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Posted on 04/13/2003 12:13:25 PM PDT by GeneD
Filed at 2:56 p.m. ET
UMM QASR, Iraq (Reuters) - Hurling rocks, bottles filled with sand and wooden stakes, detainees at the only permanent U.S. prisoner-of-war camp in Iraq riot almost daily, military officials said on Sunday.
Anger over slow food lines or disputes between different ethnic groups can spark uprisings -- especially with ringleaders quick to incite riots inside the prison that houses about 6,000 Iraqis under long white open tents, they said.
``Pretty much every day there's a riot. It can get real ugly in there for the MPs (military police),'' said Maj. Joel Droba of the 13th Psychological Operations battalion, which broadcasts orders for calm over loudspeakers and interrogates prisoners to weed out instigators.
On Sunday, clashes broke out when some prisoners opposed an Iraqi general attempting to organize a hunger strike, he said. Hours later, the camp appeared calm to a Reuters correspondent.
Prisoners wearing T-shirts and trousers milled around or chatted in groups of up to a dozen. Some gazed at the guards, leaning on the 6-foot-high chain-linked fence topped with barbed wire and draped with bright red blankets billowing in gusty winds.
The riots have generally not been widespread among the prisoners but military police have regularly had to enter to quell violence at the camp, which is a few miles outside Umm Qasr at the southeastern tip of Iraq.
``They'll throw anything. There's rock throwing, bottles filled with sand and crude weapons like the tent stakes,'' said Sgt. Brian Mathias.
``HUMANE'' CONDITIONS
The United States has been criticized by rights groups for shackling, blindfolding and housing prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan in open cages in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Capt. Lisa Weidenbush, the U.S. operations officer for the camp, said the United States was sensitive about that criticism but assured visiting journalists who were kept at about 300 from the prisoners their treatment was ``humane.''
``I can tell you from firsthand knowledge they are being taken care of very well,'' she said.
Tamara al-Rifai, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said they had interviewed about 3,800 prisoners over the last week at the camp but declined to comment on the prison conditions.
British troops built the camp outside Umm Qasr, the first Iraqi town to be taken in the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Receiving Iraqis from all over the battlefield, they placed the prisoners in tents that can hold about 250 people each and provided them with hot meals such as rice and vegetables.
British and Spanish military doctors tend to prisoners' gunshot and shrapnel wounds and give them medicine for chronic illnesses, such as diabetes.
The guards play Iraqi music, broadcast readings from the Koran and have laid out carpets for the prisoners to pray, military officials said.
Last week, a roughly 800-strong U.S. military police force took command of the camp and plans in the next few days to transfer the prisoners to a new complex on the site where they will be in tents in groups of up to 15 and have running water.
The United States labeled the prisoners held in the U.S. Navy base in Cuba as ``unlawful combatants'' -- a classification that means they are not automatically afforded the rights of the Geneva Convention given to prisoners of war.
All the detainees at Umm Qasr had prisoner of war status and none were known to be non-Iraqi, military officials said. U.S. troops planned to hold tribunals that might classify prisoners as ``unlawful combatants'' if they met certain criteria, including fighting without any identification, Maj. Doug Proietto said.
Time to expand Gitmo.
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That is one of my biggest worries - how many are we going to deem worthy of bringing into this country. I say none - if their country is going to be rebuilt and become a democracy - it will need all it citizens over there - we do not need them.
What a loon.
His 'viable solution' is to make a mockery of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.
The problem was addressed by segregating the hard-core Nazis from the rest of the German POW's within the same camp and even creating separate camps for the hard-core Nazis.
In Iraq, this has already been done. The regular Iraqi Army POW's were simply allowed to go home. The Iraqis still locked up are the hard-core Baathist fanatics and these are the ones that are now causing trouble.
It will not be possible to simply release these fanatics once the war is over. They will only start terrorizing their fellow Iraqis.
We will need to hold them until they can be turned over to the new Iraqi Government who can then deal with them in their own way......"O.K., Mohammed, we will give you a 10 second head start and then the lynch mob will start chasing you."
How truly blessed we are to live in a western society! God bless the USA: the best of the west!
And...thank God for Christianity. Where God's son died so that we may be with God rather than our sons (and daughters)having to die so that we can be with God.
Their's is a religion of peace? Seems more like a religion of death and chaos.
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