Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners

[pandora]

Wanted to start a thread talking about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, can also include commentary on treatment of prisoners at Guatanemo Bay, Cuba, and School of Americas and related material.

Looks like Bush got caught as there was one honest person there who couldn't take it anymore. Even the news agencies which handled the story sat on it for 3 weeks as their patriotic duty. It's horrible, and it's been happening, I'm just really happy that it's on the front pages and hope it stays there till the mid-West realizes their "morals" have been violated.

Bush is trying to get this one out of the spotlight as quickly as possible, but the more he tries to do that the more he makes it look like buisness as usual, the more horrifying for middle America.

[Poderosa III]

I find it disgusting that they can treat a fellow human being like that, while you could say "they'r terrorists, theyd do the same to us", it doesnt mean they have the justification to do that kind of thing.

No matter how much you try to, i can't see how you can justify killing a wounded man in cold blood...

On a side note, im quite glad that these pics are on the pages of the papers, although this means that there will be increasing violence towards our soldiers, i think that they should have thought of that before they commited these acts

[abigratsass]

your solidars are an invading force in a forgein a country were have they have no bussiness being in and to top it they seem to be ignorant sadistic kids who have no idea wut there doing!!
and thoses people werent terriosts and if they were they still have no right to treat them like that

[Intifada]

it really souldn't come as a surprise. the fact is america has used torture in many conflicts, such as vietnam. you only have to look at guantanamo for a present example of ongoing human rights abuses perpetrated by the americans. these incidents are not "isolated".

now the bu$h administration is going to appoint john negroponte as the successor to paul bremer. he was involved in the covert funding the contras and covered up human rights abuses in honduras during the eighties. in a word, he is a criminal.

[Comrade Zeke]

I am ashemd of the American Forces who whould dare to do the disgusting, vapid and nasty things to those poor Iraqis. What ever happend to Opperation Iraqi Freedom I will tell you what happend Teens got rowdy and started to torment people. This hordous act shows what the American army is all about I am so ashemd of my country. Even the British fallowed the American's exapmple and started tourting more people. This prooves that the American Soliders are no better then Saddam Hussien hismelf.
sorry about spelling
Zeke

[The idealist]

What the Americans have done is a DISGRACE. I may point out that some evidence has come to light that the pictures incriminating british troops may be fake, although I am sure that some british troops have also done such things. The problem is that many of the american troops have a black/white view of he conflict. There are the good guys and there are the bad guys.
In fact what is probably happening is that there many Iraquis who were glad to see the americans arrive, throwing out Saddam. But now, every time the americans get fired upon, everyone is a potential target. And sunni and shia muslims, who see american troops blazing away in all directions at houses suspected to be hiding enemies, could get the wrong idea. All they see is a lot of gung ho americans strutting about on their turf with lots of guns, looking as if they think they own the place. Makes them think less of them as a liberation force than as a force of occupation.
The fact is, that the American troops do not have the same disciplin and training as the british (who probably are used to hostile environments like north-ireland). I have seen on the news that over 800 american soldiers had been killed since the war "ended". I have not heard reports of british casualties.
I will leave you to ponder this, or to contest it's validity.

[Dio]

While this violates so many rules set by the Geneva Convention, this is not the first time America has commited atrocities against POW's. For example German POW's during WWII were basically treated as bad as the Jews in concentration camps in Germany. But it was kept secret only later to be revealed then dismissed as nothing. Republicans are not good at keeping secrets, unlike Democrats.

[Wash Me]

invading a country by the name of peace..
releasing them from a cruel dictator..
that doesnt sound so bad, actually thats pretty nice for someone to care about another like that.
isnt it???


i've seen pictures on tv. really bad pictures.
why would they treat those prisoners like that?
they must have done something REALLLY bad for them to be tortured like that.

no, nobody should be torutured like that. thats not human.


hold on.. but those are iraqi people..
isnt that what theyre old dictator did to them???

hmm...
so iraqi people are still suffering..
what changed then?




why the hell did they invade the damn country!?!?!?


----------------


i know im making circles around the obvious i just dont understand how some people can be so stupid and cant jump to conclusions themselves... even when they have evidence on tv to show them what exactly is happening..

im just so pissed off

that even after they showed those pictures nobody would stand up for anything


nature will continue taking its course..


as if nothing ever happened.
that fact pisses me off the most.



FUCK THIS WORLD.

[Lefty]

Personally, I think those Ay-Rackis deserve it, because they are a different color than me.

[Johnny Walker]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2004, 04:27 PM
Personally, I think those Ay-Rackis deserve it, because they are a different color than me.
Exactly! Those african bastards!

[Severian]

The main thing to emphasize, I think, is these were not merely the acts of a few individuals, but a widespread, systematic practice. As described by the International Committee of the Red Cross, (http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=27374) for example.

Also of interest is the leaked report by Gen. Taguba, which describes the role of interrogators in ordering the torture. None of them have been charged, of course, just a bunch of low-ranking MPs. An article by Seymour Hersh - the reporter who uncovered the My Lai story - about this report (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact)

And this should be put in the context of the use of torture elsewhere in the "war on terrorism". Bush claims that Iraq is the "central front in the war on terrorism." And it's been no secret that torture has been used to extract information from terrorists.

On Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, at least two prisoners died during interrogation. Then there's countries like Syria and Egypt, where the U.S. sends suspects to be tortured by those countries' police. Guantanamo is actually the public face of the "anti-terrorist" gulag system, and what goes on there is squeaky-clean compared to what's been happening elsewhere. Human Rights Watch timeline on reports of abuse and the U.S. response, or lack of response, going back to 2002 (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/07/usint8556.htm)

All this is justified in the name of extracting information that might stop "terrorist attacks" - which are defined to include attacks by Iraqi resistance groups on legitimate military targets.

But in reality, according to interrogators quoted in the ICRC report and in the media, the great majority of Iraqi prisoners were simply picked up at random. And torture is not really a way of extracting reliable information - it's a way of making people tell you what you want to hear.

So torture, in the hands of the liberators, becomes an instrument of terrorizing the population, of collective punishment. Which human rights groups have long pointed out is one of the most frequent purposes of torture worldwide.

[seen_che]

Those soldiers must have gotten completely MAD



But where they crazy before ore have the gotten crazy from the wars??

[seen_che]

Its so fucking useless to torture like that

[RedAnarchist]

The cruelty of the Americans who brutally abused those Iraqis shows just how sadistic America can be. They seem to have chucked the Geneva Convention out of the window!

America claims to be waging a war on terror. But does Bush attack the causes of terrorism and cut it at the roots? No, he provokes the terrorists! He is nowhere near suitable to be the West's most powerful man. Instead he should apply for the job of the West's most idiotic man.

[Dottie Commie]

Have you seen this piece by Joanna Bourke?.......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1211411,00.html

Here's a quote....



A woman ties a noose around a naked man's neck and forces him to crawl across the floor. Uniformed people strip a group of hooded men, then laboriously assemble them into a pyramid. Men are forced to masturbate and simulate fellatio. In the past few days, we have all participated in the pornographic gaze. The sight of wide-eyed, grinning young men and women posing in front of their stripped and degraded captives has proved profoundly shocking. These snapshots tell us more than we may perhaps want to know about our society's heart of darkness.

This festival of violence is highly pornographic. The victims have been reduced to exhibitionist objects or anonymous "meat". They either wear hoods, or are beheaded by the camera. The people taking the photographs exult in the genitals of their victims. There is no moral confusion here: the photographers don't even seem aware that they are recording a war crime. There is no suggestion that they are documenting anything particularly morally skewed. For the person behind the camera, the aesthetic of pornography protects them from blame.

Indeed, there is a carnivalesque atmosphere to the photographs. The perpetrators of this sexual violence are clearly enjoying themselves. The cliche "war is hell" takes on a chilling new vigour in these images. After all, these photographs are not "about" the horrors of war. Many, if not most, are part of a glorification of violence. There is no question that many of these snapshots were taken by people who were pleased by what they were seeing. Or what they had done. They are trophies, memorialising agreeable actions.

Also read her book 'An Intimate History of Killing'. It's an account of the crimes US, UK and Australian troops commit in war. It'll make you sick!

[RedAnarchist]

This is the work of capitalism! It has made these troops into uncompassionate machines that see their enemies not as humans, but as objects.

[Commie Girl]

<_<

[NYC4Ever]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...erican_beheaded (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20040511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_american_beheaded)

Was this another victimized act of aggression? If this is true, what do you guys make of it?

[(*]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2004, 01:36 PM
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...erican_beheaded (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20040511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_american_beheaded)

Was this another victimized act of aggression? If this is true, what do you guys make of it?
If true, I think it&#39;s sick. Countries should ride on the fact that America is in sh&#33;t for the abuse scandal. Acting the same way, or worse, will take away from this.

[NYC4Ever]

And are the Americans such a threat that this is whats deserving to them? Executing a naive dreamer of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. Its a polar ideology to you guys and your percieved dreams of a utopian communist society. My patience and I believe the appeasment of the American psyche will wear thin and soon we will all be at war with each others ideologies. Forget the crap about oil for just a minute. What is the utter justification for this act of sheer brutality? A victim of the occupation? of the humiliation of prisoners? Desperate act of revenge at the hands of muslim extremists? It&#39;s gettting to the boiling point and how do you expect your average American to keep his cool under heated preasure that everything he was told about his support for the President was a lie? Why does he have to compromise his truth with the truth of a lynch mob mentality? Appeasers of this brutal act should not be given a mic but be given a bullet to the head. I have never had these feelings before but they are gainining momentum in these troubling times.

[(*]

here is a more detailed article...

article (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=11&u=/ap/20040511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_iraq_american_beheaded)


"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused."


"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."

[Severian]

It&#39;s called blowback. I&#39;d also say Zarqawi was sinking to the moral level of imperialism - except that al-Qaeda started at the moral level of imperialism, as clients of imperialism to be exact. (This probably isn&#39;t the organization al-Qaeda, but seems to be people inspired by their ideas.)

[The idealist]

The smiles on the faces of those soldiers torturing iraquis shows either simple minded ignorance of morales (in which case they should not be in combat) or they are sadistic people whom no curse, oath or swearword could possibly define (in which case they SHOULD be put in combat, or rather a firing squad). The fact that the guilty persons have not been sentanced to long prison sentances only proves that the US gov&#39;t does not care for the iraquis rights as a free and proud people.

[The idealist]

:angry:

[Sabocat]

What the record shows: hypocrisy and lies over US torture of Iraqis
By Alex Lefebvre
12 May 2004


Recent days have seen a steady stream of reports that utterly discredit claims by US officials that the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces was an exceptional event, carried out by a few rogue soldiers. What has emerged is a clear picture of a methodical, longstanding practice of abusing and torturing Iraqi detainees for purposes of interrogation and intimidation.

The revelations of warnings from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the Bush administration have been particularly damning. According to a May 7 article in the Wall Street Journal, the ICRC was in continual contact with US authorities in May-November 2003 as it prepared its report on American abuse of Iraqi prisoners for the US government. The abuses reported by the ICRC date from the time US forces took control of Iraq in the spring of 2003.

The ICRC found that “prisoners were kept naked in empty cells [...] male prisoners were forced to wear women’s underwear [...] prisoners were beaten by coalition forces, in one case leading to death [...] coalition forces fired on unarmed prisoners multiple times from watch towers, killing some of them.”

A May 11 article in the Los Angeles Times exposed other methods of torture used by US forces: deliberately inflicting massive and severe burns, the use of electric shocks, and threatening detainees’ female relatives with rape. The Times article also revealed that the ICRC considers that between 70 and 90 percent of Iraqis seized and held by US forces are wrongly detained.

These findings match other publicly available reports, including a US Army report by Major General Antonio Taguba (http://www.antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=2479), which cites, among its findings, the rape of female Iraqi detainees by US soldiers; and Amnesty International’s (AI) report (http://news.amnesty.org/mav/index/ENGAMR510772004, and http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde140972003, in which the organization documents US torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in April 2003.

Despite the pose of shock and disbelief struck by the US government and media, there is voluminous evidence that the US ruling elite embarked on a deliberate policy of war crimes and torture, beginning with its invasion of Afghanistan in the fall and winter of 2001.


Torture and atrocities in the invasion of Afghanistan

The Bush administration carried out its first major documented atrocity against prisoners of war during the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. As Afghan Northern Alliance forces allied with the US converged on the city of Kunduz, Afghan commanders announced on November 19 that they were considering issuing safety guarantees to foreign Taliban fighters who would surrender to them. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately stated that he did not want such an agreement to be negotiated.

In the week before the surrender of Kunduz, Rumsfeld made it clear that he preferred an outcome where all the Taliban soldiers were slaughtered, saying that the US was “not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” although he hoped that Al Qaeda forces would “either be killed or taken prisoner.”

On November 21, 2001, when asked whether he would prefer that Osama bin Laden be killed rather than captured, Rumsfeld responded, “You bet your life.” As the British newspaper Observer commented, “Until the circumstances are investigated, the suspicion will remain that the US is pursuing a policy of capital punishment without trial.”

Upon their surrender in Kunduz, the non-Afghan Taliban were taken to the Qala-i-Janghi fortress in Mazar-i-Sharif under the guard of Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum’s forces. There they revolted against US interrogators who taunted them, beat them, and threatened them with death. In response, US Special Forces on the ground called in and coordinated air strikes and tank assaults against the prisoners, killing some 800. Captured on camera by US and German film crews, this atrocity was eventually the subject of an August 2002 CNN documentary. (See http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/afgh-n27.shtml and http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0208/03/cp.00.html)

After the bombing ended, US Special Forces and Dostum’s troops herded 3,000 surviving prisoners into sealed metal containers and drove them for 20 hours to Sheberghan prison. Most of the prisoners suffocated along the way. When the convoy arrived at its destination, the containers were emptied and the prisoners who had survived the journey were shot. Their remains were buried in a mass grave. This atrocity was exposed by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran in his movie, Afghan Massacre—Convoy of Death (See http://www.acftv.net) (http://www.acftv.net)..

Read the rest... http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/may2004/iraq-m12.shtml

[Skeptic]

Widespread sadism, blatant and wanton criminal abuse is what we are talking about here comrades according to a U.S. Army report; these are the facts, despite many attempts to water down ubiquitous U.S. military atrocities. You can read the 53 Page U.S. Army reports on the atrocities at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/

What more do we need but the pig&#39;s own official words in writing? This is the Army&#39;s own actual report. How about Pictures? &#39;Proud&#39; U.S and British thug soldiers gleefully swapped hundreds of photos. Many of the pictures are confiscated and hidden by Military Intelligence when the goon&#39;s bags are searched before they leave the country. Torture at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan is standard operating procedure; the soldiers were functioning on orders from higher ups in Military Intelligence. To put the words and intent of apologists for U.S.A. in their appropriate context, what they have been are doing is trying to obfuscate the scope and scale of the crimes.

Many say that the fact that the news media reports on these atrocities, which they claim, are only limited to a few individuals, and that these military criminals will be prosecuted are falsifications of the facts. The abuses are widespread and not the actions of individuals but are the methods of occupation as ordered by higher ups. The U.S. media only reported on these outrages after they learned that the British media was about to break the story. 60 Minutes II did what is called a &#39;limited hangout&#39; in which they chose to reveal some of the facts but tried to do damage control by limiting the scope of the story. They had been sitting on the story for weeks; top U.S. military ghouls had been covering up reports of torture and other atrocities for months. The reported crimes are just the tip of the iceberg, but only a handful of low-level jackals are undergoing investigation.

Torture at Ghraib by the U.S. military is not an aberration at the hands of a few by out of control, rogue individuals. It is how the U.S.A. fights its wars. The outrages against humanity are systemic, they are systematic, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is a signature of the Imperial State. It is characteristic of Imperialism at every juncture from the U.S. occupations of the Philippines, where captured people, civilians and fighters, had their stomachs ruptured by sea water forced into the by U.S. soldiers, through America&#39;s war against the People of Viet Nam, where hooking up genitals to electricity was one of the most common actions practiced by U.S. troops, through the death squads tortures to the crimes of U.S. soldiers which are indistinguishable from the crimes of the Nazi SS that are going on as we speak. These crimes are standard operating procedure, the methods of Capitalism to dominate and oppress the planet.

The officer in charge of the prison at Abu Ghraib was General Janice Karpinski, an Army Reserve Brigadier General, and what was neglected by the mainstream media is that the General had been in the Army Special forces for over ten years from 1977 to 1987, becoming a Reservist in 1987. This is a woman who received all of the training in the Army Special Forces, training in torture, training in interrogation, the highly sophisticated and highly developed form of breaking helpless prisoners.

She had active duty military intelligence experience. She is a Special Forces Military Intelligence officer that speaks Arabic. Her function was specific to the detention and interrogation of prisoners. She was running the operation and instructing the military police, she is an expert in the method in which to destroy prisoners, systemically, systematically.

Apologists squirm and whine and try to claim that Guantanamo Bay and other military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan are not like Auschwitz. Let&#39;s be frank, the detention centers and prisons described are Concentration Camps. The methods in these camps are Concentration Camp procedures. The means of containment are identical to Concentration Camps. The torture and torment described are the methods of breaking prisons as practiced by the Nazi SS. The crimes that General Karpinski committed would have gotten her hanged at Nuremberg if she was a German Nazi and not an American one. Germans were hanged at the highest levels right up to the top of the German High Command. George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are in every sense of the word War Criminals. And attempts to cover for U.S. atrocites have been going on for months.

Often apologists play word games and use semantics and it shows how weak their arguments are. They faintly try to claim that &#39;abuse&#39; is not &#39;legally&#39; torture. What is the characteristic of the treatment at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib? ABC News, on August 13th, 2003, used the words: &#39;Beating, asphyxiation, electrocution, starvation, and sexual violation.&#39; In Abu Ghraib, and the detention centers throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, these methods are standard operating procedure. The 18,000 detainees in Iraq are routinely subject to the sorts of crimes that make the U.S. military indistinguishable from the Nazi SS.

What are we talking about here? We are talking about U.S. war criminals, torturers, and sadists. Soldiers are being deployed into a snake pit of colonial depravity. I think the false pride many feel about the military will soon lose its luster, if they have any sense of humanity. Amnesty International reports that the crimes described are not aberrations or done by only a few. The crimes are systemic, not only used in prisons, but it is systemic to Capitalism itself, it is systemic to Imperial rule. It is the touchstone of the Torture Sate that requires the subjugation of vast masses of people who are targeted for occupation, their resources to be stolen, their sovereignty to be destroyed, their social order disrupted, the fabric of their daily lives to be smashed.

Most of the torturers remain on the job. Most of the military men implicated in the Army report remain on the job. Where are the charges, where are the citations, where is the investigation by the Pentagon? How about some reprimands? The United Snakes is outside the law. The U.S. government went before the United Nations in 2002 to oppose any interdiction of torture, to oppose any United Nations resolution holding States accountable for torture, and hold those involved responsible. The Torture State is endemic to Imperialism.

The Capitalist era is the bloodiest epoch in human history.

Skeptic

[Commie Girl]

Socialist Worker (http://www.socialistworker.org)





War crimes of the U.S. empire

May 14, 2004 | Pages 6 and 7

"PEOPLE IN Iraq must understand...that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know." So said George W. Bush in interviews on Arab television last week, in response to the pictures of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. But America has a long history of torture, violence and bloodshed--committed at home and around the world in the name of U.S. empire.

NICOLE COLSON looks behind the rhetoric about "freedom and democracy"--and uncovers the long record of U.S. military atrocities.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

FROM THE earliest days, the U.S. empire was built on war, genocide and horrific brutality. In the 19th century, in a drive for westward expansion, the U.S. government engaged in the systematic slaughter of Native Americans. "Indian Removal" wiped out the majority of Native Americans.

According to historian Howard Zinn, in 1820, 120,000 Indians lived east of the Mississippi River. By 1844, fewer than 30,000 were left. This genocide is one of the two great crimes at the foundation of American power.

The other was slavery. Some 20 million Africans were kidnapped from their homes to fuel the trade in human beings--sent to the "New World" to be treated like animals.

About one-quarter didn’t make it that far--because conditions during the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean were so barbaric. In the young United States, Black slaves became the engine of the American economy--both North and South.

The U.S. was late among the world’s main powers in building an overseas empire, but it made up for that in violence. In 1898, it provoked a war with Spain--which even then was justified by war supporters with rhetoric about liberating the subjects of Spain’s colonial rule. But the real aim of the U.S. was to become the new colonial boss itself.

In the Philippines, this required a war of conquest that killed as many as 1 million Filipinos. Typical of the U.S. barbarism in the Pacific was the raid on the town of Caloocan, where the entire population of 17,000 was slaughtered. "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill ‘niggers,’" one soldier wrote. "This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces."

As the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger wrote in 1901, "[O]ur men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog."

Washington didn’t hesitate to become a colonial occupier in its self-declared "backyard"--which amounted to the Western Hemisphere. During the early 20th century, the U.S. invaded and ruled over Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Marine Gen. Smedley Butler later described his role this way: "I spent most of my time being a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

The Second World War, we’re told, was the "good war"--a war against fascism for democracy. But there was nothing "good" or "democratic" about the U.S. conquest and occupation of Japan.

Despite the fact that Japan had been ready to surrender, the U.S. government dropped two atom bombs on a Japanese population that was starving--just to just to prove to the world its willingness to use its military might. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 220,000 immediately and 120,000 more from the effects of radiation poisoning.

In the years to come, Japanese civilians living under U.S. occupation were treated to vile racism and degradation. Thirty percent of the Japanese population--approximately 22 million people--were made homeless; 123,510 children were orphaned and homeless; 13 million workers were unemployed; and 10 million lived on the brink of starvation.

According to Japanese historian Takemae Eiji, "U.S. troops initially comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of the occupation. Misbehavior ranged from blackmarketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism, assault, arson, murder and rape." And American occupation authorities collaborated with the Japanese regime in abusing Japanese women--hiring 70,000 poor women to work as prostitutes to service U.S. troops.

In the years following the Second World War, the U.S. armed and equipped murderous dictatorships around the globe--the military rulers of South Korea, Somoza in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, Mobutu in Zaire, the Shah of Iran and many more. All this was justified in the name of fighting communism--as was the war in Vietnam.

The horrific tactics of the U.S. military were designed to inflict damage on civilians. With carpet bombings, napalm and wholesale massacres, 3 million Vietnamese and other Asians were dead by the end of the war. Then, as now, the horrific revelations about U.S. brutality against civilians led to an increasing number of people questioning the war here at home.

Most infamous is the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which U.S. troops in the Army’s Charlie Company murdered 347 unarmed men, women and children in a four-hour assault. According to Sgt. Kenneth Hodges, "The order we were given was to kill and destroy everything that was in the village. It was clearly explained that there were to be no prisoners...The order that was given was to kill everyone in the village."

It was an order carried out with extreme brutality, as villagers were herded into ditches and machine gunned. One military mother, shocked by the revelation of what had taken place in My Lai, commented that "I gave them a good boy, and they turned him into a murderer."

Less well known--but no less horrific--was the massacres carried out by the elite Army Platoon Tiger Force. Troops not only tortured and executed Vietnamese soldiers who they had taken prisoner, but also routinely went after civilians--in some cases cutting off the ears of corpses. "We killed anything that walked," former Sgt. William Doyle, a platoon team leader, told the Toldeo Blade last year. "It didn’t matter if they were civilians. They shouldn’t have been there."

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said about the Vietnam War, "We were taking the Black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." King’s conclusion was right--and should be remembered today, as the Bush administration tries to claim that the abuses in Iraq are "un-American."

"I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos," King said, "without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today--my own government."

Tortured in the U.S.

YOUNG DETAINEES beaten, humiliated, subjected to electroshock and other forms of torture. That’s what took place in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. And in police interrogation rooms in Chicago for nearly two decades.

The torture techniques that George Bush claims are un-American were used against dozens of young Black suspects on Chicago’s South Side by cops under the command of Lt. Jon Burge. Leroy Orange, for example, was slapped, electroshocked and suffocated at Area 2 police headquarters for more than 12 hours in January 1984.

Police held a plastic bag over Leroy&#39;s head, punching him so he couldn&#39;t hold his breath. They shocked Leroy with a black box after placing electrodes on his arms and in his rectum. Then they used his "confession" to throw him onto death row.

The existence of Burge’s torture chambers isn’t a secret. In 1993, the city was embarrassed enough to force Burge into retirement, after a confidential internal report surfaced detailing more than 50 cases of "systematic" torture. Today, investigators put the number of Burge’s victims at over 100.

Yet many of the men tortured by Burge and his cops remain locked away in prison, still waiting for justice. As columnist Carol Marin wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "When it comes to torture, the message seems pretty clear. Take pictures. Otherwise, those who don&#39;t want to believe you won&#39;t."

The brutality isn’t limited to Chicago, of course. "When I saw Bush&#39;s interview on Arab TV stations, I was thinking, had he ever stepped inside a Texas prison when he was governor?" Judy Greene of Justice Strategies, a research and public advocacy group in New York, told Reuters.

If he had stepped inside Texas’ Brazoria County jail in 1996, then-Gov. Bush could have witnessed guards staging a drug raid on inmates that was videotaped for "training purposes." The tape showed prisoners forced to strip and lie on the ground. A police dog attacked several, and guards prodded prisoners with stun guns and forced them to crawl along the ground. During much of the time that Bush was governor, Texas prisons functioned under the terms of a federal consent decree because of crowding and violence by guards

[James]

Daily mirror editor has resigned because the brit pictures have been shownto be fakes.

[pandora]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2004, 03:41 PM
<_<
Thank you so much for this, that about sums it up.
Had a friend who dated a DEA agent in Miami, have no idea why, afterwards she got involved in vodou, so she has some, interesting, tendencies.

She told me some of the different types of torture they were employing that he confessed to her.
I wouldn&#39;t stand in the same room with that man, still he was a good old fashioned Suthen boy from Georgia :D
They had specific tortures for women who were actually just mules of the drug pushers to get them to leak information which would put their and their families lives in danger which were especially repugnant and included mutilating their genitalia. :(
Anyone who doesn&#39;t think this has been going on a for a long time is fooling themselves.
IT&#39;s Sad and it&#39;s true. I am so happy it&#39;s finally come to the surface because it&#39;s disgusting.

[Eastside Revolt]

To me the most impotant issue to point out in this incident is that it was a "military-police specialist" who was caught on film doing these acts. This means another "military-police specialist" is going to be disciplining her, talk about useless.

[Blackberry]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2004, 05:51 PM
Wanted to start a thread talking about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, can also include commentary on treatment of prisoners at Guatanemo Bay, Cuba, and School of Americas and related material.
Here are some claims from former detainees of Camp X-Ray on the US base in Cuba:


After a while we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards &#39;I want his rights&#39;, and they replied &#39;that dog is a member of the US Army&#39;. - Jamal al Harith, a British citizen recently released from Guantanamo Bay, after being held there for two years without charge or trial.

Also, from a corporate source, The Australian:


Australian David Hicks was tied up and bashed for two hours at a time by US soldiers in Afghanistan, according to his former cellmate.

22 year old Shah Mohammed was released last year after spending 3 months in US custody.

"The other detainees would be tied up with rope on one hand and one foot, but Hicks they tied up both hands and both feet" he said.

Mr Mohammed also said that the Americans filmed their beatings and interrogations.

[h&s]

I can&#39;t belive that no-one is doing anything about the behaviour of the Americans. What they are doing is torture and commiting war crimes. If Bush was put on trial he wopuldn&#39;t have a leg to stand on - there is no way he could be found innocent.
I also heard that in Guantanamo prisoners are made to watch prostitutes stripping, and their religion is constantly mocked. In Abu Ghraib (Bush can&#39;t pronounce that&#33;) Prisoners are made to thank Jesus for not being beaten.
This is as bad as the nazis, &#39;cos I&#39;m sure that if they could get away with it, the Americans would do the same as the SS.
Surely Cuba should be able to prosecute the Americans for this?

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 8 2004, 09:57 PM
I am ashemd of the American Forces who whould dare to do the disgusting, vapid and nasty things to those poor Iraqis. What ever happend to Opperation Iraqi Freedom I will tell you what happend Teens got rowdy and started to torment people. This hordous act shows what the American army is all about I am so ashemd of my country. Even the British fallowed the American&#39;s exapmple and started tourting more people. This prooves that the American Soliders are no better then Saddam Hussien hismelf.
sorry about spelling
Zeke
Comrade if you can&#39;t feel pride of your country, you can&#39;t feel ashamed. Don&#39;t be ashamed, feel pride in the fact that you resisted this war. You&#39;re not the one to blame, the leaders are. And no Capitalists are not better then each other, all same scum, wethever they are named Saddam, Bush, Blair, Sharon, Arafat.

[h&s]

Pride of your country can be a very dangerous thing. You don&#39;t have to have pride in your country to be ashamed of it, just pride in the people of the country.