TORTURE REPORT MAY HAVE BROKEN CLASSIFICATION RULES

I'd be willing to be that this isn't the first time this administration (or others) have broken the classification rules...particularly in circumstances that involve the following reasons (in bold):

There's enough smoking guns stinking up the air in this administration that it's a wonder they don't get personally ill on the fumes.

(Perhaps Bush holds a pretzel in his teeth to absorb the odor).

torture report
.....since the other thread has been locked, i think ths may be a suitable substitute thread. it may throw a somewhat different light on the situation (not necessarily a better one, though).....i watchted an interview of a professor from stanford university on CBC television yesterday. he stated that what happened in the prison could easily have been foreseen. he conducted a study in the 1970's with a group of university students that were asked to participate in a"prison environment study". i won't go into the details here; you can find the whole report in the link. he said that if you have "untrained and unsupervised" prisonguards, the outcome is scary and completely predictable. he further claimed that this study was very well known to those who needed to know (the military). as i understand it, the "prisonguards" had no training as prisonguards (the description i heard was "traffic-cops" - they were never meant to serve as prisonguards). i also understand that there was no command-structure. the "civilian contractors" (contracted to come up with results pronto - to justify their contract and pay), the agents of the CIA and the senior military officers had not established that the military was in charge. while one may want to chastise the "traffic-cops" for their abhorrent behaviour, the stanford study suggests that this kind of outcome is inevitable , given the circumstances. it would seem that the officers/generals in command are the ones that should bear the major responsibility for the wrongdoings - let's see who is going to get the blame in the end ! hbg ... >>> STANFORD UNIVERSITY - PRISON EXPERIMENT

Re: torture report


We Germans are clever, aren't we, hamburger

mrs. h and i have not heard any reference to the stanford experiment on u.s. t.v. reports. has it been picked up in germany as a contributing factor to this mess ? pretty well all u.s. t.v., radio and newspaper reports have chastised and blamed "a few soldiers who should have known, that it is unaccetable behaviour", but most have stayed clear of blaming the leadership or the command structure. i find, that by "fishing around' among canadian, u.s., european and other newssources one can usually come up with a much better picture than relying on one news-source only, even if it is the NYT or SPIEGEL. hbg

Not that I noticed this - which doesn't mean lot:regarding "wie an amerikanisch Universitäten festgestellt wurde" isn't my favorite reading.

walter : you wrote : ' regarding "wie an amerikanisch Universitäten festgestellt wurde" isn't my favorite reading ' . sorry, i'm not sure what you mean. can you elaborate, please ? btw. there aare a fair number of articles listed in google under "stanford university prison report" . hbg

Just wanted to say that wie get quite often these notices/reports, like "a famous scientist on a welknown American university found out that green papers are mostly used by pregnant women of the upper middle class, who listen prferrably to classic music" - this kind :wink:

Thus, I miss serious reports quite often.

Hamburger
1971 Stanford Prison Experiment:

http://www.prisonexp.org/

Re: Hamburger


Thanks :wink:

Red Cross Says Repeatedly Warned U.S. on Iraq Jail
This Red Cross statement appears to be at odds with the complaint made by the former human rights minister Abdel Basset Turki. Turki said he had also raised concerns about prisoner abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross, but they refused to share information with him.
---BBB

Red Cross Says Repeatedly Warned U.S. on Iraq Jail
May 6, 10:23 AM (ET)
By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday it had repeatedly urged the United States to take "corrective action" at a Baghdad jail at the center of a scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

The Geneva-based humanitarian agency, mandated under international treaties to visit detainees, has had regular access to Abu Ghraib prison since U.S.-led forces began using it last year, according to chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari.

"The ICRC, aware of the situation, and based on its findings, has repeatedly asked the U.S. authorities to take corrective action," she told Reuters.

Notari declined to give details of what the ICRC had seen during the visits, which take place every five to six weeks, or about its reports to the U.S. authorities.

The United Nations said separately that it had written to U.S. authorities, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Governor of Iraq Paul Bremer, seeking information on human rights in Iraq over the past year, including treatment of detainees.

The Iraqi Governing Council and foreign ministers of other members of the U.S.-led coalition had also been asked to provide information.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement its team was ready to visit Baghdad for talks with coalition and Iraqi leaders, before submitting a report on May 31. The inquiry is being led by Jakob Moller, a lawyer and human rights expert.

The ICRC, which has been operating since the late 19th century, keeps a public silence about what it hears from detainees as the price for gaining access to jails in trouble spots around the world from Chechnya to West Africa.

Pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, Iraq's largest prison and notorious under Saddam Hussein for torture, have sparked an international outcry.

In a bid to limit damage to the U.S. image, President Bush went on two Arabic satellite television stations on Wednesday to tell an outraged Middle East that soldiers guilty of abusing Iraqi prisoners would be punished.

WANTON CRIMINAL ABUSES

Bush aides said the president had upbraided Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not having alerted him to the severity of the abuse at the jail, which was also the focus of a separate earlier probe by a U.S. general.

That report by Major-General Antonio Taguba, covering the period October-December 2003 and completed on March 3, cited incidents of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses."

The ICRC has also visited thousands of prisoners under the control of U.S. and British forces, which are also being investigated after a British newspaper published pictures of a soldier apparently urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

But Notari declined to comment on what officials had seen in British-run jails.

Under the Geneva Conventions on both prisoners and the treatment of civilians in wartime, the ICRC must be allowed to interview detainees in private and on a regular basis.

On these terms, it has carried out two visits to Saddam, who is being held somewhere in Iraq since his capture by U.S. troops shortly before Christmas.

"It is important that people understand our role, which is to be present and to have a dialogue with the authorities," Notari said.

But on a few occasions the Red Cross has broken its vow of silence because either the authority concerned has issued a partial account of the ICRC's findings or has simply failed to take any action after a long period.

One such example involved Israeli treatment of detained Palestinians some 20 years ago, when the ICRC went public with its criticism, Notari said.

More recently, the ICRC has expressed mounting frustration over the situation of Afghan and other detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announcing that its concerns about conditions and treatment were not being addressed.

A co-ordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams, a human rights group supported by North American churches that has been active in Iraq since 2002 and which conducted interviews with dozens Iraqi detainees and/or their families and support networks between May 31 and December 20, 2003 is quoted in a Reuters report from Baghdad Thursday as saying that the images of US abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghrahib prison indicate a far larger problem of mistreatment of Iraqi detainees:
Iraqis feel that they have been treated as sub-human by the Americans pretty much since the beginning...If that is what is finally coming to light, then what we're seeing now is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Stewart Vriesinga said his group had taken statements from Iraqis describing abuse in detention, sexual humiliation at US checkpoints, and even deaths.
Report and Recommendations on Iraqi Detainees

Human Rights Testimonies Recorded by CPTers in Iraq

LA Weekly from February 6: The Torture Files: Iraqi detainees allege mistreatment and abuse

Well, I am very much afraid that President Bush and his right wing crew has tried to do the very same thing that the Nazis tried to do after World War II. Get rid of the Iraq torture evidence--just as the Germans tried to get rid of the Holocaust Evidence. But the truth will out. What do you bet that the vicious American troops used as jailers will use the same cop out that the Germans used in World War II. I watched Judgement at Nuremberg the other day and it was chilling. No one in Germany knew of the existence of the extermination camps. I am sure that none of the American Officers and no one in the State Department will know about the torture of Iraqi prisoners by their American jailers.

How did they try to get rid of the evidence? The evidence came out and at least 6 seperate investigations were started. all those involved are in jail and changes are being made.

Just because WE just became aware of it doesn't mean it was being ignored. It's the same arguement that many on the left use about Osame. Because the media isn't paying attention to the continued hunt for him, the government must not be either.

Well, obviously, we shouldn't be aware of it: U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, told the committee today that he regrets CBS's decision to broadcast the photos.

However: