hobitbob:
You know what this reminds me of? They relocation of 5,000 Afghani sheepherders and farmers from Afghanistan at the beginning of the war.
Those who survived (Amnesty International thinks upward of 1,500 died in transit) were pawns in a propaganda war designed to make the Bush government look like they were actually taking a bite out of terrorism.
When in fact, they picked up a bunch of men who for the most part, had never even heard of the USA.
Where do you guys get your information? I would really like to know so I can be as informed as you bunch seem to be.
Wilso seems to know each individual prisoner and what they have and haven't done.
Bi-Polar bear has some personal crusade against anyone who doesn't agree with him and continues to make snide little personal comments.
Pistoff seems intimately knowledgeable about what the Bush admin does care about and what it doesn't. As well as knowing that each prisoner in jail is a soldier and innocent of any wrong doing.
Hobitbob contends that the prisoners are innocent young men picked up at random by the ruthles G.I. military and are also innocent of any wrong doing.
Infowarrior...well, I have no idea where Infowarrior gets his information...It's just too silly for words.
So, please share with us where you get your information because at this point your allegations are so whacked that I don't even think the National Enquirer would print your comments...
"So, please share with us where you get your information because at this point your allegations are so whacked that I don't even think the National Enquirer would print your comments..." McGentrix
You would know. Isn't that your employer?
McGentrix
McGentrix, once again you've set yourself up to look stupid. If you read a lot of the information I've posted about the military's own investigation you would know the answer just as the others here do.
The accused guards have told investigators that one of their frustrations was that the military's general neighborhood sweeps brought in so many people that they didn't know who had done what. They couldn't tell the difference between a terrorist, a resister, an abettor, or just an ordinary innocent citizen in the wrong place and the wrong time. They were instructed by their military intelligence supervisors to soften ALL OF THEM up for interrogation. The innocent obviously didn't have any information to reveal, so they were tortured to get the non-existent information out of them. The guards reported that the prisoners were so scared and shamed that they told their interrogators what ever they wanted to hear: the names of neighbors or anyone they knew, just to stop the torture. Then these other people were brought into the prison and the cycle began all over again.
If you don't believe the information I've posted, I'm not going to educate you here, McGentrix. Put your own brain to work and do your own research so you don't make such a fool of yourself on A2K. We get bored having to point it out to you so often.
BBB
Sorry, BBB, but I stopped reading your posts some time ago.
Commander of Coalition Prisons Apologizes
Commander of Coalition Prisons Apologizes
May 5, 2004
By JIM KRANE
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AP) - The commander of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq apologized Wednesday for the "illegal or unauthorized acts" committed by soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, where photographs showed Iraqi prisoners being abused by smiling American guards, and invited the Red Cross to open an office at the facility.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller also said some interrogation techniques would be halted because of the scandals while the use of others would be limited.
"I would like to apologize for our nation and for our military for the small number of soldiers who committed illegal or unauthorized acts here at Abu Ghraib," Miller told Arab and Western reporters taken on a military tour of the prison.
"These are violations not only of our national policy but of how we conduct ourselves as members of the international community.
"It has brought a cloud over all the efforts of all of our soldiers and we will work our hardest to re-establish the trust that Iraqis feel for the coalition and the confidence people in American have in their military."
President Bush was to conduct brief interviews with the U.S.-sponsored Al-Hurra television network and the Arab network Al-Arabiya on Wednesday to address Iraqi and Arab outrage at the photographs.
The prison was a notorious center for torture and killings during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
As Miller spoke to reporters in cellblock 1A, where the photos showing prisoner abuse were taken, five women inmates screamed, shouted and waved their arms through the iron bars.
"I've been here five months," one woman shouted in Arabic. "I don't belong to the resistance. I have children at home."
At a tent camp inside the prison used for detainees with medical conditions, prisoners ran out shouting at the bus of journalists. Some hobbled on crutches while one man waved his prosthetic leg in the air.
"Why! Why," he shouted in Arabic. "Nobody has told me why I am here."
Another prisoner produced a bullhorn and read aloud a statement in English.
"The problem of the Iraqi prisoners isn't only what is written in the news," he said. "Iraqi prisoners need freedom, their dignity and their rights."
He complained of "random capturing from the streets," soldiers stealing property during raids on homes, "illogical questions with no relation to reality" and "mental and psychological interrogations for no obvious reasons."
Prison authorities did not allow the journalists to speak to or photograph the detainees.
Asked about claims by many prisoners after their release that they were picked up by mistake and have no connection to the anti-U.S. resistance, Col. Foster Payne, head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, said, "Some people are in the wrong place at the wrong time, but clearly everyone is not a farmer."
Outside the prison, located on the western edge of Baghdad, about 2,000 Iraqis demonstrated Wednesday to protest U.S. treatment of prisoners there.
The protesters gathered outside the main gate, chanting, "Democracy doesn't mean killing innocent people."
They also hoisted a banner that said: "Free women or we will launch jihad."
Miller said he asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to have a permanent presence at the prison west of Baghdad. Also, Iraq's Interior Ministry and Ministry of Human Rights will have offices here at the prison, he said.
Miller said he had reviewed the U.S. Army's interrogation manual's list of 53 techniques for questioning prisoners and spoke to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top general in Iraq.
"He has approved my recommendation to restrict some of those techniques," Miller said.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military said it was ordering troops to use blindfolds instead of hoods and requiring interrogators to get permission before depriving inmates of sleep or keeping them in stressful positions for extended periods - two of the most common techniques reported by freed Iraqis.
Exceptions would require permission of a general officer, Miller said.
The scandal over treatment of prisoners erupted after CBS broadcast pictures of smiling American guards near Iraqi prisoners in humiliating positions. That unleashed a huge international outcry that undercut the U.S. position it invaded Iraq to replace the tyrannical regime of Saddam with a just and humane Iraqi government.
In Washington, Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, said there were 10 ongoing investigations of prisoner deaths, mostly in Iraq, and 10 pending cases involving the possible assault of prisoners.
There were "some deaths" at Abu Ghraib and they were being investigated, Miller said.
Abdul-Salam Al-Qubeisi, a leading member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, which organized the Wednesday protest, called on the United States to punish the soldiers involved in abusing Iraqis and to pay compensation to the victims. He also said human rights groups should be allowed to visit the prisoners.
"These demands are vital to us as Iraqis and meeting them will help maintain security and alleviate tension and violence," al-Qubeisi said.
Members of the association later met with a prison official who "promised that our demands would be met," group member Sheik Majid al-Saadi said.
Al-Saadi could not identify the official.
"If our demands are to be met I think Iraqis should resort to the language of guns and Jihad," he said.
On Tuesday, Miller, former commander of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, said he would reduce the number of inmates at Abu Ghraib from the current 3,800 to less than 2,000. His changes to interrogation techniques were aimed at getting "the maximum amount of intelligence" while treating prisoners in a humane manner, he said.
Miller took over as head of the prison last month after the previous chief, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, was suspended amid investigations into the claims of abuse.
The U.S.-led coalition has about a dozen prisons in Iraq holding up to 8,000 inmates total.
U.S. officials have said the guilty soldiers and their commanders would face justice.
Miller's investigation at Abu Ghraib is one of three ordered by Sanchez in response to alleged abuses by U.S. Military Police, their commanders and interrogators. Six soldiers have been charged and six others have been reprimanded.
Iraqis freed from coalition jails - emboldened by photographs of abused prisoners - stepped forward with new allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation and hours spent hooded and kneeling before interrogators.
One former prisoner, Muwaffaq Abbas, on Tuesday displayed scarred wrists, black eyes and a gouge on his eyebrow that he said came from nine days in a U.S. lockup. Abbas, like many other former prisoners, said he was prevented from sleeping by booming rap music and sadistic guards.
The Baghdad lawyer was arrested at his home in March with five relatives.
McGentrix wrote:
Bi-Polar bear has some personal crusade against anyone who doesn't agree with him and continues to make snide little personal comments.
Timber, sometimes farmerman, scrat, occom bill, sofia, but a few that I do not agree with on most or many things. I also happen to like them, respect their opinions and knowledge and would welcome their company any old time.
It's the one dimensional, predicitable, walking talking cliches with a hard on for war and killing that I find idiotic and distasteful in the extreme. However I have no personal crusade against them because they are not important to me. I do however, as I have stated before, take an admittedly childish delight in poking a stick in the monkey cage.
:wink:
Most inmates believe themselves to be innocent. This article does nothing to address the fallacious claims made in this thread. you can through any prison in the world and hear the same complaints. It's a prison, not a day-spa.
