Posted on 09/22/2004 7:11:44 AM PDT by mark502inf
The head of the militant group routinely shows visitors to his office in Basra the same set of pictures. The first is of an American soldier having sexual intercourse with a female Iraqi prisoner. Others include the familiar picture of Pte Lynndie England with an Iraqi soldier on a dog leash.
The images, and hundreds like them, can be found everywhere in Iraq. They are available on the internet, on video and DVD at market stalls and as mass-produced flyers. The captors of Kenneth Bigley will have seen them.
In Iraq's deeply conservative society the effect of the images has been to fuel a level of hatred against foreigners that makes kidnap and murder a ready response.
Pictures of abused female prisoners making the rounds of Islamic militants also explain why Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his group repeatedly demand the release of women from Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca jails.
The US military says it is not holding any women at these detention facilities and has only two "high value" women in custody: Rihab Taha, nicknamed "Dr Germ", and Huda Ammash, "Mrs Anthrax", both of whom worked as researchers in Saddam Hussein's weapons programme in the 1980s and 1990s. Iraq's justice ministry said yesterday that Rihab Taha would be released on bail today.
Most Iraqis believe that women are being held - and abused - by American forces.
Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabar, the head of the Islamic Clerics Association, said: "I have seen a CD show one thousand male and female Iraqis being abused by the Americans. You can watch that CD in the market or you can go to Abu Ghraib and see it with your own eyes."
Anger at the images has boosted support for insurgent groups such as Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad that were previously viewed with horror by most Iraqis. It has also blurred the demarcation between US troops and western civilians, making kidnappings a simpler, acceptable alternative to attacks on armed soldiers. "We only see ajnabi - the Arabic word for foreigner - now," said one Iraqi businessman.
A spokesman for the US military said it was "greatly concerned" by the circulation of pictures of abused female prisoners and that all allegations were fully investigated.
No more than 45 women were processed through Abu Ghraib. The last two were released in July, the spokesman said. No women were ever held at Camp Bucca. "We have received no allegations of female prisoner abuse. There was one woman identified from pictures take at Abu Ghraib but we have been unable to contact her," the spokesman said.
Those pics of "abused" women were from a porn site. ISLAM treats women like animals. Sometimes not even on that level.
But Saddam's rape rooms and feet-first so you can watch yourself be shredded to death routines make him the object of adoration around the Arab world.
I'm with you on the hypocrisy and the differences in scale of what our guys did as opposed to what Hussein & the terrorists did; but the fact that our guys really committed the abuse & sexual stuff has made all the rest of the propaganda even more believable--and the net effect has been to shift a lot of Iraqis further along the scale of anti-Americanism; from pro-US to neutrals, from neutrals to anti-US, from anti-US to supporting insurgents, from support to fightng, etc. Wherever they fell on that scale, they have slid a little further along in the wrong direction.
I've become highly suspicious of the alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib since learning that Mary Mapes is the one who broke that story.
I agree. Those out of control soldiers like Lyndie England have caused our righteous cause great harm, and should have the book thrown at them.
However, morons like the handful of misbehaving American soldiers at Abu Graib gave them credibility.
In the light of the orgasm of the alphabet press over Abu Gharib, The the middle-eastern mind set cannot comprehend the unified Western press blackout regarding the Saddam Torture Tapes except as being indicative that the tapes must be fabrications.
I honestly believe that there are Americans who are dead because of the agenda-setting alphabet press, namely ABCCNNNBCSeeBS. Even Fox screwed up. And I have a son in Iraq right now.
It has been investigated by the Army in much greater depth than could ever be done by CBS. It really happened.
I don't think our opponents are above falsifying photos for propaganda purposes.
However, morons like the handful of misbehaving American soldiers at Abu Graib gave them credibility.
Precisely, on both parts.
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