Iraq Prison 'Torture' Allegations Overblown

News Max ^ | 5-2-04

[hope]

Sunday, May. 2, 2004 1:43 PM EDT

Iraq Prison 'Torture' Allegations Overblown

Did U.S. soldiers in Baghdad "torture" Iraqi prisoners housed at Saddam Hussein's old Abu Ghraib prison?

That's the impression being given by the blanket coverage of photos showing Iraqi detainees being humiliated at hands of their American keepers - half of whom, by the way, were female.

That's right. Along with three male GIs suspected in the prison "torture" episode, three females, Spec. Megan Ambuhl, Spec. Sabrina Harman and Private Lynndie England have been named in the scandal.

England is the GI shown in several of the photos circulated throughout the world, cigarette dangling from her lips as she smirks at a masturbating Iraq prisoner.

Female torturers? That tidbit should send up a red flag immediately.

When Saddam routinely tortured Iraqi innocents held at Abu Ghraib for decades, press accounts make no mention of women feeding detainees into meat grinders, or dipping prisoners in acid, or dismembering victims to be sent home to family members in Hefty bags.

Soldiers or not, women are generally not the best candidates to administer physical "torture" of any kind.

In fact, what the photos show is not "torture" - or Iraqi prisoners being subjected to "atrocities," another term being tossed out to hype this story.

Instead, these GI's were likely doing what they were told to do - soften up their prisoners for interrogation that next day by using humiliation and intimidation.

Much the same way Iraq war hero Corporal Alan West fired his weapon in the presence of an Iraqi captive earlier in the war to get him to come clean about an impending attack against West's unit.

For all the hysterical headlines, this allegedly shocking episode sounds more like a college fraternity hazing:

"The photographs tell it all," writes the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.

"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."

Embarrassing? Yes. But hardly the Bataan Death March.

Hersh also alleges that phosphoric liquid from chemical lights was poured on detainees; along with cold water. Others were subjected to "threats" of rape. Military dogs were used to "frighten and intimidate" prisoners, including one case in which a detainee was actually bitten.

Pretty weak stuff by the standards of Saddam, however, who used to have his Doberman Pincers devour dissidents alive as his Cabinet looked on.

Hersh does note the alleged sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick. But in a report ripe with quotes from a preliminary military investigation into the prisoner abuse scandal, he includes no direct quotes about this, the most egregious of all abuse allegations.

It's also worth noting that Hersh's reporting earlier in the war on terror turned out to be highly questionable.

The bottom line: While reporters pretend to be shocked that the U.S. isn't housing Iraqi POW's at the Baghdad Waldorf Astoria, complete with full room service, an in-room Jacuzzi and daily massage privileges, that kind of treatment isn't likely to yield much by way of actionable intelligence. And that, after all, was the point of all the harsh treatment.

The Bush administration needs to announce that while this entire episode may be regrettable, there was no "torture," "atrocities" weren't committed - and suggestions to the contrary by American reporters give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Meanwhile, if the Muslim world considers it "torture" to have female GIs looking at their undressed prisoners, they ought to consider how upset Americans get when the folks we sent over to rebuild one of their countries are shot, burned, have their corpses dragged through the streets and used for bridge ornaments.

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[annyokie]

So she tortured him by watching him wank-off? How terrorized could he have been?

[CzarNicky]

As I said before this sounds like what goes on everyday in a San Fransisco bathhouse.

[dsc]

WND kind of hacked me off with their poll on this.

I wanted to answer, "Nothing has even been alleged that amounts to 'torture,' " but it wasn't an option.

[Darryl Newhart]

women are generally not the best candidates to administer physical "torture" of any kind.

Actually women have been routinely used throughout history as instruments to shame and humiliate the enemy.

[Darryl Newhart]

I don't think this was torture - but it was abuse, and assault. And if it was pictures of Iraqi insurgents forcing GI's to "perform" these acts, we'd all be outraged, and rightfully so.

Perhaps these soldiers should face charges brought by the nascent Iraqi council.

[wagglebee]

What they really should have done was make them eat pork.

[stop_fascism]

The libs are just mad that Souter and Spacey weren't invited.

[AngryJawa]

Gee whiz...Islamokaze terrorist prisoners sure do like to spank the monkey in the presence of female US military personnel. I've read about lots of this at Gitmo, as well as feces and urine throwing incidents. Nice fellas, eh?

[bwteim]

Don't get too close to her shoes...

[EggsAckley]

What is the MOST disturbing is the stupidity of the GIs for taking photos.

[FairOpinion]

"Iraq Prison 'Torture' Allegations Overblown"

You can say that again! I just found some articles about Saddam's torture. THAT's torture. What the US soldiers did was stupid, but it's a far cry from anything that can be called torture.

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Iraqis pour out tales of Saddam's torture chambers

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-04-13-saddam-secrets-usat_x.htm

BAGHDAD — Pictures of dead Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out and their genitals blackened, fill a bookshelf. Jail cells, with dried blood on the floor and rusted shackles bolted to the walls, line the corridors.

An Iraqi soldier, who according to the facility's records witnessed the beatings, said interrogators regularly used pliers to remove men's teeth, electric prods to shock men's genitals and drills to cut holes in their ankles.

In one instance, the soldier recalled, he witnessed a Kuwaiti soldier, who had been captured during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, being forced to sit on a broken Pepsi bottle. The man was removed from the bottle only after it filled up with his blood, the soldier said. He said the man later died.

"I have seen interrogators break the heads of men with baseball bats, pour salt into wounds and rape wives in front of their husbands," said former Iraqi soldier Ali Iyad Kareen, 41.

He then revealed dozens of Polaroid pictures of beaten and dead Iraqis from the directorate's files."

====

Videotape Shows Saddam's Men Torturing Iraqis
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101689,00.html

A grisly videotape showing acts of torture carried out by Iraqi Republican Guard and Saddam Fedayeen militiamen has been declassified and obtained by Fox News.

The punishments include fingers being chopped or shot off, tips of tongues being cut off, wrists being broken by sharp blows from a wooden rod, lashes by whip or cane, a bound man being tossed off a building, a beheading involving a sword and a knife and a man being humiliated by riding a donkey backwards.

Several scenes show charges being read out, ranging from disobeying an order to desertion, before punishments are inflicted.

"When you have people filming in front of crowds cheering and clapping -- you have people cutting off people's tongues and heads and chopping off their fingers and hands throwing them off three-story buildings -- you learn something about a group of people and how they lived their lives and treated their people

[Gunrunner2]

>>Perhaps these soldiers should face charges brought by the nascent Iraqi council.<<

Written is jest. . .I hope. . .or are you alos in favor of the ICC?

These soldiers are subject to the UCMJ and shall be punished in accordance with US laws and no other.

[Tribune7]

Our military was making a smut film.

[annyokie]

Real charmers, they are. I didn't know about the Gitmo stuff.

They bodily waste throwing goes on in US prisons all the time, however.

[annyokie]

I guess we Infidel babes are just too hot for these guys.

[lelio]

For all the hysterical headlines, this allegedly shocking episode sounds more like a college fraternity hazing:

Sheesh, NewsMax is seriously lacking a clue here. Whether or not this rises above a "fraternity prank" it doesn't matter: these "soldiers" were acting in an inappropriate way that's going to jeopardize any goodwill built up between the US and moderate arabs.

To blow this off as a prank is determental to our interests there.

[Darryl Newhart]

Written is jest. . .I hope. . .or are you also in favor of the ICC?

99% in jest, but that 1% is the nagging question of what I (if I were Iraqi, witnessing these crimes) would wish to see.

These fools have monkey-wrenched our efforts, and soldiers, that would not have died, will.

Perhaps allowing the Iraqi governing council to deal with these criminals will lessen some of the blowback.

[alloysteel]

Not only did these Iraqi prisoners get humiliated, they were subjected to the humiliation by girls - DOUBLE BURN!

I don't think I would arrange a Saturday night date with these babes myself. They sound like BAD NEWS. Of course, there is no accounting for tastes, and they may be deluged with offers.

[Enterprise]

I am still skeptical about allegations of torture. And if humilitation was done as an interrogation technique to get valuable information, I say so what?

That being said, let me construct a couple of different scenarios. Suppose some militant females were captured and forced to strip and masturbate, and U.S. military male guards stood by laughing and pointing their fingers. What would our reaction be then? Or, as will probably happen, a female soldier is captured, and her captors show her nude, being laughed at and forced into humiliating poses. In light of the incident with the male detainees, would we then say that since we did it, then it is ok that they did it?