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April 22, 2005
What I Think of the Iraq "Torture" Photos
A classic post from Lockjaw's Xanga Page
Lots has been said about the incident involving the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US troops, lately. There are a lot of people up in arms about this, as if the incident is typical of all US actions in the region. Here's my take.
First, how did the incidents come to light? Did a reporter sneak in and take the pics? Did someone snatch the pictures from the soldiers in question and take them to the media or the authorities? No. In fact, it was OTHER soldiers who saw the mistreatment happen, and documented them as evidence. It was those other soldiers who notified the authorities that this was happening. When the mistreatment was witnessed by one of the 100,000+ soldiers who wasn't involved in it, they took actions to stop it.
Secondly, since these pictures have surfaced so recently, it begs the question, when did it happen? These incidents happened, apparently, this past fall. When the US authorities were notified, an investigation was launched the next day.
So, what are they going to do about these soldiers who mistreated the prisoners? They're already doing it. On January 19, US Military Command requested a review of practices at the prison. That review was completed March 3. In February, the Army Inspector General started a review of prison facilities in the region. On April 23, another review was started focusing on the intelligence side of things. As for the culprits themselves, the investigation was completed in March 15, resulting in 20 criminal charges for the six individuals.
What about how this will affect our image in the arab world? This won't affect our image one bit. Only one side of this story will be told by a majority of the arab media. Only one side of this story will be told by a majority of the arab leadership. Only one side of this story will be told by the muslim clerics. Face it, if we delivered ten million baked chickens, cakes and candies to the arab regions, and distributed them to the hungry and needy, the leaders would say that we're only trying to corrupt them and that we probably baked them with the blood of arab children, anyway. After all, they'll say, it's all a zionist plot. That's not fantasy. That's indicative of the messages they already spread about the US and Israel. Why? Because they lie. The truth is not their friend, so they lie. Since they're lying either to, or about, non-muslims, it's fine and dandy.
It is my sincere hope that these individuals who allegedly mistreated the iraqi prisoners get a fair trial, and the punishment that they deserve. What was apparently done was wrong, and should never happen at all, much less at the hands of a US soldier.
Now, a note about what constitutes abuse, taken from The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal Online in the Best of the Web column:
The Associated Press manages to produce an ex-prisoner, Dhia al-Shweiri, a supporter of
renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who claims the abuse he suffered at
the hands of his American captors was worse than what Saddam's henchmen meted
out in the same prison. Here are the horrors to which America subjected him:
During his stay at Abu Ghraib, he said [he] was asked to take off his clothes only once and for about 15 minutes.
"I thought they wanted me to change into the red prison uniform, so I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. Then he asked me to take off my underwear. I started arguing with him, but in the end he made me take off my underwear,"
al-Shweiri said.
He said he and six other prisoners--all hooded--had to face the wall and bend over a little as they put their hands on the wall.
"They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us," he said, adding that he was not sodomized.
During Saddam's regime, in contrast, "he said he was given electric shocks, beaten and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back." According to him, "that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked."
The Washington Post, meanwhile, quotes a former prisoner who says the exercise routine was too demanding and the music was unpleasant:
The black sack the troops placed over his head was removed only briefly during the next nine days of interrogation, conducted by U.S. officials in civilian and military clothes, he said. He was forced to do knee bends until he collapsed, he recalled, and black marks still ring his wrists from the pinch of plastic handcuffs. Rest was made impossible by loudspeakers blaring, over and over, the Beastie Boys' rap anthem, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn."
That some ex-prisoners are bellyaching about trivia does not, of course, mean that all was well in Abu Ghraib. If real abuses are proved, then it's entirely appropriate, as Dan Senor, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, puts it, that "careers will be ended and criminal charges are going to be leveled."
Enemy propaganda notwithstanding, this underscores the fundamental difference between America and totalitarian regimes like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Evil is part of human nature, and Americans are as susceptible to it as anyone else. But in a civilized country like ours, the state uses its power to prevent and punish brutality. In a regime like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the state uses its power to inflict brutality. Those who seek to blur this distinction are acting in the defense of institutionalized evil.
Posted by Lockjaw at April 22, 2005 11:32 AM
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