Exerpts from Red Cross report on Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040507/ap_on_re_mi_ea/red_cross_excerpts&cid=540&ncid=1480

The ICRC draws the attention of the Coalition Forces to a number of serious violations of humanitarian law:

_Brutality against protected person upon capture and initial custody, sometimes causing death or serious injury.

_Physical or psychological coercion during interrogation to secure information.

_Prolonged solitary confinement in cells devoid of daylight.

_Excessive or disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their liberty resulting in death or injury during their period of internment.

_Seizure and confiscation of private belongings.

The main places of internment where mistreatment allegedly took place included battle group unit stations; the military sections of Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib Correctional Facility; Al-Baghdadi, Heat Base and Hubbania Camp in Ramadi governate; Tikrit holding area (former Saddam Hussein Islamic School); a former train station Al-Khaim, near the Syrian border, turned into a military base; the Ministry of Defense and Presidential Palace in Baghdad, the former mukhabarat office in Basra, as well as several Iraqi police stations in Baghdad.


Methods of Ill-Treatment

_Hooding, used to prevent people from seeing and to disorient them, and also to prevent them from breathing freely. ... Hooding could last for periods from a few hours up to two to four consecutive days, during which hoods were lifted only for drinking, eating or going to the toilets.

_Handcuffing with flexi-cuffs, which were sometimes made so tight and used for such extended periods that they caused skin lesions and long-term aftereffects on the hands (nerve damage), as observed by the ICRC.

_Beating with hard objects (including pistols and rifles), slapping, punching, kicking with knees or feet on various parts of the body (legs, sides, lower back, groin).

_Pressing the face into the ground with boots.

_Threats.

_Being stripped naked for several days while held in solitary confinement in an empty and completely dark cell that included a latrine.

_Being paraded naked outside cells in front of other persons deprived of their liberty and guards, sometimes hooded or with women's underwear over the head.

_Acts of humiliation such as being made to stand naked against the wall of the cell with arms raised or with women's underwear over the head for prolonged periods, while being laughed at by guards, including female guards, and sometimes photographed in this position.

_Being attached repeatedly over several days, for several hours each time, with handcuffs to the bars of their cell door in humiliating (i.e., naked or in underwear) and/or uncomfortable position causing physical pain.

_Exposure while hooded to loud noise or music, prolonged exposure while hooded to the sun over several hours.

_Being forced to remain for prolonged periods in stress positions such as squatting or standing with our without the arms lifted.

These methods of physical or psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information or other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an "intelligence value."

Brutality against protected person upon capture and initial custody, sometimes causing death

Causing death..ya that sounds like frat party hazing alright

HOWEVER, as my sister pointed out to me, participation in a frat hazing is VOLUNTARY.

Now that's a serious difference.

the fact that the ICRC has released this, means that this is far worst than we think.... the ICRC never releases this...

OH MY LORD what have we done?

Leaked, and confirmed. Not the same.

And it's important to the safety of prisoners worldwide that we stick to this story.

and why... nough said

Does the report predate the pictures which are being distributed (I believe someone indicated they were dated between Oct and Dec 2003)?

If so, "notice" had been given,...and NOTHING had been done or not enough had been done to stop the torture tactics.

Moreover, was Congress provided this report? If not, why?

AND, why wasn't Congress provided the January report?

If this is not a conspiracy to cover-up, I don't know what stronger case could be made for such a crime.

humans have behaved like this....but i am thinking of our inability to take in what happened on 9/11. Did it have to lead to this madness?

that the Iraqis perpetrated 9/11 and so they feel justified.

Guess what... at the height of the KKK in the 20's forward through the fifties and sixties, the most all were republicans. KKK was practically synonymous with republican.

I think people are using the terms "we" and "our" a little too loosely here. "We" voted for Al Gore, and were it not for election fraud by republicans "we" would never have invaded Iraq.

There is a racist, masculinist ideology that gets us into these messes every time, and keeps us there, and it just won't seem to die. Some people are trying to learn and grow from tragedy, yes, but humanity and particularly U.S. citizens, need to inhale and fully accept the fact that some people are not, and don't care about the suffering of others of a different religion or color or gender or whatever. Anything that gets in the way of their endgame (money) has got to go, by any means necessary. By and large, these people are called republicans. Not to say that democrats are without prejudice, but bigotry is not our organizing feature like it is with them

A more enlightened administration might not have chosen to mobilize the American public in support of its goals by encouraging fear and hatred and legitimizing the suspension of the rule of law. Problem is, when you start chucking the rule of law out the window and encourage hatred of other human beings as impersonal, one dimensional agents of evil, why should anyone feel constrained by decency and/or legality? The government isn't concerned about due process, so why should anyone else?

Human Rights Watch, in their letter to Rumsferatu, perceptively observed that the casualness displayed by the perpetrators in the photographs suggested that they genuinely felt they had nothing to hide. Those who have been arrested in connection with these abuses are reported as showing surprise, and I suspect they probably are genuinely surprised. Are these actions really all that different from the countless other suspensions of constitutional protections and illegal detentions we've committed since 9/11 which, I'm sorry to say, have enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and widespread acceptance among the American people? Americans need to learn that they can't be a little bit pregnant: if you start throwing out the rule of law whenever it suits your convenience, how can you expect anyone to know that it's not okay to chuck it out in other contexts?

KevinJ wrote:

Human Rights Watch, in their letter to Rumsferatu, perceptively observed that the casualness displayed by the perpetrators in the photographs suggested that they genuinely felt they had nothing to hide. Those who have been arrested in connection with these abuses are reported as showing surprise, and I suspect they probably are genuinely surprised.

A very astute observation, which begs the question of whether the powers that be wanted these incidents photographed, possibly to show to other detainees as an indicator of what would happen if they didn't suddenly start spewing information (with, of course, no concern on the U.S.'s part as to whether such information was true). As for their surprise, perhaps they should have read up on their war crimes history to understand that they are indeed culpable for obeying illegal orders.

Red Cross denied access to PoWs

Up to 3,000 Iraqis - some of them civilians - believed to be gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at US camps close to Baghdad airport


The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt.
There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source.

The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat. All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down.

There is circumstantial evidence that prisoners are being gagged and hooded, in the manner of the Afghans and other captives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - treatment in itself questionable under international law.

more...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,963108,00.html

So this isn't phony. Myers and Rummy kept saying that this was an isolated incident today at the hearing. Well, this excerpt from the Red Cross report shows that the general and the secretary are lying.

:mad:

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