Torture at Abu Ghraib (MERGED)

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
241

Jesus God yes condemnation.

However I am concerned about a number of things.

First, in this firestorm there is a fine line between "the truth coming out", and unfounded political attacks. Undoubtedly opponents of the US will attempt to capitalize on the shame of these actions with over the top claims with no foundation. The facts appear to be awful enough without the typical hysteria flogging them higher.

Second, I believe that a gloves-off investigation needs to be tough thorough, and politically protected. Just now on television Gen Taguba was asked a question regarding General Karpinski. He was asked if there is truth to the claim that Karpinski did not have effective access to sections of Abu Graib. He scornfully replied that that he believed that she had full access as well as responsibility. This woman had responsibility for 8000 prisoners. She damn well better have assumed the responsibility. I believe a great deal of the problem resulted from her negligence and incompetance. If blame goes higher, let the chips fall where they may.

Third, there is an attempt to create a cloudy theory of global responsibility, implying that the moral decay evidenced by these incidents was an inevitable result of going to war, and therefore the war itself is really the crime. I fall short of this conclusion.

Fourth, outrage can only last so long, and then rationality needs to kick in. The US must have a tranparent and visible process for addressing this situation, but it serves no one to see it degrade into a witch hunt. That would be compounding one problem with another.

Fifth, while the US twists in the wind, there is still the very real problem of how to improve the daily lives of Iraqi's. I remain unconvinced that a withdrawl of the US would bring anything but rampant chaos to Iraq, again, compounding the problems. Despite all the histrionics, no one has come forward with an effective alternative to US occupation. Until a rational and realistic plan is put forward, the Iraqis remain pawns of global forces, the US versus those who would revel in our failure. This gamesmanship is dangerous and destructive to the Iraqi people. If countries are TRUELY concerned about Iraqi's, they will do more than shoot political arrows, they will effectively intervene to bring peace and safety to the Iraqi people. So far I see no evidence that anyone wants to do more than pay lip service to anything other than a US occupation. Therfore the US faces two choices, continue on, or abandon Iraq. Abandoning Iraq is simply not an acceptable alternative.

242

Indians abused at US military camp in Iraq

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_730198,000900020003.htm

We were slaves in American kitchens. We barely got two hours of sleep. Any slip-ups and we were tortured for days," says Hameed.

• “Once I told the kitchen in-charge that as I was a devout Muslim I could not cook pork. I was beaten up with rifle butts,” says Hameed’s brother Shahjahan.

• “Iraqi militia attacked our camps several times. At times, officers used us as shields,” adds Hameed.

I guess Indian food is in demand.

243

At times, officers used us as shields

Pathetic cowards.

244

They all look the same to the trained American eye!

No discrimination here, just straight forward equal opportunities. You will all be treated as Iraqis!

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by : *
**Where is the condemnation from all the Americans (except OG)? Funny how they haven't been on gupshup since the story broke.*
[/QUOTE]

Well now notice that after you pointed this out, they came rushing to this thread to offer their "condolences" and in some cases justifications. Where were they before?

246

Here are the excuses for these war crimes from a representative of the American people, and a champion of the Bush regime…

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5106409

Senator ‘Outraged by Outrage’ at Prison Abuse

As others condemned the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe on Tuesday expressed outrage at the worldwide outrage over the treatment by American soldiers of those he called “terrorists” and “murderers.” “I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment,” the Oklahoma Republican said at a U.S. Senate hearing probing the scandal. “These prisoners, you know they’re not there for traffic violations,” Inhofe said. “If they’re in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.”

Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 percent to 90 percent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been “arrested by mistake,” according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week. The report also said the mistreatment of prisoners apparently tolerated by U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq involved widespread abuse that was “in some cases tantamount to torture.” In heated remarks at odds with others on the Senate committee who took aim at the U.S. military’s handling of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, Inhofe said that American sympathies should lie with U.S. troops. “I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations, while our troops, our heroes are fighting and dying,” he said. Inhofe, who visited Iraq in March, is described on his senatorial Web site as a leading conservative voice in the Senate, advocating “common sense Oklahoma values including less government, less regulation, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and a strong national defense.”

247

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Malik73: *
*"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment,"**

[/QUOTE]

What the fk! I knew it, this is what many americans must feel deep down (not too deep) if the people that lead them can spew such crap.

248

I think India should invade america to right the balance.

249

Who ordered ‘shock and awe’? - The source of debauchery

…the moral debauchery came down the chain of command from Washington

This article says it all…

http://www.iht.com/articles/519353.html

**Who ordered ‘shock and awe’? **

The source of debauchery

To what extent have the policies of the Bush administration - and the values and attitudes that have characterized the conduct of the so-called war against terror - contributed to a state of mind and morale in the American military that opened the way to the torture, abuse and, in some cases, apparent murder of prisoners in Iraq? Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration displayed hostility toward international law and treaty obligations that it considered as limits on U.S. national sovereignty or as obstacles to American national interest. In the Afghanistan war it summarily shipped prisoners outside of the country, notably to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without serious examination of their cases, and in disregard of Geneva norms concerning prisoners taken in war. U.S. Army regulations on dealing with prisoners of war were bypassed, since these people were by presidential definition “enemy combatants,” not prisoners of war. Ordinary American norms of justice, requiring timely presentation of charges, legal representation and impartial adjudication, were ignored then and continue to be ignored.

While the administration’s disregard for international, military and constitutional law was widely acknowledged at the time, there was little protest in the American press, and no effective challenge from Democratic Party leaders. There is a bipartisan responsibility for what has happened. Some Afghan and other “war against terror” prisoners were transferred to third countries. Reporters were informed - with a smile and a wink - that this was because they could be tortured there. Again there was negligible reaction in U.S. press and political circles. In Afghanistan, and subsequently in Iraq, an obvious reason for the involvement of civilian “contract employees” in intelligence and interrogations has been that they are not subject to military discipline, and responsibility for them and what they do can be “plausibly denied” by U.S. officials. All this is consistent with an attitude toward violence characteristic of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who have for years insisted that history is made through violence, and that in the national cause a governing elite has the right to mislead the public in order to achieve goals that the leaders alone are in a position to understand. This lies behind the administration’s pressure for violent action to “change regimes” and intimidate so-called rogue nations, constantly described - however implausibly - by the president and vice president as threatening mass destruction attacks on the United States, jeopardizing national survival. Iraq had to be attacked before it was “too late.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly says that those who oppose the United States in Iraq and elsewhere have to be killed. He does not speak in terms of defeating them, much less of negotiating with them, as the British do in southern Iraq. Dehumanizing language has deliberately been employed to describe all those who oppose the United States. The cumulative effect of this has conveyed to American troops that international and national norms of lawful conduct have been suspended or crucially limited in the war against terror. It can be argued that the Bush administration created a state of expectation, mode of conduct, hostility to traditional norms of military behavior, and attitude toward Iraqi, Afghan and other Islamic “terrorists,” that opened the way to atrocities. Finally, there is a problem with U.S. military doctrine. Offensive operations are intended to “shock and awe” opponents through massive use of violence, even when civilians are potential victims, as in the armored column assault that led the attack on Baghdad a year ago. Additionally, American military doctrine of “force protection” mandates killing civilians perceived as being in any way threatening to American forces. This requires American soldiers to treat all Iraqis as potential enemies, and their lives as being of lesser worth than American lives. A British officer recently complained to The Daily Telegraph in London - a pro-American newspaper - that Americans "don’t see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen - subhuman, a term applied by the Nazis to Jews and Gypsies. “They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life the way we are. Their attitude toward the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful … As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them.” But that is what they have been trained to think. One result of that training was what happened in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Young military reservists from small American towns do not spontaneously torture, humiliate, sexually abuse and obscenely mock powerless prisoners unless people in authority over them have ordered or encouraged them to do so. An American friend who works in Saudi Arabia recently e-mailed me to say “it’s all over with those pro-American Arabs who until now have credited Washington with good intentions in Iraq. Photographs of American women soldiers sexually taunting and abusing naked and bound Arab men says to them that the United States is a totally depraved society.” But who debauched these young American men and women soldiers? I would argue that the moral debauchery came down the chain of command from Washington.

250

A well put together piece and very much what I have been arguing throughout this prisoner abuse business.

Certain created mindsets will ultimately result in certain events, who is responsible, the one initiating the brainwash or the brainwashed....BOTH!

251

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chota: *
I think India should invade america to right the balance.
[/QUOTE]

Well at the rate these mass torture stories are coming out, I would not be surprised that a "coalition of the willing" starts ranging against the United States.

252

It was reported (forgot where) that one of the female soldiers who was involved in this mess believed that a group of prisoners at one point were the ones who raped Jessica Lynch. But Lynch was never raped. But those prisoners were, by a broomstick, because this poor idiot MP wanted revenge and was in a position to take it.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

253

Good pioint, a forced regime change in the US is in order.

254

Yes spoon the dangers of the first set of lies do filter down to the troops so to speak.

A dog owned by a cruel master will learn nothing but cruelty.

255

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chota: *

I knew it, this is what many americans must feel deep down (not too deep) if the people that lead them can spew such crap.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, that's why it took almost all the American's to offer their "condemnations", only after they were reminded by bhai.

256

Chota

At least the dog doesn't have any choice!

What can be said about the GI Joe Dumbasses?

................... I think the last word has answered the question!

257

unfortunate.

258

This was a war that started with lies, and has continued throughout with lies, and good honest American's have been fooled and mislead. The torture stories are the beginning of the end for the American's in Iraq, as their "victory" has now been washed away in a sea of shame.

259

U.S. general blames leadership for abuse](Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The abuse of Iraqi prisoners reflected a failure of leadership in the U.S. armed forces, the general who investigated the mistreatment has testified.

But he found no evidence that American soldiers had acted on direct orders of higher-ups.

Asked directly in “your own soldier’s language” what had caused the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, once the feared symbol of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial rule, U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba recited a litany of ills.

“Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant,” Taguba, the author of a Pentagon report on the abuse, told the latest Senate hearing on the scandal, which has drawn worldwide outrage.

Taguba’s testimony came as an Islamist Web site said an American civilian, Nick Berg from Philadelphia, had been beheaded by an al Qaeda leader in Iraq in revenge for the “Satanic degradation” of Iraqi prisoners.

Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee he did “not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition.”

But he also said Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the prison when the abuses took place last year, was the highest ranked officer he had interviewed.

“So what may have happened above General Karpinski is an open book?” said Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat.

The hearing followed an all-day grilling of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday, at which Rumsfeld apologised for the abuse but said he would not step down simply to appease his political enemies.

Democrats were irked that the Pentagon balked at plans for Taguba to testify by himself, and called its insistence that Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone also appear an “attempt to dilute” his testimony, a Democratic aide said. “Taguba is known as a straight-talker.”

In sometimes testy exchanges, Cambone, who is in charge of military intelligence, said U.S. soldiers were under direction to treat prisoners according to the Geneva Conventions.

In a key point, Cambone also differed with Taguba on whether military intelligence or military police were in charge of the prison.

‘TACTICAL CONTROL’

Cambone said military intelligence was given “tactical control,” which he said was to help in security and improvements at the facility. But he said that did not put the intelligence brigade in charge of military police operations.

Taguba’s report said Army orders “effectively made a military intelligence officer rather than an M.P. officer responsible for the M.P. units conducting detainee operations at that facility.”

Taguba’s report, and photographs shown around the world of naked prisoners stacked in a pyramid or positioned to simulate sex acts at the prison near Baghdad, have shocked Americans and set off an international furore that has posed a serious setback to U.S. efforts to stabilise Iraq.

While his 53-page report completed in March castigated the prison operation for abuses from October through December 2003, Taguba told the committee he saw no evidence it resulted from a deliberate policy to extract information from detainees.

But Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat, said “the despicable acts” shown in the report “not only reek of abuse, they reek of an organised effort and methodical preparation for interrogation.”

Taguba said he did not see evidence of comparable abuses at other facilities, which were not under military intelligence control.

Several senators were sceptical that a few guards would have taken it upon themselves to learn abuses that were particularly offensive to Muslims, which they said suggested that people up the chain of command were involved.

“These youngsters didn’t understand the nuances of Muslim culture to have, some people say, staged those photographs, which I understand were going to be shown to the prisoners’ family by way of threat unless he came forward with some valuable information,” said Committee Chairman John Warner, a Virginia Republican. “The plot is thickening.”

Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said some of the soldiers charged in the abuse scandal have stopped talking to investigators, citing protections against self-incrimination enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

“The soldiers that are charged are saying that military intelligence told me to do this … That’s really where we need to get to: who told them to do this,” Alexander said.

With close U.S. ally Britain battling its own abuse scandal, Amnesty International accused British soldiers in Iraq of killing civilians, including an 8-year-old girl and a wedding guest, who posed no apparent threat.

The scandal broke in America as public support for the Iraq war was already declining.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Monday found only 44 percent believed the war was worthwhile.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chota: *
unfortunate.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, but that seems to be the mindset of the right-wingers in the US, who feel no remorse for the systematic mass torture their forces have carried out in Iraq.