Interrogators from Guantanamo involved in Abu Ghraib.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- At least five soldiers objected last fall to abuses they saw at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. One demanded to be reassigned, saying the behavior he witnessed there ``made me sick to my stomach.''

Up the chain of command, the noncommissioned officers who heard such complaints did little to stop the mistreatment, according to Army records obtained by The Associated Press.

One of those same NCOs, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. ``Chip'' Frederick, is accused of stomping on prisoners' toes and punching another prisoner so hard in the chest that he remarked, ``I think I might have put him in cardiac arrest.'' Frederick is among six soldiers facing courts-martial. Another soldier pleaded guilty last month.

These two reports will get all the publicity, but it's two lesser-known studies that should trouble Americans even more. The first report, authored by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth in May 2004, indicates that several American units in Iraq detained wives and children of insurgents in an attempt to make the insurgents turn themselves in or talk while in custody. According to a study by U.S. Army Maj. Christopher Varhola (one of the report's authors), it was also common practice for Americans to "collectively detain ... all males in a given area or village for up to several weeks or months." The collective and family detentions served to "alienate much of the population," Varhola concluded. Such collective detentions played a major role in inflating the Abu Ghraib prison population, to the point where the Red Cross reported that 70 percent to 90 percent of detainees were "arrested by mistake." (Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, an Army spokesman in Baghdad, said there is currently no policy endorsing such detentions, and such past detentions fell outside the bounds of standard operating procedure. But Johnson said such detentions could still occur where family members were personally connected to insurgency activities, and commanders decided it was necessary to detain them.)

Cuba Base Sent Its Interrogators to Iraqi Prison
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ANDREA ELLIOTT

WASHINGTON, May 28 ? Interrogation experts from the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there, senior military officials said Friday. . . .

The involvement of the Guantánamo teams has not previously been disclosed, and military officials said it would be addressed in a major report on suspected abuses by military intelligence specialists that is being completed by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay.

The report by General Fay will be the second major chapter in the Army's examination of the prisoner abuses in Iraq. Military officials said he would determine whether tactics used by military interrogators at Guantánamo and in Afghanistan were wrongly applied in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib.

Marine goes on trial in Iraqi prisoner’s death

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine [Sgt. Gary Pittman] accused of karate-kicking a handcuffed Iraqi POW [Nagem Hatab] who later died believed it was his role to show prisoners “who’s boss” and to soften them up for interrogation, a prosecutor said Tuesday as the court-martial got under way. . . .

The prosecutor also said guards will testify that a special military interrogation team had asked members of Pittman’s unit to soften up the prisoners for interrogation. . . .

Hatab is among 37 Iraqi and Afghan prisoners whose deaths are under investigation . . . Within two days of Hatab’s arrest in June 2003, a guard found his lifeless, naked body covered in his own waste in a yard at Camp Whitehorse, a makeshift lockup outside Nasiriyah.

According to a Lance Cpl. Roy, who has been granted immunity, Pittman, who in civilian life was a federal prison guard, karate-kicked the handcuffed, hooded Hatab in the chest so hard that he flew three feet before hitting the floor.

An autopsy concluded that Hatab had seven broken ribs and slowly suffocated from a crushed windpipe. Defense lawyers say Hatab died of natural causes, perhaps from an asthma attack.

General Says U.S. Forces Tortured Iraqis in Jail
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Army general acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that U.S. forces tortured Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib jail and his report said a colonel who headed the military intelligence unit at the prison could face criminal charges.

"It's a harsh word, and in some instances, unfortunately, I think it was appropriate here. There were a few instances where torture was being used," Army Maj. Gen. George Fay told a Pentagon briefing on his investigation with Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones into the role of military intelligence personnel in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Pentagon leaders and Bush administration officials had previously steered clear of describing the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners as torture. Fay did not specify the actions he considered torture.

The government may establish secret torture camps in foreign countries, pry as much info outta the "terrorists" and "enemy combatants" as they can before the torture turns fatal, and then take the survivors out behind the proverbial barn, put bullets and their heads, and bury them in unmarked graves.

The American people don't have to be bothered with these details. We can pound our "remember 9/11" drum, sit in our comfortable homes with our blinders firmly attached, and pretend our nation is morally superior to all other nations in the world.

Ignorance is Bliss. God Bless America!

What a shame you believe such tripe.

Another way of looking at this:

We capture high ranking officials in terrorist organizations. They have important information regarding attacks on othe human beings. If their fellow terrorists know they have been captured, they will change their plans, locations, people and tactics essentially nullifying any intelligence gathered from the prisoner. So, we keep their capture secret until that intelligence is acted upon. Then, we transfer that prisoner into the general population to demonstrate that we are winning the war on terror.[/quote[/b]]

So we just turn these high ranking officials of terrorist organizations loose in the general population to continue on their merry way plotting more terrorist actions? I doubt it.

The general population of a prison, not society.

<takes a deep breath>

No, they would have been held in the secret prisons that we have been talking about until all the actionable intelligence received has been acted upon. Once the prisoner no longer poses a threat because he has been captured, he is placed into a non-secret prison and given prisoner status.