Pentagon investigates 'brutal' deaths of 5 Iraqi prisoners csmonitor.com
[ A little news roundup on the "spin, lies, bias, and prevarication" front. It's a conspiracy. ]
Report: 75 cases of Iraqi prisoner abuse being examined
by Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
The Denver Post reported Wednesday that Pentagon records show "brutal interrogation techniques" used by US military personnel are being investigated in the deaths of five Iraqi prisoners who were held in war zone detention camps. The Post says the details of the deaths of the prisoners provide the "clearest view" yet of the kind of tactics used to "coax secrets from Iraqis."
The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure. Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another detainee died "while undergoing stress technique interrogation," involving smothering and "chest compressions," according to the documents.
Documents obtained during the Post's investigation show that 75 allegations of prisoner abuse are being investigated in Iraq – more than twice as many as previously reported. Twenty-seven of those allegations involve the death of a prisoner, and eight of those 27 are "believed to be homocides."
Find out more.
ABC News reported Tuesday that a former US intelligence staffer at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad says the Army concealed its involvement in abuse scandal. "There's definitely a cover-up," the witness, Sgt. Samuel Provance, said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet." The Washington Post reports that Sgt. Provance ran a top secret computer network at the Iraqi prison. While Provance did not see any of the alleged abuse take place, he said military interrogators talked freely about the tactics they used.
According to Provance, some of the physical abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib included US soldiers "striking [prisoners] on the neck area somewhere and the person being knocked out. Then [the soldier] would go to the next detainee, who would be very fearful and voicing their fear, and the MP would calm him down and say, 'We're not going to do that. It's OK. Everything's fine,' and then do the exact same thing to him." Provance also described an incident when two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night and stripped her naked to the waist. The men were later restrained by another MP.
Provance is also concerned about the possibility of being punished by military authorities for being honest and reporting the abuse. He said that if he had pretended that he had seen nothing, as many other have, his life would be "just fine right now."
An editorial in The Christian Science Monitor, however, says it important for people like Provance, and Army Reserve Spc. Joseph Darby, who first brought the allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib to the military authorities, to show this kind of "moral courage."
Moral courage derives its strength from the ability to not just have values, but to practice and live them. When values get turned into action, mountains can be moved. Luminaries such as Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel have proven that, but so have everyday individuals like Darby, as well as three soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison who actually refused to go along with the abuse, or tried to stop it, despite the threat of ridicule and court-martial.
Top US commanders acknowledged Wednesday that US military doctrine for imprisoning and interrogating prisoners is "flawed, confusing and desperately in need of fixing." Gen. John Abizaid, top US military commander in Iraq, told a US Senate Committee investigating the abuse of Iraqi prisoners that "our doctrine is not right." Newsday reports that Gen. Abizaid, who was accompanied by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US-led coalition forces in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of US-run prisons in Iraq, denied authorizing "brutal" interrogation techniques, and said that reports from the Red Cross about these tactics "never reached him."
But the New York Times reported Tuesday that Army officials in Iraq responded late last year to a Red Cross report of abuses at Abu Ghraib by trying to curtail the international agency's spot inspections of the prison. The Times says Tuesday the information came from a senior Army officer who served in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross said Wednesday that it is still worried about the conditions at Abu Ghraib. The Evening Standard of London reports that conditions have improved since the Red Cross's highly critical February report detailed a catalogue of "unacceptable" practices. But delegates who visited the prison in March demanded further measures to meet the Geneva Conventions, said Red Cross director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl.
"We felt that some of the findings and recommendations that we submitted have been taken seriously, that on some issues corrective measures were taken but they remained areas of concern for which we did request further measures to be taken and would continue to look at and follow up visits regularly."
The Red Cross says it wants to return to visit Abu Ghraib again, but the security situation in Baghdad has caused to a delay.
The Shanghai Daily reports that the head of the Washington office of the Red Cross has resigned for "personal reasons." Sources in the community of non-governmentl organizations that work with the Red Cross said they believed Christophe Girod was unhappy with his own organization and with the US government. "My reading of it is that he felt they (the Red Cross) should have gone public with their report. He never told me he was quitting, but I think he was very upset about the situation,"one source said.
Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu, a former Army Green Beret, writes in FrontPageMag.com that it is critical to acknowledge that as "ugly as this incident may turn out to be it is strictly that: an aberration, an anomaly in the way American soldiers conduct themselves." Lt. Col. Cucullu says that we don't need to be worry so much about the "good will" of the Arab street (which he says is almost non-existent anyway) but need to focus on the long term.
Meanwhile, we have our own house cleaning to do. While we go about it, it may be necessary to remind everyone, we are still fighting a war against worldwide terrorism. We need to fix what is broken but keep focused on the ultimate mission of defeating the terrorists.
But Stuart Taylor asks in The National Journal if it is necessary for us to become "like the barbarians" in order to save ourselves. And he writes that the stage for the brutality of Abu Ghraib may have been set by the White House's negative attitude towards international law.
But the Bush-Rumsfeld presumption that our prisoners (at least those at Guantanamo) are guilty until proven innocent may have been seen by some as a green light for indiscriminate brutalization of any and all prisoners who might possibly be terrorists. No cause-and-effect connection has been established, and the military's written interrogation rules for Iraq do require high-level authorization for the tougher techniques. But the signals from the commander-in-chief have surely communicated little respect for international law or for the presumption of innocence.
And columnist Barbara Ehrenreich writes at Alternet.org that the photos of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib by US military personnel had another effect: the end of the feminist idea that women are somehow morally superior to men.
What we have learned from Abu Ghraib, once and for all, is that a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience. This doesn't mean gender equality isn't worth fighting for its own sake. It is. If we believe in democracy, then we believe in a woman's right to do and achieve whatever men can do and achieve, even the bad things. It's just that gender equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and peaceful world.
Finally, after months of saying that the security situation in Iraq would improve after the handover of power from the US-led coalition to Iraqi authorities on June 30, the US is now saying the level of violence in Iraq might actually get worse. The Associated Press reports that President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged that Iraq could remain dangerous and unstable after the transfer of political power. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had said that the current high level of violence could continue until December of this year, or longer. Gen. Abizaid also said Wednsday that he would need more troops in Iraq after the handover to maintain security. |
