posted October 13, 2006 02:28 PM              

the fate of the United States

posted October 13, 2006 02:31 PM              

A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees – some as young as 10 – are also being subjected to rape and torture
By Neil Mackay
http://www.sundayherald.com/print43796

Iraq: One more sin – evidence of children being abused in Abu Ghraib.
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/news/iraq_child_prisoners.htm

posted October 13, 2006 02:36 PM              

see ~

posted October 13, 2006 02:43 PM            

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How long has the Constitution listed the President as "Commander in Chief"? Does that mean since Clinton, Carter and Reagan served as the "Commander-in-Chief" they ALSO had the right to torture children and squish their testes? Anyone recall that whole argument being played out here in the past?

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Chances are they weren't concerned with how far they could go in torturing people. Like I said previously this is the only administration since the Geneva Convention that felt compelled to get a definition of torture. The implications of simply having to ask that question are terrible.

posted October 13, 2006 03:01 PM            

Salome,

posted October 13, 2006 03:09 PM              

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: To those Iraqis who were mistreated by member of the U.S. Armed Forces, I offer my deepest apology.
MIKLASZEWSKI: Rumsfeld then dropped a bomb, revealing that there were more photos, even videos depicting abuses far worse than what has been seen so far.

RUMSFELD: There are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence towards prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman.

MIKLASZEWSKI: U.S. military officials tell NBC News, the unreleased images, show American soldiers severely beating one Iraqi prisoner to near death; apparently, raping an Iraqi female prisoner; acting inappropriately with a dead body; and Iraqi guards apparently videotaped by U.S. soldiers raping young boys.

SEN. LINDSAY GRAHAM ®, SOUTH CAROLINA: We‘re talking about rape and murder here, we‘re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience, we‘re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.

posted October 13, 2006 04:37 PM            

When terrorists bomb, shoot, behead, torture and mutilate innocent people, terrorist supporters cheer and excuse them. Duh, is any of that against the Geneva Conventions?

A brain dead pro-terrorist, antisemitic twit from the Center for International Human Rights poses a hypothetical question about torture and every leftist picks it up and attempts to spread it as though it's reality and the gospel truth. Given leftists propensity to lie, we don't even know if that was John Yoo's voice and I find it strange John Yoo would be caught dead talking to someone of the ilk of Doug Cassel. Not to mention the fact that as far as I can tell, not one main stream newpaper has picked this story up...and you can bet your ass they would if they thought there was anything there to exploit against Bush.

Now tell me the names of all the children, all the terrorists and all the other citizens..of any nation..Bush has ordered tortured.

posted October 13, 2006 05:55 PM              

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the children's identities should not be released publicly.

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posted October 13, 2006 07:34 PM              

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DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: To those Iraqis who were mistreated by member of the U.S. Armed Forces, I offer my deepest apology.

MIKLASZEWSKI: Rumsfeld then dropped a bomb, revealing that there were more photos, even videos depicting abuses far worse than what has been seen so far.

RUMSFELD: There are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence towards prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman.

MIKLASZEWSKI: U.S. military officials tell NBC News, the unreleased images, show American soldiers severely beating one Iraqi prisoner to near death; apparently, raping an Iraqi female prisoner; acting inappropriately with a dead body; and Iraqi guards apparently videotaped by U.S. soldiers raping young boys.

SEN. LINDSAY GRAHAM ®, SOUTH CAROLINA: We‘re talking about rape and murder here, we‘re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience, we‘re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.

MIKLASZEWSKI: Senator Carl Levin raised questions about one photo which appeared to show the abuse of prisoners may not be random, but part of routine operations.

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posted October 13, 2006 08:25 PM            

Bush ordered none of that and you know it. Bush ordered no torture for anyone..children or otherwise and you know that too.

Further, the people who did are in prison..either a military prison or a federal prison...if they were discharged prior to being found out.

Further, don't attempt to confuse the issue. When I say leftists..and in this case, I was talking about the so called human rights activist who supposedly had a debate with John Yoo...which I don't believe ever happened for the reasons I stated. I think this is a fraud because if it weren't, the press would have been all over it...and you know that too.

posted October 13, 2006 08:47 PM              

no one stated anywhere here that bush ordered anything.

posted October 14, 2006 02:18 AM              

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Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok. Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib which is 30 miles from Baghdad [...]

The women were passing messages saying "Please come and kill me, because of what's happened". Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out.

It's impossible to say to yourself how do we get there? who are we? Who are these people that sent us there?

This is a summary of Hersh speaking at the ACLU 2004 America At A Crossroads conference

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I even recall hearing about that earlier now, but I didn't know the source. Someone must of put serious pressure on congresscritters and the press to keep a lid on these alegations. There was nary a peep in the mainstream press about these revelations that there should have been. This is evident by the fact that to most of the very well-read dKos community this was still new "news".
Maybe that's why Hersh is holding back until he has solid evidence (videos or lots of credible witnesses). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence perhaps? Would america even know about Abu Ghraib if not for the photos?

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On one level, their concern is justified -- when this hits the open air, the previous amount of Iraqi antagonism will seem like flowers and kisses (TM "spit-comb" Wolfowitz, 2002). The second this becomes public knowledge (with non-stop tape on Al Jazeera) is the second that the "anti-insurgency" in Iraq becomes a full-blown popular rebellion.
On the more repugnant level, however, this is simply ass-covering of the highest degree. Hersh gets it exactly right: "Who are we?" The delusional facade that the popular press constructed in the lead-up to war is coming crumbling down, and they are absolutely terrified that their complicity in facilitating this tragedy will be laid bare for all the world to see.

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Der Speigel posted this and the story states that it was American soldiers involved in the abuse, not Iraqi interrogators as some have speculated. I admit that I do not read german all that well, but what I can translate with my HS german matches the English version of the story.

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this dialogue is here http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/7/14/193750/666

posted October 14, 2006 02:24 AM              

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think I'm pretty tough but I just could not do this thread in one sitting. Had to go out and sit under a tree and ask....
Why?

Please let us not let this go until some justice has been done.

I kept thinking about women asking their men to come and kill them......

I kept thinking of those kids screaming......

I kept thinking of soldiers doing this and asking myself what manner of human does this....

Who watches this done to a child and calmly tapes this..........

What have we done? What have we done?

What in God's name have we done?

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it's "personally" devastating in a way beyond anything we've so far seen or learned about the horrors behind the smirk.
I've been asking the same questions.

Mostly: how do we undo that which was done in our name?

How f*cking depraved must Bushit be to authorize such. To see the consequences and not stop the tortures?

He has made no public renunciation of it. And his comments have been couched in such a way that he appears to be skirting the issue; i.e., it continues. And did you hear the tone in his voice when he said he never "ordered" turture? Anger -- at those asking questions about it. Petulant arrogance which says: if you don't shut up about it I'll do it to you.

Honestly, we knew he is a petty, vindictive little prick. And knew he is a sadist. But in our wildest imaginings, did any of us arrive at the extreme assumption that he would be so depraved as to authorize -- and defend -- the use of torture?

Who could imagine that would include rape and murder of adults, let alone of children.

The Provance description of the 16-year-old boy -- wrists so thin the handcuffs wouldn't stay on -- is powerfully moving. And at the same time compassionate and gentle. Obviously, Provance has a greater degree of education -- is more consciously awake -- than many in the military, and especially among those who have been inflicting the tortures.

Who, indeed, could film the rape of children as if such were normal, acceptable?

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posted October 14, 2006 02:40 AM              

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the only way to undo the damage done by the Bush*** War Crimes Family war crimes is by complete and full disclosure, turning all the perpetrators over to the Hague, signing onto the International Criminal Court.
In short, to put our values not only where our mouths are, but in our actions.

And on top of those actions, apologizing.

And that will only -- justifiably -- be the beginning of undoing the damage: why should the US betrusted to keep its word in view of such indescribable extremes of violations of so many laws and norms?

If we haven't the guts we demand of others, if we must "save face" where there can be no legitimate face saving, then we are not what we claim to be. And that will at minimum mean that the terrorists' rhetoric is true, and ours a long-standing lie.

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Let me get this straight. The people running the video cameras saw people raping children, and taped it instead of stopping it?
Unbelievable. And I'm sure I heard about this at least 2 months ago, but there's been nary a peep in the press.

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...What's more, if you distribute the videos, you may be violating various child pornography laws...

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posted October 14, 2006 02:52 AM              

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Take a look at the MSNBC story here.

MSNBC/Newsweek tracked down what some of those pictured were charged with. (Remember they were only charged, not convicted of anything).

These guys weren't terrorists, insurgents or high value prisoners. At worst they were just common thugs. They were charged with assualt or car jacking. Keeping in mind it is quite common for Iraqis to turn someone in for reward money or for revenge it's quite possible these people did absolutely nothing wrong.

All this fever over the torture and they victims were (at worst) common criminals. Not that torturing someone is ever right but this makes it so much more wrong.

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Pure Evil
"Let me get this straight. The people running the video cameras saw people raping children, and taped it instead of stopping it?"

Well yes. They didn't stop the rape because it was deliberate. They were raping the children in front of their parents to get the parents to give up information on the insurgency.

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posted October 14, 2006 02:59 AM              

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Doesn't this show...
that torture is completely ineffective? The insurgency lives on.

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Torture for the sake of torture...

Sorry to be pedantic, but this actually doesn't prove that torture works or doesn't work, because anywhere between 60% and 95% of the people detained were innocent of anything. Raping the innocent kids of parents who don't know anything (and therefore are innocent themselves) is torture, but it can't be effective or ineffective, because the people are completely innocent. In this case, it's really more like torture for the sake of torture. Nazi comparisons abound.

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...When governments set out to torture to extract information, the people they end up torturing always turn out to be 50%-95% innocent. That's what happens, it's why torture is an ineffective intelligence-gathering technique, besides being morally wrong.

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posted October 14, 2006 03:07 AM              

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...the rest of the world is less and less willing to make the distinction between the actions of our 'leader' President Bush and the American public. They saw that when the original photos show abuse and torture of adults that a significant part of the political sphere was outraged at the outrage, they saw that no senior leaders were sacked, they saw the deliberate foot dragging on the way to the mildest apology possible, they saw that people are more concerned about the Laci Peterson and Kobe Bryant trials than Iraq.

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Command Responsibility

You are right in that President Bush did not personally fly into Baghdad, feed plastic turkey to the troops at Baghdad International Airport and then decide "What the hell, I'll go rape an Iraqi boy." The actual execution of the rapes are the responsibility of the rapists, and for them, I hope that they are punished to the fullest extent of the applicable law (UCMJ, US criminal law, or Iraqi criminal law).
However, if Hersh's statements are to be believed, and all the evidence that has come out of Abu Ghraib and other US run prisons in Iraq suggests that he knows what he is talking about, there is a systemic failure here. That is the responsibility of the commanders to fix. If there was a single rape in which the rapists were quickly and severely punished, and guidelines and proactive protective measures were then installed as soon as the command team realized that there was a problem, then it would not be the fault of the Executive branch/President Bush.

However, we have repeated examples of torture, torture-lite, rape, and hostage taking over a several month period. We have repeated reports of individuals with incredible amounts of moral courage coming forward to their superiors saying that something that they have seen is morally and criminally wrong. We have the knowledge that the chain of command extending up to and including President Bush knew or should have known that potential war crimes were being committed by American forces or by Iraqi forces under American command at Abu Ghraib. Yet they decided to not take corrective measures until the light of day forced them to do so.

This is a systemic failure of leadership and command responsbility. The officers and civilian leadership knew that they were doing something wrong frequently, repeatedly and for months at a time and yet did not change their actions. The buck kept on getting passed back and forth and human rights abuses and war crimes continued. That is where the greatest crime lies, the unwillingness of the executive branch to step in and order American soldiers to follow basic guidelines of civilized behavior and not to commit war crimes.

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posted October 14, 2006 03:13 AM              

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The Democrats did decide torture was acceptable...

They're accepting it right now.
This particular "unacceptable policy", a.k.a. war crimes, should draw a response, first of impeachment, then imprisonment, of the Republican executives responsible for the policy.

But I guess impeachment and inditement are for dodgy land deals and extra-marital affairs, not for the kidnapping, imprisonment, starvation, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder of innocent men, women, and children.

Seriously, where is the outrage, and what are we going to tell the children? I really want to know.

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posted October 14, 2006 03:31 AM              

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the Iraqis knew what was going on there. They shelled the prison on 6 occasions killing prisoners. At the time I couldn't figure out why they would shell the prison - I thought maybe to keep people from talking. Then the torture scandal broke and I knew exactly why the killed their own. To spare them the horrors.
Can you imagine that!?

People so terrified they would prefer death to another day in OUR custody.

And we invaded Iraq why?

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