Abuse of Iraqis may have been ordered by US intelligence: - reports

[JoFerret]

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayArticle.asp?col=§ion=focusoniraq&xfile=data/focusoniraq/2004/May/focusoniraq_May8.xml

WASHINGTON - Abuse of Iraqi prisoners that sparked worldwide condemnation may have been ordered by US military intelligence to extract information from the captives, and was possibly more cruel than officially acknowledged, The New Yorker magazine and Britain’s daily Guardian reported on Saturday.


Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for The New Yorker, said that Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of six US military policemen accused of humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison outside Baghdad, wrote home in January that he had “questioned some of the things” he saw inside the prison, but that “the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence wants it done’.”

According to his letter quoted by Hersh, military intelligence officers had congratulated Frederick and other soldiers on the ”great job” done with prisoners because “they were now getting positive results and information”.

....

[fishnfla]

1. fix title please

its says US intelligence

[fishnfla]

2. confidential army report in Feb

Army Major Gen Antonio Taguba, lets hear what he has to say.

So these guys have been on the hook since Jan? Without the photos being broadcast we may have never known. I have seen reports that there were rumours on the ground in Iraq that bad things were going on in that prison, I wonder what has become of the prisoners.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. They may have been killed

in that mortar attack on the prison last month?



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3643151.stm

[fishnfla]

5. Perhaps, but in all the uproar, they have been ignored

I understand that in their shame they may not want to come forward (more likely they cant) but nowthat their naked humiliation has been broadcast across the world, they may never want to be known.

One of the ironies, now the insult of the guards is being compounded by the uproar

[Judi Lynn]

4. Really good article, JoFerret.

It's good to see Seymour Hersh is looking into this. The _Bushies don't like him one bit.

There are more crimes against the prisoners mentioned here, as well as the interesting thought that it's really unlikely really low ranking GI's would simply undertake all this torturing, intimidation on their own without some kind of encouragement from their "superiors."

[Political_Junkie]

8. Hersh's article is worth checking out

He's on top of things as usual:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

[fishnfla]

9. Thanks for that

good read.

[maddezmom]

10. from the The New Yorker article

"A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant."

:eyes:

And then there is this:

~snip~
Lynndie England said she was under orders to say no more. The military has told the family nothing; all the Englands know is that she has been detained, apparently in connection with the unit's alleged misconduct at the prison.

"Whether she's charged or not, I don't know," Terrie England said.
~snip~

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.md.soldier30apr30,0,160127.story?coll=bal-home-headlines


Her mother doesn't even know she's back in the states???

[fishnfla]

11. The army's confidential report

Taguba is scathing of the military intell officers and the the civilian interregators finding 2 members of each "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse" at the prison

[Judi Lynn]

15. This article is essential for any of us who have been carrying around

a real sense of horror, shame, and rage over what those photos revealed.

Seymour Hersh tells us our instincts WERE right on target about what we believed was going on. What's more, he tells us that this kind of thing has actually been happening ALL THE WAY BACK TO AFGHANISTAN.

How many of us thought maybe something like this was happening when there was a sudden prison riot in Afghanistan, and a man from Alabama, Johnnie someone, an interrogator, possibly with the CIA, was killed?

As graphic and unadorned as some of the material was in the article, you do get the feeling Hersh was modifying what he had learned from concern for some of his readers' sensibilities. I don't think more was needed to get the point across, either.

Thanks to Political_Junkie. I've already sent off a link of the story to someone else as soon as I finished reading. I hope multitudes will read it. We have really been short of Americans willing to invest the time reading, haven't we?

[treepig]

17. yup, atrocities occur in afghanistan, too

According to research by Marc Herold, an economics professor at the University of New Hampshire, and others, American/British state terrorists have murdered an estimated minimum of 24,000 civilian people so far, including women, children and elderly people — innocent people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the September 11 attacks.


On November 12, the U.S. Air Force dropped a 500-pound bomb on the al-Jazeera T.V. studios in the heart of Kabul. Al-Jazeera had been broadcasting scenes of the total devastation which American state terrorism was wreaking on the lives of innocent people in Kabul.

The U.S. military bombed the T.V. station just before the “Northern Alliance” occupied Kabul so that the bloody massacres and reprisals which they knew would take place would be as hidden as possible from American people. The U.S. military ensured there were no T.V. cameras rolling when their “Northern Alliance” buddies strapped their prisoners to tank treads, rolled the tanks forward and crushed the men to death, while smirking -heroic and patriot - American military personnel stood by and enjoyed the show. There were no T.V. cameras to record when the U.S. military’s “Northern Alliance” buddies raped other men and sadistically tortured them to death.

http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/afghanistan/American...


thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces - everyone of them a patriot hero of the highest order - re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3267.htm

[Judi Lynn]

21. Oh, yes. How could anyone forget those astounding atrocities?

Absolutely unlike anything you'd ever dream you'd hear connected to our country, and this happened right at the beginning of our expansionist wars.

How can they live with themselves?

Thanks for the reminders. It would be completely sick to try to pretend they never happened.

[Orangeone]

19. Johnny Spahn?

He was the CIA agent killed while interrogating prisoners in Afghanistan.

I always thought that they were torturing people in Afghanistan too.

[Judi Lynn]

22. You nailed it, Orangeone! Thanks a lot.

I believe you're right to have held those suspicions. I'll bet you're going to hear a lot more about it one day.

[saigon68]

24. Ever notice how johny spann's partner went off the radar

There was something FU about that whole deal.

[TahitiNut]

27. I opened a GD thread on that ...

... at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1508364

[goddess40]

6. They didn't think this stuff up on their own

These horrible monsters didn't just pick from the sky what would be the worst humilation for these Iraqi POW's, they had to have some help.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. This wasn't just an isolated incident.

This is cultural. We are soon to find out that this sort of treatment of Iraqi prisoners and civilians is the norm, not the exception.

It is amazing that in just 3 years, a small group of neocon fanatics could turn the US Armed Forces into a the biggest bunch of war criminals in history.

[Karenina]

34. What a difference a day makes...

Having heard first-hand reports from neighbors what's been going on for ages, I never dared more than "suggest" it, as so many would not hear or believe it. WHOOMP! Dey it is, in technicolor. :cry: We MUST get our troops the hell out of there. GET THE *MIC RAPIST OUT OF THE ROOM.

[mmonk]

12. Specialist Joseph M. Darby

American hero in an era of American madness.

[TahitiNut]

26. It's sad that doing the right thing is now "heroic" ...

... but I agree. This is the guy deserving of brass bands and parades.

[riverwalker]

13. "a room with blood spattered walls"

The Hersh article should be required reading for the entire country.
What did Bush say a year ago? "There are no longer rape rooms, torture chambers or mass graves" Fallujah has two football fields full of dead civilians, and the torture and rape continues. Just when I think I can not possibly be any more ashamed.....

[Athame]

14. Just a reminder that

EVERYTHING he says is an absolute LIE!

[leftchick]

29. uh, he said it again yesterday too...

in his 8.9 minute bigot speech he mentioned the fact that the rape rooms and torture chambers are gone. Right after denouncing the prison atrocities by US soldiers. I swear repukes lack an irony meter....

[0007]

33. I've read Seymour Hersh's long article twice now and I'm still

trying to sort this out in my mind.
junior must've knew and it now appears the Military Intelligence knew at least four months ago.
So is this the cover up version? Were the photos a back up just in case of being exposed?

I recall some two years ago or so the media were running polls asking the public what they thought of torturing the enemy for needed information.

I'm almost sure that junior and the whole administration knew and approved of what went on in Abu Ghraib.

[daleo]

35. I would like to hear Dershowitz go on about torture warrants now

Although I am sure he would manage to defend his insane idea somehow.

[0007]

36. Yes, that would be a gas. Thanks for jogging my memory.

[JoFerret]

37. He was on about that just YESTERDAY

They have no shame.

[Tellurian]

16. The abuse is a double whammy..

Our government has to be held accountable for the larger crime because this is a crime against HUMANITY. The government abused our troops by forcing them to abuse Iraqi prisoners. I'm not making excuses for our troops unconscionable acts but thinking of it this way. How much choice does a soldier have? Either way, troops refusing to obey orders get court martialed and every way you look at it, the abuse has been done to both partys.

[yardwork]

18. More quotes - really horrible events

Hersh points out that abuses at the Abu Gharib prison were detailed in a confidential Army report as far back as February and were more cruel that just humiliating the detainees.

They include breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees, pouring cold water on naked detainees, beating them with a broom handle and a chair, according to the report.

.....

Military police have been allowed to stitch the wound of a detainee, who was injured after being slammed against the wall, and sodomized a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, Hersh quotes the report written by Army Major General Antonio Taguba.

[reprobate]

20. Military intelligence? Like Colonel Flagg?

Noone sees him come. Noone sees him go. He moves like the wind.

He's more like passing wind.

[worldgonekrazy]

23. Goddamn these bastards

Is there anything they WON'T do to undermine basic human rights? Heads need to roll over this.

[demgrrrll]

25. I keep thinking this cannot get any worse but again and again I am

wrong. I agree with the poster up thread Hersh is
usually on top of things.

[Piperay]

28. Someone needs to go right to the top

on this thing and not just pass it off on to the ones who did it but find out who was "allowing" it to be done.

[ConcernedCanuk]

30. "nasty" photos NOT in earlier report - a clearly intended coverup . . .

.
.
.


TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?

As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole.

Taguba’s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees.

Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority.

___________________________________________________________________


Posted 2004-04-30

Early this year, the senior U.S. Army commander in Iraq authorized a major investigation into the American Army's prison system there. The fifty-three-page report that resulted, which was written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and was not meant for public release, was devastating.

Taguba found numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" of Iraqis by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, located twenty miles west of Baghdad. This systematic and illegal abuse, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by members of the 320th Military Police Battalion, and also by members of the American intelligence community.

There was considerable evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added, including "detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence"; the photographs, which were taken by American soldiers while the abuse was going on, were not included in the report, Taguba said, because of their "extremely sensitive nature." Here are ten of those photographs (see the related link to the right); we have digitally obscured some details.
___________________________________________________________




Friggen Admin is more upset with the pictures than the actions.

Oh, has anyone got a line on that 53 page report, and the Article 32, or are they one and the same?

I can't find a link nywhere . .

[llmart]

31. I just looked at all the pictures

and I'm sick to my stomach. I'm sick of all the "hero" talk about our military. I'm truly ashamed of my country more so than ever before in my life. If anyone from other countries is reading this right now I want them to know that there are many, many of us that are so sorry that this administration is ruining the image of the United States around the world. I want you to know that most of us here are doing everything in our power to get him out of office. I have marched in Washington, spoken out loudly and clearly to anyone who will listen, worn pins and displayed bumper stickers, donated some money on my meager salary, written letters, called my representatives, emailed, etc. etc. etc. and I will continue to do so.

When these people come back from the war, what kind of people do you think they'll be? They'll be like Timothy McVeigh.They'll just find something here that will set them off and they'll be domestic terrorists. They're certainly not going to become Sally and Bobby Doe down the street.

The military can turn people into monsters.

[JoFerret]

32. 18,000 Iraqis are being held illegally

<<According to the Baghdad-based Organisation for Human Rights, at least 18,000 Iraqis are now being illegally held in jails and prison camps. In a country of only 25 million, these figures are staggering and represent the incarceration of 1 in every 1,380 Iraqi citizens. Moreover, during December, American troops were arresting 100 Iraqis per day—a rate that will have increased dramatically during the past month as operations intensified against the local population.

Referred to as “security detainees” by the US military, the prisoners are held without charge and denied access to lawyers, family and friends for months on end. Most of those incarcerated have been arrested during raids by coalition troops who storm houses, smashing down doors and windows and trashing household furnishings, televisions and other property. In many cases, armoured vehicles and Humvees or troops using high-powered ammunition or explosives seriously damage the homes.

After “securing” the raided property, troops generally handcuff and hood all men and boys before transporting them to the nearest military base for preliminary interrogations. The detainees are then taken to the nearest US-controlled prison. These include Abu Ghraib, infamous for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein; Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport; al-Shaab Stadium; Camp Bucca, near Un Qasr in southern Iraq; and other jails in Habbaniyah, Nasariya, Tikrit and Baquba.

The US-based Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a human rights organisation, has confirmed these Nazi-style techniques.>>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/jail-a22.shtml

[Vitruvius]

38. "Only following orders."

Sickening.