FURIOUS BUSH DEMANDS TO SEE ALL PRISONER ABUSE PHOTOS, VIDEOS

Drudge ^ | 5/9/04 | Matt Drudge

[demkicker]

A furious President Bush has demanded to see all photos and videos showing abuse of Iraq detainees, a senior White House source said late Sunday.

"The president was blindsided by the first TV images, he will not be blindsided again," the source, who demanded anonymity, explained to the DRUDGE REPORT.

The president has instructed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to present him with him all known images that could further deepen the crises.

Monday editions of the NEW YORKER feature photos of a dog attacking a naked Iraqi detainee at Abu Ghraib prison.

President Bush was aware of the photo, the top source claims.

The White House is preparing for more fallout, and leaks from lawmakers.

The Pentagon is considering the possibility of showing the unseen material to members of Congress.

"It's clear the moment the evidence is sent to the Congress, we will see a new feeding frenzy in the media."

[PhiKapMom]

Why is everyone so quick to believe what Drudge has to say? Just who is talking to him -- no one close to Pres Bush I would bet.

[Southack]

"We just can't have this stuff. I saw my Catholic Church raked over the coals for covering up sexual abuse, and deservedly so. It's painful to think that a few in our military think it's just dandy to strip down human beings and beat them, or rape them, or sic dogs on them, or use them for photographic props. These are deranged SOBs, IMO."

I agree. The good news is that there is no cover up. Our military was already investigating and initiating courts martial for those who perpetrated these crimes, and now even the trials themselves are going to be public. That's rather unlike the trap that the Catholic Church got itself into with its gay clergy (which served to demonstrate that their coverup only exacerbated their problem).

[oceanview]

that can play both ways - if the rapes are being done by iraqis, the media can just say "guards raping boys", not show the video, and leave the viewer with the impression that it was an American soldier doing it.

[Southack]

"Except for UN sanctioned actions of course, like bombing civilian infrastructure targets in Serbia, that's OK."

Not even the UN sanctioned that 1999 war.

[Columbine]

Not being a smart aleck here but how much of Drudge's stuff do you think is really true?

I only believe about half of it.

[joesnuffy]

THE MALMEDY MASSACRE
(December 17, 1944)
During the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) the Combat Group of the 1st
SS Panzer Division, led by SS Major Joachim Peiper, was approaching the
crossroads at Baugnes near the town of Malmedy . There they encountered a
company of US troops (Battery B of the 285th. Field Artillery Observation
Battalion) from the US 7th Armoured Division. Realizing that the odds were
hopeless, the company's commander, Lt.Virgil Lary, decided to surrender. After
being searched by the SS, the prisoners were marched into a field by the
crossroads. The SS troops moved on except for two Mark IV tanks Nos.731 and
732, left behind to guard the GIs. An order was given to fire and SS Private Georg
Fleps of tank 731 drew his pistol and fired at Lary's driver who fell dead in the
snow. The machine guns of both tanks then opened fire on the prisoners. Many of
the GIs took to their heels and fled to the nearest woods. Incredibly, 43 GIs
survived, but 86 of their comrades lay dead in the field, being slowly covered with
a blanket of snow. The US troops in the area were issued with an order that for the
next week no SS prisoners were to be taken.

At the end of the war, Peiper, and 73 other suspects (arrested for other atrocities
committed during the offensive) were brought to trial. When the trial ended on
July 16, 1946, forty three of the defendants were sentenced to death, twenty two
to life imprisonment, two to twenty years, one for fifteen years and five to ten
years. Peiper and Fleps were among those sentenced to death, but after a series of
reviews the sentences were reduced to terms in prison. On December 22, 1956, SS
Sturmbannführer Peiper was released. He settled in the small village of Traves in
northern France in 1972 and four years later, on the eve of Bastille Day, he was
murdered and his house burned down by a French communist group. His charred
body was recovered from the ruins and transferred to the family grave in
Schondorf , near Landsberg in Bavaria. Most of the remains of the murdered GIs
were eventually shipped back to the US for private burial but twenty one still lie
buried in the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chappelle, about forty kilometers
north of Malmedy.
Today, the American flag flies over the Memorial built at the Baugnes crossroads,
about 50 metres from where the actual killings took place. Names of all victims are
engraved on individual plaques on the wall behind the flagpole.





CHENOGNE
(January 1, 1945)
In the village of Chenogne, the US 11th Armoured Division had captured around
sixty German soldiers. Marched to behind a small hill, out of sight of enemy troops
still holding the woods beyond the village, the prisoners were subjected to a volley
of machine-gun fire. On this cold and frosty first day of 1945, the GIs were
showing no mercy for their unfortunate prisoners as they crumpled to the ground,
shot dead in cold blood. With memories of the Malmedy massacre still fresh in their
minds, killing had become impersonal, revenge was now uppermost in their minds.


HOLLAND

DE WOESTE HOEVE
(March 6, 1945)

On the night of March 6, a BMW car, carrying the SS General Hans Albin Rauter,
was ambushed, his driver and orderly being killed. Rauter was seriously wounded .
Some hours later, the damaged car was found by German troops and Rauter was
taken to the St. Joseph-Stichting hospital on the outskirts of Apeldoorn where he
recovered after a series of blood transfusions. Soon after the ambush, the SD
arrived and what followed was one of the most notorious war crimes ever
committed in Holland. In charge of the investigation was SS Brigadefuhrer
Dr.Eberhardt Schongarth, who immediately ordered reprisals. One hundred and
sixteen men were rounded up and transported to the scene of the ambush where
they were all shot dead, their bodies being buried in a mass grave in Heidehof
Cemetery in the village of Ugchelen . In Gestapo prisons all over Holland, prisoners
were taken out and shot in reprisal for the ambush. In all, a total of 263 people
had been shot in reprisal. The irony was, that the Dutch underground fighters had
intended to ambush and steal a German lorry, and had no idea that the car they
shot up contained a German General. Rauter himself survived the war. He was
arrested by British Military Police in a hospital at Eutin and turned over to the
Dutch. Before a Special Court of Justice in the Hague, he was sentenced to death
and on March 25, 1949, he was executed by firing squad in the dunes near
Scheveningen Prison. Schongarth was tried by a British Military Court, found guilty
on another war crime charge and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1946.


TEXEL MASSACRE
(April 1945)

On the island of Texel, just off the coast of Holland, some 800 Soviet soldiers from
Georgia (drafted into the Red Army and who volunteered to join the German Army
after being taken prisoner during the German advance into the Soviet Union)
decided to mutiny against their German masters. They had been formed into the
822nd Infantry Battalion, and were led by around 400 German officers and NCOs.
One night at the end of April, the Georgians, led by a Lt. Shalva Loladze, stealthily
entered the German quarters and killed 246 German soldiers as they slept. German
battalions were sent from the mainland to secure the island and hunt down the
rebels. Summary justice was then dispensed to the Georgians, four or five being
tied together and grenades placed between them. Only 235 were left alive out of
the original 800 when the Canadians occupied the island in May. During the hunt,
117 Texelers were also killed. A total of 476 Georgians lie buried in unmarked
graves in the Georgian War Cemetery on Texel.


PUTTEN ATROCITY
(September 30, 1944)

On the night of September 30, 1944, a group of Dutch resistance fighters
ambushed four German soldiers near the small Dutch village of Putten . The attack
went wrong and three of the soldiers escaped to raise the alarm, the fourth being
kept hostage. The German commander of the area, General Heinz Helmuth von
Wuhlisch, ordered all inhabitants arrested and the village burned down. Thirty nine
were arrested immediately and lined up on the square. Hoping to save the 39 men,
the resistance group released the hostage, Lt.Eggert. It made no difference, all the
other men in the village were rounded up and together with the 39 men on the
square, forced to board a train bound for the Reich. In all, 589 men from the
village were transported to Germany for forced labour. Only 49 were alive at the
end of the war. Luckily, of the 600 or so houses in Putten, 'only' 87 were burned
down.


RIDDERKERK ATROCITY
(1945)

The last atrocity of the war in Europe took place in the small town of Ridderkerk,
near Rotterdam. The Mayor had ordered the local police to arrest some 'Hun girls'
(women collaborators). While standing with three of their prisoners in front of the
house, a German officer and his girl friend passed by in a truck. The police stopped
the truck but at a signal from the German officer, a group of ten drunken soldiers
stormed out of a nearby house and started firing at the police and their prisoners
who had fled to safety back into the house. The soldiers then stormed the house,
dragging women and children outside. Eleven men were found inside the house
and forced outside to stand up against the wall to be shot down. A wounded man,
hiding behind a sofa, gave himself away by his moans. He too was shot dead. The
soldiers departed, leaving behind three survivors.


THE AMSTERDAM REPRISAL
(October 24, 1944)

When S.D. officer Herbert Oelschagel was murdered by the Dutch resistance on
October 23, 1944 in Amsterdam, the Nazi reprisal was swift and severe. Next day,
29 civilians were arrested and pedestrians on the Apolloaan were forced at
gunpoint to witness their execution. At the same time, several buildings were
deliberately set on fire.


GERMANY

KRISTALLNACHT (Night of Broken Glass)
(November 9/10, 1938)

Demonstrations against Jews and Jewish property was widespread throughout
Germany on November 9/10, 1938. On Nov.12, Heydrich reported to the
Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, that 101 Jewish Synagogues had been
burned down and 76 others demolished. Over 815 shops and businesses were
destroyed including the huge Margraf department store on Berlin's
Unter-den-Linden which was totally ransacked. This orgy of anti-Jewish violence
was the result of the assassination of a German Embassy official, Ernst von Rath, in
Paris by a 17-year old Polish Jew in an act of protest against the deportation of his
parents from Germany. Thirty six Jews were killed and around 20,000, in particular
the more wealthy Jews, arrested and transported to concentration camps. The cost
of shattered glass alone throughout the Reich was estimated at six million marks.
The whole cost of Kristallnacht (night of glass) had to be paid by the Jews
themselves, the Nazis confiscating their insurance money and imposing a collective
fine of one billion marks!.


THE SKIATAWA MASSACRE
(Sunday November 30, 1941)

The prime mover behind the expulsion of Berlin's Jews was Albert Speer, Hitler's
chief architect who had been given the task of rebuilding Berlin. A close friend of
Joseph Goebbels, together in 1941, they planned for the clearance of the Jewish
slum areas in the western part of the city. In doing so, Speer could then take
control of around 34,000 houses and apartments and start his demolishing and
rebuilding programme. The first trainload of these expelled Jews left Berlin on
October 18, 1941. There were to be 130 trainloads altogether. On November 7, a
train, No. Do-26, loaded with 943 Jews left the city bound for Riga in Latvia.
Arriving at 9.30am in Skiatawa , about eight kilometres outside Riga, in zero
temperatures and three inches of snow on the ground, they were forced out of the
train and shot into deep trenches previously dug in a strip of the Rumbula Forest.
The executions were supervised by SS Major Rudolf Lange but the actual shooting
was carried out by the local Latvian SS troops. Later that day around 4,000 local
Jews from Riga itself were transported by trucks to the forest and murdered in
the same way at the same spot on the orders of the local SS Commander Friedrich
Jeckeln. (By the beginning of 1942, Jeckeln was credited with reducing the Jewish
population of Riga from 29,500 to 2,600) This massacre was witnessed by Major
General Walter Bruns, a 54 year old German Army bridge building engineer whose
testimony is on file at the Public Records Office in London. At the 'Wolf's Lair',
Hitler had given instructions to Himmler that the Berlin Jews were not to be
liquidated but they were all dead by the time the order came through.


RUSSIAN P.O.W. MURDERS

The first 3,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at the Buchenwald Concentration
Camp during September 1941. After months of marching hundreds of miles they
finally entered the camp completely exhausted and emaciated into mere
skeletons. They had received almost nothing to eat during the march. Some
weeks later another 4,000 arrived and during the ten kilometre march from the
station in Weimar to the camp, 417 collapsed and died. In the camp, one of the
most vile cold-blooded war crimes took place in a facility hastily constructed
inside the camp's horse stables. When no longer able to work in the stone quarry
the prisoners were taken to the stable and ordered into the shower-room eight
at a time. The door was then closed and through a slit in the door the
unsuspecting victims were simply shot down by an automatic pistol. To cover the
cries of the dying loud music was played over loudspeakers. After the killings
the showers were turned on but only to wash away the blood. Another method
used was for the prisoner to stand against a measuring device to measure his
height. Concealed behind the device was a small cubicle in which stood the SS
murderer who then fired a shot into the neck of the prisoner through a slot in
the partition. Around 500 killings a day was achieved through these methods. In
all, about 7,200 Russian POWs were murdered in Buchenwald.


STARVATION AT REMAGEN

After the capture of the Remagen Bridge, the US Army hastily erected dozens of
Prisoner of War cages around the bridge-head. The camps were simply open fields
surrounded by concertina wire. Those at the Rhine Meadows were situated at
Remagen, Bad Kreuznach, Andernach, Buderich, Rheinbach and Sinzig. The
German prisoners were hopeful of good treatment from the GIs but in this they
were sadly disappointed. Herded into the open spaces like cattle, some were
beaten and mistreated. No tents or toilets were supplied. The camps became huge
latrines, a sea of urine from one end to the other. They had to sleep in holes in the
ground which they dug with their bare hands. In the Bad Kreuznach cage,
560,000 men were interned in an area that could only comfortably hold 45,000.
Denied enough food and water, they were forced to eat the grass under their feet
and the camps soon became a sea of mud. After the concentration camps were
discovered, their treatment became worse as the GIs vented their rage on the
hapless prisoners.

In the five camps around Bretzenheim, prisoners had to survive on 600-850
calories per day. With bloated bellies and teeth falling out, they died by the
thousands. During the two and a half months (April-May, 1945) when the camps
were under American control, a total of 18,100 prisoners died from malnutrition,
disease and exposure. This extremely harsh treatment at the hands of the
Americans resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 German prisoners of war in the
Rhine Meadows camps alone in the months just before and after the war ended. It
must however be borne in mind that with the best will in the world it proved
almost impossible to care for such a huge number of prisoners under the strict
terms of the Geneva Convention. The task of guarding these prisoners, numbering
around 920,000, fell to the men of the US 106th. Infantry Division. The Remagen
cage was set up to accommodate 100,000 men but ended up with twice that
number. On the first afternoon 35,000 prisoners were counted through the gate.
About 10,000 of these required urgent medical attention which in most cases was
completely absent. All roads leading to the camps were clogged with hundreds of
trucks bringing in even more prisoners, sent to the rear by the advancing 9th.US
Army. By April 15, 1945, 1.3 million prisoners were in American hands.

Tourists, cruising down the Rhine today can pick out a small memorial
and plaque built on the site of the former POW cage. In the Remagen
cemetery there are 1,200 graves and at Bad Kreuznach, 1,000 graves.

[oceanview]

what don't you believe? the stuff about Bush asking to see all photos is totally believable, and the stuff about the rapes was tipped by Hersh two weeks ago.

[sinkspur]

Donning flame-resistant suit as an awful lot of people find it really convenient to blame it either on women or gays in the military. I really don't think it had anything to do with either. It was just a poor command structure, poor commanders, and enough lowlifes (but fairly run-of-the-mill lowlifes, not anomalous or out of the ordinary) in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I could not agree with you more. Instead of trying to blame a "gender" or "orientation," why not just look at this squarely?

There are some brutal, ignorant people in our society, and, giving them some "enemies" to act out their brutal fantasies on, gets us where we are today.

There are cops like this. Most of them work in large city police forces, and are drummed out before they kill somebody.

A few get through, however, and they're the ones who end up on the front pages.

[sinkspur]

Nothing I have seen so far can be labeled torture, just humiliation. The Geneva Conventions were violated when 60 Minutes II broadcasted the photo's, until then, there was no humiliation shown to the public or the world

With all due respect, no one is seriously saying this is torture.

But, if you see nothing wrong with stacking naked prisoners on top of each other, or loosing snarling dogs at naked prisoners, then you have a problem.

[Southack]

"Donning flame-resistant suit as an awful lot of people find it really convenient to blame it either on women or gays in the military. I really don't think it had anything to do with either."

Thousands of nude photos. Naked human pyramids. Nude men on leashes. Videos of multiple homosexual rapes.

And you don't think that this was a gay porn ring in a "don't ask, don't tell" military?!

[oceanview]

the media is. this is the "torture scandal". Bob Novak tried to say it wasn't on capital gang, the libs went crazy.

[oceanview]

you are likely correct, how did they all "congregate" in that unit?

[sinkspur]

And you don't think that this was a gay porn ring in a "don't ask, don't tell" military?!

Please. They were ALL in one reserve unit?

It's not a gay porn ring.

It's a sicko, let's-humiliate-the-camel-jockey ring.

Heterosexuals don't have fantasies of humiliation? Two of the seven accused are at least heterosexual enough to be engaged to be married, and to have conceived a child.

You're telling me they're BOTH gay?

[kjenerette]

...We wouldn't want to think Bush is laughing at the photos of Iraqi prisoners on leashes like most the rest of us are.

As a veteran of Desert Storm...I'm not laughing...these people are a disgrace to the uniform.

This is not PR....most of us 'real men(and women)' who have served in combat are disgusted by what these few puke-bags have done to the honorable reputation of thousands of soldiers who have NOT treated Iraqi's in such a manner.

I served over there...I know better...your perspective is off base on this one, brother...

[sinkspur]

you are likely correct, how did they all "congregate" in that unit?

He's likely NOT correct. Gays are a convenient scapegoat. The fact is, ONE RESERVE UNIT was in charge of that prison. And this Gruner cowboy had already been up on charges of beating the hell out of his wife!

You don't think this sicko had some serious problems BEFORE he went to Iraq?

[Southack]

"You're telling me they're BOTH gay?"

If some anonymous man in a bar tells you that he's been taking thousands of digital photos of nude men in his basement, that he's stacked them into nude human pyramids, paraded them around on dog leashes while naked, and even filmed somebody else raping a couple of them...do you suspect this stranger of being gay or straight?

[Polybius]

the rumors I heard were that iraqi guards were the rapists, I guess (who knows?) filmed by an american soldier.

That is also what I read.

Iraqi guards were raping boys and it was video-taped by an American.

Not to excuse the American pervert behind the video camera but it was an Iraqi pervert behind the boy.

I have a feeling, however, that still frames of that video will never be released by the American liberal media.........It would make Iraqi society feel bad about itself, it would not be culturally sensitive, it would violate the privacy of the victim, it would not contribute enough to the demonizing of the Bush Administration.....

[GB]

This particular MP unit was made up of reservists, wasn't it? I don't want to paint all reservists with the same brush, I'm sure the majority of them knew what they were getting into when they joined and that the majority of them are serving honorably and doing their jobs to the best of their abilities right now ... but could this be the fallout of having to send some folks into a wartime situation who joined the reserves simply as a part-time job or to pay for school, thinking it would involve only two weekends a month and two weeks in summer, without any semblance of a clue that they might have to actually be in a wartime situation? Could those folks, some of whom might not have been jewels of society to start with, basically have just snapped and started taking out their frustrations for being where they did not want to be on the most convenient targets ... the Iraqi prisoners ... thinking that because said prisoners were even more unsavory characters, basically flotsam and jetsam, nobody would ever call them on it?

[LandOfLincolnGOP]

Geeze, I'm thinking that Bush maybe going overboard.

I couldn't agree less. FR is one of the only places I find people who try and downplay just how serious this situation is. The problem isn't the photos, it's that it happened. The sooner we get our heads out of the sand about this, the sooner we can deal with it, neutralize the advantages the Rats are getting out of this, and move on.

[strela]

When a prisoner fails to do what he is told in an American prison, a five man team dressed in riot gear opens his cell door and thumps his ass but good, it's not considered punishment, it's considered maintaining order.

You've apparently been watching too much "Oz" on HBO. The cadre of prison officials you refer to is called a "SORT team". And no, they do not routinely "thump his ass but good" just for kicks and grins if they want to stay out of a disciplinary hearing and/or prison themselves.

Stripping prisoners and taking pictures of them in degrading poses grossly violates the rules of war, the rules of human decency, and the UCMJ. I have a feeling that each of these goon guards are going to feel the wrath of all three very soon in their military careers.

We do not know the rap sheet on the Iraqi prisoners, but one thing is for sure, they are not in the prison for writing a bad check, they're trained killers captured on the battle field while trying to kill our Soldiers or planning terrorist attacks on our troops.

They also fall under the protection of the Geneva Convention, which these US Army jailers violated in spades by abusing them. And the problem with our violating the Convention is that the enemy now has perfect justification to do the same thing to OUR prisoners. Just wait for the first photos of our POWs being abused to hit Al Jazeerah.

Nothing I have seen so far can be labeled torture, just humiliation.

You're joking, I hope. EVERYTHING I have seen in the photos so far falls under that description.

The Geneva Conventions were violated when 60 Minutes II broadcasted the photo's, until then, there was no humiliation shown to the public or the world

Uh, 60 Minutes II is not a governmental organization, and as such is not subject to the Convention.