I didn't expect you to see my point. LOL!
Ask him about this:
Consider the following excerpts from a State Department report printed at the end of last year. These are pretty grisly, but I hope you who question what we're trying to achieve in Iraq will read not only these, but the complete report...
state.gov
Iraqi dissidents are tortured, killed, or disappear in order to deter other Iraqi citizens from
speaking out against the government or demanding change. A system of collective punishment
tortures entire families or ethnic groups for the acts of one dissident. Women are raped and often
videotaped during rape to blackmail their
families. Citizens are publicly beheaded, and
their families are required to display the heads of
the deceased as a warning to others who might
question the politics of this regime.
___
"[T]hey stripped me of my clothes and a security officer said “the person you saw has confessed
against you”. He said to me “You followers of [Ayatollah] al-Sadr have carried out acts harmful
to the security of the country and have been distributing anti-government statements coming from
abroad. He asked if I have any contact with an Iraqi religious scholar based in Iran who has
been signing these statements. I said “I do not have any contacts with him” . . . I was then left
suspended [naked and handcuffed, with a board between my elbows and knees on two high
chairs]...My face was looking upward. They attached an electric wire on my penis and the other
end of the wire is attached to an electric motor. One security man was hitting my feet with a
cable. Electric shocks were applied every few minutes and were increased. I must have been
suspended for more than an hour. I lost consciousness. . . . They repeated this method [of
torture] a few times.”
Al-Shaikh Yahya was regularly subjected to electric shocks and beating on his feet. For two
months of his detention, he slept on the floor with his hands tied behind his back and his face on
the floor. According to his testimony, this was more unbearable than the electric shocks. He was
also suspended from a window non-stop for three days once, and at one point during this
suspension, had a heavy weight attached to his genitals.
___
“Iraq under Saddam's regime has become a land of hopelessness, sadness, and fear. A
country where people are ethnically cleansed; prisoners are tortured in more than 300
prisons in Iraq. Rape is systematic . . . congenital malformation, birth defects, infertility,
cancer, and various disorders are the results of Saddam's gassing of his own people. . .
the killing and torturing of husbands in front of their wives and children . . . Iraq under
Saddam has become a hell and a museum of crimes.”
- Safia Al Souhail, Iraqi Citizen, Advocacy Director, International Alliance for Justice
___
Summary executions in Iraq take many cruel forms. A
quick yet effective method is to line up the entire male
population of a village and shoot them systematically, one
at a time, in order to eliminate the village. Saddam
Hussein's regime, however, often prefers methods that take
more time, and inflict more pain on the victim and the
victim's family. His regime has poisoned political
prisoners by giving them a slow-acting poison, thallium,
which slowly infiltrates the system and takes several days
to bring death. Iraqi citizens are often decapitated in front
of family members, and at other times, they are shot in front
of family members and the family is charged for the cost of
the bullet. Saddam Hussein has perfected many of these
methods of murder on Kurds in Northern Iraq and religious
leaders from the Shi'a community, claiming that they are
disloyal to the Government. Once murdered, many Iraqis
are buried in unmarked graves so that their family members
cannot visit them.
(At this point in the report, there is a photo of Iraqi child victims of one of Saddam's chemical weapons attacks)
___
Gwynne Roberts, a reporter for the London-based Independent, describes her experience in a
torture center in Northern Iraq:
In one cell pieces of human flesh – ear lobes – were nailed to the wall, and blood
spattered the ceiling. A large metal fan hung from the ceiling and my guide told me
prisoners were attached to the fan and beaten with clubs as they twirled. There were
hooks in the ceiling used to suspend victims. A torture victim told me that prisoners were
also crucified, nails driven through their hands into the wall. A favorite technique was to
hang men from the hooks and attach a heavy weight to their testicles.
- Independent, March 29, 1991
___
Branding and amputations have been routine in Iraqi hospitals. In 1994, the Iraqi government
issued at least nine decrees that established cruel penalties such as branding. Amputation has
been used against citizens convicted of military desertion. One citizen whose hand was cut off
was paraded on national television as a method of instilling fear in the people.
___
Torture Methods in Iraq
· Medical experimentation
· Beatings
· Crucifixion
· Hammering nails into the fingers and hands
· Amputating the penis or breasts with an electric carving knife
· Spraying insecticides into a victim's eyes
· Branding with a hot iron
· Committing rape while the victim's spouse is forced to watch
· Pouring boiling water into a rectum
· Nailing the tongue to a wooden board
· Extracting teeth with pliers
· Using bees and scorpions to sting naked children in front of their parents
___
Shaho was nine at the time.
Within weeks, he began to suffer
back pains and eventually was
unable to stand or walk. 'Before
the chemical attack, I was
perfectly healthy...
I am certain that poison gas
caused my illness. My mother
lost her sight at the time, and I've
got gradually worse ever since.'
Shaho spends each day at home
lying on his mattress, turned
every thirty minutes by his
devoted sister to avoid bedsores.
[Gwynne Roberts, “Poisonous
Weapons,” Crimes of War, eds.
Gutman and Rieff, (Singapore, 1999)].
It was 6:20 PM on March 16, 1988, when a smell of apples
descended on the town of Halabja. This Iraqi Kurdish town
of 80,000 was instantly engulfed in a thick cloud of gas, as
chemicals soaked into the clothes, mouths, lungs, eyes and
skin of innocent civilians. For three days, Iraqi Air Force
planes dropped mustard gas, nerve agents known as sarin
and tabun, and VX, a newly manufactured and highly lethal
gas. These chemicals murdered at least 5,000 civilians
within hours of the initial attack, and killed and maimed
thousands more over the next several years. Halabja has
experienced staggering rates of aggressive cancer, genetic
mutation, neurological damage, and psychiatric disorders
since 1988. If you walk through the streets today, you will
still see many diseased and disfigured citizens.
___
The daily
newspaper “Babel” owned by Uday, the eldest son of Saddam Hussein, contained a public
admission on February 13, 2001of beheading women who are suspected of prostitution. The Iraqi
Women's League in Damascus, Syria describes this practice as follows.
“Under the pretext of fighting prostitution, units of 'Feda'iyee Saddam', the paramilitary
organization led by Uday, have beheaded in public more than two hundred women all
over the country, dumping their severed heads at their families door steps. Many of the
victims were innocent professional women, including some who were suspected of being
dissidents. Such barbaric acts were carried out in the total absence of any proper
judicial procedures, even under Iraq's own Penal Code.” (March 3, 2001).
___ |
