Torturing Children - God help this country

Torturing Children

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 20 July 2004

The biggest story of the Iraq war is not about missing weapons of mass destruction, or about deep-cover CIA officers getting their covers blown by vengeful White House agents, or even about 896 dead American soldiers. These have been covered to one degree or another, and then summarily dismissed, by the American mainstream news media. The biggest story of the Iraq war has not enjoyed any coverage in America, though it has been exploding across the international news media for several weeks now.

The biggest story of the Iraq war is about the torture of Iraqi children.

A German TV magazine called 'Report Mainz' recently aired accusations from the International Red Cross, to the effect that over 100 children are imprisoned in U.S.- controlled detention centers, including Abu Ghraib. "Between January and May of this year, we've registered 107 children, during 19 visits in 6 different detention locations," said Red Cross representative Florian Westphal in the report.

The report also outlined eyewitness testimony of the abuse of these children. Staff Sergeant Samuel Provance, who was stationed at Abu Ghraib, said that interrogating officers had gotten their hands on a 15 or 16 year old girl. Military police only stopped the interrogation when the girl was half undressed. A separate incident described a 16 year old being soaked with water, driven through the cold, smeared with mud, and then presented before his weeping father, who was also a prisoner.

Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker reporter who first broke the story of torture at Abu Ghraib, recently spoke at an ACLU convention. He has seen the pictures and the videotapes the American media has not yet shown. "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking," said Hersh. "And this is your government at war."

Hersh described the prison scene as, "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway," and that there has been, "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

Reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American prisons have been public knowledge since the release of the Taguba Report. Recently, however, some 106 annexes to the report, previously classified, have also been released. U.S. News and World Report detailed the sum of what is contained in these annexes in an article titled 'Hell on Earth.'

In it, U.S. News says, "The abuses took place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report, that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib." According to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report from last May, between 70% to 90% of Iraqi detainees held in these prisons were arrested "by mistake." That means they were innocent.

The orders to treat prisoners in this fashion were not manufactured by the few "bad apples" we have heard about, but came from up on high. Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski, former commander of Abu Ghraib and now scapegoat for the abuses, says the truth about where the orders came from would be revealed in the trials of the accused soldiers. Memos ordering the abuse of prisoners were signed off on by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The Justice Department and Mr. Bush's senior legal advisor went out of their way to craft arguments justifying this, claiming that torture isn't really torture and that the President is basically above the law.

Mr. Hersh will revisit this issue within the next several weeks. In the meantime, the American news media has an obligation to report on this situation. Photographic and videotape evidence of this torture is currently in the hands of the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the U.S. Congress and the White House. It must be released.

We invaded a country based upon the false claim that Iraq was allied with al Qaeda. We invaded a country based on the false claim that there were weapons of mass destruction which needed to be destroyed. We promised freedom and democracy, and instead installed a CIA-trained strongman named Allawi who has all but created a dictatorship in Iraq, and who has been accused of killing Iraqi prisoners by his own hand. 896 American soldiers have died so we could do this.

We took thousands of innocent civilians off the streets in Iraq and threw them into hellhole prisons, where they were beaten, raped, and killed. This story has faded from public view because no new pictures of the abuses have come out in the last several weeks. Those pictures are out there, and they show the rape and torture of children. The international media is reporting on it. Coalition ally Norway may be preparing to flee Iraq because of the allegations regarding these children.

Where is the American news media? Where are the pictures? Who is responsible for this abomination? Torturing children in the name of freedom? Is this what we have become?





What the hell is wrong with our country

I think they call it democracy but from my point of view it is the same as under Saddam except this time the occupiers do the torturing.

Originally posted by MajicEyes
Torturing children in the name of freedom? Is this what we have become?

What the hell is wrong with our country

No, this is what we have been all along. The governments we have elected for the better part of the 20th century have supported governments which inflict such oppression on their populations.

What you are witnessing is only a dropping of a veil. The reality beyond it has been present for a good while.

As we become more and more of a consumer of other nation's raw materials, this veil will drop further, and less and less of our dirty work will be done via proxy.

U.

[edit on 10-8-2004 by upuaut]

instead of asking "waht is wrong with your country", i think it is better to ask: what is happening to our World!
more weird then that is all the people that continue stating that we humans are just love and capable of beautifful good actions....so,,,and what?!,,,what it's the good in been able to performe good actions if each day, fewer and fewer people do that!? the world is crunbling, we have reach a level of inasanitie behind imagination,,,but for many, we are the "best" yet!...please wake up! continue to deny "control", and soon we do not will have a practical solution for nothing!

[edit on 10-8-2004 by kangaxx]

[edit on 10-8-2004 by kangaxx]

The Number is above 2000 not 100 never trust the agency



Falcon

kangaxx , I agree with ya. Too many people/countries making too many problems and not enough love/care to go around. People give a sh*t, most people wants the lie that we have been told to buy.

Oh well turn the page, we made it through the cold war, yeah.
Everyone knows the good guys always win, TV tells us this .

I'm off topic sorry

kangaxx , I agree with ya. Too many people/countries making too many problems and not enough love/care to go around. People give a sh*t, most people wants the lie that we have been told to buy.

Oh well turn the page, we made it through the cold war, yeah.
Everyone knows the good guys always win, TV tells us this .

I'm off topic sorry

Wow! It was reported so it must be true!

The reort comes from Seymor Hersch ( an avowed U.S. hater so no bias there) and next

Where was Alllawi trained by the U.S?

The Army self reported the abuse in January. Why no concern until the story "was broken" in july? The Senate knew this info in JANUARY! Not a peep.

The abuse was done by the locals and STOPPED by the military.

Children can throw bombs too.

soon they will all die

they will face the wrath of god

the new world order can't stay in power forever

everything can end at anytime

i'll p@#$ on you all f@#$%^&!!!!!!!!

The reports are based on eyewitness accounts, including a couple from US soldiers and reports from UNICEF, Amnesty International and the International Red Cross as well as independent investigative journalism by that German crew and others.

More info here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 11-8-2004 by kegs]

We should all be dead.

You the funny thing is that this abuses has been reported around for week if not even months but people tend to go blind to this type of stories I wonder what�s is going on with the media that may consider this type of news not that important.

What a shame

How dare they!!!! The thought of this sickens me.. Why can't ppl reralize children are our future no matter what race,religion,or beliefs they may have, and to abuse a child is too destroy the future!!! Children are the one true innocent victims of all this!!! We need to love and nurture them. Teach them to learn from our mistakes and to love one another and not to feed off of hate and anger!!! If this happened do u not think that they will too grow up and hate us like their parents do!!!! The children are the ones who will take care of us when we are older! the children are the ones who will run the country when we are gone!!! Is this the message we want to be sending them!!!!

A child is a special gift given to you ( like a diamond in the ruff) Do u really want to throw it away before it has a chance to sparkle and shine!?
Chances are these kids were only doing and saying what their parents told them too!!!! Did ya ever think of that?

I thought that in a democracy, you have the right your opposition on your government or should I say on the invaders of your country perhaps?

I think its disgraceful.

Do they not realise that these kids are going to grow up? A great way to encourage more anti-US terroists of the future.

These "Children" can kill you just as dead as an adult.

alsaher.com...

I don't care who told them to act I WILL kill anyone who threatens me, my family or more country.

AlAqsa Martyrs Brigade...snicker... those brave guys are now using mentally challenged 17 year olds. Should the Israelis not shoot him?

I guess the torturers we're only doing what their commanders told them to.

Crmanager: said that "Children can throw bombs too", and I guess all Coalition troops are kind understanding heroes sent to liberate an oppressed society.

It must be that all the negative things that have been in the media about the behaviour of the coalition troops must have been lies, either that or you live in another dimension called "Denial".
It's a shame th US Administration can't practice what it preaches.

[edit on 11-8-2004 by Koka]

Originally posted by crmanager
I don't care who told them to act I WILL kill anyone who threatens me, my family or more country.

I assume you're posting this from somewhere in Iraq then?

Whoa! Wait a minute, children? Sexually assaulted? In prisons? No way! You mean this is some sort of aberrant power structure behavior never seen before?

houseonahill.net...
www.hartford-hwp.com...
puck.wolmail.nl...
www.bangladeshobserveronline.com...

Wake up and smell the occupation. Taking over Iraqi real estate was easy. The trick now is going to be to take over the people. The reasons for invading Iraq notwithstanding, the methods used to subjugate a people are time tested and proven.

By humiliating, embarrassing, disgracing, and denying any semblance of human dignity to the occupied, you remove any cultural, societal (ethnic), or national pride and any will to fight or resist. Invariably, however, there will be those who, despite best efforts, will decide to fight and resist.

Fortunately, those who do resist and fight, provide a ready reason, or excuse, to further damage and destroy their cultural, societal (ethnic), and national institutions. The vacuum created by the loss of these institutions only adds to the humiliation of, and increases the control over, the inhabitants of the newly acquired real estate.

Thanks for the links, BOHICA,

But as anything in this country all this things go unoticed by the media and our country.