The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 2 - The Washington Post

Washington Post via the White House ^

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

 

 The Washington Post

 

 "'We smelled something rotten, and when we breathed in, we couldn't breathe out. The sky was full of smoke, and someone said it was chemicals. People started crying and running toward the mountains. I was burning and I became blind, but someone led me out. After walking for two days, we reached Iran.' [Wais Abdel] Qadr was the only member of his family to survive the gassing of Halabja by the Iraqi military on March 16, 1988."

 -- The Washington Post, August 7, 2003

~*~

"In the last room, where she was held for several hours, the door was locked. At sunset two men entered. She recalled they said they had to take routine security precautions in advance of a meeting with Uday Hussein. They slipped a black hood over her head and tied her hands behind her back. The anxiety, which had mounted through the day, flared into terror. She was taken down to a lower level in an elevator and then along a passageway that seemed narrow because of the way the two men bumped against her. She was pushed into a room and tied, spread-eagle, to a bed.

"'All of this period, I didn't resist,' she said. 'But on the bed, I knew. I said, "I am like your sister; please don't do this." I started to beg. They said if our sister married an Indian and started a network against the government, we would kill her. I kept praying, calling for Jesus and the Virgin Mary. I prayed to Muhammad. They damned them all.'

"'They raped me twice that first day,' she continued. 'I don't know the persons. Two of them. I couldn't see them. They kept raping for four days as well as I can remember. They took my honor.'

"Over the next seven months, Hanna said, she implicated people she had never heard of in a spy network she knew nothing about. She was routinely beaten and she said the Major, in a grotesque joke, kept three sticks on a wall hanging under the names Jesus, the prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali, whom Shiite Muslims believe is Muhammad's true heir. Whichever holy man a prisoner called out for determined which stick they were beaten with. The Major, she said, also routinely used electric shock and once set a police dog on her in a small room; the scar of the bite mark is still on her arm.

"One of his preferred forms of torture, she said, was to order the women to strip, then tie them to the tree trunk, and smear wet sugar on them so the dogs would terrorize them as they licked it off their bodies. Hanna also identified his superior at the academy."

-- The Washington Post, July 21, 2003

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"'These people were taken from prisons and detention centers to execution,' said Sheik Kadhim Fartousi, a prominent Baghdad cleric who took charge of the excavation. 'We believe there are thousands of other victims here.'"

"Fartousi said security sources in the former government told his organization that some resisted the executions. 'A colonel in charge of intelligence objected to the killing and said, "The regime is on the verge of collapse, why execute people?" So he was executed,' Fartousi said, as the smell of decaying bodies wafted through the blazing heat."

-- The Washington Post, June 9, 2003

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"Two witnesses from the village of Salman Pak, south of the capital, said they had seen 115 corpses stacked in piles here on April 10, all of them men with their hands tied behind their backs who had been shot in the back of the head. In attempts to exhume bodies on Saturday and today, Iraqis retrieved the remains of eight victims, none of whom, however, appeared to have died recently."

 -- The Washington Post, June 9, 2003

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"Abas Rahim, a speedy 24-year-old left wing for Police, is one of Iraq's finest players. After returning home from 1997 Junior World Cup qualifying matches in South Korea, Rahim was jailed for 21 days. He was the team captain, as well as the tournament's most valuable player, and he was punished for the team's failure. "Five years later, after trying to quit the team, Rahim missed a crucial penalty kick against the Union Club in Qatar. He was held captive in Hussein's Republican Palace for seven days, he recalled, blindfolded the entire time. Today, he played unafraid."

-- The Washington Post, May 17, 2003

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"In May 1991, having served in the Persian Gulf War with the Marines, I volunteered for further duty in Provide Comfort -- a joint military operation designed to assist in the relocation of Kurdish refugees into northern Iraq. Assigned to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, I was flown to the city of Zakho, where the unit was establishing its headquarters in and around an abandoned Iraqi divisional headquarters building....

"As the Marines began digging defensive positions and putting up tents, a grisly discovery was made. Heavy equipment had unearthed myriad body parts; hands, arms, legs, etc., were uncovered in what was determined to have been a mass grave. Most telling among this evidence of inhumanity was an infant's sandal.

"The body parts were reburied immediately after their discovery, but for many days the stench of rotting flesh lingered in the air until all the remains were located and reburied. It was later learned from the Kurds that about 70 of their tribesmen had been taken into this Iraqi divisional HQ and that none had come out alive. The victims were brutally tortured and executed, their remains then thrown into a common grave."

-- James Zumwalt, op-ed in The Washington Post, April 30, 2003

~*~

'The players would start crying,' said Emmanuel Baba, 69, a former player who became a coach renowned throughout the Arab world, where he is known by his nickname, Ammo Baba. 'They would tremble with fear.'"

"'When they got out of prison, they would come to me and lift their shirts to show me the red stripes on their back. They had been beaten with a metal cable. Then the guards threw salt water at them, so the scars would stay for life.'"

-- The Washington Post, April 24, 2003

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'I thought many times of leaving soccer,' said Laith Hussein, captain of the national team and a star in Iraq. 'But how could I? I was afraid of what Uday would do to me and my family. I would sit and cry when I was by myself. I want to play soccer for myself, and for the Iraqi people, not for Uday.'"

-- The Washington Post, April 24, 2003

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"Though the tales of punishment were not a closely guarded secret in Iraq, it is only now that many athletes are talking freely about their experiences. A common thread runs through all their narratives. After losing a competition, players and their retinue were taken to the Olympic Committee building, where they were harangued before being transferred to a prison, usually Radwaniya. They often had their heads shaved as a mark of shame and spent the first days in prison without food. Many said they were whipped on their backs, legs and arms by thick metal cables that hung from a wall in the prison and were named after snakes. And if they were offered jobs playing abroad, Uday Hussein demanded a cut of the contract if they wanted exit visas to leave Iraq."

-- The Washington Post, April 24, 2003

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'I went to kill one person, but suddenly I saw he had guards with him, so I killed four or five of his guards,' Ali recalled. 'After that, we cut off his head and we put it in a bag and we brought it to Baghdad from Karbala at 4 a.m. We put it in front of Uday's office. He asked us to bring his head.'"

-- The Washington Post, April 22, 2003

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Former prisoners of ousted president Saddam Hussein's government are everywhere in Basra, standing on street corners waiting for water, rummaging through papers in the headquarters of the once feared secret police, sitting quietly at home on a hot afternoon. These are the tortures they describe, and more: a prisoner forced to sit on a heated metal stove, electric shocks applied to genitals, a small blade used to slash a prisoner's back. Even doctors became torturers; they cut off army deserters' ears. Servants of the system fell victim to it, too: police officers and prison guards arrested, tortured, then sent back to work. Torture was considered so routine that many former prisoners shrugged at first when asked about it. 'Of course, they tortured me. Beating people here is something regular,' said Maithem Naji."

-- The Washington Post, April 19, 2003

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"Anwar Abdul Qadir was there, too, looking. He has been missing his brother since 1991 as well, when the 17-year-old was taken from their home at 4 a.m. His uncle is also missing, and his cousin was executed in 1996. Altogether, he has six relatives who were arrested and whose whereabouts are unknown. 'I'm very lucky they just took five or six relatives,' he said, nodding in the direction of Abdul Wahab. 'Some people had five or six brothers taken.'"

-- The Washington Post, April 19, 2003

~*~

Ali belonged to Saddam's Fedayeen, a security force led by Hussein's elder son, Uday. For the better part of a decade, he recalled, he assassinated opposition figures, broke the backs of those accused of lying to the government and chopped off tongues, fingers, hands and once even a head.

"'It didn't matter if we felt he was guilty or not guilty. We had to do it,' he explained. 'These people were against Saddam Hussein. If we got orders to punish him, we would go and do it. If Uday said to cut off his tongue, we would do it. Or his hands or fingers or his head. Anything. We would do it.'"

"'I just followed orders,'" he said.

-- The Washington Post, April 22, 2003

~*~

....In another neighborhood, a group of some 100 children, clothed mostly in rags and newly released from one of the regime's prisons, hugged and kissed the Marines who had freed them."

-- The Washington Post, April 10, 2003

~*~

 

See also:

The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 1 - The New York Times

Coming soon:

The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein:

The London Times,

Los Angeles Times,

Newsweek,

Agence France Presse,

more....

~*~

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

             

 Ping!

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This is a graphic series, and one I'd rather not post. Since the majority of Iraqis - Saddam's victims - are still being censored by the world's free press this election year, and until justice is rendered by the new Iraqi government, as long as our media and other Saddam Hussein apologists continue to defend, appease, and otherwise mock the sacrifices of our Soldiers, cover-up the mass graves, and give legitimacy to Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Socialist co-terrorists - I will post these threads.

 

Please Freepmail if you want on this particular ping list.

 

Thank you for sharing the truth with others.

[facedown]

Stttteeeeeerrrriiikkkkkke 2!

[sgtbono2002]

I read these articles from the Washington Post ,one of the most liberal papers in the world , I read them an I know that the Post knew these things were going on, and still they work in every way possible to destroy George Bush, the man who tried to stop the disgusting acts by Saddam Hussein.George Bush who had the courage to step in and say enough. in spite of political. I see this and I say what the hell is wrong with liberals, What is their problem? So what if Bush had to play up the WMD angle to give these liberal cowards enough spine to rid the world of Saddam. Saddam is gone and the Iraqui's have a chance for decent lives. We need to defeat people who would behead marines and murder innocents with car bombs. Liberals--Washington Post--WAKE THE HELL UP.

[mtntop3]

Thank you for the posts. This individual, humanized perspective of Iraq is so necessary and so lacking in the public realm today.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Oh yes. Saddam will hang. It's too bad we blew up Uday and Qusai. We could have hung them all side by side. Personally, I think hanging is too good for them, but after all...we're civilized.

[onyx]

BUMP.

Thanks for your work.

[Mears]

Thanks for the post. It's unbelievable that the Bush haters can't seem to recall articles like this.

I think they all have selective amnesia,half of them seem to have forgotten 9-11.

[McGavin999]

Isn't it amazing that the WP is so partisan that they will turn their heads now and pretend these things never happened?

[Coop]

You're awesome, as always.

[windchime]

"This is a graphic series, and one I'd rather not post."

Thank you, RC. It is difficult to read.....but then I think of the difficulty of LIVING (or dying from) it.

[Grampa Dave]

This was not inhumane.

Putting the Victoria Secret underpants on the heads of terrorists was the real war crime.

[PsyOp]

Bio-Chemical Weapons & Saddam: A History.