Roots of Abu Ghraib Traced to Texas Prisons under George Bush

[donsu]

http://www.democrats.com/

ABC Nightline reports "Consider the following scenario: Some rather frightening prisoners - ones that might not elicit your sympathy - are placed in a situation where many are abused. Complaints are made to the proper authorities; it remains unclear if any of them made their way to chief executive George W. Bush. Those complaints largely go nowhere. Then months later, photographic evidence of the abuse emerges, whipping up a media outcry and a promise by Bush to get to the bottom of the atrocities. This scenario is not just the story of Abu Ghraib circa 2004. It was also a prisoner abuse scandal from 1997 in Brazoria County, Texas, when Bush was governor... Because of a prison abuse case in 1972, Judge William Wayne Justice eventually ruled that a sentence to a Texas prison amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and therefore unconstitutional. 'It's like a picture of the second circle of hell that emerges from that judgment,' Elsner said."


http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Nightline/World/texas_prison_abuse_040826-1.html

Prisoner Abuse Echoes
Texas Case Sheds Light on Abu Ghraib Scandal

Human rights abuses similar to those revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal have occurred regularly in U.S. prisons, but they have sparked far less attention and outrage, critics say.

-snip-

Elsner is the author of Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons, a book that takes a critical view of the human rights situation in the U.S. penal system. He says he "was not that surprised" when he first heard allegations that U.S. soldiers had abused Iraqi detainees, "especially when it became clear that two of the correctional officers who were involved in Abu Ghraib actually had been prison guards in the United States."

Elsner is referring to Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, who recently announced he plans to plead guilty to some charges, and Spc. Charles Graner Jr. Both men are military police with the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Maryland.

-snip-

Others from the U.S. penal system were involved in Iraqi prisons. In May, ABC News reported that four of the six former state prison commissioners chosen by the Bush administration to help set up prisons in Iraq had left their previous posts after allegations of neglect, brutality and prisoner deaths.
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let's see: pedophiles go to the Catholic church and sadists do prison work. what a wonderful world.

[chookie]

1. A Texas sadist tied to Abu Ghraib

Can't supply deets here, but this aired on CBS Evening News about 1.5 weeks after they broke the Abu Ghraib story.

A prison guard in Texas, who had been charged with sadistic abuse of prisoners (there was a videotape documenting it) joined Halliburton and went off to serve George W in Iraq by offering his services as a prison guard.

When confronted with the charge by CBS, officials said -- well, we just don't have enough time to give everyone a thorough background check, and bad apples get through.

Nobody gives a shit. It's not limited to the South by any means, but glee in sadistic treatment of "deserving" criminals in prisons is a Southern thing.... (Western PA, where I live now, supplied Sadist First Class Grainer, who seemingly got hot for sex with Lynndie after a few relaxing hours competing with other guards about who could make Iraqi prisoner shit with fear first. )

A few days ago, Paula Zahn reported on this, describing how the Iraqis in the famous abuse photos had rioted, or had sodomized children -- and *that's* why Patriots Charles Grainer and Lyndie England went all medieval on them -- to do God's Justice upon them. Unbelieveable....

[Tsiyu]

2. I know a few former corrections officers

They concur, some even brag about degrading prisoners.
My first thought when confronted with US abuses at Abu Ghraib was that we've exported our perverted, psychopathic method of dealing with the imprisoned.

So many victims. May all of their screams, and unanswered pleas for true justice, and blood cry out to * every night and day of his life.

Bush, your hands are bloodier than a butcher's. And that damned spot ain't never coming out. If there is a hell, you will surely rot in it.

[Karenina]

3. Mumia had a close encounter

of the "prison guard" kind with Charles Graner in PA. Check the archives of Democracy Now.

[peekaloo]

4. Chickenshit George in a shaky , quiet voice

"If we'd known there was a videotape we'd acted sooner." (paraphrase)

Nightline juxtaposed that admission next to his Iraqi TV interview.....while they're late to the game on this report it was sweet seeing them expose Boo$h for the lying, deceitful piece of shit that he truly is.