this is appalling, abuse of Iraqi prisoners

I saw this on the news.... it's plain disgraceful. I'm extremely disappointed in those troops who did this.

Allready a thread

Why not Capital Punishment?

Because that is way too extreme a punishment.

Court martial. Run them out, strip them of every medal or award they have ever earned. Let it be known who they are and what they did.
Convict them of sexual assault and terrorism.

Kill them? No way.

I thought it was kind of cool how intel would play loud, heavy metal in their cells until they'd crack, but this is not cool.

Anyway, getting courtmartialed is pretty shitty. You end up in jail and have a major stain on your record. It's a fitting punishment.

I've heard that these photos have note been seen in the ME yet.

There will be more trouble when they do - the lines have always been blurred but now we can start to really see it: the mercenaries that were barbarically killed - now this.

We don't need any more of this bs - it's all gone over the top. Like an unfunny Monty Python.

Shouldn't this be merged anyway ?

why is anyone surprised by this?

i just wonder why it took this long for this to come out. i guess this is the way we "win hearts and minds"

but this is only a drop in the bucket, they "confiscated" tons of other pics...

i remember last year when i saw a pic of what i called a "home invasion" of an iraqi family by us troops and they showed a pic of a us soldier and a hancuffed child of about 8 years old and the little boy was on the ground with the soldier's boot on his neck and his face in the dirt. and i thought "did he really need to do that?"

any wonder why they dont want us there?

Turns out the US is even using privat contractors for running interogations in Iraq... guardian linky...

This is just sickening.

What. The. ****?

Only in the way that nuclear weapons are (i.e. until you remember that noise, even Sesame St., can still be torture).

Aren't wars fun?

....bloody bastards

What's going on in Fellujah?


"Cry Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

I disagree. Capital Punishment is supposed to be a great deterrent to other potential offenders. I'm afraid that letting someone out of service during a war isn't a stringent enough penalty. In fact, it might encourage some of those that want out to do more of the same. Hell, it's a free ticket back to civilization.

I say Capital Punishment, as long as the country still wants to use it at all.

EDIT: If they're civilians, then they definitely need something more strict than stripping them of their medals. THey don't get medals. Capital Punishment.

[Edited by Fellowship]

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Fellowship

this will "play poorly" in the middle east...sexual abuse, especially by american woman against muslim men as is shown in many of the photos, is looked on very very harshly...not to mention placing the men in "homosexual" positions...i think the people of iraq and the middle east are gonna come out highly pissed and aren't going to accept the line of "it is a few and they will be punished"...they will see an american woman humiliating a muslim prisoner, they will see american soldiers abusing muslim prisoners...not gonna be pretty when the papers run the photos

maybe this is why they closed down the paper of the one cleric...perhaps they can keep it out of the other papers but knew they couldn't keep it out of his??

g

Obscene. Stop the excuses.

Amnesty International: torture not isolated

Horrible, but no surprises here. This kind of stuff happens anywhere prisoners are taken during armed conflict, insurrection, or even protests/demonstrations. If you knew anyone who was in Miami during the anti-WTO protests last year, then they could tell you things that would make anyone's skin crawl. The stuff that went down in Miami Police Dept.'s jail cells (repeated 110v electric shocks with bare-ended cables, sodomy with large objects, homosexual rape, beatings, one kid was even smashed on the head with a hammer, almost killing him etc. etc.) was similar to what we are seeing in the photographs coming out of Baghdad.

What is it about human beings in positions of great power over others that brings out the worst, or least civilized behavior? It seems universal, like some kind of perverted sport, as in what happened in ancient Rome etc. Is there any hope for us as a species?

I'm a little confused by the accused enlisted people's protest that they hadn't received guidance around appropriate procedures, or they hadn't gotten any training in being prison guards, or they hadn't been apprised of the terms of the Geneva Convention.

Is the thinking here that without specific instructions otherwise, the default behavior is to abuse and humiliate prisoners?

It would be one thing if we were talking about substandard cell conditions or lack of access to exercise and fresh air or poor quality meals, because these are the sorts of things that could be chalked up to lack of preparation or understaffing or poor communications. Sins of omission rather than commission.

But these pictures depict specific instances of elaborate humiliation of the sort that require real effort and imagination on the part of the abusers.

Unless the argument is that these tableau were order by superior officers the accused have no excuses whatsoever.

Why everyone is so surprised?

You know what russians did to afghans caught during afghan war (and vice-versa) ...

Or in Vietnam, Korea, or during WWII.


It starts from the kids with guns, thinking they are invincible, doing the right thing, then being confronted with the reality, being afraid of loosing their lives, not knowing if the next person you talk to won't try to kill you.

This is not war when you have 2 armies going to fight it out in an open field and loosers congratulate the winners after the battle.

It's urban/gorilla fighting, you have to watch your back all the time, any chance they got to 'get even' they will take. Do you think soldiers are afraid of killing iraqis? They aren't. They are the enemy who wants to get you.

Do you think people in charge give a sh*t about iraqis?
How can you order use of laser guided bombs in an area when you know there are innocent civilians..? How about helicopter air strikes?
These guys don't want to risk lives of US boys, so they will do it from the air, then send troops to clean up the mess.

It's a war, realize it, conventions do not apply, it looks different for someone releasing press statements from the comfort of their offices, than it is to a soldier on a patrol mission.

Look at the available pictures, look at their faces, most of them are naive kids, or 'tough guys'.

These things happening on a daily basis, realize it.

It takes something like that to make people stick their heads out of their a**es and open their eyes a little.. but there are other awful things taking place right now, most of which we will have no knowledge of or will learn about in many years from now.

Wake up people, welcome to the "iraqi freedom"

What a BS..

This was not a battlefield. This was a prison. Not even a prisoner of war camp, but a prison. Murderers, rapists and thieves, yes. But any kind of enemy, no.

Sure it is a battlefield..

Imagine you being a soldier in Baghdad, your duty is to take care of the inmates, and every day you learn that more and more of your country man are being killed.

Would you feel neutral?

If you have nothing to be afraid of? Wouldn't you abuse your powers?

Give me a break.

That's what war brings out in people.

When U.S. soldiers train to endure various forms of torture, which includes mocking, offensive and dangerous situations, don't forget there are people, fellow U.S. soldiers, doing the mock tortures. (Often people serve both roles in training).

Combined with brutal hazing rituals within the ranks, already notoriously bad, can this instance of apparent Iraqi torture be any surprise?

We're training people to kill and most of them don't kill but are relegated to lighter duty. Already desensitized to torture (giving and receiving) from training and already inured to killing (if only in theory), is it any wonder we have this happen?

I won't argue that torture of Iraqis is systemic, (we'd need far more evidence for that), but more importantly and more accurately that the causes of the dehumanization that can lead to it, at the hands of U.S. troops, is systemic, in the training system.

There needs to be a total overhaul of the training to have tougher psychological testing and training.

This is the "Stanford Prison Experiment" with a global audience. Good people* can and will do horrible things under the right circumstances. We need to not merely punish the people (ir)responsible parties, but also change the things that lead to such situations. A token punishment won't be enough if the system remains untouched.


* "Good people" read: "Everyman". That isn't a defense of these particular people.

More pictures: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/


Such is the problem with contractors

Apparently these pictures showing Iraqi prisoners being paraded naked are a year old. Looks like this might be a tip of an iceberg.

If you are going to write "RAPIST" on a prisoner's ass and then take pictures, can't you at least take the time to do a spellcheck?

"Rapeist"?

The U.S. education system is truly screwed.

Someone please tell me that's not a tattoo. U.S. soldiers tattooing prisoners would make things truly explosive.

hey that's a norwegian article. How did you find it?

You sound like you think we can't get foreign/Norwegian sites here in the U.S.

Norwegian Google links pertaining to Irak

Just add site:.no to your search. Of course it'll help if you use their spellings.

You can search only a given country's domain that way (assuming the are not on .com etc).

hey, I remember reading the article, I was just impressed by it showing up here so much later. I doubt segovius googled it.

Who is this little fvcking kid in all the pictures?!

Are we to assume Joe Mercenary (Halliburton Division) brought his little kid to Iraq to aid in "security duties"? He's WAY too young to be in the military, and almost certainly NOT Iraqi, so how the hell did this little douche get into this prison for photo ops?

Obviously soldiers are not allowed to bring relatives into the battle area, so the only logical conclusion is that he's the son of a civlian contractor. Gee, there's certainly no reason to worry about hiring civilian contractors to perform military security duties in Iraq now, is there?



Wait until these pictures get out... talk about taking anti-American hatred to new levels.

That not a kid. I believe your "he" is a female soldier.

not a kid, a female soldier...

a female american soldier doing that to iraqi men will make many arabs quite unhappy


g

at least she isn't wearing a cross necklace...that would really cause some shit

They'll probably not be too impressed by being pissed on either.

But the propagandists told me only the evildoers do this sort of thing.

Personally, if I was in charge of the the war, I would take every opportunity to demoralize and decimate the population. Makes for a weaker country afterwards and ensures your dominance. None of this pussy-footing. Of course this is also why they don't let me have sharp objects...

Hello? Can we please read the sources?

The "kid" is Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade which oversees all the U.S. detention centers in Iraq.

So it's worse on many levels, moreso than were it a mere "kid".

Here is the 60 minutes report:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Nomad667/iraq.wmv

Sorry, but look at her. She looks like she's 14 year old boy. Honsetly, if he's a she and not only that but old enough to be a Brigadier General, the pictures sure fooled me. WTF... I need a beer.

Various articles (whose views and agenda's are irrelevant) mentioning B.G. Karpinski, all sadly ironic after the latest news.

Looks like a lot of wool pulled over people's eyes:

http://burns.house.gov/html/release.cfm?id=70



http://www.freedom.gov/Bradley/email%20update2.htm



http://www.khilafah.com/home/printab...ocumentID=7799



By the way she is pantomiming machine-gunning their genitals. Not sure if anyone picked up on that up or not. (Although perhaps she is merely pointing and giving a thumbs up. She later gives only the thumbs up, so I might be wrong).

Also, the above was merely Googled. I have not read those websites regularly aside from this instance. That's in case any dot connectors want to somehow tie me to a particular site or view.

Just so you know...that is a British soldier...can't have the Americans have all the fun...

Sickening..,stupid and...got one word to describe it:

QUAGMIRE