Posted on 04/02/2003 2:21:07 PM PST by MadIvan
“WE KILL, we kill,” muttered the Iraqi driver of the pick-up truck speeding through the night-time streets of Baghdad bringing his helpless cargo of handcuffed Western journalists to Saddam Hussein’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Thus began the first of eight days in Iraqi captivity for Matt McAllester, a British foreign correspondent, the photographers Moises Saman, Molly Bingham and Johan Spanner, and a peace activist, Philip Latasha, who were seized without warning or explanation from their rooms in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad while covering the war on Iraq.
During the week in which neither families nor friends had any idea of their whereabouts, the terrified quintet sat in adjacent, bare-concrete cells forbidden to talk to each other, their solitude punctuated by the screams of Iraqi prisoners being led away to torture from the cells around them, the thud of anti-aircraft fire and the pounding of US bombs that were exploding uncomfortably close.
Then, after sleepless nights and blindfolded interrogation sessions, they were released as suddenly as they were captured — seemingly after the intercession of Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and other intermediaries. Yesterday the exhausted group arrived in the Jordanian capital, Amman, where they told for the first time of their capture, ordeal and release.
“I frequently thought we were going to die,” said Mr McAllester, 33, a London-born Scot raised in Edinburgh and now working for the New York Newsday newspaper.
Describing how Iraqi prisoners were in cells across a narrow corridor, Mr McAllester said that he had to turn his back to avoid watching other inmates being dragged away and tortured each night.
“We could hear screams, especially at night,” he said. Unshaven, rib-thin and wearing a crumpled Thomas Pink shirt, he slowly detailed the conditions inside Abu Ghraib, where Amnesty International claims 23 political prisoners, mainly Shia Muslims, have been put to death.
“They were being taken from their cells for a session, or meeting or whatever you want to call it and were being beaten in front of us, a yard or two away from where we were sleeping, with some kind of implement,” he said. “One night one guy was moaning for about an hour and it sounded like they brought a doctor for him.
“I have no idea who was doing it, whether it was the interrogators or the prison guards, but we saw a lot of people inside that prison who had been in there a lot longer than we were and who didn’t have the support network to get them out.”
Although none was given a reason for the arrests by Iraqi intelligence agents — in the early hours of March 25 while other Western journalists continue working — they appear to have been singled out because they did not enter on a regular journalist visa.
Mr McAllester and Mr Saman, 29, arrived in Baghdad a month ago with a group of “human shields” and although they insist that they clearly identified themselves as journalists on the group visa, Mr McAllester admits that they “pushed the envelope” by peeling away from the group with which they were supposed to stay.
Miss Bingham, 34, once a photographer for Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, and Johan Rydeng Spanner, a 28-year-old Danish photographer, entered as tourists just before bombing began and said that they had planned to ask the authorities to change their status to journalists the day that they were arrested.
Miss Bingham told how she had been seized by Iraqi intelligence agents in her hotel room and led away blindfolded with the others for what they were told would be a “few questions”. Repeated interrogation sessions about their visas, photographs, stories and whether they were government agents left them fearing death either at the hands of their “disconcertingly polite” captors or from US bombers.
Forbidden to speak, she and Mr McAllester developed a “three tap” code on their cell walls to assure each other that they were still there or draw attention to a noise or event.
None was tortured — Mr McAllester saying simply: “I sense they knew we were scared enough and they didn’t need to do anything more.” Then, after seven days, their guards put them into the same cell for the final night before saying: “You must leave Iraq now and not come back.”
Unwilling to believe that they were free until they had crossed into Jordan at 9pm on Tuesday, all said they simply had no time to think about what they would do next.
None saw any other foreigners inside Abu Ghraib. But Mr McAllester said that, as he was ushered from one room, a quick glance around revealed something that gave him pause. “I believe I saw a British passport in a bag on a desk.”
Chirac and his U.N. tried. But France has billions of francs in Iraqi drilling contracts, not to mention all the others, so they are opposing deposing Saddam as unjust.
Dittos here, Huck.
Going to see some Civil War battlefields in a few weeks.
Going to see our National Parks and monuments. Going to our nations capitol.
There's plenty to see in America. I've been to Europe, and to England and Scotland. I've seen how they live. I couldn't wait to be back on U.S. soil. America is still the prettiest country in the world.
How great is a country where I can eat 24 hours a day? Drive from coast to coast on the best freeway system in the world. Visit deserts, mountains, praries, oceans, lakes, etc. See the largest trees on earth, the largest hole in the ground on earth, some of the tallest mountains on earth, the best wine growing region on earth, the most recongizable landmarks on earth - wonders of the world, in fact.
Screw the world. I'll stay right here in my own country, and I'll see every inch of it, and I'll visit with my own countrymen, and I'll spend my hard earned dollars on my own people, in my own nation.
I wouldn't p!ss on the rest of the world if it was on fire.
I guess so!!! You have a great way with words, Huckleberry!!!
Every day I open the paper, every new outrage, every new insult, every comment that just reeks of envy and jealousy and hatred for us; jealousy and envy for how powerful we are, how good we have it - it makes me hate 'em even more.
Just when I think my ire has reached its threshold, some foreigner in some pissant nation opens his gaping pie-hole and spews forth some new insult to my intelligence and my nation, and my threshold pushes into the red zone.
They're all filthy, degenerate, boy-buggering, European rotters and the rest are simply third-world parasites, and they can all burn in hell.
Gimme an army big enough, and put me in charge for one week.
That's how I feel right now.
They say a neo-Conservative is a Liberal who has been mugged.
My guess is, these people will be speaking and writing from the right side of the spectrum from this date forward!
Anymore, when I hear about French Canadians booing 12 year old kids, or booing our National anthem, or the scads of other nasty treatments meted out these days, I say to myself, "Screw them -- payback is a BiTXX." As a nation, we are good natured, patient, tolerant and positive -- and we've got a long memory and can be quite aggressive in delivering payback after we've reached the "tipping point". I think many of us have reached that point.
lol....excellent rant!
They feel rage? They hate us?...Their hatred, and their rage, is a drop in the bucket, it's a fart in the wind, compared to my hatred and rage, and I know that I'm not alone in this feeling. I know I'm just one of millions that feel this way.
Americans are slow to rage, but when kindled, there is nothing on earth like it.
I want them to see it. I want them to feel it. I want them to tremble. I want them to fear us. I want the words "the Americans are coming" to be a phrase around the world that mothers use to terrify their disobedient children into behaving. As the Roman mothers would tell their children "Hannibal is at the gates!", so I want "the Americans will get you" to send gut-churning, fear and shivers down the spines of every one of these degenerate, pissant nations in years to come.
I hope the world sees our rage in various forms in the coming years...
I, for one, am boycotting all things French and German. I am working actively with my family and friends to encourage them to not deal with any French or German companies, not to travel to these regions, not to buy their cars, not to do anything that will economically aid any business in these nations. We just struck the first couple of blows. Two BMW purchases were turned into purchases of a Ford and Toyota (since Japan has been one of our biggest supporters, I was proud to support them).
I want them to hurt...I want their economies crushed...I want them to "feel my pain"...and I'm doing my own small part with my "boycott crusade".
This is beyond rage, for me...it's vendetta.
Glad they're out. I hope they will gain a better appreciation of what the troops are trying to accomplish in Iraq. Freedom isn't free.
You know what,I agree with you.I too am sick and tired of sorry assed nations attacking us while they would be NOTHING without our protection!
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