WAR: Abuse may have been ordered

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American military personnel may have been ordered in order to obtain information, a News 24 article believes.

Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of six US military policemen accused of humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison wrote that he had "questioned some of the things" he saw, but received the reply that 'This is how military intelligence wants it done'.

The Staff Sergent then continued, explaining that soldiers were ordered to 'stress out' prisoners in order to obtain information. This is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention.

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners that sparked worldwide condemnation may have been ordered by US military intelligence to extract information from the captives, and was possibly more cruel than officially acknowledged, The New Yorker magazine and Britain's daily Guardian reported on Saturday.
News24.com

If this is true, it shows exactly how far the Government are willing to go in order to obtain information from prisoners. The whole reason that the Geneva Convention came into being was to stop this kind of abuse. From what I have read, even the prisoners of the Nazis within Colditz Castle were treated better than these Iraquis, and this was before the inception of the Convention.
If this is true, and that soldiers were ordered to 'torture' these prisoners, then there need to be a top-level inquiry.



[Edited on 3-5-2004 by Pisky]

I had heard about this this morning. It's disgusting. I sure hope they go after the six or seven senior officers that have been reprimanded. I think they should be court martialed just like those directly involved. On the other hand, can we really believe that any country is going to play by the Geneva Convention when at war? Sometimes I think it comes down more to a matter of degree. Hmmm, do we just humiliate or do we crank it up to torture? What methods do other countries use when attampting to extract information from prisoners? I really think humiliation is humane compared to wha6t Saddam would have done.