Taguba Report: Systemic Torture of Iraqi POWs For Months

Also, how are these soldiers *not* prisoners of war?

 

Saw the most disgusting video in the world today relating to this.

They took an old famous religious guy, made him wear a bra and panties, and put him in the women's prison.

Must've been taken out of context though .

 

The hubris of this man is unbelievable. Does he even read this stuff before he makes his speeches? Or is he just that thick.

I think he's just that thick.
Amazing. Not that we didn't have an impact on the abuses of Saddam's regime... but to say this during a firestorm of world outrage directed at us because of torture conducted by our own troops, no matter how few in number, is staggering. I feel sorry for Powell. I really do. Bush talks like he has no comprehension of foreign policy and no clue about the impact his words have overseas. I really feel he's living in a fantasy world created by his own ignorance and his compliant staff. It's frightening, isn't it.

 

Don't know if it's been posted yet, but on Charlie Rose last night, Hersh made the comment that there are prison wings for teenagers and women.

And here I was a few days back wondering why Iraqis were attacking a prison.

 

I'm certainly not inclined to feel sorry for that POS Uncle Tom, but I am extremely puzzled as to why he continues to serve. Surely he has sense enough to see what a fiasco this has become and the foresight to comprehend how completely untenable it will be. Does he really want history to lump him in with all the other cretins and criminals that are steering the country at present? Why does he not resign, immediately? Any ideas?

 

Powell had another choice. He could have resigned if he felt so strongly about lying to the world about our reasons for the war. Instead, he did the same thing when he investigated My Lai, he toed the company line, and left the dirty work of uncovering the truth to others.

 

I'm somewhat happy that Powell did have concerns and raised them. But he can't win in this administration. They haven't listened to much if anything of his ideas, it seems. They still present him as a show of how moderate the administration is and then go ahead and don't listen to his ideas or concerns.

I have always believed that he was torn because his ideas are more just, but placing such a high value on loyalty, he hasn't created waves, or anything else.

But the fact of the matter is, after a point he has to see that he's being used, and ill-respected. There comes a time when he has to resign, or do something.

 

One could very easily replace 'personal agendas' with 'morals' and 'duty' with 'politics.'

I have, yes. From what I've read his input is generally summarily dismissed, but I can only hope it carries an effect internally.

 

I expressed feeling sorry for Powell for exactly the reasons MacBeth gave, but I also agree with nyrocket that the time has come and passed for Powell to do the honorable thing... resign. I wish he would. It's not too late for him to maintain some dignity and salvage a largely sterling career of service to the United States. Being window-dressing for moderation at this point, even if the intentions are good, is of little use to the country, imo.

I don't use the word "honor" a lot. Recently (within the last few weeks), I said that we should stay in Iraq until we can leave with honor, along with the other reasons for staying to finish the "job". But lately it has been harder and harder to feel that way when I see Bush stick his chest out and say, "We're not going to cut and run while I'm President."

Bush made what I consider to be an almost cavalier decision to invade a sovereign country, detestable dictator or not, that wasn't a clear and present danger to the United States. He justified doing so with what I think were dishonorable means. He invaded without a coherent exit strategy and ignoring the advice to have a large enough force to blanket the country with sufficient troops to insure that we wouldn't see just what we are seeing now. One could go on with listing his mistakes, not that his most ardent supporters would pay the least attention.

What I'm getting at is that I'm beginning to feel that we are doing a disservice to our armed forces and the Iraqi people by staying. I'm not at that position yet, but, surprisingly for me, I'm beginning to get there.

 

The guys with courage were the guys who complained and who investigated My Lai and revealed the truth. Colin Powell revealed his true character with that one investigation. If he is so beholden to duty to overlook doing the right thing, that's his flaw.

He should not cut and run to save his prestige but to make a statement that he feels this is so wrong that he wanted to have nothing to do with it. By staying he is implicitly condoning the action.

At this point, I don't see how it could not have gotten much worse than it is.

 

I have an idea which might help save some shred of our dignity regarding this shameful set of events.

I know it will never happen, but I want to throw it out there for discussion anyway.

1.The U.S. should issue apologies, investigate the violations and detain everyone from top to bottom involved as a prisoner including Generals or CIA folk etc.

2.The U.S. should wait until a democratically elected form of govt. is in place in Iraq.

3. The U.S. should turn over the prisoners and all evidence to the new Iraqi govt. and let these cases be the first tried under the new Iraqi legal system.

I know it wouldn't make up for what's been done, but it might show a sincerity about an apology(which hasn't happened yet) and our intent to let Iraqis control their own country and destinies.

 

The only way to avoid an totally untenable outcome in Iraq at ths point is restore some international legitimacy to the "Coalition" not vis-a-vis the UN but via some collaboration between NATO and the Arab league. De-americanization of the rebuilding process seems to be the only way to regain the trust of the Iraqis and the international community.

Sadly though I don't think this is possible, Bush & co. would never go hat in hand back to NATO and I don't think they'd trust him either, as for the Arab league, selling out to Sharon was probably the last straw but the torture at Abu Ghairab has extinguished the last few shreds of crediblity the US had in the Arab world...I wouldn't be surprised if the few friendly arab regimes like Kuwait and Bahrain start distancing themselves even more.

 

As a first step, the occupying forces could release a comprehensive list of who is in jail. As it is, Iraqis go without knowing where there family members are for months. If they are criminals, they deserve to be in jail but in any case that does not mean they should go into some black hole where no one knows if they are in jail or dead ala Saddam or any other two bit dictator.

 

Train wreck looming...
_________________

Bush To Address Abuse On Arab TV
May 4, 2004

(CBS)The deaths of 10 prisoners and abuse of 10 more in Iraq and Afghanistan are under criminal investigation, the Army disclosed on Tuesday as U.S. commanders in Baghdad announced interrogation changes and the White House reached out to the Arab world to try to blunt a widening and increasingly damaging controversy.

And, the military has already determined that two prisoners were murdered — one by a soldier and one by a civilian working for the CIA, and another Iraqi prisoner died at the hands of U.S. Marines, reports CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin.

President Bush's national security adviser said Bush "will speak directly to the Arab world," and a White House official said the president is planning to do interviews with Arab television to underscore his feelings about photographs of naked prisoners and gloating U.S. soldiers.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that Bush will conduct two 10-minute interviews with the U.S.-sponsored Al-Hurra television network and the Arab network Al Arabiya.

"This is an opportunity for the president to speak directly to the people in Arab nations and let them know that the images that we all have seen are shameless and unacceptable," McClellan said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld condemned abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers as "totally unacceptable and un-American."

Outraged by the sexual humiliation and abuses of Iraqis by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison, senators called for Rumsfeld to explain the situation in an open congressional hearing as soon as possible.

"We all feel outraged at these pictures," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the Arab television station Al-Arabiya. She said Bush was "determined to find out if there is any wider problem than just what happened at Abu Ghraib. And so he has told Secretary Rumsfeld that he expects an investigation, a full accounting."

Among Tuesday's revelations, one week after the publication of devastating details of Iraqis suffering physical and sexual abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers:

The Army said one soldier had been court-martialed for using excessive force in shooting to death an Iraqi prisoner last September. The soldier was reduced in rank and dismissed from the Army, an official said.

The Army also disclosed that it had referred to the Justice Department a homicide case involving a CIA contract interrogator alleged to be responsible for the death of an Iraqi prisoner last November. That death was at Abu Ghraib prison, notorious during Saddam Hussein's rule for torture and killing and now the focus of global outrage over U.S. mistreatment.

In Baghdad, the new commander of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq said he would cut in half the number of Iraqis in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and end some interrogation techniques considered humiliating, such as hooding prisoners. Some Iraqis who have been freed from coalition jails stepped forward with new allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation and hours spent hooded and kneeling before interrogators.

In somber tones at his first Pentagon news conference since the reports of abuse surfaced, Rumsfeld said Americans should not believe that the behavior captured in the photographs of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with naked Iraqi prisoners is tolerated.

"The images that we've seen that include U.S. forces are deeply disturbing, both because of the fundamental unacceptability of what they depicted and because the actions by U.S. military personnel in those photos do not in any way represent the values of our country or of the armed forces," Rumsfeld said.

Reaction to photographs of the apparent abuse reverberated from Capitol Hill to the United Nations on Tuesday. More Iraqis on Tuesday came forward to allege abuse at the hands of American interrogators, and a military official said U.S. authorities have ordered a halt to using hoods to blindfold Iraqi prisoners.

The photographs, first broadcast last week by CBS News' 60 Minutes II, showed prisoners hooded and nude, forced into sexual positions and piled together. One was attached to wires and told he might be electrocuted.

"The actions of the soldiers in those photographs are totally unacceptable and totally un-American," Rumsfeld told reporters. "I intend to take any and all actions that may be needed" to address any abuse.

The defense secretary rejected suggestions that part of the Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq to remove a ruthless government that tortured its own people had been undermined by the behavior of U.S. soldiers responsible for detention facilities.

"The pattern and practice of the Saddam Hussein regime was to do exactly what you said, to murder and torture, and the killing fields are filled with mass graves. And equating the two, I think, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what took place" at Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld said.

While the investigation continues into who, if anybody, gave orders for prisoners to be treated this way, the new commander of U.S. prisons in Iraq today announced he has ordered a halt to placing hoods over prisoners' heads -- they will still be blindfolded, reports Martin.

Rumsfeld said he hoped the photos represented an isolated case.
But the basis for such hope seemed to be eroding.

Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, told reporters there were 10 investigations underway of prisoner deaths
mostly in Iraq and 10 pending cases involving possible assault of prisoners, including one sexual assault. Also, one prisoner's death was ruled to have been a justified homicide.

Investigations into 12 other detainee deaths that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2002 had concluded that the causes were either undetermined or natural, Ryder said.

The Pentagon does not recognize detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as prisoners of war. The Army's second-ranking officer, Gen. George Casey, was asked at a news conference with Ryder whether that policy might have led soldiers to think they could use excessive force against the detainees. Casey said no.

"It's very basic for us, how we treat detainees," Casey said. "We treat all of the folks we come in contact with with dignity and respect."

Rumsfeld said U.S. military authorities have pursued the allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq since Jan. 14, one day after a soldier brought the matter to a commander's attention.

He also said investigations were being opened to determine whether abuses occurred in other prisons and camps run by the U.S. military, including the Guantanamo Bay detention center and the Charleston, S.C., Naval Station brig, where war-on-terror suspects are held.

Asked about the impact of Abu Ghraib on the U.S. image around the world, Rumsfeld said it was "unhelpful in a fundamental way. It's harmful."

The sexual humiliation photographed in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad which has drawn worldwide condemnation is "as serious a problem of breakdown in discipline as I've ever observed," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

In Baghdad, Iraq's U.S.-appointed human rights minister, Abdul-Basat al-Turki, said Tuesday he had resigned to protest abuses by American guards, and Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi demanded that Iraqi officials be allowed to help run the prisons.

Al-Turki said he resigned "not only because I believe that the use of violence is a violation of human rights but also because these methods in the prisons mean that the violations are a common act."

Many of the allegations of abuse were contained in an internal Pentagon report completed in March.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., demanded to know why Bush was not earlier informed of the report and why Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers had not yet read the two-month old document.

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush first became aware of the allegations of abuse some time after the Pentagon began looking into it, but did not see the pictures until they were made public last week. Bush did not learn of the classified Pentagon report until news organizations reported its existence, McClellan said.

Rumsfeld said he had read an executive summary of the report. He denied any foot dragging by the Pentagon and said the correct military procedures were being followed.

"These things are complicated, they take some time," he said of the investigations. "The system works."

Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said the February report had been moving up the chain of command. "There had been no attempt to hide this," said Pace, who joined Rumsfeld in briefing reporters at the Pentagon.

Pace said Pentagon officials agreed with the internal Army report's findings that the prisons in Iraq were understaffed for the number of prisoners incarcerated and that those serving as prison guards had been inadequately trained.

 

More than 30 investigations...
_____________________

Army Discloses Criminal Inquiry on Prison Abuse
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT, NYTIMES

Published: May 5, 2004


WASHINGTON, May 4 — In the last 16 months, the Army has conducted more than 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and two deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides, the Army's vice chief of staff said Tuesday.

To date, the most severe penalties in any of the cases were less-than-honorable discharges for five Army soldiers, military officials said. No one has been sentenced to prison, they said.

The disclosure of the investigations, by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army's second-highest ranking general, was the strongest indication to date of a wider pattern of abuse at American prisons beyond the horrific descriptions and photographs that have emerged recently of acts of humiliation, sexual and otherwise, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in November.

At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld condemned the abuses at Abu Ghraib as "totally unacceptable and un-American," but sought to minimize the significance of incidents elsewhere and insisted that the military had acted swiftly in cases in which misconduct was alleged. "The system works," he said.

But on Capitol Hill, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed anger after a briefing in which they were told of the details and potential scope of the misconduct for the first time.

The Senate Intelligence Committee said it would hold a closed session on Wednesday to determine whether American intelligence officers from the military or other agencies were involved.

The Bush administration dispatched top officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to contain the fallout over the widening story of abuse at the prisons, which Mr. Powell said had "stunned every American." Administration officials have acknowledged that the episode had caused enormous damage to the American image around the world.

To date, only Army military police officers assigned to Abu Ghraib prison have been disciplined in abuses committed in November in a secure cellblock. But a March 9 report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said two military intelligence officers and two private contractors who oversaw interrogations may have been "either directly or indirectly responsible."

It was not until April 24 that the Army began to investigate possible involvement by military intelligence units and contractors working with them in Iraq in any abuse, including the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade; employees of CACI, a private contractor; and the Iraqi Survey Group, a unit of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to Defense Department officials.

The worst abuses at Abu Ghraib took place in November, after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then in charge of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, recommended changes in procedures intended "to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," according to General Taguba's report.

In Iraq on Tuesday, General Miller said he had recommended that military police be given a more active role in gathering intelligence, but said the abuses had not been the result.

In providing a detailed accounting of other Army investigations into accusations of abuse, General Casey said the military had conducted a total of 25 criminal investigations into deaths and 10 into allegations of misconduct involving detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of the cases involving death, the cause in 12 was natural or undetermined.

Of the 13 other deaths, one — a prisoner killed while trying to escape — was ruled a justifiable homicide, General Casey said.

Of the two cases determined to have been criminal homicides, defense officials said, one was in Iraq, and has resulted in a dishonorable discharge but not the jailing of the American soldier responsible, whose actions were judged to have been provoked by rock-throwing Iraqi prisoners.

 

How does one discover a translator adroit in malapropisms?