6 US Troops charged for maltreating Iraqi jail inmates

[Agathon]

I just heard that the pictures which haven't been released include a video of a prisoner being forced to masturbate in front of female guards.

That's bad.

But I also heard that there are pictures of male and female prisoners naked. If they are the same sort of sexually degrading pictures that we've seen, then this will make the Arabs go berserk.

You know what they're like about women. I wouldn't want to be within a bull's roar of the Middle East if these come out.

[asleepathewheel]

has this been posted?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4855930/

Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

sickening.

[muxec]

Psychologists say that an average jail guard simply can not treat prisoners as human without special training.

Those who are real guilty criminals are not those, who misstreated inmates, but those f.king cameramen.

[Dis]

women should not be prison guards, I feel strongly about this. And this includes domestic prisons inside the U.S.

I hope they don't go easy on this England girl because she's a woman. She better get 20 years hard labour like the rest of them. If anything, she should get more hard labour time.

And her dumbass sister is defending her saying she was only following orders!. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. How would she like to be treated like that if she were captured?

I don't understand why the army reserve is so perveted. We were never that perverted in the navy . I never knew anyone who would dream of doing something like this.

[Dis]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Well, I guess I'm not visiting the ME anytime in my life.

trust me, you aren't missing much

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
On a side note, has anyone heard about the torture of the Russian soldiers in Chechnya?

They are available on the net. Everyone who has seen them feels sick and says the are very disturbing.

Where is the outrage at those videos???

In Russia
Sadly, the Chechnya tragedy doesn't get the spotlight it deserves

[Dis]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
On a side note, has anyone heard about the torture of the Russian soldiers in Chechnya?

They are available on the net. Everyone who has seen them feels sick and says the are very disturbing.

Where is the outrage at those videos???

Americans are held to a higher standard, as we should be.

[lightblue]

Well it's partly that, and that these are UK and US soldiers so the UK and US press will give a lot more press to it, as it actually affects our countries.

[Dis]

those photos sicken me.

But for some reason the conduct of the women bothers me the worst. women should not be allowed near prisoners because they should not be viewing males naked. And this includes inside domestic prisons in the U.S.

I supported the war up until now.

But now I suspect something is seriously wrong with americans, and they should never go to war again. Something is sick, and twisted. Our american society has hit it's worst. We have no business starting wars, we have proven we are worse than the nations we attacked.

I hereby withdraw my support of George W. Bush this upcoming election. The goverment needs to be overthrown. This is not what the founding fathers envisioned.

don't think I'm voting for John Kerry. this dumbass admits to committing atrocities

[muxec]

America has proven itself worse than the nations it invades.

Nope. American soldiers did not execute direct orders of their commanders when misstreating inmates while Iraqi jailguards did. Also i think that USA should think about wery serious (but expansive) psychological preparation for work in jail. When randomly selected pacifist students participated in psychological experement as temporary jailguards half of them became brutal.

[Agathon]

If half of what the reports say is true about the remaining pictures then the government is in a very difficult position. Either the pictures are released or speculation will mount that they have been suppressed or destroyed. Neither option seems better than the other from the point of view of the administration.

Among several other papers, today's New York Times has called for Rumsfeld's resignation, and that now looks like the path of least resistance. How long do you give him?

Looking around the net it seems that Dissident's feelings are shared by the majority of people. Could this effectively be the end of any large scale support for the war? It doesn't seem that the US has any credibility left with Arabs, and if these new pictures come out the level of hatred can only increase.

It simply beggars belief to think that those in charge didn't know about this. Surely if they cared at all, they would have made it their business to know. The only reasonable surmise is that they didn't give a ****. Their humming and hawing about the Geneva Conventions looks even worse in the light of what has gone on.

Whatever is going on at Gitmo is now immediately suspect no matter what Bush or anyone else says.

[muxec]

Agathon, I bet that if you were jailguard you would behave as brutally as those USA soldiers shown on pictures.

[oedo]

Nope. American soldiers did not execute direct orders of their commanders when misstreating inmates while Iraqi jailguards did. Also i think that USA should think about wery serious (but expansive) psychological preparation for work in jail. When randomly selected pacifist students participated in psychological experement as temporary jailguards half of them became brutal.

Which actually would mean that direct orders aren't necessary since torturing happens anyway. At least as long as nothing is done to prevent it.

[oedo]

Pentagon Refused Lawyer As Prison Adviser


Pentagon Refused Lawyer As Prison Adviser

Sat May 8, 2:14 AM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!


By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Pentagon (news - web sites) officials rejected an Army plan last year to send an experienced military lawyer — who is also a Republican member of Congress — to help oversee the unit blamed for prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib complex outside Baghdad.



That left the prison complex, which holds up to 7,000 Iraqis, without an onsite lawyer to guide interrogations and treatment of prisoners.


The top lawyer for the 800th Military Police Brigade, the Army unit in charge of detainees at Abu Ghraib, later came under fire in an Army report about the abuse for being ineffective and "unwilling to accept responsibility for any of his actions."


The rejected lawyer, Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., and other experts say having had a lawyer at the prison might have prevented or at least mitigated the beatings, sexual humiliation and other abuse detailed in photographs and the Army probe.


"It's always good to have a lawyer around so you've got a conscience for the command and an opportunity to vet questions," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, who commanded an armored brigade during the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).


Pentagon officials confirmed there was no onsite lawyer at Abu Ghraib, but spokesmen for Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Pentagon personnel officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment Friday. Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, referred questions to the Army.


Buyer, a strong supporter of the Iraq (news - web sites) war and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, had volunteered to go to Iraq shortly after the invasion in March 2003.


In a telephone interview Friday with The Associated Press, Buyer said military officials all the way up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff had approved his assignment to the 800th Military Police Brigade, which has handled Iraqi prisoners of war since the beginning of the conflict.


Pentagon personnel officials and Brownlee rejected the assignment, saying the Army could fill the requirement another way. Brownlee also wrote to Buyer that his high-profile status could bring danger to the troops around him.


Buyer said he objected to David Chu, the Pentagon's personnel chief, and Charles Abell, Chu's deputy.


"I expressed the importance of having a (lawyer) at the camp," Buyer said. "You have to ask, when you had a qualified officer, and the civilian leaders, Dr. Chu and the secretary of the Army, said no, who did you send in his place?"


Soldiers from the 800th MP Brigade have been accused not only of abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib but also detainees at the Camp Bucca POW facility near Basra in southern Iraq. The military also is investigating a dozen prisoner deaths in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq, some of them in facilities run by the 800th Brigade.


Buyer served as a lawyer at a prisoner of war camp run by the 800th Brigade during the first Gulf War. His duties, Buyer said, included helping the International Committee of the Red Cross monitor conditions and ensuring guards followed international law such as the Geneva Conventions. He said he also questioned some Iraqis suspected of war crimes.


"The 800th MP Brigade performed exemplary service in the Gulf War," Buyer said. "There was no hint of any mistreatment or maltreatment of prisoners. It never happened. They had excellent leadership."


The investigation of Abu Ghraib by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found serious problems with the brigade's leadership, including its commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski.


Taguba wrote that even after the abuse at Camp Bucca in May 2003, Karpinski did not give the unit proper training.


"I could find no evidence that BG Karpinski ever directed corrective training for her soldiers or ensured that MP soldiers throughout Iraq clearly understood the requirements of the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of detainees," Taguba wrote.


The Associated Press obtained a copy of the classified report this week.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...cted&printer=1

[the_ceebs]

American soldiers did not execute direct orders of their commanders when mistreating inmates while Iraqi jail guards did.

The big problem isn’t that senior politicians have explicitly ordered the mistreatment of prisoners, rather that by employing ‘independent contractors’ they have effectively provided a way where they can claim that these actions have occurred outside their control. If politicians have ordered the military to accept the orders of these individuals then they would be more responsible than the senior soldiers.

I read one article that said that the independent contractors could not be tried for their actions, as they fall outside as they fall outside military law. Unfortunately I don’t remember where. However whilst looking for it I found this which says that the independent contractor there is still in post.