The U.S. and Iraq are currently negotiation a security agreement that would replace a U.N. mandate that allows their presence in Iraq. Of course there are a series of problems with Iraq wanting to prosecute U.S. soldiers and the U.S. wanting to protect Americans from Iraqi courts.

Iraq has had little power to protect its citizens from foreigners following heinous crimes inside Iraq. Following the killing of 17 civilians last year by Blackwater, security contractors that protect diplomats, the Iraqi government could do nothing. When a teenage girl was raped and her family killed, south of Baghdad, by a U.S. soldier, the Iraqi government could do nothing.

While the negotiations continue and seem to be hitting a wall we've forgotten about the detainees.

Right now the U.S. military is trying to pare down the number of Iraqi detainees in custody before the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. They've reduced the number by almost 10,000 since last year; currently there are 17,000 people in U.S. custody. Most are detained and are never charged or go on trial, many are held for months or years until they are no longer deemed a threat. If and when a security agreement is actually in place the U.S. will have to transfer the remaining detainees to Iraqi custody.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement today calling for the protection of detainees who fear abuse and toture in Iraqi prisons once they are transferred from U.S. custody.

Human Rights Watch and many journalists have documented abuse, torture and ill-treatment in Iraqi prisons. The organization ask that the U.S. military be responsible and put into place a process in which an Iraqi can ask not to be transferred for fear of torture.

“Since the United States made itself synonymous with abuse of detainees in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal, the least it can do now is assure that a security agreement does not pave the way for further abuse,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Iraqis prefer to be detained by U.S. forces these days because of the terrible treatment in Iraqi prisons. But even there they often don't get access to legal council or a right to their day in court. Recently I interviewed a police chief in Fallujah who told me that since he took over everything was much better fo inmates in his jails.

"We feed them now," he said.

After a 4 and a 1/2 hour meeting little was accomplished in a cabinet meeting to discuss the "final" draft of a long-term security agreement between the United States and Iraq that would replace a United Nations mandate that currently governs the U.S. presence here. Following the meeting it was no longer final, Shiite ministers once again raised objections to the wording of the draft.

The Foreign Minister of Iraq, Hoshyar Zebari, conceded that it was unlikely the agreement would be finalized before the U.S. elections on Nov. 4, he told Reuters. The clock is ticking; the United Nations mandate expires on Dec. 31.

The agreement, which now is set to end in 2011, includes a clause that gives the Government of Iraq the option to extend the agreement. Members of the Shiite Iraqi parties said it was too vague and also objected to wording of the jurisdiction of U.S. soldiers.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki asked for a list of objections to be submitted to his office by Wednesday afternoon.

The leader of Iraq sits in an uncomfortable position now as Iraq transitions from a nation with a foreign occupation to a nation with a mutual partnership and agreement with a former occupier.

The Political Council for National Security couldn't come to a decision on the latest version of the draft and so Maliki passed it on to his cabinet where most parties are represented, save the followers of Muqtada al Sadr who wholly reject the accord. 

Maliki does not want to take the blame if the agreement is rejected by the Iraqi parliament, who must pass it in order for it to take effect.

"He genuinely understands that there needs to be an agreement but he feels that he has been passed a hot potato by the political council," a senior Iraqi official said referring to the Political Council on National Security which represents the various Iraqi parties. "He felt they actually passed the buck and he didn’t want to be made a scapegoat for encouraging an agreement when there are disagreements."

So Maliki was indifferent during the hours-long meeting as minister after minister voiced their objections to specific clauses. The Kurdish alliance is the only group that has endorsed the latest draft.

"He doesn’t want to support a document and get an approval from the cabinet, then send it to the council of representatives where it might be rejected," the official said.

Maliki fears bearing the historical responsibility for an agreement that could be rejected by the Iraqi street as signing away Iraq's sovereignty.

But it is also unclear if Shiite legislators are genuine in their objections to the agreement. The agreement has changed significantly in the favor of the Iraqi government during the months-long negotiations. Shiite officials, including Maliki, have claimed to agree to an American compromise and then when the draft is finalized object the written product.

Soon there will be another "final" draft in this drawn-out process which was originally supposed to be finished by July.

But the door is closing and it is unclear what would happen if the United Nations mandate is not renewed and an agreement is not finalized by the end of the year. The United States would then be an illegal occupier and they would have no legal cover in Iraq while they withdrew their forces.

It wasn't a good couple of days for journalists in Iraq or a positive reflection on a government that is supposed to be a fledgling Democracy.

When a press conference by the advisory commission of the Shabak, an Iraqi ethnic minority demanding their rights, turned heated today parliament security guards held 35 journalists against their will and confiscated their equipment. They stopped broadcasts and cut off internet lines so no journalist could file the news to their offices, the Journalistic Freedom Observatory an independent Iraqi organization that monitors violations of press freedom.

An Arabic satellite television station reported that a young cameraman was beaten by guards and in Kirkuk a young man named Diyar Abbas Ahmed was shot down as he left the Artist Union in the Northern city.

The Kurdish man left the union with a friend and gunmen drove up. They leaned out of the windows of their vehicle and yelled for people to move out of the way so they could shoot Ahmed. Ahmed's friend tried to protect him but the men shot bullets into the air and then shot the 25-year-old, friends and police said.

Diyar was a young journalist who worked for The Eye, a privately owned Iraqi News Agency. He is one of 222 media workers who've been killed in Iraq since the start of the war, according to Reporters without Borders.

His death is a tragedy and his life was a light. The more journalists that are killed or intimidated the more darkness there will be.

Thousands of followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr marched in mourning on Friday. They bereaved the death of Sadrist parliament member Saleh al Ugaili. The man was known as a moderate voice among the Sadr movement, a man of reason, his colleagues say.

Sadrists accused the Americans of killing Ugaili because of their opposition to a security agreement being negotiated between the United States and Iraq.

Ugaili was killed in an attack by a motorcycle-rigged with explosives. He was transported to the hospital but died on Thursday evening. His body was taken to the holy city of Najaf on Friday to be buried in the Valley of Peace, the largest Shiite Muslim cemetery in the world.

As men walked through the streets in eastern Baghdad a statement by Muqtada was read:

"Here is another star that brightens in the sky of martyrs, of Sadr followers and the sons of Iraq. Another martyr waters the land of Iraq with his blood, a martyr that sacrifices himself for the sake of Iraq and the people of Iraq, a martyr that gave all of his time to expel the occupier and not to sign agreements with him."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki formed a committee to investigate the death. We will probably never know who killed Ugaili. Just as it is unclear who are behind the assassinations in Iraq right now. Who is sticking magnetic bombs on peoples' cars? Who are shooting officials and civilians with weapons equipped with silencers? The questions are clear, why and who benefits? The answers are so much more murky.

The provincial elections law is at the center of a controversy once again.

First it was the oil-rich city of Kirkuk that stalled the law as Kurds and Arabs battled over a power-sharing proposal that would divide seats among Arabs, Kurds and ethnic Turkmen.

To solve the problem they passed the law and postponed elections in Kirkuk, which Kurds believe, should be part of their semi-autonomous region.

Now it's about minority rights. On Tuesday dozens of Christian Iraqis and Muslim friends walked about a block and held a protest against the provincial elections law. When the law was passed, an article that gave a portion of seats to minorities was nixed from the legislation.

Only a couple dozen Christians showed up, urged by church leaders to make their voice heard.

"We are the roots of this country, of Iraq itself," said Adeeba Youssef, 43, a teacher from New Baghdad. "Don't marginalize us."

Many of her friends did not show up, afraid of car bombs.

Now the law has been passed but the minority question is rife with pitfalls. Parliament members will try to pass a seperate law for minority rights. But who is a minority and how many representatives do they get are questions slowing the process.

The Eid al Fitr has come for all Muslims, Sunni and Shiite, in Iraq now. The first day of the holiday, when Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting when Muslims believe the holy book of the Quran was revealed to the prophet Mohammed, was once again marked with revelry and tragedy.

At least 20 people were killed at Baghdad mosques as people went to pray on this holy holiday.

I called a friend to wish her a happy holiday. She’d given birth the day before the day before the holiday in a place that she does not consider home. The Arab Sunni fled to the Kurdish north when things grew too dangerous in her Baghdad neighborhood. She still hasn’t decided that Baghdad is safe enough for her to return.

She named the baby Leila, after her mother. Her husband’s mother flew to the north to help her with the baby.

The next morning they got word that her husband’s uncle had died in custody. He and his nephews were all detained in an operation in Diyala province led by Iraqi troops titled the “Glad Tidings of Benevolance.”

My friend, Shatha, looked at her mother-in-law and told her to return to Baghdad to pick up her brother’s body.

The operation was to weed out the vestiges of Al Qaida in Iraq and Shiite militants in the area but residents complained that the Shiite-dominated security forces targeted Sunni Arab men. The governor’s secretary was killed, a Sunni provincial council members was arrested, leaders of the U.S. backed paramilitary of mostly former Sunni Arab insurgents fled the country in fear of persecution and men like my friend’s uncle and his nephews were detained.

He was a moderate and his farm, in a small Sunni village, was often the target of American raids in the first three years of the war. He was also a victim of the extremism that took over his province. Like all men who needed to survive, at his local mosque he was forced to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq, an Al Qaida front that declared a religious state in Sunni Arab parts of the country. He couldn’t smoke in public and militants threatened him if his wife didn’t cover her face.

Just a few villages away Shiite militants controlled the area and the drive to Baghdad became too dangerous as a Sunni man.

When Al Qaida in Iraq’s grip was loosened the man was relieved. But now he is dead. It is unclear what happened and the family is too afraid to ask. They were told he had a stroke. But the man’s nephews are still in detention and they don’t want to hurt them by asking too many questions, the family said.

So they didn’t ask whether he was in American or Iraqi custody, they didn’t ask if he’d received treatment following a stroke he had in custody. They picked the body up from the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and buried him silently.

As my friend revels in the birth of her baby, she mourns the death of her uncle and worries about the future of her cousins.