Stop publishing torture photos; we get the picture

The photos that have been released are mild in comparison to the photos and videos that exist, and that might soon come out.

There's a lot of noise about the unreleased imagery depicting scenes that make the released ones look like hazing.

Occom Bill

I was responding to your suggestion that we who are now outraged over the pictures were the ones who wanted to keep Saddam in power.

I was attempting, however badly, to show that your logic is not logic. America is supposed to be above that sort of thing, at least I always thought, now we are not that much better than Saddam was.

BBB, since that abuse has been happening for over a year, I imagine that the other side has already known about it so I don't think showing more pictures is going to endanger our troops any more than they are presently dying now.

I think what the pictures show is that these were not just people run amok on their own like a disgruntled postal worker. In one picture it showed several people watching and others just going about their business as though nothing unusual was going on. That picture is very telling and it should be showed again and again to rebut the spin that is being spit out about how these are just a few acting on their own.

!
If horrible photos cause more US & UK troops death then the solution would be send the troops back home.

Or send enough troops to defend themselves instead of a bare bones unequipped military and expensive former military contract miltia men that make Haliburton wealthy. Many alternatives here in this war.

Defend themselves? I must have confused which country invaded which in this war. Also, the United States have by far the most powerful military in the world, and there's such a large fraction of it in Iraq already that you don't have more troops to send there without pulling them out of other hot-spots (South Korea for example).

One day I expect to see news photos of the last chopper out of Baghdad before the Iraqis claim their country again.

Shades of the fall of Saigon edgablythe!

There is no way coalition forces can remain in Iraq other than by enforcing a brutal military occupation of the country.

I was always in 2 minds about this war. I did not want it to start, but once it did start I thought it worth pursuing on the grounds that American and British intentions towards Iraq were honourable.

It is now abundantly clear that American intentions were never honourable. The objective was simply to take and hold certain parts of Iraq deemed to be of strategic importance to the US.

Objectives such as the removal of Saddam, the liberation of the Iraqis people, the destruction of wmd and the war on terror were of secondary importance and purely optional compared with the achievement of the primary goal.

That the American/British invasion has provoked a guerilla war of resistance should be of no surprise. Suppression of that resistance by use of torture to gain intelligence should not be a surprise either. Of course it is no surprise to the military and political leadership, just a shock to people like me who thought something good might come out of invading Iraq.

Coalition forces maintain their grip on Iraq through a brutal military occupation and the analogy of Bush with Hitler, and American soldiers with nazi SS concentration camp guards is not misplaced.

It is people like me who had a simple faith in the overall decency of American/British intentions towards Iraq who are now exposed as having misplaced that trust.

Steve, I've never had that trust; this administration changed their justification for attacking Iraq too many times. Bush's latest rhetoric of "staying the course" also never made any sense to me, because we don't know how many more American lives and our treasury it will cost. If we're looking at the worst case scenario, it seems a lose-lose proposition to me. We continue to lose more lives and billions, while the Iraqis begin to hate more of our occupation. I just hope I'm wrong.

Red Cross Was Told Iraq Abuse 'Part of the Process'

2 hours, 33 minutes ago Add Top Stories
By Peter Graff

LONDON (Reuters) - The Red Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail in October, and was told by the intelligence officer in charge it was "part of the process," a leaked report said on Monday.

AFP
Slideshow: Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners





The International Committee of the Red Cross also described British troops forcing Iraqi detainees to kneel and stomping on their necks in an incident in which one prisoner died.


The Red Cross said it had repeatedly alerted U.S.-led occupation authorities to practices it described as "serious violations of international humanitarian law" and "in some cases tantamount to torture."


It confirmed the confidential February 4 report, which appeared on the Wall Street Journal Web Site Monday, was genuine.


The 24-page report concluded that "persons deprived of their liberty face the risk of being subjected to a process of physical and psychological coercion, in some cases tantamount to torture, in the early stages of the internment process."


During a visit to Abu Ghraib in October, Red Cross delegates witnessed "the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said.


"Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process'."


It said it met prisoners who were being held naked in complete darkness. Others had been held naked and were allowed to dress, but given only women's underwear.


The Red Cross's visit took place two months before pictures were taken of U.S. troops abusing prisoners, which later led to criminal charges against seven soldiers.


PICTURES


Those pictures appeared in the media last month, causing international outrage and prompting apologies by President Bush (news - web sites) and other senior officials. However, Washington has said it believed the practices were isolated incidents of aberrant behavior by individuals and not its usual practice.


Although much of the abuse described in the report appears to have taken place in jails run by U.S. forces, the report also describes the death of an Iraqi prisoner in custody in the British zone Basra last September. His name is blacked out.


A spokesman for Britain's defense ministry said the allegation was not new, but appeared to be a reference to the death of an Iraqi detainee named Baha Musa, which Britain says it has been investigating since last year.


The Red Cross report described him as one of nine men arrested in a Basra hotel and "made to kneel, face and hands against the ground, as if in a prayer position. The soldiers stamped on the back of the neck of those raising their head."


It said the death certificate for the Iraqi prisoner listed his cause of death as a heart attack.


"An eyewitness description of the body given to the ICRC mentioned a broken nose, several broken ribs and skin lesions on the face consistent with beatings."


The report describes prison guards opening fire with live ammunition during riots and escape attempts, on detainees who "were unarmed and did not appear to pose any serious threat to anyone's life."





According to the report, the Red Cross repeatedly drew allegations of mistreatment to the attention of the authorities. In some cases, they changed practices. For example, they stopped issuing wristbands marked "terrorist" to all foreign detainees.

Among the "serious violations of international humanitarian law," the report listed a failure to set up a system to notify family members of arrests.

"The uncaring behavior of the CF (Coalition Forces) and their inability to quickly provide accurate information on persons deprived of their liberty for the families concerned also seriously affects the image of the Occupying Powers among the Iraqi population," it said.

This brings a whole new meaning to "coalition of the willing."

'Washington Post' Publishes Only a Few of Its Many Iraq-Pris
'Washington Post' Publishes Only a Few of Its Many Iraq-Prison Photos
By Joe Strupp
Published: May 11, 2004

NEW YORK Despite having more than 1,000 photos taken by American soldiers of life in and around the abuse-filled Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, The Washington Post has published just 10 depicting alleged mistreatment of prisoners due to concerns over incomplete information about the pictures and the "dignity of those [who are naked] in the photos," said Executive Editor Leonard Downie, Jr.

"It is only a fraction of the photos that show abuse," Downie told E&P. "Out of those, we have only published photos in which we knew what was going on in the picture. We have other photos of people with injuries and we did not know what those injuries were. We had no idea if the injuries were from abuse or not, who they are, or how the injury occurred."

Downie, who declined to say how or exactly when the photos were obtained, said they were first published starting last week, in most cases 24 hours after the paper received them. The paper's Web site, www.washingtonpost.com, offers a gallery of 10 abuse photos, but only four are credited to the Post (Click for QuikCap), with the remaining six identified as coming from The New Yorker. The Post Web site also has a gallery of nine non-abuse Iraq prison photos.

"Some of the soldiers took a lot of pictures, but some of them were tourist-like photos of their lives in and around Baghdad and the prison," Downie said.

Downie added that some of the photos of naked prisoners were either cropped or not published out of respect for those in the photos or because "they are similar to what we already published."

Several photos are running with a three-part series that began on Sunday and ends Tuesday, depicting events in the Abu Ghraib prison, life outside and around the prison, and how that particular prison fits into American detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries since the Sept. 11 attacks, Downie said.

Downie also praised the cooperation among many newspapers and magazines covering the story, such as The New York Times and The New Yorker, for sharing the images and offering credit where deserved.
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Joe Strupp ([email protected]) is senior editor of E&P.