Grow up twerp. Either make your point - whatever it is - in a proper manner or you'll be looking for somewhere else to post very soon.
Sick yokel fools. I hope they get the punishment they are due. People can try to provide equivocation or context, but it does not excuse these shameful incidents.
Even in a conflict, when you're there face to face with prisoners/ fellow human beings in your charge, to be capable of shaming people like this takes a major league a-hole mentality. Not having empathy for these guys. Really disgusting.
I'll tell you where the Americans are, for the most part we are ashamed and embarrassed.
After a few days away, not listening to the news, I find myself with a still seething anger, and some additional thoughts.
First, the administrative dismissal of some officers is a good start. Next we need to examine contractors and the CIA to see what their involvement was. Next we need to Court Marshal those directly responsible. Next we need to apologize to the Iraqi's who were treated this way, and to compensate them where appropriate.
I have heard the American General on TV today, and I want to slap the woman across the face. She doesn't get it. She was in charge, and it was her watch. I suggest criminal charges if she does not quickly understand that she should be issuing apologies, not limp excuses.
The detention needs to be completely reviewed, and a top to bottom review done. Right is right and wrong is wrong, let the chips fall where they may.
But let me add one more thing. Initially I did not believe these reports. Why? Because there is so much crap, as evidenced by our beloved Gupshup. Some thread, with no factual reporting, claims that 4000 women were raped by Americans. Civilian deaths are grossly exaggerated for propaganda value. Islamist web sites scream torture at a drop of the hat. The collective response is to tune out ALL accusations as more overly politicized claims. It is not that I do not believe some reports, it is that the true claims are so overloaded with propaganda crap that when the truth DOES appear, it is taken as just more propaganda noise. When the sky is actually falling, no one will believe it....
The only glimmer of good news to this is that one soldier saw what was going on, and turned in his brother soldiers. What an act of courage! The press did their job unmercifully, and that is indeed good. This is what I personally count on in a Democracy. Individual courage, a man whose parents tought him the difference between right and wrong, and a set of checks and balances that allows the press to expose problems. That is the America that I live in and I endorse......
So, let me apologize on behalf of all of us. I think we are collectively shocked and appalled, and more than a little embarrassed. At this point there is still a chance for America to correct it's errors, and to sweep clean the situation. That should be percieved as a strength, not a weakness.
“It appears OG, that this ** is ** what you stand for and the way you do things.”
“indicative of your average american's attitude towards these prisoners.”
“makin 'em do sick sexual stuff and making your porn fantasies come to life.”
“Most goray are like that, racist *******s.”
“even a so called civilised educated gora would do something like that for fun.”
“there's a time and place for licking out bush and blairs arseholes and this certainly aint it so keep ur sorry arse politically corect bull to ur self.”
Why have I not participated in this thread or the other on the topic? Because these types of comments are simply not worthy of response. No point to it.
BTW: As to the actions of the American soldiers participating in this: horrendous, despicable, disgusting. I thank and respect my fellow Americans for sharing this view and not trying to legitimize, excuse and/or condone this behavior and/or to search for its root causes. I also respect my President for quickly and promptly voicing his own disgust.
this is disgusting.. forget the soldiers, imagine how psychologically disturbed the victims would be.. it makes me sick just thinking bout it.
We live in a world of animals
This is the most shameful act I can imagine, America has lost all credibility, sadly.
Torture at Abu Ghraib – New Yorker
TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
Issue of 2004-05-10
Posted 2004-04-30
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.
In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.
Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners.
General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, “living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave.”
A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.”
The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes 2” last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.
The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.
Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.
Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood.
The 372nd’s abuse of prisoners seemed almost routine—a fact of Army life that the soldiers felt no need to hide. On April 9th, at an Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand jury) in the case against Sergeant Frederick, at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, one of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called “hard site” at Abu Ghraib—seven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in another section of the prison. Wisdom said:
SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that.
When he returned later, Wisdom testified:
I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn’t think it was right . . . I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, “Look what these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds.” I heard PFC England shout out, “He’s getting hard.”
Wisdom testified that he told his superiors what had happened, and assumed that “the issue was taken care of.” He said, “I just didn’t want to be part of anything that looked criminal.”…
sickening...!!
I’m starting to think this isn’t something we can come back from.. have to make an effort to do that, and understand what exactly the mistake was. I aint seeing it. Too many attempts at moral equivalence. We’ve had our ‘American guppies’ give their well-written condemnations (which I agree with and appreciate), but unfortunately there are other Americans who would not be so considerate.
Anyway, these may or may not be related but here’s some links:
Former human rights minister told Bremer about Iraq detainee abuse
And what about that Maher Arar case? whatever happened with it?
More…
CLEANING UP…From the Army’s investigation of Abu Ghraib prison, according to Seymour Hersh:
General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors…He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances…“He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote.
Via Billmon, this is the April 25 entry in the online diary of Joe Ryan, [www.am1500.com/personalities/joeryan.htm+KSTP+“Joe+Ryan”&hl=en]a](http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:XYYOCOWnu_8J:[There were six of us that had to come in early and conduct long interrogations…I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf. Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and onto the highway.](There were six of us that had to come in early and conduct long interrogations…I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf. Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and onto the highway.)
Like Billmon, I sort of doubt there are two guys with this same name working at Abu Ghraib. Considering that General Taguba’s report was written in February and Stephanowicz was still in Iraq hitting golf balls two months later, the Army doesn’t exactly seem to be hopping to implement his recommendations, does it?
– source
I was taught to believe my whole life that:
"We are the good guys."
We believe in freedom and equal rights.
I was taught an ideal of fairness and equality. Human rights.
Now I am ashamed.
I'm ashamed that this prison was often cited by admin as a reason to liberate Iraqi's from Saddam.
I'm ashamed of the poor excuses cited by broadcast news interviews and reports.
"weren't trained" and "weren't instructed in Geneva Conventions"
As if one doesn't know wrong from right. As if one needs to be instructed that its wrong to strip people naked and threaten electrocution.
As if one needs to be told its wrong to threaten sodomy.
I'm doubley ashamed that on another thread I wrote even if angst over bridge hanging incident no excuse.
Not equitable.
Investigation of abuse against the Iraqi's seems to have stemmed way earlier.
Command should be held accountable as well as the perps.
AV Why you are ashamed. why dont you think that all this is a designed propaganda. and most of all no one can blame the american nation for a fault of few.
so far authenticity of photos is not decided. this is all mellisious, fake and rubbish.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by anjjan: *
AV Why you are ashamed. why dont you think that all this is a designed propaganda. and most of all no one can blame the american nation for a fault of few.
so far authenticity of photos is not decided. this is all mellisious, fake and rubbish.
[/QUOTE]
I am ashamed because the pictures look real.
Why would such awful photos be used as propoganda?
Also because I saw Gen. Karpinski televised interview. .She had an attorney with her and she sounded nervous to me.
Nearing end of the interview she seemed to speak of intelligence people at prison and stress caused soldiers due to numbers of Iraqi prisoners taken.
She didn't admit abuse occured but basically admited she would own up to some responsibility.
"Also because I saw Gen. Karpinski televised interview. .She had an attorney with her and she sounded nervous to me."
What in the world this general was doing on TV is a real mystery to me. She is thick as a brick, and just does not get it. Part of the theory of command is that you are RESPONSIBLE (in large letters), not responsible like in the civilian world. She should have known. The fact that "no one told me" is so friggin lame I can't believe it.
She should be diggin a hole and making herself small, not appearing on TV. She is probably criminally negligent, and the US military should pursue these charges. The Buck should have stopped here.....
AV, what do you mean the pictures look real? From which corner? Do you see the faces?
On the contrary some Italians, Japanese captured by the Iraqis were seen totally shivering at the knife point.
Though some of you might be interested in what American soldiers are saying. I think this letter to Stars and Stripes, a military publication is pretty typical:
Swift and harsh
There has been much blame-slinging already in regard to the photographs of alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq. I don’t doubt that the abuses occurred, but I feel that it’s far too early to be casting final blame. If the photographs are in fact true, the U.S. soldiers in them are definitely part of the problem. They can’t try to blame their superiors or military intelligence or anyone else without accepting their own responsibility.
The chief of the Army Reserve is investigating to determine if reservists are receiving proper training. Anti-abuse training might be something to have, but lacking such training is certainly not an excuse for the abuse to occur.
Attaching blame seems rather clear cut. Did it happen? Who did it? Who knew about it? Who did something about it? And who did nothing? Those are questions that can be answered without trying to cast blame. But the answers themselves? That’s another matter. The answers will pinpoint the appropriate degrees of blame. Punishment must be swift and harsh. Nothing must be swept under the rug.
Lt. Col. Harry R. Austin (Ret.)
Camp Monteith Kosovo
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=21995
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by anjjan: *
AV Why you are ashamed. why dont you think that all this is a designed propaganda. and most of all no one can blame the american nation for a fault of few.
so far authenticity of photos is not decided. this is all mellisious, fake and rubbish.
[/QUOTE]
You are so thickheaded you dont realise that this is a trained, 'civilised' force which overtook Iraq on a principle of moral self righteousness, and not a rag tag bunch of hostage takers. No. They did worse. They got 'em naked and made 'em do terrible sick stuff. I only sympathise with you, for having a rather basic IQ level, classifying incidents as 'propaganda' based on your own biases.
The American nation is ashamed coz there was siginificant support for invading Iraq. And these incidents usually arent as isolated as you may think they are - they are reflective of a general attitude of the forces towards the Iraqis. Just like when they close down free newspapers in Iraq or shoot at demonstrators asking for them to go.
This could be only propaganda if the photos were fake. Quite unlikely because the people shown are serving US Army offciers - some of them have even admitted. The prisoners who were in these photos have also spoken to the media. And its another thing to get a massive amount of men to 'fake' a sex pyramid. The place shown is for sure Abu Ghraib - to conveniently doubt the genuineness of the photos is not going to work, sorry.
Next time you type in something THINK. And just dont jump into it based on your emotions. And take some spelling lessons along with that too. You really need that.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ohioguy: *
ehsan,
The difference here is that the professionals in the US Military will drop a ton of bricks on the people who dishonored the rest of the services. If you looked at Kimmett, the General in Iraq talking about these incidents, he was barely under control. He was not simply debating some point with the press, he was absloutely furious. Every military guy I know is utterly furious about htis, as they all feel tainted by the incident.
The military will not give some lame line about "root causes", they will crush the people who brought this problem on them... They will insist on personal and professional accountability. Heads will roll.....
[/QUOTE]
Nothing is going to happen to these American soldiers who did this. Maybe a token punishment shall be given to a couple of them. American soldiers who have raped Japanese and Korean girls at their bases there have always walked scott free and so shall these. Meanwhile America shall continue to preach the world about human rights and the need for them to invade other countries to remove 'evil' and 'scary' dictators. Also now with both reasons for invading Iraq, ridding it of WMD's and stopping torture of Iraqis, blown to pieces, the 'experts' will now say the real reason for invading Iraq was to teach english to Iraqis.
HERSH: First of all, it’s going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I’ve had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn’t want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women’s section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It’s much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.