Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
 | |
| Exposed | 2004 |
|---|---|
| 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)[1] in Abu Ghraib,[2] with the approval of many more senior officials than were ever subjected to discipline for what went on. The pictures and stories that eventually made it to corporate media were a limited hangout; photographs of sexually tortured men leaked, but those of abused women are still classified for fear of greater outrage.[3][4][5]
Contents
Official narrative
These war crimes were confined to low-level military and were not officially sanctioned. These things happen in a war.
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[6] 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.[7][8]
The rape and torture of women (and children) was completely excluded from any mention or discussion in the commercially-controlled media.[9][10][11][12]
“Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out.”
Seymour Hersh (July 15, 2004) [13]
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.[14]
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.[15]
Dogs from Abu Ghraib
In her 2015 article: "Military Dogs & Child Rape",[16] 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.[17] 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, very likely, a method that was applied by the United States military.[18]
Dan Rather
The decision to publish some of the Abu Ghraib torture photos on the program 60 Minutes might have contributed to the downfall of corporate journalist Dan Rather. He was set up with forged documents, sent to a mock internal trial, and fired from CBS in late 2004.
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. |
References
- ↑ https://www.hrw.org/news/2005/05/20/afghanistan-killing-and-torture-us-predate-abu-ghraib
- ↑ https://original.antiwar.com/news/2006/02/17/abu-ghraib-abuse-photos/
- ↑ https://www.arabnews.com/node/249910 saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/20/iraq.gender
- ↑ http://www.thehandstand.org/archive/september2006/articles/belfast.htm saved at Archive.org
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170827033751/http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20656
- ↑ https://www.amazon.com/Language-Empire-Ghraib-American-Media/dp/1583671196
- ↑ https://lilarajiva.wordpress.com/the-language-of-empire-abu-ghraib-and-the-american-media/ saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ http://dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Rajiva0727.htm saved at Archive.org
- ↑ http://dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Rajiva0730.htm saved at Archive.org
- ↑ http://dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Rajiva0804.htm saved at Archive.org
- ↑ http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Rajiva0809.htm saved at Archive.org
- ↑ https://www.salon.com/2004/07/15/hersh_7/
- ↑ http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/693
- ↑ http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Special:WhatLinksHere/Naomi_Klein
- ↑ https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/military-dogs-child-rape-81e46413ab81 saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/2/7/torture-under-pinochet-we-were-peeling/ saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ https://www.alternet.org/2014/12/did-nato-dogs-rape-afghan-prisoners-bagram-air-base/
