Posted on 05/03/2004 4:41:10 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
WASHINGTON — At least one Iraqi prisoner died after interrogation, some were threatened with attack dogs and others were kept naked in tiny cells without running water or ventilation, according to an account written by a military police sergeant who is one of six U.S. soldiers charged in a growing scandal over prisoner abuse in Iraq.
The account of Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, along with interviews Saturday with other soldiers in Frederick's unit and senior U.S. and military officials, paints a portrait of a prison that spun out of control last fall as thousands of captured Iraqis poured into its razor-wire confines.
In some cases, as few as a dozen U.S. soldiers were responsible for overseeing more than 1,000 prisoners. Escape attempts were common. Mortar fire from insurgents rained down on prison grounds, killing U.S. guards and Iraqi prisoners.
Relatives of Frederick, who faces court-martial in connection with the alleged sexual and physical degradation of prisoners in Iraq, gave The Times a copy of the account that they said was handwritten by Frederick shortly after his arrest in January.
Frederick, 37, wrote that U.S. intelligence officers and civilian contractors who were conducting interrogations urged military police at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad to take steps to make prisoners more responsive to questioning.
Military intelligence officers have "encouraged us, and told us, 'great job,' that they were now getting positive results and information," he said in the neatly written 10-page document that covers a two-week period of last fall.
One U.S. official said 50 to 100 Iraqis had died in U.S. custody during the last year, victims of mortar attacks, heat exhaustion, wounds suffered in battles and attacks by other prisoners.
Although Frederick said one prisoner died after interrogation, the official said that so far no such allegations had been independently substantiated. He said the deaths from other causes amounted to a small percentage of the estimated 35,000 Iraqis who had spent time in U.S. detention centers.
Still, he said that the abuse allegations and other evidence showed that Iraqi prisoners had suffered under U.S. custody.
"There was a mentality that the people we're in charge of are not humans," the U.S. official said. "That's not consistent with our values. The people who were doing this lost it."
The New Yorker magazine reported Saturday that it had obtained a 53-page U.S. military report that concluded that Iraqi prisoners had been subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison, which before last year's U.S.-led invasion had been Saddam Hussein's primary killing ground for political enemies.
The author of the report, identified by the New Yorker as Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, said it appeared that some of the inmates had been beaten and sodomized, perhaps with a broomstick or a chemical light.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
30 Jun. By then the military will have done all it can do. After that, who knows.
If somebody pisses in your beer you don't dump out the keg...you just get another beer. Bow out my ass.
The abuse has nothing to do with our reasons for being in Iraq, but they certainly complicate our mission there. All of those directly culpable must be prosecuted including all officers who knew or should have known. Heads must roll as far up the chain of command as necessary. This kind of garbage should never be tolerated, nor should it have any impact on our timetables and withdrawal decisions.
Uh... Our military is not leaving on June 30th. We will have a security arrangement that will include our military enforcing the new government.
A business associate of mine has a son over there, a young lieutenant who emails him often, and he in turn passes them on to those of us who want to keep track of the situation, and to penpal with his son. Here's what I got today:
"Here is my unsolicited, low level take on this: Those horrible events and pictures are DEVASTATING to our mission here. 12 months of rebuilding and good gestures have been completely reversed by 6 people. They did to those prisoners what we told the world we were liberating Iraq from - at the same FRICKING location Saddam's gang tortured their prisoners at! It makes us all sick that they did that. While there are 140,000 of us here in uniform doing our best, those 6 have really, really hurt this mission. And don't get me wrong, many Iraqis know that this was just 6 people doing this. But our enemies will use those pictures for years against us. But things like this can't and won't affect what we do here on a daily basis. But everyone sure talks about it a lot."
I have a feeling that by the time the investigations are over, it will be way more than six.
There is something to that. Some percentage of the attackers would have been out of work and got hired as mercenaries. 5%? 10%?
True, even if the White House as Commander in Chief turns the military upside down to resolve this.
I believe these pictures were held back by the media for that reason.
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