Seymour
Hersh, the investigative reporter who helped to break
the story on the torture & abuse of Iraqi prisoners, told an ACLU
convention that the US government has videotapes of boys being
“sodomized” at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
“The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking.” Hersh said there
was “a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the
highest command out there, and higher.”
This is a story that has been growing slowly but steadily.
In news reports these tapes were alluded to by members of Congress and
other officials who viewed alledged footage of rapes and murders
earlier this year during the first round of stories on abuses at Abu
Ghraib.
“America was braced last night for new
allegations of torture in Iraq
after military officials said that photographs apparently showing US
soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death and having sex with
a female PoW were about to be released.
The officials told the US television network NBC that other images
showed soldiers “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” A videotape,
apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping
young boys.
On May 8th Fox news reported “[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld
said there are many more photographs and videos that have not been made
public yet.” Rumsfeld went on to say “It’s going to get still more
terrible, I’m afraid.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he wants to “prepare the public:
Apparently the worst is yet to come potentially in terms of disturbing
events.” He later told reporters, “The American public needs to
understand we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just
talking about giving people a humiliating experience.”
The Telegraph, a respected British publication and Marketplace, a US
public radio show about business and the economy, reported in May
that an employee of the San Diego based Titan Corporation was
implicated in the rape of a teenage boy in the Abu Ghraib prison.
German
Media Attention
In early June a German TV newsmagazine called Report Mainz broadcast an
eight-minute segment reporting that the International Red Cross found
at least 107 children in coaliton-administered detention centers in
Iraq. The report also quoted from a June 2004 UNICEF report, which
confirmed that children were routinely arrested and “interned” in a
camp in Um-Qasr.
In addition to the Red Cross and UNICEF complaints, Report Mainz
broadcast an original interview with U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance,
who was stationed for six months at Abu Ghraib and later blew the
whistle about abuses there and the subsequent cover-up. In this
interview, Provance confirms the presence of teenagers in Abu Ghraib,
describing the torture-by-cold-and-exposure of a teenage boy in order
to get his father to talk.
As one commentator put it, “ The US military and possibly Coalition
partners have in many cases taken women and children hostage in order
to force their male relatives among the guerrillas to surrender. Since
this practice is a form of collective punishment and was undertaken
while the Coalition occupied Iraq, it is a war crime. “
The General Secretary of Amnesty International in Germany, Barbara
Lochbihler, is finally shown demanding a full accounting from the U.S.
government, describing the information as “scandalous.”
Australian
Accomplice
In Australia, particular attention has been focussed on a member of the
Australian military, Major George O’Kane, who spent six months up until
February this year in the US military headquarters in Baghdad. He
worked in the office of the senior US legal officer in Iraq, and was
closely involved in the American legal assessment of the allegations of
torture and illegal interrogation techniques.
O’Kane received two Red Cross reports on conditions inside Iraqi
prisons, issued in October and November last year. He was responsible
for investigating many of these complaints, and visited Abu Ghraib
prison on at least five occasions between August 2003 and January 2004.
The Australian legal officer worked closely with the American military
authorities in producing legal arguments justifying war crimes. He
drafted the official reply to the Red Cross reports, arguing that a
number of Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners who allegedly
posed a serious security risk.
The letter went on to threaten the Red Cross that its unannounced
prison inspections might be blocked in the future. This draft was
finally signed by US Brigadier General Janice Karpinsky, who has since
been reprimanded by the US military, and found to be unfit for duty.
UNICEF seems particularly vexed with the “internment” status, since
that means indefinite detention.
Here is an excerpt from a leaked document of the testimony of a
prisoner: “I saw […] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years.
The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with
sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on
top it wasn’t covered and I saw […] who was wearing the military
uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass. I couldn’t see the
face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the
female soldier was taking pictures. […], I think he is […] because of
his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a
homosexual(gay). And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.”
US Media
Silence
With this story all over the Web, and the international media as well,
the US media has been (strangely?) silent. It’s appropriate to ask
that, if this is true, what does it mean for the War on Terror? More
importantly, what does it mean for America’s soul?
There is something very sick about America, when Senator Rick Santorum
warns us that same-sex marriage will destroy the moral fiber of the
nation while at the same time US soldiers are making videos of boys
being raped in Abu Ghraib by members of an institution that works hard
to exclude gays from its ranks.
If Hersh is right, this torture was done for the purposes of spectacle.
The youths were being raped as a means of torturing their parents,
which is a double humiliation. The boys were violated and their own
emotions were turned into a weapon against their parents.
This is yet another reason why we should not go to war unless there is
no other choice. Atrocities will happen, it is the nature of war. Such
atrocities are acceptable only if the alternative is truly more
horrible. In this case, there were other options. This war was a choice
and it was a bad one. Such ‘dirty laundry’ needs to be aired. We must
understand fully the consequences of a choice for war in the hopes we
are more reluctant to choose that later.
In spite of everything, I still believe that
people are really good at heart. — Anne Frank
Every time I try to comment on this story I grow so
angry I lose the ability to speak rationally. The United States
government has utterly lost any standing to pass moral judgements on
others. It has become nothing less than pure, unadulterated evil. —
Ed.
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