Published on Sunday, May 2, 2004 by the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
The Pictures That Lost The War
Grim images of American and British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners have not only caused disgust and revulsion in the West, but could have forever lost Bush and Blair the moral high ground that they claimed to justify the invasion of Iraq
by Neil Mackay
IT'S an image that would do Saddam proud. A terrified prisoner, hooded and dressed in rags, his hands out-stretched on either side of him, electrodes attached to his fingers and genitals. He's been forced to stand on a box about one-foot square. His captors have told him that, if he falls off the box, he'll be electrocuted.
The torture victim was an Iraqi and his torturers were American soldiers. The picture captures the moment when members of the coalition forces, who styled themselves liberators, were exposed as torturers. The image of the wired and hooded Iraqi was one of a series of photographs, leaked by a horrified US soldier inside Saddam's old punishment center, Abu Ghraib - now a US PoW camp.
When the images were flashed around the world by America's CBS television network last Wednesday, there was a smug feeling within the UK that British troops would never behave like that to their prisoners. But on Friday night, the UK was treated to images - courtesy of the Daily Mirror - of British soldiers urinating on a blood-stained Iraqi captive, holding guns against the man's head, stamping on his face, kicking him in the mouth and beating him in the groin with a rifle butt.
US soldiers force Iraqi prisoners to pose naked and wired for execution at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
The pictures of US soldiers torturing their captives have the added horror of sexual abuse. In five of the 14 images that the Sunday Herald has seen, a female soldier - identified as Lynndie England, a 21-year-old from a West Virginia trailer park - is playing up to the camera while her captives are tortured. In one picture, she's smiling and giving the thumbs-up. Her hand rests on the buttocks of a naked and hooded Iraqi who has been forced to sit on the shoulders of another Iraqi prisoner.
In another, she is sprawled laughing over a pyramid of naked Iraqis. A male colleague stands behind her grinning. Later, she's got a cigarette clenched between grinning lips and is pointing at the genitals of a line of naked, hooded Iraqis. A third snap shows her embracing a colleague as a naked Iraqi lies before them.
In other pictures, two naked Iraqis are forced to simulate oral sex and a group of naked Iraqi men are made to clamber on to each other's backs. One dreadful picture features nothing but the bloated face of an Iraqi who has been beaten to death. His body is wrapped in plastic.
Other pictures, which the world has not seen, but which are in the hands of the US military, include shots of a dog attacking a prisoner. An accused soldier says dogs are "used for intimidation factors".
There are also pictures of an apparent male rape. An Iraqi PoW claims that a civilian translator, hired to work in the prison, raped a male juvenile prisoner. He said: "They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming ... and the female soldier was taking pictures."
The British pictures show a hooded Iraqi aged between 18-20 on the floor of a military truck being brutalized. According to two squaddies who took part in the torture, but later blew the whistle, the Iraqi's ordeal lasted eight hours and he was left with a broken jaw and missing teeth. He was bleeding and vomited when his captors threw him out of a speeding truck. No-one knows if he lived or died.
One of the British soldiers said: "Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was "Get rid of him - I haven't seen him'." The other whistle-blower said he had witnessed a prisoner being beaten senseless by troops. "You could hear your mate's boots hitting this lad's spine ... One of the lads broke his wrist off a prisoner's head. Another nearly broke his foot kicking him."
According to the British soldiers, the military police have found a video of prisoners being thrown from a bridge, and a prisoner was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. Although there is a debate about the veracity of the images, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said that if the pictures were real, they were "appalling". A Downing Street spokesman said Tony Blair expected "the highest standards of conduct from our forces in Iraq". The UK's most senior army officer, General Mike Jackson, said that if the allegations were true then those involved were "not fit to wear the Queen's uniform". The Defense Ministry is in crisis over the pictures as top brass know they ruin any hope of UK forces winning Iraqi hearts and minds.
The US torture pictures were taken by members of the American 800th Military Police Brigade sometime late last year. Following an investigation, 17 soldiers were removed from duty for mistreating captives. Six face court martial. Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, who ran Abu Ghraib and three other US military jails, is suspended and faces court martial. Prior to the revelations, Karpinski assured the US media that Abu Ghraib was run according to "international standards".
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, said he was "appalled". He added: "These are our fellow soldiers. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down. Our soldiers could be taken prisoner as well - and we expect our soldiers to be treated well by the adversary, by the enemy - and if we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect ... we can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers as well. This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers over here."
But these soldiers aren't simply mavericks. Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations. Two "civilian contract" organizations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration.
California-based Titan Corporation says it is "a leading provider of solutions and services for national security". Between 2003-04, it gave nearly $40,000 to George W Bush's Republican Party. Titan supplied translators to the military.
CACI International Inc. describes its aim as helping "America's intelligence community in the war on terrorism". Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI's board.
Rest of article here:
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0502-02.htm