Posted on 07/23/2006 9:16:29 AM PDT by new yorker 77
The group Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday that U.S. military commanders encouraged abusive interrogations of detainees in Iraq, even after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal called attention to the issue in 2004.
Between 2003 and 2005, prisoners were routinely physically mistreated, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme temperatures as part of the interrogation process, the report said.
"Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk," wrote John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The organization said it based its conclusion on interviews with military personnel and sworn statements in declassified documents.
A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Greg Hicks, said he wasn't aware of the report, but noted the military is reviewing its procedures regarding detainees following a Supreme Court ruling that the Geneva Conventions should apply in the conflict with al-Qaida.
The Bush administration had previously held that certain enemies, including terrorists, were illegal combatants and not protected by those rules.
The conventions prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
Human Rights Watch focused much of its report on a detention facility called Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport.
One soldier, whose name was withheld from the report, described a suspected insurgent being stripped naked, thrown in the mud, sprayed with water and then exposed to frigid temperatures in an attempt to soften him up for interrogators.
Commanders, the soldier said, seemed confident that their treatment of prisoners was legal.
He described computerized authorization forms that had to be filled out before subjecting detainees to strobe lights, loud music, extreme heat or cold, or intimidation by barking dogs.
The allegations of abuse at the camp were first reported in March by The New York Times.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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I am not for any form of sadism, but I am for getting information out of such animals, who themselves believe in murdering and torturing innocents as well as our military personnel, by tough means if necessary before their summary execution.
IMHO, we need to handle and deal with these irregul;ar, saboteur, spies, insurgents in this fashion, using their own beliefs against them if necessary, like Black Jack Pershing did many years ago when faced with the same in the Philippines. Just my opinion.
We'll at least they did claim they were being tortured, now the word of the day is abused.
Sorry i mean "didn't".
you forgot to label this thread as Barf Alert... what the hell are we suppossed to do when catching these animals? interview them in a clean room, music playing in the background, be so nice it brings it makes them confess just cuz we are good guys?
War is the last resort.
Last resort with "rules" is an oxymoron.
My report is at least as valid as theirs, and is supported by the descriptions in their report. Heat, cold and a barking dog are hardly torture.
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/media-trots-out-detainee-abuse-charge-one-more-time
Trotting out again the SAME unsubstantiated allegation.
I shudder at this stage at what it will take before we do...hundreds of thousands or even millions dead I fear.
By the looks of this guy, it appears that the 'Don't ask. Don't Tell.' policy has failed.
Hunh. It always sounds like a lot of wasted effort when described by unidentified sources. Keep 'em awake for 72 hours and they'll talk.
If we just shot the out of uniform saboteurs when captured like the Geneva Convention calls for, we’d be done with this frack’n thing by now.
"Last resort with "rules" is an oxymoron."
This rings very true to me for some reason. I think of that old saying, "All's fair in love and war."
Right on brother!
Haha. You people crack me up. For me, this is pure comedy. I mean, it's sad, and all, that your president has done such a fantastic job of totally alienating one of the world's greatest countries. But the irony is wonderfully funny. And you would all jump off a cliff if he or Anne Coulter told you to. It's marvellously funny. Just in case any of you were curious, America is now the laughing stock of Europe, and the United States doesn't seem to have many other potential allies. The sad part is, we've got to clean up the mess that that tosser Bush is making. I'm just glad that we're having a better government run America next time around - it certainly couldn't get any worse. But this forum... I just think it's so perfect. It's so easy to satirise, given the fact that you all agree on everything. If it has anything to do with (superficially) easily identifiable groups of people, you all jump on it like it's going out of fashion. It's so predictable as to be absurd. I love it. Keep up the good work. The rest of us need a good laugh.
"The group Human Rights Watch..." I stopped right there.
Human Rights Watch = Leftist Panty-waist Rabble-rousers
You've probably noticed that we are in the process of building a new alliance. The old NATO has outlived its usefulness, so we are building a new one.
The members of the new alliance are easy to identify, they are the ones who have been with us on the battlefield. If you want to know who your friends are, look around you when the bullets are flying; the ones still standing are your friends. The rest aren't and can be ignored.
The core of the new alliance seems to be, as usual, Britain and Australia, with the eastern European countries following close behind. The jewel in the crown that we've been working hard to bring on board is India. Russia, for all its complications, was extremely important during the Afghan campaign, and we appreciate them.
The others, the ones we thought would be with us and weren't, well we're learning to work around them. And, in any case, Chretien is gone now, replaced by a pro-Bush prime minister. Schroeder is gone, replaced by Merkel. Chirac may soon be gone, and the guy first in line to replace him is Sarkozy. Meanwhile the UN managers who gave us so much grief have been exposed as having been on Saddam's payroll. So the world is moving our direction.
We lost Spain; Aznar's replacement however has turned out to be one of the most bizarre creatures in politics today, which is really saying something. I would be proud to have Aznar on my side any day. The other side is welcome to keep the disturbed individual who replaced him.
In fact, that pretty much tells the tale. The men and women who stand with us, are typically people of character I would be proud to stand with. The ones who fought us, in general, like Chirac and Schroeder and Zapatero, are a rather contemptible lot.
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