Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs -WP

[Rose Siding]

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel. Senior officers in charge of the facility near the Syrian border believed that such "claustrophobic techniques" were approved ways to gain information from detainees, part of what military regulations refer to as a "fear up" tactic, according to military court documents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201941.html

[tk2kewl]

1. Improvisation my ass.

:grr:

[Rose Siding]

3. Congress isn't even looking into this group- won't even admit it existed

There's a companion article-

snip>
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, asked if he was satisfied with the information he received on the unit, said, "Yes -- if it existed." But he added: "We're not spending a lot of time going back and dissecting tactical programs."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201579.html

[Rex]

2. Welcome to the New World Order.

Give us what we want or we will kill you. Are we really that much better than Saddam? Dam man, this shit really pisses me off! I expect it from some thug third world country but NOT us. NOT our troops.

[MisterP]

4. one guy who was tortured by both dictators said he wanted Saddam back:

"at least they left my clothes on"

[Rex]

11. It all boils my blood!

WTF has happened to my country!?!?!?!

[MisterP]

14. it's hideous how modern each new horror is:

WWI and the Whites occurred after Arthur Conan Doyle and conveyor belts and canned food and Art Nouveau and Darwin and Mendeleev and Ladies' Home Journal and gaslights.
Hitler came after Art Deco and flappers and Einstein and IBM and electric sockets and jazz--it was only 59 years ago for God's sake! Fifty-nine!

[Catrina]

5. Words fail to express

the horror I feel each time I read of the atrocities being committed under the direction of this administration.

I wonder how many 'terrorists' were created by that murder. As far as gathering information, I guess you could say they failed miserably.

'We've closed Saddam's torture chambers'! I heard Bush say that recently! They lie with impunity! Imagine if that was your father ~ or brother, or husband! How did this happen? Isn't anyone in charge of this country? :grr:

[atreides1]

20. Let's not forget one very important thing

The men and women who are following those directions and who obviously enjoy their jobs.


Those in uniform are just as guilty as the civilian government, and should also be reagarded as War Criminals and should stand next to the ones whose orders they are obeying without question.

We need to stop defending the criminals in uniform, and hold them just as accountable for their actions.

[Hav]

23. .

I wonder what these guys will be like when they return home.
It's not that you just stop being a sadist from one day to the other...

[Barrett808]

6. When will the Pentagon release the new round of photos?

That's going to be something.

[Barrett808]

7. Funny how this story doesn't use the phrase "war crime"

Not once.

[AllyCat]

15. Struggle crime? n/t

[mike_c]

8. dammit-- this did NOT come out of the White House....

This is what the military ALWAYS becomes when it is unleashed without proper command IN THE FIELD. When will people wake up-- left to their own devices, these normal soldiers-- husbands, sons, and next door neighbors-- did not choose to act honorably. They chose barbarism.

[bvar22]

9. Thank god the "Torture Cells and Rape Rooms" are closed!

Thanks, george*, you little, little man.

[mike_c]

12. George Bush did not do this....

Bush has other war crimes to answer for, but you cannot possibly believe that the Bush (s)election suddenly turned the military bad. Or that simply removing him from office would suddenly set things right. This is a systemic problem with the U.S. military that the Rumsfeld DOD simply encouraged, but did not create.

[bvar22]

13. The fish ROTS from the head down.

The crimes in Iraq are a direct result of a lack of Leadership that goes straight to Washington. bush* may not have directly ordered the individual episodes of abuse and torture, but by NOT FORCEFULLY TAKING DECISIVE ACTION when the first reports began to emerge from Afghanistan, bush* let the message travel down the line that this type of thing was OK!

This is a complete FAILURE of LEADERSHIP from the very top.
bush* KNEW (certainly Rummy KNEW) and DID NOTHING! In fact. they actively participated in a CoverUp! A REAL leader would have quickly nipped this in the bud as conduct unbecoming an Officer or soldier!

[Ambrose]

29. Exactly.

Remember they were so upset that the Abu graib was leaked to the press...not that anything bad was going on there.

[Theres-a]

28. He's not doing anything to stop it

Unless his month long vacation milking horses is just a ruse.Perhaps he's really in a conference somewhere trying to get to the bottom of all these torture scandals.:eyes:

[mike_c]

30. yes, Bush shares responsibility...

...he's part of the failure of leadership. But the propensity to do this was already there. Blaming Bush for "not stopping this sort of behavior" is fine, because under the Bushn administration barabism has been sanctioned, but the impetus comes from the bottom up. It was the soldiers who asked themselves "how can we hurt this guy maximally without actually killing him?" That's barbaric. It's worse that this is newsworthy ONLY because they failed the last bit of that task, not because they set out to commit the first part. If the general had lived, it's doubtful that anyone would have ever heard about his torture.

[jokerman93]

32. Bush purged the pentagon

Don't forget. Those who resisted or opposed Bush were purged from the pentagon and replaced with incompetent toadies and christo-fascist wackos.

There's always a link of things.

[usregimechange]

10. sad, just sad

[Voltaire99]

16. This is why running "war heroes" as candidates is a wash.

Because, simply, the progressive public isn't impressed that you've "served" in Iraq.

We know it's a dirty war, an illegitimate war, an unacceptable war. And while we're working to end it, we frankly have no interest in hearing about your "heroism" in participating in it.

And we sure as hell aren't going to vote for you on that merit.

It's that simple. DLC war-mongers, take note: playing war hero in the forthcoming elections isn't going to get you shit.

[high density]

17. So I take it there's no "Support Our Troops" ribbon on your car?

:eyes:

[sandnsea]

18. Your view on Hackett then

How did he get more votes in his district than any Dem in 25 years?

[Voltaire99]

21. How? By being more like a Republican...

...than any Dem in Ohio in 25 years.

On his faux opposition to the Iraq war I found him intellectually and morally disgraceful, to say the least. Really, it's so simple a child can understand it: one doesn't volunteer for wars one opposes, nor does one slander the motives of those who actually do oppose said wars. Particularly slimy was Hackett's claim that "too many liberals who opposed the war want to see the president's Iraq policy fail." What an asshat; good riddance to him.

See, e.g., http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh07302005.html

[mike_c]

26. hear hear....

Well said!

[WhiteTara]

19. Improvisational torture

this is a new one for the books. American gave them good kids and chimpy and his war turned them into animals. No wonder so many of them are coming home mentally crippled.

[llmart]

22. How do you know they were good kids?

This rampant generalization of soldiers is as unacceptable as calling them all war criminals. Let's face it. Some of these "kids" were more than likely bad apples to start with. The military just makes them worse.

[mike_c]

27. "good kids" that "chimpy turned into animals...."

This is utter hog-wash. IF they were "good kids" to start with, it wasn't Bush who "turned them into animals," it was the U.S. military.

[enough]

24. kick

[DeaconBlues]

25. it looks like our soldiers are reliving their own private traumas

in this war. Daddy use to beat me and I couldn't do anything about it, so now I'm going to take it out on the Iraqis...

"The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel."

This sort of thing makes it real hard to join the "support the troops" parade.

[JohnyCanuck]

31. Anyone up for a game of soccer?

US Army Deserter Fled Iraq for New Life in Canada

Joshua Key grew to hate his army's chaotic brutality. In BC, he seeks legal refuge and a home.

By Rebecca Craigie
Published: August 2, 2005


The Keys are living in a van because of Joshua Key’s opposition to the US-led war in Iraq. While many opponents of the Iraq war base their opposition on media reports, Key’s opinion is based on what he witnessed when he fought for eight months in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle.

Key never thought he’d end up in Iraq in the first place. When he first enlisted, he signed up to be a bridge builder in a non-deployable unit. Despite this the army trained him in explosives and landmines, and sent him to Iraq in April of 2003.

<snip>

According to Key, sympathy for the Iraqi people was one of his downfalls. “You’re told to treat the enemy as though they’re guilty until proven innocent, and to have no remorse and no regret.” During a traffic control point that Key was part of, an American tank blew up a car that passed through without permission. There was a father and his child inside. The father was dead and the boy was badly injured. Key bandaged him up and took him to the closest hospital.

“I wasn’t supposed to do this as it showed sympathy to the enemy.” Key and other U.S soldiers searched the car afterwards and there were no signs of contraband anywhere. “They just didn’t understand what stop meant,” he says sadly. There were signs everywhere that showed the military’s lack of control. At a scene in Ramadi, Key realized that no soldier was going to be held accountable for their actions. “We turned a corner and all I saw were heads and bodies. It shocked us all. There were American troops in the middle saying they had lost it. My squad leader told me to go and see if I could find evidence of a firefight and what went on. As soon as I stepped out of the tank I saw American soldiers kicking a head around like a soccer ball.

http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/02/IraqDeserter/

[blindpig]

33. business as usual

This sort of behavior has been SOP with our forces whenever in conflict with non-white people. Be it against Native Americans, Filipinos, Japanese or Vietnamese the rules and decency go out the window when dealing with "untermench".

That we thought we had gotten beyond tribal behavior and that bu$h & co are directly and personally responsible for this episode does not take away from this being an ugly pattern in our history.