Saddam's reign of terror – where prisoners die in plastic shredders

yorkshire today ^ | 3/12/03

[knak]

Chilling new details of Saddam Hussein's reign of terror in Iraq – including prisoners being killed by being fed through industrial shredders – were revealed to MPs yesterday.

Researchers preparing an indictment of Saddam for crimes against humanity detailed evidence of torture, murder and ethnic cleansing gathered from witnesses in northern Iraq over the past few weeks. Their horrific report included eyewitness testimony of children being gassed in jail.

And the MPs heard an impassioned plea for military intervention from Shanaz Rachid, the daughter of prominent Kurdish leader Ibrahim Ahmed, who accused the international community of standing by for more than two decades while the Iraqi people suffered under Saddam.

Iraqi Kurds and Shia Muslims would welcome war to unseat the dictator, but were fearful that chemical weapons would be used to massacre them if US and UK troops withdrew from the area without toppling him, she said.

Ms Rachid was scathing about the role of French President Jacques Chirac in leading opposition to war, which she said the Kurdish people would not "easily forget".

Presenting evidence to MPs at the House of Commons, researchers from Indict – the organisation gathering evidence to prosecute Saddam and his henchmen – said many of the stories were so horrific they were difficult to believe.

But there was a "remarkable consistency" in evidence from many different sources, which boosted its credibility.

Witnesses had told them about prisoners having nails torn out, being given electric shocks to the genitals, tortured with boiling water and beaten. Women were suspended by the hair or legs in front of their families and raped, while their husbands were forced to watch.

Saddam's son Qusay – the head of Iraq's security and intelligence agencies – had administered mustard gas on prisoners, including a 12-year-old boy, whose father heard his screams from a neighbouring cell, they were told.

And Saddam's special adviser, Barzan al-Tikriti – Iraq's former representative on the UN Commission on Human Rights – had personally tortured detainees before their execution.

One witness, who spent 15 years in jail after being accused of using a false surname, described a particularly horrific method of execution: "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were ... made to watch. "Sometimes they went in head first, and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. "Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food. On one occasion, I saw Qusay Saddam Hussein personally supervising these murders."

Kamaran Sabir, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who has worked with Indict, told MPs: "The war between Saddam's regime and the Iraqi people is continuing. It started decades ago and has caused thousands of deaths each year.

"Military co-operation to end Saddam's regime would be welcomed by the Iraqi people. We want to be able to live like the rest of the world."

Ms Rachid said: "Everybody keeps talking about the United Nations, but, as far as we are concerned, the UN has not done anything for the people of Iraq, and they will not do so.

"We have heard for so many years that the UN inspectors have gone in and destroyed weapons. As far as we are concerned, the UN could spend another 20 years going backwards and forwards to Bagdad, and nothing would change."

If the current military build-up did not lead to Saddam's overthrow, he would wreak his revenge on the Kurds of northern Iraq and Shia Muslims in the south, she claimed.

"If Saddam punishes us for siding with Britain and the US, I think that Britain, the US and the UN would be responsible for the death of millions of people in Iraq."

Members of the UN Security Council were responsible for selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam over many years, and France's opposition to war appeared to be motivated in part by the hope of securing commercial contracts with the regime, she said.

"These people are asking for war," said MP Ann Clwyd, chairman of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group and vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. "They think it is the only way to overthrow Saddam. I have to agree with them."

12 March 2003

[Byron deVilliers]

Dighton the Hall Monitor......

Better make sure Byron uses all the right words and phrases, wouldn't want our normalcy disturbed. Best to just sleep tight in a blanket of jingoist rhetoric and call people 'Cong' if they don't regurgitate the Party Line on command.....

Pathetic.

[Billthedrill]

Sorry, it just won't scan. One parallel, sure, you can deny that, two, accidental, three, too vague, four, apples and oranges, five, and six, and seven, and more...I don't think you have a case, and insulting phrases such as "amateur psychology" are nothing more than the bluster of someone who knows it.

Read the source material and get back to me.

[Byron deVilliers]

Not my friend?

How do you know?

We go waaaaaaaaaay back, as I recall....

[Calpernia]

>>>>>The truth is that stories are made up preceding every war to paint the intended targets in the worst possible light.

Nope, sorry. I knew these stories WAY before this war and the Fatwas that were written in 1996 and on. These are just recent unveilings. I started a community college in 1986. Made immediate friends with the girl who sat in front of me in Math, Parvenae. A month into class I went to her apartment to tutor her. She just couldn't grasp the math and we had a horrible language barrier to overcome that kept me from tutoring her in the loud Cafe at school.

At her apartment, I met her sister and brother who were only one and 2 years older than her. No parents??? After I arrived, a group of their friends came over with Pizza hoping they could pick up tips from whatever tutoring I was going to give Parvenae. Unfortunately, that night, the math book stayed unopened on the coffee table. A slice of pizza stayed folded in my hand and was never bitten into. "I WAS THE ONE TUTORED!" I learned where they all came from.
They were all my age. They were all without family here. Their families payed to have them smuggled out of Iraq. They could never speak to their families again. They could never go back. They lived on grants from our Refugee Resettlement Program. The stories I heard made me numb.

1970s and on, the government of Iraq has also displaced the Marsh Arabs, Shi'a Muslim groups, Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians. The government of Iraq has displaced groups assumed to be in opposition to it and those residing in oil-rich territories, such as the northern city of Kircuk (spelling?).

In southern Iraq, approximately 300,000 people were/are displaced. At least 100,000 of these are Marsh Arabs displaced from the southeast. Government repression of the Marsh Arabs in the early 1990s included diversion of water from the marshes near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through the use of dams and canals. Officially, the government claimed people were displaced from the marshes in order to offer them better living conditions. These deliberate policies deprived the Marsh Arabs of food, destroyed their agricultural traditions, and forced them from their homes. One reason for the government's assault on the marshes was the presence of Iranian soldiers inside the marshes, which began in 1984 during the Iran-Iraq war. Army deserters and political opponents from central
and southern Iraq were believed to be present in the marshes. The Iraqi gov had had plans for the drainage of the region and long-term plans for the exploitation of untapped oil reserves since the 1980s. The Marsh Arabs were forced from their homes because these Shi'a Muslim people had themselves revolted against the Sunni Muslim-based
Iraqi gov in 1991.

In the north, estimates for the number of internally displaced persons range from 600,000 to 805,505. Iraqi armed attacks and fighting between Kurdish factions have caused forced displacement, the destruction of important infrastructure, villages, and agricultural land, and the laying of landmines. The displaced in the north also include individuals who tried to leave Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf war, but were prevented from doing so and therefore became internally displaced.

Since the mid-1970s, the government has expelled Kurds, Turkmen, and Assyrians from their homes in oil-rich areas such as Kircuk, Tuz Khormortu (spelling?), Khanikwin (spelling?), and other districts as part of its "Arabization" program. Most have been expelled to areas
controlled by Kurdish opposition forces and a smaller number to central and southern Iraq. Individuals who refuse to sign so-called "nationality correction" forms are among those displaced in this manner. These forms were introduced by the authorities prior to the 1997 population census, and required members of ethnic groups residing in these districts to relinquish their Kurdish, Turkmen, or
Assyrian identities and to register officially as Arabs. Underlying the Arabization campaign is the Iraqi government's desire to reduce the political power and literal presence of ethnic minorities in certain areas, and to retain control of areas rich in oil. Motivated
by these reasons, the Iraqi gov displaced approximately 120,000 persons from Kircuk and other cities under government control from 1991 to 2000. On September 6, 2001, Iraq's Revolution Command Council issued a decree/law, "enabling" Iraqis aged eighteen or over
registered as non-Arab to change their ethnicity to Arab.

Not only is the Iraqi government forcing specific ethnic groups to flee their homes, but it is also adopting measures intended to prevent the return of those displaced. The government has built new housing in villages around Altun Kapri and Tuz Khormortu to accommodate Iraqi Arab families, and substituted Arabic for Kurdish, Turkmen, and Assyrian place names. The Arab settlers are given title
deeds of property owned by those expelled. Military checkpoints have been established around Kircuk, Kurdish sites have been demolished, and Kurds and other minorities in the area have been prohibited from constructing or inheriting property in the area. Those refusing to
comply with these measures have been intimidated, arrested, murdered, tortured, raped and/or have had their ration cards revoked.

[Byron deVilliers]

The question is how those 'parallels' are linguistically constructed. Without a certain framing they aren't parallels at all, but, alternatively, random events in unrelated narratives and causality spheres......

I can 'frame' the Founding Fathers to sound like terrorist revolutionaries and murderers of all that is decent. Go back and read the British dispatches of the time, they did it....

What was the 'truth'?

[Calpernia]

This is why it is necessary for a regime change. If we ignore it all, it spreads like cancer. Hence the entrance to the USA soil. It is also morally wrong to close your eyes and do nothing.

[Riley]

I think the babies on bayonettes story was World War I.

The grandfather of a relation-by-marriage was a Filipino Scout during World War 2, and held a US Bronze Star for his actions in that war. He escaped from the Bataan Death March and operated with Guerilla units in the Phillipines until the US forces returned and liberated the Phillipines.

He witnessed Japanese soldiers actually doing this.

[Calpernia]

>>>I simply pointed out that stories like these are quite easy to fabricate and disseminate....

Then why do we hear these stories from multi sources over decades of years from people that don't know each other? Why would parents pay to have their children smuggled out to a country they know nothing about in hopes of their survival? My sources aren't just the media. I've been there on medical rotations, I've gone to school with the smuggled out children that can never speak to their parents again.

[Byron deVilliers]

Again, you aren't following me.

Just because some stories are true, doesn't mean all stories are true....

Does that make more sense? Like I said, I never offerred an alternative vision of Saddam Hussein as some great philanthropist, I simply pointed out that we need to 1) be careful not to let historical allusions get in the way of our thinking about political situations. And 2) be mindful that there's an effort to get us all into a lather to support the killing of other people in their own name - that's what 'liberation war' means. As such, we need to be skeptical.

[Calpernia]

>>>>historical allusions

I am showing you that my information is NOT an illusion. Now if you wish to discuss this further with ME, why don't you blatantly state your case.

[TLBSHOW]

WHAT WAS IT THAT SCOTT RITTER SAID ABOUT CHILDRENS PRISONS AGAIN, OH YEAH HE WOULDN'T SAY........

scott ritter and william pitt useful idiots

[cynwoody]

Similar killings are graphically described in many "spy" novels ; the question is which came first : the idea in the WRITER's mind or the ACTUAL killers ?

Remember that airline pilot in Connecticut whose wife disappeared, her place taken by a foxy stew? There was nary a clue about the missing wife. Then a snow plow driver, hearing the news, remembered something odd he'd seen in the middle of the night during a big storm. A guy was operating a wood chipper. So, the cops went around to the tool rental shops in the area, and, wouldn't you know it, but the pilot had rented a wood chipper! To make long story short, Dr Henry Lee of OJ fame and the Connecticut State Police and his merry band of criminalists managed to recover damning clues from the wood chipper output. No OJ verdict that time!

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

Truly awful.

I think this article needs to be cut and pasted onto the Vichy Chicks message board, under the heading "So, you don't want us to overthrow this man?"

[Frank_2001]

Saddam is a demon! LET'S ROLL!!!

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

Did you see the flag Mr. DeVilliers is flying?

[cynwoody]

The constant allusions (illusions would be more apropos) to the Nazis, and concomitantly the Jewish Genocide, are beginning to wear thin. The situation in Iraq is not the same as that which preceded WWII. Not even close. Saddam Hussein is not Adolf Hilter ...

Not even close, eh? Did you ever hear the phrase "close enough for government work"? There's going to be a lot of government work done on this case. Real Soon Now.

Homesick, Monsieur?

[Billthedrill]

The question is how those 'parallels' are linguistically constructed. Without a certain framing they aren't parallels at all, but, alternatively, random events in unrelated narratives and causality spheres......

All that we know is "linguistically constructed," truth and falsehood. So let's see whether the term "framing" applies here.

For example, when I state that both Saddam and Stalin held party conferences, denounced many of the attendees as disloyal, and had them shot, is there really room in that claim for "framing?" They did or they did not. In fact, they did. In Stalin's case it was the Congress of Victors in 1934, of whose 1996 attendees 1108 were executed (or committed suicide when facing that) in the subsequent terror. Do you deny this? In Saddam's case it was the very first Baath party conference at which he made his accession to the throne - do you deny that event? Neither Stalin nor Saddam did so in their respective cases. Is this then a parallel? Is it framed? Or is it, as I assert, an action of grotesque and disturbing similarity?

There is no real room here for casuistry - the events either happened as I stated or they did not, and if they did, are significant in terms of comparing the two individuals. Where a number of such occurrences happen in the lives of both men, it is no accident of description, no "framing," that leads us to compare them, only the bald, bare facts.

I'll restate it so that there will be no room for misinterpretation - Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin are men of closely similar character, closely similar antecedents, with closely similar career arcs, closely similar crimes, closely similar failings as human beings. The similarity I describe is not a random occurrence, not the product of linguistic interpretation, and not an artifact of "framing," it is a long chain of events that justify the comparison of the two men. In less similar men there will be fewer events that so closely correspond. There the comparison will be less valid.

That these narratives and "causality spheres" are unrelated is central to the argument - the commonality isn't in either of those, but in the characters of the two men. That's the point.

[palmer]

Thanks but Iraqwatch did a project with the U.S. DoD so I would question their unbiasedness. It is supposed to be listed on their website, but I couldn't find it.

[JasonC]

Of any given story, it may of course be rational to doubt it. Doubting any of it can be true, without looking to see what real evidence there is suggesting such things happen and are even matters of routine, is not rational.

In the 91 war, Kurds took over a number of cities in northern Iraq. In some, they took away scads of government files, some of which were retained when Iraqi forces retook the areas. Some of those files have made it out to the west. Some in this case means several million pages of documents, that have made it to US archives.

They are boring, dry matters of bureaucratic routine, for the most part. But they deal with quota driven crackdowns, collective reprisals, systematic murder sprees, chemical attacks on civilians, rounding up families of suspects. And it is all very familiar. Arendt and Solzhenitsyn know the drill.

"Ordinary people do not know that everything is possible."

[palmer]

Thanks but Iraqwatch did a project with the U.S. DoD so I would question their unbiasedness. It is supposed to be listed on their website, but I couldn't find it.