New Reports of US Torture.

Reverend Blair

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Apr 3, 2004
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From Human Rights Watch:
New Accounts of Torture by U.S. Troops

(New York, September 25, 2005) -- U.S. Army troops subjected
Iraqi detainees to severe beatings and other torture at a base in
central Iraq from 2003 through 2004, often under orders or with
the approval of superior officers, according to accounts from
soldiers released by Human Rights Watch today.

The new report, "Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of
Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne
Division," provides soldiers’ accounts of abuses against detainees
committed by troops of the 82nd Airborne stationed at Forward
Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury), near Fallujah.

Three U.S. army personnel—two sergeants and a captain—
describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and
inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have
broken a detainee’s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also
forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms
outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers
also applied chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes, and
subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation,
and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into
human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also
described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base
in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan.

According to the soldiers' accounts, U.S. personnel abused
detainees as part of the military interrogation process or merely to
"relieve stress." In numerous cases, they said that abuse was
specifically ordered by Military Intelligence personnel before
interrogations, and that superior officers within and outside of
Military Intelligence knew about the widespread abuse. The
accounts show that abuses resulted from civilian and military
failures of leadership and confusion about interrogation standards
and the application of the Geneva Conventions. They contradict
claims by the Bush administration that detainee abuses by U.S.
forces abroad have been infrequent, exceptional and unrelated to
policy.

"The administration demanded that soldiers extract information
from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what
was forbidden," said Tom Malinowski, Washington Director of
Human Rights Watch. "Yet when abuses inevitably followed, the
leadership blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking
responsibility."

Soldiers referred to abusive techniques as "smoking" or "fucking"
detainees, who are known as "PUCs," or Persons Under Control.
"Smoking a PUC" referred to exhausting detainees with physical
exercises (sometimes to the point of unconsciousness) or forcing
detainees to hold painful positions. "Fucking a PUC" detainees
referred to beating or torturing them severely. The soldiers said
that Military Intelligence personnel regularly instructed soldiers to
"smoke" detainees before interrogations.

One sergeant told Human Rights Watch: "Everyone in camp knew
if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC
tent. In a way it was sport… One day [a sergeant] shows up and
tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the
guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat."

The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent
efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with
his chain of command and to obtain clearer rules on the proper
treatment of detainees, but was consistently told to ignore abuses
and to "consider your career." He believes he was not taken
seriously until he approached members of Congress to raise his
concerns. When the officer made an appointment this month with
Senate staff members of Senators John McCain and John Warner,
he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his
base. The officer was interviewed several days later by
investigators with the Army Criminal Investigative Division and
Inspector General’s office, and there were reports that the military
has launched a formal investigation. Repeated efforts by Human
Rights Watch to contact the 82nd Airborne Division regarding the
major allegations in the report received no response.

The soldiers’ accounts show widespread confusion among military
units about the legal standards applicable to detainees. One of the
sergeants quoted in the report described how abuse of detainees
was accepted among military units:

"Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear
guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel [intelligence].
As long as no PUCs came up dead it happened. We heard rumors
of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and
legs and shit."

The soldiers’ accounts challenge the Bush administration’s claim
that military and civilian leadership did not play a role in abuses.
The officer quoted in the report told Human Rights Watch that he
believes the abuses he witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan were
caused in part by President Bush’s 2002 decision not to apply
Geneva Conventions protection to detainees captured in
Afghanistan:

"[In Afghanistan,] I thought that the chain on command all the way
up to the National Command Authority [President Bush and
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] had made it a policy that
we were going to interrogate these guys harshly. . . . We knew
where the Geneva Conventions drew the line, but then you get that
confusion when the Sec Def [Secretary of Defense] and the
President make that statement [that Geneva did not apply to
detainees] . . . . Had I thought we were following the Geneva
Conventions as an officer I would have investigated what was
clearly a very suspicious situation."

The officer said that Bush’s decision on Afghanistan affected
detention and interrogation policy in Iraq: "None of the unit
policies changed. Iraq was cast as part of the War on Terror, not a
separate entity in and of itself but a part of a larger war."

As one sergeant cited in the report, discussing his duty in Iraq,
said: "The Geneva Conventions is questionable and we didn’t
know we were supposed to be following it. . . . [W]e were never
briefed on the Geneva Conventions."

Human Rights Watch called on the military to conduct a thorough
investigation of the abuses described in the report, as well as all
other cases of reported abuse. It urged that this investigation not be
limited to low-ranking military personnel, as has been the case in
previous investigations, but to examine the responsibility
throughout the military chain of command.

Human Rights Watch repeated its call for the administration to
appoint a special counsel to conduct a widespread criminal
investigation of military and civilian personnel, including higher
level officials, who may be implicated in detainee abuse in Iraq,
Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Human Rights Watch also called on the U.S. Congress to create a
special commission, along the lines of the 9/11 commission, to
investigate prisoner abuse issues, and to enact proposed legislation
prohibiting all forms of detainee treatment and interrogation not
specifically authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on
Intelligence Interrogation and all treatment prohibited by the
Convention Against Torture.

"When an experienced Army officer goes out of his way to say
something’s systematically wrong, it’s time for the administration
and Congress to listen," Malinowski said. "That means allowing a
genuinely independent investigation of the policy decisions that led
to the abuse and communicating clear, lawful interrogation rules to
the troops on the ground."

To view this document on the Human Rights Watch web site,
please visit: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/25/usint11776.htm
 

Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
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:lol: I'm gonna go with the latter 3, Vanni.

The interesting thing about this report is that it points to superior officers and the Bush regime as either causing the problem or allowing /encouraging it to continue. That makes it harder for them run a white wash like they did when Abu Graihb first hit.
 

Vanni Fucci

Senate Member
Dec 26, 2004
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the-brights.net
Re: RE: New Reports of US Torture.

Martin Le Acadien said:
A sad day when this stuff happens, serious questions need to be raised by Congress and those in charge! Nothing noble in torture! Our constitution prohibits it, claerly we have failed.

Clearly your constitution has been suspended in the interest of the "Global War on Terror"...too bad they didn't tell you about it though... :?
 

neocon-hunter

Time Out
Sep 27, 2005
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RE: New Reports of US Tor

The US claims to be a so called free and civilized country and they should be conducting themselves better. They should be setting an example but so many people in positions of authority and power down there have an attitude they will not be held accountable. They have violated the Geneva convention on Prisoners of War and no matter what laws they create to try and get around the Geneva Convention they are still breaking them. Plus that invasion and occupation was not authorized. But bushie let all his "power" under his disposal go to his head.
 

Ocean Breeze

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Jun 5, 2005
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But bushie let all his "power" under his disposal go to his head.
indeed......and to the point he has become deluded with it.....and feels omnipotent. ( NB to note that bush ain't functioning on all cylinders when it comes to mental health.)
 

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
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US regime will not prosecute soldiers in Iraq who take illegal photos

The US regime will not punish soldiers who take illegal photos of dead
Iraqi civilians and rebels or those who then circulate those pictures as a
joke or for porn.

Unfortunately, of the few mainstream Western news sources that mention
this scandal today, all only two in our sample from around the world (BBC
News, Daily Telegraph) actually mention this fact, while other outlets
misleadingly report yesterday's official statements which promised a
proper investigation. Most disturbingly of all, most mass media outlets
did not mention the story at all, particularly TV news, and most people
will simply never know how US soldiers are treating people in the country
thay invaded.

Mistreating the dead is a war crime, as is killing civilians. The fact
that US troops are exploiting images of dead Iraqis for their own personal
benefit in this way raises the possibility that some of these people may
have been killed for no reason other than entertainment or trophies. How
many of these people were killed purely to be used as a macabre currency
for buying porn?


Source: BBC News, UK; Daily Telegraph, UK.
 

Ocean Breeze

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Jun 5, 2005
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Re: RE: New Reports of US Tor

Reverend Blair said:
This stuf will all come back to bite them in the ass eventually, Ocean. Not that it will change much...

no it won't. "they" simply do not CARE .Wrapping themselves up in their flag is like their form of denial.
 

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
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September 29, 2005

"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good."
Mohatma Mohandas Gandhi

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."
Martin Luther King; Birmingham Jail,4-16-63

Leftists and intellectuals have a tough time explaining the presence of evil in the world so they steer away from the topic like the plague. This is a big mistake and will eventually inhibit our ability to deal effectively with the present crisis.

Typically evil is understood in the context of spiritual belief and depends heavily on one's acceptance of the ultimate division of reality into unseen forces of good and evil; God and Satan. The trouble with this analysis is that it completely eschews demonstrable phenomena that can help us understand the nature of the problem itself. There are things we can know about evil in a practical, provable way that provide both insight and remedy. These things do not require belief in a Supreme Being or faith in an afterlife.

The Leftist approach sidesteps evil altogether, looking instead for hidden psychological causes or deep-seated emotional problems to explain the erratic behavior of destructive people.

This is ridiculous. Evil exists, just not in the Manichaean way that George W. Bush chooses to characterize it. Let me give you an example. Yesterday the Counterpunch web site featured a brilliantly written article on torture, "The Invention of Porno Torture", by Liaquat Ali Khan. "Porno torture" is a new addition to the Pentagon's repertoire of abusive treatment of prisoners and takes place when sexual torture is "photographed, filmed, or videotaped". These photos or films are then used to "degrade and torment Muslim men"; an effective tool in breaking down prisoners and extorting information from them. Khan suggests that the Pentagon is using porno torture for two reasons. First, there is some ambiguity about its legality under present treaty agreements (which gives the Defense Dept a "green light" to continue abusing inmates) and, secondly, because porno torture offends the "cultural-religious" sensibilities of its conservative, Muslim victims. Both of these are correct, in some sense, but they miss the larger issue, the essential evil of torture itself, and its real roots in the heart of man.

We like to believe that we are reasonable creatures' governed by the dictates of considered judgments and well-examined opinions that are grounded in objective observation and experience. In fact, we are quite the opposite. The German philosopher Nietzsche grasped this when he stated, "The ego is the mask behind which the instincts operate." Man's appearance as a reasonable creature is a pure sham; a protective outer-coat that conceals the darkly-irrational tangle of instincts and appetites that drive his every action. Only the thin veneer of respectability and the law keep society's thin thread from unraveling entirely.

Man is capable of great good; creativity, curiosity and compassion. But, that is only half the story. He is also capable of incalculable evil; torture, war and devastation. This evil-seed in the soul of man does not emerge from a blighted childhood or some remote psychological disturbance; it is an integral part of his human make-up; a faculty for annihilation that is every bit as real as the gnawing hunger of a starving man. Evil and nihilism are a central part of man's incomprehensible complexity; they cannot be dismissed as mere character flaws or aberrations.

The photos from Abu Ghraib express the unalloyed wickedness of torture. This is evil in the truest sense. The men who produced these horrors are not the victims of some unknown childhood trauma or buried dementia. They are men who take delight in inflicting cruelty and pain. This is important, because we are not looking to understand their twisted behavior; only for an effective way of stopping it.

Evil cannot be stopped by reason, but only by putting oneself in harms way and obstructing the perpetrator. Every act of non-violence diffuses the power of evil.

The heart of man reflects the vast and chaotic forces of the universe. It is pure egotism to think we can grasp this incoherent, labyrinth of primal appetites and infinite space. Non violence puts these conflicted forces in line with a deeper sense of harmony, but it cannot be attained without great sacrifice.


interesting........and well appointed take on the humanoid....
 

mrmom2

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Mar 8, 2005
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Those pics make me feel sick every time i see them :( I can only imagine how bad the latest release are going to be .How can anyone justify what the US has done to for the most part innocent people :evil:
 

Ocean Breeze

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Re: RE: New Reports of US Tor

neocon-hunter said:

thanks for posting them again. Serves to remind how SADISTIC AND CRUEL the US /troops are. It makes a mockery of the US when they get on their hi horse and pontificate about "freedoms" humanitarianism, human rights.......etc...

The world has seen the most hypocritical side of the US.....and in some ways the REAL US/G. and it is neanderthal in nature.
 

Ocean Breeze

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.How can anyone justify what the US has done to for the most part innocent people



there is NO Justification for it.........and that only adds to the vileness of it all. It is EVIL personified. ( don't care for the word "evil.".......but in this case.......it FITS as non other.)


think we can be grateful those pics were publicized as if they had not been..........can you imagine how much more of this conduct would have gone on undetected......?????

( would bet that the only regret the USG has , is that these bozo's got caught on film.......and the film was published for the world to see. )
 

neocon-hunter

Time Out
Sep 27, 2005
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RE: New Reports of US Tor

I think the way the US troops treated prisoners, flagrently violated geneva convention, got next to nothing for punishment for doing it, seeming to enjoy doing it, It will leave a very negative view about the US for many people and for many years to come. I know it will for me.

Those pictures make me so angry and sad at the same time. I would love to get amerikkka's so called president alone for a few minutes. Georgie, his cabinet and generals, colonels etc all deserve to be in the jail cell next to Saddam.

Yet what pisses me off just as much the religious right seems to ignore this as to them stopping sssm and denying them rights is a more pressing issue. Sick if you ask me.
 

Ocean Breeze

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Who Did You Torture During The War, Daddy?

Or, We Are All Torturers Now

By Ted Rall

09/29/05 "ICH" -- -- NEW YORK--Never miss the Saturday paper. Because it's the skimpiest and least-circulated edition of the week, it's the venue of choice for lowballing the stories the government can't completely cover up. September 24's New York Times, for example, contained the bombshell revelation that the U.S. government continues to torture innocent men, women and children in Iraq.

An army captain and two sergeants from the elite 82nd Airborne Division confirm previous reports that Bagram and other concentration camps in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan are a kind of Torture University where American troops are taught how to abuse prisoners who have neither been charged with nor found guilty of any crime. "The soldiers told Human Rights Watch that while they were serving in Afghanistan," reports The Times, "they learned the stress techniques [sic] from watching Central Intelligence Agency operatives interrogating prisoners." Veterans who served as prison guards in Afghanistan went on to apply their newfound knowledge at Abu Ghraib and other facilities in U.S.-occupied Iraq.

One of the sergeants, his name withheld to protect him from Pentagon reprisals, confirms that torture continued even after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. "We still did it, but we were careful," he told HRW.

The latest sordid revelations concern Tiger Base on the border with Syria, and Camp Mercury, near Fallujah, the Iraqi city leveled by U.S. bombs in a campaign that officials claimed would finish off the insurgent movement. After the army told him to shut up over the course of 17 months--tacit proof that the top brass condones torture--a frustrated Captain Ian Fishback wrote to two conservative Republican senators to tell them about the "death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment" carried out against Afghans and Iraqis unlucky enough to fall into American hands.

"We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them," one sergeant said. "This happened every day...We did it for amusement." Another soldier says detainees were beaten with a broken chemical light stick: "That made them glow in the dark, which was real funny, but it burned their eyes, and their skin was irritated real bad." An off-duty cook told an Iraqi prisoner "to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a...metal bat." The sergeant continues: "I know that now. It was wrong. There are a set of standards. But you gotta understand, this was the norm."

Torture, condemned by civilized nations and their citizens since the Renaissance, has continued to be carried out in prisons and internment camps in every nation. But save for a few exceptions, such as France's overt torture of Algerian independence fighters during the late 1950s, it has been hidden away, lied about and condemned when exposed. Torture is shameful. It is never official policy.

That changed in the United States after 9/11. Current attorney general Alberto Gonzales authored a convoluted legal memo to George W. Bush justifying torture. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld joked about forcing prisoners to stand all day and officially sanctioned keeping them naked and threatening them with vicious dogs. Ultimately Bush declared that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would ignore the Geneva Conventions. By 2004 a third of Americans told pollsters that they didn't have a problem with torture.

Torture has been normalized.

By Monday, September 26, the story of torture at Camps Tiger and Mercury to which New York Times editors had granted page one treatment two days earlier had vanished entirely. Only a few papers, such as the Seattle Times and Los Angeles Times, ran follow-ups.

In his 2000 book "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture" John Conroy presciently describes the surprising means by which democracies are actually more susceptible to becoming "torture societies" than dictatorships: Where "notorious regimes have fallen, there has been a public acknowledgement that people were tortured. In democracies of long standing in which torture has taken place, however, denial takes hold and official acknowledgement is extremely slow in coming, if it appears at all." Conroy goes on to describe the "fairly predictable" stages of governmental response:

First, writes Conroy, comes "absolute and complete denial." Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that the U.S. had followed Geneva "to the letter" in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The second stage," he says, is "to minimize the abuse." Republican mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh compared the murder and mayhem at Abu Ghraib to fraternity hazing rituals.

Next is "to disparage the victims." Bush Administration officials and right-wing pundits call the victims of torture in U.S. custody "terrorists," implying that detainees--who are not charged because there is no evidence against them--deserve whatever they get. Dick Cheney called victims of torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (who, under U.S. law, are presumed innocent) "the worst of a very bad lot." Rumsfeld called them "the worst of the worst."

Other government tactics include charging "that those who take up the cause of those tortured are aiding the enemies of the state" (Right-wing bloggers have smeared me as a "terrorist sympathizer" because I argue against torture); denying that torture is still occurring (numerous Bush Administration officials claimed that Abu Ghraib marked the end of the practice); placing "the blame on a few bad apples" (the classic Fox News-Bush trope); and pointing out that "someone else does or has done much worse things" (the beheadings of Western hostages by Iraqi jihadi organizations was used to justify torturing Iraqis who didn't belong to those groups).

Bear in mind: Conroy wrote his book in 2000, before Bush seized power and more than a year before 9/11 was given as a pretext for legalizing torture.

Citing the case of widespread and proven torture of arrestees by Chicago cops, Conroy noted: "It wasn't a case of five people...doing nothing or acting slowly, it was a case of millions of people knowing of an emergency and doing nothing. People looked about, saw no great crusade forming, saw protests only from the usual agitators, and assumed there was no cause for alarm. Responsibility was diffused. Citizens offended by torture could easily retreat into the notion that they lived in a just world, that the experts would sort things out."

Ted Rall, America's hardest-hitting editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, is an award-winning commentator who also works as an illustrator, columnist, and radio commentator. Visit his website http://www.tedrall.com/



my bet is that these same torturors laugh about their activities with each other. The military training may have just dehumanized them to the point where feelings... compassion and good judgement no longer exist. They might even have their own contest... No amount of euphamism or excuse making or evading by the bushevic gov't is going to undo what has been done and what is being done. When the leader LIES about invading another nation that posed no threat ........then the ethical/moral standard is shot from the top down. If he can get away with lying about a war (killing THOUSANDS and maiming more).....why would the troops care about how they treat prisoners. ??? They probably wish they had killed them in the first place so they would not have to be bothered by them. THIS Is the face of the current "amerika"...... and the current neo -con-fascist gov't and its insane supporters. Gone totally mad. but lust for money and power does that to people.


are there still some amerikans ........that don't "get" just WHY they are resented ???? (now ,more than ever before........and before was no great shakes) Think CRUELTY. Think INHUMANE. Think TORTURE, Think GREED. Think LUST FOR POWER /CONTROL..... ad infinitum...

SHAME,, SHAME, SHAME. the new neo con fascist Bushevic's amerika!! and SHAME to anyone who tries to justify any of the bushevic's actions .decisions and policies. SHAME to the neo cons, in Gov't and those supporting the insanity. There is NO excuse for it .........not in this day and era.
 

GL Schmitt

Electoral Member
Mar 12, 2005
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Re: RE: New Reports of US Tor

Ocean Breeze said:
. . . Serves to remind how SADISTIC AND CRUEL the US /troops are. . .
Not to disagree with the main thrust of expressions of contempt for the Bush Administration's leadership through all the despicable aspects of this war, and its aftermath, but I would like to caution against a mistake made during the Vietnam War — failure to differentiate the upper brass in Washington, the Pentagon and in command from the grunts following orders.

It is true that it is a war crime to follow criminal orders, but how much more of a crime is it to give troops criminal orders?

I can’t help but feel that by sending young men and women into a war of aggression armed with false assurances that they are doing a good deed, only to encounter hatred where they expected to encounter gratitude, and then have their leaders encourage them to inflict horrific torture upon their enemy captives, have made all troops — but especially the troops involved in tortures — equally into victims of this war.

All wars bring out the barbarous side of man’s nature. Their leaders have betrayed these troops into delving far deeper into the inhumanity which accompanies even the most necessary of wars.

While not visible to the camera, these troops have encountered the most terrible, and unnecessary wounds of this most unnecessary war.