ABUSE CRISIS: Children Said Among Abu Ghraib Prisoners

Originally posted by FredT

sfgate.com
Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of the prison told investigators, according to a transcript.

"He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."

Karpinski's statement is among hundreds of pages of Army records about Abu Ghraib the American Civil Liberties Union released Thursday. The ACLU got the documents under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about abuse of detainees in Iraq.

Hummm...I don't see ANYTHING in this article that says ANY children were abused. Says the ACLU was seeking information.

Amazing that some people can just jump on a story and add all their own details. Ha! What a bunch of.................

Disagree? Show me where in this article it states our military abused and tortured children. Good luck.

I know that I did not state what you said Part, but I sure was thinking it. People overract sometimes by what they think happened rather than what happened. A good example of this is the Courtroom Killer in Georgia who everyone thought was driving the reporters car he hijacked but really never had taken it out of the parking garage. Good post!

Good point Partyof1.

Another hypothetical question here is: If in combat, you happen to look across the field, while avoiding being hit by oncoming targeted bullets, and notice that a young adult or child is firing that AK-47 or grenade launcher at you, do you shot to kill or simply target everything else but the child/young adult wielding that AK-47?

Another hypothetical question: As applied to the above situation, if the combat ends and the young adult or child is captured in the operations, do you simply disarm the child/young adult and spank him/her on the butt and send him/her home or do you treat them as any other combatant and send them to a POW or like camp/detention center?




seekerof

[edit on 12-3-2005 by Seekerof]

It is not the person that makes the solider but the weapon. He is a combatant and therefore is to be treated like one. This is brutally shown by the Russian airline incident where the women were suicide bombers. All because the peg is a different shape doesn't mean that it cannot fit the hole

Originally posted by CAConrad0825
All because the peg is a different shape doesn't mean that it cannot fit the hole

Just off topic, but if the peg is a square, then it wouldn't fit in a circle.
Assuming both shapes are of the same area.

For you people who assert that the kid was an enemy combatant, consider this. Nowhere in the article did it say he was abused, no doubt. BUT, the article also didn' t say that he was an enemy combatant. So, change your logic on that one...

Anyway, no one should be surprised about this one. Deny it if you will, but most people think that the Iraqis we're fighting are subhuman. Ask any neocon...

Oh, I know that isn't true. This isn't the same country that considered my people subhuman at one point. Hell, I still run into fools who don't think I'm human...

Originally posted by Partyof1
Hummm...I don't see ANYTHING in this article that says ANY children were abused. Says the ACLU was seeking information.

Exactly what I was saying above. There is no evidence that this or any toher children were subject to abuse. Otherwise we would have seen hundreds of reports about it by now

It didnt say he was caught firing a weapon either.

Also would an Army Commander come out and say "Yeah he looked about 8 years old and we easilly tortured him to find out where his uncles and brothers are" thus admitting that he'd been tortured. If his combantant status can be infered BY YOU then his torture can be equally infered.

The plain facts from the story are this:
- there are more than one child being held at Abu Ghraib ("Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included")
- a kid who the Commander thought was 8 years old is being "held" at an Army Prison camp.
- these kids are not specified as combatants
- not all held at Abu Ghraib are combatants, they include people rounded up on suspicion and intelligence grounds
- Abu Ghraib denied it was mistreating detainees when it apparently was

Now you may or may not find this acceptable. If you do it shows just how low morality has fallen lately. Just what remains sacred in this War on Terror when kids are being held in Army prisons.

Also I never mentioned in my post that the child had been tortured so play your semantics elsewhere. I merely said a childs obviously physically and mentally weaker than an adult so IF they chose to torture him it would be alot easier to obtain "information" than it was from an adult.

If you want to play semantics why dont you analyse the Donald Rumsfeld decree on whats acceptable in interrogation. You're awfully quiet on that little fact.

Also if a 12 year old clearly was firing rockets its the soldiers judgement call on whether he kills to save himself and live with the mental demons of it or try to wound him/call for non-lethal weapons(bean bag rounds).

If said 12 year old was captured with weapons on them and it was a prevalent situation then clearly a separate Army camp riddled with Unicef/Red Cross/Red Crecent/Amnesty and news reporters would be the logical step. It ensures these CHILDREN are not abused and that the Army can never be accused of anything of the sort.

Wheres the common sense? Our view on children is that they are incapable of legally making decisions until they are 18. Thusly any child using weapons would of been forced into this by adults or does not know what they are doing. It applies in America, why not in Iraq? Oh yeah they are human but not as human as white kids.

Also why does it take an investigation into abuse at Abu Ghraib to occur before we learn that children are being held. If the Army used common sense it would shout from the roof tops that these insurgents are debasing themselves with child soldiers.

[edit on 13/3/05 by subz]