See what a good job we are doing winning hearts and minds in Iraq. James Risen in
The New York Times > Treatment of Prisoners: G.I.'s Are Accused of Abusing Iraqi Captives:
American soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses in order to make them talk, according to officials and others familiar with the charges.
The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards inside the prison, but were not described in detail until some of the pictures were made public.
Some of the photographs, and descriptions of others, were broadcast Wednesday night by the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" and were verified by military officials.
Courts martial are pending for the soldiers involved.
The CBS News program reported that poorly trained American reservists were forcing Iraqis to conduct simulated sexual acts, among other things, in order to break down their will before they were turned over to others for interrogation.
Charges against the soldiers included assault, cruelty, indecent acts and maltreatment of detainees, Pentagon officials have previously said.
Gary Myers, the lawyer for one of the enlisted men charged, said in an interview that the military had treated the six soldiers as scapegoats and had failed to address adequately the responsibilities of senior commanders and intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations.
[snip]
In one photograph obtained by the program, naked Iraq prisoners are stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English. In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The program said that according to the United States Army, he had been told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.
"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners," states a transcript of the program's script, made available Wednesday night. "And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up."
The CBS News program said the Army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another showing a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner. The program also reported that the Army's investigation of the case included a statement from an Iraqi detainee who charges that a translator hired to work at the prison raped a male juvenile prisoner.
At the Abu Ghraib prison, where the photographs were taken, American forces have been holding hundreds of Iraqis since the American-led invasion of Iraq. The prison is infamous as a site where Saddam Hussein tortured prisoners while he was in power.
I suppose no one remembers the buzz after the invasion when conservatives were arguing that
when terrorists are involved, maybe torture is justified.
Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives surely outweigh constitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is far more barbaric. Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands. If you caught the terrorist, could you sleep nights knowing that millions died because you couldn't bring yourself to apply the electrodes?
Note the gap in logic here: millions of lives were not at stake from terrorist Iraqis. There were no WMD in Iraq. There is no connection between Iraq and 9/11. There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
