CNN/Cooper: US put Iraqi prisoner put in cage with a lion

[BeyondGeography]

Followed by soldiers putting him against a wall and firing blanks at him, sodomy and electric shocks. On right now.

[99Pancakes]

1. Holy crap!

What are Americans turning into? And Shrub supports this stuff? He's evil.

I fear this will come back to haunt us one day in the form of someone else torturing us.

[Marie26]

2. Lions? Where would they find a lion?

Not that I doubt this prisoner, but that part always seemed a little over the top.

[madeline_con]

5. Iraq had zoos. eom

[BeyondGeography]

7. Rummy agrees with you

Hard to say what the truth is. One thing's for sure, in my view: This guy was sodomized. When the interviewer asked him to talk about it, his eyes welled up and he left the room. That part was totally convincing.

[Marie26]

9. Lions and tigers and bears

Ahhhh! Rummy agrees with me? That's seriously almost enough to change my mind. x( I don't doubt this guy was horribly abused; we have enough pictures and testimony to know what went on there. But even if there is a zoo, soldiers would have to sneak out a lion, find a zookeeper to show them how to move it, keep it quiet at the prison, feed it, and somehow have no one else notice or comment on this odd visitor. And why bother? That'd take a lot of time & effort; soldiers were perfectly capable of torturing prisoners without needing a lion to do it. I tend to think he was embellishing a little & he really didn't need to - the truth is bad enough.

[BeyondGeography]

11. On the other hand, what could be cooler for a sadist

than to keep a lion on hand for a little abuse? Our soldiers are bored off their asses and angry as hell, the anger part probably since birth for many of them. A bored and angry male can be incredibly creative.

The truly sad part is that torture has become so commonplace that only stories like these make it on air.

[knowbody0]

14. I agree

zero sensitivity on the part of the interviewer. when he refused to speak about the sodomy, - - "they insist upon openness, yet they claim this is toooo personal" crikey! no class what so ever.
MORONS!

[madokie]

3. can't watch, the little lady is watching music awards

and I won't disturb her, she's had a hard day. Anderson Cooper has earned my respect. I've let cnn know it too.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

4. I swear, every bit of news of bushco I hear, I hear in the background this

dah dah dahhhh dah dah dahhhhhh dah dah dahhhhhh

deeee deeee deeee deee de dahhhh deeee deee dahhhhhh

(Star Wars, if ya didn't grasp it)

[JanMichael]

6. Well Cheney says there isn't any torture so this isn't torture.

How evil are we now? -7 on the "You're becoming Fascists!" scale?

[MADem]

8. They are saying the lions were removed away from the compound

months before he was picked up. He also refused to talk about the sodomy business.

Here is what I think: SOMETHING awful happened to him--you can see it on his face. What, we don't really know. He might have thought that Belgian shepherds (a favored breed for military police work) were lions, especially if he was in a very fearful state (they do have stunning ruffs). And the sodomy thing, in that end of the world, is--as the lawyer noted---a BAAAAAAAAAD thing for a man to talk about. Pitching is one thing, catching considered shameful, to the point of community jeering and something akin to shunning in some quarters (and that is how a VICTIM might be treated, mind you--of course, women in those same circumstances could be "honor killed" in some areas of that region, while men suffer simply ridicule and ostracism).

[salin]

10. W: "We do not torture..." (said friday)

guess it was another "bring it on" message - as folks are starting to come out of the woodwork to tell their first hand experiences to the contrary.

Ugh.

Absolutely horrifying and disgraceful.

[Dancing_Dave]

12. Hurray for CNN broadcasting this!

One can always find these grisly details on the internet...it's high time CNN woke up and smelled the coffee!

[Burried News]

13. Prisoner abuse by Iraqi guards.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4440134.stm
"Deputy interior minister Hussein Kamal, who saw some of the abuse victims personally, said: "I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad, this is the worst.

"I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies." "
.
.
.
""This is the tip of the iceberg," he told Newsnight. "We told the government about this months ago and they did nothing."

Human rights group Amnesty International welcomed the investigation but said it should cover other allegations of torture and maltreatment by Iraqi police and security forces belonging to the interior ministry.

The security forces have faced repeated allegations of systematic abuse and torture of detainees, and of extra-judicial killings.

A report by pressure group Human Rights Watch earlier this year said methods used by Iraqi police included beating detainees with cables, hanging them from their wrists for long periods and giving electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body. "

[Ms. Clio]

15. Funny how people doubt this--I remember when the torture stories

first started coming out, all the people who said, "Oh, no, that could never be true! U.S. forces don't rape, sodomize, set dogs on people!"

I have no doubt that the worst things I can imagine--and things I can't--have occurred and continue to occur.

[Enhancer]

16. Bullshit!

There were no blanks!