Posted on 05/25/2004 10:33:04 AM PDT by kattracks
In a dramatic gesture designed to counter the media's focus on U.S. abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, President Bush met in the Oval Office on Tuesday with a group of Saddam Hussein's torture victims.
The six men, whose hands were surgically amputated at Saddam's direction in operations that were filmed for his viewing pleasure, picked up on Bush's promise last night that Abu Ghraib would be demolished, saying that they wanted to be among the first to "swing the hammer" against the prison's walls.
Their plight, chronicled by video producer Don North in the documentary "Remembering Saddam," has received scant attention in the U.S., with North telling the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago that American media outlets he contacted have shown no interest in broadcasting the film.
The film tells the story of how Saddam meted out the amputation punishments to the six Baghdad merchants, whom the Iraqi dictator blamed for his country's collapsing economy.
"Besides having our hands amputated, we were scarred on our foreheads, between our eyebrows," one of the men, Ala'a Abdul Hassein, told the Houston Chronicle in April. "The regime wanted us to be psychologically scarred forever."
"I was amazed and shocked by the tape," North told the paper. "It clearly showed doctors working with surgical instruments cutting through and severing these healthy hands. The victims were under anesthetic, and while they were still under, they had these black crosses tattooed to their foreheads to show they were miscreants," he said.
"Remembering Saddam" also documents how Houston surgeon Dr. Joseph Agris volunteered to perform the necessary surgery to fit the six torture victims with prosthetic devices last year with the help of Houston oil executive Roger Brown, who helped bring the them to the U.S.
In a bid to circumvent the mainstream media's embargo of the film, the Heritage Foundation has scheduled a screening of "Remembering Saddam" in Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.
I wish Bush had issued a VERY public invitation to teddy kennedy for this event.
And I'm sure CBS will lead with this tonight...
I'm heading over to the National Press Club to meet these men. C-SPAN is scheduled to cover their press conference at 3 p.m., IIRC.
Funny. Not a word of this on ABC, CBS, or NBC...
Bump the heck out of this story.
BTTT
Ping for more news we won't see anywhere
BTTT
Unless Bush made them walk around with womens underpants on their heads, CBS has no use for a story like this.
Bump !! Let's keep this one going!!
including Fox News - North did an interview last week with Laura Ingraham, he cannot get a distribution deal for the film, and Laura specifically asked him if Fox News would run it - nope.
bttt
BTTT
Tommorrow in D.C.:
Remembering Saddam
Date: May 26, 2004
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Speaker(s):
Don North’s documentary film
Remembering Saddam
Followed by a discussion featuring
Seven Iraqi Men
whose hands were severed in Saddam Hussein’s arbitrary act of terror
and
Don North
Producer, Northstar Productions
Host(s): The Heritage Foundation and the American Foreign Policy Council
Details:
Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Auditorium
As Iraqis emerge from the dark ages of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the staggering dimensions of his cruel atrocities are becoming known. Remembering Saddam is the story of seven Baghdad merchants who incurred the wrath of Saddam. Nine years ago, after spending a year in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, their right hands were surgically removed as part of an effort to blame small businessmen for Iraq’s collapsing economy. Each man tells his story and friends, wives and children recall their experiences under the former dictator. Join us for a look at this powerful and poignant documentary, which as of now, no U.S. broadcast or cable network has chosen to air.
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev052604a.cfm
For a touching synopsis, read from my attorney friend Michael Craig's email commentary below:
"I went to a luncheon at Brennan's yesterday with my law partner; it was sponsored by the West Point Society (we were guests of Airborne Longhorn's, an alumnus of West Point). The featured speakers were a panel of four young officers, all West Point graduates, who had just returned from a tour in Iraq.
It was enlightening to hear their versions of combat and reconstruction that is going on in Iraq, a somewhat different perspective than what we currently read in the media. One young officer (he looked 19 to me, but I am sure he was in his mid to late twenties) talked about how he was handed $30 million (U.S.) captured from Saddam's bunkers and put in charge of putting it to use.
He described how he oversaw the utilization of these monies in building schools, bridges, repairing water works and sewage systems, purchasing police cars, repairing electrical systems, etc., a far better use of the funds than its previous owner had in mind for it.
Another officer said that Saddam's palaces were opulent beyond measure, and incredibly abject poverty existed just outside the gate of each palace. They also uniformly reported that over 90% of the country stood solidly behind the U.S. involvement there.
Of more visceral impact on me, however, was meeting the guests of honor at the next table, seven middle-aged Iraqi men, all missing their right hands. They were businessmen (importers, jewelers, etc.), with the exception of one teacher.
Their crime under Saddam Hussein was that they had all inquired about the value of the Iraqi currency against the value of the U.S. dollar in their professional endeavors. Their punishment was to lose their right hand at Abu Gharaib prison.
Somehow, for me, this had far more gravity in its cruelty and permanent consequence than the capricious humiliation of a prisoner by having him pose naked with underwear on his head, at the behest of a handful of dunderhead soldiers at the bottom of the food chain.
These Iraqis, who each got up to speak (with the assistance of a translator) were gentle, unassuming men, and my heart went out to them. So did a lot of others, appparently, as Marvin Zindler took their cause up some time ago, resulting in their all coming to America to have new bionic hands fitted on them by a prominent Jewish plastic surgeon at the Texas Medical Center at no cost (though no one mentioned it at the luncheon, I couldn't miss the irony of a Jew's compassionate act for these middle Eastern men).
Continental Airlines donated the plane fare, the Warwick and Marriott Medical Center hotels donated their room and board, and the West Point Society, made up of veteran officers, did the logistics. Even Drayton McClain got in the act by donating his box for their viewing of an Astros game the other night.
To me, this was an incredibly moving human interest story about the generosity of Americans. To my knowledge, our liberal press didn't give this story so much as a mention on the back page.
I think God's handiwork goes on behind the scenes through so many people; unfortunately, none of this is seen by the majority of people in this country.
Michael"
bump to the ping
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1142025/posts?page=1
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