U.S. ignored torture allegations - Newsday

[TacticalPeek]

U.S. ignored torture allegations


BY JAMES RUPERT
Staff Correspondent

May 7, 2004, 10:26 PM EDT

U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington ignored human rights monitors' repeated pleas for official investigations of American abuse, torture and killings of Iraqi prisoners over the past year, international and Iraqi human rights officials said Friday. And human rights groups rejected Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's assertion that such abuses are "an exception," saying they are widespread in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. war on terror.

Asked by reporters when the U.S. administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, first heard of allegations that U.S. soldiers had been mistreating Iraqi prisoners, his spokesman, Dan Senor, said Bremer "was made aware of the charges relating to the humiliation" of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in January, when U.S. forces began investigating. The inquiry was prompted by a U.S. soldier's complaint to superiors about the sexual humiliation of prisoners that he had witnessed at the prison outside Baghdad.

But the U.S. authorities here had similar information from the International Committee of the Red Cross for at least seven months beforehand, said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, its operations director. The Red Cross, which is the official global monitor of prisoners' treatment under the Geneva Conventions, gathered testimony from prisoners of abuses against them and reported the details "on several occasions, orally and in writing, throughout 2003" to U.S. military and civilian officials in Iraq, Kraehenbuehl told a news conference in Geneva.

He declined to discuss details of the complaints, noting the Red Cross normally reports only secretly to the governments holding prisoners. But he confirmed as genuine published excerpts of a summary of the reports that was submitted in February to Bremer. The excerpts, published Friday by the Wall Street Journal, told of Iraqi prisoners kept naked in dark cells and of Iraqi men forced to walk about in women's underwear.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woabuse0508,0,921242.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

[the Kelly Gang]

1. ignored it and actively promoted it..only problem is being found out.

[maddezmom]

3. and activley covered up n/t

[Barrett808]

2. kick

[ColdWarZoomie]

4. Here's the Kicker for Me

Last paragraph from the article:

<<The Baghdad-based Human Rights Organization in Iraq sent memos to U.S. officials for months last year and sought a meeting to present its evidence of detainees being mistreated. The Americans "would give excuses for not meeting," a leader of the group, Adel al-Allami, told The Associated Press. U.S. officials finally agreed to meet the group last month, he said.>>

Let me get this straight. We go over to liberate Iraqis. They set up the Human Rights Org in Baghdad and collect evidence of our wrongdoing. We then ignore them.

Liberate, then ignore the human rights groups. Got it.

And we expect to "win the hearts and minds" of the Iraqis and are surprised by the ongoing insurgency?

It becoming increasingly clear that we are fighting a homegrown insurgency of our own making. For every innocent prisoner we abused, God only knows how many insurgents have decided to exact their revenge on us.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Gee, where have I seen that headline before?

Oh yeah, I remember:

WH ignored terrorist threat

WH ignored the worst terrorist attack in US History

WH ignored anti-war protesters

WH ignored Russia, France and Germany

WH ignored evidence that Saddam did not have WMD's

WH ignored torture allegations


All I can say, is this has got to be the most ignorant bunch of clueless criminals in history.

[leftchick]

6. like Sen. McCain said....

Let everything out NOW!