The latest revelations about torture in the “New Iraq” are really horrific. Reuters has a good (by which I mean very disturbing) account of it… Including this:
- “There were 161 detainees in all and they were being treated in an inappropriate way … they were being abused,” Hussein Kamal, a deputy interior minister, told Reuters.
“I’ve never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad, this is the worst,” he told CNN.
“I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralyzed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies.”
The BBC’s report is much fuller. It says:
- Sunday’s discovery is hard evidence and officials believe it may be the tip of the iceberg.
There are suspicions the building may also have been used as a base for a militia called the Badr Brigade, and that such militias may have infiltrated Iraq’s security services, our correspondent adds.
“May have infiltrated” is an amazing euphemism, since what has happened in large parts of Iraq is that the US/UK occupation forces have handed off public security to various militias–including both the Badr Brigade and the Kurdish Pesh Merga– quite knowingly. (And they complain about the Lebanese government allowing a militia to operate there!)
The victims of the latest barbarity were reportedly all Sunnis.
The BBC account notes that extreme mistreatment of detainees by Iraqi security forces and their allied militias is not a new issue:
- Anne Clwyd MP, the UK government’s human rights envoy in Iraq, said she had raised such allegations with Iraqi authorities back in May.
“It is shocking what has happened,” she told Newsnight.
She said the UK had been trying to help bring about a cultural change by providing human rights training to Iraq security forces.
“After 35 years of abuse, it takes a long time for people’s mindsets to change,” she said.
Also, this:
- The security forces have faced repeated allegations of systematic abuse and torture of detainees, and of extra-judicial killings.
A report by pressure group Human Rights Watch earlier this year said methods used by Iraqi police included beating detainees with cables, hanging them from their wrists for long periods and giving electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body.
That would be this report, from January.
The 161– or, in some accounts, “more than 170”– mistreated detainees were apparently discovered by US troops, who for some reason had been searching for a missing 15-year-old youth. (People get “disappeared” in Iraq all the time. This kid must have had some powerful relatives.)
The BBC report said:
- A US soldier who carried out the raid said: “It’s not what we expected at all, we were looking for a 15-year-old boy.”
The generally well-informed Salam Pax recounts some additional gruesome details:
- It is said that there were a number of dead bodies as well in the shelter and what the report doesn’t mention is signs of power tools used on the detainees. Apparently the officer in charge of this operation has something for drills; there were holes on feet and legs. Heading this operation there is an Iraqi officer and [he] is under the direct supervision of the current minister of interior affairs (security) who us a member of SCIRI. And I don’t really [buy] the spokesman’s line that the minister of Interior Affairs had no idea of what was going on, what I heard was that the officer in charge was under direct supervision from the Minister.
The tragedy of all that’s been happening seems almost overwhelming. Large numbers of Iraqi Sunnis have been receiving barbaric treatment for many months now– at the hands of both the US forces and the Iraqi-government/Badr forces.
By the way, the BBC today quoted Pentagon spokesman Lt.Col. Barry Venable as confirming that US troops used White Phosphorus bombs in last November’s attack against Fallujah:
- “When you have enemy forces that are in covered positions that your high explosive artillery rounds are not having an impact on and you wish to get them out of those positions, one technique is to fire a white phosphorus round or rounds into the position because the combined effects of the fire and smoke – and in some case the terror brought about by the explosion on the ground – will drive them out of the holes so that you can kill them with high explosives,” he said.
There is one serious error in that report. It states that a prof at Bradford University said that WP could count as a chemical weapon “if deliberately aimed at civilians”– but the actual quote they have there from the professor doesn’t say “civilians”, it says “people”… And the worldwide Chemical Weapons ban is a ban on using CW against anyone, whether combatants or noncombatants; it doesn’t specify “civilians” at all…
But anyway, in western Iraq, and in many parts of Baghdad, Sunnis have been targeted for ourageous mistreatment. Then, on the other side, we saw the terrible tragedy of the recent, Iraqi-Sunni-perpetrated bombings in Jordan.
Violence begets violence.
Yes, there was violence inside Iraq before the US invasion of March 2003. (But actually, in the three years immediately preceding the war, not very much of it at all.)
But in March 2003, President Bush and his advisors opted for a massive escalation of violence in and against the country— and after having unleashed the “shock and awe” cataclysm of the invasion, they proceeded to dismantle the Iraqi state, thus unleashing all the demons of inter-sectarian strife.
And now this, in the “new order” they created there: Skin peeled off..
Bring the troops home. Resign. Apologise. There are no further excuses. It is not just the skin of those men screaming in pain that has been peeled off. It is also the skin of all the Bush administration’s lies about this war.
This incident is part of a much wider pattern of abuse and torture by Iraq’s new govt.
It’s revolting, but not exactly surprising. In so many parts of the world, for so many years, there’s been this image of members of the “Security Forces” trooping off to work for another day of inflicting pain and distress on helpless captives.
“Hard day at the office, dear?”
Oh, just the usual, you know.”
Johnathon Schell, was it? once predicted a post-atomic world as a “republic of insects and grasses.”
Sometimes it doesn’t seem to be such a bad idea.
What has been achieved by this futile colonial enterprise? What?
Meanwhile, the debate in the USA, led by Senator McCain, focuses not on the morality of torture, but on its effectiveness.
To the best of my knowledge, apart from abuse of a few conscientious objectors by the military in World War One, there has never been an instance of officially sanctioned torture here in New Zealand. Never. The very idea is ludicrous.
What’s wrong with us?
Nothing, I reckon. Why don’t the rest of you just go away. Find another planet to play on.
another quote from MLK Jr.:
Violence is self-defeating.
What infuriates me is the Americans’ utter bloody hypocrisy over this. They are shocked – shocked! – and outraged, too, because the Iraqis they appointed to the job, and in some cases trained, are doing to prisoners what they themselves have done (and continue to do).
“What infuriates me…”
(HEAVY IRONY ALERT) No, no Shirin it’s not quite the same: You see, In case of Americans (Abu Ghraib etc.) these were just a few low-rank ‘bad apples’, who have been prosecuted, it was not an official policy (“We don’t torture” – prez. Bush) while this case directly implicates Iraqi authorities (Interior Ministry).
Meanwhile, the debate in the USA, led by Senator McCain, focuses not on the morality of torture, but on its effectiveness.
“PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. ”
Cruel inhuman and degrading are moral, not pragmatic terms. This is the text of the amendment.
Elendil– you site looks like a real resource. Thanks for telling us about it.
It looks, however, as if there’s a problem there with the datestamping on the posts… The post you link to has a datestamp of “August 20, 2001”. This makes it harder to use the blog easily, imho…
She said the UK had been trying to help bring about a cultural change by providing human rights training to Iraq security forces.
”After 35 years of abuse, it takes a long time for people’s mindsets to change,” she said.
It’s better off for her to train her follows Brits who abused the Iraqis, instead saying “After 35 years of abuse, it takes a long time for people’s mindsets to change”!!!
Is the Britt’s solder also lived under abuse for long time that why they did what they did in Basra?
Those Iraqi forces was trained for three years to replaced the occupation forces as we heard many times looking they got very advance training and very high standard of human right training by the trainee…
The question is if the suffering of 160 detainee, what about using chemicals “a white phosphorus” and other chemical which banned by UN so you kill they kill in different way in the end the Iraqi suffered by both in fact they killed in massive number by the occupying forces and humiliated.
Other question rises here where is he? The Bremer mane that left in each ministry and every where, who had the power to fire the ministries if they not obey his rolls? Where he is? what he is doing? what is his response? Can some one reach this man and let us know what his reaction?
Thanks, I’m glad you found it useful. The date-stamp on that post is strange because that post is meant to be an “index”. I only found out after I created the blog that blogger is too primitive to do proper indexing, so I decided to use posts on some of the earlier dates as an index. One of these days I’ll figure out how to get rid of the date on it so it’s less confusing.
I wonder how related all of this is to the “El Salvador” option the U.S. was talking about implementing months ago. I think Negroponte said at some point the authorities needed to be feared more then the insurgents. Wasn’t the Wolf brigade trained by the U.S.?
How does this compare with what occurred during the Lebanese civil war?
Shirin is right. On the Jim Lehrer Newshour they used the prowar NYT reporter John Burns as their resource and of course he portrayed it as innocent Americans having to deal with the legacy of Saddam’s brutality, which has unfortunately infected the Iraqis. There are reasons for subscribing to the NYT, but the reporting of John Burns isn’t one of them.
Iraq has engaged in torture for a lot of years. Nothing new there. Most of the torture of terrorists or terrorist suspects is a direct result of the Bush/Republicans encouragement, advocation and direct orders to torture prisoners. That includes GW Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Feith, right on down through the Republican partys hierarchy. They all knew about, condoned and ordered torture of prisoners. Most of the top brass in the U.S. military did, too.
I once thought these people could never be held accoutable for their war crimes. I’m beginning to think I was wrong.
The Nazis of Hitlers Germany thought they were and always would be above the law. They were the law.
The Bush Republicans actions are so similar to Hitler and his Nazi thugs that I can’t help thinking of The Bush/Republicans as the Fourth Reich.
Was I courteous? I tried really hard to be courteous. Thank you.
Say Helena, if you’ve updated your comment elsewhere, my apologies in advance. Yet in the event you didn’t, I’m wondering about your reference to the administration’s attempt to say that the use of the white phosphorus was, technically, ok – as the US never signed the 1980 Protocol III. That is, do you buy the legal technicality being invoked here – per se (as a legal argument)?
Obviously, from the vantage point of “international legitimacy” and politics, the lame defense is hillarious (irony alert) – one that only an administration steeped in neocon and “lobby” distortions would even try to propound on the American people (never mind the world). As even a column in a Murdoch paper, The London Times, noted yesterday, the effects of such hypocrisy on the world’s hearts and minds will be “incendiary.” (pun no doubt intended) eh?