Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

 Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse (war crime,  torture,  murder,  research,  Copper Green)

Date	March 2003 - Present
Exposed by	Seymour Hersh, Sam Provance
Interest of	CACI, Ian Fishback, Michael Hourigan, Lila Rajiva
Description	Top level sanctioned torture on US prisoners, both to gather information about the effects of torture on victims and perpetrators as well as to intimidate and sew dragon's teeth.

Prisoners were tortured and very possibly murdered (with those murders covered up) in Abu Ghraib, with the approval of many more senior officials than were ever subjected to discipline for what went on.

Official narrative

These war crimes were confined to low-level military and were not officially sanctioned. These things happen in a war.

Negative Energy Plan by Robert Ponzio

Bigger picture

There seems to be little doubt that these war crimes were in fact sanctioned from the highest level, though through a sufficiently off-the-books mechanism to provide plausible deniability as and when the activies were exposed. The codeword 'Copper Green' was used to refer to a systematic programme of abuse, torture and murder, which may be a helpful lens through which to understand what was going on.

Narrative shaping

The pictures that were released invariably showed the abuse of men and all media attention was focused on this fact and also to some extent, that the female soldier Lynndie England took part in the torture. Lila Rajiva has noted that the media has colluded with the Bush administration to relay a subtle message of women's empowerment with respect to L. England. The rape and torture of women (and children) was completely excluded from any mention or discussion in the commercially-controlled media.

Destructive research on Prisoners

See Operation Phoenix for an analogous research project carried out during the Vietnam War. This aimed to refine understanding of how much extreme torture people can stand and the various ways their bodies, minds and communities respond to it.

Terrorisation of the Populace

Naomi Klein has argued on Unwelcome Guests that the events of Abu Ghraib were never intended to remain secret, but instead carried out in an effort to stiffen resistance by terrorising the local population.

Dogs from Abu Ghraib

In her 2015 article: "Military Dogs & Child Rape", Lori Handrahan speculated that dogs, which were trained to rape prisoners, were taken back to the US and may ended up in the production of child porn. The use of dogs for humiliation is confirmed to have happened in Chile under the Pinochet regime. Since research on torture does not get lost, only expands, it is, especially in societies were a strong feeling of shame can be produced by this, a reliable method to get people to do what is asked from them. It was, with the highest possibility, a method that was applied by the United States military.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Niyirah al-Sabah’s Story	article	28 August 2011	Sandra Barr	Niyirah al-Sabah presenting her lies about Saddam Hussein's troops taking babies out of incubators that led to the Iraq War and Iman al-Obeidi claiming she was gang-raped by Muammar Gaddafi's forces justifying the 2011 Attacks on Libya
File:A case to answer.pdf	report	2008	Amnesty International	An Amnesty International report on the 40 month long detention and rendition of Khaled al-Maqtari, a 25 year old Saudi national at the time of his arrest in Fallujah, Iraq in January 2004.
File:Pictures That Missed the Exhibition.pdf	article	17 February 2006	Lila Rajiva	Funny how freedom of expression - so indispensable for the survival of Western Civilization when it comes to inflammatory and dangerous anti-Muslim imagery - gets jettisoned in a hurry when it comes to exposing war crimes.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.