Tortured Iraqis - shocking article

Higgins

Looks like something out od Deliverance ...

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9488928%255E2,00.html


If you don t have time to read it all, here are a couple of lines from the article:



"She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero. "


"A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq," Colleen Kesner said. "

"To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised. "

"Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."

:dunno:

Memnoch

i find this bit the most intersting from the above article

Pentagon officials have confirmed that other alleged incidents of torture under Brig-General Karpinski's regime were being investigated.

A military source said: "The word is that she was told it would be beneficial if the prisoners were willing to talk.

"Let's just say a blind eye was turned to certain events."

Celt

She got hit with the ugly stick too many times

Maybe that's why she likes to torture

Rock Climber

Originally posted by Celt
Maybe that's why she likes to torture

Actually she denies having had any knowledge of the abuse when it was going on.
To be fair , we'd have to take her for her word on that.

Sleipnir

Down a dirt track at the edge of town, in the trailer where England grew up.....

Says it all really. Her mother is about as backward as it is possible to get.

Memnoch

Originally posted by Rock Climber
Actually she denies having had any knowledge of the abuse when it was going on.
To be fair , we'd have to take her for her word on that.

her story seems to change every time

especially that of her subordinates...

though i think in the end, the small time soldiers will be made the scapegoats

bonkey

Originally posted by Rock Climber
Actually she denies having had any knowledge of the abuse when it was going on.
To be fair , we'd have to take her for her word on that.

I think your she is a different she to who Celt was referring to.

He was referring to the person who allegedly did the torturing. You are linking to an article with an interview the prison commander....

jc

Rock Climber

Originally posted by bonkey
I think your she is a different she to who Celt was referring to.

jc

Oh I was wondering, how she had got even uglier
Both were hit by that stick apparently
mine was a quick reply in relation to the bit that memnoch quoted:

Pentagon officials have confirmed that other alleged incidents of torture under Brig-General Karpinski's regime were being investigated.

/ note to self click on related link next time and such confusions won't arise... :O

Higgins

a friend of mine went to California recently.

He spoke to lots of americans about the war. Most of them were opened minded and critical of the war (good or bad)


But one of them was like in the article above : we sould kill all arabs and all irakis.


!!!

Originally posted by Higgins
He spoke to lots of americans about the war. Most of them were opened minded and critical of the war (good or bad)

I haven't been back there since last year, but most people I met then were anti bushe and anti war to be honest.
I had a chat with a protest group outside the whitehouse( mothers against war ) who were there protesting that more time and effort should be spent on americans and not on Iraq.

Big al

And what will the Iraqis do if they capature a UK female??

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13082198,00.html

A Shi'ite cleric in Basra has told worshippers that anyone who captures a female British soldier can keep her as a slave

Real open minded chaps.......

bonkey

Originally posted by Big al
Real open minded chaps.......

So what ?

Are you saying that because some Iraqis have some rather dubious ideas like this that it should be ok to torture, abuse and demean other Iraqis?

By that standard....there are some people in the US who think that non-whites are an inferior sub-human race. So I guess - using your apparent logic - that makes it ok to treat all Americans as sub-human, yes???

No, I didn't think so. Thats clearly not what you meant.

So exactly what was your point? That the US isn't the only bad guy? That its not the worst guy? That despite doing some really sh1tty things, we shouldn't pay too much attention, because other people are suggesting similar things?

jc

keano_afc

With a name like England it was inevitable she was'nt going to know anything about human rights anyway. "Innocent until proven Irish" springs to mind.

sovtek

Originally posted by keano_afc
With a name like England it was inevitable she was'nt going to know anything about human rights anyway. "Innocent until proven Irish" springs to mind.

I really have to ask what someone's name has to do with the price of rice in China? :rolleyes:

sovtek

Originally posted by Big al
And what will the Iraqis do if they capature a UK female??

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13082198,00.html



Real open minded chaps.......

Leave it to Sky/Fox to come up with something completely irrelevant, but which makes Arabs look like animals.

sovtek

Originally posted by Higgins
a friend of mine went to California recently.

He spoke to lots of americans about the war. Most of them were opened minded and critical of the war (good or bad)


But one of them was like in the article above : we sould kill all arabs and all irakis.


!!!

I remember during the first "Gulf War" some people saying crap like that. Other things heard were "turn the Middle East into one big glass factory" and "kick their ass and take their gas" (IIRC the former a bumper sticker around the time of the OPEC boycott).
I think it has to do with not having real exposure to people and culture of other countries as well as a singular and biased media.
Another aspect, I think is not having any concept of what a real war on your home soil is really like.
I also want to say that it's not true for everyone.
Then you take over a 100,000 of these people and invade a country. Then alot of people in that country (that your superior told you hated you anyway, terrorists and whatnot) start shooting at you and planting bombs that kill your friends... I don't think it takes a whole lot of that before you loose your humanity. I'm not excusing it but I can surely understand that it will happen about every time in a situation like this.
It's what alot of people I talked to (myself included) who were against this war said would happen if you did go down this wreckless path.

pro_gnostic_8

Originally posted by sovtek
Leave it to Sky/Fox to come up with something completely irrelevant, but which makes Arabs look like animals.

Respectfully, it's NOT irrelevant. How could it be irrelevant when the debate at issue is the humiliating treatment of ALL human beings in the context of the present situation in Iraq. Neither is it irrelevant to point out that the regrettable behaviour of a <few> U.S. military personnel was not part of a sytematic or institutionalized policy pursued by the Allied liberation force in contrast to a premeditated and conscious call by the fundamentalist mischief-maker al Sadr to enslavement and murder.

pro_gnostic_8

Originally posted by sovtek
It's what alot of people I talked to (myself included) who were against this war .

:rolleyes:

sovtek

Originally posted by pro_gnostic_8
Respectfully, it's NOT irrelevant. How could it be irrelevant when the debate at issue is the humiliating treatment of ALL human beings in the context of the present situation in Iraq.

I understand what you're saying and maybe I shouldn't have used the word irrelevant.
It is definetly something meant to show how "bad" these people are and how they would "treat us the same way given a chance".

Neither is it irrelevant to point out that the regrettable behaviour of a <few> U.S. military personnel was not part of a sytematic or institutionalized policy pursued by the Allied liberation force

No you're correct that it isn't irrelevant to say that, unfortunetly your statement doesn't seem to be consistant with the facts either...IE Red Cross and Amnesty International reports.
Also your label of "Allied liberation force" is arguable on a few points.

in contrast to a premeditated and conscious call by the fundamentalist mischief-maker al Sadr to enslavement and murder.

Where did Sadr make those supposed statements?

pork99

Originally posted by bonkey
So what ?

Are you saying that because some Iraqis have some rather dubious ideas like this that it should be ok to torture, abuse and demean other Iraqis?


jc

Yes it's about time the Yanks got the hell out of the way so Iraqis can go back to torturing and murdering other Iraqis as God intended.

It's easy to blame that stupid Military Policewoman, she was dumb enough to get into the photos. It effectively diverts attention from more senior officers who were either encouraging those practices or turning a blind eye to them.

sovtek

Originally posted by pork99
Yes it's about time the Yanks got the hell out of the way so Iraqis can go back to torturing and murdering other Iraqis as God intended.

So it's ok for Americans and British to torture Iraqis because "we are trying to do good".
Otherwise Iraqi's would just all torture and murder each other. Or are you just refering to one Iraqi torturing a large number of Iraqi's with British and American support for 30 some odd years?

It's easy to blame that stupid Military Policewoman, she was dumb enough to get into the photos. It effectively diverts attention from more senior officers who were either encouraging those practices or turning a blind eye to them.

I agree with you there and the Bush regime is going to use that as much as possible to hide their compliance in all this.
I find it hard to believe that the top leaders of the Bush regime didn't know this was going on if someone like myself had heard that it MIGHT very well be going on for several months now.

The Muppet

So war is uncivilised and people do terrible things to each other , whats new?

Should we expect these young people to be able to switch off from the mindset that they were sent into war with. That being the enemy are sub human and deserve to die. I don't condone what we are seeing in the media and the behaviour is not what you would ideally expect from professional soldiers but I,m sure neither side is sticking to the geneva convention.


The stories about Ms. England is just a media frenzy. Because they have posed pictures of a woman alledgedly torturing Prisoners they are focusing on her as that is the best media angle and she is fast becoming the scape goat. The fact that she had to be acting under orders and part of a wider problem seems to be largely ignored for now.

"She told me nothing happened which wasn't ordered by higher up," she said.

"They are trying to pin all of this on the lower ranks. My daughter was just following orders. I think there's a conspiracy."

In the fist gulf war stories of civilians and captured allies being tortured are well documented. In war captives get tortured , there is nothing new in that, it has always been that way. The only difference this time is that pictures showing this have been made public and the fact that one of the " torturers" is a young woman makes it a juicy story.

Chinafoot

well what sickened me was her family's attitude. they said the photographs were "pranks" and "souvenirs"!! says a lot about her upbringing.

and old rummy admitted that theres worse to come. and we're talking rape and murder! he knew about this stuff for 2months before it came out.
disgusting and yet unsurprising! land of the free my arse!

pro_gnostic_8

Sovtek, thank you for your replies.

Can I nail my colours to the mast at the outset, here?
I supported in principle the War on Iraq as I honestly believed that the murderous dictator Saddam should be removed and that the Iraqi people deserved release from his murderous regime.
Now, it seems beyond doubt that the "liberators" are indulging in the torture and perhaps murder of the people that they were supposed to be liberating! And this in the very prison that was Saddam's sadistic playground (Abu Graihb). This makes me very angry.

So, what should be done now? Three options as I see it.........

1) America to pull out now. This, unfortunately, entails abandoning Iraq to chaos and fundamendalist usurpation.
2) America to proceed with June handover to Iraqi administration. Too soon, IMO, the country is still too unsettled.
3) America to wait until change of leadership (hopefully) in the November presidential elections and then withdraw thus saving face.
4) United Nations to take over responsibility immediately.

I honestly don't know what is the solution.
I would, however, be interested in your (and others) views on resolving this unfortunate situation.

Regards.

pork99

Originally posted by pro_gnostic_8

Now, it seems beyond doubt that the "liberators" are indulging in the torture and perhaps murder of the people that they were supposed to be liberating! And this in the very prison that was Saddam's sadistic playground (Abu Graihb). This makes me very angry.

Not the American way?

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

FFS!

Apparently the reserve MP unit guarding prisoners in Abu Ghraib has a lot of civilian prison guards in it's ranks. One of the MPs in the photos has admitted she never even read the Geneva Convention

As international anger continued to grow over the Americans' behaviour, one of the seven soldiers facing possible court martial for abusing detainees revealed that she did not read, or even see, a copy of the Geneva Convention until two months after she was charged. Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, said she now understood that it was regularly breached at Abu Ghraib. "I read the entire thing, highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot," she said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/09/wtort09.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=5223
(registration required)

Otherwise Iraqi's would just all torture and murder each other. Or are you just refering to one Iraqi torturing a large number of Iraqi's with British and American support for 30 some odd years?

I was being sarcastic

pork99

In addition to being wrong it's just plain incompetent

"Basically, they were amateurs," said Frank Snepp, a former CIA analyst and an interrogator during the Vietnam War. "I can't even come up with a theory for what they were doing."...

...But all four of the interrogators who spoke with The Chronicle strongly doubted that the Abu Ghraib interrogators got much useful information out of their subjects after they had been "softened up" by the techniques shown in the photographs.

"Humiliation will only generate resentment," Snepp said. "If you break somebody on the basis of what you've done to their self-esteem, you can't trust any of their information."

The kinds of abuse documented in the photographs would have been particularly useless in interrogating Iraqis, who have a strong taboo against appearing nude before others or engaging in homosexual acts, said another interrogator, active during the Cold War, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's incredibly dumb. This guy's not going to want to talk to me after I've done to him the worst thing I can do to a Muslim," he said. "No interrogator worth his salt would do this."

I'll say it again - this is a war that needs to be fought smarter not harder

kahlua

I suppose it should be of no surprise that the American's are not following the Geneva Convention look at Guantanamo Bay.