From: Adam Watt (adamwatt@mac.com)
Date: Tue Jun 01 2004 - 16:51:13 BST
On Tuesday, June 1, 2004, at 03:42 pm, Platt Holden wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> Thanks to MSH we have this comment from Chomsky about American
> treatment of
> jailed suspected terrorists:
>
>> The clear truth of the matter is that it wasn't "abuse,"
>> but torture, and it wasn't a few "bad apples," but general
>> policy.A0
>
> I suggest old Noam learn the difference between abuse and torture by
> first
> having girl's underwear placed on his head and then having his fingers
> chopped off one by one. You can call both torture if you wish, but
> believe
> me, there's a difference. Nor is it U.S. "general policy" to toss
> dissidents
> off 3-story buildings or put them alive feet first in wood chippers.
>
> Talk about making irrational comparisons . . .
>
> Regards,
> Platt
>
> Hello all,
> ^ Another ridiculous post. Platt, There is no comparison being made
> here by anyone but you. Chomsky is saying it wasn't abuse, but
> torture. He's right. Your sorry attempts to belittle his words are
> frankly, quite pathetic.. again. Here's a article detailing a US army
> report. Mild, compared to the views of NGO's like Amnesty and the Red
> Cross, but I thought you'd like to hear it from the guilty party. It
> doesn't even mention the Human Rights violation still taking place in
> Guantanamo Bay, or the myriad of other abuses carried out by US and
> other forces across the world.
Prisoner abuse 'on wider scale', US report says
Mark Oliver
Wednesday May 26, 2004
" An official US army overview of the deaths and alleged abuse of
prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan has revealed a wider scale of
mistreatment than has so far come to light, it was reported today.
The New York Times said it had obtained a recent army synopsis of the
status of investigations into 36 cases of alleged abuse relating to US units.
The paper reported that the document had been compiled by the US army's
criminal investigation command at the request of military officials.
It covers cases at Abu Ghraib prison, near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad,
which is at the centre of a scandal over the abuse of detainees by US
troops.
However, the synopsis, dated May 5, also details previously
unpublicised cases of alleged prisoner mistreatment.
One case cited detailed a prisoner who was in the custody of US navy
commandos in Iraq last month, and whose death the document attributed
"blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia". It described
the death as a suspected "homicide", or murder.
The document also reportedly details investigations into allegations of
prisoner abuse in Samarra, north of Baghdad, last spring, saying that
unidentified enlisted personnel "forced into asphyxiations numerous
detainees in an attempt to obtain information" over a 10-week period.
Most of the allegations of abuse that have already been reported were
claimed to have occurred either as part of interrogations or before
them.
The new evidence of prisoner mistreatment is likely to be interpreted
by some as adding weight to claims that there has been a pattern to
abuse rather than it being, as the White House has insisted, the
actions of "a few".
Reports have claimed that torture had been sanctioned by high-ranking
army and White House officials, who had taken a harder line on
interrogation in the context of the "war on terror".
The New York Times said the army synopsis suggested that the cases of
abuse under greatest scrutiny may have taken place in Afghanistan,
where two prisoners died during one week in December 2002.
The prisoners died in an area near a US base at Bagram airport, which
was being used for interrogations overseen by a platoon from the US
army's North Carolina-based 519th Military Intelligence Battalion.
Military intelligence personnel, and an army reserve military police
unit from Ohio, were thought to have been "involved at various times in
assaulting and mistreating the detainees", according to the document.
US army officials had originally said that at least one of the deaths
had been due to natural causes, the Times says.
It adds that the document was apparently put together during the week
after reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib first emerged, and may have been a
response to the intense scrutiny facing the US military.
The White House is under growing pressure over its handling of the
situation in Iraq, partially due to the Abu Ghraib revelations. Seven
US soldiers have so far been charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at
the jail. "
and this..
Yet more photos of US brutality published
Josh White, Christian Davenport and Scott Higham
Friday May 21, 2004
" The video begins with three soldiers huddled around a naked detainee,
his thin frame backed against a wall. With a snap of his wrist, one of
the soldiers slaps the man across his left cheek so hard that the
prisoner's knees buckle. Another detainee, handcuffed and on his back,
is dragged across the prison floor.
Then, the human pyramid begins to take shape. Soldiers force hooded and
naked prisoners into crouches on the floor, one by one, side by side, a
soldier pointing to where the next ones should go. The grainy video
stops. But there is more.
In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short
digital videos obtained by the Washington Post, US soldiers are shown
physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu
Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
The new pictures and videos go beyond the photos previously released to
the public in several ways, amplifying the overt violence against
detainees and displaying a variety of abusive techniques previously
unseen. They show a group of apparently cavalier soldiers assaulting
prisoners, forcing detainees to masturbate, and standing over a naked
prisoner while holding a shotgun. Some of the videos echo scenes in
previously released still photographs - such as the stacking of naked
detainees - but the video images render the incidents more vividly.
Defence department spokesman Lawrence DiRita said the photographs, by
description, sounded like those the Pentagon has exhibited to members
of Congress and that defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld had warned might
yet become public. "There are a series of investigations going on as a
result of the disclosure of the activities depicted on photos," Mr
DiRita said last night.
In another photo, the same handler has the black dog, which this time
looks ready to pounce as a naked detainee shrinks away in the middle of
a prison hallway, his hands defensively up in front of him. Another
soldier, his hands in his pockets, watches.
The photos continue, showing an array of abuse in what appear to be
different rooms, cells, showers and hallways of Abu Ghraib.
Hooded and cloaked men are handcuffed to hallway rails. A prisoner in
flexible handcuffs is made to use a banana to simulate anal sex. Two
naked male detainees are handcuffed to each other. A naked detainee
hangs upside down from a top bunk. Another naked detainee grimaces, his
face pressed against the ground, a soldier bending his arm behind his
back. Blood covers the detainee's left knee, and another soldier grabs
his right leg.
In one photo, a detainee is stripped to his underwear, in a hood. He is
standing, crouched, on top of two boxes of MRE military meals, his arms
cuffed around his left knee, his right ankle chained to a cell door.
Another detainee appears to be the victim of a cruel joke: A photo
shows the man's deformed left hand emerging from an orange jumpsuit,
the words "The Claw" written in English on his left breast pocket. A
crude drawing of the man's hand appears on the back of his jumpsuit in
another photo, with "The Claw" scrawled across his shoulder blades in
black ink.
The situation inside the prison became so chaotic that U.S. soldiers
turned their cameras on themselves, filming scenes of consensual sex.
Photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib were presented to Army
investigators in January. They began to surface publicly last month,
severely damaging the US reputation in the Arab world.
"Be on notice," Mr Rumsfeld said in a standing-room-only Senate hearing
room on May 8. "There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist.
If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse." "
Washington Post staff writer Thomas E Ricks contributed to this
report
Copyright Los Angeles Times / Washington Post News Service
Regards to all,
Adam
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