This is what one recently said about an Iraqi falsely imprisoned--though apparently my 'shroom buddy doesn't quite grasp 1. the fact that these people didn't necessarily do anything against 'merikans and 2. even if they did, uhm, we aren't supposed to torture the. but i suppose realizing any of this requires an ability to do something more than investigate your large intestine.
'Shroomville: "One of the Iraqi prisoners who was abused by U.S. prison guards says he is so humiliated he can't return to his hometown. So, he wants to come live in the United States. Think about this. This Iraqi is abused by Americans. As a result of that abuse he wants to go live in America. Of course, he was in there in the first place because of what he did to Americans. We ought to tell him, "no thanks, go live in France."
Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/07/iraq8560_txt.htm
POW: Ashley guard beat me Ex-detainee files claim against Army; says Lisa Girman abused him, but he forgives her. By BONNIE ADAMS badams at leader.net
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/8617617.htm
-------------------
Abuse began at another jail in Iraq
By CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
The torture and sadism at the Abu Ghraib prison were spawned at another Iraqi jail called Camp Bucca. And it may have been allowed to flourish by inept officers and inadvertently encouraged by a policy that urged the prison guards to perform jobs they weren't trained to do.
Some of the U.S. soldiers who were photographed sexually humiliating prisoners at deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's most notorious prison were also at Camp Bucca last year, when the facility was rocked by allegations that detainees were beaten.
But instead of throwing the book at the four soldiers caught abusing Iraqi detainees, the military gave them the boot with less-than-honorable discharges, according to a scathing report into the shocking sadism prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
Their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, was transferred to Abu Ghraib, where the actions of soldiers supposedly under his command have shamed the nation and outraged the Arab world.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/191682p-165691c.html
-----------------------
Ex-detainees say prisoner abuse by Americans was widespread Fall reports weren't publicly dealt with by the United States THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Sunday, May 9, 2004
Detailed allegations of psychological abuse, deprivation, beatings and deaths at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq were met by public silence from the U.S. Army in October - six months before shocking photographs stirred world outrage and demands for action.
At the time, one former prisoner sensed that words might count for little. Instead, Rahad Naif, 31, told a reporter, "I wish somebody could go take a picture of Camp Bucca."
Early accounts by freed prisoners, reported in the fall, told of detainees punished by lying bound for hours in the sun; being attacked by dogs; being deprived of sufficient water; spending days with hoods over their heads.
One told of seeing an elderly Iraqi woman tied up and lying in the dust; others told of ill men dying in crowded tents.
They spoke repeatedly of being humiliated by American guards. None mentioned the sexual humiliation seen in recently released photos, but Arab culture might keep an Iraqi from describing such mistreatment.
In contrast to suggestions that the photos indicate isolated abuse by a few, these Iraqis told of widespread practices in several camps that would violate the Geneva Conventions and other human-rights standards. On Friday, in an unusual public statement, the international Red Cross agreed, disclosing that its inspectors last year found a "broad pattern" of abuse. On Oct. 18, the AP posed specific questions about the reported abuses to the U.S. military command in Baghdad and the 800th Military Police Brigade, which was in charge of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
The MP unit drafted responses, AP later learned, but the Baghdad command did not release them. No explanation was given. The AP report, published Nov. 1, cited a statement to Arab television by the MP commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, that prisoners were treated humanely.
In the meantime, "between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees," according to the report of a later Army investigation.
That Army report said that the photos from Abu Ghraib dated from this period - both before and after the AP article appeared. The Army's report, which found that soldiers also committed "egregious acts and grave breaches" at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, did not come to light until they were disclosed in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker magazine. It had been classified "secret."
That investigation was prompted by a soldier's complaint to superiors in January about fellow guards' actions.
The six former prisoners interviewed by AP in October were freed without charges after spending months in Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and the Baghdad airport's Camp Cropper.
Some Americans were humane, they said, but many were not. "They don't respect old or young. They humiliate everybody," said Naif, a Baghdad resident and one of three brothers who were confined.
Women guards especially were verbally abusive, with obscene invective, "insulting our sisters and parents. It was very hard to accept," he said.
This story can be found at: http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031775346446&path=!nationworld&s=1037645509161
----------------
Don't bother, they're all animals: Abuse Investigation Includes 25 Deaths Beatings and Humiliation Routine, Say Freed Iraqis
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD Abdel Rahman remembers an American soldier pointing a gun at his head and groin. You've been found guilty of killing our troops and must die, he says the soldier told him. The soldier pulled the trigger. It was a stun gun. The electrical shock jolted through Rahman's body. He fainted.
Said Salim talks of beatings as being routine. The soldier named "Barrera" was especially dedicated, Salim says, forcing him to the ground and stepping on his back while proclaiming: "I'm an American."
Hooded, Handcuffed
Days earlier, Arrawi said, he was seized in a midnight raid on his Baghdad home along with his father, three brothers and a brother-in-law. The U.S. forces crashed through the wrought-iron gate on his driveway, through the plaque that says, "There is no God but the one God, Allah," then placed an explosive in the family's front door to get inside.
The soldiers rounded up the men of the family, handcuffing each one and placing a hood over his head. They piled all six men into the back of a Humvee, one on top of the other. They were not allowed to talk, Arrawi, a lawyer, recalled.
In the raid, a soldier landed his rifle butt just above Arrawi's left eye, he said. It required stitches and his eyes were black and blue for days. He and his father, Sammi, have puncture marks on their wrists where they say the cuffs cut into the flesh for the duration of their detention.
Sammi Arrawi was a brigadier general in Hussein's army. He turned against Hussein in 1989, criticizing the Iraq-Iran war, and ended up in prison for 13 months, he said. He has papers indicating that he was vetted early in the occupation by U.S. authorities and not seen as a threat.
In the days after their arrest, father and sons were held in the airport detention center. The only times the hoods were lifted were during grueling interrogation sessions or mealtimes. Their hands were never unbound. The younger Arrawi said his questioners accused him first of having killed U.S. troops, then of having aided and abetted those who did the killing, then of knowing who was directing those who did the killing. After two weeks, they let him go.
His father was held for only a few days. But in that time, he said, the American guards forced him to stand, hooded, on one leg with his arms extended straight up for hours on end.
"It was hard for me with my bad back," Sammi Arrawi, 56, said in his living room, with his son and a grandson by his side. "I fainted. I fell and the soldier kicked me for having fallen. Then he put a second bag on my head.
"It's psychological warfare," he continued. "They want to humiliate you and exhaust you to the biggest degree."
Every time the men started to go to sleep at night, on the hard prison floor with a single blanket, the soldiers would blast American rap music to keep them awake, the Arrawi men said. Their toilet was a hole in an open-air yard.
The only sympathetic officer, they said, was a medic. But he was reprimanded by a superior officer for attending to the prisoners. "Don't bother," the officer told the medic, the Arrawis said. "They're all animals."
The other three Arrawi sons were transferred to Abu Ghraib, where they are being held. Their brother-in-law was freed.
Rahman, meanwhile, was released last October. He was part of a group of 45 Iraqis whom the Americans deposited on a street in central Baghdad.
They emerged from the bus that carried them, scruffy with long beards and filthy clothing. To this day, Rahman says he is not sure why he was freed.
He quickly began to denounce his abuse, but few listened. The publication of the notorious Abu Ghraib photos and the scandal that has followed has given him and Iraqi human rights activists new impetus for pursuing their cause.
"At first I was not able to speak as easily," Rahman said. "I feel more free now. It is a good opportunity." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-detainees5may05,1,2710334.story?coll=la-headlines-world