The Nazz
25-09-2005, 05:10
And this time, the charges are coming from a decorated former Army Captain in the 82nd Airborne, among others. The story is from Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1108972,00.html), and the report it cites is from Human Rights Watch. The Army has opened yet another investigation into this sort of prisoner treatment.
The new allegations center around systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees by men of the 82nd Airborne at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base located near Fallujah, the scene of a major uprising against the U.S. occupation in April 2004, according to sources familiar with the report and accounts given by the Captain, who is in his mid-20s, to Senate staff. Much of the abuse allegedly occurred in 2003 and 2004, before and during the period the Army was conducting an internal investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but prior to when the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public. Other alleged abuses described in the Human Rights report occurred at Camp Tiger, near Iraq's border with Syria, and previously in Afghanistan. In addition, the report details what the Captain says was his unsuccessful effort over 17 months to get the attention of military superiors. Ultimately he approached the Republican senators....
Prisoners were designated as PUCs (pronounced "pucks")—or "persons under control." A regular pastime at Camp Mercury, the report says, involved off-duty soldiers gathering at PUC tents, where prisoners were held, and working off their frustrations in activities known as "F____a PUC" (beating the prisoner) and "Smoke a PUC" (forced physical exertion, sometimes to the point of collapse). Broken limbs and similar painful injuries would be treated with analgesics, the soldiers claim, as medical staff would fill out paperwork stating the injuries occurred during capture. Support for some of the allegations of abuse come from a sergeant of the 82nd Airborne who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch quotes him as saying that, "To 'F____ a PUC' means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To 'smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.
"On their day off people would show up all the time," the sergeant continues in the HRW report. "Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all U.S. soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the cook."
The sergeant says that military intelligence officers would tell soldiers that the detainees "were bad" and had been involved in killing or trying to kill Americans, implying that they deserved whatever punishment they got. "I would be told, 'These guys were IED [improvised explosive device] trigger men last week.' So we would f___ them up. F___ them up bad ... At the same time we should be held to a higher standard. I know that now. It was wrong. There are a set of standards. But you gotta understand, this was the norm. Everyone would just sweep it under the rug ... We should never have been allowed to watch guys we had fought."
The Captain making the allegations, say those who have been in contact with him, gave lengthy statements to Human Rights Watch only after his attempts to report what he had seen and heard to his own chain of command, were met, he claims, with repeated brush-offs. He is currently in special forces training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The two non-commissioned officers served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and likewise approached the watchdog group, but have not conferred with Senate staff. "The captain is a very sincere officer, and troubled by what he says he has seen," says another senior aide to a Republican senator. "Only an investigation can determine how accurate his account will prove to be."
The Senators he approached were Bill Frist, John Warner and John McCain.
This is the reason why I don't believe that the US can take part in any legitimate democracy building in Iraq, no matter how long we stay or how many troops we send in there. As Americans, we have to come to grips with the fact that our troops have committed atrocities in our name--there's no other way to describe it--and as a result, we have to realize that there is no way that the Iraqi populace at large will ever trust us.
I was watching a documentary earlier tonight--Hearts and Minds--which is about Vietnam. The Vietnamese footage was shot during the war, as were the interviews. The similarities between this documentary and the situation in Iraq today are eerie.
The new allegations center around systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees by men of the 82nd Airborne at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base located near Fallujah, the scene of a major uprising against the U.S. occupation in April 2004, according to sources familiar with the report and accounts given by the Captain, who is in his mid-20s, to Senate staff. Much of the abuse allegedly occurred in 2003 and 2004, before and during the period the Army was conducting an internal investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but prior to when the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public. Other alleged abuses described in the Human Rights report occurred at Camp Tiger, near Iraq's border with Syria, and previously in Afghanistan. In addition, the report details what the Captain says was his unsuccessful effort over 17 months to get the attention of military superiors. Ultimately he approached the Republican senators....
Prisoners were designated as PUCs (pronounced "pucks")—or "persons under control." A regular pastime at Camp Mercury, the report says, involved off-duty soldiers gathering at PUC tents, where prisoners were held, and working off their frustrations in activities known as "F____a PUC" (beating the prisoner) and "Smoke a PUC" (forced physical exertion, sometimes to the point of collapse). Broken limbs and similar painful injuries would be treated with analgesics, the soldiers claim, as medical staff would fill out paperwork stating the injuries occurred during capture. Support for some of the allegations of abuse come from a sergeant of the 82nd Airborne who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch quotes him as saying that, "To 'F____ a PUC' means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To 'smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.
"On their day off people would show up all the time," the sergeant continues in the HRW report. "Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all U.S. soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the cook."
The sergeant says that military intelligence officers would tell soldiers that the detainees "were bad" and had been involved in killing or trying to kill Americans, implying that they deserved whatever punishment they got. "I would be told, 'These guys were IED [improvised explosive device] trigger men last week.' So we would f___ them up. F___ them up bad ... At the same time we should be held to a higher standard. I know that now. It was wrong. There are a set of standards. But you gotta understand, this was the norm. Everyone would just sweep it under the rug ... We should never have been allowed to watch guys we had fought."
The Captain making the allegations, say those who have been in contact with him, gave lengthy statements to Human Rights Watch only after his attempts to report what he had seen and heard to his own chain of command, were met, he claims, with repeated brush-offs. He is currently in special forces training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The two non-commissioned officers served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and likewise approached the watchdog group, but have not conferred with Senate staff. "The captain is a very sincere officer, and troubled by what he says he has seen," says another senior aide to a Republican senator. "Only an investigation can determine how accurate his account will prove to be."
The Senators he approached were Bill Frist, John Warner and John McCain.
This is the reason why I don't believe that the US can take part in any legitimate democracy building in Iraq, no matter how long we stay or how many troops we send in there. As Americans, we have to come to grips with the fact that our troops have committed atrocities in our name--there's no other way to describe it--and as a result, we have to realize that there is no way that the Iraqi populace at large will ever trust us.
I was watching a documentary earlier tonight--Hearts and Minds--which is about Vietnam. The Vietnamese footage was shot during the war, as were the interviews. The similarities between this documentary and the situation in Iraq today are eerie.