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In reference to the torture Bush said "This is not how a civilised army acts." He was right, this is how the US army acts.
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You can say that again!
The US Government and its forces has been exposed and its true colors shown in full glare of the world.
Now its just a matter of Public relations job for the US and its propoganda machine!
All the talk of freedom and human rights has been shown for what its is according to the amerikkans cheap talk!
"By the way, if you can count leaders apologizing for their respective country, kindly consider the nature of the incident(s) too. "
There is no shortage of shameful incidents everyday in virtually every prison in the Middle East. Frankly most third world countries have horrible records, with “incidents” occuring daily. I almost hesitate to say this because I do not want to be in any way justifying the behavior of our soldiers. Perhaps rather than be hyper focused on Bush, you should look at the editorials streaming out of every local newspaper, big and small across the country. Not only is the President speaking out, there is a virtual outpouring of condemnation and shame from every corner of our country. More than just Bush, the American people, and THEIR democracy are doing the speaking. I particularly like the following:
“In the coming weeks, more of this story will be told. We’ll hear about the role of the commanders and the role of private contractors. People will be punished, and if so, that might help restore the rule of law in Iraqi prisons. National outrage is mounting, and that’s a good thing. None of which should distract us from the deeper point: Yes, America is a beacon of democracy. But Americans are still as capable of torture as anyone else. Rumsfeld said yesterday that it was “un-American” to abuse prisoners – as if Americans were still somehow exempt from the passions that grip the rest of the human race. But we aren’t, and because we aren’t, we shouldn’t dispense with rules that have been designed to contain them.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2328-2004May4.html
I am not hyper focusing on bush in anyway but just talking from an Arab perspective, they were looking for an apology and it could turn out to be a big thing in coming days.
I know common american is appalled to say the least and all the condemnations are positives. Bush did the right thing by going on arab channels but he missed one simple way of controlling some damage. Lets see how events unfold in coming days.
I personally agree with you. There is no harm in apologizing on behalf of our country, however some would interpret an apology as a personal apology, and don't believe we are at that point yet.
By the way, we should also look for a congressional resolution apologizing to the Iraqi's, as well as an apology from Rumsfeld. I do not believe that the Iraqi people really know the outrage that this has sparked in the US.
But there is also a danger of appearing weak. I think by the end of the week you will indeed hear an apology.
Hey hey ho ho..rumsfeld's got to go..
I was watching Maria B read out letters from angry Americans today and I was so proud of this country that we stand up for what is right. These acts were criminal and those who did it should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday. … “She was held for about six weeks without charge,” the envoy told Wednesday’s Evening Standard newspaper. …
– (Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More) what the… holy ****ing ****… goddamn … I just don’t know what to say anymore.
These *******s who did these things deserve a painful death.. i’m surprised no one’s kicked the **** out of them yet.
This is the kind of stuff that makes your realize that the clash of civilizations is inevitable after all.
Anyway.. cooling off now... back to W
But first, gotta relieve Rumsfeld. And, no, Wolfowitz can't be his replacement.. he's gotta go too. This obviously isn't the only reason, but we've suffered through their gross incompetence long enough.
Bush.. what an arrogant... I'm not talking about all that y'all "must understand" stuff.. that aint even the rudest bit. That this idiot will stage a blame deferral kabuki on a topic that is causing so much real grief everywhere... both interviews, they weren't intended to assuage the victims' grief, they were for domestic audiences. That, that is sickening. "the America that I know." Words like that don't address the Iraqis, that's stump speech BS. The country takes a blow in the most sensitive area.. and all this scum can do is damage control for his campaign?
I don’t agree Spoon. Wolfie has nothng to do with this. Strategy guys needn’t be saddled with the onus on implementation. that is why we hire people from tier II schools.
We will catch the culprits, we will prosecute them, punish them and go on. This is the american way… 
we won’t have polls about how it is the fault of the arab policy or that 40000 syrians were missing that day.
now now this is an “isolated” event…
normally they just abuse young men…so it is safe to assume that riding an old lady as a donkey is an isolated event…
“Let the bells of freedom ring” :rotfl:
oh and before some of the ppl start to rationalize this behavior (the same ol: this stuff happens during war, saddam did worse, isolated incident etcx) ...just imagine what if that elder lady was ur own mother... sickening...now i know this might be hard for some as they view muslims as sub humans but still try :) ...
More photos to come..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5623-2004May5.html
New Prison Images Emerge
Graphic Photos May Be More Evidence of Abuse
By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 6, 2004; Page A01
The collection of photographs begins like a travelogue from Iraq. Here are U.S. soldiers posing in front of a mosque. Here is a soldier riding a camel in the desert. And then: a soldier holding a leash tied around a man’s neck in an Iraqi prison. He is naked, grimacing and lying on the floor.
Mixed in with more than 1,000 digital pictures obtained by The Washington Post are photographs of naked men, apparently prisoners, sprawled on top of one another while soldiers stand around them. There is another photograph of a naked man with a dark hood over his head, handcuffed to a cell door. And another of a naked man handcuffed to a bunk bed, his arms splayed so wide that his back is arched. A pair of women’s underwear covers his head and face.
The graphic images, passed around among military police who served at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, are a new batch of photographs similar to those broadcast a week ago on CBS’s “60 Minutes II” and published by the New Yorker magazine. They appear to provide further visual evidence of the chaos and unprofessionalism at the prison detailed in a report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. His report, which relied in part on the photographs, found “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” that were inflicted on detainees.
**
This group of photographs, taken from the summer of 2003 through the winter, range widely, from mundane images of everyday military life to pictures showing crude simulations of sex among soldiers. The new pictures appear to show American soldiers abusing prisoners, many of whom wear ID bands, but The Post could not eliminate the possibility that some of them were staged.
**
The photographs were taken by several digital cameras and loaded onto compact discs, which circulated among soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cresaptown, Md. The pictures were among those seized by military investigators probing conditions at the prison, a source close to the unit said.
The investigation has led to charges being filed against six soldiers from the 372nd. “The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence,” Taguba’s report states.
For many units serving in Iraq, digital cameras are pervasive and yet another example of how technology has transformed the way troops communicate with relatives back home. From Basra to Baghdad, they e-mail pictures home. Some soldiers, including those in the 372nd, even packed video cameras along with their rifles and Kevlar helmets.
Bill Lawson, whose nephew, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. “Chip” Frederick, is one of the soldiers charged in the incident, said that Frederick sent home pictures from Iraq on a few occasions. They were “just ordinary photos, like a tourist would take” and nothing showing prisoner abuse, he said.
“I would say that’s something that’s very common that’s going on in Iraq because it’s so convenient and easy to do,” Lawson said of troops sending pictures home. He added that his nephew also mailed videocassettes “of him talking into a camcorder to [his wife] when he was going on his rounds.”
But in the case of prisoner abuse, the ubiquity of digital cameras has created a far more combustible international scandal that would have been sparked only by the release of Taguba’s searing written report. Since the “60 Minutes II” broadcast, pictures of abuse have been posted on the Internet and shown on television stations worldwide.
The photographs have been condemned by U.S. military commanders, President Bush and leaders around the world. They have sparked particularly strong indignation in the Middle East, where many people see them as reinforcing the notion “that the situation in Iraq is one of occupation,” said Shibley Telhami, who holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.
The impact is heightened by religion and culture. Arabs “are even more offended when the issue has to do with nudity and sexuality,” he said. “The bottom line here is these are pictures of utter humiliation.”
It is unclear who took the photographs, or why.
**Lawyers representing two of the accused soldiers, and some soldiers’ relatives, have said the pictures were ordered up by military intelligence officials who were trying to humiliate the detainees and coerce other prisoners into cooperating. **
“It is clear that the intelligence community dictated that these photographs be taken,” said Guy L. Womack, a Houston lawyer representing Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., 35, one of the soldiers charged.
The father of another soldier facing charges, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., also said his son was following orders. **“He was asked to take pictures, and he did what he was told,” Daniel Sivits said in a telephone interview last week. **
Military spokesmen at the U.S. Central Command in Qatar and at the Combined Joint Task Force 7 headquarters in Baghdad referred requests for comment about those claims to Col. Jill Morgenthaler, a U.S. military spokeswoman. Morgenthaler could not be reached by telephone yesterday and did not return requests to comment by e-mail. Requests to speak with Col. Thomas M. Pappas – who commands the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, based in Germany, and whose troops were stationed at Abu Ghraib – were declined by a U.S. military spokesman for the Army’s V Corps in Heidelberg, Germany.
Yesterday, in Fort Ashby, W.Va., two siblings and a friend identified Pfc. Lynndie England, 21, as the soldier appearing in a picture holding a leash tied to the neck of a man on the floor. England, a member of the 372nd, has also been identified in published reports as one of the soldiers in the earlier set of pictures that were made public, which her relatives also confirmed yesterday. England has been reassigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., her family said. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful. The military has not charged her in the case.
England’s friends and relatives said the photographs must have been staged. “It just makes me laugh, because that’s not Lynn,” said Destiny Goin, 21, a friend. “She wouldn’t pull a dog by its neck, let alone drag a human across a floor.”
England worked as a clerk in the unit, processing prisoners before they were put in cells, taking their names, fingerprinting them and giving them identification numbers, her family said. Other soldiers would ask her to pose for photographs, said her father, Kenneth England. “That’s how it happened,” he said.
Soon after CBS aired its photographs, Terrie England said she received a call from her daughter.
" ‘Mom,’ she told me, ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ " Terrie England said.
**The pictures obtained by The Post include shots of soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts with one another and shots of a cow being skinned and gutted and soldiers posing with its severed head. There are also dozens of pictures of a cat’s severed head.
Other photographs show wounded men and dead bodies. In one, a dead man is lying in the back of a truck, his shirt, face and left arm covered in blood. His right arm is missing. Another photograph shows a dead body, gray and decomposing. A young soldier is leaning over the corpse, smiling broadly and giving the “thumbs-up” sign. **
And in another picture a young woman lifts her shirt, exposing her breasts. She is wearing a white band with numbers on her wrist, but it is unclear whether she is a prisoner.
Washington Post requires registeration to view these pictures.
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Unbelievable and sickening, this isn't American; this isn't human, sick animals.
these poor iraqis...first saddam and now this immoral war...what wrong have they done to sdeserve this savagery..
The torture victim](http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=518621)
Iraqi tells how he was stripped, beaten and sexually abused by US military
**Hayder Sabbar Abd is the man in the hood. He was one of the Iraqi prisoners stripped, humiliated, beaten and abused by American reservists and interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in what is arguably the worst scandal to engulf the United States military since the massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968. **
Having been freed from prison without charge several months ago, the slightly built father of five is now talking about his abuse and, with the help of the photographs that have shocked the world, identifying those who carried it out.
In an extraordinary interview published yesterday, Mr Abd detailed a catalogue of abuse and sexual humiliation inflicted by captors at the sprawling prison complex west of Baghdad, which for decades was notorious as the location of Saddam Hussein’s torture and execution rooms.
The irony is not lost on Mr Abd. “Americans did not mistreat me in general,” he said. “But these people must be tried. I can’t tell you my feelings. The Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein. They told us about democracy and freedom. We are happy about that. Then [the soldiers] did this to the seven of us. I am asking ‘Is that democracy, is that freedom?’.”
The gathering scandal, which also involves allegations that British troops were involved in abuse of prisoners, is creating severe problems for the Bush administration at a time when it was already struggling with growing difficulties in Iraq and a soaring casualty rate.
It is now known that more than 20 prisoners have died in custody at United States-run military jails in Iraq and Afghanistan _ two inmates are alleged to have been murdered by Americans. Maj-Gen Geoffrey Miller, the new commander of the jail, apologised yesterday for the torture meted out. “I would like to apologise for our nation and for our military for the small number of soldiers who committed illegal or unauthorised acts,” he said in Baghdad.
President George Bushgave interviews yesterday to two Arabic-language television channels to try to limit the damage the scandal has done to America’s already tattered image in the region. He stopped short of making an apology, but vowed that those responsible would be brought to justice.
One of the Americans accused of conducting abuse at Abu Ghraib is Specialist Charles Graner, an army reservist from Pennsylvania who joined the 372nd Military Police Company in March last year. While in captivity, Mr Abd did not know Mr Graner by his real name. “That is Joiner,” he said in the interview published by The New York Times yesterday, pointing to a grinning soldier wearing a black hat and rubber gloves, one thumb raised as he stood behind a pyramid of naked prisoners.
Mr Abd was able to identify himself in another photograph by small scars on his body. In that photograph a smiling woman soldier, identified as Private Lynndie England, who is also giving a thumbs up, points towards Mr Abd’s genitals. Pte England is Mr Graner’s fiancée and is reportedly pregnant by him.
Speaking through a translator, Mr Abd explained that as an Arab, perhaps the most degrading aspect of the abuse was the sexual humiliation. During one session of abuse, he and six other prisoners who had been involved in a fight were stripped naked, forced to straddle each other’s backs and then made to simulate oral sex.
Mr Abd said he recalled having his hood removed and being told by the soldiers’ Arabic translator to masturbate as he looked at Ms England. “She was laughing and she put her hands on her breasts,” he told the newspaper. “Of course I couldn’t do it, so they beat me in the stomach and I fell to the ground. The translator said, ‘Do it, do it. It’s better than being beaten.’ I said ‘How can I do it?’ So I put my hand on my penis, just pretending.”
At this point, one of the other prisoners _ a friend of Mr Abd’s identified as Hussein _ was pushed towards his genitals while the hood was put back over his own head.
“They made him sit next to me. My penis was very close to his mouth. I did not know it was my friend because of the hood. It was humiliating. We didn’t think that we would survive. All of us believed we would be killed and we would not get out alive,” said Mr Abd. One of the photographs appears to show this precise moment.
Indeed, Mr Abd recalls that throughout the abuse, photographs were taken.
After the incident in which he was forced to simulate oral sex with his friend, the soldiers began piling him and the others on top of each other to form the pyramids, all the time clicking away with the camera. When they were let down Mr Abd recalls that Mr Graner _ “Joiner” _ pulled on the prisoners’ hoods as though they were leashes. “He said ‘When I whistle, you bark like a dog’,” he said.
Specialist Graner has yet to comment publicly on the allegations. His lawyer, Guy Womack, said he was “following orders”. He also said the photography was more likely to have been a deliberate part of the orders to intimidate the prisoners.
“I think when you see the photographs, you can tell these were obviously staged. They were part of the psychological manipulation of the prisoners being interrogated,” he said. “It was being controlled and devised by the military intelligence community and other governmental agencies, including the CIA.”
Mr Abd also described how Specialist Graner, a former prison officer, and two other male soldiers beat the seven hooded prisoners. “They beat our heads on the walls and doors.” The former Republican Guard soldier from Nasiriyah said his jaw was broken so badly that even six months later he is unable to eat properly. He estimated that during a two-hour period he received 50 blows.
It was after this session of beating that Mr Abd and the others were told to remove their clothes. “The interpreter told us to strip,” he said. “We told him, ‘You are Egyptian, you are a Muslim. You know that as Muslims we cannot do that.’ When we refused to take off our clothes they beat us and tore our clothes off with a blade.”
Records obtained by The Independent reveal that this is not the first time that Specialist Graner has been involved in abuse allegations. His ex-wife obtained three separate “temporary protection of abuse” orders from a judge in their home town in Pennsylvania. The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is now under intense pressure and will be forced to try to explain why the abuse was allowed to take place when he appears before senators on Capitol Hill today. And still the allegations grow. Ann Clwyd, Tony Blair’s personal envoy to Iraq, has claimed that a 70-year-old woman was ridden like a donkey by US troops, while up to 17 Iraqi families are expected to seek compensation for relatives allegedly killed by British troops in Iraq since the end of the war. The MoD does not accept liability.
Six Iraqis are alleged to have died in British custody; 33 cases of civilian deaths, injuries or ill-treatment have been investigated by the MoD; 12 are continuing, and 21 have been completed. Of the completed cases, 15 were found to have no case to answer, and six are being considered for prosecution.
Hayder Sabbar Abd, meanwhile, is preparing to go home to Nasiriyah, having been assured by US military officials in Baghdad that their investigations will be exhaustive and that those involved in abusing him and his friends will be punished. He said that while he will go home to see his family, his shame will not allow him to stay.
Oh, I’m sure we’ll kick their asses one way or another.. no doubt.
But on Wolfie, I’m not blaming him for this. That’d be pointless. I don’t blame Rummy for it either. (Though arguments can be made that their leadership styles and general policy decisions created an environment conducive to this sort of behavior) Thing is, we’ve just had too many problems on their watch. I mean everything. Even if you’re pro-war (which I once kinda-sorta was), these people have royally screwed up damn near everything they’ve touched.. They’ve had some nice broad ideas, they’ve had some good ones on stirring up the military (Army esp), but their follow-thru has been disappointing, their rhetoric dangerous (and just stupid) and their discipline–which is something in 2000 I thought would be spotless–is pure ****. They’ve gotta go.
So...
No Saddam-Osama connection...
No Weapons of Mass Destruction...
And this?
What's the new casus belli gonna be?
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*Originally posted by 5Abi: *
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Look how many people are in the room at that one moment. Those are either all stubborn witnesses or malicious collaborators. Guilty either way.
This may have been an isolated phenomena in the context of the entire military, but where it happened here.. they institutionalized it.
So let me get this straight: Bush is trying to convince Iraqis that he isn't Saddam? This isn't about Rumsfield or Wolfowitz committing these acts but about knowingly letting these acts go on.
Shocking and Awful
By MAUREEN DOWD
NY Times
Published: May 6, 2004
WASHINGTON
Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were swanning around in black tie at the White House Correspondents' dinner on Saturday night, mingling with le hack Washington and a speckling of shiny imports, like John Kerry's former Tinseltown gal-pal Morgan Fairchild, Ben Affleck, a Victoria's Secret model who was not Gisele and several "Apprentice" alumni who were not Omarosa.
The Pentagon potentates seemed unburdened by the spreading storm kicked up by the torture pictures shown on "60 Minutes II" and about to appear in The New Yorker — the latest example of a dysfunctional and twisted occupation warped by arrogance over experience, ideology over common sense.
When a beaming Mr. Wolfowitz stopped at my table to greet an admiring Republican, I wanted to snap, "Get back to your desk, Mr. Myopia from Utopia!" Shouldn't these woolly headed warriors burn the midnight Iraqi oil — long enough for Wolfie to learn the body count for dead American troops and for Rummy to read Gen. Antonio Taguba's whole report on "horrific abuses" at Abu Ghraib?
Sure, the secretary of defense has had two months to read the report, but as he complained to Matt Lauer, it's awfully thick: "When I'm asked a question as to whether I've read the entire report, I answer honestly that I have not. It is a mountain of paper and investigative material." Goodness gracious, where is Evelyn Wood now that we need her?
Can't the hawks who dragged us into this hideous unholy war at least pay attention to a crisis of American credibility that's exposing Iraq and the world to more dangers every day? For the defense chief and the president to party two nights in a row, Friday at Rummy's house and Saturday at the Washington Hilton, is, to borrow a Rummy line, "unhelpful in a fundamental way."
President Bush also seemed in a buoyant mood on Saturday. But he might think about getting just a tad more involved so he doesn't have to first see on TV, as he clicks around between innings, the pictures sparking a huge worldwide, American-reputation-shattering military scandal. And so he doesn't keep nattering about how we had to go to war to close Iraq's torture chambers, when they are "really not shut down so much as under new management," as Jon Stewart drily put it.
Most Republicans seemed in a "party on, Garth" mood, less concerned with Humpty Dumpty Iraq or Unjolly Green Giant John Kerry than with the unfairness of a world where Jeb Bush would probably not be able to succeed his brother. "By 2008," a wistful Republican fund-raiser said, "there'll probably be Bush fatigue."
It seems nothing can make hard-core hawks criticize the war (even the request for $25 billion more). Rush Limbaugh compared the prison torture to "a college fraternity prank," like a Skull and Bones initiation.
Michael Eisner evidently also feels the Bush dynasty will survive because he is balking at distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that criticizes President Bush's 9/11 actions and ties with the Saudis, probably out of fear that Jeb will come after his Disney World tax breaks.
Senator Kerry jumped on the president yesterday for saying nothing about Crown Prince Abdullah's "outrageous anti-Semitic comments" that terrorists in Saudi Arabia get funds from "Zionists." The prince's remarks — and arrests of reformers — show that, far from transforming the Mideast into democracies that flower with love of America and Israel, the bumbling neo-cons have unleashed a rash of racism, revenge and hate.
Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, tells GQ magazine that Wolfie is "a utopian" like Lenin: "You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it."
Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, The Associated Press reports from London that "U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey."
And Douglas Feith, the defense under secretary who was in charge of Iraqi postwar planning and the secret unit that furnished prêt-à-porter intelligence to back up Dick Cheney's doomsday scenarios, told conservatives that the administration might set up an office to plan postwar operations for future wars.
Well, on the one hand, it would be refreshing to have a postwar plan. On the other: future wars???