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Torturing reporters is totally, totally unacceptable. Quote:
PenWing said:
I know I'm taking your statement out of context here, but bare with me a moment. Why doesn't the media do stories about what the US is doing over there? Yeah, here is a sensational story of US officers torturing prisoners. Great. That gets ratings. But, it looks very bad for our media, and our society, when they take the time to report these inexcusable actions, but have not taken the time to report, with equal detail, the good things the US has done since the beginning of the occupation.
And that's another thing, T-Dave. Sure, the occupation isn't a good thing, but what was the US supposed to do, take out Sadam and leave the country to the animals who are commiting constant acts of terror? Would it have been responsible for the US to remove a government, no matter how evil it was, and then just leave, knowing that many innocent, peace loving Iraqis, who suffered greatly under Sadam, would have been ruled by another, most likely worse regime, probably in the form of another Taliban? If we are above that, and I hope we are, we could not just leave. The US must stay to clean up the mess. The hope is that when the US leaves, it will be turning over the nation to a peace loving democracy. Is that a bad thing?
I guess what I'm saying is that, while the media had an obligation to report the story, it failed us in the way it was done. I am also saying shame on those who would rather the US just up and leave. Right now, there is hope for Iraq. If the US leaves before Iraq is ready, and there is a set date (although I don't know that Iraq will be ready), many good people will be subjugated to yet another evil dictatorship of some form. And then the question becomes what was the point of the US going in in the first place?
I don't know that I can answer that question.
I think you don't fully understand my posiiton. I support the presence fo US troops there, and deplored Spain's decision to withdraw its troops.
You can't invade a country and then leave it to rot, as you said. Creating anarchy like that is the height of injustice.
Australia is sending more troops to Iraq, and its something I totally agree with.
As for media reports on the good things happening in Iraq.... on the domestic front, I have little idea of what you guys are seeing on TV, but I assume you aren't seeing the good thinsg happening there. The overwhelming preoccupation is security, in the media, and I thnk its a correct preoccupation. What's the point of building schools and hospitals if they are going to be looted, or the people heading up the education department are shot? Having only 170000 soldiers or so (plus the large number of "military consultants") on the ground in Iraq clearly isn't enough. The US taxpayer shouldn't be shouldering it all, either: NATO and the UN should get involved, but with France in a corner that won't happen in a hurry. Some better diplomacy - multilateral instead of the chest-thumping Bushite unilateralism - would fix that up.
In asking me in response to my complaints about torture whether I see any reasonable alternatives to pulling troops out, your post kind of implies that torture is a necessary evil in a military occupation. I don't accept that at all.
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Published on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 by ABC News
‘Definitely a Cover-Up’
Former Abu Ghraib Intel Staffer Says Army Concealed Involvement in Abuse Scandal
by Brian Ross and Alexandra Salomon
Dozens of soldiers other than the seven military police reservists who have been charged — were involved in the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and there is an effort under way in the Army to hide it, a key witness in the investigation told ABCNEWS.
"There's definitely a cover-up," the witness, Sgt. Samuel Provance, said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet."
Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion stationed at Abu Ghraib last September. He spoke to ABCNEWS despite orders from his commanders not to.
"What I was surprised at was the silence," said Provance. "The collective silence by so many people that had to be involved, that had to have seen something or heard something."
Military intelligence analyst Sgt. Samuel Provance told ABCNEWS that the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison began as a technique ordered by military intelligence interrogators.
ABCNEWS.com
Provance, now stationed in Germany, ran the top secret computer network used by military intelligence at the prison.
He said that while he did not see the actual abuse take place, the interrogators with whom he worked freely admitted they directed the MPs' rough treatment of prisoners.
"Anything [the MPs] were to do legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators," he said.
Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence.
"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," Provance said. "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."
According to Provance, some of the physical abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib included U.S. soldiers "striking [prisoners] on the neck area somewhere and the person being knocked out. Then [the soldier] would go to the next detainee, who would be very fearful and voicing their fear, and the MP would calm him down and say, 'We're not going to do that. It's OK. Everything's fine,' and then do the exact same thing to him."
Provance also described an incident when two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night and stripped her naked to the waist. The men were later restrained by another MP.
Pentagon Sanctions Investigation
Maj. Gen. George Fay, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, was assigned by the Pentagon to investigate the role of military intelligence in the abuse at the Iraq prison.
Fay started his probe on April 23, but Provance said when Fay interviewed him, the general seemed interested only in the military police, not the interrogators, and seemed to discourage him from testifying.
Provance said Fay threatened to take action against him for failing to report what he saw sooner, and the sergeant fears he will be ostracized for speaking out.
"I feel like I'm being punished for being honest," Provance told ABCNEWS. "You know, it was almost as if I actually felt if all my statements were shredded and I said, like most everybody else, 'I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything. I don't know what you're talking about,' then my life would be just fine right now."
In response, Army officials said it is "routine procedure to advise military personnel under investigative review" not to comment.
The officials said, however, that Fay and the military were committed to an honest, in-depth investigation of what happened at the prison.
But Provance believes many involved may not be as forthcoming with information.
"I would say many people are probably hiding and wishing to God that this storm passes without them having to be investigated [or] personally looked at."
© Copyright 2004 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures.
Fair play!
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For those still under the impression that this is somehow limited to a dozen scapegoats.
Quote:
May 18, 2004
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Pervasive Abuse Alleged by Freed Detainees, Red Cross
By Tracy Wilkinson and Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writers
BAGHDAD — It begins with a blast at the front gate in the middle of the night. Troops pound their way into the home. Males are rounded up. They disappear into a chaotic system of U.S.-run jails and prison camps and emerge months later, sometimes battered and often never knowing of what crime they are accused.
That has been the experience of many of the nearly 40,000 Iraqis who have been detained and released by U.S. forces occupying Iraq for more than a year.
As much of the world focuses on Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, dozens of detainees and their families, along with scathing reports from international human rights groups, describe mistreatment at detention centers under U.S. control from Basra and Umm al Qasr in the south to Tikrit and Mosul in northern Iraq.
Even as the White House continues to argue that photographed abuse at Abu Ghraib was an isolated case, interviews with detainees and human rights reports demonstrate that abuse in various forms was systemwide.
"They just don't know how to handle us properly," said Ghazwan Alusi, 26, a car dealer held in two prisons for four months late last year. He described being transported from one detention center to another 600 miles away, hogtied by the arms and legs to other prisoners in the back of an uncovered truck.
"We were treated worse than animals," he said.
Much of the treatment alleged by freed Iraqi prisoners does not constitute torture. Not everyone was subjected to the aggressive interrogation techniques, from sleep deprivation to threats and beatings, that now are banned. And it remains to be seen whether any other detention facilities were as bad as cellblock 1A at Abu Ghraib, where sexual torture was employed.
But Iraqis say even the routine treatment is humiliating and unjust, especially for the vast majority of those rounded up in sweeps by U.S. troops, who cast an ever-wider net, sometimes with faulty intelligence. The detainees were often denied access to lawyers and seldom charged with a crime.
Sheik Abdul Sattar, 71, was watching television with his wife of 50 years in the early morning of April 25 when he heard the sound of machine-gun fire, he said. Afraid that a grandchild had found the family Kalashnikov, he shouted out, "What's going on?" and started to hoist himself off the sofa.
As he looked up, he saw a U.S. soldier towering over him and heard him shout: "Put your hands up!"
Sattar watched the soldiers throw his grown sons to the floor, handcuff them with plastic "flexicuffs" and pull hoods over their heads. A moment later, it was Sattar's turn. He was pushed flat on his face, he said, a bag was pulled over his head and his hands were tightly cuffed behind his back. An ill man who walked with difficulty, he was dragged on the ground, suffering bruises and a twisted ankle.
Hours later, the hood was taken off and Sattar found himself in the total darkness of a closet so narrow that he could only stand. It was almost a day before he saw light again, he said, emanating from an electric bulb in a small, wood-frame cell.
The details of Sattar's arrest are similar to those of thousands of Iraqis detained by U.S.-led occupation forces, according to a February report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The report alleges that the abuses were part of a pattern at detention centers across Iraq. The Red Cross lists a dozen methods used, including three that involve sexual abuse.
Throughout the first months of the occupation, detainees frequently made an initial and indefinite stop at Baghdad's international airport and its Camp Cropper, which housed a military intelligence section charged with running interrogations and screening new detainees.
Alusi, the car dealer, said he was picked up by a U.S. patrol on May 16, 2003, for a curfew violation. He was taken to a nearby school and told that he would be freed at dawn.
But in the morning, soldiers put a bag on his head, bound his hands and bundled him off to the airport, he said. He and 300 to 400 other detainees were corralled in a dusty patch of desert surrounded by concertina wire.
Alusi was jailed alongside Sadun Hamadi, the 75-year-old former speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, who lay on a single blanket in a sweltering tent, using his shoes as a pillow.
Alusi said he offered to bring water to the respected statesman, but the guards required Hamadi to get it himself. In his underwear, before all to see, Hamadi crossed the sand to retrieve a bit of water.
"Oh my God," Alusi recalled thinking to himself. "If they do this to him, a man of his position, what is in store for the rest of us?"
According to the Red Cross, those who potentially could provide useful information at the airport were singled out for aggressive questioning. It "was part of the military intelligence process to hold a [detainee] naked in a completely dark and empty cell for a prolonged period, to use inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and psychological coercion … to secure their cooperation."
As the hot summer dragged on, Alusi and other inmates protested. Some became violent.
About 1,200 were transferred to Camp Bucca, another detention facility in the southern port town of Umm al Qasr. Alusi and the others were loaded into the backs of metal-paneled trucks. Each prisoner was cuffed to the next, at both the arms and legs, bouncing painfully over the rutted back roads on the 600-mile journey, their heads slamming against the sides of the trucks.
At one point, an American soldier bumped his head and was evacuated by helicopter. But the prisoners, Alusi said, were swooning and retching from the heat, with little water and no relief. He claimed that several prisoners died, but that could not be confirmed.
Alusi said conditions were better at Camp Bucca. But the camp gets mixed reviews from human rights groups.
The Red Cross said intimidation and the threat of attack — such as aiming a rifle at a prisoner's head — was used during interrogation at Camp Bucca, but beatings and hoodings were far less common than in other detention centers. Guards regarded their charges with hostility and "general contempt," the Red Cross said.
The Christian Peacemakers Team, a U.S.-based advocacy group, documented 72 cases of abuse at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq between May 31 and Dec. 20. It reported its findings to L. Paul Bremer III, the occupation's top civilian official, in a letter dated Jan. 9 and to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of military forces, in a letter a day earlier.
Privately, the Red Cross began notifying occupation officials of abuse last year, and Amnesty International raised the alarm publicly last summer. The Los Angeles Times wrote about allegations of prisoner abuse as far back as July, as did other media sources.
Abu Ghraib figures prominently in the reports, but so do the other facilities. In its findings, the Red Cross also singles out seven smaller jails in Baghdad for allegations of abusive treatment.
One of them, the Salhiyye jail, is where Suad Mirza spent four of the six months she was in detention. Mirza was arrested in mid-July, and her two sons, Hussein and Ali, 2 1/2 weeks before that. Hussein, a high school senior, was studying for final exams when American soldiers burst into the Mirza home. Ali, 22, a university student, had just returned from a trip to Jordan.
Mirza understands that her husband's close relationship with ousted dictator Saddam Hussein would have focused scrutiny on her family. A Kurd, Sabegh Mirza was a Hussein bodyguard for two decades. But Suad Mirza said her husband was forced out of government a dozen years ago. He suffered a series of strokes and has been a bed-ridden paraplegic for about five years.
"I swear to God, maybe my husband and I knew Saddam. But my son [Hussein]? He was 6 when my husband left the regime," she said. From the time she arrived at the jail, she was questioned regularly by an American officer she described as tall and fit with blondish hair and blue eyes, accompanied by an Iraqi interrogator.
Mirza is the rare woman who has come forward and talked about her imprisonment — most are too ashamed or terrified. Mirza said she was not physically abused. But her interrogators repeatedly threatened her family in an effort to extract information. They threatened to have her daughters raped and her house looted, she said. They jailed her, initially, in a crowded cell with common male criminals who she believed were on drugs.
"This woman is a terrorist," she said she overheard the U.S. officer telling the Iraqi. "Treat her in the worst possible way."
Most of the questioning centered on whether she knew anything about the insurgency and on a crate of pistols — her husband's collection, she said — found in her house during last year's raid.
She eventually was released without being charged. Her older son, Ali, remains at Abu Ghraib, and Hussein, 18, is at Camp Bucca.
"The Iraqi people are angry, primarily because so many people are being detained arbitrarily. It's a harsh and inhumane detention," said Thamer Sultan, a tribal leader from the largely anti-American town of Tikrit. Now, with the Abu Ghraib scandal revealed, he said, "anger over the mistreatment is just an extension of that already pervasive anger. It only adds to the outrage."
Sultan, whose son, nephew and cousin are or have been detained, is a former army general who had a falling out with Saddam Hussein several years ago and now is a consultant to the occupation authority in the Tikrit region. His son, Omar, was held for a month and beaten by military police in December, he said, even though the young man was pointing out arms caches and providing other intelligence.
When Sultan complained about his son's beating to Bremer's representative in Tikrit, he was told that such treatment at the hands of U.S. soldiers was impossible.
"The bruises and marks were visible," Sultan said
And this is definately not for the squeamish but it is an ironic footnote with all this talk of Iraqi WMD'S. Again, some of the stuff is beyond graphic, so you've been warned.
POISONOUS LEGACY
It's the kind of stuff that you don't see on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. But out of sight doesn't mean it isn't happening. And not just to Iraqi's either. Our troops are suffering from this as well.
Last edited by whomod; 2004-05-19 11:36 AM.
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Quote:
Dave said:
As for media reports on the good things happening in Iraq.... on the domestic front, I have little idea of what you guys are seeing on TV, but I assume you aren't seeing the good thinsg happening there. The overwhelming preoccupation is security, in the media, and I thnk its a correct preoccupation. What's the point of building schools and hospitals if they are going to be looted, or the people heading up the education department are shot? Having only 170000 soldiers or so (plus the large number of "military consultants") on the ground in Iraq clearly isn't enough. The US taxpayer shouldn't be shouldering it all, either: NATO and the UN should get involved, but with France in a corner that won't happen in a hurry. Some better diplomacy - multilateral instead of the chest-thumping Bushite unilateralism - would fix that up.
In asking me in response to my complaints about torture whether I see any reasonable alternatives to pulling troops out, your post kind of implies that torture is a necessary evil in a military occupation. I don't accept that at all.
I disagree. By reporting on the building of schools and the like, it gives a real feel good purpose to why we invaded in the first place. In other words, its the propoganda I expect from my nation's media. They still have to call the government, and the military, when they fuck up, but that doesn't mean they can sit quietly waiting for that to happen. And that's what they did.
As for torture, I never made any mention of it, and I never intended to imply anything about it. Torture is wrong. And this is clearly torture.
<sub>Will Eisner's last work - The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of ZionRDCW Profile"Well, as it happens, I wrote the damned SOP," Illescue half snarled, "and as of now, you can bar those jackals from any part of this facility until Hell's a hockey rink! Is that perfectly clear?!" - Dr. Franz Illescue - Honor Harrington: At All Costs"I don't know what I'm do, or how I do, I just do." - Alexander Ovechkin</sub>
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There was a report on the radio this morning to say that the "Australian Taleban" (I forget his name - David something) had been reported as bound and beaten by Us soldiers during several half hour sessions.
Ian Fleming said, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." We're now getting widespread reports of systemic torture. Not all of them can be fabricated.
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Educator to comprehension impaired (JLA, that is you) 50000+ posts
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brutally Kamphausened 15000+ posts
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That cartoon really makes the point, Britney.
Saddam killed roughly 1 million of his own poeple, and that was never reported or an outrage in the Arab media.
But 7 American prison guards in Abu Ghraib who roughed up and harassed a few prisoners, who may not have even killed anyone (although investigations are being done of up to 40 deaths where there is any question of wrongdoing by U.S. guards)... and that's all over the Arab media, in posturing outrage ?!?
Again, crimes were committed, no one disputes that. And the first of the guards (Sivits, who by accounts is the least of the offenders) was already sentenced to a year in military prison. I fail to see what the outrage is about. The guilty are being punished, and the rule of law is being maintained in Iraq, even against the American occupiers.
I enjoyed this interview Zod posted, of Rush Limbaugh receiving a call from an American soldier on leave from Iraq:
Interview of a soldier from Iraq
http://www.rkmbs.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=278741&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
It lays out that American soldiers have limitations on how they can do their job in Iraq, because there is so much media scrutiny, and any mistake they make will be broadcast across the global media.
Again, 7 U.S. soldiers committed crimes and are being punished.
Where is the sense of proportion, in outrage at the slaughter and dismemberment of American civilians and soldiers in Iraq?
Where is the sense of proportion, in the outrage of seven U.S. soldiers, who possibly didn't even kill anyone, versus the million or more dead Iraqis, systematically tortured and murdered, found in mass graves throughout Iraq ?
Very selective rage indeed, on the part of Arabs, liberals and the media worldwide.
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"I have never ordered torture," Bush said. "I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being."
Quote:
Bush Claimed Right to Waive Torture Laws
WASHINGTON - President Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs, according to documents released Tuesday. .....
Why would Bush want the right to suspend torture laws if he didn't intend on excercising that right!?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't torture defined as inflicting actual bodily harm on someone? Everything else seems to fall under the heading of abuse which is still not the best way to go, but certainly isn't an atrocity on par with Japanese mistreatment of American POWs in WWII or any other incident of actual torture in history.
At the risk of tossing in another political stereotype, I'm not terribly surprised that politicizers who equate hurt feelings with offensive violation of their civil rights would muddy the definition of torture and waste valuable campaign time attacking the straw man by insinuating that Bush or his administration is ordering war crimes, which is essentially unprovable.
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Quote:
Captain Sammitch said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't torture defined as inflicting actual bodily harm on someone? Everything else seems to fall under the heading of abuse which is still not the best way to go, but certainly isn't an atrocity on par with Japanese mistreatment of American POWs in WWII or any other incident of actual torture in history.
At the risk of tossing in another political stereotype, I'm not terribly surprised that politicizers who equate hurt feelings with offensive violation of their civil rights would muddy the definition of torture and waste valuable campaign time attacking the straw man by insinuating that Bush or his administration is ordering war crimes, which is essentially unprovable.
If I have you bound and repeatedly threaten to shoot you with a rifle, I would be imprisoned.
Why should that not be a crime if I happened to be a member of the US Army, and I was doing it to an Iraqi detainee?
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According to the Capitol's own newspaper, we may soon be seeing a breakdown of Nixonian proportions.
Quote:
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON & TERESA HAMPTON
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15
President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
CONTINUED: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4636.shtml
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Any corroboration on that?
The site "whitehouseblues.com" sounds very partisan.
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No way of being sure when you just have 'contacts' in the White House. Hell, the night janitor could be called a 'contact' by some people. In and of itself that's no more journalistic clarity than you see in your average supermarket tabloid. 
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Quote:
Dave said:
Quote:
Captain Sammitch said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't torture defined as inflicting actual bodily harm on someone? Everything else seems to fall under the heading of abuse which is still not the best way to go, but certainly isn't an atrocity on par with Japanese mistreatment of American POWs in WWII or any other incident of actual torture in history.
At the risk of tossing in another political stereotype, I'm not terribly surprised that politicizers who equate hurt feelings with offensive violation of their civil rights would muddy the definition of torture and waste valuable campaign time attacking the straw man by insinuating that Bush or his administration is ordering war crimes, which is essentially unprovable.
If I have you bound and repeatedly threaten to shoot you with a rifle, I would be imprisoned.
Why should that not be a crime if I happened to be a member of the US Army, and I was doing it to an Iraqi detainee?
Good question. My best guess is that as an American citizen, I would have rights that were protected by law-enforcement officers on US soil and by the American Embassy on foreign soil. As there was no de facto government in place when these events unfolded, there was no authority to respond to these incidents - unless superior officers were there all along and did nothing to stop what happened. I doubt any of those officers would be that eager to destroy their careers.
Harsh as it may sound, though, they weren't citizens of a government that protected their rights, and they had nobody to intervene. Doesn't make it morally right, of course. But in a situation like that, all you have to go on is Geneva, which we're beginning to see is a pretty outdated and rather open-ended standard. So there might actually not be anyone to say the US soldiers violated the Iraqis' civil rights if there wasn't a government or constitution or treaty in place establishing those civil rights.
At any rate, there's nothing to establish that incidents of this nature continued after this came to light, and all reports suggest they were isolated incidents themselves. It's nowhere near proportional to the kidnapping and murder of American civilians and other foreign nationals - who, by the way, do have rights protected by their respective governments. I personally think that the Iraqis at Abu Ghirab were wronged and mistreated and they didn't deserve it at all - but what happened to them is pretty tame compared to what's been happening to all the foreign civilians over there. You put on the uniform, you pick up a gun, you're no longer a civilian - all bets are off as far as what will happen to you.
It doesn't make Abu Ghirab right.
But it does make Abu Ghirab different.
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Quote:
Captain Sammitch said:
Harsh as it may sound, though, they weren't citizens of a government that protected their rights, and they had nobody to intervene. Doesn't make it morally right, of course. But in a situation like that, all you have to go on is Geneva, which we're beginning to see is a pretty outdated and rather open-ended standard. So there might actually not be anyone to say the US soldiers violated the Iraqis' civil rights if there wasn't a government or constitution or treaty in place establishing those civil rights.
But the Geneva rights are still the upheld standard, a standard the U.S. has enforced in the past. During my time in the military I was repeatedly made aware of that. In Iraq, those rights were violated.
Quote:
Captain Sammitch said:
At any rate, there's nothing to establish that incidents of this nature continued after this came to light, and all reports suggest they were isolated incidents themselves.
White House - AP Cabinet & State
U.S. Reports 94 Cases of Prisoner Abuse
2 hours, 4 minutes ago
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has found 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001, the Army's inspector general said Thursday in a long-awaited report made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.
The number is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by the Pentagon, which had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations.
 The inspector general investigation, ordered Feb. 10 after the allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to the attention of top Army officials in Washington, concluded that there were no systemic problems that contributed to the abuse. In some cases, the report found, the abuse was abetted or facilitated by officers not following proper procedures.
Most of the alleged abuses — 45 of the 94 — happened at the point where the detainee was captured, said Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, the Army's inspector general. Of those 45 cases, 20 involved allegations of physical abuse and the rest were allegations of theft or other crimes, he said.
Twenty-one cases of alleged abuse happened at detention centers such as Abu Ghraib, Mikolashek said. Another 19 happened at collection points where prisoners are gathered between their capture and their transfer to long-term prisons.
Only eight cases happened during or surrounding interrogations, Mikolashek said.
In contrast to its own findings that there were no systemic problems, however, the Army report also cites a February report from the International Committee for the Red Cross that alleged that "methods of ill treatment" were "used in a systematic way" by the U.S. military in Iraq.
Seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit from Cresaptown, Md., were charged in the prisoner abuse scandal, which unfolded this past spring with the release of pictures of abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Questions also arose about prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the deaths of detainees, as well as whether abuse was part of interrogations.
Sen. John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had been pressing for the results of the inspector general report for several weeks, called the last-minute hearing Thursday before Congress leaves for the rest of the summer Friday.
The Army has not yet made the entire report public but released parts during the public hearing.
The Army inspector general report, looking at the period from Oct 1. 2001 through June 9 of this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, is by far the most comprehensive examination of the abuse that sent shock waves through both the Arab world and the United States.
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, testifying at the hearing, said he accepted responsibility for the abuses committed by soldiers.
But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the committee, said it was "difficult to believe there were not systemic problems with our detention and interrogations operations."
The Army inspector general report found that since the fall of 2001, overall the United States had held more than 50,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, a number never before made public.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958
some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
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some RKMB'ers are Obsessed with Black People Hmmm? 5000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 5,958 |
Not in Iraq but jut as embarassing. The online version unfortunately didn't contain the trial photo from the print edition. It looks as if these black-op's guys aern't going down quietly. Quote:
July 22, 2004
THE WORLD
Trial of Alleged U.S. Vigilante Begins in Kabul
Jonathan Idema, who is accused along with two other Americans, says the Pentagon had full knowledge of his detention of Afghans.
By Hamida Ghafour, Special to The Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — An American accused of running a private jail and torturing Afghans suspected of terrorist activities insisted at the opening of his trial here Wednesday that he had been working with the full knowledge of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office.
Jonathan Keith Idema, a retired Special Forces soldier, told reporters outside a Kabul court that he worked for the U.S. government, was in contact with the Pentagon and had the documents to prove it.
He and two other Americans were arrested July 5 after Afghan authorities raided a house in a residential neighborhood of Kabul, the capital, and found eight Afghan prisoners, some hanging from their feet.
Idema and his colleagues — Edward Caraballo, who Idema said was a journalist, and Brent Bennett — deny the charges, which include torture and illegal detention of citizens.
"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did, they absolutely supported what we did. We have extensive evidence to that…. We're prepared to show e-mails and correspondence and tape-recorded conversations," Idema said before the trial. "We were in contact directly by fax and e-mail and phone with Donald Rumsfeld's office."
The American military, the U.S. Embassy and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials here have said Idema did not work for, or on behalf of, the American government.
In Washington, officials said Idema obtained contact information for the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone, and subsequently sent a series of faxes and e-mails to Cambone's office and that of his deputy, Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin.
Officials would not describe the nature of his correspondence and said only that he offered to provide the Pentagon intelligence about the Al Qaeda terrorist network.
"He approached DoD to work for them," said one defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He was told his services weren't needed."
The $50-million reward offered by the U.S. for the capture of Osama bin Laden has attracted bounty hunters, mercenaries and private security contractors to Afghanistan. Many wear a mix of American military uniforms and civilian clothing, carry weapons and set up their own roadblocks. Their conduct, which is difficult to regulate, has caused problems for the NATO peacekeepers.
On three occasions, Idema persuaded troops with the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led peacekeeping mission, to help him carry out raids on houses where he seized Afghans, a NATO spokesman said.
Idema has claimed that he was a special advisor to the Northern Alliance, the Afghan coalition that helped the U.S. topple the Taliban in 2001.
He also has said he has been running a counter-terrorism operation for months and on several occasions has handed militants to the U.S.-led forces for further questioning. He has claimed to have foiled a number of assassination bids on senior Afghan Cabinet ministers.
Idema, Caraballo and Bennett did not testify during Wednesday's court appearance. Charges related to the illegal detention and torture of hostages were read during the two-hour session, which was slowed by the need for interpreters. The room was packed with people, most of them Afghans.
Three of Idema's alleged prisoners gave statements to the court. Ghulam Sakhi said he was stopped in a taxi on his way to Kabul from the nearby province of Laghman. The car was searched, and he was taken to the private jail run by Idema and his associates.
Sakhi said his captors poured boiling water on him and kicked him to the point that he now has difficulty breathing.
Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari adjourned the trial for up to 20 days to allow the three men and four Afghan associates to prepare a defense and find better interpreters.
Times staff writer Mark Mazzetti in Washington contributed to this report.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 26,346 Likes: 38
brutally Kamphausened 15000+ posts
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brutally Kamphausened 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 26,346 Likes: 38 |
I thought this YouTube video clip made a playful commentary on the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisoners (which kind of mixes apples with oranges, because the military standards at Guantanamo have not been compromised at any point.)
At points it seems to be sympathetic to the detainees.
But it also seems to criticize the silliness of calling prisoner treatment "atrocities", portraying it with the silliness of a slumber-party pillow-fight.
Mostly, it's just funny.
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