The Missing People Shredder

The Guardian ^ | February 25, 2004 | Brendan O'Neill

[alpowolf]

The missing people-shredder

The horror of one of Saddam's execution methods made a powerful pro-war rallying cry - but the evidence suggests it never existed

Brendan O'Neill Wednesday February 25, 2004 The Guardian

Forget the no-show of Saddam Hussein's WMD. Ask instead what happened to Saddam's "people shredder", into which his son Qusay reportedly fed opponents of the Ba'athist regime. Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who chairs Indict, a group that has been campaigning since 1996 for an international criminal tribunal to try the Ba'athists, wrote of the shredder in the Times on March 18 last year - the day of the Iraq debate in the House of Commons and three days before the start of the war. Clwyd described an Iraqi's claims that male prisoners were dropped into a machine "designed for shredding plastic", before their minced remains were "placed in plastic bags" so they could later be used as "fish food".

Not surprisingly, the story made a huge impact. When the Australian prime minister John Howard addressed his nation to explain why he was sending troops to support the coalition, he talked of the "human-shredding machine". Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, expressed admiration for Clwyd's work in an email and invited her to meet him.

Others, too, made good use of the story. Andrew Sullivan, who writes from Washington for the Sunday Times, said Clwyd's report showed that "leading theologians and moralists and politicians" ought to back the war. The Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips wrote of the shredder in which "bodies got chewed up from foot to head", and said: "This is the evil that the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican bishops refuse to fight." In his recent book, William Shawcross wrote of a regime that "fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony". And earlier this month, Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun's political editor, claimed that "Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders".

Nobody doubts that Saddam was a cruel and ruthless tyrant who murdered many thousands of his own people and that most Iraqis are glad he's gone. But did his regime have a machine that made mincemeat of men? The evidence is far from compelling.

The shredding machine was first mentioned in public by James Mahon, then head of research at Indict, at a meeting in the House of Commons on March 12. Mahon had just returned from northern Iraq, where Indict researchers, along with Clwyd, interviewed Iraqis who had suffered under Saddam. One of them said Iraqis had been fed into a shredder. "Sometimes they were put in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 die like this ..." In subsequent interviews and articles, Clwyd said this shredding machine was in Abu Ghraib prison, Saddam's most notorious jail. Indict refuses to tell me the names of the researchers who were in Iraq with Mahon and Clwyd; and, I am told, Mahon, who no longer works at Indict, "does not want to speak to journalists about his work with us". But Clwyd tells me: "We heard it from a victim; we heard it and we believed it."

This is all that Indict had to go on - uncorroborated and quite amazing claims made by a single person from northern Iraq. When I suggest that this does not constitute proof of the existence of a human shredder, Clwyd responds: "Who are you to say that chap is a liar?" Yet to call for witness statements to be corroborated before being turned into the subject of national newspaper articles is to follow good practice in the collection of evidence, particularly evidence with which Indict hopes to "seek indictments by national prosecutors" against former Ba'athists.

An Iraqi who worked as a doctor in the hospital attached to Abu Ghraib prison tells me there was no shredding machine in the prison. The Iraqi, who wishes to remain anonymous, describes the prison as "horrific". Part of his job was to attend to those who had been executed. Did he ever attend to, or hear of, prisoners who had been shredded? "No." Did any of the other doctors at Abu Ghraib speak of a shredding machine used to execute prisoners? "No, never. As far as I know [hanging] was the only form of execution used there."

Clwyd insists that corroboration of the shredder story came when she was shown a dossier by a reporter from Fox TV. On June 18, Clwyd wrote a second article for the Times, citing a "record book" from Abu Ghraib, which described one of the methods of execution as "mincing". Can she say who compiled this book? "No, I can't." Where is it now? "I don't know." What was the name of the Fox reporter who showed it to her? "I have no idea." Did Clwyd read the entire thing? "No, it was in Arabic! I only saw it briefly." Curiously, there is no mention of the book or of "mincing" as a method of execution on the Fox News website, nor does its foreign editor recall it.

Other groups have no recorded accounts of a human shredder. An Amnesty International spokesman tells me that his inquiries into the shredder "drew a blank". Widney Brown, the deputy programme director of Human Rights Watch, says: "We have not heard of that particular form of execution or torture."

It remains to be seen whether this uncorroborated story turns out to be nothing more than war propaganda - like the stories on the eve of the first Gulf war of Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait taking babies from incubators and leaving them to die on hospital floors. What can be said, however, is that the alleged shredder provided those in favour of the war with a useful propaganda tool. The headline on Clwyd's story of March 18 in the Times was: "See men shredded, then say you don't back war".

· Brendan O'Neill is the assistant editor of spiked. A longer version of this article appears in this week's Spectator

[cardinal4]

Anybody have real evidence to refute this article?

What do you need to refute? In a post 9/11 world, the planet is too small for the likes of Saddam. He didnt comply with orders from the civilized community, and he got his ass kicked. He was a monster on a par with Stalin and Hitler, who cares whats found and what is isnt? I saw the videos of trussed up people being tossed of roofs alive. Videos have been found with Qusay and his rape victims. Its amazing people still seek justification for our making the world a better place..

[JZoback]

We call them mass graves.

It's amazing how easily you fall for the Bush propaganda machine.

Don't you know those mass graves were planted at the end of the first war to justify our invasion the second time. See how easy it is for the Bush war machine to manipulate the teeming masses of sycophants. Sheesh.

< removing tongue from cheek >

[Lee Heggy]

"his job was to attend to those who had been executed."

So morticians were considered 'doctors' in Iraq?

[Cultural Jihad]

Its amazing people still seek justification for our making the world a better place..

For the record, these 'people' are ideologues, or outright enemies of America, or simply those mean-spirited who would never spit if they thought it would do anyone some good.

[American_Centurion]

http://leonsparx.zftp.com/Iraq_Prisoner_Execution.avi

Not a shredder but just as sick.

[DustyMoment]

The flaw in the story rests with the logic. The writer attempts to link the lack of WMD with the lack of a shredder. If one doesn't exist, then the other can't. Therefore, Bush/Blair made it all up to generate public support for the war.

The Guardian isn't noted for being one of the most objective sources. I would take this article with a bag of salt.

[isthisnickcool]

Did you say mass graves?

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

18 March 2003

"See Men Shredded, Then Say You Don't Back War," by Ann Clwyd

Permission has been granted, by Ann Clwyd, covering website/wireless file distribution, republication, translation of "See men shredded, then say you don't back war" by Ann Clwyd, published in TIMES OF LONDON, March 18, 2003 by our Public Diplomacy offices and in the local press outside the United States.

See Men Shredded, Then Say You Don't Back War

By Ann Clwyd
Labour MP for Cynon Valley

"There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food ... on one occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein's youngest son] personally supervise these murders."

This is one of the many witness statements that were taken by researchers from Indict -- the organisation I chair -- to provide evidence for legal cases against specific Iraqi individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. This account was taken in the past two weeks.

Another witness told us about practices of the security services towards women: "Women were suspended by their hair as their families watched; men were forced to watch as their wives were raped ... women were suspended by their legs while they were menstruating until their periods were over, a procedure designed to cause humiliation."

The accounts Indict has heard over the past six years are disgusting and horrifying. Our task is not merely passively to record what we are told but to challenge it as well, so that the evidence we produce is of the highest quality. All witnesses swear that their statements are true and sign them.

For these humanitarian reasons alone, it is essential to liberate the people of Iraq from the regime of Saddam. The 17 UN resolutions passed since 1991 on Iraq include Resolution 688, which calls for an end to repression of Iraqi civilians. It has been ignored. Torture, execution and ethnic-cleansing are everyday life in Saddam's Iraq.

Were it not for the no-fly zones in the south and north of Iraq -- which some people still claim are illegal -- the Kurds and the Shia would no doubt still be attacked by Iraqi helicopter gunships.

For more than 20 years, senior Iraqi officials have committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This list includes far more than the gassing of 5,000 in Halabja and other villages in 1988. It includes serial war crimes during the Iran-Iraq war; the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds in 1987-88; the invasion of Kuwait and the killing of more than 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians; the violent suppression, which I witnessed, of the 1991 Kurdish uprising that led to 30,000 or more civilian deaths; the draining of the Southern Marshes during the 1990s, which ethnically cleansed thousands of Shias; and the summary executions of thousands of political opponents.

Many Iraqis wonder why the world applauded the military intervention that eventually rescued the Cambodians from Pol Pot and the Ugandans from Idi Amin when these took place without UN help. They ask why the world has ignored the crimes against them?

All these crimes have been recorded in detail by the UN, the US, Kuwaiti, British, Iranian and other Governments and groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Indict. Yet the Security Council has failed to set up a war crimes tribunal on Iraq because of opposition from France, China and Russia. As a result, no Iraqi official has ever been indicted for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. I have said incessantly that I would have preferred such a tribunal to war. But the time for offering Saddam incentives and more time is over.

I do not have a monopoly on wisdom or morality. But I know one thing. This evil, fascist regime must come to an end. With or without the help of the Security Council, and with or without the backing of the Labour Party in the House of Commons tonight.

[Paradox]

If somebody peddles a story as fact without evidence to back it up, that is propaganda.

Actually, propaganda can be something that is factually TRUE as well. There were eyewitness accounts about the shredders from multiple sources. That is "evidence". Maybe not hard enough for you, but what can you expect in a country like Saddams Iraq?

Sure, there are a thousand different conceivable scenarios that would explain why there is no evidence. But that is true of virtually any assertion.

But there were eyewitness accounts, its not just an assertion. What made them believable is that people KNEW the nature of Saddams regime. Its like, if another woman had said that Clinton had an affair with her, and she had a friend that corroborated the story, one might tend to believe it because of Clintons KNOWN nature.

I could claim that Bush did indeed plant the shredder; what would you do? Demand proof of course. As you should.

Well sure, just show how he traveled back in time. Show me a few witnesses who saw him back in 1996 in Iraq..

[secretagent]

Apparently very little evidence of a shredder. Always good to check out atrocity stories. Fabrications abound.

But that doesn't affect the debate on the rightness of the Iraq invasion, at least for me.

[cyncooper]

If somebody peddles a story as fact without evidence to back it up, that is propaganda.

People making reports of such does in fact = "evidence". What do you mean by "without evidence"?

Let's posit the shredding machine never is found. Do you concede that the tales of tongues and limbs being hacked off before crowds has been thoroughly documented via videotape that has been shown on tv? If the machine story turns out to be a hyperbolic invention from desperate people in order to get us in to help them from atrocities that were beyond any doubt occurring, do you then say we went in under false pretenses because one form of torture on the list of many documented did not exist?

[arasina]

Unfortunately, Ann Clwyd is being accused (probably by the same group of people who doubt the human shredder) of staging a photo of mass graves. From the digusting IndyMedia website:

Ann Clwyd Iraq mass grave a staged photo-op

Tom Young, 12.12.2003 00:20

Ann Clwyd, the British politician who most strongly pushed the humanitarian case for war is shown posing in front of what is a manufactured mass grave photo-op
Note: this article draws no conclusions about human rights in Iraq and under Saddam Hussein. Or the extent of mass killings that took place. It solely concerns the ethics of British left wing politician Ann Clwyd.

Fresh from asserting in Parliament the truth rumours of prisoners in Iraq being fed head or feet first into plastic shredders, Ann Clwyd visited Iraq in the aftermath of the war. Returning to Parliament in tears she claimed that she personally had counted 10000 remains removed from a mass grave.

Really?

10 000 takes a while to count. In anycase it turns out that the site she visited had in fact yielded fewer than 3000 graves.

But a news photo found on the USinfo site casts doubt on Ann Clwyd's claim to have seen any bodies at all.

 http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/gallery/iraq-2003/0602mon1.htm

Ann Clwyd has shown standing at site, with a hillside in the background strewn with white plastic sacks. The viewer is invited to make the connection that these sacks contain human remains.

However, the sacks are both too bulky, the wrong shape and to be filled to the brim, to contain anything but sand or earth or some particulate matter. They appear to have been strewn across the hillside, quickly and at random, and have no indication of actually being excavated from anywhere.

The photo bears all signs of being a hurriedly constructed scene to provide a visiting politician with a nice photo-op. What does this say about the sincerity of Ann Clwyd and her views on the importance of human rights abuses and victims? What an utterly cynical display.

SOURCE: In-denial Media

[alpowolf]

Actually, propaganda can be something that is factually TRUE as well.

You've got me there, that is correct. I should have said "bullshit". For that's what it is sans evidence.

There were eyewitness accounts about the shredders from multiple sources.

Sources with an axe to grind--for example read the article posted in #28 by another poster. That person and her org plainly went into the exercise with the object of emotionally swaying people to their cause.

Maybe not hard enough for you, but what can you expect in a country like Saddams Iraq?

No, not hard enough for me. What can I expect? That anyone who asserts it as fact can back it up. If they can't they should make that clear.

I will concede that the story is believable. But that's not the same thing.

Interesting that someone finally brought up Clinton. I remember how people went over every little lie he and his sycophants told; and I thought that was a good thing. I remember people saying that they were doing it because the truth matters; because letting lies go unchallenged corrodes the moral fabric of society. I agree. So why have so many people abandoned that standard? Did they really mean it when they said it? I am increasingly coming to doubt it.

[alpowolf]

Do you concede that the tales of tongues and limbs being hacked off before crowds has been thoroughly documented via videotape that has been shown on tv?

Yes. I never said otherwise.

If the machine story turns out to be a hyperbolic invention from desperate people in order to get us in to help them from atrocities that were beyond any doubt occurring, do you then say we went in under false pretenses because one form of torture on the list of many documented did not exist?

We went in under false pretense because a govt torturing its citizens is not a legitimate casus belli. We went in under the pretense of a threat to United States security. I seem to remember a politician saying that we are not the world's 9-1-1. Who was that....hmmm...I think his name was Bush.

[Paradox]

Sources with an axe to grind--for example read the article posted in #28 by another poster. That person and her org plainly went into the exercise with the object of emotionally swaying people to their cause.

No doubt, but believable because of what we knew about him.

That anyone who asserts it as fact can back it up. If they can't they should make that clear.

I actually agree with you, and now that, apparently, they cannot back it up, they should admit to it, but thats a long way from saying it was nothing but some propaganda lie.

I remember people saying that they were doing it because the truth matters; because letting lies go unchallenged corrodes the moral fabric of society. I agree. So why have so many people abandoned that standard? Did they really mean it when they said it? I am increasingly coming to doubt it.

There are lies, and there are mistakes, I don't see what is so difficult for some to see the difference. Clintons "lies" (I am not a Clinton hater BTW), were things that he knew for a fact were false. He bombed a Somali medicine factory based on faulty intelligence. That was not a lie (as far as I can tell that is). I just dont see the need to introduce boogymen into these arguments.

[Killing Time]

Anne Clwyd replies in a letter published in todays Grauniad:

Brendan O'Neill (Comment, February 25) believes that I made "uncorroborated and quite amazing claims" about the existence of a shredding machine used as a method of execution in Saddam Hussein's prisons.
Brendan O'Neill was told by my office, but chose not to include in his article, the following information. In his statement, the witness who said that people were killed by the shredder was very specific: he named individuals who he said were killed in the shredder and the individuals who he said supervised the execution by shredder; he stated where the shredder was located and the month and year when the executions took place. The witness was closely questioned by Indict researchers and was described by them as being "unshakeable". He said he is also prepared to testify in court about the incident.

This witness statement was taken by Indict, the organisation which I chair. Indict has collected evidence to be used in the prosecution of senior members of the former Iraqi regime for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indict researchers worked to the high standards of admission of evidence of the English and Welsh courts, under the guidance of Queen's counsel. Extensive enquiries were always made to corroborate information provided in witness statements.

Indict, for obvious reasons, took witness statements on the basis of confidentiality. All witnesses who signed their statements did so, however, in the full knowledge that they could be liable to legal prosecution if they had stated anything they knew to be false or did not believe was true.

As the Iraqi doctor who worked in the Abu Ghraib prison hospital, and quoted by Brendan O'Neill, himself stated the prison was horrific and that Saddam's regime was "very, very terrible, one of the worst regimes ever". The extent of the regime's depravity is not and can never be in question, as many Iraqis know from personal experience, and will soon attest to, when leading members of the regime are brought to justice.
Ann Clwyd MP
Prime minister's special envoy on human rights in Iraq

---

You stateside folks may not be familiar with the personalities involved. O'Neill is a member of an ex-Trotskyite cult once known as the Revolutionary Communist Party which has galloped, if not exactly to the right then to a position of apologist for the likes of Saddam and Milosvic and a preoccupation with modern society's aversion to risk. They are unduly influential in the Brit media, hence the original publication of this item in the Spectator, house journal of mainstream conservatism over here. Some of you might also find their website interesting: http://www.spiked-online.com/.

Anne Clywd is a left wing Labour MP whose views on most things would be anathema to many on here but who has been a steadfast advocate for the Iraqi people and supporter of regime change.

[cyncooper]

Then your concern about the machines is moot.

I see you've moved your goal posts.

[Mr. Mojo]

Ah, the Guardian. ....The same paper that calls Muslims who hack Christian women and children to death with machetes "warriors."

[cyncooper]

Believing something to be true based on testimonials and perhaps other evidence and telling a blatant lie as clinton did many times are two different things.

Your effort to equate the two is offensive.

[alpowolf]

Offensive? That's too bad. We both know you guys would never let Clinton or Gore or their media supporters get away with something like this. Talk about moving goalposts....