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Torture in Iraq: Another Reason to Get Out |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mark Weisbrot
(No verified email address) |
06 May 2004
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What would we heavily-armed Americans do if foreigners invaded our country, and announced that they would remain in control until a suitable "democracy" could be established? We would shoot at them and kill them until they left. We would learn to make roadside bombs, too. We might not carry pictures of bearded clerics, or call the invaders infidels. But we would try to drive them out by any available means. |
Opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq is growing abroad, including within Iraq itself. Even before the torture and sexual abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were widely publicized, 57 percent of Iraqis told pollsters from CNN-USA Today-Gallup last week that U.S. troops should leave, while only 36 percent said they should stay.
These numbers would undoubtedly be much more lopsided today. And why should we expect otherwise? What would we heavily-armed Americans do if foreigners invaded our country, and announced that they would remain in control until a suitable "democracy" could be established? We would shoot at them and kill them until they left. We would learn to make roadside bombs, too. We might not carry pictures of bearded clerics, or call the invaders infidels. But we would try to drive them out by any available means.
Here in the United States it is easy to forget that for most of the world, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has never had any more legitimacy than Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Now it appears to have even less, as images of the occupying forces' brutality circle the globe.
And they are very disturbing images. One shows a female American soldier, cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, posing cheerfully and pointing below the waist of a naked, hooded Iraqi prisoner. He is being forced to masturbate in front of her. Others show Iraqi prisoners, always naked and hooded, forced to simulate sexual acts or piled up in human pyramids.
Another is the corpse of an Iraqi prisoner, packed in ice, who looks as though he were beaten to death. "They killed him -- either civilians, the private guards, or the CIA or the military killed him during an interrogation," said Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who provides the details of this latest scandal in the current issue of the New Yorker.
Hersh, a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter who also broke the story of the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, got hold of a 53-page report written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba of the U.S. Army. The report determined that there were “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib a prison 20 miles from Baghdad that ironically was infamous under Saddam Hussein's rule for its torture and execution of political prisoners.
The evidence indicates that these abuses were not just the work of a few individuals, but part of a systematic effort by military intelligence to "break" prisoners so that they would divulge more information during interrogation. One of the six soldiers now facing prosecution for these crimes, Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, wrote that military intelligence officers encouraged the abuse of prisoners. "We have a very high rate with our style of getting them to break," he wrote in an e-mail released by his uncle. "They usually end up breaking within hours."
Frederick also wrote that military intelligence "instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days."
This week the army announced seven reprimands of officers and non-commissioned officers who had responsibility for Abu Ghraib prison. But so far there have been no criminal charges or even discharges brought against higher-ups.
It remains to be seen whether this latest scandal will lead to an independent investigation and charges against those responsible at all levels. But the more immediate problem is the war itself. There appear to be many Americans who opposed this war and yet now believe that "we cannot just leave" until the country is stabilized. This view mistakenly assumes that U.S. forces can stabilize Iraq. But all the evidence is to the contrary, including these latest photos now inflaming anti-American hatred in the Middle East and elsewhere.
In 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to run for re-election because of overwhelming opposition to the Vietnam War. Yet it took seven more years to get out of Vietnam, during which tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lost their lives. In the end, we did in fact "just leave" Vietnam. The same will undoubtedly happen in Iraq; the only question is how many people will die before we leave.
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.net), in Washington, D.C. |
See also:
http://www.cepr.net
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Red Cross Says Repeatedly Warned U.S. on Iraq Jail |
by Richard Waddington
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
06 May 2004
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GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday it had repeatedly urged the United States to take "corrective action" at a Baghdad jail at the center of a scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
The Geneva-based humanitarian agency, mandated under international treaties to visit detainees, has had regular access to Abu Ghraib prison since U.S.-led forces began using it last year, according to chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari.
"The ICRC, aware of the situation, and based on its findings, has repeatedly asked the U.S. authorities to take corrective action," she told Reuters.
Notari declined to give details of what the ICRC had seen during the visits, which take place every five to six weeks, or about its reports to the U.S. authorities.
The United Nations said separately that it had written to U.S. authorities, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Governor of Iraq Paul Bremer, seeking information on human rights in Iraq over the past year, including treatment of detainees.
The Iraqi Governing Council and foreign ministers of other members of the U.S.-led coalition had also been asked to provide information.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement its team was ready to visit Baghdad for talks with coalition and Iraqi leaders, before submitting a report on May 31. The inquiry is being led by Jakob Moller, a lawyer and human rights expert.
The ICRC, which has been operating since the late 19th century, keeps a public silence about what it hears from detainees as the price for gaining access to jails in trouble spots around the world from Chechnya to West Africa.
Pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, Iraq's largest prison and notorious under Saddam Hussein for torture, have sparked an international outcry.
In a bid to limit damage to the U.S. image, President Bush went on two Arabic satellite television stations on Wednesday to tell an outraged Middle East that soldiers guilty of abusing Iraqi prisoners would be punished.
WANTON CRIMINAL ABUSES
Bush aides said the president had upbraided Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not having alerted him to the severity of the abuse at the jail, which was also the focus of a separate earlier probe by a U.S. general.
That report by Major-General Antonio Taguba, covering the period October-December 2003 and completed on March 3, cited incidents of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses."
The ICRC has also visited thousands of prisoners under the control of U.S. and British forces, which are also being investigated after a British newspaper published pictures of a soldier apparently urinating on an Iraqi detainee.
But Notari declined to comment on what officials had seen in British-run jails.
Under the Geneva Conventions on both prisoners and the treatment of civilians in wartime, the ICRC must be allowed to interview detainees in private and on a regular basis.
On these terms, it has carried out two visits to Saddam, who is being held somewhere in Iraq since his capture by U.S. troops shortly before Christmas.
"It is important that people understand our role, which is to be present and to have a dialogue with the authorities," Notari said.
But on a few occasions the Red Cross has broken its vow of silence because either the authority concerned has issued a partial account of the ICRC's findings or has simply failed to take any action after a long period.
One such example involved Israeli treatment of detained Palestinians some 20 years ago, when the ICRC went public with its criticism, Notari said.
More recently, the ICRC has expressed mounting frustration over the situation of Afghan and other detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announcing that its concerns about conditions and treatment were not being addressed.
© 2004 Reuters Ltd
http://www.Reuters.com |
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Re: Torture in Iraq: Another Reason to Get Out |
by chuck
chuck (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: -2
06 May 2004
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Considering that we have what most rational people would call a "suitable democracy", my guess is that we would welcome these people in and send away all the people who do nothing but complain about how bad everything is in the US.
What was done to those prisoners is bad, real bad, and those people who committed those acts will get their punishment in time...just like a suitable democracy promises. |
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Re: Torture in Iraq: Another Reason to Get Out |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2004
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It truly is worse than that...great commentary on the photo thing.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/monacharen/mc20040507.shtml |
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It Is Torture |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2004
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Contrary to Mona Charen's excusal and downplaying of these incidents, including making the incredible claim that this did not amount to torture, some additional documentation needs to be called to everyone's attention.
The definition of torture under international law:
For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Source:
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/39/a39r046.htm
Compare the definition above to the official army report:
[From the Army by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba]
I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:
a. Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
b. Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
c. Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
d. Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
f. Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
g. Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
i. Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
k. A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
l. Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
m. Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
Source:
http://cryptome.org/army-report.htm
The fact that the army report was classified as SECRET may, in fact, be unlawful in and of itself:
"By classifying an explosive report on the torture of Iraqi prisoners as 'Secret,' the Pentagon may have violated official secrecy policies, which prohibit the use of classification to conceal illegal activities. The report, authored by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, found that 'between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility, numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.'"
Source:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/05/050504.html |
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Besides |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2004
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Rummy sez it sure sounds a lot like torture...
From Rummy's testimony in front of Congress today:
There will be more pics and even videos that depict acts that are "...blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman."
If that 's not torture, then you're wanting to get the military off on a technicality. And I know how much it pisses off conservatives whenever anyone gets off on a technicality... |
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Re: Torture in Iraq: Another Reason to Get Out |
by kerry for president - torture, he had done it personaly!
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 May 2004
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News :: Elections or Legislation
Kerry Committed War Crimes, 'Burned Villages' in Viet Nam
Submitted by United Press International
Original Publisher: United Press International
Another site, Wintersoldier.com, places records from Sen. Kerry's anti-war protests online, including the transcript of the full question and answer session before a U.S. Senate committee, where the young Vietnam veteran detailed, among other activities, his trip as a civilian to the Paris Peace talks involving the U.S., South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese governments.
"I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks -- that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government," Kerry said during testimony on April 22, 1971, before the Foreign Relations Committee, according to the transcript posted on the site.
Wintersoldier.com also features audio sound bites -- in the MP3 format -- of Kerry describing what he did in Vietnam, both in testimony before the Senate and in an interview.
"Yes, I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed," Kerry said in the sound bite. "I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages."
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040309-122413-8660r |
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