U.S. General Suspended Over Iraqi Prisoner Abuse

Iraqi prisoner scandal grows
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Andrew Clennell
05 May 2004


The full extent of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners began to emerge last night when the United States announced it had launched investigations into the deaths of 23 detainees and the murder of two others.

The British Government was also under immense pressure as it admitted that 33 cases of civilian deaths, injuries or ill-treatment in its custody have been looked into. Meanwhile, controversy continued to rage over the pictures published in the Daily Mirror newspaper allegedly showing the torture of Iraqi prisoners, with further allegations they had been faked.

In the US, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Pentagon top brass were heavily criticised over their failure to prevent the abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees. In Washington, an army official revealed that one US soldier was convicted of murder for shooting a prisoner to death in September 2003 at a detention centre in Iraq, and that another prisoner was killed at the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad two months later by a private contractor working for the CIA.

The soldier - convicted by court martial - was thrown out of the service but did not serve time in jail. The official said that the soldier shot the prisoner after he had thrown stones at him. The serviceman was found to have used excessive force. No action was taken against the CIA contractor because the military had no legal jurisdiction.

A third death among the 25 being investigated was ruled a justifiable homicide, because the authorities said that it happened as the prisoner was attempting to escape.

Of the other 22 death investigations involving prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, 12 prisoners were found to have died either by natural or undetermined causes and a further 10 deaths were still being investigated.

In Britain, Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, told the Commons that of 33 investigations into deaths of Iraqi civilians or alleged ill-treatment involving British soldiers, 12 were ongoing. Twenty-one had been completed. In 15 cases there had been no case to answer and six recommendations were being considered. Eighteen of the inquiries concerned deaths.

It was reported last night that there have been 21 alleged fatalities caused by UK forces and six Iraqis have died in British military custody.

Peter Mandelson led a backlash by former ministers and Labour MPs against the Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, for publishing the pictures of British soldiers allegedly carrying out abuses on an Iraqi.

Unconfirmed reports were circulating around Westminster that the photographs had been faked by a private security firm operating in Iraq with a grudge against anti-coalition media. Mr Ingram was told about the reports minutes after making a statement to the Commons in which he called on Mr Morgan to make a full disclosure of the identity of the soldiers who handed over the photographs to the newspaper.

With more details of abuses in Iraqi by Allied forces emerging every day and with so many investigations belatedly under way, there is a growing sense in Washington that it is only a matter of time before one or more senior officials or officers are forced to resign as a consequence.

Mr Rumsfeld, who other than Mr Bush holds ultimate responsibility for the military, yesterday condemned the abuse as "totally unacceptable and un-American". He said: "We're taking and will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to hold accountable those that may have violated the code of military conduct and betrayed the trust placed in them by the American people."

Yesterday Senator Edward Kennedy emerged from a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee saying he believed the allegations made public were only "the beginning rather than the end" of the abuse accusations. "This does not appear to be an isolated incident," he said.

But Mr Rumsfeld refused to admit that the abuse amounted to torture. "I'm not a lawyer," he said. "My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture."

The Bush administration has been forced to try to explain how widespread abuse was permitted at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad between October and December last year. The extent of the abuse was revealed by photographs which showed soldiers sexually humiliating hooded prisoners and intimidating them. A leaked internal report carried out by the army into the maltreatment described it as "sadistic, blatant and wanton".

Seeking to limit the damage from the scandal, the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network yesterday: "We have a democratic system that holds people accountable for their actions."

Tarantulas wrote:

We were not shown what happened to Daniel Pearl, but we get to see the naked human pyramid over and over. Seems a little one-sided, doesn't it?

I have seen the Daniel Pearl tape. It's nothing like the naked pyramid and is one of the most brutal things I have ever seen.

The press won't show it because of the level of gore.

Likewise, the press has not been showing the relatively goreless images of a prisoner who was killed in the same prison very much.

For the same concerns about content the more graphic images and portions of images are not being shown.

You may have a point about the press somewhere, but not because of a contrast to the Pearl tape. If the roles were reversed the American press would still not show it simply because of the levels of gore.

Okay, Tarantulas, so nothing really bad happened.

Tarantulas, your skepticism demonstrates your lack of knowledge of Arab Islam culture.

I really can not understand why he is still leading in most opinion polls. Perhaps Mr. Blatham is correct. Most Americans are really stupid.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Okay, Tarantulas, so nothing really bad happened.

I didn't say nothing bad happened. I said some people were assaulted and raped. And I said some people were made to stand in silly poses without clothing. There's a big difference.

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Tarantulas, your skepticism demonstrates your lack of knowledge of Arab Islam culture.

Yeah, I'm a skeptic all right. Do you think that the guards should have backed out of each prison cell to avoid showing the prisoners the bottoms of their shoes? To see that is a huge insult to an Iraqi, as I understand it. Should all the guards attend Muslim Sensitivity Training prior to interacting with Iraqi war criminals?

"Should all the guards attend Muslim Sensitivity Training prior to interacting with Iraqi war criminals?" tarantulas

At last, a sound idea from tarantulas.

If the USA (READ: Bushco) is to be believed that our mission in Iraq is to end tyranny and bring democracy as well as a pro-American POV among iraqi citizens, then perhaps sensitivity to the beliefs and customs unique to Islam, might be a good place to start.

But let's be serious here.

Bushco doesn't give a rats ass about the Iraqi people, or winning them over in opinion polls. In fact, based on the treatment of Iraqi civilians at the hands of the occupying US military, I think it would be much more accurate to say the Iraqis (25 million strong) are a nuisance and an obstacle to achieving the goals of the neocons and the PNACers.

I found tarantulas characterization of the Iraqi prisoners as "criminals" quite telling in so far as a statement to his complete ignorance on this matter. By every account that I've read, the Iraqi prisoners were soldiers -- nothing less and nothing more. But they were not criminals. And, to make a factual leap to characterize them as "criminals" wasn't an accident on tarantuals part.

If the Iraqi prisoners were criminals, then it's much easier to make the final jump to labelling them terrorists, and if they're terrorists, then they
are not protected under the Geneva Convention. However, if they were soldiers (which they are) then they are in fact protected under the Geneva Convention, leaving their American military torturers open to prosecution.

hobitbob wrote:

Tarantulas wrote:

I keep looking for some of those police groupies but they never show up when I'm in uniform. I doubt my wife would appreciate them fully anyway.

But you aren't really a policeman, either from what I understand. You are a sort of reserve officer. What do you actually do? Bring them hot cocoa?

Nope, I'm an extra set of eyes and ears for them, and handcuffs, gun, and pepper spray. I can direct traffic or transport prisoners or look through bags at a security checkpoint and free up a sworn Deputy Sheriff to do the more important law enforcement work. And in almost every respect, my uniform is identical to his.

Hot cocoa!