Verified torture, rape, physical abuse, desecration of a human body of the captives by their 'HamAss' captors.

[TeamProg]

This is about Abu Graib and GitMo. Remember those horrific pictures? It is relative to what's going on today. Tests have shown that prisoners are often abused their jailers (search the Stanford prison experiment). Some acts more violent than others.


During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical abuse, sexual humiliation, both physical and psychological torture, rape, as well the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. 3][4][5][6] The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.[7]

The George W. Bush administration said that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents and not indicative of U.S. policy.[8][9]: 328  This was disputed by humanitarian organizations including the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch; these organizations stated that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay[9]: 328  (Gitmo). There were also 36 prisoners killed at Abu Ghraib due to insurgent mortar attacks. This also provoked criticism due to the facility's location in a combat zone.[10]

Documents popularly known as the Torture Memos came to light a few years later. These documents, prepared in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States Department of Justice, authorized certain "enhanced interrogation techniques" (generally held to involve torture) of foreign detainees. The memoranda also argued that international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, did not apply to American interrogators overseas. Several subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), have overturned Bush administration policy, ruling that the Geneva Conventions do apply.

In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits.[11] England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.[12] Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commanding officer of all detention facilities in Iraq, was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of colonel. Several more military personnel who were accused of perpetrating or authorizing the measures, including many of higher rank, were not prosecuted. In 2004, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the Abu Ghraib abuses.

[comradebillyboy]

1. So what is the point of reminding us that the US soldiers

involved in those human rights abuses were in fact court martialed and punished? Are you trying to justify and excuse the Hamas atrocities in Israel with the "what about all the bad things the US has done" excuse? Because that's how it appears to me.

[TeamProg]

2. My points were pretty clear I thought. What Hamas has done is beyond torture, closer to mid-evil torture or what the

Turks did to Armenians in WWI, that was even worse than what Hamas is/was doing. Look it up!

[yardwork]

4. I'm rarely at a loss but I am now.

Are you actually comparing atrocities and saying one is "not as bad" as another? Or... what?

And what's this HamAss in your title? Seriously, dude, wtf?

And mid-evil? As in medieval, or middling evil, or... ????

[Igel]

5. Your rhetorical point is flipped, I think.

If you're trying to say that Hamas was an order or 5 magnitudes worse, all that came to mind as I read through was whataboutism.

" 'HamAss' is bad? Look what we did!"

This post of yours seems to say that it's the reverse. People were pilloried for much less serious acts, while those who committed far worse acts are exculpated by some, given a pass by others with a 'yeah, whatever'. (We'll ignore celebrations in "Palestina oppressa".)

[Hekate]

6. Medieval

[TeamProg]

7. Yeah, yeah I try to be clear when I do dictation to text from my phone but it doesn't always work out!

[questionseverything]

3. If you look at my profile

Those torture pics are in my journal