this is appalling, abuse of Iraqi prisoners - Page 7

The torture and sadism at the Abu Ghraib prison were spawned at another Iraqi jail called Camp Bucca.

And it may have been allowed to flourish by inept officers and inadvertently encouraged by a policy that urged the prison guards to perform jobs they weren't trained to do.

Some of the U.S. soldiers who were photographed sexually humiliating prisoners at deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's most notorious prison were also at Camp Bucca last year, when the facility was rocked by allegations that detainees were beaten.

But instead of throwing the book at the four soldiers caught abusing Iraqi detainees, the military gave them the boot with less-than-honorable discharges, according to a scathing report into the shocking sadism prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.

Their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, was transferred to Abu Ghraib, where the actions of soldiers supposedly under his command have shamed the nation and outraged the Arab world.

"The information in the Taguba report links the atrocities at Abu Ghraib to Camp Bucca," Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said at a Senate hearing Friday into the explosive abuse charges. "In fact, some of the same people, some of the same command, some of the same MPs [military police] were involved apparently.

Gen. Janis Karpinski, who as head of the 800th Military Police Brigade - based in Uniondale, L.I. - oversaw all the U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and supervised Phillabaum, told Army investigators their failure to properly punish the soldiers at Camp Bucca led to the outrages at Abu Ghraib.

"The decisions were made to give the guilty people at Bucca plea bargains," Karpinski said in the report. "So, the system communicated to the soldiers, 'The worst that's gonna happen is you're gonna go home.'"

Karpinski, who is back home in Hilton Head, S.C., could be stripped of her command because of the abuses that happened on her watch. Her lawyer, Neil Puckett, said "the abuses at Abu Ghraib are related to what happened at Camp Bucca."

"Some of the MPs who were up at Camp Bucca were indeed transferred to Abu Ghraib," Puckett said. "I believe there were relationships between the folks charged now and folks who were separated from the military back then. I wonder if there is a more widespread problem."

Phillabaum, commander of the 320th Military Police Battalion, based in Ashley, Pa., faces official reprimands for what Taguba called his "extremely ineffective" leadership.

Troops told Taguba that they rarely saw Phillabaum or Karpinski.

Phillabaum did not return calls to his Lansdale, Pa., home.

Other top commanders in the unit also received scathing assessments by Taguba, with two majors called "essentially dysfunctional" and another top officer "unwilling to accept responsibility."

In addition, the military police were told to "'set the conditions' for MI [military intelligence] interrogations," the report said.

Taguba said the tactic that "military police actively set the favorable conditions for subsequent interviews runs counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility."

SMITH:_Sir, we knew that there were photos on June 14th because that's how the investigation started -- I mean January 14th._When the soldier...

Do you condemn or condone acts such as this that I have described? And if you condemn them, how would capital punishment not fit this crime that I (and the media) have described?

Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
New posted this picture on January 4, 2003.

It isn't difficult to find evidence of systematic maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners and it's not difficult to see how we ended up where we have.
Incidentally, just for our amusement, when New posted it, trumptman replied:

pscates, ironically enough, posted this:

One mrmister said this:

Aww.

In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called O.G.A., or other government agenciesthat is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employeeswas brought to his unit for questioning. They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away. The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prisons inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, and therefore never had a number.

The photographs show a 52-year-old former Baath Party official, Nadem Sadoon Hatab, who died at the detention center last June after a three-day period in which he was allegedly subjected to beatings and karate kicks to the chest and left to die naked in his own feces.

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Camp White Horse was allegedly carried out by U.S. Marine reservists. The accused reservists have told their lawyers they were given orders to "soften up" the men in their custody for interrogation by what were known as human exploitation teams from military intelligence.
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According to testimony in the case, Hatab was targeted for especially harsh treatment because he was believed to be in possession of Jessica Lynch's 507th Army Battalion weapon and suspected of involvement in the ambush of her unit.