http://www.buzzflash.com/mailbag/04/05/mai04129.html(page 2 near top)
-snip-
Subject: Who made the hoods?
Besides the obvious disgust one would feel at looking at the pictures of Iraqi Prisoners and the "fun" that the guards were having, (don't blame me, that's how Rush Limbaugh describes it), something else has been bothering me: It's the hoods stuck over the prisoner's heads. In the picture of the prisoners all piled up in a human pyramid, the hoods all look identical. And I wondered about that. Were there a bunch of identical hoods just laying around for the soldiers to grab when they felt like blowing off some steam? (Again, that's how Rush sees the whole thing: "Just a little fun". "Our guys, blowing off some steam". Which pretty much explains one of the many reasons why I wouldn't want to hang out with Rush when it's time to unwind. And has anyone bothered to point out that if Rush thinks putting hoods on strangers and sticking things up parts of their unwilling anatomies is relaxing, it says more about him than anything else?) Anyway, where did those hoods come from?
They could have gotten the wires they stuck on that one prisoner from anywhere. You know, the guy on the box with wires hanging off of him. He was the one (or, he's the one we know about), who was told that if he fell off of the box, he would be electrocuted. How long do you think they made him stand there? He had on one of those hoods on too.
And they could have gotten that saddle they put on the back of the 70 year old Iraqi woman, before one of our finest got on her and rode her around and told her she was a donkey, from the locals. (Sean Hannity likens the treatment of Iraqi prisoners to a fraternity hazing. Hey, Sean, do you think that 70 year old woman felt like she was joining a fraternity? Do you think a 70 year old Iraqi woman even knows what a fraternity is? Cause if she doesn't, your fraternity hazing theory would kind of be lost on her.) But I doubt if the locals had those hoods laying around. I think they had to be brought in by the military, or the mercenaries, uh, I mean contractors.
I was in the military, at an isolated base. We had nothing that wasn't shipped in to us. So, where did these hoods come from? Were they left over from Saddam's time? I doubt it, 'cause they have them at Gitmo and Afghanistan, too. Except for the Khaki green color, they kind of look like KKK hoods, with that point on the end. Where do you order something like that? Torture-R-Us? Does the Army have them stored somewhere? Do they have little, tiny labels on the inside that say, "Made in the USA"? The ones in Gitmo have pointy ends too. I bet they're made by the same company. I wonder if it was a no-bid contract? I bet it was. How much did they cost us? Because you know this is just one more fine example of your tax dollars at work.
What kind of weird military name do you think they are called on military order forms? "Liberation hats", maybe. Or, "Winning the Hearts Headgear". Knowing how perverse the Bush Administration is, it's probably something like, "Vision Preservation Accessory". They would have an acronym for them, like, "VPA". As in, "Hey Charlie, we need to order 150 more of those VPA's."
Anyone who has been in the military knows that there are procedures for procurement of supplies. First, there is a determination that something is needed. Then funds must be allocated for this purpose. An authorized source for procurement must be determined. Forms must be filled out to order the needed material. Since it's the military, lots of forms. These things take time and planning.
Somewhere there is a paper trail for every single item at every prison in Iraq, including the hoods. And that means that several things could be determined from following this trail:
1. Whose idea was it to use them in the first place? (Donald, I'm talking to you. Did Dick put you up to this?) The truth is that these hoods were in use before we went into Iraq. You could ask the detainees in Guantanamo, (well, actually, you can't ask them - no one can, not their lawyers, not their families, no one), they flew from Afghanistan to Cuba with their heads hooded. Never mind the illegality of putting hoods on prisoners of war, we got around that by calling them "enemy combatants" , thereby evading those pesky Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of prisoners. I wonder if that 70 year old Iraqi lady was considered an enemy combatant? Or just a fun ride?
2. How were the procurements for the hoods justified? "General, we may need to order several thousand of these, uh, special party hats for command functions."
3. Who okayed the orders? How far up did the authorization for restricted torture equipment go?
4. When was it determined that we needed these hoods? If they've been using them for a year or more, how long before that were the wheels set in motion to make sure they had them on hand? We know they were not left over from conflicts prior to the first Bush Administration, because we weren't ignoring the Geneva Convention back then. We didn't even treat the Nazi prisoners of war like this. But then, we weren't liberating them.
You know, these hoods could potentially reveal a lot more than they cover up.
Rose L.
-snip-
---------------------------------
so, what US company makes these hoods? or are they made in Briton?
maybe one of our soldiers over there could find out?
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
