WP: Iraqi Teens Abused at Abu Ghraib, Report Finds

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27048-2004Aug23?language=printer

An Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has found that military police dogs were used to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers as part of a sadistic game, one of many details in the forthcoming report that were provoking expressions of concern and disgust among Army officers briefed on the findings.

Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that unmuzzled military police dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Abu Ghraib, something the dog handlers have told investigators was sanctioned by top military intelligence officers there. But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.

"There were two MP dog handlers who did use dogs to threaten kids detained at Abu Ghraib," said one Army officer familiar with the report, one of two investigations on detainee abuse scheduled to be released this week. "It has nothing to do with interrogation. It was just them on their own being weird."

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released, other officials at the Pentagon said the investigation also acknowledges that military intelligence soldiers kept multiple detainees off the record books and hid them from international humanitarian organizations. The report also mentions substantiated claims that at least one male detainee was sodomized by one of his captors at Abu Ghraib, sources said.

[David Dunham]

1. Bush's Iraq at its worst

[NickB79]

2. What messed-up priorities this article has

The majority of it is devoted to saying the guards simply scared the teens with attack dogs until the teenagers pissed themselves. Only near the end does it also mention they've substantiated claims that a guard ASS-RAPED a teenage boy! Shouldn't that be the VERY first thing this article touches on? It's like they're trying to hide it down at the bottom of the story so its less likely people will notice it.

[daleo]

13. I usually read last few paragraphs of news items first, for this reason

These days, the important stuff usually is in the last few paragraphs. A reversal of the old journalism principle of the inverted pyramid. "Bury the lead" has become standard, when it doesn't support the status quo.

[rawstory]

3. RAW STORY reported this on July 4 and followed up July 26

Only when the ARMY MAKES THEIR OWN REPORT, and the info is HANDED in their LAPS does the media catch on. It makes me sick. These reporters for the post make four times what I make and I don't even leave my apartment and I could have told you this at the beginning of July. Unicef even SPOKE OUT about it in early July.

Revolt -- Read Raw Story: http://rawstory.com

JULY 4: http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=53

More than 100 Iraqi children allegedly held, abused by U.S. troops
Filed under: U.S. foreign policy Iraq conflict

Exclusive English translation

More than 100 children report being detained by U.S. soldiers, according to information gleaned from the International Red Cross, including in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

According to “Report Mainz,” a German television magazine, ” 107 children were registered held between January and May while in custody in at least six different internment centers,” Florian Westphal, speaking for the International Red Cross told the magazine in Geneva.

The number of imprisoned children held could be higher, Westphal said.

The TV magazine reported testimonies in which U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prisons had abused children. Samuel Provance, an NCO stationed in the notorious torture prison Abu Ghraib, said specialists harrassed a 15- to 16-year-old girl in her cell.

Military police intervened only when she was already half undressed. Another time a sixteen-year-old was driven into water in cold weather and afterwards covered with mud. The child welfare organization of the United Nations (Unicef) confirms the capture of Iraqi children by coalition forces.

###

JULY 26: U.S. COLONEL ADMITS HOLDING IRAQI CHILDREN:
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=149

EXCLUSIVE to THE RAW STORY at http://rawstory.com

By John Byrne | Raw Story Editor

The US army admitted Monday for the first time to having detained adolescents in its prisons in Iraq, according to a German press report. The story was then carried by the Chinese Xinhua news agency.

The popular TV magazine “Report Mainz,” broadcast Monday evening, quoted Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the US troops in Iraq, as saying that they still imprisoned 58 Iraqis in the age of from 14 and 17. The program had previously reported July 5 that 117 children had been held during the period of January through May.

The Iraqi adolescents are held in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and"Camp Bucca” and the length of their average imprisonment is half a year, Johnson said.

In an independent report, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Yoswa, a spokesman for the Defense Department allegedly confirmed that the U.S. military is holding 58 juveniles. None of them are female, he said.

In the report, published by Arkansas Indymedia, he stated that the U.S. does imprison children in sweeps made by patrols in Iraq. Whole families are arrested and taken from their homes in the middle of the night, the report said.

The families are taken before a “committee” who then decides who to release and who to imprison, according to the report. The highest ranking officer on the “committee” is a Colonel.

[nosmokes]

9. you're absolutely right, raw story

but the army/DoD has what, something like 12 investigations going on? you don't conduct 12 investigations on a subject to find out what's going on, you do it to muddy the water and and put out so much worthless and benign information that the cancer gets hidden and goes un detected.

every damn day i wait for sy hersh to say something, and i think about the children being raped and sodomised by american GIs and contractors on US payroll over there and it breaks my fucking heart.

god damn gw bush to hell.

[whistle]

4. Time to hold Donald Rumsfeld's feet to the fire.....

....that bastard knew exactly what was happening and probably gave the orders, but he is insulated by lots of buffers.:mad: :grr:

[rawstory]

5. And the MEDIA's as well!

This makes me so irate. I don't they'll *EVER* report the truth about Bush being AWOL.

[Dancing_Dave]

6. It's time for us to put an end to this

:puke:

I'm organizing a local rally in solidarity with the huge Peace protests coming in New York. I know lots of people near who feel that the need to end this criminal and disasterous occupation is the most pressing issue we face now.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

17. to end this criminal and disasterous occupation

Wouldn't it be nice.... if ending the occupation... could undo everything that has led up to the occupation?? Such as.... the chads... the "supreme" court... the operatives messing with the recount.... the gullibility of Congress and the American people.... and on and on and on.... oh and including the extreme hatred for America that has increased geometrically in the last 3 3/4 years???

Wouldn't it be nice if we could have actually recounted the votes and let democracy do its thing?

[anarchy1999]

7. I just logged in and this is the first post I looked in on after spending

2 and 1/2 hours drive time going to an organizational meeting for the www.texastruthconvention.org

I just feel very tired and so very sad and almost ill to read this. Why are we all having to fight so hard to have criminals be held accountable, brought to trial and sent to prison?

That includes this current administration. For heavens sake, we can impeach a president for lying about a private indiscretion. Why is it we can't find anything, anyone in this administration worthy of being impeachable or at least worthy of termination? Where are representatives in Congress or in the military? Where is the public outrage?

I'm at a loss or maybe we just live in the wrong place. Come to think of it, many of the people we have been most influenced by these last couple of years and that we love the most have left or are leaving.....

Hmmm, something to have to think about.

[riverwalker]

8. the media is complicit in war crimes

tonight Paula Zahn interviewed the Doctor who wrote in the Journal Lancet about medical personnel assisting in the abuses and torture. She was hostile and defensive as usual, and Paula actually said the abuses at Abu Ghraib were because the guards were tired and hungry. She also poo-pooed The Geneva conventions because this war is "different".

[Ms. Clio]

11. She is one dangerous psycho bitch

And if this war is different for us, so that the Geneva Conventions no longer apply, then I guess it will be different for whatever foreign power or powers that finally rise to challenge the U.S., too.

Empires rise, and empires fall. Why do Americans think they exist outside of history?

[Nordic]

12. She sure did. Here's the transcript

I had to see it to believe it, but here it is:

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0408/23/pzn.00.html

ZAHN: You say it's a Geneva violation. But you no doubt know there are a lot of people out there who say, in this post-September 11 environment, that you have to treat these prisoners differently, and maybe there's a way the line is blurred where you don't violate the convention, but you're able to successfully interrogate them to make the country safer.

MILES: Well, 70 to 90 percent of the people at Abu Ghraib were not guilty of anything. And they were all collectively abused. They were not segregated into separate areas, as is always caused by the Geneva Convention.

Some people in the Pentagon have said that these abuses are the battle that lost the war. And so I don't think that our national interest has been advanced either in Iraq or around the world by this catalog of abuses.

ZAHN: Where did these doctors cross the line?

MILES: I think where they crossed the line was that they saw themselves as soldiers rather than as medical professionals who are serving in the military. And I'd point out that the degree of complicity and the types of acts varied a great deal.

I've mentioned the issue of the failure to establish an adequate health care system in Iraq and Afghanistan. A much smaller number of physicians participated in designing and monitoring interrogation plans, which they should not have done. A small group of people participated in falsifying death certificates. In very, very sporadic cases, medics directly abused detainees.

ZAHN: Doctor, finally tonight, we've all tried to gain a better understanding of what it is these prison guards were up against. We've heard about tremendous sleep deprivation. In some cases, these guards, American personnel, were extremely hungry. And we're told that even doctors suffered some of these same challenges.

Does that make it any easier to understand why some of them may have crossed the line if that is what it turns out the government ends up admitting to?

MILES: Well, first off, this occurred in diverse theaters, including Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. There was a policy that was signed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorizing medical participation in designing and monitoring interrogation.

And the purpose of the medical system is to function as the last defense for prisoners against human rights abuses, because very few prisoners will be visited by the Red Cross. And the entire fabric of international law is weakened when they do not live up to that duty.

ZAHN: Dr. Steven Miles, we have got to leave it there this evening.

[grasswire]

14. the doctors were HUNGRY?

What's that about???

Is it just another example of Bush not providing for GIs? Or what?

[Nordic]

20. they're providing excuses, that's what they're providing.

and lame excuses at that.

"Oh, gosh, I was hungry, that's why I shoved that baseball bat up your ass."

[calimary]

22. I saw that last night, too. She twisted herself all over the map trying to

provide an "out" for the White House, a way to spin it, a window of plausible deniability. It was ABUNDANTLY clear that she did NOT like what this guy was saying, and she tried EVERY which-a-way to punch holes in his EVERY assertion. Thank heavens he never caved.

I swear, sometimes I wonder if she's not just some mole. I singled her out for serious criticism the last time I called the CNN comment line. Maybe she's one of the "friendly" journalists kkkarl rove keeps in his pocket through whom to float all his talking points and trial balloons. I kept shouting at my TV - Paula - WHERE'S YOUR BLUE DRESS?!?!?!?

[Voltaire99]

10. Where is Seymour Hersch?

Since his ACLU speech, we've been anticipating his Abu Ghraib rape story for weeks. Did he get the goods? Is the New Yorker waiting to spring the piece at the right time?

[thebigidea]

16. he's got a book coming out next month.

That should be interesting.

[0007]

15. One male detainee was sodomized by a captor at Abu Ghraib?

How many detainees clammed up by intimidation?

[hansolsen]

18. George Bush is the Prince of Abu Ghraib. This is his legacy.

George Bush is responsible for this abuse. I call him The Prince of Abu Ghraib.

He set the tone from the top down that this war is different, that 9/11 changes everything, that the world is either for us or against us, and anyone against us in this war is not entitled to enemy combatant status as prisoners of war.

George Bush has trashed the United Nations, trashed the World Court, and trashed the Geneva Convention. Is it any wonder that soldiers in the front lines are unclear how far they must go to squeeze intelligence from prisoners?? Bush holds "detainees" for years without access to counsel, and treats them like dirt, keeping them naked and terrified by unmuzzled dogs. In this sense, George Bush, too, is a terrorist.

George Bush is the boy emperor of American politics; he is a modern day Caligula in training pants. The abuse at Abu Ghraib is his legacy. As an American citizen, I say this is wrong, I don't like it, and I am mad as hell about it. And furthermore, I don't care who knows it.

[The Night Owl]

19. Kick

:kick:

[saigon68]

21. Kind of like this