this is appalling, abuse of Iraqi prisoners

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners



picture



more sickening pics



'nuff said



edit; took place in the same prison where SH tortured people, "Saddam?s torture palace"
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 578
    akumulatorakumulator Posts: 1,111member
    I saw this on the news.... it's plain disgraceful. I'm extremely disappointed in those troops who did this.
  • Reply 2 of 578
    pfflampfflam Posts: 5,053member
    Allready a thread
  • Reply 3 of 578
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Why not Capital Punishment?
  • Reply 4 of 578
    groveratgroverat Posts: 10,872member
    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.
  • Reply 5 of 578
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    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.
  • Reply 6 of 578
    futuremacfuturemac Posts: 242member
    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?
  • Reply 7 of 578
    newnew Posts: 3,244member
    Turns out the US is even using privat contractors for running interogations in Iraq... guardian linky...



    This is just sickening.
  • Reply 8 of 578
    Quote:

    One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.



    What. The. ****?
  • Reply 9 of 578
    stoostoo Posts: 1,490member
    Quote:

    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.



    Only in the way that nuclear weapons are (i.e. until you remember that noise, even Sesame St., can still be torture).
  • Reply 10 of 578
    piwozniakpiwozniak Posts: 815member
    Aren't wars fun?



    ....bloody bastards



    What's going on in Fellujah?





    "Cry ?Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."

    Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
  • Reply 11 of 578
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by groverat

    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 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.
  • Reply 12 of 578
    anandanand Posts: 285member
    [Edited by Fellowship]



    This post violated posting guidelines and if such is done again the author will have a partial or permanent ban. Any questions should be directed to myself via private messages.



    Fellowship
  • Reply 13 of 578
    thegeldingthegelding Posts: 3,230member
    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
  • Reply 14 of 578
    Obscene. Stop the excuses.
  • Reply 15 of 578
    sammi josammi jo Posts: 4,634member
    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?



  • Reply 16 of 578
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    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.
  • Reply 17 of 578
    piwozniakpiwozniak Posts: 815member
    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..
  • Reply 18 of 578
    Quote:

    Originally posted by piwozniak

    Why everyone is so surprised?...



    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.
  • Reply 19 of 578
    piwozniakpiwozniak Posts: 815member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SonOfSylvanus

    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.
  • Reply 20 of 578
    johnqjohnq Posts: 2,763member
    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.
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