Torture worse than Saddam's

Apparently some people have a very short memory, and quickly tend to forget what was happning in Iraq soon after the war - apparently the name Abu Ghraib does not mean anything to some people.

But that is another story - still it has alot to do with the topic, that Torture in Iraq is WORSE then under Saddams, since we all know and remember the photos from Abu Ghraib, and that was the American Soldiers doing the dirty job.

Whats happening today?

So is THIS torture:

Torture of Iraqi POWs

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

And the list goes on and on and on and on - and that is just what Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found in his investigation in a well known and IN-famous prison, which is known to everybody. I wonder what goes on in all those Phantom prisons we do not know about, where 14.000 Prisoners are in US Custody - 70-90% of the Completly INNOCENT, but still where are they? Where are they being held? Are they being tortured? Well...

Torture in Iraq Still Routine, Report Says

Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.

Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are "committing systematic torture and other abuses" of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.

Looks like to me, that nothing really changed for the better - if you read the article, you can find out, that the jailers and torture experts just got new bosses; back then they worked for Saddam, but now they work for the USArmy.

So what is Torture for some people to realize that the problem is not at all overblown? Perhaps a few pictures would do?

News BBC

The UN report says detainees' bodies often show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in heads and genitals, broken legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns.

Many bodies have missing skin, broken bones, back, hands and legs, missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails, the UN report says.

So - broken bones, broken back, missing skin, missing eyes, missing teeth, power drill holes in the nails; how is that? Better or worse then Saddam? Actually, if we role back a little, we already found out, that the same people that tortured under Saddam's regime, are actually torturing even today.

So is it Worse or Better?

Actually I find it sickening, that we have to discuss on this kind of cases, if the situation in Iraq is better or worse then before - but as far I can see, it is far, FAR Worse. Why is that? What could be the reason for such Chaos?

ABC News

Iraq's government, set up in 2006, is "currently facing a generalized breakdown of law and order which presents a serious challenge to the institutions of Iraq" such as police and security forces and the legal system, the U.N. report said, noting that torture was a major concern.

Basicly there is no Law in Iraq - if the Police and the Military and the US are using Torture, then there is nobody that could establish a controlled enviroment and bring Peace to this country. If everybody is doing the same to the people of Iraq, then who is going to play the role of the Law enforcement?

Iraq: Torture Continues at Hands of New Government

Police Systematically Abusing Detainees

The 94-page report, The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody, documents how unlawful arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees (including children) by Iraqi authorities have become routine and commonplace. Human Rights Watch conducted interviews in Iraq with 90 detainees, 72 of whom alleged having been tortured or ill-treated, particularly under interrogation.

“The people of Iraq were promised something better than this after the government of Saddam Hussein fell,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “The Iraqi Interim Government is not keeping its promises to honor and respect basic human rights. Sadly, the Iraqi people continue to suffer from a government that acts with impunity in its treatment of detainees.”

Well the report is pretty much clear, the the police in Iraq - supported and trained by the United States - is still using torture as their tool of the trade; not just torturing adults, but also little children. Better or Worse then Saddam?

But do only Iraqi goverment forces, Iraqi Police and many Militias torture?

Prisons and torture in Iraq

In February ’04, The International Red Cross published its (January) “Report on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and other protected persons in Iraq.” The report drew the attention of the Coalition Forces “to a number of serious violations of International Humanitarian Law.” These violations were “documented and sometimes observed while visiting prisoners of war, civilian internees and other protected persons by the Geneva Conventions (hereafter called persons deprived of their liberty when their status is not specifically mentioned) in Iraq between March and November 2003." The report said that mistreatment allegedly took place at Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper and ‘battle group unit stations.’ Other ‘mistreatment’ places of internment mentioned were: ‘Al-Baghdadi, Heat Base and Hubbania Camp in Ramadi governate; Tikrit holding area (former Saddam Hussein Islamic School); a former train station Al-Khaim, near the Syrian border, turned into a military base; the Ministry of Defense and Presidential Palace in Baghdad, the former mukhabarat office in Basra, as well as several Iraqi police stations in Baghdad. Many of these locations are difficult to identify based on the reported place names, which in many cases do not correspond to the place names used by the US military.”

Interesting.

Hey, there were also British Soldiers in Abu Ghraib!

One UK soldiers even admitted that he commited war crimes:

British soldier admits war crime as court martial told of Iraqi civilian's brutal death

'Systematic' abuse meted out at detention centre

A corporal in the Duke of Lancaster's regiment became the first British soldier ever to be convicted of a war crime yesterday as a court martial heard that he and his colleagues systematically abused prisoners at a detention centre in southern Iraq.

One civilian was killed and others tormented brutally while officers, including the most senior to be brought before a court martial in modern times, did nothing to stop the abuse, it was claimed.

But he is only a ScapeGoat - since the big Fishies, who really AUTHORIZED this Torture to be commited against the Civilians in Iraq, are really just laughing at us and watching the news with a big grin on their faces.

Ofcourse the US Goverment Denies that Torture is out of hand - and so to their biggest fans and supporters on this Forum and in this Thread.

So what is the Proof of Torture for You Guys?

Isn't 6000 Iraqi CIVILIANS killed in two months enough to realize there is a problem?

More than 5,100 were murdered in Baghdad and many victims had been tortured.

Missing eyes, missing teeth, broken limbs - is that enough to reaize the problem?

ABC News

"The body of another man kidnapped by Shiite militias bore signs of facial mutilation, had fingers missing from his hands and had a significant perforation, presumably from a power drill, below his left shoulder."

Great post Soulajh, thankyou...

And you asked the reason WHY? Because the nazi regime in government now, that is running this war and the terror behind the war wants to make these people suffer, for one reason or another.. To perpetuate the terror.. to perpetuate the war.. to get coersed confessions.. to show that there are terrorists all over.. . to MAKE these people the bad guy.. to MAKE these people the terrorists.. And to make the world fear them.. To justify what he's doing over there

In a follow up to this story..

Nowak added, "That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine."

Yahoo News

Now I know alot of people have been saying that Saddam was the worst.. well.. that's what Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture had to say about it.. That Saddam was the worst there was.. until now...

This is sickening

Souljah - excellent posts. Thank you for your research.

It probably won't be enough for some people. Let's look at this, for example:

Originally posted by Muaddib
Do you know what "classified documents mean" Souljah?.....

Obviously the reporter wanted to try to give more credit to that story, but by trying to do that he/she dug the grave of his/her report.

......

Anyways, back to "this post".... i still stand by my statements. The information is exagerated, and anyone that has a mind to read on their own, instead of just following the party line will see it.

Well, Muaddib. Nice to see you're here to dismiss the facts, as usual. Have you ever heard of "The Pentagon Papers"? They, at the time, were classified documents that somehow made their way into the public domain thanks to a public-spirited guy called Daniel Ellsberg. It may seem to you that the mere mention of "classified documents" is enough to rule a report as misinformation, but the Pentagon Papers is only one example of inconvenient facts coming to light.

But lately I've discovered an analytical tool that makes me almost forgiving of the inability of some of the posters here to cope with an influx of information that reveals their government to be, well, let's not mince words, evil. There's a great new book out by John Dean, who was Nixon's counsel back in the days of Watergate, called Conservatives Without Conscience, and he's publicizing a concept that's been around for some time but is rarely talked about, which is the idea that some people, for psychological reasons, have what is referred to as an authoritarian personality.

It seems, according to Dean (and others), that authoritarianism is mostly to be found on the right, and its most prominent characteristics are:

1. Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives. "It is good to have a strong authoritarian leader."

2. Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities. "It is acceptable to be cruel to those who do not follow the rules."

3. Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities. "Traditional ways are best."

It is not an ideological measure, but a social psychological one... For example, RWA theory holds that in the Soviet Union, high RWAs were supporters of the Communist Party because it represented the established authority.

There's another excerpt from the Wiki article that I think applies to certain parts of this thread:

Altemeyer discovered a wide range of correlations over the years, which can be organized into four general categories.

1: Faulty reasoning — RWAs are more likely to:

• Make many incorrect inferences from evidence
  
• Hold contradictory ideas leading them to ‘speak out of both sides of their mouths’
  
• Uncritically accept that many problems are ‘our most serious problem’
  
• Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs
  
• Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear
  
• Use many double standards in their thinking and judgements
  

(from the Wikipedia entry)

There's quite a lot of that sort of thing going on in threads, I find... but it's interesting that John Dean writes (quoted here) :

The heart of [New York University Professor John] Jost and his collaborators’ findings was that people become or remain political conservatives because they have a “heightened psychological need to manage uncertainty and threat.” More specifically, the study established that the various psychological factors associated with political conservatives included (and here I am paraphrasing) fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, overreaction to threats, and a disposition to dominate others.

Anyway, back to the topic.

The whole point is not that the US may have handed Abu Ghraib over to the Iraqis and installed people there who are just as vicious as Saddam's guys (in fact, for all we know, they might even be Saddam's guys), but that there are two other prisons in Iraq which the US still runs out of sight (and out of mind) of everyone.

Camp Bucca Theater Internment Facility (TIF),

was named after Ron Bucca, a New York fire marshal and Army Reservist who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

OOPS! That would seem to be a thinly-veiled propaganda effort to link the invasion of Iraq with the attacks of September 11. Naughty, naughty! So if that's the name of the place, what kind of treatment do you think the prisoners get? The source linked seems to think everything's above board, but I don't find it a particularly bias-free spot, because of this -

The first thing the MPs had to do was find a proper spot to set up an EPW camp. To put up a camp, Army planners first scout out a site isolated enough to be able to protect the prisoners and their guards from attack. Free Iraq Forces are also used to help locate a safe place. The FIF is a group of native Iraqis who have joined to help the American and British forces in freeing the Iraqi people.

BZZZZZZZZZZZ! WRONG answer! It might be what you need to believe to make yourself think this is all worthwhile, but anyone who can look honestly at the situation in Iraq realises that the Iraqi people have NOT been freed. They've been cast loose into civil war, which really doesn't qualify as an improvement.

And "isolated enough to be able to protect the prisoners and their guards from attack"?

In the deep desert no-one can hear you scream.

No-one who gives a damn, that is.

The Wiki entry makes everything seem pretty hunky-dory, but this Global Security report seems to suggest otherwise -

Daily News (New York) February 08, 2005
Bone-Crushing Abuse At Bucca, Letters Say
In-Depth Coverage

By Brian Kates

NEW ALLEGATIONS OF abuse surfaced yesterday at Camp Bucca, the Army's main lockup for Iraqi prisoners after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

A group of Muslim clerics told reporters in Baghdad it received letters from detainees charging that American guards broke some prisoners' legs, smashed others' fingers and forced some to sit for hours inside large freezers.

There's a hilarious Washington Post article that attempts to show that Bucca is the nice, cuddly face of Iraqi detention facilites... but it really doesn't ring true. The reporter is doing the rounds with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, deputy commander of detainee operations in Iraq, and the signs are there of some hasty attempts to make everything look nice. There's a pile of sleeping bags, and Miller checks that all the detainees have one: he also asks whether the detainees are getting bottled water. What comforting attention to detail. Frankly, if they've only just got sleeping bags, what the hell has been going on? Of course, the reporter doesn't ask anything so pointed. And he reports with an apparent poker face the following, which made me lol:

Miller, who ran the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- known as Gitmo -- said Camp Bucca presented a very different set of challenges. "This is a complex business," he said. "Gitmo is different because this population is a relatively small number of terrorists. It's not the same level of evil."

During Miller's visit, commanders showed him an area where workers were constructing large metal cages to replace the tattered tents in the isolation compound for prisoners who had been caught fighting or found with contraband.

Miller walked over to the cages, peered in, shook his head and said finally: "Guys, these don't sing to me. I don't like it. You can't put people in here."

These don't sing to me? Are we really expected to believe that these cages are to be torn down and that this is not a PR exercise for a compliant reporter? Did he, one wonders, ask about the time when several female GIs were involved in a mud-wrestling competition on base/ (Ah, feminism! Women can join the army now! You can be an Army of One AND take your clothes off to mud-wrestle. Endless fun.)

And, you know, when I found out that Miller had been in charge of Guantanamo Bay, I remembered that when he had come to take charge of Abu Ghraib, he had, in his own word, come to "Gitmoize" the place. He took charge of Abu Ghraib before it got the reputation for US torture of its inhabitants!

Our reporter from the Post is either ignorant of this, or unwilling to do even the most basic research.

Yes, you can find people even in the military that resort to inhumane tactics....but that is the exception, not the rule, but people like Souljah here would love to blame it all in the U.S. govenrment... and he is working very hard to make it so and blame as the U.S. much as possible....

Read the same reports you gave...

Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents.

news.bbc.co.uk...

i also love it how you change your views around, just so you can play your blame game time and again. Not too long ago you were one of those people claiming the U.S. govenrment should leave the people of Iraq, and their government alone, but now you say the U.S. has to do something about it?....

Are you ever going to make up your mind, or are you going to continue to change your stance just so you can keep blaming the U.S.?.....

As far as I am concerned, the government endorsed torture when Cheney fought so hard to prevent congress from passing yet another law against it, or when it does the legal redefining, ect, or such standard accepted rules as the geneva convention. You got to admit it does seem to give the impression that something is amiss, doesn't it?

and a rather large portion of of the population seem to be endorsing it when they continually justify such treatment casting the victims as somehow subhuman and therefore worthy of such treatment.

I believe waterboarding was going on, I believe it was endorsed by the bush administration, and I believe if you search the transcripts of the congressional records you will find mention of this fact....

I also believe waterboarding is torture.
I also wouldn't be surprised if it was used by every administration before this one, but it was done in secret, quietly....they at least had enough sense to know that it was something to keep hidden from the american people not to mention the rest of the world! the current administration and their followers seem to be doing everything in their power to make it an acceptable practice in the citizens eyes....ain't going over too well, is it?

you would think that such "compassionate conservatives" would at least have a drop of compassion within them. But, I guess not. Much of the american public does though, and that compassion leads one to accept the idea that to treat any other living being in such cruelity is wrong and can't be done without some rather negative side effects to the ones doing the cruelity also. I have a kid in the military, I also have one about to go in. They are both quite compassionate, and I like that trait in them. I don't want them to be asked to torture anyone, it would strip them of every drop of compassion that they have within them!

The following 4 links are actual videos of Iraqis being tortured by members of Fedayeen Saddam. Warning! these are very graphic videos! The first link shows beatings and blindfolded people being through from rooftops. I will leave the discovery of the remaining 3 up to you.

Ater viewing these, it is difficult how anyone can make a "comparison" case against Saddam.

Warning! Graphic Videos!

[edit on 24-9-2006 by jsobecky]

Yup. Because Saddam did it (and the US and UK supported him through most of it), his torture has to be worse than our torture.

That is an absurd and nonsensical viewpoint.

Torture is torture. People have died under torture from the US, UK and now the new Iraqi forces.

Tell me, jsobecky - how bad does torture have to be before you condemn it? You clearly condenm Saddam's torture... how bad does it have to be before you'd condemn torture condoned by Rummy and Dubya?

Rich..
Some people just wont see their country in bad eyes... they wont.. believe me, My wife wouldnt until she saw the horrors being done by Bush and Government.. She saw many 9/11 videos (A different thread I know) and it opened her eyes.. But there are some that will never open their eyes... they can live in the dark.. that's fine, they're the ones who allow these attrocites to take place by not standing against their dictators.. I mean Governments..

And youre right.. torture is torture... its evil and wrong.. And people die from it every day.. But the ones who do die from it no longer have to suffer.. I feel bad for the ones who are still suffering..

Here's a Link
from another thread of mine, the link was provided by marg6043, I thank you marg6043.. The story details some of the breaches in the CIA torture program, I've sure these methods have been used in the past, and I'd bet dollars to cents they're still being used..

'Grave' breaches detailed Instead of redefining the language of the Geneva Conventions, the compromise instead codifies into federal criminal law a list of actions considered to be "grave" breaches.

The president would be able to prohibit, by executive order, actions that are considered less than grave.

Grave breaches would include torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, biological experiments, murder, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, rape, sexual assault or abuse and taking hostages.

Only the President would dictat what is considered "grave" breaches.. And somehow I dont see him saying that anything would be a grave breach

From this thread

[edit on 24-9-2006 by Ox]

Link

I know that link is a little off topic.. but.. 40 MORE bodies have been founded and appear to have been tortured.. What a shock.. in Iraq.. no that never happens..

This is all terror all the time.. the same crap Bush has been preaching since the november election stir...