, buckle down. If the Iraqi government doesn’t start stepping up it’s only going to get worse.