Tag: Abu Ghraib

Apr 29 2009

Abu Ghraib Cremation Ovens Controversy

[Recently posted at the Daily Kos – please see questions about (unwarranted?) banning below]

On the holocaust anniversary yesterday, President Obama spoke eloquently about other holocausts in Rwanda and Somalia.  But he steered clear of discussing the human remains and ashes in US run prisons overseas:

there was something about living in cells at Abu Ghraib that never felt right. “We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building,” Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. “It was this huge circular thing. We just didn’t know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew—bodies.” Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. “It had bones in it,” he said, and he called it the crematorium.

This was reported by award winning journalists in The New Yorker just over a year ago.  But for obvious reasons I've never heard any politician mention it.

Now that it's suddenly appropriate to discuss illegal US torture policy – and in honor of the holocaust anniversary – is it possible we can investigate why our soldiers report that Iraqi detainees were evidently burned in ovens?

Yesterday Obama said, “part of the responsibility for the Holocaust rests with people who accepted the assigned role of bystander.”

I think he means it.  So maybe he was too busy to read The New Yorker during the primaries.  

Rather than be bystanders, let's make sure he sees the article today.

 


Apr 27 2009

April 28, 2004: Abu Ghraib

The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS’s ”60 Minutes II.” The photos had been taken by U.S. military personnel responsible for detaining and interrogating Iraqi prisoners arrested following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib

American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, who helped break the story.

Apr 26 2009

Tortured

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Never for a moment in my life have I been “in love.”  I do not believe in the notion.  Fireworks have not filled my heart.  Flames of a fiery passion do not burn within me.  Indeed, my soul has not been ablaze.  Thoughts of a hot-blooded devotion seem illogical to me.  Such sentiments always have.  Fondness too fertile is but torture for me.  I admire many, and adore none.  For me, the affection I feel for another is born out of sincere and profound appreciation.  To like another means more to me than to love or be loved.  Excitement, an emotional reaction to another, rises up within me when I experience an empathetic exchange with someone who has glorious gray matter.

Today, it happened.  I felt an a twinge that startled me.  I stood still as he entered the room.  I expected nothing out of the ordinary, or at least nothing other than what has become his recently adopted, more avoidant, routine.  Although long ago, I had become accustomed to his face, his voice, and his demeanor, for I have known the man for more than a few years.  In the last few weeks, while essentially he is who he always was, some of his stances have changed.  Possibly, Barry has felt a need to compromise his positions, but I wonder; what of his principles.

Apr 22 2009

American Torture: “A Bipartisan Skill”

Crossposted from Antemedius

The release of some of the Bush administration torture memos now presents the Obama administration with a crucial dilemma. President Obama at first exonerated CIA officials responsible for the euphemistic “enhanced interrogation” techniques. The White House has even expunged the word “torture” from its vocabulary. The bulk of corporate media favors a whitewash.

Pepe Escobar argues the question is not that the memos should have been kept secret – as the CIA and former Vice-President Dick Cheney wanted. The question is that those who broke the rule of law must be held accountable. Responding to growing public outrage, the White House shifted gears and is now leaving the door open for the work of a Special Prosecutor.



Real News – April 22, 2009

American torture

There can be no “exceptionalism” when the rule of law is broken

Apr 21 2009

The Bush Administration’s Stunning Geneva Hypocrisy

by Jason Leopold, April 20, 2009

   Newly released US government documents, detailing how Bush administration officials punched legalistic holes in the Geneva Conventions’ protections of war captives, stand in stark contrast to the outrage some of the same officials expressed in the first week of the Iraq war when Iraqi TV interviewed several captured American soldiers.

   “If there is somebody captured,” President George W. Bush told reporters on March 23, 2003, “I expect those people to be treated humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”

   Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush, and other administration officials orchestrated a chorus of outrage, citing those TV scenes as proof of the Iraq’s government contempt for international law in general and the Geneva Conventions in particular.

   “It is a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention to humiliate and abuse prisoners of war or to harm them in any way. As President Bush said yesterday, those who harm POWs will be found and punished as war criminals,” Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said on March 24, 2003.

   That same day, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the BBC that “the Geneva Convention is very clear on the rules for treating prisoners.. They’re not supposed to be tortured or abused; they’re not supposed to be intimidated; they’re not supposed to be made public displays of humiliation or insult, and we’re going to be in a position to hold those Iraqi officials who are mistreating our prisoners accountable, and they’ve got to stop.”

   At a March 25, 2003, press briefing about progress in the US-led invasion, Secretary Rumsfeld said, “This war is an act of self-defense, to be sure, but it is also an act of humanity…. In recent days, the world has witnessed further evidence of their [Iraqi] brutality and their disregard for the laws of war. Their treatment of coalition POWs is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.”

Read the whole article here:

http://www.antemedius.com/content/bush-administrations-stunning-geneva-hypocrisy

Mar 23 2009

Introducing Sunday Weekly Torture “Round-up”

Also posted at Daily Kos and Invictus

The Sunday Weekly Torture “Round-up” is intended to be a new regular feature at Daily Kos, capturing stories on the ongoing torture scandal, especially those that might otherwise escape notice. At the same time, we will strive to present an overview of important new developments in the drive to hold the U.S. government responsible for its war crimes, in addition to covering stories concerning torture from other countries, as time and space permit. (Alas, the U.S. has no monopoly on this hideous practice.)

The editors for the WTR are myself, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, and Meteor Blades and we will rotate each week. Interesting or important news or tips concerning torture or civil liberties issues bearing upon it can be emailed to any of these individuals.

There were many new developments this week: the CIA announced it would withhold a list describing 1000s of documents related to the destruction of videotapes depicting torture; an ex-Bush administration official told of administration indifference to evidence of innocence for the great bulk of “enemy combatants”; a major lawsuit against Pentagon contractors accused of torture was allowed to proceed; a “released” Guantanamo hunger striker was refused more humane prison conditions, and more.

Jan 24 2009

Infamous Iraqi Prison Set to Reopen

They say a picture speaks a thousand words.

Well we got rid of all those Saddam pictures around the country, now didn’t we!!

May 14 2008

DailyKos let me down yesterday. This is important!

Cross-posted at dkos.

Special intro for docudharma version

This diary is written for the dKos audience in hopes of achieving a wide readership.  I had not intended to post it here, as it began as a fairly straightforward plagiarization of tahoebasha3’s diary, Overlooked by Media, Important Torture Testimony.  I was frustrated that the issue had not received more attention, so I wanted to point it out again on dKos.  In the process, the diary expanded to the point that I really want to post it here.  And I do so confident in the knowledge that what all of us care about is stopping our government from torturing.  Yet I don’t want to pull energy away from the great diary which inspired me to stay up most of the night creating this.  If this post pulls attention away from where it is deserved, or if it is in any way offensive to do this, please let me know so I can delete it.  Please save your comments pertinent to the original essay for that essay and only comment here with respect to what has been added.

dKos diary starts here  

I have come to rely on dailyKos for almost all of my news.  In fact, I’m downright smug about it.  When someone offers up an item from the news, I usually say something along the lines of “I know.  What really happened is . . .”  When someone dismisses something I’ve read here as propaganda or wild speculation, I just sigh at their ignorance.  I have learned that if I read something here which has gone unchallenged or uncorrected, then it is virtually always accurate.  And I usually learn it somewhere between a day and six months before any non-Kossack.  But yesterday the great orange glow was dimmer than it should have been.

Fortunately, I have recently begun spending more time at docudharma.  It was there that I learned of important developments which I had not seen reported here.  As a result of encouragement there, tahoebasha’s diary was cross-posted here on dailyKos, garnering little attention.  In searching for it here, I discovered another important diary on the same issue.  This is my attempt to support those diarists, and decent people everywhere, in calling for attention to these matters. Please read on.

Cross-posted at docudharma.

Mar 23 2008

The Dark Side

Lets see Saddam, even though we installed and supported him, Had To Go. Because he Arrested the Innocent and his ‘Henchmen’ Tortured and Killed many of those arrested, as well as Killing and Maiming Tens of Thousands of Iraqi’s. Those are only a Couple of the many ‘Nobel Cause’ Reasons for the Righteousness of Invading, Destroying, and Occupying Iraq for our National Security!

Feb 29 2008

Bringing ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’ to the Iraq People!

How many remember this:

“For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.” – George W. Bush upon capture of Saddam Hussein.

Feb 18 2008

Outsourcing Torture? It Depends.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Photobucket

Torture At Abu Ghraib

It depends on what you mean by “outsourcing.”  If, like me, you’ve been assuming that “interrogations” of detainees prisoners at Guantanamo and the “black sites” were all being conducted only by CIA employees or uniformed armed forces personnel or at the very least US government employees, you’re probably making a mistake.  The facts seem to be that “interrogations” have frequently been conducted by “contractors” and not by government employees.  That’s right.  Arguments about what the CIA’s employees can and cannot do don’t directly address what contractors can do any more than US law determines how prisoners are to be interrogated after they are extraordinarily renditioned illegally extradited to other countries.

Follow me behind the facade.

Feb 11 2008

Torture Amnesia – Shame on America

There are some things one never forgets. I’ll never forget my brief encounter with torture 40 years ago. Our patrol engaged some VC hidden in a tree-line and a firefight ensued. The tree-line held a small hamlet. Predictably the village people fled in our direction. They fled because they knew their village would most likely be shelled, strafed or bombed. It was.

Our Viet counterparts detained a young lady they suspected of being a VC, a nurse they claimed. We brought her back to our dilapidated compound where they bound her, stripped off her shirt and attached wires to her nipples and proceed to use a crank operated electrical device to shock her. Needless to say it was thoroughly disgusting. Through it all she refused to talk. I admired her courage. I don’t know where they sent her but I hope she survived.

In April 2004, Americans were stunned when CBS broadcast those now-notorious photographs from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. As this scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the abuses were “perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military personnel”…

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