NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1683578,00.html

IRAQI security forces, set up by American and British troops, torture detainees by pulling out their fingernails, burning them with hot irons or giving them electric shocks, Iraqi officials say. Cases have also been recorded of bound prisoners being beaten to death by police.
In their haste to put police on the streets to counter the brutal insurgency, Iraqi and US authorities have enlisted men trained under Saddam Hussein’s regime and versed in torture and abuse, the officials told The Times. They said that recruits were also being drawn from the ranks of outlawed Shia militias.



Counter-insurgencies are rarely clean fights, but Iraq’s dirty war is being waged under the noses of US and British troops whose mission is to end the abuses of the former dictatorship. Instead, they appear to have turned a blind eye to the constant reports of torture from Iraq’s prisons.

Among the worst offenders cited are the Interior Ministry police commandos, a force made up largely of former army officers and special forces soldiers drawn from the ranks of Saddam’s dissolved army. They are seen as the most effective tool the coalition has in fighting the insurgency.

“It’s a gruesome situation we are in,” a senior Iraqi official said. “You have to understand the situation when the special commandos were formed last August. They were taking on an awful lot of people in a great hurry. Many of them were people who served in Saddam’s forces . . . The choice of taking them on was a difficult one. There was no supervision. There still really isn ’t any, and that applies to all the security forces. They’re all doing this.”

“This”, said Saad Sultan, the Human Rights Ministry official in charge of monitoring Iraq’s prisons, includes random arrests, sometimes without a warrant, hanging people from ceilings and beating them, attaching electrodes to ears, hands, feet and genitals, and holding hot irons to flesh.

Four of his 22 monitors have already quit their jobs, leaving a handful of lawyers to inspect scores of prisons.

“Two months ago I could go into a prison and more than 50 per cent of the people had been ill-treated,” Mr Sultan said. Six months ago the situation had been even worse.

Reports of torture and abuse are commonplace. Omar, a 22-year-old student, said that he was picked up in a night raid on his home in Baghdad by police commandos, who dragged him away from his family to a detention facility. No one told him where he was or what he was accused of, he said. As he was marched into prison, policemen lined up to beat him and his fellow detainees. The prisoners’ handcuffs were tightened until the men screamed.

The next day, he and his neighbour were blindfolded and transported to another facility, where his neighbour collapsed unconscious during a beating. He was then led into an interrogation room, where a policeman attached electrodes to his thumbs and toes. “I immediately asked what they wanted and he said something like, ‘You have been targeting police and national guardsmen’. Without waiting for my response, he switched on the electricity, then kept on turning it off and on until I could hardly breathe.

“I screamed under torture,” Omar said. “It’s not a place to prove your courage. These guys are trying to kill you for nothing.” He was released without charge after 12 days.

The abuse has not gone unnoticed by the coalition, but little has been done to address it. A US State Department report in February stated that Iraqi authorities had been accused of “arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prison conditions — particularly in pre-trial detention facilities — and arbitrary arrest and detention.” A Human Rights Watch report also noted that “unlawful arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees (including children) by Iraqi authorities have become routine and commonplace”.

Evidence of extra-judicial killings by the security forces has also come to light. Mr Sultan is investigating the case of three members of the Badr Corps, the paramilitary wing of one of the main Shia parties in government, who were arrested by police, handcuffed and beaten to death.

An Iraqi official said that the Iraqi National Guard, the US-trained paramilitary police, regularly disposed of the corpses of its victims by throwing them in the river. “The problem is that some people have still got that training from the past,” he said. “You have ten or twelve of them in the same unit working, and if they seize terrorists they will torture or kill them.”

He added that while the de facto death squads were not part of government policy, little was being done to counteract them. “These are exceptional times. It’s an emergency.”

General Adnan Thabet, the commandos’ commander and a special adviser to the Interior Minister, was a senior officer under Saddam. He was sentenced to death for plotting against the former dictator and was tortured after his sentence was commuted.

He denied any allegation of torture, but admitted: “This is a dirty war. We are the only ones with the nerves to fight it.”



Thoughts?

War sucks.

Any killing of civilians for unjustifiable reasons is bad all the way around.

Bad business. Tough times.

...

Unless more people take an interest and begin taking responsibility for the conduct of their government, attrocities like these will continue to occur. People from the U.S. should take a long look at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia and let their government know that this is not the way they want to bring about democracy.

Gee, what a great way to prevent people wanting to become insurgents and improve their trust in the new Iraq and the US.
Interesting to see the complete indifference by posters on this forum. I guess cause they not 'one of us', so it doesn't really matter, eh?

Gee, what a great way to prevent people wanting to become insurgents and improve their trust in the new Iraq and the US.
Interesting to see the complete indifference by posters on this forum. I guess cause they not 'one of us', so it doesn't really matter, eh?

It has nothing at all to do with indifference at all. It has to do with recognizing the fact that war does suck. It is dirty, nasty, reprehensible business. There is no question about it. There is also no question that anything a combatant to do to win they will do. Not only including the allegeded abuses, but the writing of falsified stories targeting the other sides civilian population for the purpose of hindering their own sides ability to prosecute their operations.
No war has ever been won building trust with the enemy, or being nice and taking the "moral high ground", but many have been lost that way. Winning hearts and minds is an ignorant concept when dealing with captured soldiers. They live to fight another day.

I like this line They said that recruits were also being drawn from the ranks of outlawed Shia militias.

Now, given that militias are civilians taking up arms in defense of one's country, it would seem natural that they would be the type to go into something like the iraqi security forces. In a rational world it makes sense. Apparently however, those who wrote the article do not live in a rational world.


Then there's this one: “Two months ago I could go into a prison and more than 50 per cent of the people had been ill-treated,” Mr Sultan said. Six months ago the situation had been even worse.

Now, it would seem to me, once again, that this is a good thing, and that chaos is slowly receding as the country puts itself back in order. As things become more stable and the foreign terrorists stop with the suicide bombings, you will see stuff like this begin to disappear. Or at least become no worse than in most other prisons.


I'm not completely sure but I believe this :
The next day, he and his neighbour were blindfolded and transported to another facility, where his neighbour collapsed unconscious during a beating. He was then led into an interrogation room, where a policeman attached electrodes to his thumbs and toes. “I immediately asked what they wanted and he said something like, ‘You have been targeting police and national guardsmen’. Without waiting for my response, he switched on the electricity, then kept on turning it off and on until I could hardly breathe.

Would leave significant nerve damage, especially if continued for any length of time. One should always be leery of reports like this one. Not that it might not be true, but it might also be false.

Liverbreath']It has nothing at all to do with indifference at all. It has to do with recognizing the fact that war does suck. It is dirty, nasty, reprehensible business. There is no question about it. There is also no question that anything a combatant to do to win they will do. Not only including the allegeded abuses, but the writing of falsified stories targeting the other sides civilian population for the purpose of hindering their own sides ability to prosecute their operations.
No war has ever been won building trust with the enemy, or being nice and taking the "moral high ground", but many have been lost that way. Winning hearts and minds is an ignorant concept when dealing with captured soldiers. They live to fight another day.

So, if we are aloud to act no better than Saddam and allow Saddam's horror men back into power, why exactly did we go into Iraq?

Wait, is that the cry of economic imperialism I hear? "He tried to kill my daddy"? Something like that?

so much synicism (sp), i approve. we should ask q's of our governments and try to get them to prevent doing things like this. it defeats any arguments they may have had for the war in the first place and doesn't help the situation there at all. i honestly don;t know how they get away with it.

is anyone gonna post something defending this? i'd be curious to see how it's done if they did.

a phrase that caught my eye was "abritary deprivation of life." The US can't even use the word "killing" when refering to their own creation.

The war is bullshit, we should have never gone in, this is the reason people want to fight America, shit like this. This is why the guerillas keep operating.

And to the guy who was talking about not being soft on enemy combatants, if you read the article, it was talking about shit happening to random people who had done nothing wrong, but were still beaten and killed.

So, if we are aloud to act no better than Saddam and allow Saddam's horror men back into power, why exactly did we go into Iraq?

Wait, is that the cry of economic imperialism I hear? "He tried to kill my daddy"? Something like that?

You know something. I was against allowing former police and Iraqi soldiers to serve as police once we gained the military advantage over the Republican Guard, but thinking back at the US's own civial war and several others, once repatriated, who else are you going to get. They live there it's their country. Seeing how many of them die at the hands of the insurgents compared to the number of traitors, I have to say it was the only reasonable solution. You simply cant kill them all. Can you?
You say if we are aloud to act no better than Saddam and put these men in power. I thought the Iraqi government (the group slapped together consisting of all different groups including current insurgent supporters were the ones that did the hiring and firing around there. Am I wrong in that assumption?

Your last line reveals you for what you truely are about. I should have read closer before bothering with an attempt at serious dialog. My mistake.

a phrase that caught my eye was "abritary deprivation of life." The US can't even use the word "killing" when refering to their own creation.

The war is bullshit, we should have never gone in, this is the reason people want to fight America, shit like this. This is why the guerillas keep operating.

And to the guy who was talking about not being soft on enemy combatants, if you read the article, it was talking about shit happening to random people who had done nothing wrong, but were still beaten and killed.

A lot of things caught my eye in it, which is why I believe it to be a completly bullshit article with no basis in fact, but designed to sway weak minded individuals.

Liverbreath']You know something. I was against allowing former police and Iraqi soldiers to serve as police once we gained the military advantage over the Republican Guard, but thinking back at the US's own civial war and several others, once repatriated, who else are you going to get. They live there it's their country. Seeing how many of them die at the hands of the insurgents compared to the number of traitors, I have to say it was the only reasonable solution. You simply cant kill them all. Can you?
You say if we are aloud to act no better than Saddam and put these men in power. I thought the Iraqi government (the group slapped together consisting of all different groups including current insurgent supporters were the ones that did the hiring and firing around there. Am I wrong in that assumption?

Your last line reveals you for what you truely are about. I should have read closer before bothering with an attempt at serious dialog. My mistake.

As I will need clarification on what your entire two first paragraphs are supposed to mean, I'll just ask you this: what am I about that is so blantantly obvious in my last line?

Unless more people take an interest and begin taking responsibility for the conduct of their government, attrocities like these will continue to occur. People from the U.S. should take a long look at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia and let their government know that this is not the way they want to bring about democracy.

Know that many people in the US have looked at these issues before you start making any sweeping generalizations.

Let me just say this. Lets rember the first time around we didnt vote that fucker in it was the supreme court who his daddy had hired who put him on.

As an aditional note if you live in Europe most likley you have no right to bash us on a whole as your imperialism and and tyrrany was responsible for a lot of sufffering and problems in todays war. not that i am justifying some of my governments actions im just saying before you put horns and a tail on us look at your own past.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1683578,00.html





Thoughts?

Well, well, what do you know? Old Jim Dunnigan was right again. ;)

I posted an article from analyst Jim Dunnigans page predicting exactly this story - a month ago: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=423515

:D

The Next Big Atrocity Story
by James Dunnigan
May 29, 2005

The next big thing in news headlines denouncing the American military will be horror stories about how Iraqi soldiers and police treat terrorism suspects. While the Iraqi security forces have been given training, by Americans, on how to be kind and gentle with the suspects they pick up, old habits die hard. In the Middle East, actually, in most of the world, brutal treatment of prisoners is pretty routine. But because American troops are working with the Iraqis, the Americans will be blamed for any bad treatment (by Western standards) terrorist suspects get. Journalists love stories like this, because if the Americans did try and control the way Iraqi police dealt with suspects, the Americans could be accused of “interfering with Iraqi sovereignty.” In a practical sense, the American troops could not stop what the Iraqi cops and troops do to prisoners, because there are not enough American troops to be there for every arrest, and watch over the prisoners as long as they are in custody, and at risk.

U.S. troops have been told to get out of the way when Iraqi cops or soldiers “interrogate” prisoners. American officers and NCOs serving as advisors in Iraqi police and army units are told to, well, advise the Iraqis that there are better, and less brutal, ways to get information from prisoners. This won’t get American troops off the hook with the media. In fact, there’s no way that the army can win in this game of guilt by association. So don’t be surprised when the stories begin to appear later this year.
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200552912142.asp

I like this line

Now, given that militias are civilians taking up arms in defense of one's country, it would seem natural that they would be the type to go into something like the iraqi security forces. In a rational world it makes sense. Apparently however, those who wrote the article do not live in a rational world.


Then there's this one:

Now, it would seem to me, once again, that this is a good thing, and that chaos is slowly receding as the country puts itself back in order. As things become more stable and the foreign terrorists stop with the suicide bombings, you will see stuff like this begin to disappear. Or at least become no worse than in most other prisons.


I'm not completely sure but I believe this :

Would leave significant nerve damage, especially if continued for any length of time. One should always be leery of reports like this one. Not that it might not be true, but it might also be false.

Totally agree with u, man, though it could probably be possible to adjust voltage to keep nerve damage down. But other stuff i agree with.

It's reprehensible, what's detailed in that article.

*Now, a related topic*

On the Moral High Ground -

I think it was Liverbreath who pointed out, quite astutely, that few wars have been won by holding the moral high ground. He's right, as much as I loath admitting it.

However, many wars have been about the moral high ground. What made the US, USSR, UK and France viewed as right by history and in the eyes of the world, compared to Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan and Hungary was the fact that the Allies wern't dictatorial genocidal maniacs. The war was certainly justifiable, as wars go, considering what the Nazis did.

Now, it might have indeed proved expiedient for the Allies to repeal democracy, and round up all the Germans and Japanese they could find and exterminate them, to ignore the Nazi death camps in favor of attacking more strategic targets, and many other questionable things, but I ask you, if that had happened, what would have been the point of the war? There would have been no good reason to maintain a world war, if all the politics, policies and actions of the nations warring were the same?

Holding the moral high ground is not the most tactical solution to a war, but that doesn't make it less valuable. I loathe war, absolutely loathe it, but if it must exist, then we must recognize that a war is useless if one takes the moral high ground out of the equation. If we kill civilians and torture people, and they kill civilians and torture people, then no war between us and them is accomplishing anything worth warring over.

I mean if this war wasn't about the moral high ground, if we let the only difference between us and them be the style of our respective uniforms, then we are fighting an Orwellian, nillistic war that serves only to kill, maime and destroy.

The Moral High ground is significant to warfare as it provides purpose and meaning. Do you really want young men and women suffering and dying for something that is ideologically meaningless? I sure as hell don't.

The story reaffirms for me that replacing a government that the West dislikes will do nothing if the society itself is based on different principles. In other words, what works for us may not work for them, so let's not assume we know better than they do and march in with guns blazing until the situation really, actually merits it, FOR REAL.

Know that many people in the US have looked at these issues before you start making any sweeping generalizations.
Note also that he used the word "more" - and that people who did look at these issues (however many they were) apparently didn't act effectively against them.
======================================================
I would think the US commanders on the ground couldn't give a shit about whether people are being tortured. It's apparently quite common with soldiers to see things in a very black vs white kind of way (not in a racial sense). If they do that, then they may very well see nothing quite so outrageous in what's being done to the "bad guys". I think that is the root cause of pretty much all the abuses carried out, be they Abu Ghraib, Rendition or what apparently goes on in Camp X-Ray.
Very dangerous if you ask me.

It's reprehensible, what's detailed in that article.

*Now, a related topic*

On the Moral High Ground -

I think it was Liverbreath who pointed out, quite astutely, that few wars have been won by holding the moral high ground. He's right, as much as I loath admitting it.

However, many wars have been about the moral high ground. What made the US, USSR, UK and France viewed as right by history and in the eyes of the world, compared to Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan and Hungary was the fact that the Allies wern't dictatorial genocidal maniacs. The war was certainly justifiable, as wars go, considering what the Nazis did.

Now, it might have indeed proved expiedient for the Allies to repeal democracy, and round up all the Germans and Japanese they could find and exterminate them, to ignore the Nazi death camps in favor of attacking more strategic targets, and many other questionable things, but I ask you, if that had happened, what would have been the point of the war? There would have been no good reason to maintain a world war, if all the politics, policies and actions of the nations warring were the same?

Holding the moral high ground is not the most tactical solution to a war, but that doesn't make it less valuable. I loathe war, absolutely loathe it, but if it must exist, then we must recognize that a war is useless if one takes the moral high ground out of the equation. If we kill civilians and torture people, and they kill civilians and torture people, then no war between us and them is accomplishing anything worth warring over.

I mean if this war wasn't about the moral high ground, if we let the only difference between us and them be the style of our respective uniforms, then we are fighting an Orwellian, nillistic war that serves only to kill, maime and destroy.

The Moral High ground is significant to warfare as it provides purpose and meaning. Do you really want young men and women suffering and dying for something that is ideologically meaningless? I sure as hell don't.

::claps::

The US is going to be damned by the media either way it goes.

If Iraqis aren't put back in charge, the US is an imperial power. If Iraqis are put back in charge, the US is putting the old butchers back in charge and gets blaimed for their actions (which is what would have continued to happened if the US hadn't gotten involved).

And as far as the alledged torturers having been taken from the ranks of the former regime, it's another double-damned situation. The US and Iraqis could have screened the police reqruits more carefully, but this was occuring at a time when many voices were screeching that the US dragging their feet and build up the police quickly in order to turn control back over to Iraq as fast as possible. Now that the police forces have been put in place, it turns out they are rotten. And it's likely they would have been without a significant investment in time that neither the current US administration nor it's opponents seem to want to invest. (And, honestly, I don't see either side as having either will or political capital to do the job right.)

At least Iraq now has a Human Rights Ministry monitoring the prisons. Tha's somewhat of an improvement.

Know that many people in the US have looked at these issues before you start making any sweeping generalizations.

And what are your conclusions regarding the School of the Americas, the current situation in Iraq, the U.S. support of the Mujahideen, The Contras and the AUC?